Douglas Caddy

Exclusive: 27-Year CIA Vet says Obama May be Afraid of the CIA ... For Good Reason... Alluding to the assassination of JFK, long-time high-level CIA analyst says Panetta and the President 'afraid of these guys because these guys have a whole lot to lose if justice takes its course'... Posted By Brad Friedman On 11th September 2009 @ 15:00 In CIA, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Barack Obama, Dept. of Defense, Torture, Eric Holder, Bush Legacy, Leon Panetta | 6 Comments http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7408 During my interview last night with 27-year CIA analyst Ray McGovern on the Mike Malloy Show [1] (which I've been guest hosting all this week), the man who used to personally deliver the CIA's Presidential Daily Briefings to George Bush Sr., among other Presidents, offered an extraordinarily chilling thought --- particularly coming from someone with his background. In a conversation at the end of the hour (audio and transcript below), as I was trying to pin him down for an opinion on whether or not he felt it was appropriate for CIA Director Leon Panetta to have reportedly attempted to block a lawful investigation [2] into torture and other war crimes committed by the CIA, McGovern alluded to a book about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and noted he felt it likely that both Panetta and President Obama may have reason to fear certain elements of the CIA. "Let me just leave you with this thought," he said, "and that is that I think Panetta, and to a degree President Obama, are afraid --- I never thought I'd hear myself saying this --- I think they're afraid of the CIA."... McGovern went on to note "the stakes are very high here," in relation to Attorney General Eric Holder's recently announced investigation [3] of the CIA now under the direction of Panetta. "His main advisers and his senior staff are liable for prosecution for war crimes. The War Crimes statute includes very severe penalties, including capitol punishment for those who, if under their custody, detainees die. And we know that at least a hundred have, so this is big stakes here." He then recommended James W. Douglass' new book, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters [4] . "He makes a very very persuasive case that it was President Kennedy's, um, the animosity that built up between him and the CIA after the Bay of Pigs, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because he was reaching out to the Russians and so forth and so on. It's a very well-researched book and his conclusion is very alarming," the long-time CIA veteran noted in what turned out to be a chilling end to our interview in which he described "two CIAs". One, he says, was created by President Truman to "give him the straight scoop without any fear or favor. And then its covert action arm, which really doesn't believe --- which doesn't belong in this agency." McGovern referred to that CIA "advisedly" as the President's "own personal gestapo" which acts without oversight by the Congressional committees once tasked to do so. "And so if you're asking why Obama and Panetta are going very very kid-glove-ish with the CIA, I think part of the reason, or the explanation is they're afraid of these guys because these guys have a whole lot to lose if justice takes its course." "So, it's pretty scary. Yes, it is," he concluded. * * * • The complete audio archive of the entire interview (appx. 37 mins.) can be download here [5] or heard online here... • The final few minutes (appx. 6 mins) containing the conversation described above, as transcribed below, can be heard here... The transcript of the above-described 9/10/09 conversation between Brad Friedman and 27-year CIA analyst Ray McGovern on the Mike Malloy Show, follows below... BRAD FRIEDMAN: Was it appropriate, in your opinion, for Panetta to try to block this lawful investigation into torture by Eric Holder's investigation. Is that the appropriate thing for a CIA Director to do? RAY MCGOVERN: Well, you and I know that it's not appropriate if he's Director. If he sees his role as the agency's lawyer --- which apparently he does --- then there's nothing unlawful about him pleading their special causes. The stakes are very high here. His main advisers and his senior staff are liable for prosecution for war crimes. The War Crimes statute includes very severe penalties, including capitol punishment... BF: Yeah... RM: ... for those who, if under their custody, detainees die. And we know that at least a hundred have, so this is big stakes here. And let me just leave you with this thought, and that is that I think Panetta, and to a degree President Obama, are afraid --- I never thought I'd hear myself saying this --- I think they're afraid of the CIA. And you look in history...look to the incredible book written recently by Jim Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable [6] . He makes a very very persuasive case that it was President Kennedy's, um, the animosity that built up between him and the CIA after the Bay of Pigs, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because he was reaching out to the Russians and so forth and so on. It's a very well-researched book and his conclusion is very alarming. And so if you're asking why Obama and Panetta are going very very kid-glove-ish, with the CIA, I think part of the reason, or the explanation is they're afraid of these guys because these guys have a whole lot to lose if justice takes its course. And that's why I think Attorney General Holder is to be applauded. I'm really just delighted to have somebody from The Bronx, where I grew up, try to do something to wipe out the blot that Colin Powell has put on The Bronx. BF: Even though its a narrow investigation, you still applaud it. But Ray McGovern, 27-year CIA analyst, you're saying that there is reason to be concerned about the CIA --- that Barack Obama should be concerned. Having been there 27 years, I guess you know what you're talking about. Uh...but that's a chilling thought I gotta say, Ray. RM: Well, read the book. James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable [6] . Uh, Brad, as you probably know, there are two CIAs. Okay? The one that was set up by Truman to give him the straight scoop without any fear or favor. And then its covert action arm, which really doesn't believe --- which doesn't belong in this agency --- but is the one that is entitled, so to speak, by one sentence in the National Security Act of 1947 which says 'the Director of Central Intelligence shall perform such other functions and duties as the President shall direct.' That gives the President the ability to use the CIA as his own personal gestapo --- and I use the word advisedly --- the only check on that are what used to be called the oversight committees of Congress, now they're called the overlooked committees of the Congress... BF: Indeed. RM: So it's pretty scary. Yes, it is. Article printed from The BRAD BLOG: http://www.bradblog.com URL to article: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7408 URLs in this post: [1] Mike Malloy Show: http://MikeMalloyShow.com [2] block a lawful investigation: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7380 [3] recently announced investigation: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7372 [4] JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/157075755...-20&linkCod e=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1570757550 [5] download here: http://www.bradblog.com/audio/MikeMalloy_B...91009_Hour1.mp3 [6] JFK and the Unspeakable: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/157075755...-20&linkCod e=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1570757550 [7] JFK and the Unspeakable: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/157075755...-20&linkCod e=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1570757550

A Clash of Camelots Within months of J.F.K.’s death, the president’s widow asked William Manchester to write the authorized account of the assassination. He felt he couldn’t refuse her. Two years later, nearly broken by the task, Manchester found himself fighting a bitter, headline-making battle with Jackie and Bobby Kennedy over the finished book. The author chronicles the toll Manchester’s 1967 best-seller, The Death of a President, exacted—physically, emotionally, and financially—before it all but disappeared. BY SAM KASHNER VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2009 http://www.lewrockwell.com/spl/death-of-a-president.html I thought that it would be bound in black and put away on dark library shelves. —Jacqueline Kennedy It has never gone away, the nightmare of November 22, 1963. Each time one revisits the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th president of the United States, “one hopes for once the story will be different—the car swerves, the bullets miss, and the splendid progress continues. But each time, like a recurrent nightmare, the handsome head is shattered,” as Gore Vidal wrote in his World Journal Tribune review of William Manchester’s highly detailed, passionate, and greatly beleaguered account, The Death of a President. Visit VF.com’s Kennedys archive. Plus: Sam Kashner on the definitive J.F.K. assassination book. Of all the books written about the Kennedy assassination—by some counts more than 2,000—the one book commissioned by the Kennedys themselves and meant to stand the test of time has virtually disappeared. The fight over Manchester’s book—published on April 7, 1967, by Harper & Row after more than a year of bitter, relentless, headline-making controversy over the manuscript—nearly destroyed its author and pitted him against two of the most popular and charismatic people in the nation: the slain president’s beautiful grieving widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, and his brother Robert F. Kennedy. And the struggle would bring to both Jackie and Bobby a public-relations nightmare. A day after the president’s body was flown to Washington, his casket lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda, before final interment in Arlington National Cemetery. Kennedy’s family had wanted the president to be buried in Brookline, Massachusetts, next to his father and to his son Patrick, who had died two days after he was born. But Jacqueline realized that her husband belonged to the American people, and so she insisted on a burial at Arlington. For two days before the burial, the line of citizens waiting to file by the catafalque reached five miles, snaking through the chill, solemn streets of the capital. For the procession from the Rotunda to St. Matthew’s Cathedral, where the funeral Mass was held, Mrs. Kennedy didn’t want to ride in one of the government’s black Cadillacs, so she walked, leading a delegation from 92 nations. Charles de Gaulle, who towered over the other heads of state as they followed the horse-drawn caisson down Constitution Avenue, later reflected that President Kennedy’s widow “gave the world an example of how to behave.” Manchester later noted that, in the hours after the tragedy, “Jacqueline Kennedy was virtually the government of this country and held it together.” After the assassination, she had stood beside Lyndon B. Johnson in her blood-splattered Chanel suit as he was sworn into office. Now, at the president’s funeral, in her black widow’s garb, she symbolized the nation’s grief. For five years in a row, a Gallup poll named her “the most admired woman in the world.” Following the ordeal of the funeral, Jacqueline resolved to leave the White House as quickly as possible. Before departing, she had a plaque inscribed with the words “In this room lived John Fitzgerald Kennedy, with his wife Jacqueline, during the two years, ten months, and two days he was president of the United States” and placed it in the Lincoln bedroom. (The Nixons would later have the plaque removed.) Eleven days after the funeral, Jacqueline sought refuge at her temporary home at 3038 N Street, in Georgetown. Beset by writers clamoring for interviews, Jacqueline decided to designate one to produce the official story of the assassination. In part, she wanted to stop Jim Bishop, a syndicated columnist living in Florida, who was already preparing a book. He was the author of The Day Lincoln Was Shot and a just-finished book, A Day in the Life of President Kennedy, but according to Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and special assistant to Kennedy, the First Lady considered Bishop a “hack” who asked too many personal questions. She preferred that no book be written, but as that was impossible, she went in search of an author. William Manchester was not her first choice. Theodore H. White, a family favorite (The Making of the President 1960), and Walter Lord (A Night to Remember) turned her down. Then Pierre Salinger, the Kennedys’ press secretary, suggested Manchester, a onetime foreign correspondent for the Baltimore Sun and the author of novels and nonfiction books on H.L. Mencken, the Rockefellers, and President Kennedy. Most important, he had worshipped John F. Kennedy. His 1962 Portrait of a President was so respectful it was described as “adoring.” Kennedy, not surprisingly, liked Portrait, and Jacqueline had read Manchester’s profile of the president that had appeared in Holiday magazine in 1962. His prose had an emotionally rich, poetic quality that impressed her. J.F.K. had in fact sat for interviews with Manchester, a not unpleasant experience. “I’d see Jack at the end of his last appointment for the day,” Manchester told the journalist Seymour Hersh. “We’d have a daiquiri and sit on the Truman balcony. He’d smoke a cigar and I’d have a Heineken.” Duty Calls Manchester, an ex-Marine, was square-jawed, dark-haired, solidly built. When he first met the president he was 39, Kennedy 44. Both men had been born in Massachusetts, but Manchester’s ancestors, who had settled in Attleboro, had arrived long before the Kennedys. The two men may have bonded over their similar W.W. II experiences. (Both had received Purple Hearts, Manchester fighting on Okinawa, J.F.K. commanding PT 109 in the South Pacific’s Solomon Islands.) Manchester later wrote that the president “was brighter than I was, braver, better-read, handsomer, wittier, and more incisive. The only thing I could do better was write.” In 1964, Manchester was living in a white 18th-century frame house on High Street in Middletown, Connecticut, with his wife, Judy, and their three children. He was working part-time as a managing editor for American Education Publications and, on a Wesleyan fellowship, was writing a history of the Krupp manufacturing family. On February 5, he was sitting in his office on the second floor of Wesleyan’s Olin Library when he received an early-morning telephone call from Salinger. He initially thought it was his friend Jerry—J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye—so he was caught off guard when Kennedy’s press secretary made the offer for him to write the authorized account of the assassination. At first reluctant to take on such a burden, Manchester turned to his secretary and asked, “How can I say no to Mrs. Kennedy?” “You can’t,” she replied. He resigned his post at Wesleyan the same day. Suddenly Manchester found himself “jobless, a middle-aged, highly educated vagrant.” There was never any question that the proposed book would be published by Harper & Row, which had brought out John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage and Robert Kennedy’s 1960 investigation into union corruption, The Enemy Within. They had both been edited by Evan Welling Thomas III, who had come up with the title for the former book. In his 22 years at Harper & Brothers, later Harper & Row, Thomas had published many prominent politicians and statesmen—mostly Democrats—and John Cheever was among his handful of fiction writers. Tall, slim, aristocratic, Thomas came by his interest in politics honestly as the son of Norman Thomas, the famous American socialist and perennial presidential candidate. There were other Kennedy connections at Harper & Row as well. Cass Canfield, the president of Harper and chairman of the Executive Committee, was a product of Groton, Harvard, and Oxford. Canfield’s son had been briefly married to Jacqueline’s sister, Lee Bouvier, before her marriage to Prince Radziwill. “Cass was, I guess, Jackie’s friend. He was sort of a high-society type,” recalls Thomas’s son, Evan Thomas, now Newsweek’s editor-at-large and the author of a well-regarded biography of Robert Kennedy. “I remember my father once saying that Cass was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and enjoyed the taste of it. The family legend is that Profiles in Courage came to Harper through Cass.” But it was Thomas who went to see John F. Kennedy in the hospital, where he was recovering from major back surgery, to persuade him to write Profiles in Courage, which would win the 1957 Pulitzer Prize. Thomas was impressed by Kennedy’s physical courage and charisma. “In the hospital when I saw him, he was lying on his back, writing on a board. It was impossible not to be charmed by him.” He was charmed, too, by Robert Kennedy when he worked on The Enemy Within. “Daddy started dealing with Bobby,” the younger Thomas recalls. “He liked Bobby—he admired his toughness.” To see complete article: http://www.lewrockwell.com/spl/death-of-a-president.html

What Really Happened to JFK Jr. Now that Teddy Kennedy has died, a great American political dynasty that was a generations-long irritant to the far right has ended. But if JFK Jr. had not died in a tragic air accident, that would not be true. Jim Marrs revisits that accident and asks some provocative questions. For example, who turned off the fuel supply to the engine? (It was found turned off in the remains of the plane.) Also, why, given that he had reported that he was on approach, did it take so long for rescuers to react to the fact that the plane didn't land? And why was there ANOTHER crash that was so similar, right down to the mysteriously cut off fuel supply? Listen to one of the great experts on the hidden history of our time as he explores the explosive reason why this great dynasty has ended--and why so many of its members were killed off. http://www.unknowncountry.com/media/index_rev.phtml

