Ashton Gray

Mr. Baldwin, we meet again.

Here is my third and final installment of a three-part series in response to your last answers to me of some questions I had asked you in good faith. You made your record. Now I'm making mine. Any questions that seem to be posed herein are rhetorical, because I think the record speaks for itself. Loudly. And as I've made no bones about, I think the record absolutely shouts that you and your co-conspirators, in knowing collusion with CIA and their symbiotes, put a massive hoax over on the entire world that has mangled and destroyed too many lives and careers even to count, and I believe that the living participants continue the hoax to this very minute for their own entirely selfish, amoral self-protection.

That last part is my opinion.

Now to facts of record and your continuing claims:

Also, there were "bugs" in the DNC.

No, there weren't any "bugs" in the DNC between Memorial Day weekend 1972 and June 17, 1972. There were none at all. Not one, not two, not twenty, not a phone bug and a room monitor, not two phone bugs, not any of the confusing, conflicted lies that any of you have told. There were no bugs there at all. That's why no bugs were found in the DNC at relevant times.

The only actual physical evidence in the entire pathetic fraud is an electronic sweep of DNC headquarters just before June 17, 1972, and electronic sweeps of DNC headquarters immediately thereafter. Both sweeps determined conclusively that there were no bugs at the only possible relevant times.

You can repeat the fiction for 30 years (which you have done), and it still doesn't alter the fact of record that there were no bugs. The constant, monotonous reiteration of the fiction by you and your co-conspirators doesn't make any bugs appear where there were none. In fact, let's try your claim this way:

ALFRED BALDWIN: "Also, there were pterodactyls in the DNC."

Well, no. No, there weren't any pterodactyls in the DNC.

ALFRED BALDWIN: "Also, there were gorgons in the DNC."

Well, no. No, Mr. Baldwin, there weren't any gorgons in the DNC, either. I will grant you this: the claim has as much truth and validity and reality as the false claim that there were "bugs" in the DNC, but the only real "bugs" we need to exterminate are the completely irreconcilable conflicts strewn like train wreckage throughout the fictions told by you and your co-conspirators.

That's what I'm doing here.

But do go on:

...because I would monitor some conversations when I saw the phone being used in that office and the conversations would start and end with different individuals using the phone in that office. Thus watching those individuals there is no doubt that the "bug" in that office was working.

Oh. I see.

Well, first, let's notify everybody that you've again used your CIA-trained singular/plural trick to spin everybody's head around like Linda Blair in "The Exorcist," and in one short paragraph you switched from "bugs" (plural) to "the 'bug'" (singular). I already know, Mr. Baldwin, that this trick evolved from decades of vicious CIA mind-control experiments on unwitting United States military men, and you know it, too, and you knowingly use it like a bludgeon to practically knock people unconscious. Having just woken a couple of people up who had nodded off:

So your "proof" that there were bugs is "because" we can't doubt your word—for which there is not a single particle of evidence or corroboration—that you voyeuristically watched Bela Lugosi and Jayne Mansfield (headless) and Pinnochio and Betty Boop talk on some phone that conveniently happened to be placed in a convenient window, and that you simultaneously eavesdropped on their private conversations.

And we're supposed to just accept your unsupported claims, even though you can't get your own story straight about how many "units" you purportedly were monitoring; even though you can't get your story straight on whether you took these fantasy conversations down on a yellow legal pad and then typed them later, or whether you typed them directly while listening; even though you claim you typed "almost verbatim" running transcripts of phone conversations when that is patently, utterly, ridiculously impossible; even though your co-conspirators claim there were no such transcripts, but just "summaries;" even though nobody can even get the story straight about how many "bugs" there purportedly were in the DNC and where. No. We're all just supposed to ignore these idiotic contradictions and accept your unsupported claims at face value because you, like Mr. Caddy, are the One True Boy Scout in this whole pack of lying criminal thugs who Cannot Tell A Lie.

Oh, yeah: and we also have to ignore two professional electronic sweeps that say there were no bugs. Why do we have to ignore this hard physical evidence? Because you, Mr. Baldwin, tell us that we have to, since it completely contradicts and eradicates every claim you've made.

But do go on with your record of "The Official Myth":

Also, Jim actually displayed some of the "bugs" to me prior to installation.

He certainly did that, all right. I don't doubt you at all on that count.

Except the only "installation" that ever was done was with these electronic stage props, paid for with public money, was "installation" in McCord's possession to get "caught" with, and "installation" at key locations that would point directly to the White House, including "installation" into Hunt's White House safe and the "installation" that you yourself did at McCord's house—which is exactly what set it up for you to go to the U.S. Attorneys a week after McCord and company were "caught" (on cue), and start this entire enormous, despicable, unconsionable, self-serving, self-protecting fiction about your whereabouts and activities on Memorial Day weekend, which ultimately would destroy an entire culture and its people's little remaining faith in their leaders, and which today still has reverberations of shock waves echoing around the world, such was its maliciously destructive force.

That's the credit I think you deserve, Mr. Baldwin. That's the credit I said earlier in this thread you are due. And I told you there that I meant to see you got the credit you deserve. You actully started all this "Memorial Day weekend" fiction. You. Personally. Knowingly, and with malice aforethought. You're the water-carrier the CIA elected to plant the first fictions about the "Memorial Day weekend" into the record and raise the curtain on the play. And as a result, here we sit right now, still sifting through the rubble of disgusting CIA-scripted lies after 30 long years.

So since we all want the CIA to get plenty of mileage out of tax dollars they've fleeced from all of us and squandered on their vast criminal programs, let's hear the fiction again:

The logs, and copies of the logs, are a fact that cannot be denied or questioned by anyone.

<SPIT!> The hell they can't. The only stage-prop "logs" anybody ever saw came—as one source has so aptly put it—"from Liddy's lying lips." He dictated these "logs" into a tape recorder, and gave the dictated tapes to Sally Harmony, and she did her job. And the stage props were thereby created, and then strategically spread to a few stupid dupes whose hearts beat fast.

But Liddy even screwed that part up royally, didn't he, Mr. Baldwin? Isn't that exactly why you had to go on national TV in front of a congressional committee, and put over on an already confused and credulous and weakened nation the absolutely ridiculous lie that you had typed "almost verbatim" real-time transcripts of intercepted conversations? That's a rhetorical question, because you and I both know that's why you had to put such absurd fiction into the record.

Liddy just couldn't help himself: when he sat there dictating these fictitious "logs," he went overboard. He was supposed to dictate SUMMARIES, which is exactly why McCord stuck to the CIA script and claimed they were summaries. But Liddy, always a little too full of himself, embellished and embroidered the CIA script outline, and filled in too many details in his fictional "logs," and so dictated what read like actual "conversation" dialog. So the few mouth-breathing rubes who had been selected to get glimpses of Liddy's stage prop "logs" then had to be supplied with some kind of "plausible explanation" for having seen what appeared to be real-time transcripts of conversations.

So that's exactly why you went into congress, and raised your hand, and swore to tell the truth, and promptly spewed out one of the biggest, most brazen, most absurd, most laughable lies ever told. Even poor Senator Ervin just sat there and repeated what you said in stupefied incredulity. Let's revisit that magic moment again together just one more time. I certainly want you and the CIA get your blood-money's worth:

• SENATOR ERVIN: ...And you typed a summary of the conversations you overheard?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: Well, they weren't exactly a summary. I would say almost verbatim, Senator.
  SENATOR ERVIN: Almost verbatim.
  

I couldn't have put it better myself. So let's just give Senator Ervin the last word on the whole pathetic stage play, and let the curtain ring down.

I'm done, Mr. Baldwin. You made your record. I've made mine.

I recall vividly being a very young man agog at the flashing, swirling, colorful lights, the noise, the barkers (no pun intended, but fitting), the smells, the sawdust, and the electrifying energies and cross-currents of the State Fair midway. I remember well the sense of giddy gullibility (despite what I'd been told repeatedly) with which I went from canvas booth to canvas booth, listening to the friendly, buddy-buddy come-ons, looking at cheap, tawdry prizes that I'd never actually buy under any circumstances, but seeing the quarter entry fee for taking a shot at "games" for me to play, and thinking, "Hell, I can do this."

I also remember all too vividly the feeling of walking away empty-handed, with considerably lighter pockets, duped, conned, snookered by smooth-talking swindlers whose up-front good-ol'-boy affability was a tissue-thin veneer to hide the simple truth that they didn't give a royal damn about my survival or well-being: they only wanted to take as much as they could from me by any means, then move on to the next mark.

There's no feeling quite like being made a fool. But there's no shame in it, either; we've all been duped in our lives.

