Ashton Gray

<Deep Inhale> Ahhhhhh, I love the smell of smoke screens in the morning!

Ashton Gray

Is it just me, or is there a lot of baying and howling in here, like something's been treed?

Ashton Gray

Thanks. Can you document Caddy's ties to the Mullen Company? To me that

seems crucial.

I've already attempted to do a thorough and yeoman-like job of that very thing some time ago in the following thread, hence the title:

Douglas Caddy, Hunt, Liddy, Mullen, and the CIA

I have considerable experience trying to identify "whistleblowers" who do

things that bother their conscience. If Caddy was a Mullen insider, how do

we know that his present stance is not an attempt to get the truth out?

We don't. At least I don't. Your mileage may vary. There are quite a few unanswered questions remaining in that thread. Although I believe the entire thread is worth studying, I refer particularly to my post not quite midway down the second page listing unanswered questions from my first round, a clarification of questions he innocently or intentionally misunderstood, and several new questions arising out of some of his responses. About the time I asked those, he stopped responding to me, and posted his indirect set-up of this thread we're in now by warning of infiltrators, etc. (It should be clear to anybody paying attention by now that that was a javelin aimed solely at my heart, but thrown from the bushes.)

A suggestion: make a list of things on which you and Caddy agree and

another list of things on which you disagree. It needs to be narrowed down

to points you disagree on. Then each could be analyzed.

It's not nearly as much a question of Caddy and I being in disagreement as it is of Caddy being in disagreement with some of his own statements, and being in extreme disagreement with statements made by Hunt and Liddy, purportedly about the same events. My efforts with Mr. Caddy have been to find out why there are all these contradictory, mutually exclusive stories. I had hoped for candid and open explanations. Instead it's been like trying to find a gopher.

But, again, I've already attempted to do a yeomanlike and thorough job of exactly what you just suggested by starting yet another thread last week:

Who Was Douglas Caddy Representing, and When?

If you can read my introductory message, and my following three messages in which I quote the accounts of Caddy, Hunt, and Liddy about purportedly the same events, and come away with an explanation to me of how one of them, or two of them, or all three of them aren't lying, please come back here and 'splain it to me. That's all I've been trying to get Mr. Caddy to do. That's why in my three postings in that thread (after the introduction) I have a total of 52 questions posted for Mr. Caddy trying to make sense of the dog's breakfast of conflicting stories.

About the time I posted those questions, he posted the thread we're in (in both forums) calling for my head on a platter.

I'm afraid that the sum of those threads is going to exceed your length requirements, but I would remind you, with all due respect, I didn't create this mess. I'm trying to sort it out. I think it's about time somebody did. I've been seeking Mr. Caddy's help. But Mr. Caddy: he lay low; he don' say nothin'.

Ashton Gray

Ashton, you might find this timeline helpful:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WatergateChronology.htm

Thanks very much, John. That timeline has long been a friend of mine.

Another is the Charlie Citrine timeline, and several others.

Since I found the one I've recently been citing, in the little time available to me for all this I've done a sort of hit-and miss, half-done job of trying to shuffle them all together, but in more than a few places they don't dovetail terribly well, or at all. I think it still should be done, with the conflicts reconciled, and I'm chipping away at it.

Ashton Gray

The Ashton Gray timeline is very interesting. I would like to know

the source. Much of it is very informative, if all is true. Now I begin

to see what the Caddy/Gray argument is about.

Jack

Jack, I didn't include the sources in this excerpt, but 118 different sources are very thoroughly included in the original timeline that I took the excerpts from. It would have been a monumental task to include them in the posting (especially when the link is provided to the actual timeline) because the cites are referenced by links at the end of each event, linking to the relevant source in the list of references at the end, and some events have several different sources cited.

One of the features of the timeline that sets it apart from most, in addition to its very narrow dating of things that often are "timelined" only by month or even grosser strokes, is the fact that it does compare differening accounts of incidents, or, for example, at 23 June 1972, takes different accounts from different testimony and accounts, and breaks the day down by hours.

In my excerpt, I actually added a few things, like Caddy having been dubbed as a successor to Mullen, that aren't in the timeline (although I've sent a suggestion to the site that they should add it).

Ashton Gray

I've now had the great good fortune of having been directed to Tim Carroll's extraordinary distillation and analysis of the historical context of JFK's assassination, "The Whole Bay of Pigs Thing," and I cannot overstate my admiration for his recognition of, and centered disquisition on, the most salient and relevant forces and factors that converged and condensed that day into a rain of bullets.

When Dylan wrote "A Hard Rain's Gonna' Fall" during the Cuban missle crisis, his fear was a hard rain of missles of a different kind, but his prescience was no less astonishing.

I will revisit this significant work of Mr. Carroll many times. I believe that one of its gifts, among many, is to sweep away a virtual landfill of irrelevancies that has been willfully dumped by the ton over the JFK assassination, leaving in view the bedrock of motives, personnel, and connections that could not possibly have been otherwise than involved.

One of the very stark veins in that exposed bedrock is the trail of E. Howard Hunt from the Bay of Pigs through hard documented evidence of his presence in Dallas directly to the nexus of Watergate, parallelled and joined by confluences of common CIA-connected Cuban personnel, like tributaries of the same river. Their origins all trace back to the same eternal poisoned spring at Langley.

Having leapt from bedrock now into deep flowing waters, I'll say that so consistent is this unbroken stream that the naivety embodied in climbing out and following any inviting path to its exclusion is jaw-dropping.

As to its meanderings into the floodwaters of Watergate: some who have read my own articles and analyses of Watergate as a CIA hoax of almost inconceivable proportions may assume that my own research and Mr. Carroll's there part ways.

On the contrary, I believe that in more expanded and compared analysis they will prove extremely complementary, and that ultimately—if I can be forgiven for throwing yet another metaphor into the blender—they will overlay like matching fingerprints.

I'm woefully far behind him and almost everyone else in this forum on current study and thorough understanding of the JFK assassination, having set it aside some years ago to focus my attention on Watergate, believing—rightly or wrongly—that if the wall of lies around that fraud could be broken down, the truth about the JFK assassination would be found inside the same stronghold.

I believe entirely that just such a breach has been made in that Watergate levy (follow me back into the river), and I believe that answers hidden behind it for so many decades are about to spill out, and that no damage control can repair that breach.

I eagerly anticipate an opportunity to compare notes with Mr. Carroll, and I am dismayed to learn that for whatever reason he is not currently participating—although if some of the Watergate participants here have their way, I may soon be joining him as one of the voiceless.

In any case, I thank him profusely for his contributions to the common store of knowledge, relevance, and reasoned analysis.

Ashton Gray

At the outset, I apologize deeply and sincerely for the length of the following introductory paragraphs, but I believe they address core issues predicate to the timeline that follows, which I originally posted in the JFK Assassination forum in response to Daniel Wayne Dunn. You are welcome to skip these introductory comments entirely and go straight to the raw data in the timeline below. It might be at the peril of grasping the gravity and scope of what is at issue. It might not.

Some of my detractors have launched rather shameless and scurrilous attacks on me and on the information I have posted in the Watergate forum concerning CIA's role in the Pentagon Papers operation, and in the subsequent related events leading up to what is popularly known as "Watergate." I even have my own personal ankle-biter following me around to every thread I post in, yapping the same tiresome yaps tirelessly for no other purpose than to disrupt discussion of, and to distract attention from, the facts at issue.

I don't care what the trolls growl and spit and snarl about me, personally, as long as they're able to spell my name right. (One even tried to put me in direct lineage with the CIA's bald-pated marionette, L. Patrick Gray.) But when they start making obscene attacks on the data (which most of these few have done without bothering to read it, by their own admissions), they get my very focused attention.

One of the straw men that has been trotted out by these detractors so they could beat it to death is a variation of this: to hold the CIA accountable for CIA culpability is to "let Nixon off the hook."

I can only just barely bring myself to imagine, on a purely theoretical level, such a naive, either/or, black-and-white, wholly simplistic "gimme one bad guy to demonize and hate" world view, and even then I don't waste any time on it.

Instead, I have what these people apparently consider to be a strange idea of justice: I think all guilty parties should be held accountable for their own specific crimes, and none should be either "let off the hook," or held accountable for anything that they are not guilty of, regardless of who they are.

To that end, I have compiled and condensed and presented an extensive body of comparative data that in sum makes a very compelling case for CIA complicity in activities for which no person or persons ever truly have been held accountable at all—including Nixon. It comprises a completely uninvestigated, untried set of serious possible offenses, which may even reach to and include TREASON and related offenses, as defined at USC 18 Part I Chapter 115, §2381 et seq.:

• § 2381. Treason
  Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
  § 2383. Rebellion or insurrection
  Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
  § 2382. Misprision of treason
  Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States and having knowledge of the commission of any treason against them, conceals and does not, as soon as may be, disclose and make known the same to the President or to some judge of the United States, or to the governor or to some judge or justice of a particular State, is guilty of misprision of treason and shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than seven years, or both.
  § 2384. Seditious conspiracy
  If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
  § 2388. Activities affecting armed forces during war
  (a) Whoever, when the United States is at war, willfully makes or conveys false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies; or
  Whoever, when the United States is at war, willfully causes or attempts to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or willfully obstructs the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, to the injury of the service or the United States, or attempts to do so—
  Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
  (b ) If two or more persons conspire to violate subsection (a) of this section and one or more such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be punished as provided in said subsection (a).
  (c ) Whoever harbors or conceals any person who he knows, or has reasonable grounds to believe or suspect, has committed, or is about to commit, an offense under this section, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
  (d) This section shall apply within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States, and on the high seas, as well as within the United States.
  

What obviously escapes these "Nixon or the CIA—Pick One" advocates is that the above has nothing to do with a single individual named Richard Milhouse Nixon; it has to do with the Office of the President of the United States as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States during times of war.

It's about the Office of the President, not about whoever's butt happened to be warming the Oval Office chair at the time without benefit of Febreze. What was done was an assault on the Office of the President during time of war, and was a massive costly and destructive hoax and fraud on other vital institutions during time of war, including Congress, which has war powers. Period.

So if, in reading the material I have posted, you are among the few unfortunates who for whatever reason are unable to make this grave and pertinent distinction, do us both a favor: don't click the "REPLY" button on anything I post. It will only waste your time and the time of other readers here, not mine, because I won't be responding to such posts anymore.

Here is what I originally posted to Daniel Wayne Dunn in the JFK forum in response to one of his posts:

Nixon was not an idol to (his own) "elite fascist guard," but instead (seen by them as) a mere unsophisticated rube? Contending that is letting Nixon off the hook, as is contending he "was merely a puppet whose wims and idiosyncracies were becoming a liability to their secret teams real agenda." ...I guess since Speer and me are the only ones who care enough to fight about this, I'll have to stay in the fight --- and begrudge you fun folks the time wasted when more important things are pressing. But we all have to choose what we consider as important, and right now it's pretty clear that this should be it.

I already answered this partially, Daniel, but since you've opened the door, and since you feel that right now this should be considered important, I considered it important enough to give you a little more "fleshed out" response.

I realize that this is the JFK forum, and while I'm going to post an appropriately introduced version of this message in the Watergate forum, I'm posting it first in response to you here—since Mr. Caddy elected to put my name in lights in this forum as an accused forum pariah, and since you and one or two others have taken the opportunity not only to imply that my research and presentations on the CIA's role in Watergate are the deluded pursuits of a borderline loon, but also to build a totally specious "case" that to render unto CIA what is CIA's in regard to Watergate is somehow to "take Nixon off the hook."

Therefore I've created this timeline for you, a condensed version of the excellent timeline I've referred to repeatedly. I've excerpted relevant events just for you. In doing so, I've expunged all references to the "S word," or to what else the CIA might have been doing simultaneously, because I don't want you or Mr. Speer to start shaking uncontrollably or to run to your black helicopters again, as Mr. Speer seems wont to do. We don't need to address possible CIA motive in order to see events: who was doing what when.

So here is your own personal version of a relevant portion of that timeline, and I'm going to name it in your honor in the Watergate forum. I have taken it up only to the purported "first break-in" of the Watergate because I consider that entirely sufficient. At the end I will make an effort to sum up as succinctly as possible what I understand your position to be. Without further ado:

CIA-PENTAGON PAPERS-WATERGATE TIMELINE

Friday, 10 April 1970

Richard Helms has rubber-stamped E. Howard Hunt's "early retirement" and has written a letter to Robert R. Mullen on behalf of Hunt, urging Mullen to hire him. Mullen is head of a public relations firm in D.C. that is a front company for CIA. One of the Mullen offices, in Stockholm, Sweden, is "staffed, run, and paid for by CIA." Also at the Mullen firm is Douglas Caddy.

Monday, 13 April 1970

Daniel Ellsberg quits Rand in California, flies to Boston and signs a contract at MIT. He remains, though, a "consultant" for Rand.

Friday, 1 May 1970

E. Howard Hunt ostensibly "retires" from CIA. He goes to work for the Mullen company in D.C. There, he is told by Robert Mullen that he and Douglas Caddy have been selected by Mullen to take over running the CIA front company soon, when Mullen retires.

Tuesday, 5 May 1970

Daniel Ellsberg flies to Washington, D.C. and is there for three days, flies to St. Louis for a day, then flies back to D.C. [FORUM NOTE: Caddy wouldn't answer the question of whether he or Hunt had been in touch, either directly or through intermediaries, with Ellsberg.]

Thursday, 28 May 1970

A CIA Covert Security Approval is requested under Project QK/ENCHANT for the "retired" E. Howard Hunt.

August 1970

Just four months after E. Howard Hunt, James McCord "retires" from CIA.

September 1970

Daniel Ellsberg stops seeing Beverly Hills psychiatrist Lewis Fielding.

November 1970

Douglas Caddy leaves the Mullen firm to work for Gall, Lane, Powell and Kilcullen. Around the same time, E. Howard Hunt becomes a "client" of Caddy and of Gall, Lane. Caddy consults with Hunt regarding wills and "other matters." Around the same time, G. Gordon Liddy is approached by Robert Mardian, asking Liddy to take a position that Mardian describes as "super-confidential."

February 1971

A hidden taping system is installed in the Oval Office of the White House.

Saturday, 17 April 1971

E. Howard Hunt is in Miami and meets with Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, and Felipe De Diego. Bernard Barker has a history of almost seven years with CIA. Eugenio Martinez is on "retainer" with CIA. [NOTE: A little over four months later, these same three men will be involved with Hunt in a purported break-in of the offices of psychiatrist Lewis Fielding, ostensibly in response to Daniel Ellsberg having leaked the Pentagon Papers. But the Pentagon Papers haven't been leaked to the press yet, and won't be for almost two months.]

Early June 1971

Daniel Ellsberg makes "a series of phone calls" to psychiatrist Lewis Fielding shortly before the Pentagon Papers are published. Around this same time, Douglas Caddy meets with E. Howard Hunt and Bernard Barker at the Army-Navy Club in Washington, D.C. [NOTE: Caddy will claim that this is the one and only time that he ever met Bernard Barker.]

Saturday, 12 June 1971

The day before the "Pentagon Papers" are published, Morton Halperin, Leslie Gelb, and Defense Department official Paul Nitze make "a deposit into the National Archives" of "a whole lot of papers." [NOTE: This turns out later to be copies of the not-yet-published Pentagon Papers that will make Daniel Ellsberg famous and launch everything that later comes to be known as "Watergate."]

Sunday, 13 June 1971

Daniel Ellsberg, having highest possible clearances from CIA, leaks the "Pentagon Papers." The New York Times publishes the first of three installments of secret documents that have been passed to Times reporter Neil Sheehan by Daniel Ellsberg. [NOTE: Ellsberg had been connected to Sheehan in Viet Nam by CIA's Edward Landsdale and CIA's Lucien Conein.]

Tuesday, 15 June 1971

G. Gordon Liddy is abruptly transferred from being "Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury" to "Staff Assistant of the President of the United States," part of the White House Domestic Council. Liddy is supplied with White House credentials.

Monday, 28 June 1971

Daniel Ellsberg is indicted for the leak of the Pentagon Papers.

Wednesday, 30 June 1971

The Supreme Court rules 6-3 that the government has not shown compelling evidence to justify blocking further publication of the Pentagon Papers.

Thursday, 1 July 1971

David Young—who is with NSA—is appointed to the White House Domestic Council to work with Egil Krogh. On or about the same date, Carol Ellsberg, Daniel Ellsberg's ex-wife, calls the FBI. She tells them that Daniel Ellsberg had seen a psychiatrist. She says that Ellsberg has "assured her" that he "had told this analyst all about what he had done" (referring to the Pentagon Papers). She volunteers the name of the Beverly Hills psychiatrist: Lewis Fielding. [NOTE: Daniel and Carol Ellsberg have been living apart since January 1964, divorced since 1966. Daniel Ellsberg didn't begin with Fielding until two years after the divorce, in March of 1968 (see), and had quit seeing Fielding in September 1970 (see)—nearly a year before "what he had done."] On or about the same date, John "Jack" Caulfield, Staff Assistant to President Nixon, has created a 12-page political espionage proposal called "Sandwedge." Ostensibly as part of it, Anthony Ulasewicz has rented an apartment at 321 East 48th Street (Apartment 11-C), New York City. G. Gordon Liddy is given the complete "Sandwedge" plan. [NOTE: The apartment is in close proximity to the lab and school of CIA's Cleve Backster. It provides a backstopped New York address and phone. Note, too, that the reference for date of Sandwedge is a document in the National Archives titled "7/71 Sandwedge proposal," despite most anecdotal accounts placing it later in 1971.]

Friday, 2 July 1971

CIA Director Richard Helms is pushing behind the scenes to get E. Howard Hunt into a position connected with the White House in response to the Pentagon Papers having been leaked. H. R. Haldeman tells Nixon that Helms has described Hunt: "Ruthless, quiet and careful, low profile. He gets things done. He will work well with all of us. He's very concerned about the health of the administration. His concern, he thinks, is they're out to get us and all that, but he's not a fanatic. We could be absolutely certain it'll involve secrecy... ." On the same day, Charles Colson sends a memo to H. R. Haldeman with a transcript of a phone conversation he had with E. Howard Hunt the previous day—which he happened to record. Colson says: "The more I think about Howard Hunt's background, politics, disposition and experience, the more I think it would be worth your time to meet him."

Wednesday, 7 July 1971

E. Howard Hunt is hired as a "White House consultant" while keeping his full-time job at CIA front company Mullen. Hunt is supplied with White House credentials.

Thursday, 8 July 1971

The day after starting with the White House, E. Howard Hunt has a private meeting with CIA's Lucien Conein, Hunt's acquaintance of almost 30 years. [NOTE: Conein had been part of the team that Daniel Ellsberg had gone with to Vietnam, headed by CIA's Edward Landsdale, where Ellsberg had been connected up with reporter Neil Sheehan.]

Tuesday, 20 July 1971

E. Howard Hunt has a private meeting with CIA's Edward G. Landsdale. [NOTE: Landsdale had taken Daniel Ellsberg and Lucien Conein to Vietnam in 1965-66, where Ellsberg had been connected up with reporter Neil Sheehan.]