Assassinations and Coups Keeping Track of the Empire's Crimes By WILLIAM BLUM August 6, 2009 www.counterpunch.org http://www.counterpunch.org/blum08062009.html If you catch the CIA with its hand in the cookie jar and the Agency admits the obvious — what your eyes can plainly see — that its hand is indeed in the cookie jar, it means one of two things: a) the CIA's hand is in several other cookie jars at the same time which you don't know about and they hope that by confessing to the one instance they can keep the others covered up; or its hand is not really in the cookie jar — it's an illusion to throw you off the right scent — but they want you to believe it. There have been numerous news stories in recent months about secret CIA programs, hidden from Congress, inspired by former vice-president Dick Cheney, in operation since the September 11 terrorist attacks, involving assassination of al Qaeda operatives or other non-believers-in-the-Empire abroad without the knowledge of their governments. The Agency admits to some sort of program having existed, but insists that it was canceled; and if it was an assassination program it was canceled before anyone was actually assassinated. Another report has the US military, not the CIA, putting the plan — or was it a different plan? — into operation, carrying out several assassinations including one in Kenya that proved to be a severe embarrassment and helped lead to the quashing of the program. (The Guardian, July 13, 2009.) All of this can be confusing to those following the news. And rather irrelevant. We already know that the United States has been assassinating non-believers, or suspected non-believers, with regularity, and impunity, in recent years, using unmanned planes (drones) firing missiles, in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia, if not elsewhere. (Even more victims have been produced from amongst those who happened to be in the same house, car, wedding party, or funeral as the non-believer.) These murders apparently don't qualify as "assassinations", for somehow killing "terrorists" from 2000 feet is morally and legally superior to doing so from two feet away. But whatever the real story is behind the current rash of speculation, we should not fall into the media's practice of at times intimating that multiple or routine CIA assassination attempts would be something shocking or at least very unusual. I've compiled a list of CIA assassination attempts, successful and unsuccessful, against prominent foreign political figures, from 1949 through 2003, which, depending on how you count it, can run into the hundreds (targeting Fidel Castro alone totals 634 according to Cuban intelligence)2; the list can be updated by adding the allegedly al Qaeda leaders among the drone attack victims of recent years. Assassination and torture are the two things governments are most loath to admit to, and try their best to cover up. It's thus rare to find a government document or recorded statement mentioning a particular plan to assassinate someone. There is, however, an abundance of compelling circumstantial evidence to work with. The following list does not include several assassinations in various parts of the world carried out by anti-Castro Cubans employed by the CIA and headquartered in the United States. 1949 - Kim Koo, Korean opposition leader 1950s - CIA/Neo-Nazi hit list of more than 200 political figures in West Germany to be "put out of the way" in the event of a Soviet invasion 1950s - Chou En-lai, Prime minister of China, several attempts on his life 1950s, 1962 - Sukarno, President of Indonesia 1951 - Kim Il Sung, Premier of North Korea 1953 - Mohammed Mossadegh, Prime Minister of Iran 1950s (mid) - Claro M. Recto, Philippines opposition leader 1955 - Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India 1957 - Gamal Abdul Nasser, President of Egypt 1959, 1963, 1969 - Norodom Sihanouk, leader of Cambodia 1960 - Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Kassem, leader of Iraq 1950s-70s - José Figueres, President of Costa Rica, two attempts on his life 1961 - Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, leader of Haiti 1961 - Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo (Zaire) 1961 - Gen. Rafael Trujillo, leader of Dominican Republic 1963 - Ngo Dinh Diem, President of South Vietnam 1960s-70s - Fidel Castro, President of Cuba, many attempts on his life 1960s - Raúl Castro, high official in government of Cuba 1965 - Francisco Caamaño, Dominican Republic opposition leader 1965-6 - Charles de Gaulle, President of France 1967 - Che Guevara, Cuban leader 1970 - Salvador Allende, President of Chile 1970 - Gen. Rene Schneider, Commander-in-Chief of Army, Chile 1970s, 1981 - General Omar Torrijos, leader of Panama 1972 - General Manuel Noriega, Chief of Panama Intelligence 1975 - Mobutu Sese Seko, President of Zaire 1976 - Michael Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica 1980-1986 - Muammar Qaddafi, leader of Libya, several plots and attempts upon his life 1982 - Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of Iran 1983 - Gen. Ahmed Dlimi, Moroccan Army commander 1983 - Miguel d'Escoto, Foreign Minister of Nicaragua 1984 - The nine comandantes of the Sandinista National Directorate 1985 - Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanese Shiite leader (80 people killed in the attempt) 1991 - Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq 1993 - Mohamed Farah Aideed, prominent clan leader of Somalia 1998, 2001-2 - Osama bin Laden, leading Islamic militant 1999 - Slobodan Milosevic, President of Yugoslavia 2002 - Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Afghan Islamic leader and warlord 2003 - Saddam Hussein and his two sons For those of you who collect lists about splendid US foreign policy post-World War II, here are a few more that, lacking anything better to do, I've put together: Attempts to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which had been democratically-elected. (* = successful ouster of a government.) Albania 1949-53 East Germany 1950s Iran 1953 * Guatemala 1954 * Costa Rica mid-1950s Syria 1956-7 Egypt 1957 Indonesia 1957-8 British Guiana 1953-64 * Iraq 1963 * North Vietnam 1945-73 Cambodia 1955-70 * Laos 1958-60 * Ecuador 1960-63 * Congo 1960 * France 1965 Brazil 1962-64 * Dominican Republic 1963 * Cuba 1959 to present Bolivia 1964 * Indonesia 1965 * Ghana 1966 * Chile 1964-73 * Greece 1967 * Costa Rica 1970-71 Bolivia 1971 * Australia 1973-75 * Angola 1975, 1980s Zaire 1975 Portugal 1974-76 * Jamaica 1976-80 * Seychelles 1979-81 Chad 1981-82 * Grenada 1983 * South Yemen 1982-84 Suriname 1982-84 Fiji 1987 * Libya 1980s Nicaragua 1981-90 * Panama 1989 * Bulgaria 1990 * Albania 1991 * Iraq 1991 Afghanistan 1980s * Somalia 1993 Yugoslavia 1999 Ecuador 2000 * Afghanistan 2001 * Venezuela 2002 * Iraq 2003 * After his June 4 Cairo speech, President Obama was much praised for mentioning the 1953 CIA overthrow of Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh. But in his talk in Ghana on July 11 he failed to mention the CIA coup that ousted Ghanian president Kwame Nkrumah in 1966, referring to him only as a "giant" among African leaders. The Mossadegh coup is one of the most well-known CIA covert actions. Obama could not easily get away without mentioning it in a talk in the Middle East looking to mend fences. But the Nkrumah ouster is one of the least known; indeed, not a single print or broadcast news report in the American mainstream media saw fit to mention it at the time of the president's talk. Like it never happened. And the next time you hear that Africa can't produce good leaders, people who are committed to the welfare of the masses of their people, think of Nkrumah and his fate. And think of Patrice Lumumba, overthrown in the Congo 1960-61 with the help of the United States; Agostinho Neto of Angola, against whom Washington waged war in the 1970s, making it impossible for him to institute progressive changes; Samora Machel of Mozambique against whom the CIA supported a counter-revolution in the 1970s-80s period; and Nelson Mandela of South Africa (now married to Machel's widow), who spent 28 years in prison thanks to the CIA. William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir. He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com

A communist, pro-Cuban and leader of YAF.....??????????!!!!!!!!! Who were they kidding and how stupid was this would-be assassin and informant? Well, given that someone in intelligence wanted to kill you, I suppose because they felt something(s) your Watergate clients may have told you - or that you could piece together from what they had, is interesting. I'm sure you know more about Watergate than you've said, and in part that is out of your pledge of confidentiality to your clients. I hope, however, when you can you will tell us [the American People] more of what you know, or clues you know of - that might shed light on why they might want to kill you, Martha Mitchell, destroy Nixon, take-over the Government by stealth, and do all the many strange things that were parts of 'Watergate'. Just knowing who it was that wanted you dead, might say a lot. That you posted it on the JFK thread is, as well!..... When Robert Merritt informed me of the 1972 conspiracy to assassinate me, I was both taken back and puzzled. I asked myself why would these CIA intelligence agents want this done? The reasons they gave Merritt were that I posed a nationals security threat and that I was a homosexual. There is no way to know what was in their minds. However, to try to figure out their thinking, I decided to engage in role playing to see how I looked in their eyes. By doing this, I may have come up with a scenario as to why they were so concerned. This is as follows: When I was graduated from New York University Law School in 1966, I went to work for General Foods Corporation, then the world's largest food manufacturer. My assignment was to advise the corporate officers on government relations, legislation and regulation that might affect the company's operations. In 1969 General Food transferred me to Washington, D.C. I was to open an office for the company after a year that would handle government relations, with the emphasis on lobbying. General Foods told me that for the first year I would be working out of the offices of the public relations firm that had long handled its government relations. This firm was the Robert Mullen Company. What General Foods did not tell me was that the Mullen Company was a CIA front, having been incorporated in 1949 by the CIA and that General Foods was a partner in this arrangement. So I started carrying out my General Foods assignment, which consisted primarily of close coordination with the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the national trade organization that represented food manufacturers. In mid-1970 Robert Mullen informed me that Howard Hunt was joining the staff of his company. Hunt and I quickly found we had something in common: I had worked closely with William F. Buckley, Jr. in founding the conservative movement and Buckley not only was the godfather to Hunt's children but had served under Hunt years previously in the CIA's office in Mexico City. Howard Hunt and his wife, Dorothy, became my closest friends in Washington. Howard and I conversed daily on any number of topics. At one point Robert Mullen told Hunt and me that he was making plans to retire and asked if we were interested in buying his company, making payments on the purchase price from the profits over the future years. In the end Robert Mullen sold his company to Robert Bennett, a key associate of the Howard Hughes operation and of the CIA. Today Robert Bennett, Senator from Utah, serves in the U.S. Senate, where he is known as the tool and operative of the CIA. I left General Foods in late 1970 and joined Gall, Lane and Kilcullen, a law firm in Washington, as an attorney. Hunt immediately became a client and I handled his personal and business matters. In early 1972, the law firm assigned me to do volunteer presidential campaign legal work out of the office of John Dean, then White House Counsel to President Nixon. Hunt was pleased to learn of this assignment. Around April 1972, two months before the Watergate case broke open, Hunt invited me to join him and the CIA's General Counsel in what turned out to be a meeting about whether I would be interested in working for the CIA. If I were interested, the General Counsel told me that my CIA assignment would be to construct and open a luxurious hotel on the seashore in Nicaragua, then dominated by the Sandinistas. I told them I would think about it but in my heart knew that I could not accept CIA employment because the vetting process would inevitably reveal that I was homosexual. The CIA did not employ anyone who was homosexual. As with other federal agencies, there was a constant witch hunt against homosexuals, who were driven out and blackballed. On June 17, 1972, the Watergate case broke with the arrests of the five burglars inside the offices of the Democratic National Committee. The same day Hunt and Gordon Liddy retained me as an attorney to represent them and the five arrested individuals. On June 28, eleven days later, Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Carl Shoffler showed up with four intelligence agents at the apartment of Robert Merritt where they attempted to enlist Merritt in assassinating me, as disclosed in Merritt's affidavit. Why did they want me eliminated? One must look at it through their eyes: (1) I was one of Howard Hunt's closest friends and his attorney in the Watergate case. What had Hunt told me about the CIA operations during the period of our friendship? Did I know some of the CIA's darkest secrets? After all, Hunt was a protégé of Richard Helms, the Director of the CIA, and had worked for the agency his entire life. (2) What had I learned while working inside the Robert Mullen Company as an employee of General Foods Corporation? Had I gained access to the CIA files and documents inside the Mullen Company and acquired knowledge of its world wide operations? [For example, Robert Mullen had once spoken to me on the telephone when he was sent by the CIA to Chile to organize the media campaign to overthrow Allende.] (3) Could I have recorded the conversation that I had with Hunt and the CIA's General Counsel about the Nicaragua plan? (4) Had Hunt told me about the role played by key CIA officers and agents in the assassination of President John Kennedy? In his deathbed confession that was audio recorded in January 2004, Hunt fingered CIA officers Cord Meyer, David Philips, Frank Sturgis and David Morales as being part of the assassination plan that originated with Vice President Lyndon Johnson. In summary, it appeared to these CIA agents on June 28, 1972, that I had somehow worked myself into a position of knowing too much about the CIA, and thus of being a potential national security threat and of being a hated homosexual to boot. They feared that the mushrooming Watergate case could lead to my opening a Pandora's Box that threatened to expose some of the darkest secrets of the CIA. So the easiest solution would be to make me a casualty of a domestic Operation Condor (see article below.) In reality, these agents' fears were unfounded. Hunt was always circumspect in what he told me, I never even thought of examining the files and documents housed inside the Mullen Company, I did not record the conversation between the CIA's General Counsel, Hunt and me about Nicaragua, and I knew nothing about the CIA agents' role in the JFK assassination. Actually, I did not know for certain that the Robert Mullen Company was a CIA front until Senator Howard Baker disclosed this in his separate report released as part of the final report of the Senate Watergate Committee. But the CIA agents on June 28, 1972, feared the worst and concocted a plan to remedy the situation. What probably made them later change their course was that on June 28, 1972, I was served in the courthouse with a subpoena to appear "Forthwith" before the Grand Jury investigating the Watergate scandal and this event made national headlines. In short, I became too hot to be offed. Very interesting stuff and I didn't know you worked for Mullen or had a personal friendship with Hunt - nor that the CIA asked you to become a Contra hotelier! May I ask Doug how and when after 'all this and Watergate' it changed you as a person and your political thinking. It seems to me you'd no longer entertain working for the CIA or their ilk. Two other things, I don't know of any high-level CIA who were homosexual, but they certainly had many lower-level assets and operatives who were [Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, your would-be assassin, and many others one could name]. Perhaps they used it as an extra 'hook' to assure their 'loyalty' - or else! Thanks for the disclosures above on your life. You should write a book! Lastly, did you have any contact with Hunt near the end of his life and could you opine on his deathbed 'version' of the events of Dallas based on either what he might have said or hinted to you, or your knowing the man? While Howard Hunt and I conversed on many occasions, never once did the topic of JFK's assassination come up. I never dreamed that he had knowledge about the role played in it by CIA agents as disclosed in his death bed confession.

