Douglas Caddy

Dr. Gary North wisely wrote on his website, Specific Answers, today Trump is the most naïve elected senior politician in the history of Western civilization. He has no skills whatsoever for the position which he has now been elected do. He is what is sometimes called a babe in the woods. More to the point, he is a sitting duck. Before January 20, the revolution that millions of voters hope for today will be gone with the wind. The revolution is going to die a stillbirth. Trump is going to cooperate with Ryan. He is going to cooperate with McConnell. He is going to cooperate with the Council on Foreign Relations. It has already begun. This is a unique historical situation. We have never seen anything like this before. This is why the conventional approaches to explaining what is gone on will fail. This really is sui generis. There are no historical precedents for what is now taking place….. I am not saying that Trump is going to sell out the voters. The powers that be cannot buy him. He owns too much wealth. He is already at the top of the political system. I don't think anybody is threatening him with assassination. I think it is a situation in which a politically naïve man with no political experience finds himself at the top of the most important political hierarchy in the world, yet he doesn't know what he's doing. Nothing he has ever done in the free market has prepared him to sit on the throne of political power. Today, there are no powers behind the throne, but there soon will be.

There have been recent news articles pro and con on this issue. http://heavy.com/news/2016/11/hillary-clinton-pardon-barack-obama-pardoned-clemency-will-the-president-pardon-hillary-trump-video-josh-earnest-white-house-press-secretary-gerald-ford-nixon/

President Obama will likely pardon Hillary and her close aides that were involved in the email controversy, probably around Thanksgiving or Christmas when the public is absorbed in the holidays and not paying too much attention. The pardon for Hillary will cover both the email and Clinton Foundation controversies. It looks increasingly likely that Gov. Christi will be indicted on Bridgegate before Trump becomes president. Christi's two close aides who were recently convicted in that scandal will eagerly testify against him at the trial. However, Trump may pardon Christi before the trial begins but the public perception that he gets off free while his close aides take the fall for him will engender intense criticism of both Christi and Trump. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/10/barack-obama-will-not-rule-out-pardon-for-hillary-clinton-amid-d/

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/supporters-to-trump-break-campaign-promises-at-your-peril/ar-AAkbUZa?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=UE07DHP

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/10/politics/mitt-romney-donald-trump-racism/index.html Also this from Sen. Harry Reid: Senate minority-leader Reid did not mince his words: "White nationalists, Vladimir Putin and ISIS are celebrating Donald Trump's victory, while innocent, law-abiding Americans are wracked with fear -- especially African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Muslim Americans, LGBT Americans and Asian Americans," Reid continued. "Watching white nationalists celebrate while innocent Americans cry tears of fear does not feel like America." “If this is going to be a time of healing, we m...ust first put the responsibility for healing where it belongs: at the feet of Donald Trump, a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate. Winning the electoral college does not absolve Trump of the grave sins he committed against millions of Americans. Donald Trump may not possess the capacity to assuage those fears, but he owes it to this nation to try. “If Trump wants to roll back the tide of hate he unleashed, he has a tremendous amount of work to do and he must begin immediately.”

Posted by me on my Facebook page today: Trump is fighting back against the rising mass demonstrations against his being inaugurated as president in January. The national police union endorsed his candidacy. The FBI helped rig his election. Now these pro-trump law enforcement entities are infiltrating the mass protest demontrations using paid skilled persons who purposely cause violence. This leads to arrests of innocents and ultimately to an attempt to ban all demonstrations. The process is called COINTELPRO and America has seen it before. The difference this time is that we are now entering stage one of a national police state under a Trump Adminstration. COINTELPRO - Wikipedia COINTELPRO (a portmanteau derived from COunter INTELligence PROgram) was a series of covert, and at times illegal,[1][2] projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting and disrupting domestic political organizations.[3] en.wikipedia.org

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/with-trump’s-election-a-bonanza-for-washington-lobbyists/ar-AAk8WiU?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=UE07DHP