Thursday, 22 July 1971

E. Howard Hunt goes to CIA headquarters and meets privately with Deputy Director of CIA Robert Cushman.

Friday, 23 July 1971

The CIA supplies E. Howard Hunt with counterfeit ID in the name of "Edward J. Warren." Hunt meets CIA's Stephen Greenwood in a CIA safehouse where a fake driver's license and other ID material, plus a disguise, are given to Hunt.

Saturday, 24 July 1971

Based on a memorandum by Egil Krogh and NSA's David Young, the Special Investigations Unit is established at the White House under them. It comes to be known as the White House Plumbers. [NOTE: David Young gives the unit its nickname, supposedly because it is there to "stop leaks." It never stops a single leak, or accomplishes anything effective regarding security leaks. Liddy and Hunt are already established in their positions weeks before the unit is created. The creation of the Special Investigations Unit does nothing to alter the operational status or position of either of them. Young is running everything that leads to the Fielding office break-in. Young will later be given immunity by Watergate prosecutors, then will report the Fielding "burglary," backed up by CIA-supplied photos]

Friday, 30 July 1971

A highly secure facility has been set up in Room 16 of the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House that G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt use. It includes a secure phone used "mostly to talk to the CIA at Langley."

Early August 1971

G. Gordon Liddy is in regular communication with "State and the CIA," having direct conversations with CIA Director Richard Helms. Liddy is briefed by CIA on "several additional sensitive programs in connection with his assignment to the White House staff." Liddy is also making regular trips to the Pentagon. E. Howard Hunt is making regular trips to the State Department. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations at the time is George H.W. Bush (Sr.)

Monday, 2 August 1971

CIA psychiatrist Bernard Malloy comes to Room 16 and meets privately with G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt.

Friday, 6 August 1971

E. Howard Hunt again meets clandestinely in a CIA safehouse, this time with CIA's Stephen Greenwood and also with CIA's Cleo Gephart. Hunt purportedly discusses CIA providing a "backstopped address and phone" in New York city. Hunt also asks for CIA to provide phony ID and a disguise for "an associate"—G. Gordon Liddy. [NOTE: Hunt is asking for ID and disguise for Liddy prior to any proposal to break into Lewis Fielding's office. Also, there's already a backstopped address and phone in New York city at 321 East 48th Street, Apartment 11-C, New York City, set up by Anthony Ulasewicz as part of the Sandwedge proposal, which Liddy and Hunt have. See 1 July 1971.]

Wednesday, 11 August 1971

CIA psychiatrist Bernard Malloy again comes to Room 16 and meets privately with G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt. Soon after, Liddy and Hunt recommend an attempt at surreptitious entry for "acquisition of psychiatric materials" on Daniel Ellsberg from the files of psychiatrist Lewis Fielding. They claim the need, first, for a "feasibility study" of Fielding's Beverly Hills office

Friday, 20 August 1971

The CIA supplies G. Gordon Liddy with counterfeit ID in the name of "George F. Leonard." Hunt and Liddy meet CIA's Stephen Greenwood (called "Steve" in Hunt's account) in a CIA safehouse where a CIA-created fake driver's license and other ID material, plus a disguise, and a camera are issued to Liddy.

Thursday, 26 August 1971

E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy fly to Los Angeles. Hunt takes pictures of Liddy, in his CIA-issued black wig (which doesn't disguise him), standing in front of psychiatrist Lewis Fielding's office door, with Fielding's name on the door. Liddy also takes pictures of Hunt in his CIA-supplied non-disguise. The photos are taken with the camera supplied to them by CIA.

Friday, 27 August 1971

E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy fly back to Washington, D.C. CIA's Stephen Greenwood meets them at the airport, where Hunt gives Greenwood the film for developing by CIA. Greenwood delivers prints to Hunt the same day. The CIA keeps a copy of the photos of Liddy and Hunt (in CIA-provided "disguises" that don't disguise them at all) mugging in front of Lewis Fielding's identifiable door. [NOTE: The CIA later turns their copies of the photos over to Watergate investigators, which results in all criminal charges against Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers to be dropped.]

Saturday, 28 August 1971

On a Saturday, Hunt and Liddy purportedly are in Room 16 when Liddy tells Hunt that the plan to do a break-in of Fielding's office is approved, but that the two of them are not "to be permitted anywhere near the target premises." [see 27 August 1971, immediately above.] E. Howard Hunt then purportedly calls Bernard Barker in Miami and asks if Barker can "put together a three-man entry team." Barker calls back to say it will be Barker, Eugenio Martinez, and Felipe De Diego. [NOTE: As luck would have it, this happens to be the same three men Hunt had met with in Miami two months before the Pentagon Papers were published. See 17 April 1971.]

Friday, 3 September 1971

A break-in takes place at the office of psychiatrist Lewis J. Fielding in Beverly Hills, California. The break-in is made obvious by the smashing of a window. Accounts of the break-in are irreconcilably conflicting. According to Bernard Barker, E. Howard Hunt, and G. Gordon Liddy, the three Cubans—Barker, Martinez, and De Diego—had entered the office and searched thoroughly, and there was no file on Daniel Ellsberg anywhere. According to Lewis Fielding, there was a file on Ellsberg in his office, which Fielding says he found on the floor the next morning. Fielding claims it was evident that someone had gone through the file. The same night, Hunt and Liddy are in New York City—where Hunt has made an issue of needing "a backstopped address." They check into the Pierre hotel and remain in New York through at least Sunday, 5 September 1971. [NOTE: There is no physical evidence that either Liddy or Hunt had been in Los Angeles at all for the Fielding office break-in. Only the anecdotal claims of the co-conspirators account for the whereabouts of Hunt and Liddy that weekend. This is similar to the later purported Watergate first break-in that involves the same personnel.]

October 1971

E. Howard Hunt is in telephone contact with CIA Chief European Division John Hart, and has several telephone conversations with CIA Executive Officer European Division John Caswell. [NOTE: L. Patrick Gray will later order FBI to hold off on interviewing Caswell.]

Friday, 15 October 1971

E. Howard Hunt meets privately with CIA Director Richard Helms.

Early November 1971

CIA's James McCord, purportedly retired in August 1970, signs a contract with the Republican National Committee to handle "security." The contract is in the name of "McCord Associates, Inc." [NOTE: The corporation will not be created until several weeks after the contract is signed; incorporation papers are not filed until 19 November 1971 (see) in Maryland.]

Friday, 19 November 1971

CIA's E. Howard Hunt contacts CIA's Office of Security Director Robert Osborne. On the same day, CIA's James McCord files incorporation papers in Maryland for McCord Associates, Inc., ostensibly a security company, but the incorporation papers say nothing about providing security, and the company is not licensed for security. Included on the board are McCord, his wife, and his sister, Dorothy Berry, who works for an "oil company in Houston." [NOTE: Berry later claimed she had "no idea" she had been listed on the board. Also, the Gulf Resources and Chemical Corporation—an "oil company in Houston" that controls half the world's supply of lithium—will later provide checks that get converted to traceable $100 bills for part of what becomes known as Watergate. See 15 April 1972.]

Wednesday, 8 December 1971

E. Howard Hunt is in touch with senior CIA officer Peter Jessup, who is with the National Security Council staff. On or about the same day, Hunt meets privately again with CIA's Lucien Conein.

Sunday, 12 December 1971

NSA's David Young meets with Egil Krogh and CIA psychiatrist Bernard Malloy.

Thursday, 16 December 1971

CIA's E. Howard Hunt is in Dallas, Texas—an airline hub. Lt. George W. Bush is living in Houston, Texas. He is a pilot trained on T-38 Talons, a type of plane used as a chase plane.

January 1972

G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt are collaborating on a "political espionage" plan to replace the Sandwedge proposal. One of the items they have factored into the budget, ostensibly for "political espionage," is a chase plane. [NOTE: Budgeting and planning for this "chase plane" comes up over and over, but it is utterly ludicrous for any kind of "political espionage" purposes.]

Monday, 10 January 1972

G. Gordon Liddy is in New York city at the apartment Ulasewicz has established at 321 East 48th Street, Apartment 11-C.

Early February 1972

G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt fly to Miami, home of Bernard Barker and other CIA-connected Cubans. Around the same time, G. Gordon Liddy "recruits" CIA's James McCord as a "wire man," purportedly to be able to do electronic eavesdropping for "political espionage" purposes. [NOTE: At the time, Liddy has no approved budget for any such activities, nor are there any approved plans for, or targets for, any such activities.]

Thursday, 17 February 1972

E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy again fly to Miami, ostensibly to meet with Donald Segretti (a.k.a. "Donald Simmons"). While there, Hunt is in contact with CIA's Bernard Barker.

Tuesday, 22 February 1972

G. Gordon Liddy meets with CIA personnel at Langley in connection with CIA "special clearances" he has been granted.

Thursday, 24 February 1972

G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt meet with a "retired" CIA doctor, introduced by Hunt to Liddy as "Dr. Edward Gunn," to get briefed by him on various covert means of murder for a possible assassination.

Late February 1972

E. Howard Hunt travels to Nicaragua on an "undisclosed mission." [NOTE: See entry for 3 March 1972.]

Wednesday, 1 March 1972

Douglas Caddy, who has E. Howard Hunt as a client, begins to do "legal tasks" for John Dean and G. Gordon Liddy.

Friday, 3 March 1972

Gary O. Morris, psychiatrist of E. Howard Hunt's wife, Dorothy, vanishes while on vacation on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. No trace is ever found of the pleasure boat he had left on for a cruise with his wife and a local captain, Mervin Augustin.

Monday, 27 March 1972

G. Gordon Liddy's job abruptly changes to general counsel of the Finance Committee to Re-elect the President.

Wednesday, 29 March 1972

Two days after Liddy's job changes, E. Howard Hunt "terminates" in his paid capacity as a White House consultant—yet he keeps his office and the safe he'd used as such, and keeps his White House credentials because he continues to "work there a few hours each week."

Early April 1972

CIA's E. Howard Hunt flies to Chicago and delivers an undisclosed amount of cash in a sealed envelope to W. Clement and Jessie V. Stone Foundation. [NOTE: Dorothy Hunt later will die in a plane crash en route to Chicago carrying an envelope of cash.]

Saturday, 15 April 1972

E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy fly to Miami and deliver checks drawn on a Mexico City bank to CIA's Bernard Barker. [NOTE: Several of the checks have originated from Gulf Resources and Chemical Corporation in Houston, which at the time controls half the world's supply of lithium, used in the making of hydrogen bombs and in psychiatric drugs.]

Monday, 24 April 1972

CIA's Bernard Barker cashes a cashier's check for $25,000 at his bank in Miami. [NOTE: This $25,000, from the Dahlberg check, plus two later withdrawals by Barker will equal $114,000. See 2 May and 8 May 1972.]

Monday, 1 May 1972

CIA's James McCord contacts an ex-FBI agent, Alfred Baldwin, who is living in Connecticut. McCord purportedly doesn't know Baldwin, but wants Baldwin to come to Washington, D.C. that night.

Tuesday, 2 May 1972

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is found dead in his home in the early morning hours. L. Patrick Gray—who has no background in law enforcement—is appointed as Acting Director of FBI. [NOTE: Hoover's death is attributed to a heart attack, and no autopsy is done. L. Patrick Gray will steer the FBI investigation of Watergate, destroy material taken from the White House safe of E. Howard Hunt, then will resign.] Alfred Baldwin meets with James McCord. McCord issues Baldwin a Smith & Wesson .38 snub-nose revolver. Baldwin is assigned to travel as a bodyguard with Martha Mitchell on "a trip to the midwest." On the same day, CIA's Bernard Barker withdraws an unspecified amount of cash from his bank in Miami. [NOTE: This is the second of three transactions by Barker that will total $114,000.]

Thursday, 4 May 1972

Lt. George W. Bush is ordered to "report to commander, 111 F.I.S., Ellington AFB, not later than (NLT) 14 May, 1972." [NOTE: Bush does not report as ordered. See 19 May 1972.]

Friday, 5 May 1972

CIA's James McCord rents room 419 of the Howard Johnson's motel across the street from the Watergate. The room is registered in the name of McCord Associates.

Monday, 8 May 1972

Alfred Baldwin returns to Washington, D.C. from his trip with Martha Mitchell. He is told by James McCord to keep the .38 revolver because "he might be going on another trip." G. Gordon Liddy, in D.C., calls CIA's Bernard Barker in Miami. Bernard Barker withdraws another unspecified amount of cash from his bank in Miami which, with two other transactions, now totals $114,000. James McCord receives $4,000 in cash from G. Gordon Liddy.

Tuesday, 9 May 1972

Alfred Baldwin leaves Washington, D.C., ostensibly going to his home in Connecticut to "get more clothes." He takes the .38 revolver with him, purportedly because he has been told by James McCord that he might be going on another trip with Martha Mitchell that is scheduled for 11 May 1972. [NOTE: Baldwin doesn't return until 12 May 1972.]

Wednesday, 10 May 1972

CIA's James McCord is in Rockville, Maryland. He pays $3,500 cash for a "device capable of receiving intercepted wire and oral communications." [NOTE: Rockville, Maryland is about six miles from Laurel, Maryland. Five days later presidential candidate George Wallace will be shot in Laurel, Maryland by Arthur Bremer with a .38 calibur revolver. See 15 May 1972.]

Friday, 12 May 1972

Alfred Baldwin returns to Washington, D.C. James McCord tells Baldwin he won't be going with Martha Mitchell so he can "turn in his gun." Baldwin purportedly gives the .38 revovler to McCord. McCord tells Baldwin to move from the Roger Smith hotel, where Baldwin has been staying, into room 419 at the Howard Johnson's motel.

Monday, 15 May 1972

Presidential candidate George Wallace is shot by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, Maryland, ending his presidential campaign and partially paralyzing him.

Wednesday, 17 May 1972

CIA's Bernard Barker makes two calls from Miami to G. Gordon Liddy, and two calls to CIA's E. Howard Hunt.

Friday, 19 May 1972

Lt. George W. Bush (Jr.), a chase plane pilot, contacts a superior officer in the reserves to discuss "options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November." The memo recording the conversation says that Bush "is working on another campaign for his dad." The memo writer thinks Bush is "also talking to someone upstairs." [NOTE: George H. W. Bush (Sr.) is U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. at this time.] On the same day, President Richard M. Nixon, about to embark on an historic trip to the Soviet Union, writes the following in a letter to Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig: "The performance in the psychological warfare field is nothing short of disgraceful. The mountain has labored for seven weeks and when it finally produced, it produced not much more than a mouse. Or to put it more honestly, it produced a rat. We finally have a program now under way but it totally lacks imagination and I have no confidence whatever that the bureaucracy will carry it out. I do not simply blame (Richard) Helms and the CIA. After all, they do not support my policies because they basically are for the most part Ivy League and Georgetown society oriented." On the same day, E. Howard Hunt makes two calls to Bernard Barker in Miami.

Saturday, 20 May 1972

Richard Nixon leaves Washington, D.C. on his trip to Austria, the Soviet Union, Iran, and Poland. He will not return until 1 June 1972. James McCord sends Alfred Baldwin to Andrews Air Force Base, where Nixon is leaving on Air Force One, purportedly because there might be demonstrations and McCord wants Baldwin to be there for more "surveillance activities." [NOTE: The "reason" supplied by McCord in testimony for this trip by Baldwin is too thin to slice, particularly in light of the amount of security surrounding Nixon's departure. Besides Air Force One, there is a fleet of White House planes at Andrews for use by VIPs and various staff connected with the White House.] On or about the same day, CIA's E. Howard Hunt flies to Miami and meets with Bernard Barker.

Monday, 22 May 1972

Richard Nixon arrives in Moscow and is toasting Soviet leaders at a dinner. On the same day, the CIA "Cuban contingent" arrives in Washington, D.C. from Miami: Bernard Barker, Frank Sturgis, Eugenio Martinez, and Virgilio Gonzalez. They are in D.C. purportedly to carry out a "first break-in" on the following weekend of Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate with G. Gordon Liddy, CIA's E. Howard Hunt, and CIA's James McCord. [NOTE: There is no physical evidence that any such "first break-in" ever took place. For full coverage, see The Watergate "First Break-In Dilemma. Note also that while E. Howard Hunt claims that six Cubans arrived on 22 May 1972, the referenced criminal appeals court ruling names only four.]

Tuesday, 23 May 1972

Alfred Baldwin leaves Washington, D.C. again, purportedly going to his home in Connecticut again. No reason is given for his departure.

Friday, 26 May 1972

G. Gordon Liddy, Alfred Baldwin, CIA's E. Howard Hunt, CIA's James McCord, and several Cuban CIA contract agents purportedly are engaged in a failed attempt to break into the Watergate—the "Ameritas dinner" attempt. [NOTE: There was no such attempt at a break-in See 26 May 1972: The "Ameritas Dinner" and Alfred Baldwin.]

Saturday, 27 May 1972

G. Gordon Liddy, Alfred Baldwin, CIA's E. Howard Hunt, CIA's James McCord, and several Cuban CIA contract agents purportedly are engaged in a second failed attempt to break into the Watergate. [NOTE: But there was no such "second attempt." See 27 May 1972: The "second failed attempt" and Alfred Baldwin.]

Sunday, 28 May 1972

G. Gordon Liddy, Alfred Baldwin, CIA's E. Howard Hunt, CIA's James McCord, and several Cuban CIA contract agents purportedly are engaged in a successful "first break-in" at DNC headquarters at the Watergate. According to their later claims, McCord placed two electronic bugs in the DNC headquarters during the "first break-in," and Bernard Barker purportedly had photos taken of the office of the Chairman, Lawrence O'Brien, and of documents on his desk. [NOTE: There is no physical evidence that any such "first break-in" ever took place, or the purported two earlier failed attempts on the same holiday weekend. Barker later testified that he never was in O'Brien's office at all, and a telephone company sweep found no electronic bugs in the DNC at all (see 15 June 1972). For full coverage, see The Watergate "First Break-In Dilemma and There was no "first break-in" at the Watergate. There is nothing to account for the whereabouts of Liddy, Hunt, McCord, and Baldwin over the entire Memorial Day Weekend except the conflicting and contradictory anecdotal accounts of the co-conspirators themselves, which they volunteered when "caught" inside the building on 17 June 1972, while being represented by Douglas Caddy. See also 3 September 1971 for similarities in the purported "Fielding office break-in," including personnel involved and the use of a holiday weekend, in that case the Labor Day weekend.]

AFTERWORD: Douglas Caddy will later appear in court ostensibly representing all four of the arrested CIA-connected Cubans, plus CIA's James McCord, CIA's E. Howard Hunt, and G. Gordon Liddy, who has "special CIA clearances." Later, on Wednesday, 3 January 1973, the very day that Daniel Ellsberg goes on trial, CIA's Anthony Goldin hand delivers to the Department of Justice Watergate prosecutors copies of 10 photos of E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy taken at the office of Ellsberg psychiatrist Lewis J. Fielding, with Fielding's name on the door clearly visible. These will later be turned over to the Ellsberg court, and all charges against Ellsberg will be dropped. [NOTE: See 26 August 1971, when Liddy and Hunt flew to Los Angeles to take the photos of each other.]