Statement of Douglas Caddy regarding Robert Merritt’s affidavit of July 29, 2009: When Robert Merritt informed me on July 17, 2009, of the 1972 conspiracy to assassinate me, I was both taken back and puzzled. I asked myself why would these CIA intelligence agents want this done? The reasons they gave Merritt were that I posed a nationals security threat and that I was a homosexual. There is no way to know what was in their minds. However, to try to figure out their thinking, I decided to engage in role playing to see how I looked in their eyes. By doing this, I may have come up with a scenario as to why they were so concerned. This is as follows: When I was graduated from New York University Law School in 1966, I went to work for General Foods Corporation, then the world’s largest food manufacturer. My assignment was to advise the corporate officers on government relations, legislation and regulation that might affect the company’s operations. In 1969 General Food transferred me to Washington, D.C. I was to open an office for the company after a year that would handle government relations, with the emphasis on lobbying. General Foods told me that for the first year I would be working out of the offices of the public relations firm that had long handled its government relations. This firm was the Robert Mullen Company. What General Foods did not tell me was that the Mullen Company was a CIA front, having been incorporated in 1949 by the CIA and that General Foods was a partner in this arrangement. So I started carrying out my General Foods assignment, which consisted primarily of close coordination with the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the national trade organization that represented food manufacturers. In mid-1970 Robert Mullen informed me that Howard Hunt was joining the staff of his company. Hunt and I quickly found we had something in common: I had worked closely with William F. Buckley, Jr. in founding the conservative movement and Buckley not only was the godfather to Hunt’s children but had served under Hunt years previously in the CIA’s office in Mexico City. Howard Hunt and his wife, Dorothy, became my closest friends in Washington. Howard and I conversed daily on any number of topics. At one point Robert Mullen told Hunt and me that he was making plans to retire and asked if we were interested in buying his company, making payments on the purchase price from the profits over the future years. In the end Robert Mullen sold his company to Robert Bennett, a key associate of the Howard Hughes operation and of the CIA. Today Robert Bennett, Senator from Utah, serves in the U.S. Senate, where he is known as the tool and operative of the CIA. I left General Foods in late 1970 and joined Gall, Lane and Kilcullen, a law firm in Washington, as an attorney. Hunt immediately became a client and I handled his personal and business matters. In early 1972, the law firm assigned me to do volunteer presidential campaign legal work out of the office of John Dean, then White House Counsel to President Nixon. Hunt was pleased to learn of this assignment. Around April 1972, two months before the Watergate case broke open, Hunt invited me to join him and the CIA’s General Counsel in what turned out to be a meeting about whether I would be interested in working for the CIA. If I were interested, the General Counsel told me that my CIA assignment would be to construct and open a luxurious hotel on the seashore in Nicaragua, then dominated by the Sandinistas. I told them I would think about it but in my heart knew that I could not accept CIA employment because the vetting process would inevitably reveal that I was homosexual. The CIA did not employ anyone who was homosexual. As with other federal agencies, there was a constant witch hunt against homosexuals, who were driven out and blackballed. On June 17, 1972, the Watergate case broke with the arrests of the five burglars inside the offices of the Democratic National Committee. The same day Hunt and Gordon Liddy retained me as an attorney to represent them and the five arrested individuals. On June 28, eleven days later, Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Carl Shoffler showed up with four intelligence agents at the apartment of Robert Merritt where they attempted to enlist Merritt in assassinating me, as disclosed in Merritt’s affidavit. Why did they want me eliminated? One must look at it through their eyes: (1) I was one of Howard Hunt’s closest friends and his attorney in the Watergate case. What had Hunt told me about the CIA operations during the period of our friendship? Did I know some of the CIA’s darkest secrets? After all, Hunt was a protégé of Richard Helms, the Director of the CIA, and had worked for the agency his entire life. (2) What had I learned while working inside the Robert Mullen Company as an employee of General Foods Corporation? Had I gained access to the CIA files and documents inside the Mullen Company and acquired knowledge of its world wide operations? [For example, Robert Mullen had once spoken to me on the telephone when he was sent by the CIA to Chile to organize the media campaign to overthrow Allende.] (3) Could I have recorded the conversation that I had with Hunt and the CIA’s General Counsel about the Nicaragua plan? (4) Had Hunt told me about the role played by key CIA officers and agents in the assassination of President John Kennedy? In his deathbed confession that was audio recorded in January 2004, Hunt fingered CIA officers Cord Meyer, David Philips, Frank Sturgis and David Morales as being part of the assassination plan that originated with Vice President Lyndon Johnson. In summary, it appeared to these CIA agents on June 28, 1972, that I had somehow worked myself into a position of knowing too much about the CIA, and thus of being a potential national security threat and of being a hated homosexual to boot. They feared that the mushrooming Watergate case could lead to my opening a Pandora’s Box that threatened to expose some of the darkest secrets of the CIA. So the easiest solution would be to make me an early casualty of a domestic Operation Condor (see article below.) In reality, these agents’ fears were unfounded. Hunt was always circumspect in what he told me, I never even thought of examining the files and documents housed inside the Mullen Company, I did not record the conversation between the CIA’s General Counsel, Hunt and me about Nicaragua, and I knew nothing about the CIA agents’ role in the JFK assassination. Actually, I did not know for certain that the Robert Mullen Company was a CIA front until Senator Howard Baker disclosed this in his separate report released as part of the final report of the Senate Watergate Committee. But the CIA agents on June 28, 1972, feared the worst and concocted a plan to remedy the situation. What probably made them later change their course was that on June 28, 1972, I was served in the courthouse with a subpoena to appear “Forthwith” before the Grand Jury investigating the Watergate scandal and this event made national headlines. In short, I became too hot to be offed. ---------------------------------- Shades of Operation Condor by Jacob G. Hornberger by Jacob G. Ho Find this article at: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/riggenbach3-1.html July 30, 2009 The CIA’s assassination plan, which it chose to keep secret from Congress, brings to mind Operation Condor, a similar plan run by DINA, which was Chile’s counterpart to the CIA under the dictatorial regime of military strongman Augusto Pinochet. After Pinochet took power in a coup, his agents proceeded to round up communists and other opponents to his regime and torture, sexually abuse, rape, indefinitely incarcerate, and kill them, without any trials or due process of law. It was during that time, in fact, that the CIA, which supported Pinochet, played a role, as yet undetermined, in the murder of a young American journalist named Charles Horman. Pinochet knew that his war on communism, however, could not be limited to Chile, given that communists were located all over the world. Thus, Chile, along with other South American right-wing regimes, established Operation Condor, a secret program of assassination, torture, and political repression. According to Wikipedia, files discovered in 1992 in Paraguay revealed that Operation Condor succeeded in murdering 50,000 people, “disappearing” another 30,000, and incarcerating 400,000. One day in 1976, however, Operation Condor hit a stumbling block here in the United States. As part of its global war on communism, it took out Chilean citizen Orlando Letelier with a car bomb that succeeded in killing not only him but also his American assistant, Ronni Moffitt. The killing took place on the streets of Washington, D.C. What’s wrong with that, you ask? Weren’t Chile and the other members of Operation Condor involved in a major war? Didn’t they have the right to kill the enemy, wherever the enemy happened to be found? Wasn’t the entire world, including the United States, a battlefield in the global war on communism? After all, what was different about the Letelier assassination and the CIA’s firing of a missile into a car in 2002 in Yemen that was carrying suspected terrorists, including one who was an American citizen? Didn’t the car in Yemen contain people who the CIA was sure were terrorists or terrorist sympathizers? Didn’t the car in Washington contain people that DINA was sure were communists or communist sympathizers, one of whom was a Chilean citizen? There were some Americans who didn’t feel that Operation Condor should be permitted to extend its global war on communism to the United States. Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt were murder victims, they argued. The wartime analogy was hogwash, they said. Letelier, after all, was really just a former member of the cabinet in Chile’s Salvador Allende regime, which had been ousted in the Pinochet coup, who had continued his political battle against Pinochet’s dictatorship in the United States. The Operation Condor agents who killed Letelier and Moffitt were ultimately indicted for murder in a U.S. District Court in Washington. As it turned out, the DINA agent who orchestrated the murder of Letelier and Moffitt was a man named Michael Townley, who also – surprise, surprise – had worked for the CIA. Owing to public pressure, Townley was extradited to the United States to stand trial. The feds ultimately offered him a plea bargain that required him to testify against his underlings and that enabled him to live the rest of his life here in the United States under the federal witness protection program. Assuming the CIA is telling the truth in its claim that it never carried out its assassination program, did the CIA factor in the Letelier-Moffitt case in deciding not to carry through with its assassination program? Perhaps. After all, if CIA assassins were to be arrested in a foreign country and indicted for murder, how would they be able to distinguish what they did from what Operation Condor did to Letelier and Moffitt? July 30, 2009 Jacob Hornberge] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

A communist, pro-Cuban and leader of YAF.....??????????!!!!!!!!! Who were they kidding and how stupid was this would-be assassin and informant? Well, given that someone in intelligence wanted to kill you, I suppose because they felt something(s) your Watergate clients may have told you - or that you could piece together from what they had, is interesting. I'm sure you know more about Watergate than you've said, and in part that is out of your pledge of confidentiality to your clients. I hope, however, when you can you will tell us [the American People] more of what you know, or clues you know of - that might shed light on why they might want to kill you, Martha Mitchell, destroy Nixon, take-over the Government by stealth, and do all the many strange things that were parts of 'Watergate'. Just knowing who it was that wanted you dead, might say a lot. That you posted it on the JFK thread is, as well!..... When Robert Merritt informed me of the 1972 conspiracy to assassinate me, I was both taken back and puzzled. I asked myself why would these CIA intelligence agents want this done? The reasons they gave Merritt were that I posed a nationals security threat and that I was a homosexual. There is no way to know what was in their minds. However, to try to figure out their thinking, I decided to engage in role playing to see how I looked in their eyes. By doing this, I may have come up with a scenario as to why they were so concerned. This is as follows: When I was graduated from New York University Law School in 1966, I went to work for General Foods Corporation, then the world’s largest food manufacturer. My assignment was to advise the corporate officers on government relations, legislation and regulation that might affect the company’s operations. In 1969 General Food transferred me to Washington, D.C. I was to open an office for the company after a year that would handle government relations, with the emphasis on lobbying. General Foods told me that for the first year I would be working out of the offices of the public relations firm that had long handled its government relations. This firm was the Robert Mullen Company. What General Foods did not tell me was that the Mullen Company was a CIA front, having been incorporated in 1949 by the CIA and that General Foods was a partner in this arrangement. So I started carrying out my General Foods assignment, which consisted primarily of close coordination with the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the national trade organization that represented food manufacturers. In mid-1970 Robert Mullen informed me that Howard Hunt was joining the staff of his company. Hunt and I quickly found we had something in common: I had worked closely with William F. Buckley, Jr. in founding the conservative movement and Buckley not only was the godfather to Hunt’s children but had served under Hunt years previously in the CIA’s office in Mexico City. Howard Hunt and his wife, Dorothy, became my closest friends in Washington. Howard and I conversed daily on any number of topics. At one point Robert Mullen told Hunt and me that he was making plans to retire and asked if we were interested in buying his company, making payments on the purchase price from the profits over the future years. In the end Robert Mullen sold his company to Robert Bennett, a key associate of the Howard Hughes operation and of the CIA. Today Robert Bennett, Senator from Utah, serves in the U.S. Senate, where he is known as the tool and operative of the CIA. I left General Foods in late 1970 and joined Gall, Lane and Kilcullen, a law firm in Washington, as an attorney. Hunt immediately became a client and I handled his personal and business matters. In early 1972, the law firm assigned me to do volunteer presidential campaign legal work out of the office of John Dean, then White House Counsel to President Nixon. Hunt was pleased to learn of this assignment. Around April 1972, two months before the Watergate case broke open, Hunt invited me to join him and the CIA’s General Counsel in what turned out to be a meeting about whether I would be interested in working for the CIA. If I were interested, the General Counsel told me that my CIA assignment would be to construct and open a luxurious hotel on the seashore in Nicaragua, then dominated by the Sandinistas. I told them I would think about it but in my heart knew that I could not accept CIA employment because the vetting process would inevitably reveal that I was homosexual. The CIA did not employ anyone who was homosexual. As with other federal agencies, there was a constant witch hunt against homosexuals, who were driven out and blackballed. On June 17, 1972, the Watergate case broke with the arrests of the five burglars inside the offices of the Democratic National Committee. The same day Hunt and Gordon Liddy retained me as an attorney to represent them and the five arrested individuals. On June 28, eleven days later, Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Carl Shoffler showed up with four intelligence agents at the apartment of Robert Merritt where they attempted to enlist Merritt in assassinating me, as disclosed in Merritt’s affidavit. Why did they want me eliminated? One must look at it through their eyes: (1) I was one of Howard Hunt’s closest friends and his attorney in the Watergate case. What had Hunt told me about the CIA operations during the period of our friendship? Did I know some of the CIA’s darkest secrets? After all, Hunt was a protégé of Richard Helms, the Director of the CIA, and had worked for the agency his entire life. (2) What had I learned while working inside the Robert Mullen Company as an employee of General Foods Corporation? Had I gained access to the CIA files and documents inside the Mullen Company and acquired knowledge of its world wide operations? [For example, Robert Mullen had once spoken to me on the telephone when he was sent by the CIA to Chile to organize the media campaign to overthrow Allende.] (3) Could I have recorded the conversation that I had with Hunt and the CIA’s General Counsel about the Nicaragua plan? (4) Had Hunt told me about the role played by key CIA officers and agents in the assassination of President John Kennedy? In his deathbed confession that was audio recorded in January 2004, Hunt fingered CIA officers Cord Meyer, David Philips, Frank Sturgis and David Morales as being part of the assassination plan that originated with Vice President Lyndon Johnson. In summary, it appeared to these CIA agents on June 28, 1972, that I had somehow worked myself into a position of knowing too much about the CIA, and thus of being a potential national security threat and of being a hated homosexual to boot. They feared that the mushrooming Watergate case could lead to my opening a Pandora’s Box that threatened to expose some of the darkest secrets of the CIA. So the easiest solution would be to make me a casualty of a domestic Operation Condor (see article below.) In reality, these agents’ fears were unfounded. Hunt was always circumspect in what he told me, I never even thought of examining the files and documents housed inside the Mullen Company, I did not record the conversation between the CIA’s General Counsel, Hunt and me about Nicaragua, and I knew nothing about the CIA agents’ role in the JFK assassination. Actually, I did not know for certain that the Robert Mullen Company was a CIA front until Senator Howard Baker disclosed this in his separate report released as part of the final report of the Senate Watergate Committee. But the CIA agents on June 28, 1972, feared the worst and concocted a plan to remedy the situation. What probably made them later change their course was that on June 28, 1972, I was served in the courthouse with a subpoena to appear “Forthwith” before the Grand Jury investigating the Watergate scandal and this event made national headlines. In short, I became too hot to be offed. ------------------------------------ Shades of Operation Condor by Jacob G. Hornberger Find this article at: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/riggenbach3-1.html July 30, 2009 The CIA’s assassination plan, which it chose to keep secret from Congress, brings to mind Operation Condor, a similar plan run by DINA, which was Chile’s counterpart to the CIA under the dictatorial regime of military strongman Augusto Pinochet. After Pinochet took power in a coup, his agents proceeded to round up communists and other opponents to his regime and torture, sexually abuse, rape, indefinitely incarcerate, and kill them, without any trials or due process of law. It was during that time, in fact, that the CIA, which supported Pinochet, played a role, as yet undetermined, in the murder of a young American journalist named Charles Horman. Pinochet knew that his war on communism, however, could not be limited to Chile, given that communists were located all over the world. Thus, Chile, along with other South American right-wing regimes, established Operation Condor, a secret program of assassination, torture, and political repression. According to Wikipedia, files discovered in 1992 in Paraguay revealed that Operation Condor succeeded in murdering 50,000 people, “disappearing” another 30,000, and incarcerating 400,000. One day in 1976, however, Operation Condor hit a stumbling block here in the United States. As part of its global war on communism, it took out Chilean citizen Orlando Letelier with a car bomb that succeeded in killing not only him but also his American assistant, Ronni Moffitt. The killing took place on the streets of Washington, D.C. What’s wrong with that, you ask? Weren’t Chile and the other members of Operation Condor involved in a major war? Didn’t they have the right to kill the enemy, wherever the enemy happened to be found? Wasn’t the entire world, including the United States, a battlefield in the global war on communism? After all, what was different about the Letelier assassination and the CIA’s firing of a missile into a car in 2002 in Yemen that was carrying suspected terrorists, including one who was an American citizen? Didn’t the car in Yemen contain people who the CIA was sure were terrorists or terrorist sympathizers? Didn’t the car in Washington contain people that DINA was sure were communists or communist sympathizers, one of whom was a Chilean citizen? There were some Americans who didn’t feel that Operation Condor should be permitted to extend its global war on communism to the United States. Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt were murder victims, they argued. The wartime analogy was hogwash, they said. Letelier, after all, was really just a former member of the cabinet in Chile’s Salvador Allende regime, which had been ousted in the Pinochet coup, who had continued his political battle against Pinochet’s dictatorship in the United States. The Operation Condor agents who killed Letelier and Moffitt were ultimately indicted for murder in a U.S. District Court in Washington. As it turned out, the DINA agent who orchestrated the murder of Letelier and Moffitt was a man named Michael Townley, who also – surprise, surprise – had worked for the CIA. Owing to public pressure, Townley was extradited to the United States to stand trial. The feds ultimately offered him a plea bargain that required him to testify against his underlings and that enabled him to live the rest of his life here in the United States under the federal witness protection program. Assuming the CIA is telling the truth in its claim that it never carried out its assassination program, did the CIA factor in the Letelier-Moffitt case in deciding not to carry through with its assassination program? Perhaps. After all, if CIA assassins were to be arrested in a foreign country and indicted for murder, how would they be able to distinguish what they did from what Operation Condor did to Letelier and Moffitt? July 30, 2009 Jacob Hornberge] is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