Published on Zero Hedge (http://www.zerohedge.com) Trump Reveals Policy Goals: "Building That Wall", End "War On Coal", Repeal Obamacare, Dismantle Dodd-Frank By Tyler Durden Created 11/10/2016 - 14:21 On his transition website GreatAgain.gov [4], the Trump team has laid out the framework of his initial policies with policies focused i) on American Security including as Defense and National security, Immigration Reform and Building That Wall, and Energy Independence; ii) Getting America Back to Work Again including Tax Reform; Regulatory Reform; Trade Reform; Education; Transportation & Infrastructure and Financial Services Reform; and iii) Government for the people including Healthcare Reform (Obamacare), Veterans Administration Reform and Protecting Americans' Constitutional Rights. The key highlights include: •overhaul in immigration policies, including "Building that Wall" , the Trump transition team will "execute on the following ten-point plan to restore integrity to our immigration system, protect our communities, and put America first" - i) Build a Wall on the Southern Border; ii) End Catch-and-Release; iii) Zero Tolerance for Criminal Aliens; iv) Block Funding for Sanctuary Cities; v) Cancel Unconstitutional Executive Orders & Enforce All Immigration Laws; vi) Suspend the Issuance of Visas to Any Place Where Adequate Screening Cannot Occur; vii) Ensure that Other Countries Take Their People Back When We Order Them Deported; viii) Finally Complete the Biometric Entry-Exit Visa Tracking System; ix) Turn Off the Jobs and Benefits Magnet •promoting a strong, robust military force to defend against the "threat posed to our nation and our allies by radical ideologies that direct and inspire terrorism." The administration will push for immediate and sustainable actions to counter the threats posed by radical ideologies; will address the "catastrophic threats posed by nuclear weapons and cyber attacks" and will "ensure our strategic nuclear triad is modernized to ensure it continues to be an effective deterrent, and his Administration will review and minimize our nation’s infrastructure vulnerabilities to cyber threats." •dismantling and replacing of the Dodd-Frank Act financial-sector law with pro-growth policies. This means that banks will be allowed to not only engage in prop trading again, but to invest directly in hedge funds. “The Dodd-Frank economy does not work for working people. Bureaucratic red tape and Washington mandates are not the answer,” says statement on Trump’s official transition website. •changing the tax code: policies since President Obama took office “have been blocked in one way or another” by Democratic opposition, the transition website says in section outlining “tax reform/economic vision.” It adds that “a Trump administration tax plan can be summarized as lower, simpler, fairer, and pro-growth.” as the website summarizes "a Trump Administration tax plan can be summarized as lower, simpler, fairer, and pro-growth." •addressing the millions of American jobs that have been lost over the last decade "because of trade deals that do not put Americans first." The administration will "reverse decades of policies that have pushed jobs out of our country" by making it more desirable for companies to stay, create jobs here, pay taxes here, and rebuild the economy. The new Administration will make it more desirable for companies to stay, create jobs here, pay taxes here, and rebuild our economy. Our workers and the communities that support them will thrive again, as more and more companies compete to set up manufacturing in the U.S., to hire our young people and give them hope and a real shot at prosperity again. America will become, once more, a destination for jobs, production and innovation and will once more show economic leadership in the world. •fixing education: Trump will advance policies to support learning-and-earning opportunities at the state and local levels for approximately 70 million school-age students, 20 million post-secondary students, and 150 million working adults, To achieve this, Trump will promote high-quality early childhood, magnet, STEAM or theme-based programs; expansion of choice through charters, vouchers, and teacher-driven learning models; and relief from U.S. Department of Education regulations that inhibit innovation. •restructuring US energy policies including ending the "war on coal": "make full use" of both renewable and tradition energy sources. "America will unleash an energy revolution that will transform us into a net energy exporter, leading to the creation of millions of new jobs, while protecting the country’s most valuable resources –- our clean air, clean water, and natural habitats,” the website says. “The Trump administration is firmly committed to conserving our wonderful natural resources and beautiful natural habitats." The transition team also vows to open onshore and offshore leasing for federal land and waters for fossil fuel producers, streamline energy permitting, end “war on coal.” The site also pledges “top-down review of all anti-coal regulations issued by the Obama administration.” •"Repeal Obamacare" - the Trump administration will work with Congress to repeal Affordable Care Act with replacement that "returns the historic role in regulating health insurance to the states," according to transition plan released Thursday. Replacement would include promotion of Health Savings Accounts and option to buy insurance across states lines. The transition team also says it will act to “protect innocent human life from conception to natural death, including the most defenseless and those Americans with disabilities” and "modernize Medicare, so that it will be ready for the challenges with the coming retirement of the Baby Boom generation – and beyond." •protect Americans' constitutional rights: the Trump administration will veto legislation that exceeds Congressional authority, take actions as Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief that are consistent with his constitutional role, and nominate Judges and Supreme Court Justices who are committed to interpreting the Constitution and laws according to their original public meaning. Trump says "he will defend Americans' fundamental rights to free speech, religious liberty, keeping and bearing arms, and all other rights guaranteed to them in the Bill of Rights and other constitutional provisions." He hopes to minimize the role of government including the "Tenth Amendment guarantee that many areas of governance are left to the people and the States, and are not the role of the federal government to fulfill." The full breakdown can be found here [4]. Zero Hedge | On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero Leading news site for global finance, economics, market, and political analysis. zerohedge.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/us/politics/transition-briefing-passing-the-presidency-to-donald-trump.html