To realize that the Watergate "first break-in" was nothing but a cheap, showy con job on all of us--entirely funded by our own quarters--is similar in a lot of ways, even if exponentially greater. And just like the rubes on the midway, we were all mesmerized by the flashing lights, the echoing gavels, and the shills at the Washington Post feeding us the CIA lies, and so we surrendered our trust and our quarters.

There is one crucial difference, though:

We all know on some level when we go to the midway that we're fair game for a con. It's part of the game.

Not so with Watergate. The very people we entrusted and paid to protect us from just such criminal deception are the very people who ran the con.

You were one of them, Mr. Baldwin. You knowingly, willfully made use of your FBI background to earn certain trusts, and you knowingly, willfully betrayed that trust in ways that, in my opinion, have no equal in the history of mankind.

And that is, and will be, your legacy.

Ashton Gray

Ashton, I'm in the process of re-reading every bit of eyewitness testimony to the Kennedy assassination

John Simkin was clever and thoughtful enough to provide a whole forum for discussing the Kennedy assassination. This is the Watergate forum. Yet every time you post anything in response to my posts here in the Watergate forum, you bring up the JFK assassination. Are you just lost? Do you need an usher?

I assure you the inconsistencies that make you want to vomit so regularly are to be expected.

Yes, wherever liars lie, putrid inconsistencies are to be expected. We're in complete agreement on that.

And always, inevitably, when they are CIA liars (but I repeat myself), they have a clean-up crew of apologists following along explaining why it's all perfectly reasonable and expected.

That said, I believe you've raised a few points which hopefully Mr. Baldwin will try to answer (That is, if your hostile tone hasn't forced him to leave the Forum).

I'm not asking him questions. He made his record, I'm making mine. As for my "hostile tone," he's a former FBI agent, has faced U.S. Attorneys, U.S. court judges, and congressional hearings. You afraid he can't handle big bad Ashton? Thanks for the vote of confidence, but Alfred's a big boy. He's got a keyboard just like I have. Hell, he can type live conversations in real time "almost verbatim." Just ask him. So he ought to be able to type rings around me.

In particular, you've got me curious about who at CREEP received the logs.

What logs? Post one of these logs you're talking about. I want to see one.

You can't. There are no logs. There were no logs. There were only stage prop logs that Liddy dictated to his secretary with a big GEMSTONE splashed across the top, and even those were destroyed. Alfred Baldwin never typed a "log" of any bugs in the Watergate in his life, because there were no bugs. If he did, produce one—then we'll talk about it. Post it here. Do you have one to post? Or are you just busy keeping the fiction going? Fiction doesn't leave a paper trail. So where are these logs you're talking about?

Is this something like constantly thinking this is the JFK forum? Same kind of thing?

Ashton Gray

Greetings, Mr. Baldwin.

Here is my Part Two (of three parts) in response to your last message to me. I suggest anyone arriving late should read my earlier Part One (my last previous post in this thread).

Moving on to your second answer to me:

2. Yes, I did monitor conversations for those days in June up to the 17th, and did turn most of the logs over to Jim...

Since I can, I'm going to take the liberty of stopping you right there, Mr. Baldwin.

First, there has never been in evidence a single scrap of paper reflecting your own personal creation of any such "logs" or records of any kind, and in the entire population of the world, there have only ever been two people—no more—who could corroborate the verbal claims you just made.

Those two people are James McCord (who you refer to as "Jim" above), and G. Gordon Liddy.

Unfortunately, by your protestations that you've always and only told the truth in these matters, you have already branded Mr. Liddy as a xxxx—which I proved in Part One of this three-part series—and so you, yourself, have impeached one of only two possible corroborating witnesses on this point. Liddy is scratched. (Which is just as well, since his testimony on this conflicts with yours, as it did in Part One.)

That leaves you and James McCord, alone in the world, as witnesses to your ever having made even a single such "log" at all. That calls for comparison of your testimony and his, so let's roll up our sleeves and dive in.

First, here is James McCord's sworn testimony on your "monitoring" of purported "bugs," and of the "logs" you claim to have made and given to James McCord to pass on to Liddy. McCord is being questioned by Chief Counsel Sam Dash, and has just been asked what your assignment was:

• JAMES MCCORD: His assignment was to listen on a radio receiver that received the transmissions from the Democratic National Committee telephones, in which the electronic devices had been installed in connection with...Memorial Day weekend... .
  MR. DASH: ...In his monitoring how was he recording what he was hearing?
  JAMES MCCORD: He was listening with headphones to the conversations that were being transmitted and would take down the substance of the conversations, the time, the date, on the yellow legal-sized scratch pad, and then ultimately would type them up—a summary of them by time, chronological summary—and turn that typed log in to me and I would deliver them to Mr. Liddy.
  MR. DASH: ...Could you briefly describe, without going into any of the contents, what a log would be, what actually would be entered on the log... ?
  JAMES MCCORD: It would be similar to any other telephone conversation that one person might make to another beginning with a statement on his log of the time of the call; who was calling who; a summary of what was said during the conversation itself, including names of persons who were mentioned that Mr. Baldwin apparently believed were of sufficient significance to set forth in the log.
  —Testimony of James McCord, 18 May 1973, before the Senate Select Committee on Presidental Campaign Activities (Watergate Committee)
  

So McCord, under oath, describes what he claims you, Mr. Baldwin, delivered to him as being summaries of bugged conversations. He claims that you, while listening through headphones to a (singular) radio receiver, regularly would write down, on a yellow pad, summaries of these conversations you supposedly were monitoring, which you "ultimately" would type up for him, with notations of time and names. Now, since you both were "confessing" to the same thing, is that what you also said under oath to the Senate Watergate Committee? Let's take a look:

• SENATOR WEICKER: Now, Mr. Baldwin, what was your primary job, then, during the first two weeks of June?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: ...I was instructed to monitor all telephone conversations that were being received over these units that were in the Howard Johnson room, and to make a log of all units.
  SENATOR ERVIN: The information you got—while you were at the Howard Johnson—from the Democratic headquarters, what form was it in when you gave it to Mr. McCord?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: The initial day, the first day that I recorded the conversations was on a yellow sheet. On Memorial Day, I believe it is Memorial Day, on the holiday of Monday, I believe it was, 29th, when he returned to the room he brought an electric typewriter. He instructed me in the upper left-hand corner to print—by typewriter—the unit, the date, the page, and then proceed down into the body and in chronological order put the time and then the contents of the conversation.
  SENATOR ERVIN: ...And you typed a summary of the conversations you overheard?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: Well, they weren't exactly a summary. I would say almost verbatim, Senator.
  SENATOR ERVIN: Almost verbatim... .
  ALFRED BALDWIN: Well, that is correct.
  

Well... Mr. Baldwin... I hardly know where to begin. The testimony given by you and McCord on these purported "logs" that you and he claim you were creating is made up of nothing but inconsistencies, bow to stern. But I have to start somewhere, so:

1) The two of you still can't even get your stories straight on number of electronic "units!" Can't you even count on your fingers? How many "units" can their be? There's only one. Then there's more than one. Then there's only one again. You say you were supposed to monitor "these units." That's plural, Mr. Baldwin. Then McCord says you were to listen "on a radio receiver." That's singular, Mr. Baldwin. Yet elsewhere in your testimony, regarding your arrival in D.C. on the 26th, you testified that McCord had been "operating one of the receiver units." That's plural, Mr. Baldwin. If we're foolish enough to turn to Liddy— who you've impeached—for help, he says there was only ONE receiving unit. He says in sworn deposition already cited:

• "[W]e had a receiver that cost, in 1972 money, $8,000. It was so sophisticated that it had a cathode ray to a CRT, so that you could even find the signal, because the signal was very weak and very--very finely tuned. And after you found the signal through the oscilloscope, you then used a band spreader to make the thing audible, legible. And then it was from that that they gathered whatever it is that was being fed to it by the room monitoring device and/or the telephone bug."
  

So now we're back to one receiving unit, Mr. Baldwin. But then you tell the committee that on the logs, you were supposed to write down which unit you were monitoring! Now we're back to multiple receiving units! (Where's Louis Black when you need him?) BL-B-B-BLB-B- MAKE UP YOUR DAMNED MIND!

