Ashton Gray

In my last post in this thread I posted relevant accounts by Douglas Caddy of the June 17, 1972 Watergate arrests and their aftermath, as germane to who retained or secured Caddy as a lawyer for any of the participants, when that occurred, and under what circumstances. Below is the account of the same purported events that was given by E. Howard Hunt in his autobiography, Undercover—Memoirs of an American Secret Agent. Although Hunt makes a few brief allusions to Caddy in some of his testimony, almost no questions were put to Hunt concerning his relationship with Caddy and the circumstances surrounding Caddy's representation of Hunt, Liddy, and the Watergate entry team. I therefore see no point in adding the few random, terse snippets of mentions of Caddy's name that are scattered in only a few places in Hunt's testimony. Although the excerpt below is rather long, it cannot be successfully condensed without destroying the continuity of details necessary for the exact purpose of scholarly comparison and analysis, which is the sole purpose of this forum thread. Therefore I reproduce this section with only minor omission edits exclusively for those purposes under Fair Use, and my questions for Mr. Caddy follow. Before beginning this excerpt from Hunt, I must point out a significant discrepency in time stamps for various purported events. In Hunt's account below he says that he placed his phone call to Douglas Caddy at "0213 in the morning"—2:13 a.m.—after the arrests had taken place. In my previous message I posted excerpts from Liddy's appeal case ruling that state from the trial record that the arrests occurred at 2:00 a.m., consistent with Hunt's claim. Yet nearly all other accounts place the arrest time at 2:30 a.m. Douglas Caddy—in a reference posted and discussed in my last message—changed Hunt's original time of 2:13 a.m. for the call to Caddy, making it an hour later, "3:13," when supposedly "quoting" Hunt's own autobiography. Caddy's change makes Hunt's account more consistent with the 2:30 a.m. arrest time, while Hunt's own original telling of the story is more consistent with the appelate court ruling. All I can do is point out the inconsistency, one among many. This excerpt begins at the moment Hunt and Liddy purportedly learn that the break-in team has been "caught": E. HOWARD HUNT'S ACCOUNT FROM HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY Galvanized, Liddy gripped the W/T [Walkie-Talkie] in one hand. Then a disembodied voice spoke: "They've got us." The entry team had responded at last. Stepping onto the balcony, I looked up at the rear windows of DNC headquarters in the adjacent office building. Lights were on but no one was in sight. The two upper floors were also lighted. I returned to Liddy, who was receiving a moment-by-moment description from the monitor [Alfred Baldwin] across the street: "...filing out with them now, guns drawn. Police wagon pulling up at the entrance below, also some marked police cars .... " "Keep talking," Liddy told him as I began opening suitcases. Together we began throwing in operational litter, forcing McCord's surplus electronic gear into his black attache case. To Liddy I said, "Let's go; the police will be here any minute." "Why?" "Barker has our room key." From the W/T [Walkie-Talkie] the monitor's [Alfred Baldwin's] voice: "What should I do?" Liddy grunted. I picked up the W/T [Walkie-Talkie] and pressed the transmit button. "Keep your lights out and stay out of sight. I'll come over as soon as I can. We're signing off." I retrieved the long automobile antenna from the balcony, telescoped it and tossed it on the bed, where Liddy was packing the most incriminating items into a handbag. "That's most of it," he said, "except for that damn antenna. Leave it here?" "Hell no." I thrust it down inside my trouser leg and turned off the lights. "Let's go." Down the elevator, hearts pounding, we walked past the drowsing desk clerk. Then my leg antenna began to slide onto the floor. Hitching it back under my belt, I kept on going without looking back. We reached the street, half a block from an assemblage of police cars, flashers playing eerily through the darkness. We got inside my Firebird, which I had parked at the entrance-just in case .... As I started the engine, Liddy said, "My jeep's up the street." "I'll take you there." He gestured at the dark Listening Post windows across the street. "What about him [Alfred Baldwin]?" "I'll come back. Go home and get yourself an alibi." Silently we drove four blocks toward the city, and Liddy got out. "Got the emergency money?" "I'm going to get it now." "Okay." He swallowed. "Goodnight, Howard. I'll be in touch tomorrow." We shook hands and he walked toward his green jeep. I made a U-turn and parked two blocks from the motel. Within pistol range of the police cars, I reflected. From the motel lobby I took the elevator to the seventh floor and knocked on the L/P [Listening Post] door. It opened a crack and I saw a man with a crew cut indistinctly against the dark background [Alfred Baldwin]. "Are you-?" he asked, but I handed him the W/T [Walkie-Talkie] and went inside, locking the door behind me. Offering me binoculars, he said, "Hey, take a look; the cops are leading them out." "Listen," I said, "it's all over. Pack up and get going." He looked around uncertainly. "Lotta heavy gear here. What do I do with it?" "Load the goddamn van and shove off." "Where should I go-McCord's house?" I stared at him incredulously. "That's the last place to go. I don't care if you drive the van into the river; just get the stuff out of here. Understood?" Turning, I strode toward the door. Plaintively he called, "What's going to happen?" "I don't know-but you'll be contacted." From the room I took the elevator to the lobby and walked casually to the sidewalk. On the far side of the street police were loading the last of the five-man entry team into a white paddy wagon. It seemed so damned final, I thought as I walked back to my car. From there I drove to the White House annex-the Old Executive Office Building, in bygone years the War Department and later the Department of State. Carrying three heavy attaché cases, I entered the Pennsylvania Avenue door, showed my blue-and-white White House pass to the uniformed guards and took the elevator to the third floor. I unlocked the door of 338 and went in. I opened my two-drawer safe, took out my operational notebook, found a telephone number and dialed it. The time was 0213 on the morning of June 17, 1972, and five of my companions had been arrested and taken to the maximum-security block of the District of Columbia jail. I had recruited four of them and it was my responsibility to try to get them out. That was the sole focus of my thoughts as I began talking on the telephone. But with those five arrests the Watergate Affair had begun. ...After several rings the call was answered and I heard the sleepy voice of Douglas Caddy. "Yes?" "Doug? This is Howard. I hate to wake you up, but I've got a tough situation and I need to talk to you. Can I come over?" "Sure. I'll tell the desk clerk you're expected." "I'll be there in about twenty minutes," I told him and hung up. From the safe I took a small money box and removed the $10,000 Liddy had given me for emergency use. I put $1,500 in my wallet and the remaining $8,500 in my coat pocket. The black attaché case containing McCord's electronic equipment I placed in a safe drawer that held my operational notebooks. Then I closed and locked the safe, turning the dial several times. The other two cases I left beside the safe, turned out the light and left my office, locking the door. From the Executive Office Building I crossed the street and entered 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue, the building that housed Mullen & Company. A night guard was sitting at a desk in the lobby and I signed in, using the name Bob Wait. From my office I dialed Barker's home in Miami and spoke with his wife, Clara. "Clarita," I said, "things have gone wrong and Macho's been arrested." I heard a muilled shriek. Then, "Oh, my God!" "He's got bail money with him," I told her, "so maybe he'll be able to get out before dawn. I don't know how these things work, but I think he ought to have an attorney. I've already called one and I want you to call him too." I gave her Caddy's name and telephone number and asked that she phone Doug and retain him for her husband. "Where shall I call him from? Here?" "No. Go to a pay telephone and do it." Stricken though she was, Clara Barker focused on what had to be done. "All right," she said decisively. "I'll do it, Eduardo. My God, what happened? What was he doing up there?" "I haven't got time for questions," I told her. "Just call Caddy. That's all you or anybody can do." I hung up and stood for a moment looking around my office for what was to be the last time for many weeks. Then I turned out the light and left the room, went down the elevator and signed out at the guard desk. From there I drove to Caddy's apartment and told the reception clerk I was expected. He called Caddy on the intercom and directed me to the elevator. Caddy was awake and water was boiling for instant coffee. "Any milk?" I asked. "My ulcer's getting active." Caddy shook his head. "Sorry, Howard. No milk." "Then I'll take coffee." I sat down. "There was an operation tonight, Doug, and five men were arrested. You know one of them, Bernie Barker." "I remember him," Caddy said. "What do you mean 'operation'?" I sat back in my chair feeling a great weight pressing down on my shoulders. "It was at Democratic National headquarters in the Watergate," I told him. "I don't know what went wrong, but the long and the short of it is the police came and the men were hauled away. There're five of them, Doug, and they need legal representation." From my pocket I took the $8,500 emergency money and handed it to him. "Could you go down to police headquarters or wherever they take men after they're arrested and see if you can bail them out?" Caddy looked uncertainly at the money, then at me. "I'm not a criminal lawyer, Howard. You know that. I don't have the faintest idea where police take arrested men." "Could you call and find out?" "I guess so. Maybe one of my law firm's partners would know." "Bernie Barker's wife will probably call you and retain you officially to represent her husband and the other men," I told him. Caddy looked at his wristwatch, then went to another room to phone. I stood up and paced the floor, looked through the windows at the dark street and wondered what was happening to the entry team. Caddy came back to the room. Then the telephone rang and he disappeared to answer it. I heard him conclude one conversation, then dial another telephone number. He talked awhile longer, and I made myself a cup of instant coffee and began drinking it. Caddy approached me and said, "I talked to two of the partners; the other one's out of town. One of the partners will try to get hold of a guy named Rafferty. Joe Rafferty. I don't know him, myself, but he's a criminal lawyer, and if they can reach him, he'll call me." He shook his head. "I'll tell you one thing, Howard, my partners certainly don't like my being involved in this thing." "I'm sorry, Doug," I said sincerely. "I guess you're the only Republican lawyer I know." He laughed. "I don't know many myself," he said, and then the telephone rang. When he returned, Caddy said, "That was Rafferty. He says the men are probably at the D.C. Jail." "Maybe they're still at the precinct house or the station house or wherever police take prisoners to be booked. Funny thing is, Doug, the cops who arrested them were in hippie clothes-mod clothes, I guess you'd call it." "No kidding?" "I saw them myself." "Where were you when all this was going on?" "In another building. Doug, this is no time for details. I want those men bailed out and fast. Is Rafferty going to go down to the jail, telephone around or come here?" "I guess he's going to make some phone calls, then come here. Anyway, he'll call back when he has some information." He looked at the money again. "Take it along with you," I told him. "Okay. Any idea what the charges will be?" "Whatever they are, they can't be very heavy-maybe something like being on premises without permission, trespassing. The door lock was picked, so there shouldn't be anything like breaking and entering or burglary. They weren't going to steal anything, just photograph some documents. One other thing: Bernie has some false documents with him. They'll show him to be either Edward Hamilton or Edward Warren, I don't know which. Another man-who works for CREP-should show up as George Leonard." Caddy shook his head. "I don't get this false-document business, Howard. Where did they get them?" "In CIA," I told him, "information is made available on a need-to-know basis. There are things you don't need to know to bail them out. I want them out of jail and out of town before dawn." The telephone rang and Caddy answered it. I finished my coffee, stared again at the street and saw a solitary policeman at the far end of the block. For a fleeting moment it occurred to me that I might have been followed to the apartment and there was a stakeout waiting for me to leave. Then I dismissed the thought as ridiculous. I was overreacting to a situation that I felt sure could be contained. All the attorney had to do was to post bond for the five men, after which they would disappear. I had never heard of a criminal-conspiracy law, and as for the electronic part of the operation, I knew that electronic surveillance was conducted under the authority of the Attorney General, and Attorney General John Mitchell had approved Gemstone. By now, I thought, Liddy had informed at least one of his principals and if—as seemed unlikely—Rafferty's representations were insufficient, the full weight of the White House could be brought to bear to free the five men. Richard Kleindienst was the Attorney General, but as Mitchell's heir and successor, he should be responsive to John Mitchell's guidance. So perhaps Kleindienst could call Police Chief Jerry Wilson and arrange the men's release. I was not to learn until later that almost without exception every senior White House official was out of Washington that weekend and in or near San Clemente, California. Only John Dean was in Washington, but had I known that, I would have felt reassured. As one of Liddy's original principals, Dean would certainly know what had to be done, and as the President's counsel, he should be able to arrange things without getting Kleindienst involved. Finally Caddy returned and said, "Rafferty thinks this may take a little time, Howard, so I'm going to get dressed and stand by to meet him. You can stay here if you want." I shook my head. "No, I'd better go home." Thinking of Liddy, I said, "There may be some calls for me tonight, and home is the only place I could be reached." We shook hands and I thanked Caddy for his help. I never saw him again. When I left the apartment building, I walked out to the parking lot in a semidaze. I felt as though I had been a week without sleep, though I recognized my fatigue came from sustained tension. I drove home confident that sometime before noon Liddy would phone me to say that the men had been released and were on their way to Miami without their true names having been discovered. Dawn was graying the sky when I reached home and parked my Firebird outside, and I remember the sensation of moving against a strong current of water as I walked from the drive into my house. ...I wondered what had gone wrong in the target offices, and my mind went back to McCord's finding his first tapes taken from the garage doors. I reasoned that in view of what had ensued, a guard rather than a mailman had removed McCord's tapes, then called the police. I was puzzled, however, by the casual dress of the officers who had made the arrests. If a conventional police car had arrived in front of the Watergate office building with its roof light flashing, surely McCord's monitor [Alfred Baldwin] would have been able to warn the team in time to let them flee the building. But no marked police cars had arrived until later when my five associates were being led from the Watergate. QUESTIONS FOR MR. CADDY These questions encompass and compare Hunt's account, in this message, and Mr. Caddy's own accounts from the previous message in this thread. You said in your accounts that two of your law firm's partners were out of town that morning and only one was available: Robert Scott. Hunt says that you told him that one partner was out of town and that you had spoken to two partners on the phone, and that as a consequence you had said to Hunt, "I'll tell you one thing, Howard, my partners [plural] certainly don't like my being involved in this thing." Which of these mutually exclusive accounts, if any, is true? Why did you alter the time that Hunt had supplied for his phone call to you when you supposedly "quoted" Hunt at the beginning of your article, "Gay Bashing in Watergate"? Did the purported call from Hunt to you come at 2:13 a.m. or at 3:13 a.m. on the morning of June 17, 1972—if at all? Since the burglars couldn't have been "caught" unless the first wave of law enforcement had been plain-clothes men in unmarked cars, in your due diligence for your clients, what did you discover concerning this bizarre police response for a reported burglary in progress? What section, division, department, or unit of the D.C. police were these plain-clothes first responders part of? Did Hunt in fact tell you that you likely would be getting a call from Bernard Barker's wife? Did you ever receive such a call—as you told the Washington Post—and if so, where were you and what time was it? Hunt's account says not a word about any conversation with G. Gordon Liddy during his entire time at your apartment, and implies very strongly that neither he nor you had any contact at all with Liddy at all the entire time that Hunt was at your apartment, going so far as to say: "Thinking of Liddy, I said [to Douglas Caddy], 'There may be some calls for me tonight, and home is the only place I could be reached.'" You claim contrarily that both you and Hunt spoke to Liddy at some length on the telephone between 4:45 a.m. and 5:00 a.m., during which conversation you claim that Liddy told you that he wanted you to represent him. Which of these contradictory accounts, if any, is true? Hunt only claims to have given you aliases used by only two men: Bernard Barker, and another (McCord) who Hunt purportedly only described to you as "another man-who works for CREP." How did you get the aliases that the other men were using in order that you and Rafferty could locate them downtown? How were you able to do legal work for John Dean and G. Gordon Liddy beginning in March 1972 without ever encountering, meeting, or knowing of the Chief of Security for CREEP, James McCord? Hunt purportedly gave you the name "George Leonard" as the alias being used by McCord. That is the alias that had been used by G. Gordon Liddy at all other relevant times. When doing what you have described as minor legal research for Liddy beginning in March 1972, did you know Liddy as G. Gordon Liddy or as George Leonard? (Note: this question is asked despite Hunt's own self-conflicting accounts of who had which aliases.) Referring to your due diligence for your clients, what had Hunt done with the antenna he purportedly had stuffed down his pants leg? Referring to your due diligence for your clients, why was there purported "surplus electronic gear" in the temporary "command post" room with Hunt and Liddy? Referring to your due diligence for your clients, when did you learn that Hunt had stashed incriminating "surplus electronic gear" in his White House safe, and did you advise him to leave it there? Given that you had worked for John Dean beginning in March 1972; given that as an extension of that work did work for Liddy; given that you purportedly had been advised that Liddy was involved; given that Hunt says that Dean was in town at the time, did you contact John Dean that morning, and if not, why not? Referring to your due diligence for your clients, isn't it true that all "documentation" for every one of the aliases for every one of the participants had originated at CIA? Did you at any time put into the record the origins of the fake I.D.s used by the participants? Isn't it true the fake I.D.s supplied by Hunt to certain participants included not one, but two, different I.D.s that CIA had supplied to Hunt (in addition to a separate one that had been supplied by CIA to Liddy)? Can you list the exact aliases that the participants had supplied to the police that morning, linking each to the real names? Did you wait for Rafferty to come to your apartment, or did you meet Rafferty elsewhere? Had you ever seen or met James McCord prior to seeing him in the cell block? If so, when, where, and under what circumstances? What became of the tapes from the recording system that had been installed in Hunt's White House office on or about July 9, 1971? Had you ever met with Hunt in that office? Hunt, in telling you the men had been arrested, claims to have said to you: "You know one of them, Bernie Barker." Is that how it happened? Hunt says he never saw you again after he left your apartment. How did you manage to avoid ever encountering him throughout all the subsequent legal actions? Exactly when and under what circumstances did you stop representing each of the seven people that you have both claimed, and denied to the press, as having represented? This ends this section. Coming in the next message is G. Gordon Liddy's accounts of the same purported events. Ashton Gray