Inquiry into the Destruction of Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's Files and FBI Recordkeeping https://archive.org/details/InquiryIntoTheDestructionOfFormerFBIDirectorJ.EdgarHooversFilesAndFBIRecordkeeping

Kennedy-Khrushchev Exchanges https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v06/comp1

Joseph McBride wrote on Facebook today: "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." -- Abraham Lincoln. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt. "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." -- John F. Kennedy. "Grab 'em by the pussy." -- Donald J. Trump.

Words of great wisdom by Garrison Keillor: Done. Over. He’s Here. Goodbye. So he won. The nation takes a deep breath. Raw ego and proud illiteracy have won out and a severely learning-disabled man with a real character problem will be president. We are so exhausted from thinking about this election, millions of people will take up leaf-raking and garage cleaning with intense pleasure. We liberal elitists are wrecks. The Trumpers had a whale of a good time, waving their signs, jeering at the media, beating up protesters, chanting “Lock her up” -- we elitists just stood and clapped. Nobody chanted “Stronger Together.” It just doesn’t chant. The Trumpers never expected their guy to actually win the thing, and that’s their problem now. They only wanted to whoop and yell, boo at the H-word, wear profane T-shirts, maybe grab a crotch or two, jump in the RV with a couple six-packs and go out and shoot some spotted owls. It was pleasure enough for them just to know that they were driving us wild with dismay -- by “us,” I mean librarians, children’s authors, yoga practitioners, Unitarians, birdwatchers, people who make their own pasta, opera goers, the grammar police, people who keep books on their shelves, that bunch. The Trumpers exulted in knowing we were tearing our hair out. They had our number, like a bratty kid who knows exactly how to make you grit your teeth and froth at the mouth. Alas for the Trump voters, the disasters he will bring on this country will fall more heavily on them than anyone else. The uneducated white males who elected him are the vulnerable ones and they will not like what happens next. To all the patronizing b.s. we’ve read about Trump expressing the white working class’ displacement and loss of the American Dream, I say, “Feh!” -- go put your head under cold water. Resentment is no excuse for bald-faced stupidity. America is still the land where the waitress’ kids can grow up to become physicists and novelists and pediatricians, but it helps a lot if the waitress and her husband encourage good habits and the ambition to use your God-given talents and the kids aren’t plugged into electronics day and night. Whooping it up for the candidate of cruelty and ignorance does less than nothing for your kids. We liberal elitists are now completely in the clear. The government is in Republican hands. Let them deal with him. Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, travelling around the country, tasting artisan beers, and let the Republicans build the wall and carry on the trade war with China and deport the undocumented and deal with opioids and we Democrats can go for a long brisk walk and smell the roses. I like Republicans. I used to spend Sunday afternoons with a bunch of them, drinking Scotch and soda and trying to care about NFL football. It was fun. I tried to think like them. (Life is what you make it. People are people. When the going gets tough, tough noogies.) But I came back to liberal elitism. Don’t be cruel. Elvis said it and it’s true. We all experienced cruelty back in our playground days, boys who beat up on the timid, girls who made fun of the homely and naive, and most of us, to our shame, went along with it, afraid to defend the victims lest we become one of them. But by your 20s, you should be done with cruelty. Mr. Trump was the cruelest candidate since George Wallace. How he won on fear and bile is for political pathologists to study. The country is already tired of his noise, even his own voters. He is likely to become the most intensely disliked president since Hoover. His children will carry the burden of his name. He will never be happy in his own skin. But the damage he will do to our country ---- who knows? His supporters voted for change, and boy, are they going to get it. Back to real life. I went up to my hometown the other day and ran into my gym teacher, Stan Nelson, looking good at 96. He commanded a landing craft at Normandy on June 6, 1944, and never said a word about it back then, just made us do chin-ups whether we wanted to or not. I saw my biology teacher Lyle Bradley, a Marine pilot in the Korean War, still going birdwatching in his 90s. I was not a good student then, but I am studying both of them now. They have seen it all and are still optimistic. The past year of politics has taught us absolutely nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nada. The future is scary Let the uneducated have their day. I am now going to pay more attention to teachers.