=========================

Now, Dan, given all the foregoing, allow me to see if I can sum up your position in the most pithy way possible, and you be sure to correct me if I have this wrong. (Drum roll, please.)

DANIEL: NIXON DID IT.

<Cymbal crash>

Ashton Gray

Hi Michael,

Putting aside the Forum controversy that seems to be swirling around your posts, you are an outstanding writer and a dogged researcher.

I'll warrant the "dogged researcher" part, and thank you graciously about the writer part—although you might want to get a second opinion on that. There's an abundance of other opinions around.

As far as your approach in questioning Messrs Baldwin and Caddy, I'll definitely stay out of that discussion for the time being.

Can't say that I blame you. I'm beginning to have grave suspicions that I'm not really a contender in the forum Mr. Congeniality contest. And I already know I don't have a prayer in the bathing suit competition.

Have you ever considered self-publishing a small run book on Watergate? I'll buy two or three copies.

No, I haven't. I've been far too busy with the time and limited resources I have available just to get this information into the public view. (As Dawn pointed out, maybe at some point I could organize what I've already written and wrap it in a cover. I'll give it some thought.)

Thanks for making me revisit the Watergate mystery. Time does tend to blur perceptions.

The pleasure's all mine! I'm very gratified to know that the information has been of value and interest to you. It makes all the work worth it, and I hope you'll use it to help rekindle the interest of others.

Ashton Gray

I recall- and I may be wrong here, but I thought that I once read that you were suspicious about this entire taping the doors- TWICE- incident, until you read his book.

It's a whole chapter of "How to Spin for the CIA":

"Ally yourself with the opposition. Be 'one of them.' Express similar doubts and concerns you might have shared with them at one time. Then say that you gave the CIA operative a fair hearing, a just consideration, and realized that, as with all CIA operatives, he really was always and only of pure motive and purpose, doing his best at every step for truth, justice, and the American way. He was a victim of circumstances beyond his control, and of the failings and foibles of others around him who lacked the discipline and unblemished chaste virtue that at every moment was his own guiding light."

The advanced lessons say it's even all right to trash another CIA op (like Hunt) if you have to in order temporarily to sell the "Come to Jesus" sermon for one you're trying to peddle (like McCord)—you know, like saying that the other one blackmailed somebody while your choir boy was only trying to "do the right thing."

You can always come back in a separate argument, and say the one who you admitted was a blackmailer in one breath (Hunt) was always 100% virtuous and truthful and honest-to-a-fault in everything else he ever said or did. You know, like everything he ever said about private, closed-door meetings he had with other CIA operatives. "That? Oh, that, well, that you can just take to the bank." Don'tcha' know.

(Watch for this exact flip-flop claim to be coming soon to a thread near you!)

Ashton Gray

Nixon was not an idol to (his own) "elite fascist guard," but instead (seen by them as) a mere unsophisticated rube? Contending that is letting Nixon off the hook, as is contending he "was merely a puppet whose wims and idiosyncracies were becoming a liability to their secret teams real agenda." ...I guess since Speer and me are the only ones who care enough to fight about this, I'll have to stay in the fight --- and begrudge you fun folks the time wasted when more important things are pressing. But we all have to choose what we consider as important, and right now it's pretty clear that this should be it.

I already answered this partially, Daniel, but since you've opened the door, and since you feel that right now this should be considered important, I considered it important enough to give you a little more "fleshed out" response.

I realize that this is the JFK forum, and while I'm going to post an appropriately introduced version of this message in the Watergate forum, I'm posting it first in response to you here—since Mr. Caddy elected to put my name in lights in this forum as an accused forum pariah, and since you and one or two others have taken the opportunity not only to imply that my research and presentations on the CIA's role in Watergate are the deluded pursuits of a borderline loon, but also to build a totally specious "case" that to render unto CIA what is CIA's in regard to Watergate is somehow to "take Nixon off the hook."

Therefore I've created this timeline for you, a condensed version of the excellent timeline I've referred to repeatedly. I've excerpted relevant events just for you. In doing so, I've expunged all references to the "S word," or to what else the CIA might have been doing simultaneously, because I don't want you or Mr. Speer to start shaking uncontrollably or to run to your black helicopters again, as Mr. Speer seems wont to do. We don't need to address possible CIA motive in order to see events: who was doing what when.

So here is your own personal version of a relevant portion of that timeline, and I'm going to name it in your honor in the Watergate forum. I have taken it up only to the purported "first break-in" of the Watergate because I consider that entirely sufficient. At the end I will make an effort to sum up as succinctly as possible what I understand your position to be. Without further ado:

CIA-PENTAGON PAPERS-WATERGATE TIMELINE

Friday, 10 April 1970

Richard Helms has rubber-stamped E. Howard Hunt's "early retirement" and has written a letter to Robert R. Mullen on behalf of Hunt, urging Mullen to hire him. Mullen is head of a public relations firm in D.C. that is a front company for CIA. One of the Mullen offices, in Stockholm, Sweden, is "staffed, run, and paid for by CIA." Also at the Mullen firm is Douglas Caddy.

Monday, 13 April 1970

Daniel Ellsberg quits Rand in California, flies to Boston and signs a contract at MIT. He remains, though, a "consultant" for Rand.

Friday, 1 May 1970

E. Howard Hunt ostensibly "retires" from CIA. He goes to work for the Mullen company in D.C. There, he is told by Robert Mullen that he and Douglas Caddy have been selected by Mullen to take over running the CIA front company soon, when Mullen retires.

Tuesday, 5 May 1970

Daniel Ellsberg flies to Washington, D.C. and is there for three days, flies to St. Louis for a day, then flies back to D.C. [FORUM NOTE: Caddy wouldn't answer the question of whether he or Hunt had been in touch, either directly or through intermediaries, with Ellsberg.]

Thursday, 28 May 1970

A CIA Covert Security Approval is requested under Project QK/ENCHANT for the "retired" E. Howard Hunt.

August 1970

Just four months after E. Howard Hunt, James McCord "retires" from CIA.

September 1970

Daniel Ellsberg stops seeing Beverly Hills psychiatrist Lewis Fielding.

November 1970

Douglas Caddy leaves the Mullen firm to work for Gall, Lane, Powell and Kilcullen. Around the same time, E. Howard Hunt becomes a "client" of Caddy and of Gall, Lane. Caddy consults with Hunt regarding wills and "other matters." Around the same time, G. Gordon Liddy is approached by Robert Mardian, asking Liddy to take a position that Mardian describes as "super-confidential."

February 1971

A hidden taping system is installed in the Oval Office of the White House.

Saturday, 17 April 1971

E. Howard Hunt is in Miami and meets with Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, and Felipe De Diego. Bernard Barker has a history of almost seven years with CIA. Eugenio Martinez is on "retainer" with CIA. [NOTE: A little over four months later, these same three men will be involved with Hunt in a purported break-in of the offices of psychiatrist Lewis Fielding, ostensibly in response to Daniel Ellsberg having leaked the Pentagon Papers. But the Pentagon Papers haven't been leaked to the press yet, and won't be for almost two months.]

Early June 1971

Daniel Ellsberg makes "a series of phone calls" to psychiatrist Lewis Fielding shortly before the Pentagon Papers are published. Around this same time, Douglas Caddy meets with E. Howard Hunt and Bernard Barker at the Army-Navy Club in Washington, D.C. [NOTE: Caddy will claim that this is the one and only time that he ever met Bernard Barker.]

Saturday, 12 June 1971

The day before the "Pentagon Papers" are published, Morton Halperin, Leslie Gelb, and Defense Department official Paul Nitze make "a deposit into the National Archives" of "a whole lot of papers." [NOTE: This turns out later to be copies of the not-yet-published Pentagon Papers that will make Daniel Ellsberg famous and launch everything that later comes to be known as "Watergate."]

Sunday, 13 June 1971

Daniel Ellsberg, having highest possible clearances from CIA, leaks the "Pentagon Papers." The New York Times publishes the first of three installments of secret documents that have been passed to Times reporter Neil Sheehan by Daniel Ellsberg. [NOTE: Ellsberg had been connected to Sheehan in Viet Nam by CIA's Edward Landsdale and CIA's Lucien Conein.]

Tuesday, 15 June 1971

G. Gordon Liddy is abruptly transferred from being "Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury" to "Staff Assistant of the President of the United States," part of the White House Domestic Council. Liddy is supplied with White House credentials.

Monday, 28 June 1971

Daniel Ellsberg is indicted for the leak of the Pentagon Papers.

Wednesday, 30 June 1971

The Supreme Court rules 6-3 that the government has not shown compelling evidence to justify blocking further publication of the Pentagon Papers.

Thursday, 1 July 1971

David Young—who is with NSA—is appointed to the White House Domestic Council to work with Egil Krogh. On or about the same date, Carol Ellsberg, Daniel Ellsberg's ex-wife, calls the FBI. She tells them that Daniel Ellsberg had seen a psychiatrist. She says that Ellsberg has "assured her" that he "had told this analyst all about what he had done" (referring to the Pentagon Papers). She volunteers the name of the Beverly Hills psychiatrist: Lewis Fielding. [NOTE: Daniel and Carol Ellsberg have been living apart since January 1964, divorced since 1966. Daniel Ellsberg didn't begin with Fielding until two years after the divorce, in March of 1968 (see), and had quit seeing Fielding in September 1970 (see)—nearly a year before "what he had done."] On or about the same date, John "Jack" Caulfield, Staff Assistant to President Nixon, has created a 12-page political espionage proposal called "Sandwedge." Ostensibly as part of it, Anthony Ulasewicz has rented an apartment at 321 East 48th Street (Apartment 11-C), New York City. G. Gordon Liddy is given the complete "Sandwedge" plan. [NOTE: The apartment is in close proximity to the lab and school of CIA's Cleve Backster. It provides a backstopped New York address and phone. Note, too, that the reference for date of Sandwedge is a document in the National Archives titled "7/71 Sandwedge proposal," despite most anecdotal accounts placing it later in 1971.]

Friday, 2 July 1971

CIA Director Richard Helms is pushing behind the scenes to get E. Howard Hunt into a position connected with the White House in response to the Pentagon Papers having been leaked. H. R. Haldeman tells Nixon that Helms has described Hunt: "Ruthless, quiet and careful, low profile. He gets things done. He will work well with all of us. He's very concerned about the health of the administration. His concern, he thinks, is they're out to get us and all that, but he's not a fanatic. We could be absolutely certain it'll involve secrecy... ." On the same day, Charles Colson sends a memo to H. R. Haldeman with a transcript of a phone conversation he had with E. Howard Hunt the previous day—which he happened to record. Colson says: "The more I think about Howard Hunt's background, politics, disposition and experience, the more I think it would be worth your time to meet him."

Wednesday, 7 July 1971

E. Howard Hunt is hired as a "White House consultant" while keeping his full-time job at CIA front company Mullen. Hunt is supplied with White House credentials.

Thursday, 8 July 1971

The day after starting with the White House, E. Howard Hunt has a private meeting with CIA's Lucien Conein, Hunt's acquaintance of almost 30 years. [NOTE: Conein had been part of the team that Daniel Ellsberg had gone with to Vietnam, headed by CIA's Edward Landsdale, where Ellsberg had been connected up with reporter Neil Sheehan.]

Tuesday, 20 July 1971

E. Howard Hunt has a private meeting with CIA's Edward G. Landsdale. [NOTE: Landsdale had taken Daniel Ellsberg and Lucien Conein to Vietnam in 1965-66, where Ellsberg had been connected up with reporter Neil Sheehan.]

Thursday, 22 July 1971

E. Howard Hunt goes to CIA headquarters and meets privately with Deputy Director of CIA Robert Cushman.

Friday, 23 July 1971

The CIA supplies E. Howard Hunt with counterfeit ID in the name of "Edward J. Warren." Hunt meets CIA's Stephen Greenwood in a CIA safehouse where a fake driver's license and other ID material, plus a disguise, are given to Hunt.

Saturday, 24 July 1971

Based on a memorandum by Egil Krogh and NSA's David Young, the Special Investigations Unit is established at the White House under them. It comes to be known as the White House Plumbers. [NOTE: David Young gives the unit its nickname, supposedly because it is there to "stop leaks." It never stops a single leak, or accomplishes anything effective regarding security leaks. Liddy and Hunt are already established in their positions weeks before the unit is created. The creation of the Special Investigations Unit does nothing to alter the operational status or position of either of them. Young is running everything that leads to the Fielding office break-in. Young will later be given immunity by Watergate prosecutors, then will report the Fielding "burglary," backed up by CIA-supplied photos]

Friday, 30 July 1971

A highly secure facility has been set up in Room 16 of the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House that G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt use. It includes a secure phone used "mostly to talk to the CIA at Langley."

Early August 1971

G. Gordon Liddy is in regular communication with "State and the CIA," having direct conversations with CIA Director Richard Helms. Liddy is briefed by CIA on "several additional sensitive programs in connection with his assignment to the White House staff." Liddy is also making regular trips to the Pentagon. E. Howard Hunt is making regular trips to the State Department. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations at the time is George H.W. Bush (Sr.)

Monday, 2 August 1971

CIA psychiatrist Bernard Malloy comes to Room 16 and meets privately with G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt.

Friday, 6 August 1971

E. Howard Hunt again meets clandestinely in a CIA safehouse, this time with CIA's Stephen Greenwood and also with CIA's Cleo Gephart. Hunt purportedly discusses CIA providing a "backstopped address and phone" in New York city. Hunt also asks for CIA to provide phony ID and a disguise for "an associate"—G. Gordon Liddy. [NOTE: Hunt is asking for ID and disguise for Liddy prior to any proposal to break into Lewis Fielding's office. Also, there's already a backstopped address and phone in New York city at 321 East 48th Street, Apartment 11-C, New York City, set up by Anthony Ulasewicz as part of the Sandwedge proposal, which Liddy and Hunt have. See 1 July 1971.]

Wednesday, 11 August 1971

CIA psychiatrist Bernard Malloy again comes to Room 16 and meets privately with G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt. Soon after, Liddy and Hunt recommend an attempt at surreptitious entry for "acquisition of psychiatric materials" on Daniel Ellsberg from the files of psychiatrist Lewis Fielding. They claim the need, first, for a "feasibility study" of Fielding's Beverly Hills office

Friday, 20 August 1971

The CIA supplies G. Gordon Liddy with counterfeit ID in the name of "George F. Leonard." Hunt and Liddy meet CIA's Stephen Greenwood (called "Steve" in Hunt's account) in a CIA safehouse where a CIA-created fake driver's license and other ID material, plus a disguise, and a camera are issued to Liddy.

Thursday, 26 August 1971

E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy fly to Los Angeles. Hunt takes pictures of Liddy, in his CIA-issued black wig (which doesn't disguise him), standing in front of psychiatrist Lewis Fielding's office door, with Fielding's name on the door. Liddy also takes pictures of Hunt in his CIA-supplied non-disguise. The photos are taken with the camera supplied to them by CIA.

Friday, 27 August 1971

E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy fly back to Washington, D.C. CIA's Stephen Greenwood meets them at the airport, where Hunt gives Greenwood the film for developing by CIA. Greenwood delivers prints to Hunt the same day. The CIA keeps a copy of the photos of Liddy and Hunt (in CIA-provided "disguises" that don't disguise them at all) mugging in front of Lewis Fielding's identifiable door. [NOTE: The CIA later turns their copies of the photos over to Watergate investigators, which results in all criminal charges against Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers to be dropped.]

Saturday, 28 August 1971

On a Saturday, Hunt and Liddy purportedly are in Room 16 when Liddy tells Hunt that the plan to do a break-in of Fielding's office is approved, but that the two of them are not "to be permitted anywhere near the target premises." [see 27 August 1971, immediately above.] E. Howard Hunt then purportedly calls Bernard Barker in Miami and asks if Barker can "put together a three-man entry team." Barker calls back to say it will be Barker, Eugenio Martinez, and Felipe De Diego. [NOTE: As luck would have it, this happens to be the same three men Hunt had met with in Miami two months before the Pentagon Papers were published. See 17 April 1971.]

Friday, 3 September 1971

A break-in takes place at the office of psychiatrist Lewis J. Fielding in Beverly Hills, California. The break-in is made obvious by the smashing of a window. Accounts of the break-in are irreconcilably conflicting. According to Bernard Barker, E. Howard Hunt, and G. Gordon Liddy, the three Cubans—Barker, Martinez, and De Diego—had entered the office and searched thoroughly, and there was no file on Daniel Ellsberg anywhere. According to Lewis Fielding, there was a file on Ellsberg in his office, which Fielding says he found on the floor the next morning. Fielding claims it was evident that someone had gone through the file. The same night, Hunt and Liddy are in New York City—where Hunt has made an issue of needing "a backstopped address." They check into the Pierre hotel and remain in New York through at least Sunday, 5 September 1971. [NOTE: There is no physical evidence that either Liddy or Hunt had been in Los Angeles at all for the Fielding office break-in. Only the anecdotal claims of the co-conspirators account for the whereabouts of Hunt and Liddy that weekend. This is similar to the later purported Watergate first break-in that involves the same personnel.]

October 1971

E. Howard Hunt is in telephone contact with CIA Chief European Division John Hart, and has several telephone conversations with CIA Executive Officer European Division John Caswell. [NOTE: L. Patrick Gray will later order FBI to hold off on interviewing Caswell.]

Friday, 15 October 1971

E. Howard Hunt meets privately with CIA Director Richard Helms.

Early November 1971

CIA's James McCord, purportedly retired in August 1970, signs a contract with the Republican National Committee to handle "security." The contract is in the name of "McCord Associates, Inc." [NOTE: The corporation will not be created until several weeks after the contract is signed; incorporation papers are not filed until 19 November 1971 (see) in Maryland.]

Friday, 19 November 1971

CIA's E. Howard Hunt contacts CIA's Office of Security Director Robert Osborne. On the same day, CIA's James McCord files incorporation papers in Maryland for McCord Associates, Inc., ostensibly a security company, but the incorporation papers say nothing about providing security, and the company is not licensed for security. Included on the board are McCord, his wife, and his sister, Dorothy Berry, who works for an "oil company in Houston." [NOTE: Berry later claimed she had "no idea" she had been listed on the board. Also, the Gulf Resources and Chemical Corporation—an "oil company in Houston" that controls half the world's supply of lithium—will later provide checks that get converted to traceable $100 bills for part of what becomes known as Watergate. See 15 April 1972.]

Wednesday, 8 December 1971

E. Howard Hunt is in touch with senior CIA officer Peter Jessup, who is with the National Security Council staff. On or about the same day, Hunt meets privately again with CIA's Lucien Conein.

Sunday, 12 December 1971

NSA's David Young meets with Egil Krogh and CIA psychiatrist Bernard Malloy.

Thursday, 16 December 1971

CIA's E. Howard Hunt is in Dallas, Texas—an airline hub. Lt. George W. Bush is living in Houston, Texas. He is a pilot trained on T-38 Talons, a type of plane used as a chase plane.