http://www.metroweekly.com/feature/?ak=3296 Inside Man Butch Merritt was a leading spy in America's homegrown cold war against homosexuals Interview by Will O'Bryan Published on March 13, 2008 Earl Robert Merritt Jr., a.k.a. Butch Merritt, claims humble beginnings outside Charleston, W.Va. Had he remained in West Virginia, it's nearly certain his life would have been quite a bit simpler than the path he took to Washington as a young man, not long after President Kennedy was assassinated, though he says his move was prompted, in part, by sexual abuse at a Catholic high school he attended. A few years after landing in the nation's capital and coming out as a gay man, Merritt says he was recruited by Carl Shoffler of the Metropolitan Police Department to spy on the District's GLBT community in a time of simmering civic discontent, anti-war demonstrations and COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), the acronym for the FBI's effort to spy on Americans.... This story reminds me of Don Norton, not the fisherman, the gay piano player at the officer's club who was recruited to spy on gay military officers. Norton thought he was recruited by the CIA, but when his name came out in the Garrison case the internal CIA files had nothing on him. He was probably ONI or Army. It's also interesting how Merritt went from an informant to a rock throwing agitator. BK The excerpt below is from a Xerox copy of an undated column by columnist Drew Pearson. While the column’s exact date cannot be pinpointed at this time, reference in it to former Vice President Spiro Agnew leads one to believe it was published in the Washington Post sometime in the months immediately after Agnew’s resignation as Vice President, which took place on October 18, 1973. Columnist Drew Pearson was one of Robert Merritt’s biggest supporters. He told Merritt that he was publishing the column as a “life insurance policy’ to protect Merritt from potential physical harm, which is one reason Merritt executed his recent affidavit regarding me and why I posted it in the forum today. POLICE PLOT FAILS By Jack Anderson Washington – The Washington police attempted to plant an informant in the household of Ethel Kennedy, widow of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy, in 1971 to spy on the Kennedy crowd. The informant, E. Robert Merritt, Jr., also committed burglaries and other dirty deeds, not only for the police but for the FBI. Indeed, confidential FBI files say of him, “Nothing has developed…to indicate that the informant has furnished other than reliable information. “ The police provided Merritt with Ethel Kennedy’s private phone number and home address. He was instructed to apply for a job opening as a gardener-driver at the Kennedy residence and then to use the position to gather information about the friends, associates and members of the Kennedy family. This particular plot fell through but he completed many even more bizarre undercover assignments. Under the guidance of his lawyer Alan Cilman, the 31-year old Merritt has now told us about some of his exploits: +When the antiwar demonstrators descended upon Washington on May Day 1971, the police asked Merritt to infiltrate the inner circle and to spy on activist leaders Jack Davis, Rennie Davis and a young lawyer named Ray Twohig. The police gave Merritt pills and marijuana to plan on Twohig. Merritt was also instructed to distribute bad drugs, including blue-stripped capsules that caused nausea, and to disrupt the demonstrations by cutting microphone wires. + At the instigation of FBI agent William Tucker, Merritt entered the Red House Bookstore, which was associated with prison reform, and swiped mail which he turned over to the FBI. +The undercover operative also picked up a box of address envelopes left outside the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and delivered them to FBI agent Terry O’Connor. +Merritt was also instructed to spy on the Institute for Policy Studies, a respected left-wing research group. Told to take anything he “could get away with,” he walked off with a sack that turned out to contain first class letters. He turned the mail over to the FBI’s Tucker, who retained it for study and later asked him to return it. +Both the FBI and Washington police asked Merritt for any gossip he could glean about the following members of Congress: Senator Tom Eagleton D-Mo., Hubert Humphrey D-Minn., Ted Kennedy D-Mass., Charles Mathias R-Md., George McGovern D-S.D., Lee Metcalf D-Mont., Ed Muskie D-Maine, William Proxmire D.-Wis., Abraham Ribicoff D-Conn., and Stuart Symington D.-Mo. Also Representatives Bella Abzub D-N.Y., Mario Biaggi D-N.Y., Shirley Chisholm D-N.Y,, John Conyers D-Mich., Ron Dellums D-Calif., Don Edwards D-Calif., Walter Fauntroy D-N.C., Richard Ichord D-Mo, Claude Pepper D-Fla. and Charles Wiggins D-Calif. Footnote: The two FBI agents, William Tucker and Terry O’Connor, declined to comment. Tucker’s superior, Nick Stames, also refused to comment but promised to investigate any questions of impropriety. Some of the Washington policemen, involved with Merritt, had no comment; others did not return our calls. WASHNGTON WHIRL +There’s more that meets the eye to the sudden confession of Jack Ford, the President’s son, that he has smoked pot….. +Ex-Vice President Spiro Agnew’s name may be dragged back into the headlines. The FBI is investigating reports that certain builders, with the right political connections, were granted governmental leases. One of Agnew’s cronies, the FBI has learned, wangled a questionable $45 million lease.

Testimony of Marcus G. Raskin before Select Committee on Intelligence (Pike Committee) Re: Earl Robert Merritt. http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...sPageId=1489947 The excerpt below is from a Xerox copy of an undated column by columnist Drew Pearson. While the column’s exact date cannot be pinpointed at this time, reference in it to former Vice President Spiro Agnew leads one to believe it was published in the Washington Post sometime in the months immediately after Agnew’s resignation as Vice President, which took place in October 1973. Columnist Drew Pearson was one of Robert Merritt’s biggest supporters. He told Merritt that he was publishing the column as a “life insurance policy’ to protect Merritt from potential physical harm, which is one reason Merritt executed his recent affidavit regarding me and why I posted it in the forum today. POLICE PLOT FAILS By Jack Anderson Washington – The Washington police attempted to plant an informant in the household of Ethel Kennedy, widow of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy, in 1971 to spy on the Kennedy crowd. The informant, E. Robert Merritt, Jr., also committed burglaries and other dirty deeds, not only for the police but for the FBI. Indeed, confidential FBI files say of him, “Nothing has developed…to indicate that the informant has furnished other than reliable information. “ The police provided Merritt with Ethel Kennedy’s private phone number and home address. He was instructed to apply for a job opening as a gardener-driver at the Kennedy residence and then to use the position to gather information about the friends, associates and members of the Kennedy family. This particular plot fell through but he completed many even more bizarre undercover assignments. Under the guidance of his lawyer Alan Cilman, the 31-year old Merritt has now told us about some of his exploits: +When the antiwar demonstrators descended upon Washington on May Day 1971, the police asked Merritt to infiltrate the inner circle and to spy on activist leaders Jack Davis, Rennie Davis and a young lawyer named Ray Twohig. The police gave Merritt pills and marijuana to plan on Twohig. Merritt was also instructed to distribute bad drugs, including blue-stripped capsules that caused nausea, and to disrupt the demonstrations by cutting microphone wires. + At the instigation of FBI agent William Tucker, Merritt entered the Red House Bookstore, which was associated with prison reform, and swiped mail which he turned over to the FBI. +The undercover operative also picked up a box of address envelopes left outside the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and delivered them to FBI agent Terry O’Connor. +Merritt was also instructed to spy on the Institute for Policy Studies, a respected left-wing research group. Told to take anything he “could get away with,” he walked off with a sack that turned out to contain first class letters. He turned the mail over to the FBI’s Tucker, who retained it for study and later asked him to return it. +Both the FBI and Washington police asked Merritt for any gossip he could glean about the following members of Congress: Senator Tom Eagleton D-Mo., Hubert Humphrey D-Minn., Ted Kennedy D-Mass., Charles Mathias R-Md., George McGovern D-S.D., Lee Metcalf D-Mont., Ed Muskie D-Maine, William Proxmire D.-Wis., Abraham Ribicoff D-Conn., and Stuart Symington D.-Mo. Also Representatives Bella Abzub D-N.Y., Mario Biaggi D-N.Y., Shirley Chisholm D-N.Y,, John Conyers D-Mich., Ron Dellums D-Calif., Don Edwards D-Calif., Walter Fauntroy D-N.C., Richard Ichord D-Mo, Claude Pepper D-Fla. and Charles Wiggins D-Calif. Footnote: The two FBI agents, William Tucker and Terry O’Connor, declined to comment. Tucker’s superior, Nick Stames, also refused to comment but promised to investigate any questions of impropriety. Some of the Washington policemen, involved with Merritt, had no comment; others did not return our calls. WASHNGTON WHIRL +There’s more that meets the eye to the sudden confession of Jack Ford, the President’s son, that he has smoked pot….. +Ex-Vice President Spiro Agnew’s name may be dragged back into the headlines. The FBI is investigating reports that certain builders, with the right political connections, were granted governmental leases. One of Agnew’s cronies, the FBI has learned, wangled a questionable $45 million lease.

Testimony of Marcus G. Raskin before Select Committee on Intelligence (Pike Committee) Re: Earl Robert Merritt. http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...sPageId=1489947 STATE OF NEW YORK COUNTY OF NEW YORK Affidavit of Robert N. Wall I, Robert N. Wall, being duly sworn, depose and say on the basis of my own knowledge: 1. I am currently a resident of Buffalo, New York 2. During the period 1965-1970, I was a Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and during the period 1967-1970, I was assigned to the Washington, D.C. Field Office of the F.B.I. During that time, it came to my attention that the records of banks in the Washington, D.C. area could be obtained for the purposes of our investigation. My understanding is that these records were obtained by a special agent in the Washington, D.C. Field Office who had developed relations with various officers and employees of banks in this area. These banking records were not obtained through any legal procedures (eg. Grand Jury subpoenas or otherwise), but as an accommodation to the F.B.I. 3. I, as well as other agents investigating the so-called “New Left” and “black” organizations, were able to obtain the banking records we were interested in by requesting them from the agent on this detail. In was in this context that I saw the banking records of the Institute for Policy Studies, during the period 1968-1970. 4. By banking records of the Institute for Policy Studies, I mean a list of checks issued by IPS showing check number, date of issuance, maker, payee, and endorser, if any, with respect to the Institute of Policy Studies account at the Riggs National Bank in Washington, D.C. 5. While the checks written by the Institute for Policy Studies were routinely obtained, the F.B.I. was also able, on special request, to obtain comparable information with respect to the IPS account of deposits made in the Riggs National Bank. 6. In addition to the financial records of the IPS, the F.B.I. was able to secure in similar fashion the financial records of The New School for Afro-American Thought, The Drum and Spear Bookstore, the Center for Black Education, and those of selected individuals, including Stokely Carmichael and Jean Hughes. Then personally appeared before me the above-named Robert N. Wall and made oath that the foregoing statements subscribed by him are true. Robert N. Wall 12/16/71 Bella Greene Notary Public, State of New York No. 21-1351249 Qualified in Kings County Commission expires March 30, 1973