From the article: But this rabbit hole doesn’t end here, because after Sherman brought down some corrupt judges in Chicago, he was suddenly being fed all sorts of sensitive intel and was soon surrounded by various intel ops. A stranger offered him a packet of info on a black secret service agent in Chicago who thwarted an assassination attempt on JFK in that city prior to the successful one in Dallas. After receiving the documents, Skolnick went to visit the agent, who erupted. “You are here to put me back in prison! I’m on parole! You’re part of a government effort to put me back!” Skolnick responded, “I think Mark Lane didn’t do right for you when you were down there in Springfield, Missouri. I think all your lawyers put together have not done right for you. I am here to clear you.” “Like hell you are. You got my secret report. It’s not supposed to be out until 2039. You got it. You stole it. And I’m going to be blamed that I gave it to you and I’m going to be sent back to jail and you are going to get publicity and I am going to get jail.” JFK researcher Harold Weisberg accused Skolnick of blowing his research into this case and the details of this Chicago assassination plot were not confirmed in the mainstream media until 2007, 44 years after the fact, when a Chicago policeman spilled the beans. https://stevenhager420.wordpress.com/2015/08/31/the-mysterious-ralph-nader/ --------------------------------------------------------- Steven Hager wrote on Facebook today, Nov 9, 2016: A month or so ago, Ralph Nader blasted the idea he threw the election to Bush and he encouraged everyone to support third party candidates. I had an old friend defriend me for writing this blog. But I have to ask the Nader fans, how's that advice playing for you now?

Joseph McBride wrote on Facebook today: When Ron Rosenbaum interviewed the dauntless smalltown Texas newspaper editor Penn Jones Jr. in 1983 for a Texas Monthly article on Kennedy assassination researchers, he asked Penn about the powers behind the assassination: "Why the military? Because they thought he'd withdraw from Vietnam? Or --" Penn replied, "xxxx, no. So they could take OVER." Many people are still in denial about what happened. Maybe now they will understand better what happens when a democracy is overthrown.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2016/03/marita-lorenz-fidel-castro-conspiracy-theories