January 1972

G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt are collaborating on a "political espionage" plan to replace the Sandwedge proposal. One of the items they have factored into the budget, ostensibly for "political espionage," is a chase plane. [NOTE: Budgeting and planning for this "chase plane" comes up over and over, but it is utterly ludicrous for any kind of "political espionage" purposes.]

Monday, 10 January 1972

G. Gordon Liddy is in New York city at the apartment Ulasewicz has established at 321 East 48th Street, Apartment 11-C.

Early February 1972

G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt fly to Miami, home of Bernard Barker and other CIA-connected Cubans. Around the same time, G. Gordon Liddy "recruits" CIA's James McCord as a "wire man," purportedly to be able to do electronic eavesdropping for "political espionage" purposes. [NOTE: At the time, Liddy has no approved budget for any such activities, nor are there any approved plans for, or targets for, any such activities.]

Thursday, 17 February 1972

E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy again fly to Miami, ostensibly to meet with Donald Segretti (a.k.a. "Donald Simmons"). While there, Hunt is in contact with CIA's Bernard Barker.

Tuesday, 22 February 1972

G. Gordon Liddy meets with CIA personnel at Langley in connection with CIA "special clearances" he has been granted.

Thursday, 24 February 1972

G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt meet with a "retired" CIA doctor, introduced by Hunt to Liddy as "Dr. Edward Gunn," to get briefed by him on various covert means of murder for a possible assassination.

Late February 1972

E. Howard Hunt travels to Nicaragua on an "undisclosed mission." [NOTE: See entry for 3 March 1972.]

Wednesday, 1 March 1972

Douglas Caddy, who has E. Howard Hunt as a client, begins to do "legal tasks" for John Dean and G. Gordon Liddy.

Friday, 3 March 1972

Gary O. Morris, psychiatrist of E. Howard Hunt's wife, Dorothy, vanishes while on vacation on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. No trace is ever found of the pleasure boat he had left on for a cruise with his wife and a local captain, Mervin Augustin.

Monday, 27 March 1972

G. Gordon Liddy's job abruptly changes to general counsel of the Finance Committee to Re-elect the President.

Wednesday, 29 March 1972

Two days after Liddy's job changes, E. Howard Hunt "terminates" in his paid capacity as a White House consultant—yet he keeps his office and the safe he'd used as such, and keeps his White House credentials because he continues to "work there a few hours each week."

Early April 1972

CIA's E. Howard Hunt flies to Chicago and delivers an undisclosed amount of cash in a sealed envelope to W. Clement and Jessie V. Stone Foundation. [NOTE: Dorothy Hunt later will die in a plane crash en route to Chicago carrying an envelope of cash.]

Saturday, 15 April 1972

E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy fly to Miami and deliver checks drawn on a Mexico City bank to CIA's Bernard Barker. [NOTE: Several of the checks have originated from Gulf Resources and Chemical Corporation in Houston, which at the time controls half the world's supply of lithium, used in the making of hydrogen bombs and in psychiatric drugs.]

Monday, 24 April 1972

CIA's Bernard Barker cashes a cashier's check for $25,000 at his bank in Miami. [NOTE: This $25,000, from the Dahlberg check, plus two later withdrawals by Barker will equal $114,000. See 2 May and 8 May 1972.]

Monday, 1 May 1972

CIA's James McCord contacts an ex-FBI agent, Alfred Baldwin, who is living in Connecticut. McCord purportedly doesn't know Baldwin, but wants Baldwin to come to Washington, D.C. that night.

Tuesday, 2 May 1972

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is found dead in his home in the early morning hours. L. Patrick Gray—who has no background in law enforcement—is appointed as Acting Director of FBI. [NOTE: Hoover's death is attributed to a heart attack, and no autopsy is done. L. Patrick Gray will steer the FBI investigation of Watergate, destroy material taken from the White House safe of E. Howard Hunt, then will resign.] Alfred Baldwin meets with James McCord. McCord issues Baldwin a Smith & Wesson .38 snub-nose revolver. Baldwin is assigned to travel as a bodyguard with Martha Mitchell on "a trip to the midwest." On the same day, CIA's Bernard Barker withdraws an unspecified amount of cash from his bank in Miami. [NOTE: This is the second of three transactions by Barker that will total $114,000.]

Thursday, 4 May 1972

Lt. George W. Bush is ordered to "report to commander, 111 F.I.S., Ellington AFB, not later than (NLT) 14 May, 1972." [NOTE: Bush does not report as ordered. See 19 May 1972.]

Friday, 5 May 1972

CIA's James McCord rents room 419 of the Howard Johnson's motel across the street from the Watergate. The room is registered in the name of McCord Associates.

Monday, 8 May 1972

Alfred Baldwin returns to Washington, D.C. from his trip with Martha Mitchell. He is told by James McCord to keep the .38 revolver because "he might be going on another trip." G. Gordon Liddy, in D.C., calls CIA's Bernard Barker in Miami. Bernard Barker withdraws another unspecified amount of cash from his bank in Miami which, with two other transactions, now totals $114,000. James McCord receives $4,000 in cash from G. Gordon Liddy.

Tuesday, 9 May 1972

Alfred Baldwin leaves Washington, D.C., ostensibly going to his home in Connecticut to "get more clothes." He takes the .38 revolver with him, purportedly because he has been told by James McCord that he might be going on another trip with Martha Mitchell that is scheduled for 11 May 1972. [NOTE: Baldwin doesn't return until 12 May 1972.]

Wednesday, 10 May 1972

CIA's James McCord is in Rockville, Maryland. He pays $3,500 cash for a "device capable of receiving intercepted wire and oral communications." [NOTE: Rockville, Maryland is about six miles from Laurel, Maryland. Five days later presidential candidate George Wallace will be shot in Laurel, Maryland by Arthur Bremer with a .38 calibur revolver. See 15 May 1972.]

Friday, 12 May 1972

Alfred Baldwin returns to Washington, D.C. James McCord tells Baldwin he won't be going with Martha Mitchell so he can "turn in his gun." Baldwin purportedly gives the .38 revovler to McCord. McCord tells Baldwin to move from the Roger Smith hotel, where Baldwin has been staying, into room 419 at the Howard Johnson's motel.

Monday, 15 May 1972

Presidential candidate George Wallace is shot by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, Maryland, ending his presidential campaign and partially paralyzing him.

Wednesday, 17 May 1972

CIA's Bernard Barker makes two calls from Miami to G. Gordon Liddy, and two calls to CIA's E. Howard Hunt.

Friday, 19 May 1972

Lt. George W. Bush (Jr.), a chase plane pilot, contacts a superior officer in the reserves to discuss "options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November." The memo recording the conversation says that Bush "is working on another campaign for his dad." The memo writer thinks Bush is "also talking to someone upstairs." [NOTE: George H. W. Bush (Sr.) is U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. at this time.] On the same day, President Richard M. Nixon, about to embark on an historic trip to the Soviet Union, writes the following in a letter to Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig: "The performance in the psychological warfare field is nothing short of disgraceful. The mountain has labored for seven weeks and when it finally produced, it produced not much more than a mouse. Or to put it more honestly, it produced a rat. We finally have a program now under way but it totally lacks imagination and I have no confidence whatever that the bureaucracy will carry it out. I do not simply blame (Richard) Helms and the CIA. After all, they do not support my policies because they basically are for the most part Ivy League and Georgetown society oriented." On the same day, E. Howard Hunt makes two calls to Bernard Barker in Miami.

Saturday, 20 May 1972

Richard Nixon leaves Washington, D.C. on his trip to Austria, the Soviet Union, Iran, and Poland. He will not return until 1 June 1972. James McCord sends Alfred Baldwin to Andrews Air Force Base, where Nixon is leaving on Air Force One, purportedly because there might be demonstrations and McCord wants Baldwin to be there for more "surveillance activities." [NOTE: The "reason" supplied by McCord in testimony for this trip by Baldwin is too thin to slice, particularly in light of the amount of security surrounding Nixon's departure. Besides Air Force One, there is a fleet of White House planes at Andrews for use by VIPs and various staff connected with the White House.] On or about the same day, CIA's E. Howard Hunt flies to Miami and meets with Bernard Barker.

Monday, 22 May 1972

Richard Nixon arrives in Moscow and is toasting Soviet leaders at a dinner. On the same day, the CIA "Cuban contingent" arrives in Washington, D.C. from Miami: Bernard Barker, Frank Sturgis, Eugenio Martinez, and Virgilio Gonzalez. They are in D.C. purportedly to carry out a "first break-in" on the following weekend of Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate with G. Gordon Liddy, CIA's E. Howard Hunt, and CIA's James McCord. [NOTE: There is no physical evidence that any such "first break-in" ever took place. For full coverage, see The Watergate "First Break-In Dilemma. Note also that while E. Howard Hunt claims that six Cubans arrived on 22 May 1972, the referenced criminal appeals court ruling names only four.]

Tuesday, 23 May 1972

Alfred Baldwin leaves Washington, D.C. again, purportedly going to his home in Connecticut again. No reason is given for his departure.

Friday, 26 May 1972

G. Gordon Liddy, Alfred Baldwin, CIA's E. Howard Hunt, CIA's James McCord, and several Cuban CIA contract agents purportedly are engaged in a failed attempt to break into the Watergate—the "Ameritas dinner" attempt. [NOTE: There was no such attempt at a break-in See 26 May 1972: The "Ameritas Dinner" and Alfred Baldwin.]

Saturday, 27 May 1972

G. Gordon Liddy, Alfred Baldwin, CIA's E. Howard Hunt, CIA's James McCord, and several Cuban CIA contract agents purportedly are engaged in a second failed attempt to break into the Watergate. [NOTE: But there was no such "second attempt." See 27 May 1972: The "second failed attempt" and Alfred Baldwin.]

Sunday, 28 May 1972

G. Gordon Liddy, Alfred Baldwin, CIA's E. Howard Hunt, CIA's James McCord, and several Cuban CIA contract agents purportedly are engaged in a successful "first break-in" at DNC headquarters at the Watergate. According to their later claims, McCord placed two electronic bugs in the DNC headquarters during the "first break-in," and Bernard Barker purportedly had photos taken of the office of the Chairman, Lawrence O'Brien, and of documents on his desk. [NOTE: There is no physical evidence that any such "first break-in" ever took place, or the purported two earlier failed attempts on the same holiday weekend. Barker later testified that he never was in O'Brien's office at all, and a telephone company sweep found no electronic bugs in the DNC at all (see 15 June 1972). For full coverage, see The Watergate "First Break-In Dilemma and There was no "first break-in" at the Watergate. There is nothing to account for the whereabouts of Liddy, Hunt, McCord, and Baldwin over the entire Memorial Day Weekend except the conflicting and contradictory anecdotal accounts of the co-conspirators themselves, which they volunteered when "caught" inside the building on 17 June 1972, while being represented by Douglas Caddy. See also 3 September 1971 for similarities in the purported "Fielding office break-in," including personnel involved and the use of a holiday weekend, in that case the Labor Day weekend.]

AFTERWORD: Douglas Caddy will later appear in court ostensibly representing all four of the arrested CIA-connected Cubans, plus CIA's James McCord, CIA's E. Howard Hunt, and G. Gordon Liddy, who has "special CIA clearances." Later, on Wednesday, 3 January 1973, the very day that Daniel Ellsberg goes on trial, CIA's Anthony Goldin hand delivers to the Department of Justice Watergate prosecutors copies of 10 photos of E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy taken at the office of Ellsberg psychiatrist Lewis J. Fielding, with Fielding's name on the door clearly visible. These will later be turned over to the Ellsberg court, and all charges against Ellsberg will be dropped. [NOTE: See 26 August 1971, when Liddy and Hunt flew to Los Angeles to take the photos of each other.]

=========================

Now, Dan, given all the foregoing, allow me to see if I can sum up your position in the most pithy way possible, and you be sure to correct me if I have this wrong. (Drum roll, please.)

DANIEL: NIXON DID IT.

<Cymbal crash>

Ashton Gray

I hope people will READ this article ( by clicking on the hypertext of your original post of this name)

Actually, I've edited all my messages that originally pointed to that Wikipedia page to point to this thread instead, which is protected from that kind of sabotage.

If people want to compare, the Wikipedia page is here:

Watch honest Watergate "first break-in" information being re-fictionalized in slow motion before your very eyes

If you click on the "discussion" tab at the top, you can see how the little worm who has been sent in is attempting to justify his vandalism. Note that he won't reveal how he has all these federal "Official Story" materials at his fingertips, nor how he's able to sit on the article like a vulture around the clock.

Then click the "history" tab, and track his worm-like movements, slowly, slowly, leaving droppings of all the federal fictions scattered throughout.

Maybe somebody should add a note to the discussion page letting him know that the vulture is being watched by hawks above, and linking back to this thread.

Ashton Gray

Interesting timing, as there were

also problems elsewhere ....

(on a subject here, but a different place)

Coincidence? I do not happen to think so.

FWIW

DAwn

There was a security hole in the version of the forum software we were using which I am "assured" is now fixed. Lots of forums powered by Invision appeared to have suffered a similar set of problems so my informed instinct is to suggest that this has been just the vandalism of hackers and not a specific response to anything that has been posted on this forum.

That could be the case. Then again, exclusively targetting this one board would have made things awfully obvious. Certain likely suspects never make anything awfully obvious, since their entire reason for existence is to do everything six degrees removed, from a place of hiding—and then cover (or eliminate) their tracks.

(I think the old-timer's used to call that "cowardly scum," but now they go under acronyms, and have big budgets.)

Ashton Gray

Below is an article originally published 01:32, 27 April 2006 in Wikipedia by Huntley Troth. The article since has been systematically sabotaged in Wikipedia by a person calling himself "Beek." This is the original version as posted by Troth (although I've taken certain liberties with the title and added a subtitle for this forum posting):

Ashton Gray

=========================

The Watergate "First Break-In" Dilemma

Anatomy of a Hoax

by Huntley Troth

The Watergate first break-in on 28 May 1972 has been cited in testimony, media accounts, and popular works on Watergate as the pivotal event that led ultimately to the Watergate Scandal. Five men apprehended inside the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate building on 17 June 1972 implicated themselves on other counts and charges by voluntarily telling investigators about having committed a "first break-in." Congressional and law enforcement investigations into the the first break-in relied entirely on the testimony of the co-conspirators because there was no physical evidence of a first break-in, and there were no independent witnesses to the event.

Physical evidence that might or might not have corroborated the testimony was destroyed by a number of people involved in and peripheral to first break-in, including G. Gordon Liddy, Jeb Magruder, John Dean, and acting head of the FBI at the time, L. Patrick Gray, who resigned after his admission of destruction of evidence that had been taken from the safe of E. Howard Hunt.

As a result, the only information available concerning the first break-in is contained in the sworn testimony and anecdotal accounts of the participants themselves.

As Senator Howard Baker reflected during congressional Watergate inquiries, the available testimony and accounts are "in conflict and in corroboration."

Origins of the first break-in

Motive

E. Howard Hunt, one of the two admitted co-commanders, said under oath in congressional testimony that the reason for the first break-in was because G. Gordon Liddy "had information" from "a government agency" that "the Cuban government was supplying funds to the Democratic Party." Hunt said that to "investigate this report, a surreptitious entry of Democratic national headquarters at the Watergate was made." No such report from a government agency was produced in evidence, and no other physical evidence is in the record to support or corroborate this motive.

G. Gordon Liddy, Hunt's co-commander, has never cited Cuban contributions to the Democrats as a motive for a first break-in. For several decades Liddy never cited any reason for a first break-in except an oral order Liddy said he received in a private meeting with Nixon advisor Jeb Magruder, which Liddy says took place "toward the end of April" 1972. According to Liddy, Magruder said that he "wanted to hear anything that was going on inside the office of Larry O'Brien, who was the chairman of the DNC" (and who was in Miami, Florida at the time); that Magruder "wanted to be able to monitor his [O'Brien's] telephone conversations;" and that "if there was anything else lying around," that was to be photographed.

In more recent years, Liddy began to state in speeches, and in a subsequent libel suit, that the motive for a first break-in at the DNC was John Dean's desire to determine whether the Democrats possessed information embarrassing to Dean, and that the burglars, without Liddy's knowledge at the time, must have been seeking a compromising photograph of Dean's fiancé. (In contrast, E. Howard Hunt and Bernard Barker have said under oath that the participants had been instructed to photograph documents on Democratic donors and financial records.)

There is no verifiable evidence of any motive for a first break-in at the Watergate.

Date of origin for first break-in

Records that might have verified a date for the origin of the plan for a first break-in were destroyed by the principals. There has only been conflicting testimony regarding when the plan originated:

Latest date of origin

G. Gordon Liddy has sworn under oath that the first he ever heard about an entry into the Watergate was "in late April" 1972, when he was called to Jeb Magruder's office and orally asked in private if he could "get into the Watergate." Concerning that late April meeting, the following exchange occurred in a sworn deposition of G. Gordon Liddy:

• Q: Mr. Liddy, up until the time you received the order to enter the Watergate from Mr. Magruder, had the notion of an illegal entry into the Watergate been raised before?
  Liddy: No. Had not.
  

E. Howard Hunt has sworn under oath that "In April 1972, Mr. Liddy told me that we would be undertaking the Watergate operation... ."

This places the latest date for genesis of a Watergate entry plan at approximately Tuesday, 25 April 1972 or during that work week.

Earliest date of origin

Two people have said that the idea of an illegal entry into the Watergate originated earlier than late April 1972: Jeb Magruder and John Dean. Both have stated in sworn testimony that "surreptitious entry" of Watergate, among other targets, had been discussed by Liddy as early as 4 February 1972 in one of Liddy's two presentations of what has come to be known as the "GEMSTONE" plan.

In early 1972 Liddy presented for approval two versions of a plan drawn up by Liddy and E. Howard Hunt for political intelligence activities. The plans were presented in closed-door meetings in the office of Attorney General John Mitchell, with Mitchell, John Dean, and Jeb Magruder present at both Liddy presentations. These plans in their various incarnations have become known as "GEMSTONE"

G. Gordon Liddy has stated under oath that entry into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at Watergate was never part of any plan he presented for approval.

Gemstone 1

The first Liddy presentation was made on 27 January 1972 and had a budget of $1,000,000. It was rejected by John Mitchell. There was no mention of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at Watergate in that presentation. Liddy states that the proposal did provide for several "surreptitious entries" and for "electronic surveillance." Liddy's accounting of the four targets listed in the 27 January 1972 presentation for such activities were as follows:

• Muskie headquarters on K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. (later to become an optional "target of opportunity" after Muskie dropped out of Presidential contention).
  
• McGovern headquarters on Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.
  
• Democratic National Convention (not "Committee") headquarters, at a hotel in Miami yet to be determined.
  
• One optional "target of opportunity." (In a later account, Liddy said there were two optional "targets of opportunity;" Muskie had dropped out of the race by then, with any resources earmarked for Muskie thereby being converted to a second optional "target of opportunity.")
  

Gemstone 2

The second Liddy presentation was made on 4 February 1972 and had been pared down to a budget of $500,000.