AFFADAVIT 1972 CONSPIRACY TO ASSASSINATE DOUGLAS CADDY, Original Attorney for the Watergate Seven I, Robert Merritt, attest to the following facts regarding my involvement with the Watergate attorney Douglas Caddy, who represented the burglars known as the Watergate Seven. On Saturday, June 17, 1972, five burglars broke into the Democratic National Committee offices in Watergate and were arrested at 2:30 A. M. by Washington, D.C. Police Officer Carl Shoffler. At the time the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department employed me as a Confidential Informant and assigned me to work directly with Officer Shoffler. Two weeks before the arrests at Watergate I provided information to Shoffler about the planned break-in of the DNC that I had obtained as a Confidential Informant from a highly unusual source. By using this advance information, Shoffler developed a successful triangulation strategy that in effect set the burglars up in a form of entrapment. The Watergate scandal thus began and ultimately forced the resignation of President Nixon. Shoffler came to my apartment in Washington, D.C. late in the morning of the day of the events at Watergate and exulted in having made the arrests. He told me that he had secretly telephoned the Washington Post soon after the arrests to tip the newspaper off to what had occurred. He then demanded his special birthday present from me, which I was only too happy to perform. (First meeting) Three days later, on June 20, 1972, Shoffler showed up at my apartment with his supervisor, Police Sgt. Paul Leeper. They asked me if I knew someone by the name of Douglas Caddy, who lived at the Georgetown House, a high-rise apartment, at 2121 P St., N. W., which was directly across the street from my apartment. They told me Douglas Caddy was an attorney who was representing the Watergate burglars and that Douglas Caddy was a communist and pro-Cuban and was a leader of the Young Americans for Freedom. They wanted me to establish a sexual relationship with Douglas Caddy to find out how Douglas Caddy knew to show up for the arraignment of the burglars after their arrest. They asserted that Douglas Caddy had to be in on the conspiracy with the burglars and that in the past he had been shadowed when he frequented a leather-Levi gay bar in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. Shoffler and Leeper related that Douglas Caddy had been working as a White House attorney in a sensitive position. They claimed that I was butch enough to entice Douglas Caddy, a masculine gay guy, into a sexual affair to obtain the information they wanted. They told me that this was the most important thing that I could do for my country and that I would be well-paid if I undertook the assignment. Their initial offer was $10,000. I asked Shoffler about who it was that so desperately wanted this information from Douglas Caddy and he said that it was from very high up sources in the Department of Justice and the U. S. Attorney’s office. I did not commit to doing the assignment. Two days later, on June 22, 1972, which was my birthday, Shoffler came to my apartment to give me my birthday present. He spent the entire day with me. Afterwards, when we were relaxing in bed, he gently tried to persuade me to cooperate with him and Leeper regarding the Douglas Caddy assignment. I emphatically told him “No.” I didn’t know Douglas Caddy and I didn’t know how to get to know him and I was bothered that undertaking the assignment could lead to the destruction of another gay person who apparently was still in the closet and merely attempting to represent his clients. We talked about the break-in and Shoffler told me straight out that the burglars were hired indirectly by one of the 100 families of America, which Shoffler named as the Kennedy Family. Shoffler said, “The intention of the Watergate break-in was to destroy the Nixon presidency. President Nixon was guilty of nothing in its planning.” Shoffler said that there were hidden motivations involved, such as the fear of law enforcement agencies that their turf would be reduced by President Nixon through a scheme known as the Houston Plan, the CIA’s concern that President Nixon planned to reorganize the intelligence agencies and their operations, and the Defense Department’s opposition to President Nixon’s new China policy. I asked Shoffler if he was angry at me for refusing to take the Caddy assignment and he smiled at me and said he was glad that I didn’t. (Third meeting) In the March 1973, nine months after the initial overture and a month after the first Watergate trial ended, I met with Shoffler and Leeper, FBI agents Terry O’Connor and Bill Tucker and their FBI Agent-In-Charge, whose name escapes me. Leeper did most of the talking. He again tried to persuade me to take on the Douglas Caddy assignment, making an initial offer of $25,000. I refused outright. The group then said that I could be paid as much as $100,000 if I took the assignment but I still refused without providing any explanation. Once it was understood that I would not accept the offer, Leeper declared that the least I could do was to spread the rumor around Washington, D. C. that Douglas Caddy was gay in an effort to force him to come out of the closet. Their intention was to defame Douglas Caddy. This was the last attempt to persuade me to take the Douglas Caddy assignment. The group departed angrily, with the exception Shoffler, who secretly winked at me as he went out the door. DISCLOSURE OF SECOND MEETING On June 17, 2009, 37 years after Watergate, I notified Douglas Caddy, now an attorney in Houston, Texas, of a well kept secret and informed him of a new Watergate revelation. (Previously I had disclosed to Douglas Caddy that there had been two meetings regarding the Caddy assignment as discussed above.) I then informed Douglas Caddy that there had been a second meeting about the Caddy assignment. It took place on June 28, 1972, with Shoffler and four others agents who were never introduced to me. I am quite certain that these agents were from either Military Intelligence or the CIA. I know that they were not FBI agents from their manner and the special type of assignment they asked me to do regarding Douglas Caddy. Shoffler and these agents met with me in my apartment at 2122 P Street, N.W. Douglas Caddy did in fact live across the street from me in the Georgetown House at 2121 P St., N.W. One of the agents, whom I will never forget, had two plastic bags, one containing two small blue pills and another that had a laboratory test tube with a small gelatin substance that was approximately ¼ inch in diameter. He referred to it as a suppository. The assignment was to become intimately acquainted with Douglas Caddy as quickly as possible. The exact description of the assignment was to engage in oral sex with Douglas Caddy and in doing so I was suppose to fondle his b---- and a--, and at the same time insert the small gelatin like suppository into his rectum, which would have caused death within minutes. If there were any delay in the lethal process that would prevent me from leaving fast from his presence, then I was to take the small blue pills, which would have caused me nausea, providing me with an excuse to leave for home immediately. The agents told me that Douglas Caddy had to be eliminated without fail. My first reaction was that they were “nuts.” But then Shoffler pulled me aside and whispered that this was a very real and serious situation and the decision was entirely up to me. The agents were planning a pre-arrange way for me to meet Douglas Caddy, which they did not disclose at the time. I asked the agents what the reason was that they wanted for me to go to this length and why they and the government were taking such a risk. I was told that this matter involved a high national security situation that they were not at liberty to disclose. The agents stated that their orders did not allow them to know the answers and that they were only following orders from their superiors who sometimes did not know the answers either and merely implemented instructions from those above. However, from the agents’ comments I inferred that because Douglas Caddy was gay, that was reason enough. The agents informed me that I would be well taken care of for this assignment. They also said that I would never have to worry about anything for the rest of my life. I was totally repulsed by the entire assignment and proposition. After I emphatically refused, the agents swore me to secrecy and left. Only in July of 1986 when I was subpoenaed by Shoffler to testify before the grand jury in the Lenny Bias case in Upper Marlboro, Maryland did he ever discuss this subject again. At that time he said, “Butch, I am glad that you did not go through with that Douglas Caddy assignment because I found out that those two little blue pills would have caused your instant death.” I regret that I never disclosed these facts until now. I suppressed this information out of fear for my life. Some of the background information in this affidavit about my relationship with Shoffler as a Confidential Informant was disclosed by Jim Hougan in his 1984 best-selling book, Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA (see pages 320-323). Some was also disclosed in the Watergate Special Prosecution Force Memorandums of its two interviews of me and one of Officer Carl Shoffler in 1973. This sworn statement is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. I, Robert Merritt, swear in this affidavit that the facts are true to the best of my knowledge under the penalty of perjury. Robert Merritt Subscribed and sworn to before me on the 28th of July, 2009, to certify which witness my hand and seal of office. Notary Public in and for the State of New York Ricardo S. Castro Notary Public, State of New York No. 01CA5041272 Qualified in Bronx County Comm. Exp. 08/29/09 __________________________ 7/29/09 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page March 24, 1998 WHAT IF JUDGE SIRICA WERE WITH US TODAY? By Douglas Caddy (Mr. Caddy is a Houston lawyer) The Clinton scandals, with all the claims of coverup and executive privilege, are certainly reminiscent of Watergate. But there is a crucial difference: This case lacks a John Sirica, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia who played such a crucial role in Watergate. The untold historical record reveals that the early actions of Sirica, who assigned the Watergate case to himself, helped spur the subsequent coverup and obstruction of justice that ultimately led to the resignation of President Nixon and the criminal convictions of many Watergate figures. The Watergate scandal began at 2:30 a.m. on June 17, 1972, when Washington, D.C. police arrested five men on burglary charges at the Watergate office building. At 3:05 a.m. E. Howard Hunt phoned me from his White House office and asked if he could come immediately to my Washington residence. I had been Hunt’s personal attorney for several years. Hunt arrived half an hour later and informed me what had transpired earlier at the Watergate. He retained me to represent him in the case and then called G. Gordon Liddy, who also hired me. At that time, about two hours after the burglary, both Hunt and Liddy requested I also represent the five people arrested, four Cuban-Americans and James McCord, who were then incarcerated in the D.C. jail. On June 28 – 11 days later – while working on the case in the federal courthouse in Washington, I was served with a subpoena bearing the name of Chief Judge Sirica, to appear “forthwith” before the federal grand jury investigating the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Campbell grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the grand jury room. From June 28 until July 19 I was to appear before the grand jury on six occasions and answer hundreds of questions. I drew the line, however, on the advice of my own legal counsel, at answering 38 questions we felt invaded my clients’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel and the attorney-client privilege. A typical question: “Between the hours of Friday at midnight, June 16, and 8:30 a.m. Saturday, June 17, did you receive a visit from Mr. Everett Howard Hunt?” We believed answering such questions would incriminate Hunt and Liddy, who had not been arrested, and would violate their constitutional rights. Judge Sirica, rejecting such arguments out of hand, threatened to jail me for contempt of court. When I went before the grand jury on July 13, I refused to answer the 38 questions. Within an hour I was back before Judge Sircia, who immediately held me in contempt of court and ordered me to jail. Five days later, on July 18, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the contempt citation and ordered me to testify under threat of being jailed again. The opinion, which I found gratuitously insulting, declared: “Even if such a relationship does exist, certain communications, such as consultation in furtherance of a crime, are not within the privilege.” In his July 19, 1972, Oval Office tape, Nixon is recorded as expressing dismay to John Ehrlichman: “Do you mean the circuit court ordered an attorney to testify?” Ehrlichman replied, “It [unintelligible] me, except that this damn circuit that we’ve got here, with [Judge David] Bazelon and so on, it surprises me every time they do something.” Nixon then asked, “Why didn’t he appeal to the Supreme Court?” The answer is that my attorneys and I believe we had built a strong enough court record that if Hunt, Liddy and the five arrested individuals were found guilty, their convictions could be overturned on appeal because of Sirica’s and the appeals court’s abuse of me as their attorney. However, Judge Sirica’s actions had an unintended consequence. Hunt and Liddy, seeing their attorney falsely accused by Judge Sirica of being a participant in their crime, realized early on that they were not going to get a fair trail, so they embarked on a coverup involving “hush money.” As Hunt has written: “If Sirica was treating Caddy – an Officer of the Court – so summarily, and Caddy was completely uninvolved in Watergate – then those of us who were involved could expect neither fairness nor understanding from him. As events unfolded, this conclusion became tragically accurate.” Liddy appealed his conviction to the U.S. Court of Appeals, claiming that my being forced to testify denied him his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The court upheld his conviction: “The evidence against appellant...was so overwhelming that even if there were constitutional error in the comment of the prosecutor and the instruction of the trial judge, there is no reasonable possibility it contributed to the conviction.” Neither Judge Sirica nor the appeals court acknowledged that their assault on the attorney-client privilege helped spur the ensuing coverup and obstruction of justice. I was never indicted, named an unindicted co-conspirator, disciplined by the Bar or even contacted by the Senate Watergate Committee or the House Judiciary Committee, whose staff included a young lawyer named Hillary Rodham. Now the issue of the attorney-client privilege is again being raised, this time by Monica Lewinsky’s first lawyer, Francis D. Carter, who has been subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury and bring the notes he took while representing Ms. Lewinsky. Mr. Carter got involved when Vernon Jordan referred Ms. Lewinsky to him in January. On March 4, Mr. Carter’s attorney, Charles Ogletree, argued before Chief Judge Norma Hollaway Johnson that the subpoena should be quashed: “Once you start to allow the government to intrude on the attorney-client relationship and allow them to pierce the attorney-client privilege, clients will no longer have a sense of confidence and respect that lawyers should have.” Coming days will reveal how Mr. Carter fares in his fight to protect Ms. Lewinsky’s constitutional rights and what effect this will have on the case’s ultimate outcome. To date, at least, Judge Johnson has shown a restraint that her predecessor Judge Sirica did not.