I submitted the following guest opinion article to the Wall Street Journal on Oct. 1, 2016, but the Journal did not select it for publication. So I am reproducing it here: ----------------------------------------- CONTRASTING THE FBI INVESTIGATIONS IN WATERGATE AND CLINTON’S EMAIL CASE By Douglas Caddy An examination of Watergate and Hillary Clinton’s email case reveals striking similarities in how the Federal Bureau of Investigation mishandled both cases, causing the truth to be suppressed. On July 5, 1974, the FBI’s Office of Planning and Evaluation (OPE) submitted to the FBI Director its completed “analysis of the FBI’s conduct of the Watergate and related investigations”, a report that can be found in the Len Colodny Collection of Watergate documents at Texas A&M University. The OPE analysis declared in part: “On June19, 1972, WFO [Washington Field Office] by teletype requested authority to interview Charles W. Colson since information had been developed that [Howard] Hunt had worked for Colson at the White House. On June 22, 1972, [Acting FBI Director L. Patrick] Gray telephonically authorized then Assistant Director Bates to have WFO contact [White House Counsel] John Dean to set up an interview with Colson. Dean subsequently indicated that he would sit in on interviews of White House personnel and all requests for investigation at the White House had to be cleared through him. “Criticism of FBI interviews in the presence of Dean and clearing of proposed investigative activities through him is justified. However, there appeared no alternative to WFO and the Accounting and Fraud Section to following this procedure since the decision concerning this had been made between Mr. Gray and Dean, and neither Bureau supervisors nor field agents were in a position to overrule the decisions of the Acting Director. “With respect to the submitting of FBI reports to Dean, this is probably the most serious blunder from an investigative standpoint made by Mr. Gray. The facts concerning this development became known outside of Mr. Gray’s staff for the -2- first time on February 5, 1973. This is long after the substantive investigation into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters (DNCH) break-in was completed and, in fact, was after the trial of those originally implicated was completed. While Dean’s role as the master manipulator of the cover up was unknown and, in fact, the cover up itself was unknown during the investigation, obviously the furnishing to Dean by Mr. Gray of our reports allowed Dean the total opportunity to plan a course of action to thwart the FBI’s investigation and the grand jury inquiry. There was no way that the FBI personnel could have avoided this situation since it was unknown that Mr. Gray was furnishing the reports to Dean. “The principal lesson to be learned from this is that rarely should we conduct interviews in the presence of an attorney and never should we allow the same attorney to sit in on all interviews relative to a certain situation. Further, the FBI reports should be disseminated only to the prosecutor and certainly never to the White House.” Four decades after Watergate consider how the FBI has handled Hillary Clinton’s email case. This was best explained by Kimberley A. Strassel in her Sept. 30 Journal column about FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee two days earlier: “Congress hauled Mr. Comey in to account for the explosive revelation that the government granted immunity to Clinton staffers Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson as part of the investigation of whether Mrs. Clinton had mishandled classified information…. “Ms. Mills was able to extract an immunity deal avoid answering questions, and sit in on Mrs. Clinton’s FBI interview because she has positioned herself as Hillary’s personal lawyer. Ms. Mills could therefore claim that any conversations or interactions she had with Mrs. Clinton about the private server were protected by the attorney-client privilege. “Only here’s the rub: When Ms. Mills worked at the State Department she was not acting as Mrs. Clinton’s personal attorney. She was the secretary’s chief of -3- staff. Any interaction with Mrs. Clinton about her server, or any evidence from that time, should have been fair game for the FBI and the Justice Department.” Ms. Mills was a witness in the case because she possessed knowledge of Hillary’s email server. To enable her not to have to testify as to what she knew Mr. Comey and the Justice Department anointed her with a fictional attorney-client relationship with Hillary, granted her immunity and then let her sit in on the FBI’s interview of Hillary as the latter’s attorney. This turned the interview into a farce. FBI Director Comey’s handling of Clinton’s email case is striking similar in many ways to what FBI Acting Director Gray did in Watergate, who in addition to giving FBI reports to Dean also destroyed Howard Hunt’s files that were in his White House safe. In fact, Mr. Comey went even further than Mr. Gray by appearing to have aided and abetted the cover up in the Clinton case when he announced last July that Mrs. Clinton should not be prosecuted for mishandling classified information. Mr. Comey’s official role was to investigate the case, not to act as prosecutor or as judge and jury, thus effectively terminating the criminal case. In reality the entire legitimate inquiry into whether Hillary’s handling of emails as secretary of state compromised our national security was transformed by Mr. Comey and the Justice Department into a giant farce. Hillary served on the staff of the House Judiciary Committee in its investigation into Watergate and proposing impeachment of President Richard Nixon. She must of have learned a thing or two then from studying John Dean’s masterful cover up on how to thwart a criminal investigation. Should she not be elected president, President Obama will likely grant her a pardon from future prosecution, just as President Gerald Ford did for Richard Nixon. In any event neither she nor Mr. Comey will escape historians’ detailed judgment of the handling of her criminal email case. [Full disclosure: I served as the original attorney for the Watergate Seven as described in my Journal article of March 24, 1998, “What If Judge Sirica Were With Us Today?” Further, I recently mailed my election ballot back to the local county clerk after voting for Hillary Clinton for President, perceiving her as the lesser of two great evils.]

JFK to pull 1,000 troops from South Vietnam by end of 1963 President Kennedy holds his 63rd press conference on October 31, 1963.

Thanks to all for their clarification of this document. It appears that one of the lessons to be learned here is additional research and verification may be necessary even when a document is found in the National Archives.

https://glomardisclosure.com/2016/10/30/coming-soon-775000-cia-papers-crest/

Interesting that page 2 above shows the arrest report of Lee Harvey Oswald was clocked at 1:10 p.m. if I read it correctly and that he was charged with the assassination of JFK and killing of Officer Tippit as well as wounding Connally.

