Shane O'Sullivan

Thanks, Ron. Yes, I'm looking forward to Jeff's talk and book, which I'm sure will dip into JFK matters too. This may be the last time we gather all these Watergate prosecutors and investigators together, so hope you can register and watch some of the sessions. 

Thanks for posting, Doug. Here is the full line-up for our free 2-day online conference to mark the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in on June 9-10:

DAY 1

10am (Eastern): The Watergate Break-in 

Chair: Shane O’Sullivan

The Break-in - Adam Henig (Frank Wills: Forgotten Hero)

Gordon Liddy is Key to Understanding What Happened in Watergate - Douglas Caddy (the original attorney for the burglars)

Followed by a discussion with the speakers and Daniel Schultz (trial and appeal attorney for the Miami burglars)

12pm: Watergate in Presidential History

A presentation by Timothy Naftali (CNN Presidential Historian and former director, Nixon Library) 

2pm: Investigating the Watergate Break-in 

Opening remarks by lead Watergate prosecutor Earl Silbert, followed by a panel discussion with Silbert and fellow Watergate prosecutor Don Campbell, FBI case agent Angelo Lano and FBI agent Daniel Mahan, moderated by Melissa Graves. 

3.45pm: The Hidden Motives of James McCord 

Nixon’s Pentagon Cover-up - Ray Locker (Haig’s Coup)

McCord’s final PowerPoint to his family about his role in Watergate -Shane O’Sullivan (The Watergate Burglars)

Followed by a discussion with the speakers and Scott Camil (Vietnam Veterans against the War, the group secretly targeted by McCord). 

DAY 2

10am: Bookkeeper/Whistleblower

A panel discussion with Watergate whistleblower Judy Hoback Miller and the retired FBI agents who interviewed her (John Mindermann and Paul Magallanes), moderated by Melissa Graves. 

11.45am: Every Tree in the Forest Will Fall: The CIA and Watergate

Chair: Shane O’Sullivan (The Watergate Burglars) 

Better days: Nixon's pre-presidential relations with the CIA - Christopher Moran (Company Confessions: Secrets, Memoirs, and the CIA)

CIA and Watergate - Jefferson Morley (Scorpions' Dance: The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate)

Did Bill Colby Miss Watergate? - John Prados (National Security Archive) 

1.45pm: Watergate Myths and Counter-Narratives

Chair: Garrett Graff (Watergate: A New History)

The Press: Then and Now - Barry Sussman (The Great Cover-Up: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate)

Secret Agenda, Hougan, and Watergate: The Final Verdict - James Rosen (The Strong Man) 

3.30pm: The Legacy of Watergate

From top to bottom, this whole business is a Haldeman operation - David Kaiser (The Road to Dallas)

Gerald Ford, Watergate, and the De-Nixonization of the Presidency during 1976’s American Revolutionary Bicentennial - Tom Cryer (University College London)

More details here: www.watergateat50.com

When the Watergate burglars were arrested, they gave the arresting officers false names. But as they provided handwriting samples at police headquarters, an MPD intelligence officer recognized "Edward Martin" as ex-CIA security officer James McCord, the security chief for the Nixon campaign.

When he interviewed McCord in his courthouse cell that afternoon, McCord said he was sorry, he had taken a calculated risk and gotten caught - the other men were retired CIA men from Miami. Apart from one FBI interview, the MPD officer Garey Bittenbender has never told his story until now: https://nixondirtytricks.com/garey-bittenbender

A few months ago, I also posted a blog on how the Secret Service reacted to news of the Watergate break-in. Jake Esterline, CIA station chief in Miami, told a local Secret Service agent "the Agency was concerned with [James] McCord's emotional stability prior to his retirement.” The agent laughed, "knowing that this was his attempt to cover the Agency's backside." You can read the full story here: https://nixondirtytricks.com/the-secret-service

When the Watergate burglars were arrested, they gave the arresting officers false names. But as they provided handwriting samples at police headquarters, an MPD intelligence officer recognized "Edward Martin" as ex-CIA security officer James McCord, the security chief for the Nixon campaign.

When he interviewed McCord in his courthouse cell that afternoon, McCord said he was sorry, he had taken a calculated risk and gotten caught - the other men were retired CIA men from Miami. Apart from one FBI interview, the MPD officer Garey Bittenbender has never told his story until now: https://nixondirtytricks.com/garey-bittenbender

A few months ago, I also posted a blog on how the Secret Service reacted to news of the Watergate break-in. Jake Esterline, CIA station chief in Miami, told a local Secret Service agent "the Agency was concerned with [James] McCord's emotional stability prior to his retirement.” The agent laughed, "knowing that this was his attempt to cover the Agency's backside." You can read the full story here: https://nixondirtytricks.com/the-secret-service

When the Watergate burglars were arrested, they gave the arresting officers false names. But as they provided handwriting samples at police headquarters, an MPD intelligence officer recognized "Edward Martin" as ex-CIA security officer James McCord, the security chief for the Nixon campaign.