This is the first in a series of three messages in which I'm going to lay out the accounts of the relevant principals concerning when, where, how, and under what circumstances Douglas Caddy was secured to represent parties related to Watergate. First, I file Mr. Caddy's relevant record, taken from several sources, which I cite. At the end of this section are questions arising directly from Mr. Caddy's own accounts, without address to conflicting accounts by other parties involved. Those will come after I've posted all three sets of accounts. Before I begin this section, I need to make a note about something quoted by Mr. Caddy himself in an article he wrote. It is a passage from E. Howard Hunt's autobiography, Undercover, which Mr. Caddy used as on opening to his own article, "Gay Bashing in Watergate." In quoting Mr. Caddy from that article, I'm also going to be quoting relevant parts of what he used from Undercover, but I encountered a time discrepancy between his excerpt (from the prologue of the book) and a first edition copy I have. Maybe he can clarify this. In my copy of the book, the time given by Hunt is "0213." Mr. Caddy quotes this as "3:13," a difference of an hour. I have put the 0213 time in brackets directly after Mr. Caddy's 3:13 indication. DOUGLAS CADDY'S ACCOUNTS, DIRECT AND AS REPORTED First is Caddy's succinct statement, made in the forum in February of this year, of being hired by both Hunt and Liddy: In brief, I was retained as an attorney in the early morning hours of June 17, 1972 by Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy to represent them in the case and to represent the five persons arrested within the Democratic Party's national headquarters. Next is Caddy's more lengthy statement concerning those events, excerpted from his article, "Gay Bashing and Watergate." It begins with Caddy's own quoting of E. Howard Hunt from Hunt's biography, Undercover. The quotation marks used for the Hunt excerpt are in the original Caddy article, which itself is not set in quotes. This is where the time discrepancy appears: "Carrying three heavy attaché cases, I entered the Pennsylvania Avenue door, showed my blue-and-white White House pass to the uniformed guards, and took the elevator to the third floor. I unlocked the door of 338 and went in. I opened my two-drawer safe, took out my operational handbook, found a telephone number and dialed it. "The time was 3:13 [0213 in the hardcover book] in the morning of June 17, 1972, and the five of my companions had been arrested and taken to the maximum-security block of the District of Columbia jail. I had recruited four of them and it was my responsibility to get them out. That was the sole focus of my thoughts as I began talking on the telephone. "But with those five arrests the Watergate affair had begun... "After several rings the call was answered and I heard the sleepy voice of Douglas Caddy. 'Yes?' "'Doug? This is Howard. I hate to wake you up, but I've got a tough situation and I need to talk to you. Can I come over?' "'Sure. I'll tell the desk clerk you're expected.' "'I'll be there in about 20 minutes,' I told him, and hung up. "From the safe I took a small money box and removed the $10,000 Liddy had given me for emergency use. I put $1,500 in my wallet and the remaining $8,500 in my coat pocket. The black attache case containing McCord's electronic equipment I placed in a safe drawer that held my operational notebook. Then I closed and locked the safe, turning the dial several times. The other two cases I left beside the safe, turned out the light and left my office, locking the door." --E. Howard Hunt, Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent (Berkley, 1974) ...About half an hour after he telephoned me, Hunt arrived at my Washington apartment on P Street N.W., located just a five-minute drive from both the White House and the Watergate complex. After Hunt told me what had happened and answered a number of questions which leaped to my mind, I turned my attention to securing skilled criminal legal counsel for the five arrested individuals--McCord and the four Cuban-Americans--who were sitting in jail, naively expecting to be freed momentarily. My law firm had the then-traditional Washington practice in that it specialized in corporate law, not criminal cases. Of the three partners in the firm that Saturday, one was in Italy, another at Hilton Head, and the third, Robert Scott, was at home. I telephoned Scott, a former assistant U.S. attorney and a former assistant to the U.S. attorney general (and who later was appointed by President Carter to be a judge of the District of Columbia superior court). My 4 a.m. call awakened Scott, just as Hunt's call had awakened me about an hour earlier. I sketched the case for Scott: the arrests of the five at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, the roles of Hunt and Liddy, and the need for a skilled criminal defense attorney to represent the five incarcerated individuals. Scott, who by then was wide awake, exclaimed, "They must have been set up," and told me to sit tight while he telephoned his nephew, who was an attorney. Moments later he called back and said we would have to find another attorney, and after several more calls, Scott settled upon Joseph Rafferty, whom he knew but I did not. I then telephoned Rafferty, who told me to meet him in the arraignment courtroom of the superior court at 8:30 a.m. to begin our efforts to obtain the release of the incarcerated five. Within minutes of my conversations with Scott and Rafferty, Hunt used my home telephone to call Liddy. Hunt talked briefly to Liddy and then handed the telephone to me and we conversed. At that point Liddy retained me to represent him in the matter, Hunt having done so shortly after he arrived at my apartment. The idea of representing all seven defendants did not appeal to me, but the case was developing so fast and was of such serious nature that I was required to act, to postpone dealing with any potential conflict of interest among the various clients. Hunt then left my apartment about 5 a.m., telling me he was exhausted and was going home to get some sleep. Rafferty and I met at 8:30 a.m. but had some initial trouble locating the five arrested. Their names did not appear on the list of defendants scheduled to be arraigned in superior court. Finally, after some phone calls, we found them at the second police precinct at 23rd and L streets N.W., where they had been taken shortly after being caught. Around 10:30 a.m., the events of the day having begun at 2:30 a.m. when the arrests were made, Rafferty and I conferred with the five inside the cell block. At the end of our conference, James McCord, Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Frank Sturgis, and Eugenio Martinez asked us to represent them in the case. The five were then transferred to the arraignment courtroom and a hearing begun. ...here are six questions along with the answers I was ultimately forced to disclose: The question was, When was the last time that you saw Mr. Hunt? (Answer: from 3:35 a.m. to 5 a.m. on the morning of June 17 after the break-in when he came to my apartment seeking my legal counsel.) Did you see Mr. Hunt within one-quarter mile of the Watergate Hotel on June 16 or 17 of this year? (Answer: As the crow flies, my apartment was about a mile from the Watergate Hotel, and thus I saw Hunt when he came to my apartment after the break-in when he sought legal counsel.) At what time did you receive a telephone call in the early morning hours of June 17, 1972? (Answer: Between 3:05 a.m. and 3:15 a.m. when Hunt called to retain me, the arrests having taken place at 2:30 a.m.) Between the hours of Friday at midnight, June 16, and 8:30 a.m. Saturday, June 17, did you receive a visit from Mr. Everett Howard Hunt? (Answer: Yes, at 3:35 a.m.) Who, if anyone, asked you to represent those five individuals who were in jail at the 23rd and L streets N.W. that morning? (Answer: Hunt, when he called me between 3:05 a.m. and 3:15 a.m.; Liddy, when I spoke with him after Hunt telephoned him about 4:45 a.m.; and later the five individuals themselves.) All right, I believe the first question that we asked you, at which point you indicated a desire to consult with counsel, was the date on which Mr. X became your client? [Liddy was listed as Mr. X in this question, as his name had not yet surfaced publicly.] (Answer: Liddy became my client on June 17 when we spoke by telephone around 4:45 a.m.) Here is the account as summarized from trial testimony, including Caddy testimony, in the Appeals Court ruling U.S. v. Liddy, No. 73-1565 United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit: When McCord, Barker, Martinez, Gonzalez, and Sturgis were apprehended in the DNC offices in the Watergate complex on June 17, at 2:00 a.m., they had in their possession walkie talkies, burglary tools, documents that had been taken from DNC files, telephone bugging devices, and equipment capable of transmitting voice conversations. Baldwin, who was acting as a lookout from the balcony of room 723, saw two men emerge from an alleyway near the Watergate building shortly after uniformed policemen arrived at the scene. He identified one of the men as Hunt and testified that the other was wearing a suit he recognized as Liddy's. At about 3 a.m. Hunt arrived at room 723 with a walkie talkie and used the telephone to call an attorney, Michael Douglas Caddy. Caddy's testimony established that about a half hour after this phone call, Hunt visited Caddy's apartment. Caddy then made a series of telephone calls to retain an attorney with more experience in criminal law. Caddy stated that at about 5 a.m. Hunt called Liddy from Caddy's apartment and informed Liddy that an attorney experienced in criminal law matters had been retained. Caddy talked to Liddy and confirmed what Hunt had said. Then Hunt gave Caddy $8500 in cash, one $500 bill and the rest in $100 bills. At 8:30 a.m., Caddy went to arraignment court where he met Joseph Rafferty, a lawyer with experience in criminal law. They checked with the clerk to see whether the arraignment sheet contained names of five individuals, names that were the aliases then being used by the five men arrested in the Watergate. Shortly thereafter the attorneys went to a police station to confer with the five men. Caddy had met Barker a year previous but had never met any of the others. Caddy had not been contacted by any of these men prior to his appearance at the police station. After the meeting at the police station, Caddy called Hunt at home. A few days later, Liddy directed Caddy by telephone to pay to Mr. Rafferty $2500 of the $8500 he had received. Next, here is the account from "All the President's Men" quoting Caddy: Woodward went inside the courtroom. One person stood out. In a middle row sat a young man with fashionably long hair and an expensive suit with slightly flared lapels, his chin high, his eyes searching the room as if he were in unfamiliar surroundings. Woodward sat down next to him and asked if he was in court because of the Watergate arrests. "Perhaps," the man said. "I'm not the attorney of record. I'm acting as an individual." He said his name was Douglas Caddy and he introduced a small, anemic-looking man next to him as the attorney of record, Joseph Rafferty, Jr. Rafferty appeared to have been routed out of bed; he was unshaven and squinted as if the light hurt his eyes. The two lawyers wandered in and out of the courtroom. Woodward finally cornered Rafferty in a hallway and got the names and addresses of the five suspects. Four of them were from Miami, three of them Cuban-Americans. Caddy didn't want to talk. "Please don't take it personally," he told Woodward. "It would be a mistake to do that. I just don't have anything to say." Woodward asked Caddy about his clients. "They are not my clients," he said. But you are a lawyer? Woodward asked. "I'm not going to talk to you." Caddy walked back into the courtroom. Woodward followed. "Please, I have nothing to say." Would the five men be able to post bond? Woodward asked. After politely refusing to answer several more times, Caddy replied quickly that the men were all employed and had families-factors that would be taken into consideration by the judge in setting bond. He walked back into the corridor. Woodward followed: Just tell me about yourself, how you got into the case. "I'm not in the case." Why are you here? "Look," Caddy said, "I met one of the defendants, Bernard Barker, at a social occasion." Where? "In D.C. It was cocktails at the Army-Navy Club. We had a sympathetic conversation... that's all I'm going to say." How did you get into the case? Caddy pivoted and walked back in. After half an hour, he went out again. Woodward asked how he got into the case. This time 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." Finally, here are the following excerpted relevant sections of an article that appeared in the Washington Post on Sunday, June 18, 1972, "5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats' Office Here": ...Douglas Caddy, one of the attorneys for the five men, told a reporter that shortly after 3 a.m. yesterday, 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." ...Caddy, one of the attorneys for the five, said he met Barker a year ago over cocktails at the Army Navy Club in Washington. "We had a sympathetic conversation -- that's all I'll say," Caddy told a reporter. Caddy said that he was probably the only attorney whom Barker knew in Washington. Caddy, who says he is a corporate lawyer, attempted to stay in the background of yesterday's 4 p.m. court hearing. He did not argue before Superior Court Judge James A. Belson himself but brought another attorney, Joseph A. Rafferty Jr., who has experience in criminal law, to do the arguing. QUESTIONS FOR MR. CADDY Since the five men were using aliases with the police, and there is no record of Hunt or Liddy having given you the aliases, how did you and Rafferty know what names to look for on the arraignment sheet, and which names to use when making phone calls to find the men? How were you able to brief Robert Scott on Liddy's role in the break-in? Did you or did you not receive a telephone call from Bernard Barker's wife asking you to represent her husband and the other men? If so, what time was it and where were you when you received the phone call? Did E. Howard Hunt tell you at your apartment that Bernard Barker's wife was going to call you? If Rafferty was the attorney of record, why were you called before the grand jury as the attorney for the men? Was Rafferty called before the grand jury, too? If not, why not? Were you in the court on June 17, 1972 as an attorney or only "as an individual"? You reportedly told Woodward at the courtroom that the men were not your clients. Was that true or false? In your 10:30 a.m. meeting with the five men inside the cell block, did you properly disclose to each of them that you were not a criminal lawyer but a corporate lawyer? Since you were not a criminal lawyer, and Rafferty was, why did you stay on the case at all? On June 17, 1972, did you subscribe any permanent record, file, pleading, notice of appearance, or any other instrument related to the case for any or all of the men? If so, what? At any relevant time, were you acting as an "Attorney in fact" on behalf of E. Howard Hunt and/or G. Gordon Liddy, and if so, did you have an instrument granting you a power of attorney for either of them or both? If Rafferty was the attorney of record and was the criminal lawyer on the case, why did he get $2,500 while you got $6,000? Next will come E. Howard Hunt's full account of the relevant events. Ashton Gray