National Archives Catalog on J. D. Tippit https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7461217

Amen Doug. But I don't expect the truth about this from Caro. I fact I doubt he will even go near it. I just listened to an interview with Stone for the first time ever. Most interesting. I agreed with a lot of it, but I do not see LBJ was the mastermind, just deeply involved. And I said THAT day one at age 14 . I no longer believe Joan had a mission for the truth. But that is as far as I will go on a forum. I spoke with Nathan Darby's son today to see if he had any proof - aside from his personal recollection- that his father had kept up his certification. He is not certain if such still exists. I also told him about an alleged note his dad had sent to the IAI and his response to that was "then let her produce this note". (Which no one will I am sure as I know that never occurred). J had told me about meeting with you Doug and had a copy of your book. A funny Jism: One day after I had returned from court he called and just told me to go find a copy of that day's Wall St journal. Nothing else. (Cryptic as usual) then to call him back So I did. Then it was "open to such and such a page", then lo and behold there was an editorial by you about your days as Watergate atty. I was taken aback as I knew you had represented Billy sol in his letters to AG Trott (etc). "Strange bedfellows", I thought at the time. I hope someone does a TRUE bio of Mac. Not a whitewash. He was truly a stone cold killer. I have a lot more on my mind about this but have a very early morning. I wonder if non Texan residents are quick to dismiss the TX connection out of some Democratic loyalty to LBJ. It simply baffles me. Dawn Dawn: You must possess a form of ESP. You reference above my article to which Jay Harrison called your attention, "What If Judge Sirica Were With Us Today?", that the Wall Street Journal published on March 24, 1998. It was later included in a book that the Journal published on the Clintons. As I write this my priority mail envelop is being delivered to the Wall Street Journal this morning in which, 18 years later, I submit a second article. This one is titled, "Contrasting the roles of the FBI in Watergate and Clinton's Email Case." In It I draw upon a FBI internal 1974 report to show how the Bureau mishandled both cases. I don't know if the Journal, which receives 300 submissions each day, will publish my latest article but the coincidence in your mentioning my prior one after all these years leads me to be hopeful. VERY eager and hopeful to read this new article, Doug. I'd like to think that your submission might earn its way toward the top of the list. Here's hoping... Glenn: I have heard nothing back from the Wall Street Journal on the article that I submitted on Oct. 1. So I am reproducing the article here because I think that it is more pertinent than ever in light of FBI Director Comey's "reopening" of Hillary Clinton's email case. ---------------------------- CONTRASTING THE FBI INVESTIGATIONS IN WATERGATE AND CLINTON’S EMAIL CASE By Douglas Caddy An examination of Watergate and Hillary Clinton’s email case reveals striking similarities in how the Federal Bureau of Investigation mishandled both cases, causing the truth to be suppressed. On July 5, 1974, the FBI’s Office of Planning and Evaluation (OPE) submitted to the FBI Director its completed “analysis of the FBI’s conduct of the Watergate and related investigations”, a report that can be found in the Len Colodny Collection of Watergate documents at Texas A&M University. The OPE analysis declared in part: “On June19, 1972, WFO [Washington Field Office] by teletype requested authority to interview Charles W. Colson since information had been developed that [Howard] Hunt had worked for Colson at the White House. On June 22, 1972, [Acting FBI Director L. Patrick] Gray telephonically authorized then Assistant Director Bates to have WFO contact [White House Counsel] John Dean to set up an interview with Colson. Dean subsequently indicated that he would sit in on interviews of White House personnel and all requests for investigation at the White House had to be cleared through him. “Criticism of FBI interviews in the presence of Dean and clearing of proposed investigative activities through him is justified. However, there appeared no alternative to WFO and the Accounting and Fraud Section to following this procedure since the decision concerning this had been made between Mr. Gray and Dean, and neither Bureau supervisors nor field agents were in a position to overrule the decisions of the Acting Director. “With respect to the submitting of FBI reports to Dean, this is probably the most serious blunder from an investigative standpoint made by Mr. Gray. The facts concerning this development became known outside of Mr. Gray’s staff for the first time on February 5, 1973. This is long after the substantive investigation into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters (DNCH) break-in was completed and, in fact, was after the trial of those originally implicated was completed. While Dean’s role as the master manipulator of the cover up was unknown and, in fact, the cover up itself was unknown during the investigation, obviously the