Christ! I practically need dramamine to keep from going somewhere and losing my lunch just to continue with this. It's like being shoved into an industrial washing machine set to the SPIN cycle. So who's lying about all this, Mr. Baldwin? Is it you, Liddy, McCord, or all three of you? Rhetorical question. Moving on:

2. McCord testifies that while you monitored the unit, you would take down these "logs" longhand, on a yellow pad, and only afterward "ultimately" type them up for him. But no: you say you only used a yellow pad the first day, and from there on out used the electric typewriter while monitoring the calls. So who's lying in this case, Mr. Baldwin? You or McCord or both of you? Oh, that's right: you've only always told the truth. So, for some unknown reason, during his sworn "confession" before the whole world, McCord gratuitously lied to the committee about you writing logs on a legal pad. Got it. So now you've impeached McCord along with Hunt and Liddy. Therefore, you alone among this criminal pack of pathalogical liars always tells the truth. (Hey! You and Mr. Caddy have that in common. You two ought to do lunch.) Moving on:

3. McCord testified under oath that what you were writing down while listening to one unit (or two units, or listening to the neighbor's black dog telling you what to write, or whatever the hell you're supposed to have been listening to), that you wrote down summaries of conversations. Is that what you said in your own sworn, 100% honest "confession" before the committee, Mr. Baldwin? No, it isn't, is it. No, you said, under oath, that you were typing phone conversations in real time almost verbatim. Well, now, Mr. Baldwin, I feel it would be unmannerly to just call you a damned xxxx and walk off. So instead I'll say that there's not a person on the face of the earth anywhere that could accomplish the superhuman feat you claim for yourself in your 100% honest sworn testimony. I've already gone over this in some detail in Liddy, Baldwin, and the Phantom Phone Logs, but your claim really doesn't even warrant a comment, Mr. Baldwin. Not to any thinking, rational person who can feed themselves. See? I didn't walk off. Moving on:

You were claiming, in your reply to me, that you gave all these purported "logs" you claim you made to McCord, except for one oh-so-importantly-different set, the handling of which lends oh-so-much-more credence to the whole complicated fiction. Well, all right, if you must: tell us all about what you supposedly did with that exceptional set of "almost verbatim" illegal wiretap records that you say you didn't hand to McCord, but to someone else. I'm on the edge of my seat. You say you gave all the "logs" to McCord except for:

...other than the ones that were delivered to the DNC. I have testified to this...

Oh, yes, yes, yes. I remember now. Yes, this seals the deal, doesn't it? Now we have another party purportedly dragged into receipt of these purported "logs" made directly by you. Okay, Mr. Baldwin. Since you've absolutely forced my hand, let's trot out your testimony on this. First, here you are facing Judge Sirica on this matter, and here's what you told him on Monday, January 29, 1973:

• JUDGE SIRICA: [Y]ou also stated that you received a telephone call from Mr. McCord from Miami in which I think the substance of your testimony was that as to one particular log, he wanted you to put that in a manila envelope and staple it, and he gave you the name of the party to whom the material was to be delivered, correct?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: Yes, I did.
  JUDGE SIRICA: On the envelope. You personally took that envelope to the Committee to Re-elect the President, correct?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: Yes, I did.
  JUDGE SIRICA: And you were under strict instructions from Mr. McCord to give it to the party that was named on the envelope, right?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: Yes.
  JUDGE SIRICA: You testified before this jury and have gone into great detail regarding the various things that transpired or happened insofar as your recollection is concerned correct?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: That is correct.
  JUDGE SIRICA: But you can't remember the name of the party to whom you delivered this particular log?
  

And you couldn't remember who this was.

Of course, here we've also been shoved back into the singular/plural SPIN cycle again, Mr. Baldwin, since in your reply to me you said the ones, yet you told the jury and Sirica that it was one particular log. But, hey—who's counting? So for everyone still reading who hasn't just called you a damned xxxx and walked away in disgust, we have your testimony here that McCord called from Miami and gave you a specific name of a specific person at CREEP to put these patently illegal, damning documents into the hands of, in a sealed envelope—and the name had just slipped your mind less than six months later. Right. Got it. And is that what you also later told the Watergate Committee about this daring escapade? Let's do our due diligence here and just check:

• SENATOR WEICKER: At any time, did you hand those logs to an individual other than Mr. McCord?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: The one incident where I was telephoned from Miami and told to deliver the logs to the Republican headquarters--the Committee to Re-Elect the President on Pennsylvania Avenue, which I did.
  SENATOR WEICKER: ...It is your testimony, then, that you gave these items ["logs"] to Mr. McCord, with the exception of one time when you delivered them to the Committee To Re-Elect the President?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: That is correct.
  SENATOR WEICKER: Whom did you give them to on that occasion?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: I left them with a guard that was in the lobby. I arrived after 6 o'clock and the guard was stationed in the lobby, the offices had been closed.
  —Alfred Baldwin in testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (Watergate Committee), May 24, 1973
  

Oh, for the love of Chirst! How much sheer codswollop can anybody deal with in one sitting?

First there's some mysterious special person at CREEP H/Q you've got to specifically hand-deliver these criminal documents in a manilla envelope to (but the name just slipped your mind, I guess), then you tell us, oh, it was just whatever rent-a-guard happened to be watching the ball game at the front desk.

Well, you've made your record. Just keep sticking to your story, Mr. Baldwin. I'm walking away for now. I've had all of your brand of truth I can take at the moment without puking on the keyboard.

But once I'm fresh as a daisy again—and I will be—I'll be back for the third and final installment.

Count on it.

Ashton Gray

Hi, Terry! Sorry I've been so slow to answer. Must be creeping fossilitis. (Well, actually it's clients who don't know when to shut up and go away. When you're trying to enjoy a good conspiracy, there's nothing more annoying.)

Here we go, and I have to use your color-coordinated quoting conventions, because normal quoting in this, for some reason, is FUBAR. My quotes are still purple, yours'll be whatever I hit upon:

"I've never been any fan of Nixon, and I have no doubt that he had his own sins that made him as blind as he was and vulnerable to exactly what happened to him, but the man was just being turned around and around like the blindfolded dupe in a vicious "pin the tail on the donkey" game.

The only reason his so-called "cover up" fumbling instructions were issued was because he was being told that the FBI had concluded that they were up against a CIA op, and so was playing the little bit of hardball he could to get the heat off the White House and onto CIA where he felt it belonged.

On that count, he was dead right."

And, wouldn't you venture to say that the CIA, along with their elite backers, considered Nixon to be a "Quaker," so to speak, and beneath their station, financially as well as politically? He was merely being used by them and their Secret Team. Just like they used Carter, to be a fall-guy, in order to justify their positions, as the war-mongering opportunists they actually are. The American people have been continually psy-op'd via Operation Mockingbird ad infinitum [since 1947]. These shysters are the original tricksters behind the supposed "Tricky Dicky" campaign, and assorted similar methods used in fabricating the wool to pull over the eyes of the American sheople, back even before the BoP's Operation. Nixon was nothing more than a hick-shuckster opportunist, along similar lines as LBJ, as far as the elites were concerned, and that's how they dealt with him.

You spake sooth. You also hit the nerve center, I believe.

You may be familiar with this already, but it bears posting; here's what Nixon wrote on Saturday, 20 May 1972, the same day he was leaving on his trip to Moscow (which the CIA used as their window of opportunity to run their covert mission the next weekend, Memorial Day weekend, covering it with their "first break-in" hoax):

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

So you have it down cold.

There's more on this that I won't get into now, but I will say that CIA had Gerald Ford waiting in the wings, briefed and primed for a secret program in psy-ops that CIA implemented almost two weeks to the day after the 15 September 1972 Watergate indictments were issued. By that time, Nixon was on the thirteenth step of the gallows (though he didn't know it).

Don't dare allow yourself to think about what the foregoing has to do with Wallace getting shot. At least if you're going to, leave the lights on.

"I call on the current President of the United States to use every tool, power, agency, and department under his influence and control to reopen Watergate, and for him to make a public demand for full and unvarnished CIA disclosure of CIA's involvement in the planning and execution of Watergate..."

This is a neo-fascist regime we have in power at the moment. It ain't gonna happen, my friend.

So call me a starry-eyed optimist. (Hell, I just hope he actually isn't the one who was flying the chase plane that Memorial Day weekend. Of course, that is exactly when he was AWOL. Darn.)

"I beseech every thinking, caring American citizen, of whatever station, status, or political persuasion, to demand on every available official line that the Watergate case be reopened..."

If you can get them away from their playstations, soap operas, reality TV shows, moronic game shows, and all commerical channels between 2 and 13, long enough to get their attention.

You musta' skipped the "thinking, caring" part.

For a more serious response: I actually think that what you're describing is partially symptomatic of the head trauma this culture took with Watergate. The country is still in the coma. (This is not to take anything away from the JFK assassination, and I vow that we'll get there.) But something drastically changed with Watergate. It was mass hypnosis. I honestly do believe that the hoax itself, and the way it was played out in the media, had built into it many precise mechanics of the psy-ops you referred to, on a societal level.