When he interviewed McCord in his courthouse cell that afternoon, McCord said he was sorry, he had taken a calculated risk and gotten caught - the other men were retired CIA men from Miami. Apart from one FBI interview, the MPD officer has never told his story until now: https://nixondirtytricks.com/garey-bittenbender

A few months ago, I also posted a blog on how the Secret Service reacted to news of the Watergate break-in. Jake Esterline, CIA station chief in Miami, told a local Secret Service agent "the Agency was concerned with [James] McCord's emotional stability prior to his retirement.” The agent laughed, "knowing that this was his attempt to cover the Agency's backside." You can read the full story here: https://nixondirtytricks.com/the-secret-service

Finally, on this date a year ago, I wrote a piece for the Washington Post on James McCord and the revealing PowerPoint presentation he shared with his family two years before he died: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/05/09/watergate-burglars-account-his-crimes-and-what-it-tells-us-about-mueller-indictments

I can't say for sure who gave Martinez the key, and Martinez won't say. Baldwin was best placed to take a copy during his tour of DNC headquarters.

The missing notebook in Martinez' car and the September bug belatedly found on Spencer Oliver's phone three months after the arrests were two of the key mysteries in Secret Agenda. I managed to unearth a lot of new detail on both, so I document that in two appendices at the end of the book. The notebook belonged to Martinez. It was allegedly an operational diary and  Howard Baker's staff tried in vain to find it. It took the CIA two days to report the location of Martinez' car to the FBI in Miami. In the meantime, it seems the car was sanitized by friends of Martinez. If there was an operational diary in the car, it had disappeared by the time the FBI searched it. 

Thanks, S.T., well said but if you read the transcripts of Len Colodny's calls with Hunt, he seems genuinely bemused by talk of a call girl ring and the evidence of Magruder's involvement is very thin. For me, the critical person is Baldwin. In later years, he became a prosecutor in Connecticut and dealt with prostitution cases all the time. He knew what calls to a call girl ring sounded like, so when he insisted that wasn't what he heard at the DNC, that swung it for me. 

I'm still deeply skeptical of Dean in terms of the cover-up and how he put his self-preservation before anything else, burning Hunt's notebooks and not admitting it until November 1973 after he secured a plea deal etc. 

Thanks, S.T. At this point, I don't believe Dean ordered the second break-in. Magruder wasn't happy with the photographic take from the first break-in, one of McCord's bugs wasn't working and he'd put it on the wrong phone, and Liddy was under pressure to fix these problems and come up with the goods to pay back the $250,000 invested in Gemstone. There were already plenty of reasons to go into DNC headquarters a second time.

The timing of the Bailley indictment and John Rudy's trip to see Dean at the White House on June 9th is interesting but even if there was a call girl operating out of DNC headquarters (which I doubt), I still don't see how Dean could have bypassed Liddy and directed Hunt to get the key to Maxie Wells' drawer to Martinez. Like Baldwin, in later years, Hunt said he never heard anything about a call girl ring, so if the main players were never aware of one, where does that leave the call girl theory? 

I devoted a whole chapter of my book to the call girl theory, so I did explore it thoroughly but I came away unconvinced and after two long conversations with Spencer Oliver, I think the intimate calls heard on his phone by Baldwin are explained by gossiping secretaries, as I wrote above. 

Thanks for your kind words about my book, S.T. I also admire Jim Hougan for his lack of political bias and agree with Jim that the Rosen and Shepard books are too politically biased and constructed to exonerate Mitchell and Nixon respectively. They're both skilled researchers but a lot of the good research James Rosen did on the call girl theory didn't make it into his Mitchell biography and appears for the first time in my book. 