furnishing to Dean by Mr. Gray of our reports allowed Dean the total opportunity to plan a course of action to thwart the FBI’s investigation and the grand jury inquiry. There was no way that the FBI personnel could have avoided this situation since it was unknown that Mr. Gray was furnishing the reports to Dean. “The principal lesson to be learned from this is that rarely should we conduct interviews in the presence of an attorney and never should we allow the same attorney to sit in on all interviews relative to a certain situation. Further, the FBI reports should be disseminated only to the prosecutor and certainly never to the White House.” Four decades after Watergate consider how the FBI has handled Hillary Clinton’s email case. This was best explained by Kimberley A. Strassel in her Sept. 30 Journal column about FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee two days earlier: “Congress hauled Mr. Comey in to account for the explosive revelation that the government granted immunity to Clinton staffers Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson as part of the investigation of whether Mrs. Clinton had mishandled classified information…. “Ms. Mills was able to extract an immunity deal avoid answering questions, and sit in on Mrs. Clinton’s FBI interview because she has positioned herself as Hillary’s personal lawyer. Ms. Mills could therefore claim that any conversations or interactions she had with Mrs. Clinton about the private server were protected by the attorney-client privilege. “Only here’s the rub: When Ms. Mills worked at the State Department she was not acting as Mrs. Clinton’s personal attorney. She was the secretary’s chief of staff. Any interaction with Mrs. Clinton about her server, or any evidence from that time, should have been fair game for the FBI and the Justice Department.” Ms. Mills was a witness in the case because she possessed knowledge of Hillary’s email server. To enable her not to have to testify as to what she knew Mr. Comey and the Justice Department anointed her with a fictional attorney-client relationship with Hillary, granted her immunity and then let her sit in on the FBI’s interview of Hillary as the latter’s attorney. This turned the interview into a farce. FBI Director Comey’s handling of Clinton’s email case is striking similar in many ways to what FBI Acting Director Gray did in Watergate, who in addition to giving FBI reports to Dean also destroyed Howard Hunt’s files that were in his White House safe. In fact, Mr. Comey went even further than Mr. Gray by appearing to have aided and abetted the cover up in the Clinton case when he announced last July that Mrs. Clinton should not be prosecuted for mishandling classified information. Mr. Comey’s official role was to investigate the case, not to act as prosecutor or as judge and jury, thus effectively terminating the criminal case. In reality the entire legitimate inquiry into whether Hillary’s handling of emails as secretary of state compromised our national security was transformed by Mr. Comey and the Justice Department into a giant farce. Hillary served on the staff of the House Judiciary Committee in its investigation into Watergate and proposing impeachment of President Richard Nixon. She must of have learned a thing or two then from studying John Dean’s masterful cover up on how to thwart a criminal investigation. Should she not be elected president, President Obama will likely grant her a pardon from future prosecution, just as President Gerald Ford did for Richard Nixon. In any event neither she nor Mr. Comey will escape historians’ detailed judgment of the handling of her criminal email case. [Full disclosure: I served as the original attorney for the Watergate Seven as described in my published Wall Street Journal article of March 24, 1998, “What If Judge Sirica Were With Us Today?” Further, I recently mailed my election ballot back to the local county clerk after voting for Hillary Clinton for President, perceiving her as the lesser of two great evils.]

'WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE' By Philip Agee An excellent overview of the Church Committee's CIA investigation and critical look at the committee's findings from a well-known opponent of the Agency. The author, Phil Agee, was a CIA case officer who left the agency after a decade because he had become disgusted with its methods. He took his critiques public in his book 'Inside the Company: A CIA Diary'. Having spent his adult life first working for and then battling the agency, Agee was in an excellent position to put the investigations into perspective, and to indicate where they may have fallen short. Agee discusses more than the Church Committee - he looks at the findings of all of the major 70s investigations (the Church Committee, the Pike Committee, The Rockefeller Commission and the Murphy Commission) as well the news reporting around them. He also gives an overview of the major points of each and then discusses any short comings. So not only is it a critical response, its a good basic primer for those who haven't read the reports. From the book: 'Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe' by Philip Agee and Louis Wolf. PDF: https://archive.org/details/pdfy-9MwmH_nnJ4eOmL66