It was designed to throw people into a state of effect, into apathy. We went almost overnight from huge activist demonstrations to disco. (From life to coma. Just keep your eyes on the mirror ball while you dance...)

"I entreat educators, researchers, writers, attorneys, and judges to use every line, connection, and influence available to them to make this information known to publications and institutions that can and will move this permanently into broad public view, into the public consciousness, and onto the public agenda..."

Now, I must concede that you'll probably have more luck with this group. Especially if they tend to be like-minded and politically aligned with those of us of the more socially-inclined persuasion.

Now you're talkin'. Let's get them all out of their coma.

"I appeal to honest and responsible journalists, commentators, talk show hosts, and media people in any station or position to use their sphere of influence to make this information known, and to raise a din that will not die down until justice is served and the truth is exposed."

If Congress succeeds in its efforts to pull funding from NPR and similar subsidiaries, we'll definitely be xxxx out of luck. I seriously doubt you'll be getting any substantial response from the commercial venues. They're all running scared to save their own hides after the recent Dan Rather faux pas.

Anybody want to start up some "Free Press" rags in their towns? That's where I started: on the Kansas City Free Press, and it rattled some cages pretty good. (I learned my command of grammar there, too.)

"I demand our congressional intelligence "oversight committees" to stand aside and let honest people get the job done in disinfecting sunlight. I call on law enforcement agencies and agents to put the first "congressperson" who now attempts to keep any of this behind "closed doors" for "national security" reasons into cuffs as an accessory after the fact, and for misprison of felony."

Hey, "Now Whoa dere, Sapphire!" Do we actually have such things as "legit" oversight committees? These days? It's a REPUBLICAN Congress, totally. You're gonna be pissin' in the wind asking for that kind of cooperation, honey. Earth to Ashton...Earth to Ashton...Come back down to Earth and head directly underground before you become a moving target for Cheney.

Hey, Whoa yourself, Kingfish. You definitely must have missed "stand aside." Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to re-parse the paragraph.

All kidding aside though, your requests and honorable intentions are like a fresh spring rain to my ears and to my sore eyes. But, are we inhabiting the same planet, here? Surely not the same country?

Well, already in this thread you, Dawn, and I are here agreeing that we've been royally screwed without even so much as a peck on the cheek, and that something ought to be done about it. So how many more are there who feel the same way? I honestly do believe that once people catch on, once they get even a glimmer of an idea that they can come out of this mass-hypnosis apathy, that they actually can do something about it, and that there actually is a way out of the maze of federally-funded lies about Watergate, I think you're going to seem some action. (You know, if half the work were put into this that goes into drumming up Republicans to pay $1,000 a plate to listen to Chaney drone away, it'd be a walk in the park.)

Thanks for all your kind words, which I'd choke on repeating. Thanks even more for your interest and intention. A few more like you and Dawn, and Langley is likely to get a crash course in socialization. (Can you teach an ape which fork to eat with?)

Ashton Gray

Hello again, Mr. Baldwin.

Thanks for your replies to my two questions. I said I wouldn't have any more questions for you, and I'm going to honor that.

So you've made your record. Now I'll make mine.

1. Yes, I was there in Wash., D.C.through ouit the Memorial Day week-end on each and every day of that week-end (not off on some other clandestine work)

All right. That's your record. I didn't have any expectation that your answer, should one come at all, would deviate in any way from the The Official Story that's been being told for 30 years. I'm not obligated to accept it at face value, though, and I don't. I'm about to chronicle at least some of the reasons why.

If at any time I had lied I would have faced serious legal, professional, and personal consquences.

Well, somebody among your group of co-conspirators lied, Mr. Baldwin. That's inarguable. Your stories about your whereabouts and activities that Memorial Day weekend not only don't line up with those of your co-conspirators, they can't possibly be made to line up. So somebody among you lied. When I finish making my record here in response, maybe you'll care to say which of your co-conspirators lied—if you didn't lie, as you assert—and maybe you won't care to. That will be your choice. But there's one thing you won't say, and I'll give you an iron-clad money-back guarantee on this: you won't say that none of you lied.

As for any possible "legal, professional, and personal consequences" you might (or might not) have faced for lying during an "investigation" that was completely railroaded from the start, I'm of the opinion that you might have faced far more "serious legal, professional, and personal consequences" regarding your whereabouts and activities over that weekend if you hadn't lied.

But that's my opinion. The following are facts:

1) You testified under oath in congress that on the afternoon of Friday, May 26 1972, you arrived at room 419 of the Howard Johnson's motel, after a six-hour drive from Connecticut, and that you there found James McCord tinkering with a piece of electronics equipment that you had no familiarization with or prior knowledge of. You go on to say that on that same afternoon two men came to room 419 and you were introduced to them, and they to you, by first name. Here are the relevant excerpts from your testimony:

• SENATOR WEICKER: And as you entered the room, Mr. McCord was in the process of what—experimenting with this equipment? What did he indicate to you at the time that you entered the room?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: He was tuning the equipment. The unit was operating and he was working the tuning dials. There's several tuning dials on the piece of equipment— ...I'd just driven approximately six hours, and he said, "As soon as you get unpacked and relaxed I'll explain this," and I said, "All right. I'll take a shower and shave and join you."
  SENATOR WEICKER: Now, Mr. Baldwin, is there a sequence of events leading up to a visit by other persons to the room that afternoon.
  ALFRED BALDWIN: Well, I was told that some other individuals would be coming to the room that were part, uh, part of the security force, and that in view of their position, they would be introduced under aliases to me. And that I would also be introduced— And Mr. McCord said, "Don't take this personal; it's no reflection on you, but because of the nature of work we're involved in, I'm going to use an alias for you, and I'll use an alias for them. ...Two individuals came to the room, and when they entered the room, Mr. McCord turned to me, and at this point he introduced— He said, "Al, I'd like you to meet—" And I believe he said, uh, "Ed and—" And he got all confused, because he hadn't used the alias... . And he was introducing them— I don't know if he said at that point "Ed and Gordon" or how he did it, but he had to retrack. And then he tried to introduce me under my alias, and he couldn't remember it, and then he just introduced us under first names.
  SENATOR WEICKER: Right. Now, subsequently, have you identified who those two men were that came into the room?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: That's correct. In the FBI photographic display they were identified as Mr. Liddy and Mr. Hunt.
  

That's your testimony under oath, Mr. Baldwin: that you were introduced by McCord to both Liddy and Hunt at the same time, in room 419, on the afternoon of Friday, May 26, 1972—the same day as the "Ameritas Dinner." (Make a mental note, if you would, that you claim in your testimony that there only was one "unit" that had "several tuning dials." We'll revisit that.) For now, back to you, Liddy, and Hunt:

2) In your sworn testimony, you go on to claim that on the same night, May 26-27 1972, at "around 1:00 or 2:00" in the morning, you rode with McCord to McGovern headquarters, and there met up with G. Gordon Liddy. Of course, this could only be after the "Ameritas Dinner" fiasco the same night, which Weicker avoided like the plague, but here is your relevant testimony:

• SENATOR WEICKER: Now that same evening, the same evening of May the 26th, was there a trip to McGovern headquarters?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: That's correct. There was.
  SENATOR WEICKER: Would you describe to the committee that trip, and the evening's activities at McGovern's headquarters.
  ALFRED BALDWIN: Well, the purpose of my returning from Connecticut was to work that weekend. Mr. McCord advised me that there be, uh— That we would have to work that weekend. I didn't know we were going to McGovern headquarters until we arrived at the scene. ...And then we proceeded to McGovern headquarters and as we drove by the headquarters, he pointed to a building, and he said, "This is what we're interested in. We've got to meet some other people here." And then he proceeded to explain that, uh, "We have to find our individual. One of our men is here. He'll be in a yellow Volkswagon. Keep your eyes open for the Volkswagon—for the man sitting in it." I think he even mentioned "boy;" I don't think he said "man." "There's a boy in the Volkswagon." He said, "We have one of our— One of our people is inside the headquarters." The problem was there was an individual standing outside of McGovern's headquarters, which was a second-story headquarters above, I believe, they were stores. There was a chain across them. And this individual was there. This was late in the evening, approximately 1:00 or 2:00 o'clock in the early morning hours, and Mr. McCord was quite upset at the fact this individual was standing in front of the store. He had no business being there according to Mr. McCord. Or he shouldn't have been there.
  SENATOR WEICKER: Did you meet any other individuals at that particular— at that particular address?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: That's correct. Mr. McCord had been in communication over a walkie-talkie unit with some other individuals. And at one point as we proceeded on the same street that the McGovern headquarters is located on, we stopped adjacent to a light-colored car. An individual alighted from the car and came into the front seat of Mr. McCord's car. I slid over so I was between Mr. McCord and this individual.
  SENATOR WEICKER: Can you tell me who that individual was?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: It was Mr. Liddy. ...We— They drove around. Mr. McCord and Mr. Liddy did all the talking, and they drove around—I don't know the exact length of time, but it was over a half hour. As a matter of fact, we drove up the alleyway adjacent to the building. They discussed a problem of lights. There was a discussion of whether or not their man was still inside. There were several discussions, and finally Mr. Liddy said, "We'll abort the mission." That was his terms.
  