Liddy has sworn under oath that Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate was not a proposed target for any "surreptitious entry" or electronic surveillance in the 4 February 1972 proposal (or in any other proposal he ever submitted). John Mitchell swore under oath that no specific targets were discussed in the 4 February 1972 meeting. John Dean and Jeb Magruder swore under oath that specific targets were discussed, but their independent accounts disagree or are uncertain on what those specific targets were.

Jeb MagruderBoth Magruder and Dean have testified that the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami was one of the targets discussed—having been named as Democratic National Convention (not "Committee") headquarters at the time. Both said they thought Democratic National Committee chairman Larry O'Brien had been brought up as a target, but it is unclear as to location—Miami or D.C. Both said they thought that Democratic National Committee headquarters had been brought up, but John Dean was unclear about where that referred to, indicating possible confusion between "Democratic National Convention," "Democratic National Committee," and the location of Committee chairman, Larry O'Brien—who was actively participating in the planning and set-up of the Democratic National Convention in Miami then, traveling "back and forth" between there and D.C.

At all relevant times offhand use of the initials "DNC" could have stood for either "Democratic National Committee"—which was headquartered in the Watergate in Washington, D.C.—or for "Democratic National Convention"—which was being planned and organized in Miami, Florida, with the Fontainebleau Hotel having been named as its location.

Only Jeb Magruder has asserted unequivocally that Democratic National Committee headquarters was named as a target in the 4 February 1972 meeting.

The earliest anecdotal and uncorroborated reference to a possible "surreptitious entry" into the Watergate is 4 February 1972.

The extreme dates for the origin of any operation related to Watergate are Friday, 4 February 1972 (Magruder testimony) and approximately Tuesday, 25 April 1972 (Liddy testimony), a period of 81 days.

Between these two extremes is 30 March 1972, date of the Key Biscayne, Florida meeting of John Mitchell, Jeb Magruder, and Fred LaRue.

Gemstone 3, the 30 March 1972 meeting

Jeb Magruder said in sworn testimony that he submitted to John Mitchell the third and final version of Hunt and Liddy's "GEMSTONE" plan—this time only in the form of a condensed memorandum—on 30 March 1972 in Key Biscayne, Florida, and got Mitchell's approval for a budget said to have been $250,000.

Magruder alone has stated that a first break-in at the Watergate was part of this plan memo.

John Mitchell swore under oath, and until he died, that there was no mention of Watergate in the memo, and that he never approved any Liddy plan memo at all.

Fred LaRue testified that Mitchell only said, "Well, we don't have to do anything on this right now." Fred LaRue also testified that while the memo Magruder had brought to the meeting referred to "electronic surveillance," LaRue could not recall any specific targets being named.

Liddy was not at the Key Biscayne meeting, but was in Washington, D.C. at the time. He has sworn under oath that he never put the Watergate as a target in any plan he submitted for approval.

Magruder—the sole source of assertion that Watergate was in the memo—has changed his own testimony about the Key Biscayne meeting several times. Under oath, Magruder said that John Mitchell approved the memo concerning a "Liddy plan" on his own. More recently, Magruder told PBS that he overheard Nixon himself on the phone to John Mitchell on 30 March 1972 ordering approval of a "Liddy plan" to break into DNC headquarters and plant wiretaps.

The Key Biscayne memo does not survive. The earlier Liddy plans do not survive. There is no physical evidence to support any of the anecdotal accounts.

Source of first break-in at the Watergate

Liddy has sworn under oath that Magruder gave to Liddy the order to "get into the Watergate" in late April 1972. Liddy has opined that Magruder was merely passing the order along from "a higher source," but no evidence exists for the order at all, or for Liddy's assumption of a different source than Magruder.

Magruder has sworn under oath that Watergate entry was an idea that originated from Liddy and Hunt, that it was included in the 4 February 1972 plan that Liddy presented to Mitchell, Magruder, and Dean, and that it was included in the Key Biscayne memo, 30 March 1972.

Summary of origin for a first break-in at the Watergate

The genesis of an illegal Watergate entry is not on any linear path; it is on a closed loop, both in time and in alleged source:

• A. It has no identifiable beginning, spanning time from 4 February 1972 (Magruder testimony) to late April 1972 (Liddy testimony), revolving around a 30 March 1972 center (Magruder testimony).
  B. It has no verifiable source, since Magruder cites Liddy/Hunt as the source (4 February 1972 GEMSTONE presentation) and Liddy cites Magruder as the source (late April 1972 meeting).
  

There are no documents and no evidence in existence that can prove or counter either conflicting claim.

Two failed attempts: Memorial Day weekend 1972

The Watergate co-conspirators who were apprehended on and after 17 June 1972 volunteered testimony about an earlier 28 May 1972 break-in they said they had been involved in at the Watergate, and also volunteered information about two previous unsuccessful attempts during Memorial Day weekend 1972. There was no evidence or external knowledge of any such earlier break-in that could have been used to prosecute them on the additional counts of illegal entry and wiretapping for any such earlier break-in without their volunteered testimony.

There is no physical evidence of a first break-in on 28 May 1972, or of any of the prior unsuccessful attempts the participants described.

Ameritas dinner break-in attempt, 26 May 1972

The Watergate co-conspirators testified that a dinner had been held in the Continental Room at the Watergate on the evening of Friday, 26 May 1972 for the purpose of a first attempt at breaking into the DNC headquarters that night through a corridor leading from the Continental Room to the elevators and staircase. They said the attempt had failed.

Briefing for the Ameritas break-in attempt

E. Howard Hunt stated that he flew to Miami prior to 22 May 1972 and briefed Bernard Barker about a planned break-in at the Watergate that would be conducted under the cover of a dinner in the Watergate's Continental Room. According to Hunt, Barker told Hunt about the existence of an inactive corporation Barker had formed "sometime before" called Ameritas that could be used to hold the dinner as a cover for the break-in. In sworn testimony, G. Gordon Liddy said "we created an organization called Ameritas" for the purpose of the break-in.

Bernard Barker said in congressional hearings that although he had been briefed on the Ameritas dinner being held, the first time he was told that the dinner was a cover for a break-in attempt was on 22 May 1972 at the Mullen public relations firm in Washington, D.C., where E. Howard Hunt worked, after Barker had flown with his men to Washington to attend the dinner. Barker went on to testify that he then briefed the other men about the break-in.

Virgilio Gonzalez, the locksmith recruited by Barker and Hunt for the break-in, said in congressional testimony that he heard nothing at all about a planned break-in until late on the night of the dinner, after the meal was over, and that Hunt told him then that that's what they were there for.

Whereabouts of G. Gordon Liddy

Liddy said in his autobiography that he was at the Ameritas dinner, providing details such as "polishing off McCord's meal," being bored by a film being shown, and finally leaving with the rest of the men (except for Hunt and Gonzalez) when told to leave the Continental Room by a guard at 10:30 p.m.

In later sworn deposition, Liddy stated under oath that he "was not at that dinner," saying further: "I was present in the area but not at that dinner."

The corridor door alarm

In his autobiography, E. Howard Hunt said that before the day of the Ameritas dinner, he and James McCord had inspected the Continental Room when it was vacant and noted "a magnetic alarm" system on the door to the corridor, but that "McCord said he was familiar with the system and would be able to defeat it when the time came."

In congressional testimony, Hunt said that he and Virgilio Gonzalez had "noticed there was...a magnetic alarm" only after he and Gonzalez became locked in the Continental Room late that night when the dinner was over.

Liddy, in his autobiography, said McCord had "discovered that the alarm was not activated until 11 p.m.," and that was "the key" to their plan, because they "expected the DNC headquarters would be vacant well before 11 p.m," allowing them to get into the access corridor before the alarm was activated. According to Liddy, that plan was thwarted when a guard looked in at 10:30 and told them they would have to leave. Liddy says that he left the Continental Room dinner then with others (see "Whereabouts of G. Gordon Liddy," above).

In deposition testimony under oath, Liddy said the alarm on the door to the corridor was supposed to be "disarmed by McCord" after it was activated at 11:00 p.m., "and that would be how we would get in." According to Liddy's sworn testimony, "everything went according to plan until it came time for Mr. McCord to disarm the alarm, and he was unable to do so."

Whereabouts of James McCord

G. Gordon Liddy said in his autobiography that James McCord "excused himself from the banquet, leaving us with one extra serving." E. Howard Hunt, in his autobiography, said that McCord never came to the dinner. In both accounts, McCord was not there to disarm the alarm.

According to Liddy, McCord had two important assignments on the first break-in: "to place a tap on the telephone in the office of Lawrence O'Brien and to place a room monitoring device in the office of Lawrence O'Brien." By 26 May 1972, date of the Ameritas dinner, Liddy had given at least $69,000 in cash to McCord for the purchase of electronic equipment.

Liddy says that on the night of the Ameritas dinner McCord was elsewhere, reporting by walkie-talkie whether the DNC headquarters was yet vacant. E. Howard Hunt says that McCord was "across the street"—room 419 at the Howard Johnson's motel. Hunt also has stated that McCord was in walkie-talkie communication with him later in the evening, after Hunt and Gonzalez hid in a closet of the Continental Room, and that McCord was reporting to Hunt on the status of the DNC headquarters in the Watergate.

The only room at the Howard Johnson's across the street that McCord had occupancy of and access to on 26 May 1972 was room 419, on the fourth floor. The DNC offices in the Watergate were on the sixth floor. Liddy said in his autobiography: "McCord told me he had rented a room at the Howard Johnson's motel across the street from the Watergate, but it was on the fourth floor. To see into the DNC offices, he'd need one higher up, which he promised to get." McCord did get room 723 in the Howard Johnson's, on the seventh floor, but not until 29 May 1972, three days after the Ameritas dinner.

Whereabouts of Alfred Baldwin

Alfred Baldwin had been hired by James McCord, and on 26 May 1972 was the "monitor," or lookout, in room 419 of the Howard Johnson's. According to both Liddy and Hunt, one of only four walkie-talkies available that night had been allocated to Baldwin for use in room 419. Another walkie-talkie had been allocated to McCord, who, according to some of the conflicting accounts, also was in room 419 with Baldwin throughout the entire dinner.

Whereabouts of E. Howard Hunt and Virgilio Gonzalez

Liddy, Hunt, and Virgilio Gonzales have said that Hunt and Gonzalez stayed behind and hid when everyone was told to leave. Liddy says that was at 10:30 p.m. Hunt said in congressional testimony that it was at 11:00 p.m.

In his autobiography Hunt said that everyone left earler, at 10:00 p.m., and that he and Gonzalez stayed behind then hoping to "proceed through the corridor before the alarm system was armed at eleven."

In congressional testimony Hunt said one reason for having stayed behind at 11:00 with Gonzalez was to open the door to the corridor leading into the office building where DNC headquarters were, but said "we noticed there was an alarm, magnetic door alarm."

Gonzalez testified under oath that after everyone had left, he emerged from the closet with Hunt and tried to open the corridor door—"the door going into the building." When he did, Gonzalez said he discovered "that it had the alarm connected," and told Hunt: "If we open that door, the alarm will go off."

In his autobiography, Hunt wrote that "the entire banquet subterfuge had been wasted" because McCord had not "neutralized the corridor alarm system as promised."

In congressional testimony, Hunt said another reason that he and Gonzalez, the locksmith, stayed behind when everyone else left at 11:00 was to re-open the locked main entry doors to the Continental Room. Hunt says in his autobiography that Gonzalez did attempt to pick the main Continental Room entrance doors, but that despite Gonzalez's "best efforts, the lock would not yield."

Virgilio Gozalez said in congressional testimony that he did not attempt to pick the lock on the main doors to the Continental Room at all because they were glass and "somebody could see me." According to Gonzalez, he never had a chance to pick that lock.

All accounts say that Hunt and Gonzalez spent the night locked in the Continental Room.

Photography equipment

In his autobiography, E. Howard Hunt emphasized the importance of photography for the first break-in. Hunt had told Bernard Barker: "the idea is to photograph the list of contributors the Democrats are required to keep," saying, "the team's prime function...was photography," and that "the photography mission was paramount."

Bernard Barker told Congressional investigators that his "only job" on the first break-in was to "search for documents to be photographed" by Eugenio Martinez.

Hunt's own detailed account of the Ameritas dinner, where the break-in team was gathered for the purposes of getting access to the DNC offices after hours, does not mention the photography equipment. In a later account of a second failed attempt at the first break-in (see Second break-in attempt, night of 27–28 May 1972), Hunt describes the Cubans having "a suitcase" to carry the photo equipment and lights in, plus "a hatbox" to carry a Polaroid camera and film, but neither Hunt, nor any of the other participants who have described the Ameritas dinner, mention anything about the presence of photography equipment for the break-in being at the dinner.

Summary of Ameritas Dinner

Other than the testimony of the participants, there is no evidence to support or verify any of the accounts of the events before, during, or after the Ameritas dinner on the night of Friday, 26 May 1972.

McGovern headquarters night of 26–27 May 1972

Alfred Baldwin stated under oath in congressional testimony that around 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning of 27 May 1972—during the same night as the Ameritas dinner break-in attempt at the Watergate—he, Liddy, McCord, and other unnamed Watergate co-conspirators were at McGovern headquarters. In his testimony, Baldwin said that he rode around in a car with James McCord and G. Gordon Liddy for "over a half hour," McCord having been "in communication over a walkie-talkie unit with some other individuals."

Baldwin is detailed in his account, making reference to McCord having been looking for a "yellow volkswagon" with a "boy" in it—Thomas Gregory, one of Hunt's operatives working on the inside at McGovern headquarters—before they pulled up next to "a light colored car" from which Liddy emerged. According to Baldwin, Liddy got into the car with McCord and Baldwin. Baldwin says that after riding around for over a half an hour in discussion about the prospects of getting into McGovern headquarters, Liddy said, "We'll abort the mission."

Baldwin also testified that he had been introduced by McCord to G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt only hours earlier, during the afternoon of 26 May 1972, prior to the Ameritas dinner, in room 419 of the Howard Johnson's motel.

G. Gordon Liddy swore in deposition testimony, and wrote in his autobiography, that he did not meet Alfred Baldwin at all until four days later, on 31 May 1972, in what Liddy described as the "observation post" room at the Howard Johnson's motel across Virginia Avenue from the Watergate.

Second break-in attempt, night of 27–28 May 1972

Several of the co-conspirators have said that there was a failed second attempt at a first break-in on the night of Saturday, 27 May 1972, continuing into the early morning hours of Sunday, 28 May 1972. The two most detailed accounts come from the co-commanders, Liddy and Hunt, whose accounts not only contradict each other, but expose other contradictions and omissions.

According to Hunt, on the evening of Saturday, 27 May 1972, he had Bernard Barker and Eugenio Martinez (a.k.a. Rolando) come to the room that Hunt and Liddy were staying in at the Watergate Hotel. Hunt says he had them set up the "lights and photography equipment," and simulate photographing documents while he watched them. He then briefed them again on the importance of photographing Democratic "account books, contributor lists, that sort of thing." They then packed the photography equipment and lights into a suitcase to carry with them in the new break-in attempt, along with a hatbox carrying a Polaroid camera and film.

No such photography dry-run had been done prior to the previous night's Ameritas dinner.

Both Hunt and Liddy say in their respective accounts that later on the evening of 27 May 1972, Barker, Martinez, Gonzales, and Frank Sturgis went to the garage-level entrance to the stairway, where McCord had "taped the locks," and there met up with McCord. Hunt and Liddy, though, give conflicting accounts about when during the night this is supposed to have occurred.

Hunt has said that there was a "guard change at eight o'clock," after which McCord had taped the locks. He then states that "a little after ten o'clock" word came from McCord—in room 419 of the Howard Johnson's—that the DNC headquarters were empty, so the Cubans left then to meet McCord in the garage.

In Liddy's account, the failed break-in attempt happened two hours later. According to Liddy, there was not a "guard change" at eight o'clock, but "a building inspection." According to Liddy, they all were waiting for hours after that for word that the DNC headquarters were empty, which didn't come until "too close to the midnight shift change and building inspection" for Liddy's comfort, so they "waited until that was accomplished and sent in the team."

Hunt and Liddy do agree that the Cubans met up with McCord at the garage-level entrance and climbed six flights of stairs to the DNC headquarters, where Gonzalez attempted for some time without success to pick the lock on the main door.

Gonzalez had been recruited for the job because he was a locksmith. On or about Tuesday, 23 May 1972, Gonzalez had been taken overtly up to the sixth floor of the Watergate by McCord to view the entrance to DNC headquarters, so Gonzalez had gotten to see the actual DNC lock four days before this second break-in attempt. Hunt states in his autobiography that on Wednesday, 24 May 1972, he had gone up "to the glass doors of DNC headquarters" and had "pressed a lump of plasteline against the door lock." With it, Hunt says he "made a plaster cast from which Virgilio Gonzalez was to be able to determine the kind of lock-picking devices he would need for the entry."

Plasteline is a non-hardening clay. Pressing plasteline into a lock generally results in a lock filled with plasteline, not an impression of the key for the lock. If Hunt did end up with something from which a plaster cast could have been made—which would have required the intermediate step of a rubber mold—he would have had a plaster casting of the key needed to unlock the door.

Given that Hunt says that he made the plasteline impression on Wednesday, 24 May 1972, the locksmith Virgilio Gonzalez would have had a model of the key to DNC headquarters for two days before the Ameritas dinner on the night of 26 May, and three days before the 27 May second attempt.

Hunt and Liddy provide different accounts of how they learned of the lockpicking failure:

Hunt says that he and Liddy had waited in their "command post" room at the Watergate Hotel (not room 419 of the Howard Johnson's), getting reports by walkie-talkie of the men's progress to DNC headquarters, then getting a report that Gonzalez was working on the lock. Hunt says that about an hour passed after that, when "Barker came on the air to report that Gonzalez was unable to pick the lock" because he "doesn't have the right tools." In Hunt's account, Liddy then ordered the men over walkie-talkie to leave the building and report back to the "command post."

Liddy says that he and Hunt waited to "learn by radio" that the attempt had been successful, but that no radio report came. Instead, he says, the men merely showed back up at the "command post" in "about forty-five minutes," and that there, in person, Barker reported Gonzalez's failure to pick the lock. Liddy goes so far as to say that he was concerned enough about the lock having been damaged by Gonzalez that he took the risk of going up the elevator to the DNC headquarters himself and inspecting it while Hunt and the others waited in the "command post." Liddy says the lock had "marks of tampering," but they "weren't obvious," so he returned to the room.

Liddy goes on to say that he "overrode Hunt's objections and ordered Gonzalez to return to Miami the following morning for the correct tools." Hunt says that he, not Liddy, "excoriated" Barker and Gonzalez, and told Barker that he "wanted Villo [Gonzalez] to return to Miami in the morning, pick up whatever tools he might need and return by nightfall."

In congressional testimony, Hunt was asked if there had been a second unsuccessful break-in attempt after the Ameritas dinner. Hunt replied under oath:

"I recall something about that, but it seems to me that was more in the nature of a familiarization tour, that McCord took not more than one or two of the men up there and walked them down [sic] to the sixth floor to show them the actual door. Then they simply got back into the elevator. It was simply a familiarizing with the operational problem of the two glass doors that opened into the Democratic National headquarters."