AFFADAVIT 1972 CONSPIRACY TO ASSASSINATE DOUGLAS CADDY, Original Attorney for the Watergate Seven I, Robert Merritt, attest to the following facts regarding my involvement with the Watergate attorney Douglas Caddy, who represented the burglars known as the Watergate Seven. On Saturday, June 17, 1972, five burglars broke into the Democratic National Committee offices in Watergate and were arrested at 2:30 A. M. by Washington, D.C. Police Officer Carl Shoffler. At the time the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department employed me as a Confidential Informant and assigned me to work directly with Officer Shoffler. Two weeks before the arrests at Watergate I provided information to Shoffler about the planned break-in of the DNC that I had obtained as a Confidential Informant from a highly unusual source. By using this advance information, Shoffler developed a successful triangulation strategy that in effect set the burglars up in a form of entrapment. The Watergate scandal thus began and ultimately forced the resignation of President Nixon. Shoffler came to my apartment in Washington, D.C. late in the morning of the day of the events at Watergate and exulted in having made the arrests. He told me that he had secretly telephoned the Washington Post soon after the arrests to tip the newspaper off to what had occurred. He then demanded his special birthday present from me, which I was only too happy to perform. (First meeting) Three days later, on June 20, 1972, Shoffler showed up at my apartment with his supervisor, Police Sgt. Paul Leeper. They asked me if I knew someone by the name of Douglas Caddy, who lived at the Georgetown House, a high-rise apartment, at 2121 P St., N. W., which was directly across the street from my apartment. They told me Douglas Caddy was an attorney who was representing the Watergate burglars and that Douglas Caddy was a communist and pro-Cuban and was a leader of the Young Americans for Freedom. They wanted me to establish a sexual relationship with Douglas Caddy to find out how Douglas Caddy knew to show up for the arraignment of the burglars after their arrest. They asserted that Douglas Caddy had to be in on the conspiracy with the burglars and that in the past he had been shadowed when he frequented a leather-Levi gay bar in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. Shoffler and Leeper related that Douglas Caddy had been working as a White House attorney in a sensitive position. They claimed that I was butch enough to entice Douglas Caddy, a masculine gay guy, into a sexual affair to obtain the information they wanted. They told me that this was the most important thing that I could do for my country and that I would be well-paid if I undertook the assignment. Their initial offer was $10,000. I asked Shoffler about who it was that so desperately wanted this information from Douglas Caddy and he said that it was from very high up sources in the Department of Justice and the U. S. Attorney’s office. I did not commit to doing the assignment. Two days later, on June 22, 1972, which was my birthday, Shoffler came to my apartment to give me my birthday present. He spent the entire day with me. Afterwards, when we were relaxing in bed, he gently tried to persuade me to cooperate with him and Leeper regarding the Douglas Caddy assignment. I emphatically told him “No.” I didn’t know Douglas Caddy and I didn’t know how to get to know him and I was bothered that undertaking the assignment could lead to the destruction of another gay person who apparently was still in the closet and merely attempting to represent his clients. We talked about the break-in and Shoffler told me straight out that the burglars were hired indirectly by one of the 100 families of America, which Shoffler named as the Kennedy Family. Shoffler said, “The intention of the Watergate break-in was to destroy the Nixon presidency. President Nixon was guilty of nothing in its planning.” Shoffler said that there were hidden motivations involved, such as the fear of law enforcement agencies that their turf would be reduced by President Nixon through a scheme known as the Houston Plan, the CIA’s concern that President Nixon planned to reorganize the intelligence agencies and their operations, and the Defense Department’s opposition to President Nixon’s new China policy. I asked Shoffler if he was angry at me for refusing to take the Caddy assignment and he smiled at me and said he was glad that I didn’t. (Third meeting) In the March 1973, nine months after the initial overture and a month after the first Watergate trial ended, I met with Shoffler and Leeper, FBI agents Terry O’Connor and Bill Tucker and their FBI Agent-In-Charge, whose name escapes me. Leeper did most of the talking. He again tried to persuade me to take on the Douglas Caddy assignment, making an initial offer of $25,000. I refused outright. The group then said that I could be paid as much as $100,000 if I took the assignment but I still refused without providing any explanation. Once it was understood that I would not accept the offer, Leeper declared that the least I could do was to spread the rumor around Washington, D. C. that Douglas Caddy was gay in an effort to force him to come out of the closet. Their intention was to defame Douglas Caddy. This was the last attempt to persuade me to take the Douglas Caddy assignment. The group departed angrily, with the exception Shoffler, who secretly winked at me as he went out the door. DISCLOSURE OF SECOND MEETING On June 17, 2009, 37 years after Watergate, I notified Douglas Caddy, now an attorney in Houston, Texas, of a well kept secret and informed him of a new Watergate revelation. (Previously I had disclosed to Douglas Caddy that there had been two meetings regarding the Caddy assignment as discussed above.) I then informed Douglas Caddy that there had been a second meeting about the Caddy assignment. It took place on June 28, 1972, with Shoffler and four others agents who were never introduced to me. I am quite certain that these agents were from either Military Intelligence or the CIA. I know that they were not FBI agents from their manner and the special type of assignment they asked me to do regarding Douglas Caddy. Shoffler and these agents met with me in my apartment at 2122 P Street, N.W. Douglas Caddy did in fact live across the street from me in the Georgetown House at 2121 P St., N.W. One of the agents, whom I will never forget, had two plastic bags, one containing two small blue pills and another that had a laboratory test tube with a small gelatin substance that was approximately ¼ inch in diameter. He referred to it as a suppository. The assignment was to become intimately acquainted with Douglas Caddy as quickly as possible. The exact description of the assignment was to engage in oral sex with Douglas Caddy and in doing so I was suppose to fondle his b---- and a--, and at the same time insert the small gelatin like suppository into his rectum, which would have caused death within minutes. If there were any delay in the lethal process that would prevent me from leaving fast from his presence, then I was to take the small blue pills, which would have caused me nausea, providing me with an excuse to leave for home immediately. The agents told me that Douglas Caddy had to be eliminated without fail. My first reaction was that they were “nuts.” But then Shoffler pulled me aside and whispered that this was a very real and serious situation and the decision was entirely up to me. The agents were planning a pre-arrange way for me to meet Douglas Caddy, which they did not disclose at the time. I asked the agents what the reason was that they wanted for me to go to this length and why they and the government were taking such a risk. I was told that this matter involved a high national security situation that they were not at liberty to disclose. The agents stated that their orders did not allow them to know the answers and that they were only following orders from their superiors who sometimes did not know the answers either and merely implemented instructions from those above. However, from the agents’ comments I inferred that because Douglas Caddy was gay, that was reason enough. The agents informed me that I would be well taken care of for this assignment. They also said that I would never have to worry about anything for the rest of my life. I was totally repulsed by the entire assignment and proposition. After I emphatically refused, the agents swore me to secrecy and left. Only in July of 1986 when I was subpoenaed by Shoffler to testify before the grand jury in the Lenny Bias case in Upper Marlboro, Maryland did he ever discuss this subject again. At that time he said, “Butch, I am glad that you did not go through with that Douglas Caddy assignment because I found out that those two little blue pills would have caused your instant death.” I regret that I never disclosed these facts until now. I suppressed this information out of fear for my life. Some of the background information in this affidavit about my relationship with Shoffler as a Confidential Informant was disclosed by Jim Hougan in his 1984 best-selling book, Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA (see pages 320-323). Some was also disclosed in the Watergate Special Prosecution Force Memorandums of its two interviews of me and one of Officer Carl Shoffler in 1973. This sworn statement is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. I, Robert Merritt, swear in this affidavit that the facts are true to the best of my knowledge under the penalty of perjury. Robert Merritt Subscribed and sworn to before me on the 28th of July, 2009, to certify which witness my hand and seal of office. Notary Public in and for the State of New York Ricardo S. Castro Notary Public, State of New York No. 01CA5041272 Qualified in Bronx County Comm. Exp. 08/29/09 __________________________ 7/29/09 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page March 24, 1998 WHAT IF JUDGE SIRICA WERE WITH US TODAY? By Douglas Caddy (Mr. Caddy is a Houston lawyer) The Clinton scandals, with all the claims of coverup and executive privilege, are certainly reminiscent of Watergate. But there is a crucial difference: This case lacks a John Sirica, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia who played such a crucial role in Watergate. The untold historical record reveals that the early actions of Sirica, who assigned the Watergate case to himself, helped spur the subsequent coverup and obstruction of justice that ultimately led to the resignation of President Nixon and the criminal convictions of many Watergate figures. The Watergate scandal began at 2:30 a.m. on June 17, 1972, when Washington, D.C. police arrested five men on burglary charges at the Watergate office building. At 3:05 a.m. E. Howard Hunt phoned me from his White House office and asked if he could come immediately to my Washington residence. I had been Hunt’s personal attorney for several years. Hunt arrived half an hour later and informed me what had transpired earlier at the Watergate. He retained me to represent him in the case and then called G. Gordon Liddy, who also hired me. At that time, about two hours after the burglary, both Hunt and Liddy requested I also represent the five people arrested, four Cuban-Americans and James McCord, who were then incarcerated in the D.C. jail. On June 28 – 11 days later – while working on the case in the federal courthouse in Washington, I was served with a subpoena bearing the name of Chief Judge Sirica, to appear “forthwith” before the federal grand jury investigating the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Campbell grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the grand jury room. From June 28 until July 19 I was to appear before the grand jury on six occasions and answer hundreds of questions. I drew the line, however, on the advice of my own legal counsel, at answering 38 questions we felt invaded my clients’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel and the attorney-client privilege. A typical question: “Between the hours of Friday at midnight, June 16, and 8:30 a.m. Saturday, June 17, did you receive a visit from Mr. Everett Howard Hunt?” We believed answering such questions would incriminate Hunt and Liddy, who had not been arrested, and would violate their constitutional rights. Judge Sirica, rejecting such arguments out of hand, threatened to jail me for contempt of court. When I went before the grand jury on July 13, I refused to answer the 38 questions. Within an hour I was back before Judge Sircia, who immediately held me in contempt of court and ordered me to jail. Five days later, on July 18, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the contempt citation and ordered me to testify under threat of being jailed again. The opinion, which I found gratuitously insulting, declared: “Even if such a relationship does exist, certain communications, such as consultation in furtherance of a crime, are not within the privilege.” In his July 19, 1972, Oval Office tape, Nixon is recorded as expressing dismay to John Ehrlichman: “Do you mean the circuit court ordered an attorney to testify?” Ehrlichman replied, “It [unintelligible] me, except that this damn circuit that we’ve got here, with [Judge David] Bazelon and so on, it surprises me every time they do something.” Nixon then asked, “Why didn’t he appeal to the Supreme Court?” The answer is that my attorneys and I believe we had built a strong enough court record that if Hunt, Liddy and the five arrested individuals were found guilty, their convictions could be overturned on appeal because of Sirica’s and the appeals court’s abuse of me as their attorney. However, Judge Sirica’s actions had an unintended consequence. Hunt and Liddy, seeing their attorney falsely accused by Judge Sirica of being a participant in their crime, realized early on that they were not going to get a fair trail, so they embarked on a coverup involving “hush money.” As Hunt has written: “If Sirica was treating Caddy – an Officer of the Court – so summarily, and Caddy was completely uninvolved in Watergate – then those of us who were involved could expect neither fairness nor understanding from him. As events unfolded, this conclusion became tragically accurate.” Liddy appealed his conviction to the U.S. Court of Appeals, claiming that my being forced to testify denied him his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The court upheld his conviction: “The evidence against appellant...was so overwhelming that even if there were constitutional error in the comment of the prosecutor and the instruction of the trial judge, there is no reasonable possibility it contributed to the conviction.” Neither Judge Sirica nor the appeals court acknowledged that their assault on the attorney-client privilege helped spur the ensuing coverup and obstruction of justice. I was never indicted, named an unindicted co-conspirator, disciplined by the Bar or even contacted by the Senate Watergate Committee or the House Judiciary Committee, whose staff included a young lawyer named Hillary Rodham. Now the issue of the attorney-client privilege is again being raised, this time by Monica Lewinsky’s first lawyer, Francis D. Carter, who has been subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury and bring the notes he took while representing Ms. Lewinsky. Mr. Carter got involved when Vernon Jordan referred Ms. Lewinsky to him in January. On March 4, Mr. Carter’s attorney, Charles Ogletree, argued before Chief Judge Norma Hollaway Johnson that the subpoena should be quashed: “Once you start to allow the government to intrude on the attorney-client relationship and allow them to pierce the attorney-client privilege, clients will no longer have a sense of confidence and respect that lawyers should have.” Coming days will reveal how Mr. Carter fares in his fight to protect Ms. Lewinsky’s constitutional rights and what effect this will have on the case’s ultimate outcome. To date, at least, Judge Johnson has shown a restraint that her predecessor Judge Sirica did not.