So here your testimony, Mr. Baldwin, is that on the night of May 26, 1972—actually in the first few morning hours of May 27, 1972—you rode around in a car with James McCord and G. Gordon Liddy on a reconnaisance of McGovern headquarters for "over a half hour." We'll come right back to it, but for now, here is point number 3 of my record, which is Count 10. from the grand jury indictment, describing the same event at McGovern headquarters that night of May 26-27:

3. From the grand jury indictment: "On or about May 27, 1972, within the District of Columbia, the defendants Liddy, Hunt, and McCord inspected, surveyed, and reconnoitered the headquarters of Senator George McGovern at 410 First Street, S.E."

Uh-oh, Mr. Baldwin. This is: "Houston, we have a problem." Already. The problem is E. Howard Hunt. You don't mention Hunt being there at McGovern headquarters in your congressional testimony, do you? That's a rhetorical question; no answer required. You don't. And it's a good thing you don't. Hunt, Gonzalez, and Liddy all claim that Hunt and Gonzalez were locked in the Continental room of the Watergate at that very moment, where they purportedly spent the night, with Hunt relieving himself into a Scotch bottle that he then replaced with the liquor stores.

And if you don't mind my saying so, it appears to me that you're the one stuck with this problem, since you, Mr. Baldwin, were the one who was "cooperating" with the U.S. Attorneys at the time, spoon-feeding them the script of what purportedly happened that Memorial Day weekend, including this "McGovern headquarters" teleplay. This, of course, is why you aren't in the same scene in their version: you were the one ratting out the others, and the U.S. attorneys had to keep you out of the grand jury in return. But it seems that you royally screwed up the script when you were telling the McGovern headquarters story to the U.S. Attorneys, and accidentally put Hunt there that night, when according to the script, he was supposed to be locked in the Continental room.

Uh-oh. Of course this screw-up also explains why, by the time you got in front of the Senate Committe, you planted into your testimony to that august body a mysterious, anonymous "individual" standing out front, and a mysterious, anonymous "one of our people" supposedly inside the building, and explains why your hired ventriloquist, Lowell Weicker, carefully avoided asking any questions about the identities of these shadowy anonymous people you littered the landscape with, sowing confusion.

So you screwed up your story to the U.S. Attorneys, and you put Hunt in a scene he hadn't been written into, so you then had to write him out again in the televised congressional testimony, and Weicker helped you create the confusion with the anonymous straw men, the "extras" that you planted, standing around in the scenery. Isn't that true, Mr. Baldwin? Rhetorical question again. I actually don't give a damn at this point what you have to say about any of it: you made your record; now I'm making mine. And I'm not even finished with my warm-up pitches yet. Back to the curious case of how you say you met Hunt and Liddy, because now here are their stories about it:

4. G. Gordon Liddy said both in his autobiography, and in sworn deposition, that he never met you at all until Wednesday, May 31, 1972, and not in room 419 at the Howard Johnson's, nor at McGovern headquarters, but in room 723 at the Howard Johnson's, where he claims he had gone to discuss with McCord the problems with the purported "bugs" (that didn't exist). Here are Liddy's two accounts of your meeting, first from his autobiography:

• "The observation post was dark. Inside was a man whom I could hardly see, and McCord introduced us monosyllabically, using aliases. As the man returned to his watching of the DNC offices across the street, McCord showed me an elaborate receiver with an oscilloscope and band-spreader." —G. Gordon Liddy, Will
  

And here he is in sworn deposition:

• "The listening post was across Virginia Avenue Southwest, in a room in the Howard Johnson's motel. ...Mr. McCord brought me there to see the setup, so to speak. It was after dark. ...And I was sort of monosyllabically introduced to a man who turned out to be Mr. Baldwin, who was seated there and was observing. There was a camera mounted on a tripod with a telephoto lens. It was pointed in the direction that Mr. Baldwin was observing. There was a typewriter. There were the— was a receiver. And I didn't stay there very long. It was dark."—G. Gordon Liddy, Dean v. St. Martin's et al., USDC DC No. 92-1807
  

I don't know about you, Mr. Baldwin, but after reading your testimony, and then reading this, it just makes me cringe with embarrassment. I actually turn red. These are such amateurish lies, that if my brother and I had ever told any two such conflicting stories to my Daddy, he wouldn't have asked another single question: we both would have just been strapped till we couldn't sit down, and that would have been the end of it. And if you're cringing in embarrassment, too—I mean, assuming you're capable of it—unfortunately, I'm still not done. (Do, though, make a mental note of Liddy's false start of "There were the— was a receiver." We're going to come back to it.)

5. E. Howard Hunt claims he never laid eyes on you at all in his entire life until after the 2:30 a.m. arrests on the morning of Saturday, June 17, 1972—just before he trotted over to Doug Caddy's apartment and we have the "Mrs. Barker's phone call" fairy tale, about which Mr. Caddy still hasn't answered—and below is E. Howard Hunt's breathless account of how he claims he met you for the first and only time in the whole affair. Get out your popcorn—it starts with Hunt and Liddy parting company at Liddy's jeep while the arrests are going on, Liddy having the first lines from the play:

• "'Good night, 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, 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. '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 with uncertainty. '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.'"
  —E. Howard Hunt, Undercover
  

Oh, somebody please cue a dramatic diminished chord on a goddamned full-stops pipe organ while I try to get my flesh to stop crawling—not from suspense, but from "just how corny can fiction get" syndrome. Would they even put this on a Saturday morning cartoon show? I'm practically under the table from embarrassment. And, "plaintively," Mr. Baldwin? Seems like Hunt could have treated you better than that.

But of course you did the natural thing right after that, didn't you: you drove the equipment straight to McCord's house. I mean, where else would a former FBI agent go to ditch incriminating evidence than to the home of the chief of security for the Committee to Re-elect the President? (That's another rhetorical question, Alfred. At ease.)

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

1. Hunt and Liddy both lied.

2. You lied.

3. All three of you lied.

If your own accounts are as pure and uncontestable as you claim, then you've just branded both Hunt and Liddy as amoral lying scum who will say anything at all, even under oath, that suits them, without regard for truth or falsity. I'm comfortable with that. You've impeached them completely. I don't know how "Mr. Truth, Justice, and the American Flag Behind Me," G. Gordon Liddy, is going to take it, but I find it quite entertaining.

And, apparently, you were able to lie down with just such mangy, pathologically lying scum, and get up 100% flea-free. That's quite an accomplishment, Mr. Baldwin. I salute you. I've never encountered that in my life before. In fact, my Daddy—the one with the strap—use to say, "If you lie down with dogs, you've already got fleas." Either he couldn't get the old saws right, or maybe he knew something worth knowing.

I'll get to your second answer in my next message. I think this is enough to chew on for now, don't you? Rhetorical question.

Oh! Before I go, I think I mentioned something above about the single electronic receiving unit you described as having been in room 419 on May 26, 1972, with "several tuning dials," and Liddy's faltering over being about to say there were several units (plural) in room 723 when he claims he came up and met you for the first time on Wednesday, May 31, 1972 (but you've already branded Liddy as a xxxx), which Liddy hastily corrected to saying "unit" (singular).

Well, I mentioned it, Mr. Baldwin, because you said something very curious in your congressional testimony. Here's the exchange with your ventriloquist, Lowell Weicker:

• SENATOR WEICKER: Now, Mr. Baldwin, what was your primary job, then, during the first two weeks of June? We've now moved from the end of May to June—what was your primary job during that period of time?
  ALFRED BALDWIN: I was instructed to monitor all telephone conversations that were being received over these units that were in the Howard Johnson room, and to make a log of all units.
  