Summary of second failed break-in attempt

Other than the testimony of the co-conspirators, there is no evidence to support or verify any of the accounts of a second break-in attempt on the night of Saturday, 27 May 1972.

The first break-in, 28 May 1972

According to the volunteered confessions of the principals, a successful break-in of the DNC headquarters in the Watergate actually took place late in the evening of 28 May 1972.

Two purposes

According to G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, there were two primary missions for a first break-in of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate on the night of 28 May 1972.

Liddy said in sworn deposition: "There were two things they were to do. One was the telephone of Larry O'Brien, wiretap, and the other was a room monitoring device of Larry O'Brien's office."

Hunt said in his autobiography that "photography had been the priority mission," and that "the photography mission was paramount." Bernard Barker said in congressional testimony that his "only job" on the first break-in was to "search for documents to be photographed" by Eugenio Martinez, namely "documents that would involve contributions of a national and foreign nature to the Democratic campaign, especially to Senator McGovern, and also, possibly to Senator Kennedy," and in particular any contributions from "the foreign government that now exists on the island of Cuba."

Events of 28 May 1972

Hunt says that on the evening of Sunday, 28 May 1972, he and Liddy met in the room at the Watergate hotel that Hunt and Liddy were using as a command post.

Liddy said in his autobiography, also, that he had joined Hunt in the command post at the Watergate on 28 May 1972, and was there throughout, but when asked in sworn testimony where he was during the first break-in, Liddy said "it is not so clear to me exactly where I was at what time, but I was in the area."

According to Hunt, McCord came from "the Listening Post"—room 419 of the Howard Johnson's across the street—to report that there had been "little activity" in the Democratic headquarters that day. Hunt says, "the blinds had been conveniently raised, permitting observation from the Listening Post, and as matters stood, only one employee was in the sixth-floor offices" of the DNC. Liddy, though, has said that "to see into the DNC offices", a room was needed on a higher floor of the Howard Johnson's than room 419, and such a room was not rented by McCord until the following day, 29 May 1972, when records show that McCord rented room 723.

Still, Hunt says that McCord took two walkie-talkies and "left for the Listening Post to continue observing the sixth-floor target windows," and that shortly thereafter Hunt and Liddy were joined by Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, Frank Sturgis, and Virgilio Gonzalez.

Liddy says that around 9:45 p.m. word came from McCord that the DNC offices were empty. At around 11:00 p.m. Liddy and Hunt say they then sent the four men who were with them to the Watergate garage area to meet McCord, who earlier had taped the locks.

In Hunt's account, the men climbed the stairs to the sixth floor, and within 15 minutes it was reported by Bernard Barker over the walkie-talkies that Gonzalez had successfully picked the lock on the main door of the DNC. "Shortly after midnight," says Hunt, Barker reported that the team was leaving the Watergate.

According to Liddy, when the men returned to the command post room, Barker had "two rolls of 36-exposure 35-mm film he'd expended on material from O'Brien's desk, along with Polaroid shots of the desk and office." Hunt says Barker reported having "found on Lawrence O'Brien's desk a pile of correspondence," which Barker and Martinez "had photographed while McCord worked elsewhere in the office suite."

In congressional testimony, under oath, Bernard Barker said that the men never were in Larry O'Brien's office at all during the 28 May 1972 first break-in, giving that as the reason in his testimony for the later break-in on 17 June 1972 during which the men were arrested.

James McCord said in congressional testimony that during the first break-in he had placed a bug on Larry O'Brien's phone.

Polaroid photos of Lawrence O'Brien's office

G. Gordon Liddy has stated in his biography and in sworn testimony that on Monday, 29 May (Memorial Day) 1972, he delivered to Jeb Magruder Polaroid photographs of the interior of the Watergate office of Democratic National Committee Chairman Lawrence O'Brien. Liddy says that the Polaroids had been taken by Bernard Barker on the night before, 28 May 1972, during a "successful entry" into the DNC offices at the Watergate:

"On Monday morning, 29 May, I reported to Magruder the successful entry into Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate. For proof, I showed him Polaroid photographs of the interior of Larry O'Brien's office, taken by Bernard Barker."

Bernard Barker testified in congressional hearings that he never was in Lawrence O'Brien's office during the first break-in, stating that the burglars never "came to the office of the Chairman" until the "second entry" on 17 June 1972, the night the burglars were apprehended.

The first break-in bugs

G. Gordon Liddy had recruited James McCord as an electronics expert because McCord had "a background as a tech in the Central Intelligence Agency" and also had a background "in the FBI."

McCord testified in congressional hearings that all instructions and priorities for the first break-in came to him from Liddy, and that in the first break-in the "priorities of the installation were first of all, Mr. O'Brien's offices... ."

Liddy later testified in a sworn deposition that during the first break-in, McCord had been instructed to place only two electronic bugs: "to place a tap on the telephone in the office of Lawrence O'Brien and to place a room monitoring device in the office of Lawrence O'Brien. ...There were two things they were to do. One was the telephone of Larry O'Brien, wiretap, and the other was a room monitoring device of Larry O'Brien's office."

McCord stated under oath in congressional hearings that during the first break-in, acting on Liddy's instructions, he had placed one bug in a phone extension "that was identified as Mr. O'Brien's," and a second phone bug on "a telephone that belonged to Mr. Spencer Oliver" (Chairman of the Association of Democratic State Chairmen).

Liddy said in his autobiography that on 5 June 1972 he and McCord discussed problems with a "room monitoring device" that McCord had planted. According to Liddy, this conversation between him and McCord about how to fix problems with a "room monitoring" bug is what led to a second break-in.

McCord said in congressional testimony that the reason a second break-in was planned was that Liddy wanted a problem with one of the phone bugs fixed, and also wanted "another device installed...a room bug as opposed to a device on a telephone installed in Mr. O'Brien's office... ."

According to Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin in their book Silent Coup, just a day or two before the break-in on the night of 16–17 June 1972—where the burglars actually were caught with bugging devices in their possession—the telephone company swept the DNC phones for bugs and found none at all.

Shortly after the burglars were caught on the morning of 17 June 1972, the police and the FBI also made sweeps of the DNC headquarters and also found no bugs at all.

The only independent evidence regarding bugs allegedly planted during a purported first break-in on 28 May 1972 is actually strong evidence that no bugs ever had been planted at all.

Wiretap phone logs

Several people have testified to the existence of logs of conversations from bugs purportedly planted in the DNC on the first break-in.

G. Gordon Liddy said that he was the recipient of all written records of the bugs, and said in sworn testimony: "I wasn't getting any tapes, nor was I getting transcriptions of anything. I was getting logs. ...And the stuff was just of no use at all."

James McCord was responsible for passing the written records from Alfred Baldwin—who was making the records using an electric typewriter—to Liddy. James McCord said in congressional testimony that the records he received were not just logs, as Liddy reported. McCord said the records had "a summary of what was said."

Alfred Baldwin was questioned under oath in congressional hearings about what he had typed up while monitoring the bugs:

• Senator Ervin: The information you got while you were at the Howard Johnson [across] from the Democratic headquarters, what form was it in when you gave it to Mr. McCord?
  Alfred Baldwin: The initial day, the first day that I recorded the conversations was on a yellow sheet. On Memorial Day...when he [McCord] returned to the room he brought an electric typewriter. He instructed me in the upper left-hand corner to print—or by typewriter...the date, the page, and then proceed down into the body and in chronological order put the time and then the contents of the conversation... .
  Senator Ervin: And you typed a summary of the conversations you overheard?
  Alfred Baldwin: Well, they weren't exactly a summary. I would say almost verbatim, Senator.
  

Sally Harmony was G. Gordon Liddy's secretary. She testified in Congress that she had typed up logs of telephone conversations G. Gordon Liddy had supplied to her, and that she typed them on special stationery Liddy also had supplied with the word "GEMSTONE" printed across the top in color.

G. Gordon Liddy later admitted in sworn testimony that what he had supplied to Ms. Harmony was actually his own dictation, which Liddy claims he did from what Baldwin had produced, saying, "On Monday, 5 June [1972], I dictated from the typed logs to Sally Harmony...editing as I went along."

Summary of first break-in

The break-in of 17 June 1972 in which Bernard Barker, Vergilio Gonzales, Eugenio Martinez, Frank Sturgis, and James McCord were apprehended inside the DNC headquarters ostensibly was undertaken to correct problems and failings of the first break-in, covered in detail above.

There is a record of room 419 in the Howard Johnson's motel having been rented by James McCord, but it had been rented 21 days earlier than the Memorial Day weekend, on 5 May 1972. Since McCord didn't rent room 723 until 29 May 1972, the day after the purported successful break-in of 28 May 1972, he and Baldwin would have to have moved the receiving equipment the co-conspirators say McCord earlier had installed in room 419 up to room 723 and reinstalled it there on the very day after the purported first break-in.

There is a record of the Continental Room having been used for an Ameritas dinner on the night of 26 May 1972, and witnesses to at least some of the Cuban team having been there, but there is no surviving record of who was actually in attendance.

The "command post" room in the Watergate hotel had been rented by a person or persons unknown using counterfeit ID that the CIA had created and supplied to E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy about ten months earlier, on 23 July 1971 and 20 August 1971 respectively.

There is no physical evidence to account for the whereabouts or activities of E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, James McCord, or Alfred Baldwin for Memorial Day weekend 1972, only their own testimony and anecdotal accounts.

Perhaps the best possible summary of the first break-in is provided by former FBI agent Anthony Ulasewicz. After leaving the FBI, Ulasewicz had worked for Jack Caulfield, whose "Operation Sandwedge" proposal of 1971 was the forerunner to the "GEMSTONE" plan of Liddy and Hunt. Ulasewicz wrote, "I assumed the break-in at the DNC had been orchestrated with an army in order to cover the real purpose of the effort."

References

1. Hunt, E. Howard Undercover, Memoirs of an American Secret Agent Berkely ISBN 399-11446-7
   
2. Judiciary Committee Impeachment Hearings, 93rd Congress Book I, Events Prior to the Watergate Break-in U.S. Government Printing Office 1974
   
3. Senator Howard Baker during Fred LaRue testimony, July 18–19 1973, 6 SSC 2280–82, 2344
   
4. Alfred Baldwin testimony, May 24, 1973; 1 SSC 399–401, 410–11
   
5. Bernard Barker testimony, May 11, 1973; 165–66, 196–97 SSC Executive Session
   
6. Bernard Barker testimony, May 24, 1973; 1 SSC 371, 377
   
7. Virgilio Gonzalez testimony, December 10, 1973; 9–11 SSC Executive Session
   
8. Sally Harmony testimony, June 5, 1973; 2 SSC 461, 467
   
9. E. Howard Hunt testimony, September 24-25, 1973; 9 SSC 3683–84, 3688, 3708, 3710–11, 3764, 3785–86, 3792
   
10. E. Howard Hunt testimony, December 17, 1973; 13–15 Executive Session
    
11. Fred LaRue testimony, July 18-19, 1973; 6 SSC 2280–82, 2284, 2344
    
12. Fred LaRue testimony, April 18, 1973; 7–12 Watergate Grand Jury
    
13. Jeb Magruder testimony, June 14, 1973; 2 SSC 787-90, 793–97, 800
    
14. Jeb Magruder testimony, May 2, 1973; 22-25 Watergate Grand Jury
    
15. James McCord testimony, May 18, 1973; 1 SSC 128, 156–57, 169–70, 184–85, 195, 232–33
    
16. Judiciary Committee Impeachment Hearings, 93rd Congress Book II, Events Following the Watergate Break-in U.S. Government Printing Offlce 1974
    
17. Robert Mardian testimony, May 24 1973, 6 SSC 2357–63
    
18. Liddy, G. Gordon Will, the Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy St. Martin's ISBN 0-312-92412-7
    
19. Liddy, G. Gordon Deposition in Dean v. Liddy et al., U.S. District Court D.C. 92-1807
    
20. "New Shocks—and More to Come" (May 7, 1973) Time
    
21. "Victory How Sweet It Is!" The Liddy Letter
    

========================

Nixon was not an idol to (his own) "elite fascist guard," but instead (seen by them as) a mere unsophisticated rube? Contending that is letting Nixon off the hook, as is contending he "was merely a puppet whose wims and idiosyncracies were becoming a liability to their secret teams real agenda."

Richard Nixon on May 20, 1972—the day he was leaving for Moscow, one week before the purported "first break-in" at the Watergate over Memorial Day weekend 1972 (while Nixon was still overseas):

• “The performance in the psychological warfare field is nothing short of disgraceful. The mountain has labored for seven weeks and when it finally produced, it produced not much more than a mouse. Or to put it more honestly, it produced a rat.
  “We finally have a program now under way but it totally lacks imagination and I have no confidence whatever that the bureaucracy will carry it out. I do not simply blame (Richard) Helms and the CIA. After all, they do not support my policies because they basically are for the most part Ivy League and Georgetown society oriented.”
  —Richard Nixon excerpted from a letter of 20 May 1972 to Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig
  

When I snap my fingers, you will be fully awake: <SNAP!>

Ashton Gray

I would like for each of them to say IN 100 WORDS OR LESS what this is all about.

Well, Jack, I normally don't honor requests to cater to the TV Guide blurb crowd on a subject that the perpetrators have poured millions of words and millions of dollars into in order to sell their fraud for 30+ years, but because you're a fellow ad copy man, I'm going to do you this one favor:

Tonight's episode: There was no "first break-in" at the Watergate. It was a massive hoax to cover up the actual whereabout and activities of E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, James McCord, and Alfred Baldwin Memorial Day weekend 1972. I believe that Douglas Caddy knows this fully, and helped with the cover-up, which is the real cover-up of Watergate.

Sixty-six words. Pffft! Walk in the park.

Now let's see if Mr. Caddy will honor your request, too.

I still agree with Mr. Caddy's perception of internet provocateurs.

I'll agree with you that he's one of the best experts I've ever encountered.

Now, Jack, in exchange for my accommodating your request: Describe the universe and give two examples.

Ashton Gray

Ashton is NOT claiming Nixon is "irrelevent." Hardly!!

Hi Dawn.

In response to several attempts by Pat Speer to utterly derail relevant discussion in the Alfred Baldwin thread and take it off topic, and in the context of a brief response on the subject of Nixon I foolishly gave to one of his off-topic rants, I closed what I had said with "Nixon is essentially irrelevant otherwise to me," and even that was said in the context of what I was trying to find out specifically from Mr. Baldwin, in a thread curiously entitled not "Richard Nixon," but "Alfred Baldwin." That statement, of course, has been latched onto like hyenas on a carcass, and bastardized into "Nixon is irrelevant" so another straw man can be kicked to death.

My 'umble suggestion would be don't waste your time trying to field such nonsense. If they could get it, they would have gotten it the first time.

I do believe Ashton is, in fact, quite liberal, as is Mr. Caddy.

<A-hem> Um...

I find all such labeling and pigeon-holing and categorizing to be substitutes at worst and filters at best for thinking. My lowest marks are as "team player." I don't align myself with any pre-digested set of thoughts or positions on any issue, ever. I don't subscribe to anything that ends in "-ism."

Anybody trying to interpret anything I do against such amorphous concepts may as well be trying to tack down some quicksilver. I never bother to find out what anybody's "politics" are, because I never consider it a good enough excuse for anything.

Ashton is asking questions. But receiving no reply, except requests for his banishment.

Historically, isn't that, or burning at the stake, the ordinarily prescribed response?

Apparently this form of posting:- asking questions- is no longer permitted.

Depends on what questions you're asking. Oh, yeah: and whether you remember when you're speaking to royalty that they can't be held accountable.

I find it tragic that all the criticism he is receiving is from people who either refuse to read the posts or insist that the time line is HIS. (The "CIA/remote viewing/ Scientolgy" etc. timeline that he LINKED here.)

Next, I'll probably have El Niño pinned on me.

Ashton Gray

Dan, I realize you're busy, so I won't take much of your time, but you've said a few things I'd like to respond to.

But when the chief interrogator asserts that Richard M. Nixon was "irrelevant" in the CIA's nefarious plans for national and world domination, very severe questions are raised in my mind.

Hyperbole is so overarching. To paraphrase a famous personage, "I'm only here as an individual, not as a chief interrogator." I have questions I'm trying to get straight answers to. If they benefit others, great. Nobody else is being prevented from asking their own questions.

I've never postulated CIA "nefarious plans for national and world domination." I'm going toward where the compass points. If it pointed to the Boy Scouts, I'd be calling for some merit badges to be taken away.

And I can't help but think that the extraordinary animosity towards Mr. Caddy is at best misplaced. Has he not sought to make amends?

It's clear you haven't read my posts. In the most recent thread I started in the Watergate forum, Who Was Douglas Caddy Representing, and When, I said in the first message, and I stand by, the following:

• ASHTON GRAY:
  Despite some allegations that have been made in this forum, I don't ask the questions to hound or needle. I have no personal axe to grind with Mr. Caddy; I don't know him. What I know is what's in the record, and the record is bedlam. The record is at war with itself—which is oddity at high water, since the record is made by people who all purport to tell the same thing. Mr. Caddy is one of the narrators, and is the only one of them participating here who can answer the questions.
  

Rumors of my animosity have been greatly exaggerated.

The "CIA-did-it" theory of Watergate was originally promoted by John Ehrlichman (in his pseudo-fictional The Company, a book in which a US President is blackmailed by a DCI)

I know all about the fully, blatantly, easily discreditable "blame-it-on-the-CIA-why-don't-you" packages that have been floated into the pond to get flocks flocking to them only to be shot down in droves or fly away in dejected disappointment. Do you think the use of decoys is something new?

I frankly believe that anyone who is willing to let Nixon off the hook...

Leave Nixon on the hook. We got plenty of hooks. There's no hook shortage if that's what you're worried about.

...for what still clearly seems to have been a White House operation...

<DING><DING><DING> Back up the truck. What still "clearly seems" that way? Are you referring to a purported "first break-in"? But there was no "first break-in" at all. I'm willing to bet you that after only a cursory examination of the articles I linked to above, you'll be walking away muttering to yourself: "You mean I actually fell for that crap for 30+ years"?

There's no slight intended in that. I know that's how I felt.

That doesn't even reach to "Whodunnit." That's way, way too far down a false path. Forget about whodunnit: back the truck allll the way up and just ask yourself "Was it done at all?" Start there.

And either way, I think it's legitimate to ask questions as to the motivations and "theorizing" of those who are doing so.

I'm on the record of being very reluctant to go off "theorizing," even when pressed. Every time I've succumbed to the temptation I've said very clearly and unequivocally those were only my own personal opinions, and, really, they are entirely irrelevant and unimportant.

What is relevant and very important indeed are the countless holes in the anecdotal, unevidenced claims of the co-conspirators themselves when those are held up to the light of actual scrutiny. And I'll tell you as I've told anybody who's asked: do not, under any circustances, take my word for it: go look at the fully cited comparisons yourself. Draw your own conclusions.