Poster's note: There are a lot of subjects covered in this 2003 article by Gary North. The ones that interested me most were 1) who ordered the bubble top removed from JFK's vehicle in Dallas? and 2) how the Bushes and the Hinckleys are related. I know a lot of Forum members will not agree with some of North's contentions but his work is still worth reading. _____________________________ November 24, 2003 On a Bright Sunny Day in Dallas by Gary North http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north231.html Last week was the 40th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination. There were several television programs devoted to this event, especially on PBS. In this report, I’m going to present a missing piece of the puzzle, one that you have never heard about. It was not mentioned in the Warren Commission report. Oliver Stone did not include it in his movie, "JFK." It’s not that this missing piece has been actively suppressed. It’s that it was published in a little-known book that seemingly had nothing to do with the assassination. No one paid any attention. The book then sank without a trace. I bought a copy in a book remainder bin years ago, where books that don’t sell well at retail are sold at dirt-cheap prices, and then forgotten. The Kennedy assassination has been studied in detail and written about by thousands of people. The amount of published information on the event is staggering. The basic outline has been known for years. But the devil is in the details. A majority of Americans say that they don’t trust the Warren Commission’s theory of the lone gunman. Some surveys indicate that as few as ten percent of the American public believe that Oswald acted alone. Yet nobody has offered anything like a plausible alternative that has gained the support of a significant minority of the general public or historians. That Lee Harvey Oswald doesn’t seem capable of having fired all those shots is clear. The problem is in finding evidence for the necessary split-second coordination with a second assassin. An author trying to defend any assassination thesis must ignore or downplay implausible facts, either lone gunman facts or coordinated conspiracy facts. The resulting theories have all been implausible. That’s the way facts are when you take a close look, from subatomic physics to the Big Bang. In this report, I am going to make three simple points: (1) history is very complex; (2) the writing of history is an inexact and highly biased art; (3) our lives and even our world turn on events that cannot be predicted or defended against. LEE HARVEY OSWALD Consider Lee Harvey Oswald in November, 1963. He was a former Marine. He was a former defector to the Soviet Union – the first discharged Marine ever to defect to the USSR. He had renounced in writing his U.S. citizenship. At the time of this renunciation, he had written to one American official that he intended to turn over to the Soviets the Navy’s radar codes, which he did. The Navy had to change its codes. He was not merely a defector; he was a traitor. Yet in 1962, he returned to the U.S. with his Russian wife, and nobody in Washington blinked an eye. They knew he was back. He was de-briefed by the CIA, which the CIA continues to deny, but for which there is written evidence: a "smoking document." The FBI, the CIA, military intelligence, and the Navy ignored him. In 1962, he tried to assassinate an anti-Communist retired general, Edwin Walker. He then moved to New Orleans, where he got involved with pro-Cuba activism as a one-man member of a local Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He was visible enough to have been filmed on the streets, handing out leaflets, and be recorded in a radio debate. The films and audio tapes still exist. Oswald had been a Marxist since his teenage years. He had been openly a Marxist in the Marines, yet he was given access to radar codes. In a letter to his brother, sent from Moscow, he had said, "I want you to understand what I say now, I do not say lightly, or unknowingly, since I’ve been in the military. . . . In the event of war I would kill any American who put a uniform on in defense of the American Government – Any American." Edward Jay Epstein, a specialist in the JFK assassination, noted two decades ago, " Although his letter was routinely intercepted by the CIA and microfilmed, no discernable attention was paid to the threat contained in it." Epstein continues: After the failed assassination, Oswald went to New Orleans, where he became the organizer for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Aside from printing leaflets, staging demonstrations, getting arrested and appearing on local radio talk shows in support of Castro that summer, Oswald attempted to personally infiltrate an anti-Castro group that was organizing sabotage raids against Cuba. He explained to friends that he could figure out his "anti-imperialist" policy by "reading between the lines" of the Militant and other such publications. In August, he wrote the central committee of the Communist Party USA asking "Whether in your opinion, I can compete with anti-progressive forces above ground, or whether I should always remain in the background, i.e. underground". During this hot summer, while Oswald spent evenings practicing sighting his rifle in his backyard, the Militant raged on about the Kennedy Administration’s "terrorist bandit" attacks on Cuba. And as the semi-secret war against Castro escalated, Oswald expressed increasing interest in reaching Cuba. It gets even more interesting. Telling his wife that they might never meet again, he left New Orleans two weeks later headed for the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. To convince the Cubans of his bona fides – and seriousness – he had prepared a dossier on himself, which included a 10 page résumé, outlining his revolutionary activities, newspaper clippings about his defection to the Soviet Union, propaganda material he had printed, documents he had stolen from a printing company engaged in classified map reproduction for the U.S Army, his correspondence with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee executives and photographs linking him to the Walker shooting. Oswald applied for a visa at the Cuban Embassy on the morning of September 27th, 1963. He said that he wanted to stop in Havana en route to the Soviet Union. On the application, the consular office who interviewed him, noted: "The applicant states that he is a member of the American Communist Party and Secretary in New Orleans of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee." Despite such recommendations, Oswald was told that he needed a Soviet visa before the Cuban visa could be issued. He argued over this requisite with the Cuban counsel, Eusebio Azque, in front of witnesses, and reportedly made wild claims about services he might perform for the Cuban cause. During the next five days, he traveled back and forth between the Soviet and Cuban embassies attempting to straighten out the difficulty. I generally trust Epstein as a researcher. His biography on Armand Hammer, Dossier, is a masterpiece. His investigation of Oswald was detailed, and his first book on the assassination became a best-seller, Inquest (1966). He later earned a Ph.D. from Harvard. He is no crackpot. He is a conventional historian of the assassination. He thinks the lone gunman thesis is correct. But what he wrote a generation ago about that lone gunman’s activities before the assassination has yet to get into the textbooks. Epstein’s findings about Oswald point either to the utter bureaucratic incompetence of military intelligence, the CIA, the FBI, and the State Department, or else to a conspiracy. Textbook writers do not want to consider either possibility. There is another factor: the media never did want to play up the fact that Oswald was a long-time traitor and a Marxist. From the day of the assassination, the media tried to blame the equivalent of "a vast right wing conspiracy" in Dallas. It was "the climate of right-wing opinion in Dallas" that pundits said had killed Kennedy. On the contrary, what killed Kennedy was a Marxist revolutionary, committed to violence philosophically, who had been allowed to return to the United States. But this truth has never been palatable to the media or the textbook writers. You think this has changed? Not a chance. On Thursday evening, November 20, PBS broadcast a recently produced one-hour show, "JFK: Breaking the News." It dealt with the power of television to cover live news, which was first demonstrated on that weekend in 1963. The show spends at least five minutes to the right wing climate of opinion in Dallas. It shows that there were conservative Democrats who – gasp! – opposed Kennedy’s liberal politics. The shame of it! The audacity! To oppose this great man! The fact that the liberal media actively covered up his daily adulteries, which were security risks, given the Mob connection of some of them – a fact presented earlier in the week on the PBS documentary, "The Kennedys" – is rarely mentioned, and was never mentioned until several best-selling books revealed all this in the early 1990’s. The only reference to the truth about the political perspective of Oswald in that documentary was a brief sentence in retrospect by CBS's Bob Shieffer ("Face the Nation"), who had been a reporter in Fort Worth at the time. He admitted that Oswald was a leftist, but added, "a nut." Oswald became a nut only after the media found out about his Marxist politics. Prior to this embarrassing revelation, which was deliberately concealed by the media at the time, there was no mention of a "nut assassin" theory. For hours, the national TV commentators had been blaming the "climate of fear" in Dallas. The documentary shows Walter Cronkite's announcement of Kennedy's death. Crokite had just been talking on-screen about Adlai Stevenson's recent confrontation with conservatives in Dallas. As soon as it was known that Oswald was a leftist, he was transformed into a lone nut. The politics of lone nuts is irrelevant, having nothing to do with their actions, you see. There is never a "climate of fear" among leftists, producing a Sirhan Sirhan or an Arthur Bremer. Such assassins are instantly forgotten, as are their political views. Shieffer's segment was shown long after Jane Pauly's voice-over and film clips had pilloried the anti-Kennedy Democrats in Dallas as pig-headed, insensitive no-nothings. The media have never forgiven conservatives in 1963 for not buying into Camelot, despite the fact that the myth of Camelot was entirely Jackie Kennedy’s, who convinced Theodore White to promote it after her husband died (another fact discussed on "The Kennedys"). Most of all, they have never forgiven Oswald for not being a right-winger, and therefore representative of an entire political outlook. The irony of this neglect of Oswald’s Marxist roots was made greater by what followed the airing of "JFK: Breaking the News." PBS ran an updated version of Frontline’s 1993 3-hour documentary, "Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?" This superb documentary shows exactly who he was and what he was: a dedicated lifelong Marxist who wanted to do something big for the cause and big for his reputation. But it received little attention in 1993, and I doubt that it received much last week. The show also reveals that Lyndon Johnson was briefed on Oswald within hours, and he deliberately told the press, meaning the publishers and wire service owners, not to mention Oswald’s time in Russia and his subsequent Marxist agitation in New Orleans. The implication – never mentioned – is that Johnson controlled the press. The narrator says that Johnson feared a world war, the assassination having come only a year after the Cuban missile crisis. I suggest an additional reason: Johnson did not want to let the American public know that this was a gigantic failure of the American intelligence community, meaning the same kind of Keystone Cops failure that has marked everything associated with 9-11, from before 9-11 until today. Neither documentary mentioned the following story. This is the one that has grabbed my attention ever since I bought and read that remaindered book. THE BUBBLE TOP For those who explain history in terms of impersonal forces, the unique event is irrelevant. For those who favor a conspiracy view of history, the unique event has meaning only in terms of the conspiracy. As for me, I am a believer in the overwhelming significance of the unique event. Remove it, and everything would have turned out differently. Here is my favorite example of the unique event, itself the product of a series of unique events, that changed everything. Unique event: Late November can be cold in Dallas. But on that crucial day, it was warm. Forecasters had predicted cool weather. That was why Jackie Kennedy was wearing a wool suit. Unique event: Kennedy had spoken that morning in Fort Worth, 30 miles west of Dallas. Instead of driving to Dallas, the President and his entourage flew from Ft. Worth to Dallas, landing at Love Field. (There was no DFW airport in 1963. DFW was Lyndon Johnson’s gift to air travel.) Unique event: At Love Field were stationed the cars that would carry the President and the others through the 11-mile motorcade trip to downtown Dallas. Both cars were convertibles. The President’s car had a removable plastic bubble, just in case bad weather made it too cold or too wet for comfort. Unique event: Love Field that day had an outdoor phone line connected to the desk of The Dallas Times Herald. A local reporter used it to phone in stories about the scheduled motorcade. Then came a truly unique series of events. Here is the published account by the on-site reporter. Just before the plane was scheduled to leave Fort Worth for the short flight to Dallas, the rewrite man, Stan Weinberg, asked me if the bubble top was going to be on the presidential limousine. It would help to know now, he said, before he wrote the story later under pressure. It had been raining early that morning, and there was some uncertainty about it. I told Stan that I would find it. I put the phone down and walked over to a small ramp where the motorcade limousines were being held in waiting. I spotted Forrest Sorels, the agent in charge of the Dallas Secret Service office. I knew Mr. Sorrels fairly well, because I was then the regular federal beat reporter. . . . I looked down the ramp. The bubble top was on the president’s car. Rewrite wants to know if the bubble top’s going to stay on, I said to Mr. Sorrels, a man of fifty or so who wore dignified glasses and resembled a preacher or bank president. He looked at the sky and then hollered over at one of his agents holding a two-way radio in his hand. What about the weather downtown? he asked the agent. The agent talked into his radio for a few seconds, then listened. Clear, he hollered back. Mr. Sorrels yelled back at the agents standing by the car: "Take off the bubble top!" Just over twelve hours later, I was part of the bedlam at the Dallas police station along with hundreds of other reporters. I went into the police chief’s outer office to await the breakup of a meeting in Chief Jesse Curry’s main office. I had no idea who was in there. The door opened and out walked several men. One of them was Forrest Sorrels. He looked tired and sad. And bewildered. He saw me and I moved toward him. His eyes were wet. He paused briefly, shook his head slightly and whispered, "Take off the bubble top." The history of mankind is filled with "what if" and "if only" events that surround every major event. In American history, this is one of the big what-ifs, yet it is still unknown to the public. A plastic bubble might not have stopped the bullets that hit the passengers in that limousine, but it would have given any sharpshooter concern. A bullet can be deflected. There is no guarantee that an undeflected bullet will hit its target, and a plastic bubble would have added greatly to the uncertainty. Would the assassin or assassins have pulled the trigger(s)? There is also no way to know if someone other than Forrest Sorrels might have decided after the plane landed to take off the bubble top. What we do know, and what Mr. Sorrels knew that day, is this: a seemingly peripheral question by a rewrite man, relayed through a reporter, led to a call downtown by a two-way radio. Assessment: "Clear." Events in Dallas on that fateful day were never clear again. This story would be known by almost no one, had it not been for the reporter’s subsequent career, which justified a book publishing company’s taking a risk by publishing his autobiography. The Dallas reporter subsequently became America’s most prominent playwright-novelist-newscaster, Jim Lehrer, of the "Lehrer News Hour." His book is titled, A Bus of My Own. It was published in 1992. It did not sell well. I suspect that more people have learned about this unique "what-if" event today than have learned about it over the last eleven years. JOHNSON REPLACES KENNEDY Our lives are influenced by events far beyond our capacity to perceive at the time or understand after the fact, let alone predict in advance. On that bright, sunny day in Dallas, Lyndon Johnson became President. He subsequently escalated a war in Vietnam that Kennedy had begun. America changed dramatically because the sun was shining in Dallas on November 22, 1963. The can-do optimism of New Deal political liberalism did not survive the Kennedy assassination and the war in Vietnam. Two months after the assassination, the Beatles arrived in America, setting off what was to become the counter-culture of the 1960’s. But what we think of as "the sixties" actually began in February, 1964. November 22, 1963, remains the great divide. Johnson’s "guns and butter" spending policies expanded the federal deficit. The war in Vietnam and the war on poverty had to be paid for. Johnson preferred to borrow and inflate rather than raise taxes, except for a minor and temporary 10% income tax surcharge in 1968. To hide the reality of the deficit, Johnson persuaded Congress in 1968 to allow him to put the Social Security Administration surplus into the general fund’s accounting system. Prior to 1968, the trust funds were outside of the general fund’s accounting system. Ever since 1968, the government has counted undispersed trust fund income as present income receipts rather than as long-term obligations, i.e., debts. That decision made it easier for subsequent administrations to hide what is happening to the retirement schemes of Americans. It will have enormous effects for decades, beginning no later than 2011, when the baby boomers begin to retire. If the bubble top had been installed, it is doubtful that any of this would have happened. None of this was inevitable, humanly speaking. If there was a pattern here – and I believe there was – no conspiracy established it. (Read Psalm 2.) CONTROL OF AND BY THE PRESS We forget what America has become since that day in 1963. Presidential motorcades are no longer organized for public viewing. A convertible for a President is as old hat as a top hat at the President’s inauguration – last seen at Kennedy’s inauguration. Presidents no longer make themselves visible to the public on the streets at scheduled events. Jimmy Carter walked up Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day in 1977. After "cousin John" Hinckley shot Reagan in 1981, things changed. In 1981, the press played the same game of "pretend it’s not there." George Bush was in line to succeed President Reagan. Had Hinckley used a .38 or a .357, Bush probably would have succeeded to the Presidency. In the ancient game of "Who Wins?" he would have been the obvious winner. The day after the failed attempt, the following story was released on the news wires by the Associated Press. It was run in the Houston Post. It was run almost nowhere else. On the day of the assassination, Scott Hinckley, the brother of John, was scheduled to have dinner with Neil Bush, brother of George W. Bush and son of then-Vice President Bush. The Hinckleys were initially reported as having made large donations to George Bush Sr.’s presidential campaign, but the family denied this, and there was no follow-up by the press. The story of the hastily cancelled dinner engagement received virtually no attention by the media. Only the Web has kept it alive. Had the press investigated the story, some reporter might have come across the curious fact that the Bushes and the Hinckleys are related. The genealogical link goes back to the same founding father, Samuel Hinckley (1652–1698). On this, see this genealogical site. No one in the media noticed this until my wife’s brother-in-law began working on the family tree of my wife and her sister. He came across the web site, with its link to Samuel Hinckley, whose name did not register with him, and he sent me the information on the Bush connection. I saw "Hinckley," and the alarm bell went off. I looked more closely. The genealogist had not missed the connection. • Samuel Hinckley m. Martha Lathrop (see 8732, below) • Samuel Hinckley m. Zerviah Breed • Abel Hinckley m. Sarah Hubbard • Abel Hinckley m. Elizabeth Wheeler • Alfred Hinckley m. Elizabeth Stanley • Francis Edward Hinckley m. Amelia Smith • Percy Porter Hinckley m. Katherine Arvilla Warnock • John Warnock Hinckley m. Jo Anne Moore • JOHN WARNOCK HINCKLEY (b. 1955), attempted assassin I this information to subscribers on October 5, 2001: "News Stories That Are Somehow Not Worth Pursuing." This story remains not worth pursuing in the eyes of the media. No one picked it up. I did not think anyone would. If you think that the media have learned their collective lesson, you are naïve. The same suppression goes on. Consider 9-11. Consider United Airlines Flight 93 over western Pennsylvania. The media ignore the obvious: debris was scattered up to eight miles away from the crash site. Are we to believe that this debris bounced? No, we are to believe the story of the brave victims who crashed the plane. We are not to inquire about that scattered debris. We are to forget about it. No establishment reporter asks the obvious: Was the plane shot down high above the landscape? Were it not for the Web, these facts would be lost. http://www.flight93crash.com http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article....RTICLE_ID=30682 CONCLUSION It is a grand illusion to believe that what we do today can immunize ourselves from the fallout from the seemingly random events of life. We can buy gold, we can live in gated communities, but the hard realities of life penetrate the high walls of our long-term plans. Uncertainty is a fact of life. This is why we should rejoice that there are entrepreneurs out there who put their capital on the line to assist future consumers in their quest to reduce uncertainty. Someone must deal with uncertainty. Capitalism’s great gift to mankind is that it allows specialists to do this merely for the opportunity to reap a profit by opening their wallets to the possibility of losses. This is a cheap price for services rendered.

Rumors Fly About Palin’s “Iceberg Scandal” by Muriel Kane www.rawstory.com http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/03/rum...ceberg-scandal/ Update: BradBlog now suggests that Palin’s resignation was due to an upcoming Federal indictment for embezzlement. Max Blumenthal at The Daily Beast adds more details. In the wake of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s surprise resignation on Friday, rumors are beginning to circulate that she might have acted in anticipation of a previously unsuspected scandal being revealed. Alaskan blogger Shannyn Moore suggested at Huffington Post that “rumors of an ‘iceberg scandal’ have been circulating” even before today’s announcement. “Resignation is certainly out of character for Sarah Palin,” Moore noted. “Senator Mark Begich had a meeting with Sarah Palin two days ago with no mention of her leaving office. Palin’s press secretary, David Murrow had posted on his Facebook page Wednesday, ‘David Murrow is considering life’s ironies.’ He was hired less than a month ago. Yesterday he wrote, ‘There’s gonna be some fireworks this weekend!’” Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo similarly suggested, “Remember that based on the public record, Palin is a wildly unethical public official, guilty at a minimum of numerous instances of abusing her authority as governor. And a lot of very damaging information has come out about her in the last few days — though mainly embarrassing information about her character rather than new evidence of bad acts. I would not be surprised if this latest round of revelations shook something else loose that we haven’t heard about yet.” Moore later spoke by phone with BradBlog’s Brad Friedman and told him that “Palin is ‘resigning as part of damage control’ due to a scandal this is ‘not of a family nature.’” “The governor would not be able to continue her job when it comes out,” Moore told Friedman. “Why would Mark Sanford not resign, but Sarah Palin did? Her family didn’t even know about the resignation until they were standing with her by the lake when she made her announcement.” Update: BradBlog is now reporting additional information received from Alaskans who follow Palin: “I’ve now been able to get independent information from multiple sources that all of this precedes what are said to be possible federal indictments against Palin, concerning an embezzlement scandal related to the building of Palin’s house and the Wasilla Sports Complex built during her tenure as Mayor. Both structures, it is said, feature the ’same windows, same wood, same products.’ Federal investigators have been looking into this for some time, and indictments could be imminent, according to the Alaska sources.” Max Blumenthal at The Daily Beast offers additional details: One logical place to start looking is the affair that has Alaska political circles buzzing: an alleged scandal centered around a building contractor, Spenard Building Supplies, with close ties to Palin and her husband, Todd. Many political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators have been seizing paperwork from SBS in recent months, searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home on pristine Lake Lucille in 2002. The home was built just two months before Palin began campaigning for governor, a job which would have provided her enhanced power to grant building contracts in the wide-open state. … Though Todd Palin told Fox News he built his Lake Lucille home with the help of a few “buddies,” according to Barrett’s report, public records revealed that SBS supplied the materials for the house. While serving as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin blocked an initiative that would have required the public filing of building permits—thus momentarily preventing the revelation of such suspicious information. Just months before Palin left city hall to campaign for governor, she awarded a contract to SBS to help build the $13 million Wasilla Sports Complex. The most expensive building project in Wasilla history, the complex cost the city an additional $1.3 million in legal fees and threw it into severe long-term debt. For SBS, however, the bloated and bungled project was a cash cow. Questions about the construction of Palin’s house are not new. An article last fall by Wayne Barrett at the Village Voice offered many of the same speculations that are now being presented by Blumenthal and others as possible explanations for Palin’s resignation. If these allegations turn out to be accurate, Palin’s problems would be ironically similar to the scandal which torpedoed former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens’ career. That also involved improvements to his home for which he made no payment.

http://www.garynorth.com My Marketing Strategy for the Only Historian Who Was in Dealey Plaza at the Moment JFK Was Shot By Gary North June 30, 2009 A friend of mine has a unique selling proposition: he was the only Ph.D-holding historian to witness the Kennedy assassination. Do you think there is a market for a book here? I do. So does he. For over four decades, he has studied the assassination. He has taught history classes on it. He has had hundred of students dig into the files. He has been writing a book on this for 30 years. He never finishes. I am afraid he will die before going public. Yesterday, I outlined the following marketing strategy for him. 1. Create a WordPress blog on the assassination. (Pay $5/month to avoid ads.) 2. Create a separate forum that is linked to the blog. (Use Hostgator: unlimited domains) 3. Do a series of brief YouTube videos on aspects of the event. Create a JFK channel. Talking head. Free. 4. Direct viewers to your blog and forum on each video. 5. Build a readership. 6. Self-publish the book (Lightning Source). Make 70% per sale, since you sell to your own list. 7. Include a CD-ROM with links to the evidence. 8. Update forever. 9. Create a mailing list. Notice my strategy: multiple outlets, all free or very cheap. Each outlet moves the reader to a sale. Develop followers. Develop mailing lists (www.Aweber.com). Contact your readers for free. By eliminating the middle man, you keep the bulk of the profits from all sales. Don't share what you don't need to share. "Do not render unto middlemen the things that need not belong to middlemen." Authors no longer need to get their books published by a third party publisher. They should self-publish, get lots of sales, and then approach a publisher with evidence of sales. They can demand and get a 15% royalty, plus a large advance payment against royalties. This forces the book company to spend a lot of marketing money.