"Units?" Plural? Did you say, "units," Mr. Baldwin? How did we suddenly get "unit proliferation"? Do you mean to tell us that while typing 200 phone conversations "almost verbatim"—that superhuman feat you claimed you accomplished—you also were having to monitor several different receiving units? Really? Wow! Were you switching headphones back and forth, or just plugging one set of headphones back and forth into different units between bursts of amazing typing? And, what were these various units receiving, since supposedly only one "bug" was working? Isn't that why your friends went "back in?" Or was it because of the photos that never existed? I get confused.

That's a whole paragraph of rhetorical questions above, Mr. Baldwin. Don't think for a moment that there's even a response possible. There isn't one that would matter. And I'm about to make my further record concerning your second answer to me, with lots more about that "Ripley's Believe or Not" typing feat you accomplished. Or say you did.

Stay "tuned" for part two. Don't touch that dial!

Ashton Gray

On 25th June, Baldwin agreed to cooperate in order to avoid the grand-jury looking into the case.

That's exactly right, John: just a week after the men were "caught" inside the Watergate, Baldwin was cooperating with the U.S. Attorneys to "avoid the grand jury," and—as I'm going to explore more thoroughly in a response here soon (I'm really strapped for time at the moment)—Baldwin volunteered the electronics equipment he had planted at McCord's house (on script), then spoon-fed the U.S. Attorneys the story of the purported "first break-in," which of course made it into the indictments. And the stage play was off and running.

Ashton Gray

Were not two bugs found in the DNC ofice?

No.

If I remember correctly

You don't. If you've got a cite for any bug being found "right away," bring it. Otherwise, you seem to be attempting to keep the fictions going strong, long, and as confusedly and unattestedly as possible. That's just from where I sit.

There were no bugs found in sweeps just before and immediately after the June 17, 1972 break-in.

the other wasn't found till months later

"The" other? Assumes any "other" not in evidence. I'll tell anybody who asks where they can plant any bugs found "months later" as far as I'm concerned. Were you asking me?

As far as the room monitor versus phone tap argument...the state-of-the-art room monitors of the time were in fact placed inside phones.

Hey, Pat, I'm happy to have informed discussions, but I don't have time to waste on additional fictions being made up and put into the record. Bring a claim from any source that a "room monitor" was "placed inside a phone," and I'll gladly turn it to confetti for you here in front of everybody with contradictory claims from the record. And none of the conflicting claims have any validity whatsoever, because there were no bugs planted over Memorial Day weekend. And that's where I stand. If you think you're going to move me off of that position with "If I recall correctly" (when you don't), months-late "bugs," and whole-cloth "new" fictionalized apologies and "explanations" for the already existing malicious fictions, I hope you packed a lunch.

Ashton Gray

The best way, and I'm not trying to avoid a direct answer, would be to review the FBI 302 interview documents given during July, 19 72. Now with the passage of time every single attempt to review specific events might lead tp misleading answers.

Okay, Mr. Baldwin. I understand, and thank you. I realize that I went to some specific details that you don't feel qualified to answer based on your recollection of those events 30+ years ago.

So I'm going to bypass all those troublesome details entirely. I'm just going to ask you very frankly a few very simple, direct, unambiguous questions based on my understanding of information I've been supplied with, and that I've encapsulated in the article in this forum, There was no "first break-in" at the Watergate (and its foundational articles). And my questions are simply these:

1) Were you actually in Washington, D.C. throughout the Memorial Day weekend—26, 27, and 28 May 1972—engaged in two failed attempts at breaking into the Watergate building, and in one successful "break-in," as has been claimed in testimony and accounts by you and by your co-conspirators, or were you at any relevant time during that holiday weekend outside of Washington, D.C. on a clandestine mission with some number of the other co-conspirators?

2) Did you actually spend the first two weeks of June 1972 monitoring and making electric-typewriter records of conversations intercepted by "bugs" planted in the Wategate, as has been claimed in testimony by you and by your co-conspirators, or is it in fact true that there were no "bugs" at all planted by McCord, that the electronic equipment was all part of a giant hoax, and that you made no logs at all—which instead were dictated as whole cloth fiction by G. Gordon Liddy to his secretary, Sally Harmony?

These are simple questions, Mr. Baldwin. They require no address to 302s or newspaper articles, all of which are crafted to reflect and support the story of a "first break-in." There's no possibility, Mr. Baldwin, that you don't recall whether you were involved in the purported "first break-in" and its purported failed attempts or not, or that you can't recall whether you actually typed "almost verbatim" transcripts of intercepted oral conversations, as you described in great detail to the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities.

Either you were there and you participated as you testified to the U.S. Attorneys and to congress, or you weren't. You made "logs" of electronic bugs and gave them to McCord to pass on to Liddy, or you didn't.

I'm genuinely, deeply sorry to have to be asking these questions at all, but the preponderance of evidence that now has been supplied to me (and quite a few others), as I've laid out in the articles I've linked to for your easy reference, suggests very strongly, to me, that the extremely contradictory testimony on record is false on its face, and that there was no "first break-in" on Memorial Day weekend or any "bugs" planted in the DNC at all.

Whatever the superficial appearance might be, whatever my tone might have seemed in asking any questions, I take no personal joy at all in asking them, and I don't ask them with any personal animosity toward you. I do not ask them to be either accusatory or gratuitously adversarial. I don't ask them to play "gotcha" as another member of this forum has suggested in another thread. I ask them in all sincerety and good faith because I simply cannot reconcile the facts as I now know them to be with your own prior claims, and I am in all earnestness asking you to clear a clouded record.

I don't know if you will elect to answer responsively, Mr. Baldwin. I genuinely, and with no malice toward you, hope that you will. Not to satisfy me, personally; I have no importance in this. I hope you'll answer simply to clear and confirm the record. These are very, very troubling issues. And while you owe no answer to me, it's my best information and belief that these same ponderous questions now are going to be repeated until they are answered with finality, and not just in a pat-a-cake public forum.

I appreciate your patience with me, and, no matter what, I wish you Godspeed, but I don't have any questions for you beyond the two above.

Ashton Gray

Hi Dawn.

I empathize completely with the sense of "no hope" you express in your message. I've lived it.

But there is hope, and it's only going to take a little help to blow it wide open and back onto the front pages. It's already in motion. It was before I posted a single thing about all this here (or I wouldn't have been stupid or reckless enough to post it at all). It just needs some push. You, and everyone who cares, can make a difference.

Well...now if only we had a media that WOULD respond to any of this.

We do. There are still "alternative" media that aren't controlled like the majors, and there still are honest people who give a damn at the grass roots, and in smaller-market papers and media stations. Rattle their doors.

This also is a world-wide, not USA-exclusive, story. There's plenty of foreign media, and there's interest in this elsewhere (and was before I ever posted a syllable about any of this in this international forum).

Instead we had Bob Mr CIA Woodward "breaking" the story as the Post- (Operation Mockingbird)- saw fit. This was the big coup, remember?

Yeah, well of course that putz and his whoring excuse for a newspaper were key co-conspirators. Let that golem polish its "precccccccious," its Pulitzer, that it sold its soul for. There still are real journalists in the world. The Post and its minions are going to get their comeuppance in scrambling like mad to explain how and why they somehow "missed" the entire actual story that was right under their noses. I wonder who they're going to get to try to explain that grandiose journalistic flop away. Whoever it is probably should turn the lights at the Post off on their way out.

Meanwhile, somebody somewhere is going to get a Pulitzer that's actually earned for breaking the truth about Watergate. It's all been laid out. All they've got to do is publish it.

Now we have the same Woodward telling us Mark Felt is Deep throat.

There's an interesting story about that, which I was only made aware of relatively recently, and it's this:

In early 2004, a series of anonymous messages was posted in several USENET news groups from someone signing himself or herself "The Real Deep Throat." If you do a Google search in newsgroups for that phrase, you'll find these messages.

They expose a lot of the same information that's now in the Wikipedia article "Watergate first break-in", which I've relied on heavily for my own conclusions, and for my articles here in this forum (and which it looks like somebody is awfully desparate to get erased out of existence over there at Wikipedia right now).

A friend of mine who pointed me to these USENET postings, and who has studied Watergate for decades, feels certain that those revelations are what caused the cruds to suddenly "reveal" their "Deep Throat" just about a year after these postings started showing up—entirely violating the "promise" that it never would happen until the so-called "Deep Throat" was dead, by the way—and even got the mummified Liddy to sit upright on CNN and be a talking head to try to lend it credence.

I don't know if those postings are what caused their "Deep Throat" knee to jerk or not, but apparently those "Real Deep Throat" postings were getting a good deal of circulation, and the timing sure is interesting, isn't it? It seems like they were awfully desperate to get back in control of the story and remind the world that it all really happened just the way Bob Woodward told you it did. (I'll refrain from spitting.)