I have been trying for quite some time without even modest success to determine who Douglas Caddy was representing at what relevant times, and at whose behest or request, in the Watergate case. Since he is a member in this forum and a pivotal figure in Watergate, and is also central to this precise issue, I appeal to him in good faith to reconcile in the most straightforward and unambiguous way possible the inconsistencies and discordances in the record. I don't appeal on my own behalf; I appeal on behalf of the cause of setting forth a truthful record for posterity. I have no personal vested interest. I have no dog in the fight. Therefore, if, as there have been some indications, Mr. Caddy feels some personal antipathy toward me, I ask him to rise above it for the good of all. 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. If he finds me simply too persona non grata to countenance, then I ask that some other member of the forum step forward and present the obvious and logical questions that arise from the embattled accounts. Who presents the questions is of no relevance at all. To make personalities the issue is to obfuscate the issues. I'm going to lay the pertinent accounts out in as orderly a procession as possible, but the very nature of the contradictions is such as almost to defy the ambition. I've settled on the convention, rightly or wrongly, of presenting the accounts provided by the three relevant sources—Douglas Caddy, E. Howard Hunt, and G. Gordon Liddy—each in a separate message following this introductory message. At the end of each of those messages I will append questions arising out of them. I respectfully request that the forum members permit me the opportunity to get all three sets of accounts and questions posted before commenting in order to have the overview, but of course this is only a request. I'll get them posted as quickly as I can. The first of the three, immediately below, contains accounts and statements by Douglas Caddy himself. Ashton Gray