Exhibit A is his 1995 interview of Alfred Baldwin, in which Baldwin emphatically dismisses the call girl theory and reveals McCord told him he was in Dallas on the day of the JFK assassination. As Baldwin was the only person to hear the 200 telephone calls intercepted on Spencer Oliver's phone, I found his denial in this interview and a court deposition the following year persuasive. Baldwin discussed the content of the calls with Earl Silbert and the FBI in July 1972 but they didn't include a call girl ring, more likely DNC secretaries gossiping about their sex lives. You can read the lengthy report of Baldwin's FBI interview and his detailed statements to DNC attorney Alan Galbraith and the LA Times on my website: https://nixondirtytricks.com/alfred-baldwin

Many of the 200 calls were sexual in nature because Oliver wasn't in his office half the time. It had a refrigerator and kitchenette, so secretaries ate lunch there and used his phone. Maxie Wells dated five guys during this period and gossiped about them on Oliver's phone with Marty Sampson, who worked in the Young Democrats office on the first floor. After the bug was found, Wells admitted to Oliver their risqué conversations were probably the "extremely personal, intimate and potentially embarrassing" calls Baldwin had told Earl Silbert about. Oliver's office also had a WATS line, so Wells and others could make long distance calls to boyfriends at night. On top of this, Oliver was attending marriage counselling and the first call Baldwin heard was the Olivers talking about their marital difficulties. I'd love to find a plausible explanation for the key but I don't think the call girl theory fits.

There is no evidence of John Dean directing any of the burglars to target Maxie Wells' desk. Dean claimed he met Hunt only once (with Charles Colson) before Watergate, Liddy knew nothing about the key and the other burglars had no contact with Dean. So I disagree with S.T.'s statement that "to dismiss the Rikan ring is also to try to exonerate Dean." I'm deeply skeptical of Dean but the call girl theory, as it stands, is tantalising but unproven. 

Thanks, Jim. I read Postgate, the new book by Mark Felt's lawyer John O'Connor but found nothing new in it. 

Secret Agenda inspired my recent book Dirty Tricks: Nixon, Watergate and the CIA, which contains a lot of new information on areas first covered by Jim Hougan 35 years ago. 

Some of these are included in my new piece for the Washington Post today on what Watergate whistleblowers like Alfred Baldwin and Rob Roy Ratliff tell us about the Trump impeachment hearings: The real threat to Trump from the impeachment hearings

The article draws on my book and includes links to Baldwin's testimony and interviews; and Ratliff's unredacted affidavit concerning secret envelopes passed from Howard Hunt to the CIA before Watergate, which I've just published on my website: https://nixondirtytricks.com/rob-roy-ratliff

Cheers, Michaleen, very pleased to hear this! I'm glad the film still stands up six years after its release. 

Glad you found it, Stephanie. If anyone else has issues accessing it, you can also find it here: https://www.scribd.com/document/412494211/A-Lie-Too-Big-to-Fail

I think adding two more shooters in the pantry - one on the steam table ensuring he fired in the same direction as Sirhan, and another in a busboy outfit, right next to Cesar - makes the operation even more complex and risky, with two more shooters who need to escape undetected. It's best to discuss the operational risks of the two-shooter scenario with a professional, who's been involved in such operations but as far as I know, Lisa hasn't done that. 

Ron, I'm not sure you read my piece. I agree there were two shooters but I don't think there were four, or that Sirhan was firing blanks. 

51 years after the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, we continue to seek justice for Kennedy and the unfairly-convicted Sirhan. I'm writing a new piece on why we need to reopen the case but in the meantime, I'm sharing a new essay on some of the theories presented in Lisa Pease's recent book A Lie Too Big to Fail. While it's well-researched and digs up plenty of interesting new leads, I don't believe Sirhan was firing blanks or that there were more than two shooters in the pantry. Here, I explain why: http://www.whokilledbobby.net/a-lie-too-big-to-fail

She said his children were very private people and didn't want an obituary. McCord's wife died before him and I guess his children just want to get on with their lives and didn't even want to add a comment for the Washington Post obituary.  

There is a great exchange between McCord and John Dean on C-SPAN here during a press conference to promote the BBC Watergate series in 1994.

3 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Shane:

Here is a query.  How did you meet and greet with McCord's family?

The MSM invaded that little town in PA just recently.  I sent two friends there and no one could locate McCord's family.

Just as my book went to press last September, I got in contact with his niece (who does not live in that little town in PA) and she confirmed his death and shared an email from McCord, including the presentation, which he had sent to his family in 2015. She told me the rest of the family did not want to talk either to me or the Washington Post, when the Post obituary writers asked me to put them in touch with the family.

7 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Odd that McCord did not speak of a VVAW assassination threat at the time the entire nation wanted to know the purpose of the Watergate break-in.

If Sam Ervin refused to ask questions about the VVAW, despite McCord's memoranda to him, why didn't McCord shout about it when called before the committee?  A contempt charge would have minor compared to the sentence later McCord received.  And, where are these memoranda now?

Odd that the FBI did not approach Larry O'Brien and demand personnel records, or otherwise ascertain who the VVAW mole was among the DNC volunteers.  With "Terrorism" at issue, it took a break-in, and not a subpoena and some stern looks, to find the mole?