Then tell me what they are. But don't waste your breath or my time if you haven't at least looked.

In Mr. Caddy's case, I can't help but wonder whether the animosity...

Oh, brother...

Ashton Gray

Greetings, Mr. Caddy.

I considered that it would be unseemly of me to respond directly or immediately to your sensationalistic National Enquirer quality smear campaign that you've been running on me in two forums, and I also had more important things to do, one of them being to pose to you the 52 questions related to material discrepancies in the record that sit awaiting your response in the thread Who was Douglas Caddy Representing, and When?

Having completed that rather exhaustive research project, and while awaiting word from the people whose jobs you have appointed yourself to do in managing these boards, I'm now going to respond to your kangaroo court accusations against me.

In accordance with the instructions of Administrator Andy Walker in his June 24, 2006 posting in the Kennedy Assassination thread under the topic of Infiltrators, Saboteurs and Fifth-Columnists, I have used the Report facility to file a number of violations of Board Guidelines by Mr. Ashton Gray.

That would be "alleged violations," Mr. Caddy. You are not judge, jury, and Lord High Executioner. I'm going to skip entirely over your generalized, broad-stroke, meritless, and entirely abusive accusations, and go directly to the pitiable handful of actual cites you brought to build your case for summary excommunication.

From the Alfred Baldwin thread on Watergate:

Why not give the link, Mr. Caddy, so anyone with a modicum of reasonable probity can see the object of your strident complaints in context? Here, I'll help you out: Alfred Baldwin

Less than a month after his joined the Forum membership, Mr. Ashton in his posting in the Alfred Baldwin thread of Watergate wrote on June 21, 2006 at 05:04 AM: "Well, you’ve made your record. Just keep sticking to your story, Mr. Baldwin. I’m walking away for now. I’ve had all of your brand of truth I can take at the moment without puking on the keyboard."

Apparently I am accused of experiencing nausea. I plead guilty.

The relevant contextual information you omitted by truckloads, Mr. Caddy, is the tens of thousands of words of extraordinarily detailed foundational research I had compiled during that month and posted in the Watergate forum exposing the fact that there was no "first break-in" at the Watergate at all, and the lengths to which I subsequently had gone in the Alfred Baldwin thread, relevant to the articles I had posted, to attempt to elicit from Mr. Baldwin responsive answers to the countless troubling conflicts in the record relative to his participation—or purported participation—in a "first break-in" and its aftermath.

For those of sufficient integrity and fairness who would like to see just how much effort I had brought to bear on the issues of merit, I invite them to read the thread I started in the Watergate forum, There was no "first break-in" at the Watergate", and the five foundational articles I had submitted. For easy reference here, those include:

26 May 1972: The "Ameritas Dinner" and Alfred Baldwin

27 May 1972: The "second failed attempt" and Alfred Baldwin

G. Gordon Liddy and the Phantom Polaroids

Liddy, McCord, and the Phantom Watergate "Bugs"

Liddy, Baldwin, and the Phantom Phone Logs

I should point out here for the record that although all of those articles have been sitting there in the Watergate forum for nearly a month now, and although they go directly to the heart of Mr. Baldwin's participation, and to your own representation of the men involved, neither you nor Mr. Baldwin have posted a single response to the thoroughly researched articles or to the startling conflicts in the record that are carfully itemized and cited in those articles. You both have avoided them entirely.

This is curious, since in sum they build a compelling and persuasive case that a massive fraud was perpetrated in 1972 and 1973 upon the courts, Congress, and the people of the United States.

What you also omit from your attempted smear, Mr. Caddy, is that prior to my celebrated allusion to my own incipient nausea, I had attempted repeatedly in good faith, in the Alfred Baldwin thread, to elicit from Mr. Baldwin even one straight answer to numerous troubling questions that arise out of the articles cited above, including, but by no means limited to, his preposterous claim, under oath in Congressional testimony, to have typed "almost verbatim" transcripts of telphone conversations on a stock electric typewriter in real time, making onionskin carbon copies. As I have pointed out repeatedly, it is patently impossible, as anyone easily can put to the test themselves with any typist they care to chose anywhere on Earth. His superhuman feat has never been duplicated. It is not a repeatable event. Yet you tacitly endorse such lunacy yourself in support of Mr. Baldwin—on no other grounds than his celebrity, apparently.

You also omit that my complaints of personal digestive indisposition came only at the end of a series of three lengthy posts I had made citing fact after fact after fact from the record related to Mr. Baldwin that could not possibly be true because of irreconcilable conflicts in that record, to which he never once responded in any way, although he had every opportunity to do so. It's in my record, Mr. Caddy. And obviously you read every bit of it very carefully. And obviously you or he could have responded in many ways that could have helped to elucidate, to clarify, to clear up the inconsistencies, since he was there, and since you represented seven of his co-conspirators in respect to the same exact purported activities over Memorial Day weekend.

And yet you both sat as silent as stumps. You both have evaded any and all material and responsive reply to even a single one of the now nearly countless discrepencies in your stories and accounts.

And what do you do? You extract from all of my good faith and exhaustively researched efforts two sentences about my dyspepsia as a result of running into constant stonewalling and evasion, and use that to attempt to have me summarily executed.

But do go on with your hatchet job:

That same day, on June 21, 2006 at 6:06 P.M., Mr. Ashton wrote in the Alfred Baldwin thread:

"I’m done, Mr. Baldwin. You made your record. I’ve made mine. I’m done with you, with your soul-less, conscienceless, lying co-conspirators, and with the entire evil hoax."

That's correct. And that says not a single thing about Mr. Baldwin. Every one of the adjectives that you went to so much trouble to attempt to have me beheaded with modify the noun "co-conspirators." None of those co-conpirators are members of this forum. All of them put themselves into the category of celebrity, even if infamous, and I have every right in the world to express my opinion about them. And my opinion is that they are soul-less, conscienceless, and lying, and that they perpetrated a massive hoax on the world, and that it was, in fact, evil indeed.

Would you like to have my rights to such opinions and expressions thereof eradicated on the sole basis of your own inability to identify the subject of a sentence and its modifiers? And does this constitute your whole case, Mr. Caddy? That's a pretty interesting foundation for a lawyer to attempt to mount a case for expulsion on. I wonder why you would go to such disingenuous lengths.

But please go on. Perhaps you have something with more substance somewhere:

In his posting on the Alfred Baldwin thread, Mr. Ashton wrote on June 22 at 11:51

P.M.: "1. Hunt and Liddy both lied. 2. You lied. 3. All three of you lied."

Let's see why you carefully omitted the relevant context of the quote. Here it is:

• ASHTON GRAY:
  So, referring you back to your testimony about when and under what circumstances you met Liddy and Hunt, and comparing your 100% honest-and-true testimony (your claim) to their melodramatic legends, I come again—as I did with Mr. Caddy and his "Mrs. Barker phone call" claims to the Washington Post— to only three possibilities that I can see:
  1. Hunt and Liddy both lied.
  2. You lied.
  3. All three of you lied.
  

Anyone with even a small smear of integrity can see, Mr. Caddy, that I was expressing only three possibilities that I could see in attempting to reconcile hopeless conflicting testimony in the record.

Those statements are inclusive, not exclusive, Mr. Caddy, as I'm quite certain that you, as a lawyer, understand, and understood at all relevant times, even when you pulled what you quoted out of context and used it in your attemp to discredit me.

There was, and is, nothing to prevent anyone from answering with a fourth or fifth or sixth possibility, but comparing the testimony I had compared leading up to the statement, I, personally saw, and still see, only those three possibilities.

If the three possibilities I opined about bothered you so much, why didn't you simply answer my message and supply another more benign explanation?

I believe it's because you don't have any other to supply. Do you? If so, post it. If not, let's move on to your other accusations against me:

From the Douglas Caddy, Hunt, Liddy, Mullen and the CIA thread on Watergate:

Mr. Ashton in his posting on June 16, 2006 at 10:46 AM, falsely accused me of having a conversation with my client that never took place. It is a complete fabrication by Mr. Ashton, who wrote:

"Surely you'll recall that you couldn't hold a conversation after June 13, 1971 in Washington, D.C. that wasn't 'almost entirely consumed with' talk about the Pentagon Papers and Daniel Ellsberg. Right?

"And surely, surely you'd recall if you, Barker, and Hunt discussed the Pentagon Papers and Daniel Ellsberg just a couple of months before Hunt and Barker were involved in the Fielding op that gave Ellsberg his 'get out of jail free' card. Right? I mean, Hunt was your client at the time."

I've had three disinterested and pretty intelligent friends look at this, Mr. Caddy, in an attempt to help me figure out just what the hell your complaint is, and nobody can come up with the foggiest idea what you're going on about.

I can't figure out if this is another reading skills hurdle, or just utter desperation on your part to smear me in any way you can manufacture, but there's no fabrication of anything anywhere in my speculative questions concerning the pervasiveness of discussion of the Pentagon Papers in Washington, D.C. around the time you claim to have met Bernard Barker, and its likely relevance to what you, Hunt, and Barker might have discussed, depending on whether your meeting with them was pre-June 13 or post-June 13 1971.

So your allegation is baseless and meritless. Moving on:

Mr. Ashton in his posting of June 16, 2006 at 6:56 PM wrote of myself:

"1) Hunt Lied, 2)You lied, 3)You both lied.."

Using the same trick of disingenuously ripping something out of context doesn't work any better the second time, Mr. Caddy.

So, again, here's the relevant context:

• ASHTON GRAY
  Well, if what you told the Washington Post that same day is true, Mr. Caddy, Mrs. Barker's call to you had to have come before Hunt ever even got to your apartment. And if that's the case, then Hunt's whole little anecdote about leaving one phone at his White House office to go to another phone at his Mullen office just to call to Mrs. Barker, and her dramatic little shriek, is just complete fiction. Just really, really bad, hack-writer spy fiction. It's just embarrassing! It's one of his trashy little spy novels passed off as "fact."
  So since we're just chatting candidly and casually here, tete-a-tete, Mr. Caddy, I have to tell you that I can see only three possibilities:
  1) Hunt lied.
  2) You lied.
  3) You both lied.
  Before the tour continues, I sure would like to have that one deadly booby trap cleared off the path.
  

So here, again, Mr. Caddy, I presented in candor to you the only three possibilities that I, personally, could see in respect of the irresolvable contraditions between your accounts of the purported phone call versus Mr. Hunt's horribly conflicting accounts—which you, curiously, have wholeheartedly embraced and endorsed.

And here, again, you took the three possibilities I proposed out of their context and "quoted" them in what you thought would be the most damaging—even if dishonest—way possible.

Yet those still are the only three possibilities I see, and so far, you have not responded at all to the conflicts in the record, or supplied any other more benign explanation.

Since by your omission of the correct context you've opened the door to that, let's have people be able to review that full message I posted, too. It's in the thread Douglas Caddy, Hunt, Liddy, Mullen, and the CIA, the message at the top of the second page of that thread. I recommend that everyone here read it carefully and draw their own conclusions.

Given the fact that right up until this very moment you haven't addressed any of the actual questions I've asked regarding that purported phone call from Mrs. Barker, and given the fact that you wouldn't even reply responsively to Mr. Speer's asking you politely to address these same troubling contrary facts, I have explored the same thing in much greater detail now in this thread in the Watergate forum. And the tension just keeps packing up and mounting toward critical mass, Mr. Caddy, as you continue to evade and avoid any address to the impossible conflicts in the accounts, while simultaneously doing everything you can to smear me and get me ejected from the forum.

But do go on:

Mr. Ashton in his posting of June 22 at 3:50 PM, addressed to Mr. Pat Speer, appeared to borrow the malevolent lines of Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs:

"And you can take the rest of your non-sequitur, irrelevant, disruptive, off-topic, red-herring bag'o'crap message and shove it anywhere you want, as long as you don't try shoving it in my face again.

"I might stop being so polite. You wouldn't want that."

Now, really, Mr. Caddy: I don't even like fava beans.

Yes: that's precisely what I told Mr. Speer, and that's precisely what I meant. Of course, in your one-sided smear campaign, you've omitted his own ad hominem against me.

And now I have, in fact, stopped being so polite. Maybe that's what Mr. Speer did want. But it's done. I permanently and publicly have completely severed any and all correspondence with Mr. Speer because he repeatedly has demonstrated, in my opinion, a willful intent to disrupt and and create irrelevant distractions, particularly in the very threads at issue where so many troubling questions have arisen related to both you and Mr. Baldwin and your relative testimony and record of facts related to Watergate.

Mr. J. Raymond Carroll, later that same day of June 24, 2005 at 5:24 PM wrote of Mr. Ashton’s repeated attacks on me:

"In this case, I see no reason to suggest that a valued fellow forum member is lying. I suggest you take off that cowboy hat and replace it with your thinking cap."

What I not only have suggested, but have said repeatedly, and have proven with exhaustively researched cites, and still stand by until proven otherwise, is that somebody in the record inarguably is lying.

You weren't attacked, Mr. Caddy: you were asked direct relevant questions going to your own unique percipient knowledge, which to this moment you have refused to answer responsively.

You have the same opportunity that I have to make a record. You have had ample opportunity to respond in meaningful and relevant ways, and clear the record, and clear any doubt or question about your own former claims and statements that have reasonably been called merely into question for confirmation and verification of what is or isn't true.

No one has interfered with your ability to respond, yet you won't respond. You evade, and launch a wholesale attack against the questioner. And here we are. Here we sit. Extremely troubling contradictions that you could resolve still sit unresolved, unanswered, while you wait for the headsman to appear and make the questioner go away.

You may even succeed in getting me to go away, Mr. Caddy. If you do, so be it. But the questions now will never go away. Even if eradicated from this forum, they will come back, again, and again, and again.

You probably are trying to think of some way to twist that into some other hallucinatory "threat," Mr. Caddy. I don't deal in "threats." I deal in questions, research, more questions, analysis, and more questions, all for the simple and benign purpose of arriving at truth. I have stated emphatically that that is my only "agenda" or purpose, because it is.

If you and I had that same purpose, I don't believe there is any possibility that this contretemps could exist at all. But that's my opinion.

The facts, and their conflicts, are in the record I have made, which you seem to be on a desperate quest to erase by any means.

I'm still almost stupefied that you came over here into the JFK forum and duplicated your wholesale assault on me, when I never had posted anything here at all except one small, brief acknowledgment of some documents that had been posted.

APOLOGIES TO THE JFK ASSASSINATION FORUM MEMBERS

All I can say to the active members of this valued forum is that I apologize profusely for their discussions having been so sensationally and unwarrantedly disrupted by this, and for the necessity of this lengthy reply by me. I also briefly will invite and urge them to read the documents and analyses that I have posted in the Watergate forum, which I've linked to in this message, and to read the many questions I have posed for both Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Caddy that have arisen from this intensely thorough research.

I believe that its consequences inevitably will flow downstream (in a time sense) from Watergate to the JFK assassination, because I believe that they are linked by personnel and agenda. I also believe Mr. Caddy knows that very well, and that it accounts for his dragging this into the JFK forum as an attempted preemptive strike.

But those are my own opinions.

Please: read carefully the articles I have posted, and the questions I have posed for both Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Caddy and draw your own conclusions.

Thank you for your patience, perseverence, and continued interest in solving the biggest riddles of our time.

Ashton Gray

I believe Ashton has already read this post, as I recall him quoting Mr. Caddy's comments about Hunt's writing skills. If so, then he apparently missed Mr. Caddy's acknowledgement that he talked to Mrs. Barker and used her as his excuse to show up in court without having received a call from any of the "burglars."

<Long sigh> No. No, Pat. No, I had not missed a single syllable. Apparently you missed the fact that your question was knowingly evaded by Mr. Caddy using a tired, ancient, cobwebbed, swaybacked, transparent gimmick of sending you off somewhere looking through messages (which he knows very well most casual readers won't even bother to do) for a nonresponsive statement that contained key words like "Mrs. Barker" and "telephone call," confident that you would believe the questions had been answered. He even gave the wrong name for the thread. Of course you, being a forum veteran, were able to track it down—something he well knew that the vast majority of casual readers never would accomplish.

He was quite confident that you, having been supplied a puff of air, would believe, after encountering certain key words, that you had been given an answer. And here you are telling me that you got an answer. And you got no answer at all.

However, I see you've managed to use the no-answer Caddy gave you in that other thread to bring it over and hijack this thread and take it off topic. Therefore, I am reposting below the reply I have just posted (in the appropriate thread) to the no-answer Mr. Caddy gave you, and that you ran over here waving. And in posting this, I want to make you this personal undying vow: this is the last response to anything you post in this or any forum that you ever will see from me. Happy trails.

Here's the message to Douglas Caddy:

In regard to the matter of my telephone conversations with the wife of Bernard Barker in the early days of Watergate, I already covered this subject in my posting of Feb. 6, 2006, which can be found in the Douglas Caddy: Question and Answer thread.

Actually, Mr. Caddy, I already was entirely familiar with what you had written in the thread you reference long before I posted a single question to you. The thread, by the way, is not titled "Douglas Caddy: Question and Answer." That's very imprecise language for an attorney. The thread is in the "JFK Assassination Debate" forum, and is entitled "Questions for Douglas Caddy." If you actually want people to be able to find what you said when you send them off somewhere else instead of answering a question, it might do them a considerable service to tell them the correct place to go.

The one and only thing you said about Mrs. Barker in that other thread is not at all responsive to any questions I have asked about the purported phone call from Mrs. Barker that you have said you received from her shortly after 3:00 a.m. on the morning of June 17, 1972, and therefore is not responsive to Mr. Speer's civilized, reasonable suggestion that you answer a few of my questions on that specific point.

In fact, not only is what you wrote there not responsive, it regretably adds yet another layer of confusion to the facts at issue. In that thread, you wrote the following:

• DOUGLAS CADDY: "I did talk to Mrs. Barker several times in the days immediately following her husband's arrest, primarily about providing security for bail to get him out of jail. With her permission I publicly alluded to these calls in order to provide an excuse for my showing up at the jail on the day of the arrests without having received a telephone call from any of those arrested."
  

Thank you.

The one (singular) specific call that you "publicly alluded to in order to provide an excuse" for your showing up at the jail on the day of the arrests is the one (singular) call that you told reporters from the Washington Post about on that very day, as reported in the Post, later repeated in "All the Presiden't Men." I quote:

• "Douglas Caddy, one of the attorneys for the five men, told a reporter that shortly after 3 a.m. yesterday [June 17, 1972], he received a call from Barker's wife. 'She said that her husband told her to call me if he hadn't called her by 3 a.m.: that it might mean he was in trouble.'" —The Washington Post June 18, 1972: "5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats' Office Here"
  

The same thing is repeated in "All the President's Men":

• "Caddy said he'd gotten a call shortly after 3:00 A.M. from Barker's wife. "She said her husband had told her to call me if he hadn't called her by three, that it might mean he was in trouble." —All the Presiden't Men, Woodward and Bernstein
  

These accounts of that one (singular) crucial phone call have stood for 34 years in these seminal references on Watergate, uncontested by you.