This is an un-edited re-post of unanswered relevant questions asked of Mr. Caddy earlier in this thread. I'm reposting it after the edited repost, directly above, of other unanswered questions so both sets can easily be located together, and to get the thread back on-topic after "answers" by others (that weren't answers at all) to questions that can't possibly be answered in any meaningful way by anyone other than Mr. Caddy. I hope he will respond. Mr. Caddy, I didn't mean to slight you by being this long in getting back to you on these questions, but I wanted to give your answers due and proper consideration, and I'm very glad to see that you're posting here in the forum. Thank you again for your more than thoroughgoing address to most of the questions I'd asked. At a point that would have been a very good ending of your message, you wrote: They certainly covered most of them, but there are a few that were left unanswered, two that I'm afraid I have to apologize to you for not having asked very clearly (which I'll clear up below), and then—if you could see your way clear to extend your largesse—there are a few that arose from a couple of your answers. I'll set off sections for each category First, here are the questions that weren't answered. I've edited or amended one or two very slightly—just to reflect answers that you did provide where applicable, or because they've been taken out of their original context—and have renumbered them for simplicity: UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: Who besides Hunt at Mullen was "witting and cleared" of the CIA relationship? (If you don't have that specific information, who else can you name who worked at Mullen while you were there?) If you know, did Hunt, or you, or anyone at the Mullen company have any contact, directly or through an intermediary, with Daniel Ellsberg? If you know, were persons employed at or by Gall Lane "cleared and witting" of Mullen ties to CIA at any relevant time? If so, who? If you know, was Gall Lane in any sort of relationship with CIA that was similar to the relationship that the Mullen company enjoyed? (At any relevant time.) Did any of your legal tasks for either Liddy or Hunt include arranging for possible overseas travel? (You may have answered this by indirect exclusion, but I wasn't certain, and would like to have it cleared up.) This next section is where I think I inadvertently created some confusion by my cavalier tossing around of the word "probate" in its more general sense, from Black's: "...in current usage this term has been expanded to generally include all matters and proceedings pertaining to administration of estates, guardianships, etc." I get the idea that you were interpreting and using the word "probate" in its more narrow sense of court procedure determining validity of a will of a dearly departed—after the fact, so to speak. To correct my legalese faux pas, with your continued graciousness, I'll set forth my original questions and the relevant parts of your answers to those, then I'll ask more specifically what I was trying to ask in the first place. QUESTIONS I ASKED USING THE WORD "PROBATE" TOO BROADLY: QUESTION: Hunt became a client a Gall Lane, and you were one of the attorneys working with Hunt. You've said you consulted with Hunt regarding probate and "other matters." What were the "other matters"? DOUGLAS CADDY: At Hunt’s request, we prepared a will for him... . None of this legal work involved probate matters. QUESTION: Did the probate matters include Dorothy Hunt's probate? DOUGLAS CADDY: At no time was I involved in any probate matters dealing with Dorothy Hunt. ...I do not know who handled the probate of Dorothy Hunt’s estate. Thank you. Now here is more narrowly what I had hoped to learn: At any time, did you prepare a will for Dorothy Hunt? If not, do you know of anyone who did, and if so, who? Do you know if Dorothy Hunt had a will at the time you were preparing one for her husband, E. Howard Hunt? If you know, was E. Howard Hunt named as the primary beneficiary and/or executor of any will of Dorothy Hunt at any relevant time. I hope that narrows this considerably, and thanks for your patience. Finally, there are several questions that came up in my review of the answers you provided, if you would be so kind. QUESTIONS ARISING FROM YOUR ANSWERS: First in this section of new questions is something that arose out of the following exchange: QUESTION: What was the nature of the "legal tasks" you were doing for Liddy? DOUGLAS CADDY: In March, 1972, George Webster...asked for a lawyer to do voluntary campaign work in John Dean’s office. I was "volunteered" by John Kilcullen. I did several legal research assignments given to me by Dean and one of his associates. That's very interesting in light of something I'm about to take up with Pat Speer if he posts the new topic I asked him to post. (By the way: I think it was very thoughtful of you to post something about the kind of unwarranted and irrelevant ad hominem attacks he has launched on me repeatedly, but really, it's nothing. It's just sort of like having a gnat buzzing around.) But this thing you said about working for Dean: John Dean, of course, is the one who took possession of the contents of Hunt's White House safe and divided it into two neat piles: one pile he turned over to the rank-and-file FBI agents on Tuesday, June 27, 1972 (two days after Baldwin started cooperating with the U.S. Attorneys); the other pile Dean placed into a big envelope (or "two folders," depending on which section of L. Patrick Gray's congressional testimony you happen to be listening to), and, in the presence of Ehrlichman, handed directly to L. Patrick Gray on Wednesday, June 28, 1972—right around the very time you went before the grand jury as the very first witness called. So the questions that your answer above caused to spring immediately to mind are: A. Who was the "associate" of John Dean that you also were doing research work for? B. What was the work you were doing for Dean and that associate? C. Did you know that Dean could open Hunt's safe? And the last few questions I have that arose out of your answers is a real head scratcher for me. I'm in a real pickle here, and I hope you can help me out. Here are the relevant questions and sections of your answers: QUESTION: Were you cleared and witting of the Mullen company's involvement with CIA? DOUGLAS CADDY: No, I was not cleared and witting of the Mullen Company’s involvement with the CIA. QUESTION: Hunt became a client a Gall Lane, and you were one of the attorneys working with Hunt. You've said you consulted with Hunt regarding probate and "other matters." What were the "other matters"? DOUGLAS CADDY: This work was performed in conjunction with a partner of that law firm, Robert Scott, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, who later became a judge. At Hunt’s request, we...analyzed his proposed business relationship with the Mullen Company after Robert Bennett assumed its ownership (no mention was made then by Hunt of the CIA’s involvement with the Company)... . Okay. I've got all of that, and that's very clear. But here's why I'm in a pickle. First, the Mullen company, as a matter of CIA record, had been cooperating with CIA for at least seven years (since 1963) when Hunt went to work there, and you were already working out of the Mullen D.C. office at that time. Second, the Mullen company, as a matter of CIA record, had overseas offices, at least one of which in Europe was "staffed, run, and paid for by CIA." And given all of that information, I've got this passage from Hunt's own autobiography that I'm trying to reconcile with your answers. Read along with me, if you would, as Hunt recounts his early days at Mullen (my bold emphasis added): "The CIA placement officer had told me that the Mullen firm had "cooperated" with CIA... . So I inferred that my CIA background would not prove a handicap to employment with Mullen as it had with several multinational firms. "During a second meeting Mullen told me that he was getting on in years, the company was comfortably established and he was casting about for younger successors to take over the managment and direction of the firm. One of Mullen's accounts was the General Foods Corporation, whose Washington representative, Douglas Caddy, worked out of the Mullen offices. According to Mullen, with Caddy, myself and an as-yet-unselected individual, Mullen would be able to retire, leaving the business in the hands of this successor triumverate." —E. Howard Hunt, Undercover Can you kind of see why this is a head-scratcher for me? The owner of the Mullen company was going to retire soon, and in his mind you and Hunt had been dubbed as two of his successors. But he was in an on-going long-term secret relationship with CIA, including overseas installations completely manned, funded, and run by CIA, and so with the answers you gave above, I gotta' tell you, Mr. Caddy, I can't figure out for the life of me how the hell he expected you to be one the of three co-managers of the entire international CIA-front company if you were totally ignorant of CIA's involvement. Can you clear that up? Thanks again so much. Ashton Gray

This is an edited re-post of questions for Mr. Caddy posted earlier in this thread that haven't been answered. I've edited only to get the post down to its essentials, and am re-posting this to get the thread back on track from irrelevant distractions that have been injected into this thread. First stop is that same Washington Post article you mentioned and that I quoted from above. In it you not only spill the beans about having been in a private meeting with Hunt and Barker a year earlier, you also tell the world how you got tapped to represent Mr. Barker. Remember this? "Douglas Caddy, one of the attorneys for the five men, told a reporter that shortly after 3 a.m. yesterday, 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, Sunday, June 18, 1972, "5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats' Office Here," by Alfred E. Lewis So here we have you on contemporaneous record, Mr. Caddy, avowing that Bernard Barker had told his wife in Miami, at some undetermined point in time but certainly prior to the "break-in," to call you in Washington, D.C. if Barker "hadn't called her by 3 a.m." So Barker himself had given his wife your name and phone number prior to the 16-17 June 1972 break-in, after purportedly having met and spoken to you only once in his life, that one brief meeting having been a year earlier. Let me first assume, to your credit, that Bernard Barker had been so beguiled and impressed by you at the Army-Navy Club back in June 1971 that he had asked for your business card, and had kept it until it was creased and dirty and dog-earred just in case he ever got into criminal trouble in Washington, D.C., and therefore gave it to his wife before kissing her on the cheek and flying off to D.C. to commit criminal acts—even though he had to know that you were not a criminal lawyer. ...For surcease from this spinning sensation, I'm going to flip in my Tour Guide Book to the one other "authoritative source" on this call from Bernard Baker's wife, your good friend and long-time client, E. Howard Hunt. Below is what he tells us, in excruciating, exacting detail about Mr. and Mrs. Barker and you on that fateful night. I am aware that you lionize Mr. Hunt's writing skills, but with apologies to you and his editors at Berkley/Putnam, I'm going to prune his prose with hedge clippers to get at what's relevant. Here's Hunt on his germane activities right after the arrest. He's just gone to his White House office with some disputed number of "attaché cases" brim full with evidence that will incriminate the White House and deposited it there—naturally. Having planted the evidence, he does the following, according to his account in his autobiographical book, "Undercover": "I opened my two-drawer safe, took out my operational notebook, found a telephone number and dialed it. After several rings the call was answered and I heard the sleepy voice of Douglas Caddy. 'Yes?' "'Doug? This is Howard. I hate to wake you up, but I've got a tough situation and I need to talk to you. Can I come over?' "'Sure. I'll tell the desk clerk you're expected.'" So while you're heating up water for instant coffee, and with the evidence conveniently planted in his White House safe, Hunt makes sure his "operational notebook" that he'd gotten your number from gets put back into the White House safe (naturally), then trots across the street to his convenient Mullen office—for no other apparent reason than to call Barker's wife: "From my [Mullen] office I dialed Barker's home in Miami and spoke with his wife, Clara. "'Clarita,' I said, 'things have gone wrong and Macho's [bernard Barker] been arrested.' "I heard a muffled shriek. Then, 'Oh, my God!' "'He's got bail money with him,' I told her, 'so maybe he'll be able to get out before dawn. I don't know how these things work, but I think you ought to have an attorney. I've already called one and I want you to call him too.' "I gave her Caddy's name and telephone number and asked that she phone Doug and retain him for her husband." Now, just for the tour participants, Doug, so they don't get too disoriented in this maze, I think I should mention that the "burglars" had been arrested at 2:30 a.m. Hunt and Liddy purportedly already had watched part of the arrest, then collected up a lot of incriminating evidence to plant in the White House, then Hunt had driven Liddy to Liddy's jeep, then Hunt had driven to the Howard Johnson's and gone up to the seventh floor and told Baldwin—who he claims never to have met before, although Baldwin claims otherwise—to "get rid of" all the electronic equipment—which Baldwin drives straight over to McCord's house, naturally—then Hunt had driven to the White House and called you while planting the evidence there, then had gone over to his Mullen office across the street (are you worn out yet?) and called Mrs. Barker and only then made it over to your apartment. (Whew!) And let's remind people that you told the Post Barker's wife had called you "shortly after 3 a.m." But we're not done: Hunt finally gets to your apartment, and it could not possibly have been before 3:30 a.m., and you welcome him, having boiled some water for instant coffee—but no milk for his ulcer. And he briefs you on what's happened. And having briefed you—to your dismay of course—he hands you $8,500 and asks you if you "can bail them out." And only after all that, with it now having to be pushing at least 4:00 a.m., Hunt claims that he said the following to you, and describes your response: "'Bernie Barker's wife will probably call you and retain you officially to represent her husband and the other men.' "Caddy looked at his wristwatch, then went to another room to phone [Caddy's law firm's partners]." I'll tell you, Mr. Caddy, for the sake of my sanity and that of the tour attendees, for now I'm going to have to just gloss right over the fact that Hunt's first mention to you of a man you purportedly had only met and spoken to once a whole year earlier was using the chummy "Bernie Barker," and get directly to what you had to have seen when you looked at your wristwatch. It sure as hell wasn't "shortly after 3 a.m." It had to be considerably later. And there still is no call from Bernard Barker's wife to you. And E. Howard Hunt stays at your apartment all the way through the phone calls from two of your law firm's partners, and all the way through them scaring up Rafferty (an actual criminal lawyer), and all the way through two phone calls from Rafferty, and all the way through you telling Hunt that Rafferty is coming to your apartment so you can tag along like a fifth wheel for reasons nobody in the world knows to this very day—since by your own endless protestations, you were not a criminal lawyer—and when Hunt finally leaves to go home, it's already nearly dawn. And still there is not one single word about a call having come to you from Bernard Barker's wife while he was there. Yet just hours later, you told a Washington Post reporter that Clara Barker had called you from Miami "shortly after 3 a.m.," not at the behest of E. Howard Hunt, but because Barker himself had told his wife to call you if Barker hadn't called her by 3:00 a.m. 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. I'll be perfectly happy to find out that your client, Hunt, lied like a dog. So is it 1), 2), or 3) above? Ashton Gray

Let the record show that Mr. Gray has started the name-calling. For the record, I am not quite as ignorant as I pretend to be. Oh, for the love of Aunt Marcie. "Ignorance" is a state of being uninformed on any particular datum. I am far more ignorant than I am not ignorant, because there are far more things I don't know than there are things that I know. That's why I am on a long quest for knowledge, one I don't yet foresee an end to. You obviously were uninformed of the context of Caddy's quote. And of course the only thing that was "called a name" was a principle. Diagram the sentence, unless you're just here trying to incite and mount another "let's get Ashton banned" movement on any pretext. Of course that would seem pretty consistent with everything else you've done in this thread so far. <Raising hand> Me? Me? Can I answer? I know the answer: no, you're not alone. Some people can discern a very clear difference, others can't, still others will latch onto it and cry "trivial, trivial, trivial." A brick is pretty trivial, too. One brick doesn't make a wall; that just makes a brick. People who have met face-to-face with a brick wall, though, will tell you it ain't trivial at all. Count it as just another brick in the wall. Ashton Gray