Note: Because Robert Merritt's book will discuss Howard Hunt's role in both Watergate and the JFK assassination, I am posting this notice prepared by me in this topic of the Education Forum as well as in the Watergate topic: Whenever a whistle-blower emerges publicly with explosive knowledge, vested forces that do not want this information known invariably mount a campaign to undermine his credibility. This appears to be the case with Robert Merritt’s attempt to tell what he knows about Watergate and other government scandals in a book about his life. A COINTELPRO campaign been mounted in recent weeks that alleges Robert Merritt died years ago and that the person behind the book project is a fraud and impersonator. The purpose of this smear by officials of certain government agencies is to prevent the book from being published and to suppress the valuable information and evidence possessed by Robert Merritt. In my capacity as original attorney for the Watergate Seven defendants, I wish to take this opportunity to quash such rumors by asserting that I have thoroughly investigated Robert Merritt’s background and can attest that he is who he says he is – a key figure in the Watergate scandal and someone who has had a working relationship with law enforcement entities beginning in 1970. I have collaborated with Robert Merritt, also known as Tony Merritt, over the past year in the preparation of his book. He obtained voluminous documents from the U.S. National Achieves and other government sources that support the verbal information he has given me. More relevant are personal papers and documents he has provided me that establish beyond any reasonable doubt that he is who he says he is. Among these are his birth certificate, social security card, marriage certificate, his government finger print record, and undercover Confidential Informant Identification card. On a personal note, Robert Merritt recounted to me not long ago an incident that occurred just a few days after the Watergate arrests involving Carl Schoffler, the arresting police officer of the Watergate burglars, that took place while I was walking my dog near my residence in Washington, D.C. Shoffler drove up to within a few feet of where I was and glared at me, obviously attempting to harass or intimate me. I remember that there was one other person in Schoffler’s car – and it turns out it was Robert Merritt, who has described this event in detail to me. Only Schoffler and Robert Merritt could have known of this incident, which on its face appears trivial, but isn’t, since such action by the police against an attorney representing defendants in a criminal case violates all codes of official conduct. We are a few short weeks away from finishing the book’s manuscript, which will quickly dispel any doubt about Robert Merritt’s credibility and will re-write the history of the origins of Watergate. It will show that Robert Merritt, in his capacity as confidential informant, informed Shoffler of the planned break-in at Watergate two weeks before the arrests at Watergate on June 17, 1972. It will also show that Shoffler subsequently devised the perfect set-up, a unique form of entrapment of those arrested that ultimately led to the downfall of President Nixon. Nothing, not even the current COINTELPRO campaign, is going to prevent Robert Merritt’s story from being publicly told.

Whenever a whistle-blower emerges publicly with explosive knowledge, vested forces that do not want this information known invariably mount a campaign to undermine his credibility. This appears to be the case with Robert Merritt’s attempt to tell what he knows about Watergate and other government scandals in a book about his life. A COINTELPRO campaign been mounted in recent weeks that alleges Robert Merritt died years ago and that the person behind the book project is a fraud and impersonator. The purpose of this smear by officials of certain government agencies is to prevent the book from being published and to suppress the valuable information and evidence possessed by Robert Merritt. In my capacity as original attorney for the Watergate Seven defendants, I wish to take this opportunity to quash such rumors by asserting that I have thoroughly investigated Robert Merritt’s background and can attest that he is who he says he is – a key figure in the Watergate scandal and someone who has had a working relationship with law enforcement entities beginning in 1970. I have collaborated with Robert Merritt, also known as Tony Merritt, over the past year in the preparation of his book. He obtained voluminous documents from the U.S. National Achieves and other government sources that support the verbal information he has given me. More relevant are personal papers and documents he has provided me that establish beyond any reasonable doubt that he is who he says he is. Among these are his birth certificate, social security card, marriage certificate, his government finger print record, and undercover Confidential Informant Identification card. On a personal note, Robert Merritt recounted to me not long ago an incident that occurred just a few days after the Watergate arrests involving Carl Schoffler, the arresting police officer of the Watergate burglars, that took place while I was walking my dog near my residence in Washington, D.C. Shoffler drove up to within a few feet of where I was and glared at me, obviously attempting to harass or intimate me. I remember that there was one other person in Schoffler’s car – and it turns out it was Robert Merritt, who has described this event in detail to me. Only Schoffler and Robert Merritt could have known of this incident, which on its face appears trivial, but isn’t, since such action by the police against an attorney representing defendants in a criminal case violates all codes of official conduct. We are a few short weeks away from finishing the book’s manuscript, which will quickly dispel any doubt about Robert Merritt’s credibility and will re-write the history of the origins of Watergate. It will show that Robert Merritt, in his capacity as confidential informant, informed Shoffler of the planned break-in at Watergate two weeks before the arrests at Watergate on June 17, 1972. It will also show that Shoffler subsequently devised the perfect set-up, a unique form of entrapment of those arrested that ultimately led to the downfall of President Nixon. Nothing, not even the current COINTELPRO campaign, is going to prevent Robert Merritt’s story from being publicly told.

I view myself as a consumer in the marketplace of ideas., which is why I read your postings in the Forum. The picture you paint of Gary North does not do him justice. I subscribe to his website primarily to get his views on finance and business. For example, below is a worthwhile article by him that he made available today to his readers: http://www.garynorth.com It's Not Just Foreclosures. It's Why. Gary North June 1, 2009 I have already reported on Fitch's estimate that two-thirds to three-quarters of all loan modifications lead to foreclosure within a year. How did Fitch come up with this estimate? Diane Olick of CNBC called Fitch to find out. What she was told throws new light on what is about to this the economy. The borrowers can't pay other debts, either. It's the back end that is driving the home owners to default. Fitch talked to loan servicers in other parts of the economy. This included the auto loan industry, the credit card industry, and even student loans. Same story everywhere: the borrowers are in over their heads. They have stopped paying. In the good old days, people stopped paying their mortgage last. These days, that may still be true, but it's irrelevant. Too many debtors have stopped paying at all. The fact that a loan modification lowers their monthly payments isn't enough to save their lifestyles, which had been based on debt rather than repayment. The fall in housing prices accelerates the "stop paying" scenario. The owners have no equity to defend. Yes, a foreclosure hurts their credit rating. So what? They have stopped paying other debts, too. They have given up on their credit rating. This means that there will be no recovery in housing this year or next year. Housing prices will continue to fall. The consumer markets are funded by debt. But Americans' willingness to take on more debt is now much reduced. We find this in other reports. Consider this. Consumer spending has been contracting. Consumers say they will use their income tax refunds for savings or to retire debt. Talk is cheap, but it's amazing that they say this. In March, consumer outstanding debt levels fell at an annual rate of over 5%. Consumer credit has fallen in 6 of the last 8 months. Yet for years, this increased by 7% per year. This is an unprecedented reversal. Austrian School economics think this is healthy. Keynesians don't. Outstanding revolving debt -- mostly credit cards -- fell $5.4 billion, representing a 6.8% annualized pace, to $945.9 billion in March. Having dropped for six months in a row, credit-card debt is down 1.2% in the past year. Until February, credit-card debts had never fallen on a year-over-year basis since the record keeping began in 1969. This is not business as usual. This recession is different.

Jim Garrison is the New Orleans District Attorney portrayed by Kevin Costner in the Oliver Stone move, JKF. The Garrison Tapes document the real-life effort of Garrison, in his own words, to finger and prosecute members of the CIA for the assassination of John F. Kennedy. http://media.abovetopsecret.com/media/1956...n_Tapes_Part_1/

The article below is from Gary North’s Specific Answers website. Gary North’s invaluable website, subscription based, has provided me with countless insights into how the real world works, not only in the realm of finance and business but in other key areas as well. __________________ May 30, 2009 Charlie Skelton was assigned by the Guardian to cover the 2009 meeting in Greece. At first, he did not take it seriously. After run-ins with the Greece police for daring to try to cover the meeting, he finally figured out what and whom he was dealing with. They have power. He has none. It miffed him. I have never read anything like this in the mainstream press -- not in 40 years of reading. Spend an hour reading this series. It could change your outlook permanently -- or reconfirm it. Start with the oldest first (bottom-up). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/cha...ilderberg-files

George Knapp hosts broadcaster John Barbour on coasttocoastam tonight, who will discuss his work on the JFK assassination. Parts of Barbour's interview with the late Jim Garrison will be played. http://www.coasttocoastam.com/

2 Ex-Timesmen Say They Had a Tip on Watergate First By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA The New York Times May 25, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/business...mp;ref=politics The Watergate break-in eventually forced a presidential resignation and turned two Washington Post reporters into pop-culture heroes. But almost 37 years after the break-in, two former New York Times journalists have stepped forward to say that The Times had the scandal nearly in its grasp before The Post did — and let it slip. Robert M. Smith, a former Times reporter, says that two months after the burglary, over lunch at a Washington restaurant, the acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, L. Patrick Gray, disclosed explosive aspects of the case, including the culpability of the former attorney general, John Mitchell, and hinted at White House involvement. Mr. Smith rushed back to The Times’s bureau in Washington to repeat the story to Robert H. Phelps, an editor there, who took notes and tape-recorded the conversation, according to both men. But then Mr. Smith had to hand off the story — he had quit The Times and was leaving town the next day to attend Yale Law School. Mr. Smith kept the events to himself for more than three decades, but decided to go public after learning that Mr. Phelps planned to include it in his memoir. In the days after that 1972 lunch, the Times bureau was consumed by the Republican convention, and then Mr. Phelps left on a monthlong trip to Alaska. So what happened to the tip, the notes, the tape? Were they pursued to no effect? Simply forgotten? “I have no idea,” said Mr. Phelps, now 89, who describes the episode in a memoir, “God and the Editor: My Search for Meaning at The New York Times” (Syracuse University Press), published last month. Former colleagues he interviewed said they never knew of the material, he said, leading him to guess that the fact that it came to nothing “was probably my fault.” If his and Mr. Smith’s accounts are correct, The Times missed a chance to get the jump on the greatest story in a generation. It also means that both of the top two F.B.I. officials were leaking information about the scandal. W. Mark Felt, the associate director of the agency at the time, was identified in 2005 as Deep Throat, the secret source for Bob Woodward, the Post reporter who, with his colleague Carl Bernstein, rode the story to fame. On June 17, 1972, a group of men were caught breaking into and trying to wiretap the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex. On Aug. 16, Mr. Smith and Mr. Gray, who had been made acting director in May, went to lunch — a date shown in Mr. Gray’s records, which were kept by his son, Edward Gray, who helped his father write a book about his experience in the Nixon administration. Patrick Gray died in 2005. “My dad liked Robert Smith and gave him some interviews,” said Edward Gray, 64, and took him to lunch at Sans Souci, a fashionable restaurant, to bid him farewell. He says he finds it hard to imagine his father, who disapproved of leaks, divulging the kinds of secrets Mr. Smith recalls. But that lunch “was more between a mentor and a young man than between an acting director of the F.B.I. and a reporter,” Mr. Gray said. “I’m sure my dad may have let his hair down a little bit with Bob Smith, but only because he didn’t think he was a reporter anymore.” Mr. Smith said he sat across the table from Patrick Gray, listening in shock to details about Donald Segretti, who helped run the Nixon campaign’s “dirty tricks” operation, and John Mitchell, who had stepped down as attorney general to run Nixon’s re-election campaign. “He told me the attorney general was involved in a cover-up,” Mr. Smith said, “and I said, ‘How high does it go? To the president?’ And he sat there and looked at me and he didn’t answer. His answer was in the look.” Returning to the bureau “in a super-charged state,” he said, he found Mr. Phelps and marched him into the editor’s office. “I was too excited to sit down. I paced up and back.” Then he left for law school, and watched over the following months as Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein leapt ahead of the competition. Mr. Phelps left The Times for The Boston Globe in the mid-1970s. Mr. Smith, who worked at the Justice Department after graduating from Yale and then went into private practice, spent more than three decades wondering what happened to his tip. When Mr. Phelps set out to write his book, he called Mr. Smith to compare recollections. “The fact that he had seen Gray and he had talked to me after his lunch, that I remembered,” Mr. Phelps said. But he said it was not until Mr. Smith jogged his memory that he recalled what revelations had the young reporter so excited. In the book, he wrote, “We never developed Gray’s tips into publishable stories. Why we failed is a mystery to me.” “My memory is fuzzy on the crucial point of what I did with the tape,” he wrote. Mr. Smith said that knowing the episode would be described in Mr. Phelps’s book persuaded him, for the first time, that he was free to tell it. Until then, “I couldn’t breach the source confidentiality with Pat Gray,” even after Mr. Gray had died. “What he did was, in my mind, a quite wonderful thing, and no one knows about it.”

Lyndon LaRouche is a dangerous man. He makes you think. About 30 years ago I was introduced to his writings and speeches by two of his dedicated associates, Harley Schlanger and his lovely wife, Susan. I am most appreciative of their doing so. I do not always find myself in agreement with what LaRouche advocates but even his critics admit that he is thought-provoking and discusses subjects in public that no one else does. I mean, who on television but LaRouche regularly talks about the relevance of Plato and ancient Greece to today's problems? LaRouche in his discourses cuts across intellectual lines and weaves economics, politics, military, religion and social issues together in a way that challenges the listener to pause and reflect. One thing does amaze me as shown in this video: his mind is just as sharp as it was when I first heard him three decades ago and he doesn't look as though he has aged a bit, even though he must be way up in years.

The Bailout Bubble – the Bubble to End All Bubbles by Gerald Celente The biggest financial bubble in history is being inflated in plain sight. This is the Mother of All Bubbles, and when it explodes, it will signal the end to the boom/bust cycle that has characterized economic activity throughout the developed world. Either unwilling or unable to call the bubble by its proper name, the media, Washington, and Wall Street describe the stupendous government expenditures on rescue packages, stimulus plans, buyouts, and takeovers as emergency measures needed to salvage the severely damaged economy. All of this terminology is econo-jargon. It's like calling torture "enhanced interrogation techniques." Washington is inflating the biggest bubble ever: the Bailout Bubble. This is much bigger than the Dot-com and Real Estate bubbles which hit speculators, investors, and financiers the hardest. However destructive the effects of these busts on employment, savings and productivity, the Free Market Capitalist framework was left intact. But when the Bailout Bubble explodes, the system goes with it. The economic framework of the United States has been restructured. Federal interventionist policies have given the government equity stakes, executive powers and management control of what was once private enterprise. To finance these buyouts, rescue and stimulus packages – instead of letting failed businesses fail and bankrupt banks and bandit brokerages go bankrupt – trillions of dollars are being injected into the stricken economy. Phantom dollars, printed out of thin air, backed by nothing ... and producing next to nothing ... defines the Bailout Bubble. Just as with the other bubbles, so too will this one burst. But unlike Dot-com and Real Estate, when the Bailout Bubble pops, neither the President nor the Federal Reserve will have the fiscal fixes or monetary policies available to inflate another. With no more massive economic bubbles left to blow up, they'll set their sights on bigger targets. Given the pattern of governments to parlay egregious failures into mega-failures, the classic trend they follow, when all else fails, is to take their nation to war. Since the Bailout Bubble is neither called nor recognized as a bubble, its sudden and spectacular explosion will create chaos. A panicked public will readily accept any Washington/Wall Street/Main Stream Media alibi that shifts the blame for the catastrophe away from the policy makers and onto some scapegoat. At this time we are not forecasting a war. However, the trends in play are ominous. While we cannot pinpoint precisely when the Bailout Bubble will burst, we are certain it will. When it does, it should be understood that a major war could follow. May 15, 2009 Gerald Celente is founder and director of The Trends Research Institute, author of Trends 2000 and Trend Tracking (Warner Books), and publisher of The Trends Journal. He has been forecasting trends since 1980, and recently called “The Collapse of ’09.” Find this article at: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig10/celente6.html