I totaly agree with what you have written...but HOW do we get our government to give us any truth on anything???

Pressure. Public pressure. And it can be brought to bear. If my information is correct, there already are some groups putting together Executive Summaries of this information right now to go to legislators—and some other places. There's already a good deal of interest generated in all of this elsewhere. (I wouldn't have been stupid or reckless enough to post it here otherwise. It's already spread around in too many places to have a prayer of being contained by any means.)

Thank God for the net and forums like this. Thus far we ARE monitered I am certain but not regulated, so much information can be shared here.

You can add my thanks in spades, and not only to God, but to John Simkin as well.

As for this being monitored, you betcha', but they've got a real serious problem right now: there's no fall-back story. They've been hit so hard, so fast, by so much of their fraud being exposed that there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. That's why right this minute, in response to some hard questions arising directly from these exposures, we're being treated here in this very forum to repetitive talking points and evasive references to obscure FBI documents and newspaper accounts. That's the only answer they have! It's not following the script of the fraud any more! And there's nothing to replace it with! It's a big "no answer." It's just stonewall, stonewall, stonewall, while the CIA-contracted once-removed think tanks scramble like mad trying to come up with some kind of plausible out.

There isn't one.

They were 100% invested in keeping the hoax afloat, confident that it never would be penetrated.

It's not just been penetrated, it's been blown in half. Their next stage is damage control, and I sure hope they're busy at it—the ones who aren't trying to find a way to jump ship.

There's another problem they have, and that's numbers. Although the gang of thugs who have put this fraud over on the world and have kept it going have power, there's only a relative few of them, while there are millions if not billions of people in the world who want the truth.

So all I'm trying to say, really, is that there is hope, there's strength in numbers, and there is something that can be done about it. There are lots of bright, honest, caring people in the world who can be brought to see the light on this and get motivated to get into action on it.

We can make a difference. We will.

Happy Anniversary

Happy Anniversary to you, too.

Ashton Gray

Dawn Meredith asked some questions of me in a related thread, Liddy, McCord, and the Phantom Watergate "Bugs". That's one of the foundational articles for this thread, and while I realize that this is a bit unorthodox, I've asked her leave there to allow me to answer her questions, to the best of my ability, in this summarizing thread instead, where there are links to all the foundational articles.

So I'm not really replying to myself: here is my response to Dawn:

Ashton:

SO what were the boys actually doing that weekend?

I should know? You accusing me of being CIA or something? I don't care what names you call me, but don't you dare try to link me to that mob.

Okay, seriously, Dawn: The straight and simple answer of course is I don't know.

But now we're all going to find out. The spy-fiction alibi the co-conspirators cooked up to cover it up has been disintegrated.

What was the bogus first break- in a cover for?

Whatever it was, it was big enough—and dirty enough—for them to go to the lengths they did to hide it. And that's a pretty frightening thought all by itself, isn't it?

That's the real cover-up that has never, to this day, been uncovered. It's the cover-up wrapped in a "cover-up." It's the play within the play. It's the still-hidden dirty core of the entire madness. It's the "big secret" still buried and rotting to this minute in the dank cellar of CIA headquarters at Langley.

But the iron door of fraud, which CIA has been hiding it all behind, has been blown off its hinges, and the dark stairs behind lead straight down into CIA's cellar. And that's where the bodies are buried.

That cellar has got to be excavated now, and the truth, however decomposed and unconfrontable, has got to be hauled out into the disinfecting light of day for open, uncompromising public scrutiny. There are no other options.

Now that we finally know where to dig, it's time for all of us to start digging, and digging hard.

For the first time in over 30 years the right questions can be asked of the right people, instead of everybody chasing their tails trying to follow all the thousands of red herrings the co-conspirators planted.

Ironically, this is 6/17- the anniversary of the real Watergate breakin.

Yes, ma'am. And none of us are ever going to be the same.

I have a feeling you might enjoy this:

The "first break-in" is the first break in the case

The exposure of this CIA fraud of a "first break-in" is the first break in the Watergate case in over three decades.

(I do hope that's being read by some of the glib, pun-happy, amoral scum that the CIA uses for its eternal disinformation ops—especially here on this anniversary date. )

Do you have a theory as to why the breakin occurred?

I have several idle working theories, but I personally believe we're all standing on the threshold of the cellar door and haven't even gone down the stairs yet or rigged up the lights, so it's still a bit dark. What I know with personal certainty, is that it's the right door, the right cellar. The smell is overwhelming.

We've never even been in the right zip code before to dig up actual evidence that will make a working theory on which to build the case. Now it's time to start the probably unpleasant task of digging in the right dirt.

I'll say this: some things have no statute of limitations.

Some tings are obvious: McCord was NOT working for Nixon, but was clearly a double agent.

Yes, ma'am.

And Hunt and Liddy, at all relevant times, had CIA clearances (first), then were put into positions with full White House credentials (second), and at all relevant times were in possession of both. There is no more precise definition of "double agent." It wasn't an accident.

Every single "nonsensical" thing done by the co-conspirators--all of which has been discussed and rationalized to death--is entirely consistent with the intent and desire to get "caught" on the night of 16-17 June 1972 with wiretapping equipment and traceable "clues" in their possession that would point away from CIA and point directly toward the White House, then to plant the big alibi story covering Memorial Day weekend, further implicating the White House in the process.

Liddy and Hunt, along with CIA veteran McCord, were the pointers to the White House. They were working for CIA and its clandestine accomplices, with the malevolent intent of implicating the White House. That stark simplicity resolves all conflicting evidence, testimony, and intentionally generated confusion surrounding all related events.

It's not even complicated.

I don't put much wieght in the Dean's- fiancee- the- hooker story either.

What a sick, twisted fraud on top of a fraud and waste of court and public time that was. It doesn't even bear comment.

Watergate was a CIA plot to get Nixon, but why and what else was going on.?

As I've said, "the what else was going on" part is what all of us now must demand to be told, with all the intensity and force of the original "investigation," and without compromise.

As for Nixon, let me suggest an interesting exercise that I've done myself several times now: with this knowledge of a vast CIA cover-up, go back and read the full transcript of the so-called "smoking gun" tape. I've never been any fan of Nixon, and I have no doubt that he had his own sins that made him as blind as he was and vulnerable to exactly what happened to him, but the man was just being turned around and around like the blindfolded dupe in a vicious "pin the tail on the donkey" game.

The only reason his so-called "cover up" fumbling instructions were issued was because he was being told that the FBI had concluded that they were up against a CIA op, and so was playing the little bit of hardball he could to get the heat off the White House and onto CIA where he felt it belonged.

On that count, he was dead right.

Do you think Nixon was blackmailing them, threatening to reveal information re the assassination of JFK?

I don't know.

I'd be willing to bet the farm, though, that the most crucial evidence of the JFK assassination is still buried in the exact same cellar. And the final exposure of this fraud, the Watergate fraud, is the key that finally unlocks the door to that cellar for everyone.

I also don't think there's a ghost of a chance of finally unraveling the JFK assassination until the CIA Watergate hoax is completely stretched, salted, and tacked to the barn wall.

We have a real chance now to do just that.

And for all those reasons, on this anniversary of Watergate, I implore every person who ever has known with their own moral conviction that we all have been cheated and duped to take effective and forceful action to get that cellar fully excavated.

I call on the new Director of CIA to act at once to instigate the most far-reaching internal investigation ever launched at CIA and finally to report to the world the truth about CIA responsiblity for Watergate and for the unconsionable hoax perpetrated by CIA on mankind. If he doesn't do it as a top priority, I call for his summary removal and charges as an accessory, and on misprison of felony.

I call on the current President of the United States to use every tool, power, agency, and department under his influence and control to reopen Watergate, and for him to make a public demand for full and unvarnished CIA disclosure of CIA's involvement in the planning and execution of Watergate, including public disclosure of where Liddy, Hunt, McCord, and Baldwin actually were and what they actually were doing on Memorial Day weekend 1972. If he won't, I call for his impeachment and charges as an accessory, and on misprison of felony.

And I beseech every person who can be reached by this message to make it happen.

I beseech every thinking, caring American citizen, of whatever station, status, or political persuasion, to demand on every available official line that the Watergate case be reopened with a vengeance by every United States agency, department, and office at any level that has any jurisdiction whatsoever, including but not limited to the DOJ, the CIA itself, and Congress, and to include in that demand that the CIA and all living participants be held fully accountable.

I call on investigators and law enforcement officials at any and all levels to use the power and influence of their office to make similar demands until they are heard.