Hi Michael. Yep. Most of the things I should have been doing aren't quite as much fun, though. Okay, I'll buckle down and get serious here. Stay tuned... Ashton Gray

You know: that's precisely what I thought you might say. But I'm afraid that such a charitable interpretation probably would have to be attributed more to "the principle of ignorance" than to "the principle of charity." Let me 'splain to you why. I'll do it slowly. You see, Mr. Caddy was referring specifically to E. Howard Hunt's non-fiction when he made his now chewed-to-death quote. Did I fail to mention that before? <Tcht!> I am so sorry. I don't know how I overlooked mentioning that! Here's some more context of Mr. Caddy's quote for you, Mr. Carroll, regarding Hunt being "an extremely gifted writer," so you can have a prayer of finding out what's going on: "My meeting came about by Howard Hunt inviting me to join him for lunch at the Navy Club in Washington, D.C. When I arrived there, Hunt and Barker were already seated and Hunt made the introductions. I do not recall exactly what we discussed but it most likely was Barker's role under Hunt in the ill-fated invasion of Cuba that took place under President Kennedy, who later came to believe that he had been misled and misadvised by the CIA on the matter. Hunt's recounting of the invasion is told in his book, 'Give Us This Day.' Even Hunt's most vociferous critics concede that he is an extremely gifted writer and this is reflected in all of his books, including the above-mentioned one." —Douglas Caddy (Aside to Caddy: Doug, now you can't say I didn't try to warn you. I spent one of my own time-outs and everything! I told you that you ought to get the hook! But no! You wouldn't listen. I tried, man.) And I'm so glad you asked for it, Mr. Carroll! (The contextual reference, I mean.) Not just because it gives you your third "Caddy PR machine" meltdown in a row, either. Notice there where Doug said, concerning this private meeting with Hunt and Barker in June of 1971—before the "Pentagon Papers," mind you—the following: "I do not recall exactly what we discussed but it most likely was Barker's role under Hunt in the ill-fated invasion of Cuba that took place under President Kennedy." Now compare what Mr. Caddy said to me on the first page of this very thread: "When I arrived Hunt was already there with his guest, Bernard Barker. Hunt made the introductions. The luncheon conversation was almost entirely consumed with Hunt and Barker recounting their involvement in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba." I think that's part of the "principle of vacillating memory by convenience," isn't it? Or maybe his story about what he recalled or didn't recall changed only because Hunt had been sitting too close to him at the table way back then. You think? Maybe it's sort of a "principle of Hunt-osis by lunch table osmosis" syndrome that science and Wikipedia haven't caught up with yet. In any case, next installment here is going to be: "Just Who the Heck was Caddy Representing When?" Better dig deep in that "Platitudinous Principles for Every Occasion" bag you're carrying. You're going to need 'em all. Ashton Gray

Ohhhhhh. Well... Gosh, thanks! I think I'm getting this now. So, I see what you're saying: To interpret Mr. Caddy's endorsement of Hunt properly, so you and I can "optimise agreement," Douglas Caddy's statement about Hunt more accurately would be: "Even Hunt's most vociferous critics concede that he is an extremely gifted xxxx and this is reflected in all of his books." Tell me if I'm getting this right. That does seem to put you and me in agreement on that one point. Hmmmm. Do you think that will "optimise agreement" with Doug, too, Raymond? (By the way, lowering that rate you're charging might be a very good idea indeed. I think we've "optimised agreement" on that, too.) Ashton Gray

Everyone knows that E. Howard Hunt is a xxxx and a writer of fiction, so it seems to me that it is a safe assumtion that if Mr. Hunt and Mr. Caddy are in conflict, you can take it to the bank that Mr. Hunt is lying (or was in possession of information unavailable to Mr. Caddy) and that Mr. Caddy is telling the truth. <TWEEET!> "OFFICIAL TIME OUT CALLED, GRAY TEAM" Pst! Hey Doug! Douglas Caddy: Hi. Over here. I just had to call a time out for a minute. Why don't we each come out under a white flag here, and meet out here in the middle of the field where nobody can hear us, and let's you and me have a quiet respectful talk, soto voce. Listen, Doug, I really, really don't want to have to do what I'm simply gonna' have to do when the whistle blows again, so I just called you out here to try to give you some help in this thing: do yourself a favor, man—get somebody else besides this Carroll guy to run in here and talk for you and do your public relations work. I've done public relations, and this is— This is just— <Groan> Aw, man, even though you and I have our differences, I really hate to see anybody get done to them what he's just done to you. Even I'm over here cringing. Somebody really ought to tell him the first law of PR: don't discredit your client. Ohhhh, man! I'm afraid the PR egg he just laid might even make the PR textbooks in infamy! I think the time-out's nearly over, and you do what you want to do, but I've got to tell you that if I were you, I'd get out the hook, and not bother puttin' him on the bench, or even sending him to the showers, or even stopping to collect a severance check. Up to you. Uh-oh: the whistle just came out. I enjoyed this little chat, but I gotta' get back. Good luck! <TWEEET!> "OFFICIAL TIME OUT IS OVER" I'm sorry, Mr. Carroll, for that little interlude. You were commenting on questions I had asked Mr. Caddy concerning conflicts between his statements, and those of E. Howard Hunt in Hunt's purportedly non-fiction autobiography. So what was it you were saying to me again? Oh, dear. That's right. That is what you said, isn't it. Well, Mr. Carroll, I'm speechless. And since Mr. Caddy isn't talking about any of this himself, the only decent thing I can do on his behalf is quote him on the subject of Mr. Hunt's veracity in Mr. Hunt's non-fiction works. I briefly turn the podium over to Mr. Caddy for his own endorsement of Mr. Hunt's works, and let's all give Mr. Caddy a warm welcome for coming out and speaking: "Even Hunt's most vociferous critics concede that he is an extremely gifted writer and this is reflected in all of his books." —Douglas Caddy February 6, 2006, 07:20 AM <APPLAUSE! APPLAUSE!> Wow! Now there's an endorsement. Did you see that, Mr. Carroll? I wish I could get some kudos like that written for my work. I'd make damn sure the publishers put that right at the tippy-top on the back cover of any non-fiction book that my name was going on, because of course "extremely gifted" writers simply don't spew a bunch of lies in their non-fiction works. Right, Mr. Carroll? And did you know, Mr. Carroll, that in Mr. Caddy's article, "Gay Bashing in Watergate," he opens it with a long passage from E. Howard Hunt's Undercover—the exact same book that I've been quoting from, asking Mr. Caddy to reconcile the mutually exclusive accounts given by him and Mr. Hunt for the same events? Mr. Caddy seems to have a very high opinion of Mr. Hunt as a writer generally, and for that autobiography in particular. But, Mr. Carroll: you seem to have a <COUGH!>, um, somewhat, shall we say, "lower opinion" of Mr. Hunt's non-fiction forays than does Mr. Caddy. What was your proposed kudo for Mr. Hunt again? Mmmm. Oh. Oh, yeah. That's right. Tell you what, I'm going to have to just step aside in this one and let you and Mr. Caddy fight it out over whether Hunt is telling the truth, or is telling lies that conflict just disastrously with Mr. Caddy's statements. I hate getting involved in dosmetic disputes. Ya'll talk among yourselves. Meanwhile, I really, really hope Mr. Caddy will come in here and clean up this mess now! I mean, now, it's just all over the floor. Hey, Doug: podium's all yours. Ashton Gray

Mr. Ashton Gray is accusing Mr. Douglas Caddy, directly or by implication, of being a xxxx. Au contraire, Mr. Carroll! I merely asked politely if Mr. Caddy could help reconcile this seeming discrepancy. You seem to have eliminated the very real possibility that E. Howard Hunt, a hack spy fiction writer, could merely have gotten a little overzealous in claiming that Mr. Caddy had been selected to run a major international CIA front company. I'm perfectly prepared for Mr. Caddy to say that Hunt must have been smoking something a little too strong when he wrote that passage, or that Hunt just made it up out of whole cloth. Exactly as in my perfectly reasonable questions about the mutually exclusive stories told by Mr. Caddy and Mr. Hunt in "The Curious Case of Mrs. Barker's Phantom Phone Call," I'd be completely satisfied to learn that it was Mr. Hunt, not Mr. Caddy, who misrepresented the facts at issue, as long as these so-far unresolvable contradictions get resolved. Don't you agree that they should be able to be resolved, and that they therefore should be resolved? After all, I didn't create either of the situations at issue, I merely pointed them out and asked perfectly prudent and reasonable questions. It does, though, remind a little of a situation that arises in the game of chess referred to, so appropriately, as being "forked." Now, I will admit that when we come to certain important questions about who actually was legally representing the Watergate burglars when, Mr. Hunt isn't in the picture at all. But I haven't gotten there yet. I'm hoping Mr. Caddy will clear up these other contradictions between his accounts and Mr. Hunt's accounts of rather materially crucial issues first. Wouldn't you honestly like to see these mutually exclusive "facts" resolved one way or another, too, Mr. Carroll? It seems to me that it if Mr. Caddy could just simply say that Hunt got it wrong, then the record will be clear, and it only can derive to Mr. Caddy's benefit. Then we can move on. Don't you agree? Ashton Gray

I've got every single reference that exists on the alleged "cables" right here at my fingertips. So you go start a new topic about your precious Hunt "cables," and you make your case for the "cables" in that appropriate topic, and I'll see you there. If you continue to try to sabotage the Alfred Baldwin thread with it, the only thing I'm going to do is report it to the admins, and wash my hands of you permanently. Your choice. So go start an appropriately named topic, and then bring it all on. Lay it all out there in as much detail as you can muster, with cites, in the dusty street of your new thread at high noon. I'll be there. I'm calling you out. Ashton Gray If you have it the material on the cables at your disposal, go ahead and start the thread and I'll see you there. I thought so. I accept your capitulation and your stipulation that the "cables" are yet another fiction, Mr. Speer. Utter codswollop. Learn history before you start trying to teach it, especially to me. The only things that Ford and his cronies at the CIA "exposed" in those "exhausive investigations" were the exact things they wanted to "expose," for which Ford's cronies Helms and Gottlieb and friends already had shredded every scrap of evidence at the very beginning of 1973—immediately after their Watergate hoax, and immediately after CIA had started its top secret remote viewing program, which they never revealed at any relevant time, and which they ran in secret for well over 20 years. And Ford was absolutely key to helping them keep that secret throughout the entire dog-and-pony-show "congressional investigations" you're braying about. Explain that one in your apologist rants at me. It was the absolute highest priority black operation the CIA had going throughout all of these so-called "exhaustive investigations" that your hero Ford set up (impaneled using all his cronies, including Rockefeller, of whose offices Caddy is an alumnus), and they all made sure that not a single syllable ever saw the light of day about this secret program that the CIA was running at that very moment in back rooms just a few miles away from these flashy "exhaustive investigations." So all it really amounted to was yet another CIA cover-up, showily put on as "confessions" for which the actual evidence had been destroyed. There's not a pattern here or anything, is there? This wouldn't be the exact same M.O. as the Watergate "first break-in" hoax, run by the exact same crew, would it, Mr. Speer? I mean, we wouldn't be looking at yet another big production congressional "investigation" where the paper trail has been erased, and where we have to rely entirely on the word of the perjuring perpetrators and a few measly scraps of planted "evidence" to know what they have or have not done, would we? If not, how did these Ford-puppeted congressional "investigators" (with intelligence oversight powers) miss the biggest black program that the CIA and DIA had going right then, right under their own lying, two-faced noses? How? How is it possible? Apologize that away. But tell your apologies to somebody who's gullible enough to listen. When you picked me, you picked the wrong boy. Ashton Gray