McCord had a PowerPoint presentation.  Howard Hunt had videotaped interviews.  What do we feel stopped McCord from pulling the concept of "Terrorism" out of the thin air of modern anxieties, just as Hunt pulled the names of LBJ and Cord Meyer from the suspect pool on the internet? 

Is this a pattern?  Using your family bonds and some noble pocket litter (in modern media formats) to alibi you after you're gone?

Hunt: I refused Harvey and Morales, and was merely a bench-warmer in Dallas.

McCord: I acted from the best humane motives while not working for the CIA, even though I insinuated my self into the West Wing on a CIA assignment to train the Secret Service. 

McCord may have gotten FBI reports on Scott Camil and the Gainesville 8, but they were coincidental to the purpose of the break-in and the engineered police capture.  He kept those reports in his back pocket for apologia.

Interesting questions, David. McCord did discuss the alleged VVAW mole in his Senate Watergate testimony but not the assassination threat. You can find one of his memos on Scott Camil and the VVAW threat at the Republican convention at the link I posted. 

McCord's Secret Service connections and his revelation in the presentation that he headed up the team that brought Nosenko out of Switzerland are very interesting in relation to his claim to Alfred Baldwin that he was in Dallas on the day of the assassination. 

I have just written a new piece for the Washington Post on James McCord and the revealing PowerPoint presentation he shared with his family two years before he died, which his family shared with me. It includes a link to the PowerPoint presentation and another key McCord memo, which can find here.

Joe - I think it's worth exploring McCord's possible presence in Dallas that day, particularly when I discovered after finishing the book that McCord headed up a team which brought Nosenko out of Switzerland and into the US in early 1964. I am currently researching a lead in this direction. 

James Rosen worked for Fox News for some time and wrote a biography of John Mitchell, who directed Nixon's election campaigns in 1968 and 1972. The call girl theory is interesting -  and, as you say, sexual blackmail is a timeless tactic - but I wasn't completely convinced by it for reasons described in the book. 

Jim - of course, McCord was involved in all four attempted DNC break-ins, what I am saying is he was never a part of the special investigations unit at the White House. He first met Liddy after Liddy moved from the Plumbers unit to CRP. Yes, the faulty bug was the ostensible purpose for the second break-in but as I discuss at length in the book, McCord made a mistake and planted it in the wrong office, so there was not a faulty bug in O'Brien's office. 

The other two statements are incorrect because you overlooked the sources in my endnotes. Thanks for correcting them for accuracy. I share your admiration for Jim Hougan. He was the only author who read my manuscript in advance and gave me the following blurb: “While we have fundamental disagreements about 'Watergate' and the Deep State agenda that shaped it, O’Sullivan is to be congratulated on an impeccably researched work of investigative reporting that adds greatly to our understanding of the affair and its mysteries."

This is an interesting and welcome obituary but a few corrections are needed. Hunt and Liddy were in the Plumbers Unit, not McCord, who was the head of security at CRP, where he later met Liddy. And the faulty bug was not placed inside Larry O’Brien’s office. That was the plan but McCord didn't know where O'Brien's office was during the first break-in, so he planted the bug in the wrong office on the other side of the building and had to send Alfred Baldwin on a tour of the DNC on June 12th to find out where O'Brien's office was. That's when Baldwin met Spencer Oliver's secretary, Ida "Maxie" Wells, a key figure in the call girl theory.

Baldwin later claimed McCord told him he was in Dallas on 11.22.63. Baldwin wouldn't speak to me but he told James Rosen about it in a 1995 interview and James kindly shared the transcript with me and I published it for the first time. The Angelo Lano quote comes from an oral history interview he gave the Nixon Library, as noted in my endnotes. 

There's much more on McCord, Dean, the call girl theory and what Baldwin overheard on the bug on Spencer Oliver's phone in my book, which has been highly praised by Jim Hougan and was directly inspired by his book: www.nixondirtytricks.com

Thanks, fixed the link

State Secret, the free ebook by Bill Simpich on Oswald and Mexico City is well worth a read. May I also suggest my documentary Killing Oswald? It can be streamed for free with an Amazon Prime subscription or on Vimeo for a modest charge. 

Very interesting, thanks. I've just bought John's book and look forward to reading it. 

I cover Zabala's encounter with Cuban intelligence in my book Dirty Tricks: Nixon, Watergate and the CIA and a recent Washington Post article, which John references. The approach was heavily scripted by Veciana and designed both to establish his CIA credentials and to undermine the Carter administration's attempts at rapprochement with Cuba through Bernardo Benes (another fascinating story). Here are some of the key documents on the Zabala affair: 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=7003

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32356746.pdf

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32313056.pdf