In the post in that other thread you cited, which I have quoted above, you say that you had talked to Mrs. Barker "several times" (plural). That's fine. I have no idea what relevance the other conversations have to the one—and only one—specific phone call that you unquestionably "publicly alluded to" in order to "provide an excuse" for your having shown up "at the jail on the day of the arrests without having received a telephone call from any of those arrested."

There is only one phone call anywhere in the available record that fits that description. One. That's the one I've been trying for some time now to get a few simple answers about, which even Mr. Speer has asked you to answer, and still no answers are forthcoming to the very pertinent questions that arise about that one purported phone call.

The reasons the perfectly reasonable and logical questions, still unanswered, have been asked repeatedly now by several people, in many ways, is because you, yourself, told reporters that Mrs. Barker's call had come to you "shortly after 3:00 a.m." on the morning of June 17, 1972, specifically because her husband had given that time as a cut-off time by which she should become concerned, and specifically because Bernard Barker had given her your name and phone number as the person to call in that event.

And very relevant to all the foregoing, there are these facts of record:

• You have testified under oath that you received a telephone call from E. Howard Hunt "between 3:05 a.m. and 3:15 a.m." on that same morning of June 17, 1972, and have testified that he arrived at your apartment at 3:35 a.m. that morning.
  
• E. Howard Hunt says in your article that his call to you that morning was made at 3:13 a.m. In that conversation, neither you or Hunt make any reference to any call from Mrs. Barker, and Hunt apologizes for having woken you up.
  
• In his autobiography, Hunt says that after speaking to you at 3:13 a.m. and securing his White House office, he then left his White House office and went across the street to his office at Mullen, and there placed a call to Mrs. Barker, who he says "shrieked" at the news of her husband's arrest.
  
• It had to be at least 3:20 a.m. by the time Hunt placed the call to Mrs. Barker. Hunt says that during that call he, not Bernard Barker, is the one who gave your name and phone number to Mrs. Barker. He says exactly: "I gave her Caddy's name and telephone number and asked that she phone Doug and retain him for her husband."
  
• You, on the other hand, told the Washington Post that Bernard Barker had told his wife to call you if she hadn't heard from him by 3:00 a.m., because it would "mean he was in trouble." Yet by as late as 3:20 a.m., or even later, apparently she hadn't been concerned enough to call anyone, and she got the news about the arrest delivered to her by E. Howard Hunt. According to Hunt, she had no idea that there had been any trouble.
  
• In Hunt's account of his purported conversation with Mrs. Barker, where Hunt gives her your name and number, she gives no indication at all of knowing anything about you, or of already having your name or your phone number, or of having been told to call you by her husband, Bernard Barker.
  
• Despite the above, you told the Post that she had your contact information from Bernard Barker, not Hunt. You gave that to the Post (purportedly with her permission) as your entire motive for having been present at all: an early morning call shortly after 3:00 a.m., from a concerned woman in Miami that you didn't know, telling you—a corporate attorney—that she thought her husband "might be in trouble" somewhere in Washington, D.C. What the nature of such trouble might be, or even where in Washington, D.C. he might be, presumably neither you nor she knew the slightest thing about.
  
• In your accounts, and in Hunt's accounts, there is no mention of any call from Mrs. Barker at all during the entire time Hunt was at your apartment, which you have said under oath was from 3:35 a.m. to 5:00 a.m.
  
• In Hunt's account, he says that at some unspecified time after he arrived at your apartment—which you have testified was not until 3:35 a.m.—he told you the following: "Bernie Barker's wife will probably call you and retain you officially to represent her husband and the other men." He says you didn't respond, only looked at your watch, and went off to call your law firm partner. (Or partners, since your accounts differ on that point, too, which I've covered in another thread.)
  

Obviously, Mr. Caddy, these accounts conflict. I think any reasonable and rational person would be perfectly justified in attempting to get the conflicting accounts resolved in some direction for the sake of historical accuracy, specifically in wanting to ascertain:

1) Did Mrs. Barker actually phone you "shortly after 3:00 a.m." on the morning of June 17, 1972, as you told the Washington Post?

2) If Mrs. Barker did call you "shortly after 3:00 a.m.," did her call come before or after Hunt called you? (His call came at 3:13 a.m., according to your own article, "Gay Bashing in Watergate.")

3) If Mrs. Barker already had called you by 3:13 a.m. (when Hunt called you), why did you not tell Hunt when he called you, and why does your own article say that Hunt woke you?

4) If Mrs. Barker already had called you by the time Hunt purportedly called her and gave her your name and number—around or after 3:20 a.m.—do you have any way to account for her surprise that her husband was in trouble, or for her not telling Hunt she already had your name and number from her husband and already had called you?

5) If Mrs. Barker didn't call you until after Hunt's purported call to her at 3:20 a.m., did she tell you that Hunt had recently called her and given her your name and number and had said to call you, or did she tell you that her husband had given her your contact information and had said to call you—as you told the Washington Post?

6) E. Howard Hunt says Mrs. Barker asked him on the phone if she should call you from her home, and that he said to her: "No. Go to a pay telephone and do it." Did Mrs. Barker call you from her home, or had she gotten up, gotten dressed, and gone out to a phone booth, as Hunt says he told her to do?

7) You also said to the Washington Post that you simply had met Bernard Barker "a year ago over cocktails at the Army Navy Club in Washington." You have said this was the one and only time you had met Barker before June 17, 1972. Do you have any knowledge or understanding of why he would have had your name and number at all a year after that brief encounter, or why he would have given it to his wife as an emergency contact in a distant town without having made prior arrangements with you?

8) If Mrs. Barker called you before Hunt arrived at your apartment at 3:35 a.m., why did Hunt tell you the following when he was there with you: "Bernie Barker's wife will probably call you and retain you officially to represent her husband and the other men," and why did you say nothing in response?

9) If Mrs. Barker instead had not called you by 3:35 a.m., when Hunt arrived, did she not call you until after Hunt had left at 5:00 a.m.? If so, why did you tell the Post that her call had been received by you "shortly after 3:00 a.m."?

10) Is it, in fact, your position—as it appears—that an unknown woman called you out of the blue shortly after 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and said she was calling from Miami, and said that her husband had told her he had only met you over cocktails in a club a year before, but had told her to give you a call if she hadn't heard from him by 3:00 a.m. because he might be in some unknown kind of trouble at some unknown location in Washginton D.C., and that after hearing that at 3:00 o'clock in the morning, you did not slam down your phone and go back to sleep?

These are perfectly valid and reasonable questions, Mr. Caddy. They are obvious questions arising from your own statements. They are perfectly logical questions. Some of them have already been expressed in earlier threads, some implied, but there they are.

Your character isn't being assassinated by being asked straightforward questions about your own assertions of fact. Perhaps it isn't enough of the celebrity treatment to suit you, but speaking just personally, I didn't come to this forum for celebrity fawning, Mr. Caddy; I came here to read and discuss historical fact, and to sort fact from the fiction.

I can assure you that if persons who have direct knowledge of historical events...

'Scuse me: the exact problem is that we have two completely different sets of purported "historical events" trying to occupy the same place at the same time in the instant case, Mr. Caddy: yours and Hunt's. That doesn't work in this universe. One set, or both sets, are not "historical events" at all, but "historical fictions."

You have your own responsibility for both conflicting sets having equal "authority," since you have endorsed Hunt's account yourself by incorporating part of it into your own.

How else can anyone hope to pull such taffy apart without asking reasonable questions?

It is my intention to do no more posting, besides the immediate one, until John Simkin returns from Sicily next week...

Okay. It's fine with me if you leave these, and all the other questions I've asked, sitting here festering and unanswered. They're generating quite a good deal of interest in some quarters, I hear, just as questions, and even more interest in why you're going to such extreme, even draconian lengths to keep from answering them. In fact, it's my opinion that the longer you don't answer them, the more the questions are answering themselves in fell voice.

I also have a pretty good prescience that even if you should succeed in your strident cries for my head on a platter (hat and all ) these questions—these very same questions—will be following you for a very, very long time to come. In fell voice.

Your mileage may vary.

...when he will undertake an investigation of the Record that I filed with him and Administrator Walker of a large number of violations of the Board Guidelines by Mr. Ashton.

That's very imprecise language for an attorney, Mr. Caddy. You meant "alleged violations."

And it's not "Mr. Ashton." It's "Mr. Gray." But you can call me Pat.

Ashton Gray

In regard to the matter of my telephone conversations with the wife of Bernard Barker in the early days of Watergate, I already covered this subject in my posting of Feb. 6, 2006, which can be found in the Douglas Caddy: Question and Answer thread.

Actually, Mr. Caddy, I already was entirely familiar with what you had written in the thread you reference long before I posted a single question to you. The thread, by the way, is not titled "Douglas Caddy: Question and Answer." That's very imprecise language for an attorney. The thread is in the "JFK Assassination Debate" forum, and is entitled "Questions for Douglas Caddy." If you actually want people to be able to find what you said when you send them off somewhere else instead of answering a question, it might do them a considerable service to tell them the correct place to go.

The one and only thing you said about Mrs. Barker in that other thread is not at all responsive to any questions I have asked about the purported phone call from Mrs. Barker that you have said you received from her shortly after 3:00 a.m. on the morning of June 17, 1972, and therefore is not responsive to Mr. Speer's civilized, reasonable suggestion that you answer a few of my questions on that specific point.

In fact, not only is what you wrote there not responsive, it regretably adds yet another layer of confusion to the facts at issue. In that thread, you wrote the following:

• DOUGLAS CADDY: "I did talk to Mrs. Barker several times in the days immediately following her husband's arrest, primarily about providing security for bail to get him out of jail. With her permission I publicly alluded to these calls in order to provide an excuse for my showing up at the jail on the day of the arrests without having received a telephone call from any of those arrested."
  

Thank you.

The one (singular) specific call that you "publicly alluded to in order to provide an excuse" for your showing up at the jail on the day of the arrests is the one (singular) call that you told reporters from the Washington Post about on that very day, as reported in the Post, later repeated in "All the Presiden't Men." I quote:

• "Douglas Caddy, one of the attorneys for the five men, told a reporter that shortly after 3 a.m. yesterday [June 17, 1972], he received a call from Barker's wife. 'She said that her husband told her to call me if he hadn't called her by 3 a.m.: that it might mean he was in trouble.'" —The Washington Post June 18, 1972: "5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats' Office Here"
  

The same thing is repeated in "All the President's Men":

• "Caddy said he'd gotten a call shortly after 3:00 A.M. from Barker's wife. "She said her husband had told her to call me if he hadn't called her by three, that it might mean he was in trouble." —All the Presiden't Men, Woodward and Bernstein
  

These accounts of that one (singular) crucial phone call have stood for 34 years in these seminal references on Watergate, uncontested by you.

In the post in that other thread you cited, which I have quoted above, you say that you had talked to Mrs. Barker "several times" (plural). That's fine. I have no idea what relevance the other conversations have to the one—and only one—specific phone call that you unquestionably "publicly alluded to" in order to "provide an excuse" for your having shown up "at the jail on the day of the arrests without having received a telephone call from any of those arrested."

There is only one phone call anywhere in the available record that fits that description. One. That's the one I've been trying for some time now to get a few simple answers about, which even Mr. Speer has asked you to answer, and still no answers are forthcoming to the very pertinent questions that arise about that one purported phone call.

The reasons the perfectly reasonable and logical questions, still unanswered, have been asked repeatedly now by several people, in many ways, is because you, yourself, told reporters that Mrs. Barker's call had come to you "shortly after 3:00 a.m." on the morning of June 17, 1972, specifically because her husband had given that time as a cut-off time by which she should become concerned, and specifically because Bernard Barker had given her your name and phone number as the person to call in that event.

And very relevant to all the foregoing, there are these facts of record:

• You have testified under oath that you received a telephone call from E. Howard Hunt "between 3:05 a.m. and 3:15 a.m." on that same morning of June 17, 1972, and have testified that he arrived at your apartment at 3:35 a.m. that morning.
  
• E. Howard Hunt says in your article that his call to you that morning was made at 3:13 a.m. In that conversation, neither you or Hunt make any reference to any call from Mrs. Barker, and Hunt apologizes for having woken you up.
  
• In his autobiography, Hunt says that after speaking to you at 3:13 a.m. and securing his White House office, he then left his White House office and went across the street to his office at Mullen, and there placed a call to Mrs. Barker, who he says "shrieked" at the news of her husband's arrest.
  
• It had to be at least 3:20 a.m. by the time Hunt placed the call to Mrs. Barker. Hunt says that during that call he, not Bernard Barker, is the one who gave your name and phone number to Mrs. Barker. He says exactly: "I gave her Caddy's name and telephone number and asked that she phone Doug and retain him for her husband."
  
• You, on the other hand, told the Washington Post that Bernard Barker had told his wife to call you if she hadn't heard from him by 3:00 a.m., because it would "mean he was in trouble." Yet by as late as 3:20 a.m., or even later, apparently she hadn't been concerned enough to call anyone, and she got the news about the arrest delivered to her by E. Howard Hunt. According to Hunt, she had no idea that there had been any trouble.
  
• In Hunt's account of his purported conversation with Mrs. Barker, where Hunt gives her your name and number, she gives no indication at all of knowing anything about you, or of already having your name or your phone number, or of having been told to call you by her husband, Bernard Barker.
  
• Despite the above, you told the Post that she had your contact information from Bernard Barker, not Hunt. You gave that to the Post (purportedly with her permission) as your entire motive for having been present at all: an early morning call shortly after 3:00 a.m., from a concerned woman in Miami that you didn't know, telling you—a corporate attorney—that she thought her husband "might be in trouble" somewhere in Washington, D.C. What the nature of such trouble might be, or even where in Washington, D.C. he might be, presumably neither you nor she knew the slightest thing about.
  
• In your accounts, and in Hunt's accounts, there is no mention of any call from Mrs. Barker at all during the entire time Hunt was at your apartment, which you have said under oath was from 3:35 a.m. to 5:00 a.m.
  
• In Hunt's account, he says that at some unspecified time after he arrived at your apartment—which you have testified was not until 3:35 a.m.—he told you the following: "Bernie Barker's wife will probably call you and retain you officially to represent her husband and the other men." He says you didn't respond, only looked at your watch, and went off to call your law firm partner. (Or partners, since your accounts differ on that point, too, which I've covered in another thread.)
  

Obviously, Mr. Caddy, these accounts conflict. I think any reasonable and rational person would be perfectly justified in attempting to get the conflicting accounts resolved in some direction for the sake of historical accuracy, specifically in wanting to ascertain:

1) Did Mrs. Barker actually phone you "shortly after 3:00 a.m." on the morning of June 17, 1972, as you told the Washington Post?

2) If Mrs. Barker did call you "shortly after 3:00 a.m.," did her call come before or after Hunt called you? (His call came at 3:13 a.m., according to your own article, "Gay Bashing in Watergate.")

3) If Mrs. Barker already had called you by 3:13 a.m. (when Hunt called you), why did you not tell Hunt when he called you, and why does your own article say that Hunt woke you?

4) If Mrs. Barker already had called you by the time Hunt purportedly called her and gave her your name and number—around or after 3:20 a.m.—do you have any way to account for her surprise that her husband was in trouble, or for her not telling Hunt she already had your name and number from her husband and already had called you?

5) If Mrs. Barker didn't call you until after Hunt's purported call to her at 3:20 a.m., did she tell you that Hunt had recently called her and given her your name and number and had said to call you, or did she tell you that her husband had given her your contact information and had said to call you—as you told the Washington Post?

6) E. Howard Hunt says Mrs. Barker asked him on the phone if she should call you from her home, and that he said to her: "No. Go to a pay telephone and do it." Did Mrs. Barker call you from her home, or had she gotten up, gotten dressed, and gone out to a phone booth, as Hunt says he told her to do?

7) You also said to the Washington Post that you simply had met Bernard Barker "a year ago over cocktails at the Army Navy Club in Washington." You have said this was the one and only time you had met Barker before June 17, 1972. Do you have any knowledge or understanding of why he would have had your name and number at all a year after that brief encounter, or why he would have given it to his wife as an emergency contact in a distant town without having made prior arrangements with you?

8) If Mrs. Barker called you before Hunt arrived at your apartment at 3:35 a.m., why did Hunt tell you the following when he was there with you: "Bernie Barker's wife will probably call you and retain you officially to represent her husband and the other men," and why did you say nothing in response?

9) If Mrs. Barker instead had not called you by 3:35 a.m., when Hunt arrived, did she not call you until after Hunt had left at 5:00 a.m.? If so, why did you tell the Post that her call had been received by you "shortly after 3:00 a.m."?

10) Is it, in fact, your position—as it appears—that an unknown woman called you out of the blue shortly after 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and said she was calling from Miami, and said that her husband had told her he had met you over cocktails a year before, and had told her to give you a call if she hadn't heard from him by 3:00 a.m. because he might be in some unknown kind of trouble at some unknown location in Washginton D.C., and that after hearing that at 3:00 o'clock in the morning, you did not slam down your phone and go back to sleep?

These are perfectly valid and reasonable questions, Mr. Caddy. They are obvious questions arising from your own statements. They are perfectly logical questions. Some of them have already been expressed in earlier threads, some implied, but there they are.

Your character isn't being assassinated by being asked straightforward questions about your own assertions of fact. Perhaps it isn't enough of the celebrity treatment to suit you, but speaking just personally, I didn't come to this forum for celebrity fawning, Mr. Caddy; I came here to read and discuss historical fact, and to sort fact from the fiction.

I can assure you that if persons who have direct knowledge of historical events...

'Scuse me: the exact problem is that we have two completely different sets of purported "historical events" trying to occupy the same place at the same time in the instant case, Mr. Caddy: yours and Hunt's. That doesn't work in this universe. One set, or both sets, are not "historical events" at all, but "historical fictions."

You have your own responsibility for both conflicting sets having equal "authority," since you have endorsed Hunt's account yourself by incorporating part of it into your own.

How else can anyone hope to pull such taffy apart without asking reasonable questions?

It is my intention to do no more posting, besides the immediate one, until John Simkin returns from Sicily next week...

Okay. It's fine with me if you leave these, and all the other questions I've asked, sitting here festering and unanswered. They're generating quite a good deal of interest in some quarters, I hear, just as questions, and even more interest in why you're going to such extreme, even draconian lengths to keep from answering them. In fact, it's my opinion that the longer you don't answer them, the more the questions are answering themselves in fell voice.

I also have a pretty good prescience that even if you should succeed in your strident cries for my head on a platter (hat and all ) these questions—these very same questions—will be following you for a very, very long time to come. In fell voice.

Your mileage may vary.

...when he will undertake an investigation of the Record that I filed with him and Administrator Walker of a large number of violations of the Board Guidelines by Mr. Ashton.

That's very imprecise language for an attorney, Mr. Caddy. You meant "alleged violations."

And it's not "Mr. Ashton." It's "Mr. Gray." But you can call me Pat.

Ashton Gray

Request for a moderator to delete this mysterious vestige posting. (I still cannot find any consistent reason why some messages post twice. I've tried to avoid doing anything that has seemed to account for it—then it happens again. There must be some kind of conflict between my browser and the forum software that I'm still trying to find a fix or workaround for.)