I, personally, think that you and the rest of the moderators and John do an absolutely sterling job at what you do. Simply outstanding. In fact, I'm having a little difficulty trying to understand why someone thought you needed some unsolicited help in the form of stepping in (in what, I won't say) and wearing your hat. But speaking of hats, my hat's off to you (avatar notwithstanding). Ashton Gray

I don't claim to be any expert or final authority, and never have, and make plenty of mistakes like everybody else. But, yeah: I've done some homework. As for McCord's book specifically, I've found that it follows the exact same pattern as every other book I've ever read on the subject, and as all the testimony: it all sounds like it's telling the same story, and it all has this sort of lulling plausibility to it, and it all has so many excrutiating (and often very, very irrelevant) gratuitous details thrown in to give it the ring of utter authenticity. And all that holds true throughout everything you can pick up anywhere on the entire subject—right up to the moment that you start closely comparing the anecdotes and all those details. And then it just crumbles to dust. Just dust. This, in fact, is the most telling aspect of the entire thing, and is the absolute core of all these issues I've raised, and is something I'd be willing to bet that you know very well as a seasoned investigator: actual confessions ultimately make sense and align with fact; false alibis fall apart on scrutiny. And all these very glib, smooth, "first break-in" anecdotal "confessions"—all of them so, so, so "convincing" by the very fact that they not only are self-incriminating, but mutually incriminating—suddenly just start going to hell in a handbasket when carefully compared. It's the "self- and mutually-incriminating" part that I believe has turned belief in the Watergate co-conspirators' stories into the moral equivalent of a religion. I'm seeing this right here in this forum in response to debunking the phony, fraudulant, hoax of an alibi we've all bought into for so long. It's become a faith, and it's entirely faith-based, because there is NO physical evidence to support any of the "first break-in" stories. The co-conspirators just back each other up—or at least that's what it sounded like. But they don't. They tear each other's stories to tattered shreds once you really, honestly, investigatively start comparing them. Some people with obviously vested interests are attempting right now to discredit these completely valid and thorough comparisons by brushing the discrepancies off as "trivial." Pffffft! A lot of the discrepancies, as I know you see, are big enough to shove a battleship through, and once you start counting them, the sheer number of irreconcilable discrepancies is just overwhelming. Anybody who tries to dismiss it all, in my book, is trying desperately to hold onto their faith in proven and confessed liars and criminals (or is one of the disciples of the faith). That's a strange faith to have. It was my faith, too, for a very long time—I'm ashamed to admit. I very much appreciate your interest, and if you find anything in McCord's anecdotal accounts and recitations of testimony giving some version of "The Official Story" that in any way might alter my position that the "first break-in" was a hoax, and an alibi to cover up worse misdeeds, I will welcome it enthusiastically. I don't think you're going to. But I'll be standing by... Ashton Gray

Mr. Caddy, I didn't mean to slight you by being this long in getting back to you on these questions, but I wanted to give your answers due and proper consideration, and I'm very glad to see that you're posting here in the forum. Thank you again for your more than thoroughgoing address to most of the questions I'd asked. At a point that would have been a very good ending of your message, you wrote: They certainly covered most of them, but there are a few that were left unanswered, two that I'm afraid I have to apologize to you for not having asked very clearly (which I'll clear up below), and then—if you could see your way clear to extend your largesse—there are a few that arose from a couple of your answers. I'll set off sections for each category First, here are the questions that weren't answered. I've edited or amended one or two very slightly—just to reflect answers that you did provide where applicable, or because they've been taken out of their original context—and have renumbered them for simplicity: UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: Who besides Hunt at Mullen was "witting and cleared" of the CIA relationship? (If you don't have that specific information, who else can you name who worked at Mullen while you were there?) If you know, did Hunt, or you, or anyone at the Mullen company have any contact, directly or through an intermediary, with Daniel Ellsberg? If you know, were persons employed at or by Gall Lane "cleared and witting" of Mullen ties to CIA at any relevant time? If so, who? If you know, was Gall Lane in any sort of relationship with CIA that was similar to the relationship that the Mullen company enjoyed? (At any relevant time.) Did any of your legal tasks for either Liddy or Hunt include arranging for possible overseas travel? (You may have answered this by indirect exclusion, but I wasn't certain, and would like to have it cleared up.) This next section is where I think I inadvertently created some confusion by my cavalier tossing around of the word "probate" in its more general sense, from Black's: "...in current usage this term has been expanded to generally include all matters and proceedings pertaining to administration of estates, guardianships, etc." I get the idea that you were interpreting and using the word "probate" in its more narrow sense of court procedure determining validity of a will of a dearly departed—after the fact, so to speak. To correct my legalese faux pas, with your continued graciousness, I'll set forth my original questions and the relevant parts of your answers to those, then I'll ask more specifically what I was trying to ask in the first place. QUESTIONS I ASKED USING THE WORD "PROBATE" TOO BROADLY: QUESTION: Hunt became a client a Gall Lane, and you were one of the attorneys working with Hunt. You've said you consulted with Hunt regarding probate and "other matters." What were the "other matters"? DOUGLAS CADDY: At Hunt’s request, we prepared a will for him... . None of this legal work involved probate matters. QUESTION: Did the probate matters include Dorothy Hunt's probate? DOUGLAS CADDY: At no time was I involved in any probate matters dealing with Dorothy Hunt. ...I do not know who handled the probate of Dorothy Hunt’s estate. Thank you. Now here is more narrowly what I had hoped to learn: At any time, did you prepare a will for Dorothy Hunt? If not, do you know of anyone who did, and if so, who? Do you know if Dorothy Hunt had a will at the time you were preparing one for her husband, E. Howard Hunt? If you know, was E. Howard Hunt named as the primary beneficiary and/or executor of any will of Dorothy Hunt at any relevant time. I hope that narrows this considerably, and thanks for your patience. Finally, there are several questions that came up in my review of the answers you provided, if you would be so kind. QUESTIONS ARISING FROM YOUR ANSWERS: First in this section of new questions is something that arose out of the following exchange: QUESTION: What was the nature of the "legal tasks" you were doing for Liddy? DOUGLAS CADDY: In March, 1972, George Webster...asked for a lawyer to do voluntary campaign work in John Dean’s office. I was "volunteered" by John Kilcullen. I did several legal research assignments given to me by Dean and one of his associates. That's very interesting in light of something I'm about to take up with Pat Speer if he posts the new topic I asked him to post. (By the way: I think it was very thoughtful of you to post something about the kind of unwarranted and irrelevant ad hominem attacks he has launched on me repeatedly, but really, it's nothing. It's just sort of like having a gnat buzzing around.) But this thing you said about working for Dean: John Dean, of course, is the one who took possession of the contents of Hunt's White House safe and divided it into two neat piles: one pile he turned over to the rank-and-file FBI agents on Tuesday, June 27, 1972 (two days after Baldwin started cooperating with the U.S. Attorneys); the other pile Dean placed into a big envelope (or "two folders," depending on which section of L. Patrick Gray's congressional testimony you happen to be listening to), and, in the presence of Ehrlichman, handed directly to L. Patrick Gray on Wednesday, June 28, 1972—right around the very time you went before the grand jury as the very first witness called. So the questions that your answer above caused to spring immediately to mind are: A. Who was the "associate" of John Dean that you also were doing research work for? B. What was the work you were doing for Dean and that associate? C. Did you know that Dean could open Hunt's safe? And the last few questions I have that arose out of your answers is a real head scratcher for me. I'm in a real pickle here, and I hope you can help me out. Here are the relevant questions and sections of your answers: QUESTION: Were you cleared and witting of the Mullen company's involvement with CIA? DOUGLAS CADDY: No, I was not cleared and witting of the Mullen Company’s involvement with the CIA. QUESTION: Hunt became a client a Gall Lane, and you were one of the attorneys working with Hunt. You've said you consulted with Hunt regarding probate and "other matters." What were the "other matters"? DOUGLAS CADDY: This work was performed in conjunction with a partner of that law firm, Robert Scott, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, who later became a judge. At Hunt’s request, we...analyzed his proposed business relationship with the Mullen Company after Robert Bennett assumed its ownership (no mention was made then by Hunt of the CIA’s involvement with the Company)... . Okay. I've got all of that, and that's very clear. But here's why I'm in a pickle. First, the Mullen company, as a matter of CIA record, had been cooperating with CIA for at least seven years (since 1963) when Hunt went to work there, and you were already working out of the Mullen D.C. office at that time. Second, the Mullen company, as a matter of CIA record, had overseas offices, at least one of which in Europe was "staffed, run, and paid for by CIA." And given all of that information, I've got this passage from Hunt's own autobiography that I'm trying to reconcile with your answers. Read along with me, if you would, as Hunt recounts his early days at Mullen (my bold emphasis added): "The CIA placement officer had told me that the Mullen firm had "cooperated" with CIA... . So I inferred that my CIA background would not prove a handicap to employment with Mullen as it had with several multinational firms. "During a second meeting Mullen told me that he was getting on in years, the company was comfortably established and he was casting about for younger successors to take over the managment and direction of the firm. One of Mullen's accounts was the General Foods Corporation, whose Washington representative, Douglas Caddy, worked out of the Mullen offices. According to Mullen, with Caddy, myself and an as-yet-unselected individual, Mullen would be able to retire, leaving the business in the hands of this successor triumverate." —E. Howard Hunt, Undercover Can you kind of see why this is a head-scratcher for me? The owner of the Mullen company was going to retire soon, and in his mind you and Hunt had been dubbed as two of his successors. But he was in an on-going long-term secret relationship with CIA, including overseas installations completely manned, funded, and run by CIA, and so with the answers you gave above, I gotta' tell you, Mr. Caddy, I can't figure out for the life of me how the hell he expected you to be one the of three co-managers of the entire international CIA-front company if you were totally ignorant of CIA's involvement. Can you clear that up? Thanks again so much. Ashton Gray

Another apologetic request to have a message deleted (this one). When attempting to post, if it times out with an error message and I hit my browser back button and try again, I wind up with two copies. I won't do that any more. Sorry. Meanwhile, the actual message I was trying to post is below.

I've got every single reference that exists on the alleged "cables" right here at my fingertips. So you go start a new topic about your precious Hunt "cables," and you make your case for the "cables" in that appropriate topic, and I'll see you there. If you continue to try to sabotage the Alfred Baldwin thread with it, the only thing I'm going to do is report it to the admins, and wash my hands of you permanently. Your choice. So go start an appropriately named topic, and then bring it all on. Lay it all out there in as much detail as you can muster, with cites, in the dusty street of your new thread at high noon. I'll be there. I'm calling you out. Ashton Gray

What cables? Where are some of these cables? I want to see them. Post some, and then I'll address them. Are you going to put these alleged cables into evidence or not? I don't see any cables. Do you? If not, your entire bloviating sermon assumes "cables" not in evidence. Some people call this "hallucination." So are you busy propagating more of the CIA-generated fiction—and in a thread where it's completely off-topic to boot? I thought so. See my sig. Ashton Gray

HI Daniel, This is a drive-by posting. Sorry, but I'm really pressed for time and I wanted to address this one point. It has nothing to do with a "CIA-rules-the-world" scenario; it has everything to do with the Cold War belief by CIA at the time that the USSR was far ahead of the US in developing parapsychology and mental technologies for military intelligence purposes. Helms had been in the grip of this for at least two decades. It's a major factor of the zeitgeist for all of Watergate. Throughout everything to do with the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, the CIA, under Helms and Gottlieb, had a massive parallel and uber-secret program being developed, about which not a single thing was really known until as recently as 1995, and pieces are still being put together. But one reverberating fact that can't be ignored is that that program went formally, and very, very secretly, into high gear on Sunday, 1 October 1972—two weeks almost to the day after the Watergate indictments were handed down on 15 September 1972—with a secret contract granted by the CIA's Office of Technical Services to Hal Puthoff. There is so much to this that has remained entirely out of view for 30 years that anyone thinking they can solve or understand Watergate without factoring this black CIA operation and all it's backstory into account is thinking they can understand an elephant by smelling a peanut. The timeline I've referred to repeatedly covers a great deal of what is known about it (which, as the timeline documents, is still very little indeed), and how it dovetails with the Pentagon Papers and Watergate CIA ops. And it's my position that Ford, and not Nixon, was in the loop on this very secret CIA program, and that Ford getting in office was crucial to what came later, including the timely insertion of Bush Sr. into the DCI slot. That said in brief response here, I don't feel that this Baldwin thread is remotely the correct venue for further discussion on this. I started a topic called "There was no 'first break-in' at the Watergate" in this forum, and it would be an appropriate thread to discuss more of the backstory in if you want to post something there. Or maybe I'll start a new topic even more on point to what the CIA's agenda was, and how Watergate was vital to it. Hope that helps. Gotta' run. Ashton Gray

John, I know I've posted one reply to this, but I'm going to add more. I wasn't really ready to get fully into this particular aspect of the Baldwin myths, because I'm trying desperately to continue the stroll down Memory Lane with Mr. Caddy. There's so much more to see on that tour—even though Mr. Caddy seems to have lost interest at the very first stop. But I just can't leave this thing I'm about to explore with you entirely alone—especially with some of the other things you touched on—and that's Alfred Baldwin's celebrated "tour" of DNC headquarters. As if his other screw-ups aren't fall-down funny enough—like swearing he met Liddy and Hunt on May 26th, and the McGovern headquarters screw-up putting Hunt there when Hunt was supposed to be locked in the Continental Room of the Watergate, and the infamous "almost verbatim" fairy tale—wait until you really get a grasp on what he said in testimony about his big, startling "intelligence discovery" from his "tour." It will just put anybody on the floor in hysterical laughter if they give it two seconds thought (always a big mistake when trying to believe any of their crap). Weicker holds Baldwin's hand and walks him through this below—and strap in so you don't fall out of your chair and hurt something. Note that when Baldwin starts this tale, Baldwin is so bollixed up trying to keep his own sworn lies straight, that he first says "McGovern headquarters" when he's trying to spread the BS with a trowel about his "tour" to DNC headquarters, and his lie-buddy Weicker has to get him back to the script. Even then, Baldwin practically ties himself into a pretzel trying to get his story straight. So here's Baldwin on his secret-agent undercover "tour" of DNC on Monday, June 12, 1972 (I've given you fair warning—strap in for what follows): ALFRED BALDWIN: Well, after the tour, Senator, of the McGovern [sic] headquarters, it was obvious that Mr. Lawrence O'Brien was not in the Washington area, and that he had been in Miami, and had been working in Miami, so now-- SENATOR WEICKER: May I ask you this question, Mr. Baldwin: did you mean the McGovern headquarters or the Democratic National Committee--? ALFRED BALDWIN: I'm talking about the Democratic National Committee headquarters. After my tour there, part of the information I received was the fact that Mr. O'Brien had not been in Washington for the past month or so or longer. He had been in Miami, and Mr. McCord was quite pleased to hear this. And it appeared to me that it called for a rescheduling of the timetable, because he got quite upset to the fact that I would have to-- He would try to make some arrangements for me to go to Miami-- Uh, he had already discussed with me the fact that I would be appearing at-- I would be going to both the Democratic and the Republican conventions, but in view of this information that Mr. O'Brien was in Miami, uh, this seemed to change his timetable and he-- For the rest of that week-- That week, at several different points he told me he would like to get me--get my identification sewed up--and get me down to Miami. He had to confer with some other individuals regarding this, and as soon as it was approved I would be going to Miami. But... Say WHAT?!?! Wait a minute: First, if Baldwin is about to leave for Miami, who's going to do all that "almost verbatim" typing of logs of the "bugs" that McCord is getting ready to go "back" into the Watergate to "fix" just four days later!?!? I mean, don't even allow yourself to wonder about that for even a millisecond, or you're liable to pop a vein. But that's not even the worst of this. I swear. You want the worst of it? I'm not sure you're ready for it. Are you ready? Don't say I didn't warn you. Follow this timeline very closely, and see if you can find "Miami" anywhere in it: 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. Friday, 3 September 1971 E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy are involved in a purported break-in at the office of psychiatrist Lewis J. Fielding in Beverly Hills, California with the three Cubans from Miami: Barker, Martinez, and De Diego. Early February 1972 G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt fly to Miami, home of Bernard Barker and other CIA-connected Cubans. 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. 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. Monday, 24 April 1972 CIA's Bernard Barker cashes a cashier's check for $25,000 at his bank in Miami. Tuesday, 25 April 1972 Quoted from G. Gordon Liddy's account of a purported "first meeting" with Magruder on or about this date concerning breaking into the Watergate: "Larry O'Brien was by now involved in gearing up for the Democratic convention and was spending most of his time in Miami. Our Cuban agents were studying how best to bug him there, and I'd been laying out money for information, buying off hotel employees, etc." Tuesday, 2 May 1972 CIA's Bernard Barker withdraws an unspecified amount of cash from his bank in Miami. Wednesday, 3 May 1972 CIA's Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, Frank Sturgis, and Filipe De Diego arrive in Washington, D.C. from Miami and meet with G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt. 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. Friday, 12 May 1972 By this time (according to "intelligence" puportedly gathered by Alfred Baldwin a month later on a "tour") DNC Chairman Lawrence O'Brien absolutely is already based in and staying in Miami, not in Washington, D.C.—but Liddy had already known that as early as 25 April 1972 (see above). 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 E. Howard Hunt makes two calls to Bernard Barker in Miami. Saturday, 20 May 1972 Richard Nixon leaves for Moscow. Alfred Baldwin goes out to Andrews Air Force base. CIA's E. Howard Hunt flies to Miami and meets with Bernard Barker. Monday, 22 May 1972 Two days after Nixon has left for Moscow, 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" 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. Sunday, 28 May 1972 There supposedly is a "first break-in" at DNC headquarters in Washington, D.C., one key primary purported purpose of which is to plant a "bug" on the phone of DNC Chairman Lawrence O'Brien's phone in D.C. Monday, 12 June 1972 Alfred Baldwin takes a clandestine "tour" of DNC headquarters at the Watergate in D.C. and comes back with BIG INTELLIGENCE NEWS! GUESS WHAT! LARRY O'BRIEN IS IN MIAMI! NO, REALLY! REALLY! THIS IS BIG NEWS! MCCORD IS SHOCKED, BUT VERY PLEASED WITH ALFIE AND HIS SUPER-SPY INTELLIGENCE MISSION. IT ONLY COST MCCORD A HUNDRED BUCKS TO DIG THIS BIG SECRET OUT! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING. WE'LL JUST BREAK IN TO WATERGATE AGAIN, AND SEND BALDWIN TO MIAMI, AND... Now I've gone and hurt myself laughing again. These bufoons make the Keystone Cops look like Shakespearian tragedy. The only wonder is how they possibly have been able to keep everybody in a state of mass hypnosis for 30 years believing any of this crap the way they told it. Ashton Gray

Calling Pat Speer. Come in Pat. <STATIC> Are you there Pat? <STATIC> My God! I wonder if he's been caught red-handed (or red-faced)! Or maybe the batteries are dead in my walkie-talkie. I'll have to ask Baldwin to run into the drug store and buy me some. Meanwhile, in the last transmission I received from Pat Speer—although almost entirely static—I kept hearing "Nixon...Nixon." I've already said emphatically that I couldn't care less about Nixon, but Speer can't seem to get the message, and doesn't even seem to know he's in a thread about Alfred Baldwin, so I'm going to lay out right here everything I have to say on the "Nixon" subject relative to the "Memorial Day weekend" hoax (which Alfred Baldwin was absolutely key to). Maybe somebody can get this retransmitted in a way that even Pat Speer can get it. Maybe not. But here is my opinion on it, and is all I have to say about it: 1) Nixon's only relevance to what went down is that CIA already had him completely set up, and had agents—in addition to Hunt, Liddy, and McCord—like NSA's David Young and probably Dean and a few key others in place around him, and CIA knew where all of Nixon's bodies were buried, and had him completely ready to take the fall for their op once re-elected. And the reason they did was specifically so Gerald Ford—who had done them many favors on the JFK assassination—could finally get his reward of a presidency he didn't have a prayer of getting otherwise. The CIA and their cronies were heavily, heavily, heavily invested in having Nixon surrounded and ready to take the fall for their very long-planned op, putting Ford into place. 2) Nixon is essentially irrelevant otherwise to me. He could just as well have been Howdy Doody, as long as Gerald Ford was there to take his place. Gerald Ford was in the intelligence loop on all of it, and the CIA had to get whoever was sitting in the Oval Office out, and their man, Ford, in. They had to make sure that the "whoever" was Nixon, at any and all cost, because they already had him in the bag. 3) J. Edgar Hoover and George Wallace were the two big thorns in CIA's side to pull the whole thing off. Even as a spoiler, Wallace had to go. CIA pulled those thorns out on May 2, 1972 and May 15, 1972, and then one week after Nixon left for Moscow on May 20, 1972, CIA launched its op with Baldwin, McCord, Hunt, and Liddy on Memorial Day weekend—May 26, 27, and 28, 1972. It all goes in a very straight line. That's how much Nixon means to me. He could just as well have been Mae West, if she'd had Gerald Ford waiting in the wings. Command post to Pat Speer... <STATIC> Damn. Ashton Gray

PAT SPEER: Ashton, I looked at the Timeline the first time you posted it. I didn't ask if you'd looked at it. I asked you if you'd read it. There's a significant difference. When it started dragging the Church of Scientology into the conspiracy, I lost interest. The timeline doesn't "drag" anyone or anything anywhere, and there is no "conspiracy" concocted by the timeline. It is a dispassionate, fully cited sequential recitation of clearly related events that happened over relevant periods of time, and the events happened without regard to race, religion, creed, or national origin—or even Pat Speer's approval—and the events have everything to do with Watergate and what led to it, including Daniel Ellsberg and his "psychiatrist," Fielding, who appears at the very beginning of the timeline. If you have certain prejudices that are strong enough to prevent you from confronting actual facts and making yourself informed, then you and I have nothing to discuss—especially when it's crystal clear from the timeline that it was the CIA itself, along with the NSA, and not the timeline, that dragged Scientology and its founder into the picture. So your oblique answer to my question is that you didn't read the timeline. Maybe I'll give it another shot when I have more time. Okay. Get back to me then. Because just as your time is valuable to you, I don't have time to waste with the nonsense you're generating as a result of remaining willfully uninformed because of some religious prejudices you have. And you still haven't answered my basic questions. Well, yes, I have—at least the relevant and sequitur questions, and I don't have any obligation whatsoever to answer the irrelevant and non-sequitur questions you keep spraying in here like buckshot. I've answered repeatedly to the best of my knowledge and ability. So listen up this time, and listen up real good, and don't ask me again: 1) What was the objective of this purported hoax? TO PROVIDE AN ALIBI FOR HUNT, LIDDY, MCCORD, AND BALDWIN, WHO ACTUALLY WERE ON A CLANDESTINE CIA MISSION THAT WAS OUTSIDE OF WASHINGTON, D.C. OVER MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND 1972. IT WAS A COVER-UP FOR THAT, AND IS THE REAL COVER-UP OF WATERGATE. Am I getting through okay now? Maybe it's these damned Radio Shack walkie-talkies. You think? 2) Who was victimized by this purported hoax? You, me, and the entire rest of the world. 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. Ashton Gray

I'm genuinely glad it's being well received, John, and hope it helps everyone come to a better understanding. I don't know if I've reached "thrilling" yet. I still sort of feel like I've just come out of having been in a drugged or hypnotized stupor for 30+ years. But at least I'm out. As I've said before, I'm just a scribe. A lot of people have sacrificed one hell of a lot over many years to collect all this information and organize it and analyze it. Finally enough has come together to reveal the fraud we all were duped by for so long, and I'm just thankful that I'm here in this place and time where it's being exposed, and am able to make some contributions in compiling and presenting it. As for Mr. Baldwin's role, I don't think we've really plumbed those depths. Yet. Once past the pure fiction alibi for Baldwin, Liddy, Hunt, and McCord over that Memorial Day weekend, the next step is to find out where they actually were and what they actually were doing. Since you've opened this particular door, I'm now going to lay out what I believe to be worthwhile lines for further investigation. Of course, Mr. Baldwin is quite a typist, and can step in here at any moment and lay any of these points to rest, but for starters, here are some of my personal opinions, as opinion only: 1) That Alfred Baldwin was fully informed prior to the evening of May 1, 1972 that he would be receiving the "surprise" call from James McCord that night; that Alfred Baldwin had been priorly briefed on the nature of activities he would be called upon to engage in with McCord; that Alfred Baldwin knew at all relevant times that he would be working in an intelligence capacity on a secret operation under the auspices and control of CIA, but which had interagency coordination, and which involved "national security." I believe Alfred Baldwin's covert briefing line for this CIA operation he had been selected for was through Naval Intelligence connections to where he had been working prior to his sudden "hiring" by McCord over the phone, supposedly from a listing with "Society of Ex-FBI Agents"—which is more complete fictional nonsense. 2) That on that night of Monday, May 1, 1972, at the time of McCord's call to Alfred Baldwin, both Alfred Baldwin and McCord had foreknowledge that on the following morning J. Edgar Hoover would be found dead in his home, and would be replaced by L. Patrick Gray, who would strictly serve the CIA interests during the ensuing events. I further believe that confirmed foreknowledge of Hoover's death is precisely what triggered McCord's call to Alfred Baldwin, and Baldwin's immediate flight to Washington, D.C. on the basis of nothing but a single phone call from someone he supposedly didn't know. 3) That McCord issuing Alfred Baldwin the .38 revolver immediately after Hoover's death on the morning of Tuesday, May 2, 1972 had nothing whatsoever to do with Baldwin being a "bodyguard" for Martha Mitchell, as Alfred Baldwin claims, but was to provide an entirely specious reason for his having the gun at all relevant times, as I've already covered in this message in this thread. 4) That there never was any plan at all for Alfred Baldwin to take more than the one trip with Martha Mitchell—which Alfred Baldwin left for on that same day, Tuesday, May 2, 1972—and that the only real purpose of his making even that one trip with her was solely to make Alfred Baldwin known to Andrews Air Force base personnel as someone cleared and approved for travel on planes of the White House fleet (other than Air Force One), that purpose specifically to later serve the clandestine mission away from Washington, D.C., which already was planned by CIA for Memorial Day weekend so it would happen while Nixon was on his trip to Moscow. 5) That the untraced, unaccounted for (to this day) .38 revolver never was returned by Alfred Baldwin to James McCord, as Alfred Baldwin claims, and had been given to Alfred Baldwin specifically to be used on the planned clandestine mission outside of Washington, D.C. over Memorial Day weekend. 6) That Alfred Baldwin's trip to Andrews Air Force base on Saturday, May 20, 1972—the day Nixon left for his trip to Moscow, Iran, and Poland—had nothing at all to do with the patently ludicrous story that McCord had sent Alfred Baldwin there to do "surveillance on demonstrators;" that his trip to Andrews was specifically related to a White House plane for the following weekend—Memorial Day weekend—on the false story that it was for Martha Mitchell; that the reason CIA had long before planned this clandestine mission for Memorial Day weekend was because Nixon and key administration officials would still be on the trip to Moscow and the middle east; that the placement of Liddy, Hunt, and McCord in connection with the White House had been engineered by CIA for the dual purpose of being able to use a White House plane for the clandestine mission, while at the same time implicating the White House on the "first break-in" hoax. No. (Well, you asked.) Seriously, John, that whole hooker saga is just another snipe hunt. I'm sorry, but I've chased enough snipes. Chase 'em all you want. That entire Punch'n'Judy show between Liddy and Dean duking it out is just more bad fiction mounted solely to reinforce the existing bad fiction, and they all knew all along going in that no matter how much sturm und drung was stirred up, it all would come to a big fat net goose egg, which is exactly what it did. But it sold a lot of copy and sent people running off on more snipe hunts. Great. If there is one cardinal rule I've finally learned in following the spoor of CIA and their fellow criminal thugs, it's this, and I'm going to put it in all caps bold red: THEY ALWAYS PLAY BOTH SIDES OF THE GAME. Always. Always. Invariably. Cardinal rule. It's how they always win. Always. Invariably. They ALWAYS control both sides of the game. They ALWAYS have their own people in place on BOTH SIDES of anything they are doing. They are amoral criminal thugs, but they also are smart amoral criminal thugs, which is why the Mafia works for them: they make the Mafia look like a bunch of choir boys. They are the one group on the planet that the Mafia is scared of, so it makes a great working relationship. The plural/singular trick literally is a psy-op gimmick to keep confusion swirling around a bunch of lies. It literally brings about a lowered state of consciousness to constantly confuse someone on numbers. They know this. As for the Watergate hoax, I don't really give a damn how many "units" they had, sending or receiving. They were props to use to put over a hoax, and to run around stashing them in places that could only implicate the White House. And that was the only purpose for any of the "units," and the blatantly obvious proof that that was the only purpose of having them is: that's exactly what the "units" were used for! Of course, when I finally got this, I felt about as stupid as I've ever felt in my life. It's really hard to let go of all the false "reasons why" that these bastards have spread like their own offal all over the world. But they got these stage props to use for exactly what they used them for: for McCord to get "caught" with some, and then Baldwin and Hunt to run around the same night and plant the rest where they would turn the White House to rubble. It's just too damned simple. I don't know. I honestly don't know. I believe they were overseas, probably somewhere in Europe, because: Hunt had come out of the CIA European division for his "retirement" Mullen provided European cover for CIA ops Hunt was in touch CIA Chief European Division John Hart and CIA Executive Officer European Division John Caswell in October 1971, then met privately with CIA Director Richard Helms, and On June 28, 1972—three days after Baldwin started cooperating with U.S. Attorneys—Richard Helms called L. Patrick Gray and had him squelch the FBI interview on CIA Exec Officer Europe John Caswell, and on CIA's Karl Wagner (Wagner having arranged the CIA "disguises" and phony CIA IDs for Hunt and Liddy.) A fun bunch of guys, huh? When we find out where they really were and what they really were doing that Memorial Day weekend, I think it's going to rock the whole world. Hard. Ashton Gray

Pat, you're gettin' all red in the face... And for some reason, your message isn't quotable, so your brickbats will be in bold: Mr. Gray, what is your purpose here? To read and post about Watergate. That's what I've been doing. You came to this Forum for what exactly? To read and post about Watergate. That's what I've been doing. I believe in this last post you revealed your true cause: Nixon. <Snort!>Really? Is that what you deduced? Clever you. And to think: I didn't even mention his name once. How did you figure me out so fast? What gave me away? By the way, did you get the memo, Pat? Nixon's dead and buried. Probably pretty far along the mouldering process, too. Here's something to help you keep from going all the way off of this cliff and hitting the bottom hard: I couldn't care less about Nixon. That's why I haven't brought him up at all except in good faith response to questions others have asked my opinion on related to Nixon. I hope that saves you a lot of wasted work in trying to build your case any further. It's a real Whoopee Cushion of a case. I ask this because you seem obsessed... And you do amateur psychoanalysis, too! (Don't bother to bill me for it.) I'm just trying to figure out what YOUR real agenda is here. Hmm. Well, I hate to be disagreeable, but I don't think that's what you're trying to do at all. If you actually were, you would by now have read this timeline—something I've pointed you to several times already, something I've referenced and linked to in about 10 posts as being what I consider an indispensable reference tool regarding Watergate, and something that I've said repeatedly that I've relied on for much of the information I've posted here, much of which I've been thanked for by others who are glad to have it. If you had read the document, you couldn't possibly, possibly be going off at me like you have in your post. Unless, of course, you are passionately devoted to distracting from the issues by attempting to make Ashton Gray the issue. It's such a pitiable, worn out, transparent ploy, Pat, I hope you aren't stooping to it. Your post sounds an awful lot that way, though. I've also said loud, clear, and repeatedly what my position is: that the "first break-in" was a CIA planned and executed hoax. What part of this position are you having trouble figuring out? What's the big mystery? Everybody else seems to pretty well grasp this. Nobody has to agree with it. But nobody yet has successfully or effectively refuted it, either—including you. You've yet to effectively address or resolve one single material fact I've raised in issue. You only distract from them, or come at me with ad hominem. Like I'm answering here. why I often refer to the Kennedy assassination, it's because of the many possible connections between the Kennedy assassination and the Watergate break-in. I'm not an idiot, Pat. I'm aware of the connections. But not a single one of your cross-references on it yet has been remotely germane or applicable to my posts that you've responded to, always throwing in a gratuitious and irrelevant JFK reference. None of your references to JFK have added any clarity or new analysis whatsoever of what I was discussing at the time, nor have any of them been at all relevant to the topic. Every one of them did, though, create dispersion and distraction from issues I had raised in topics I had started to invite responsible and informed discussion. It's in the record. The record speaks for itself. I have been one of the biggest contributors to this Forum. Congratulations. I trust those contributions have moved everyone closer to the truth. And if you want a one-word statement of my "agenda," that's it: truth. I want the truth out. I'm sick of the lies. That's why I just invested a considerable amount of my own time in this very thread documenting inarguable lies. When lies are exposed and stripped away, we all are closer to the truth. If you have something that will contribute to that, we'll have plenty to talk about. So far, though, the net product I've seen of every one of your posts in response to me is muddied waters, to which you've now added a brackish Niagara of ad hominem, log-jammed with meritless accusations and bobbing waterlogged straw men. So quantity isn't necessarily a factor that I put much stock in, Pat. I believe the wise old saying: "By their fruits, ye shall know them." So why haven't you read that timeline yet? Ashton Gray

Hi, Richard. Mr. Caddy actually responded in the separate thread I created for the questions. That exchange is here: Douglas Caddy, Hunt, Liddy, Mullen, and the CIA After that, you might find of some interest my last three-part series of messages in response to Alfred Baldwin in this thread: Alfred Baldwin For background, you also might enjoy There was no "first break-in" at the Watergate and its foundational articles (linked therein). And after that, I believe you'll see how the article, The "Pentagon Papers" was a CIA op, fits into all the foregoing. I've come to the opinion that the solution to the Jello problem is to place it on a level horizontal surface, then drop the wall on it. No nails required. "Deep Throat" was intel agent Bob Woodward's imaginary friend, a very stupid literary device used to justify inside knowledge he'd had before the whole thing even started. It's a malicious snipe hunt, just like "who ordered the first break-in"—which never happened at all. It's an endlessly unanswerable question. That's what they intended. That's how we all got left holding the bag. Just between you and me, there ain't no snipes. Let's go back to camp and have some smores to salve feeling like gullible fools. Ashton Gray