I entreat educators, researchers, writers, attorneys, and judges to use every line, connection, and influence available to them to make this information known to publications and institutions that can and will move this permanently into broad public view, into the public consciousness, and onto the public agenda as an irresistable force that will open this case to uncompromising scrutiny until every last secret and crime is wrung out of it, and the responsible parties are brought to justice.

I appeal to honest and responsible journalists, commentators, talk show hosts, and media people in any station or position to use their sphere of influence to make this information known, and to raise a din that will not die down until justice is served and the truth is exposed.

I demand our congressional intelligence "oversight committees" to stand aside and let honest people get the job done in disinfecting sunlight. I call on law enforcement agencies and agents to put the first "congressperson" who now attempts to keep any of this behind "closed doors" for "national security" reasons into cuffs as an accessory after the fact, and for misprison of felony. By having protected the guilty behind those "closed doors" of "national security" for so many decades, they already have breached and betrayed the very trust that grants such rights of "national security" secrecy, and so have forfeited any right to the use of any such deceitful cloak to continue to hide and protect criminal fraud against the people on a grand scale.

Yes, I think it's just that important.

We've all been made marks of a giant con. But it's not just a con; it's a criminal betrayal of the highest trusts granted anywhere in the world.

I know that I haven't satisfactorily answered all your questions, Dawn, but for these crucially important and correct questions you've asked, I'm simply the wrong person to be asking. Now, though, we know who to ask, and we know what has to be asked. And we have to ask them together. And demand that they be answered.

Ashton Gray

Hi Dawn.

You've asked some very pregnant questions that deserve the best and most thorough answers I can give, and although I know this is a little unorthodox, I'd like to answer them in a different thread, here: There was no "first break-in" at the Watergate.

I hope you don't object. I feel that your questions are important, and directly germane to that summarizing article about the CIA hoax. If you'll be kind enough to indulge me on this, I'd like my response to be there, where anybody coming across it will have the overview of the fraud, and also will have available (in the first article of that thread) the links to all the foundational articles.

So with your good graces, I respectfully ask if you will click on this link:

There was no "first break-in" at the Watergate

I'll meet you there and vow to give it my best.

Ashton Gray

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.

So is it 1), 2), or 3) above?

Ashton Gray

While you have done a good job of demonstrating that Mr. Caddy, in order to keep Hunt's involvement secret, probably lied to a newspaper about a phone call from Barker's wife...

Okay, I'm gonna' take my stubby little pencil here and put that down as a vote for #2) above.

Please play nice.

Well, geez, Pat: I sang to him, didn't I?

Okay, okay, I repent. I take back the Archangel Michael thing (I probably would be pretty impressed), and I won't say anything else about the talking-points. Does that cover my sins? Do I need to wear a hair shirt or anything?

the relevance is not immediately apparent to some of us on the outside...

Well, not being sure of the "us" you're being spokesperson for, unless there's a mouse in your pocket, I still am always responsive to questions about relevance. So have you read the article, There was no "first break-in" at the Watergate, and it's foundational articles yet? I gave you the link a few messages back. If you haven't, that might be why the relevance is not immediately apparent. If you have, stay tuned: the Relevance Express is headed down the track, this-a-way.

Ashton Gray

Hi, Doug. I'm very heartened to see that you don't gainsay or deny that your meeting with Barker and Hunt was before the release of the Pentagon Papers, and that you only attempt to downplay the incident.

I reiterate my previous statement about this matter, which indeed is trivial as to a specific date over 30 years ago about a meeting that was thoroughly examined at the time by the appropriate Watergate law enforcement authorities

Don't be so modest, Mr. Caddy. No, it is not trivial. It's not even a little bit trivial. In fact, truth be told, there is not any date in 1971 where you can put Barker's shiny butt in a chair with you and Hunt that would be "trivial" in the least.

And thanks for the talking-points recitation, but I already know how expert you are at "reiterating" your scripted talking points ad infinitum, ad nauseum. I know how adept you are at sending people off around the mulberry bush looking for one of your other non-responsive talking-points issuances that you cite circularly, hoping they'll just go away and stay away and shut up. I already know your whole aria by heart about how the FBI and the "appropriate Watergate law enforcement authorities" dubbed you squeaky clean and lily white and smelling like Elizabeth Taylor after a tour of her perfume factory.

But frankly, Mr. Caddy, I wouldn't care if the Archangel Michael himself had personally crossed your forehead with olive oil on the Rotunda steps and a color photo of it made the cover of TIME naming you man of the year. Too many things directly involving your participation don't add up, and I'm about to stroll down memory lane and explore a few of them. You're welcome to come along and address some of the sights along the path, or you can just stand right here under the tree droning your monotonous talking points over and over and over and over, asserting and reasserting your innocent and uninformed "wrong place at the wrong time" victimization, never wavering from the script's key points, and see if you can draw a crowd and distract them from the sightseeing tour—which is pulling away right now.

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.

Bear with me a moment, Mr. Caddy (if you're still with me on the Memory Lane tour), while I attempt to cipher this mystery.

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.

Pardon me. I'm just going to lean against something and catch my breath. My credulity is already being stretched like pregnancy pants, and this is starting to sound more like a Teletubbies episode than a documentary tour. 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, and that you, in accordance with your Chatty-Cathy talking-points, are the One True Boy Scout who merely wandered like Pollyanna into a den of lying thieves, and simply, kindly prepared a cup of instant coffee for the Chief Lying Thief—your client—on that momentous morning.

So is it 1), 2), or 3) above?

Ashton Gray

The CIA-did-it theory, in relation to Watergate, was an obvious smokescreen...

Well, no, it wasn't.

Asserting generally that it was, however, is.

Start here: There was no "first break-in" at the Watergate.

If you'll actually study the referenced foundational articles, and the timeline that's referenced within those articles, then would like to discuss specific related facts in each of those threads, I'll head over and meet you there, and then this thread can be salvaged from going wildly off the rails into...

Well, a smokescreen.

Ashton Gray

Hi Doug. Regarding my question about when you first met Barker, you wrote:

I previously answered this question Feb. 6, 2006 when it was posed to me by Chris Newton. His question and my answer can be found in the Forum section “Douglas Caddy: Questions and Answers.” My prior reply of June 15, 2006 and that of Feb. 6, 2006 are consistent.

Yes. Yes, Doug, they are consistent. I'll warrant that. I had seen that exchange, thank you. But seeing you not answer the question in that discussion was no more rewarding than seeing you not answer the question in this one.

It is my recollection that the Washington Post, as part of its contemporary stories about my grand jury appearance, quoted me about this meeting with Barker.

Yes. Yes, Doug, on that point your recollection is like a steel trap. In fact, I'll quote the relevant passage for you. Here 'tis:

• "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."
  —The Washington Post, Sunday, June 18, 1972, "5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats' Office Here," by Alfred E. Lewis
  

Awwwww. That's sentimental.

So in addition to the record made at trial that I've already documented saying you had met Barker "a year before" you started representing him, here we have you—personally, directly, from your own lips—telling a Post reporter on June 17, 1972 (which was published the next day, June 18, 1972) that you had met Barker a year ago. That would put your "sympathetic conversation" with Barker at the Army-Navy Club (along with E. Howard Hunt, who had been at your apartment only hours before you spoke to the Post reporter, which you cannily omitted) in June 1971.

Would you like to stipulate to that fact now, Doug? 'Cause I'm all waltzed out. And whether you stipulate to it now or not, you made the record yourself contemporaneously with the events at issue, when your meeting with Barker was certainly fresh in your memory. You are the one who said it was "a year" before June 17, 1972. So your meeting with Hunt and Barker was right around June 1971 by your own statement. If you still want to argue the point, you'd do well to find a mirror, since you're only arguing with yourself.

(If you'll take a moment to recall carefully, I specifically said in my earlier reply to you that I was using the Silbert cite "in this exchange." It's just above in this thread if you'd like to scroll back and check. I'll wait for you.)

I was not asked by Prosecutor Silbert to provide the exact date of the meeting.

Yeah, but I'm not Silbert.

I stand by my prior reply as to the circumstances under which I met Barnard Barker. This was the only occasion prior to June 17, 1972 that I met him.

Excellent! Since you established in your statement to the press that the meeting was in June 1971 sometime, let me now turn back to those circumstances you outlined in your first response on this. You said:

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'll be damned. I'll just be damned. That's fascinating. I can't tell you how absorbing that detail is. In fact, that pretty much nails your little luncheon/cocktails get-together with Barker and Hunt right down to the first two weeks in June. I'm sure you know why. Right?

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

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

Right, Doug?

Ashton Gray

P.S. From the Watergate Trivia Files: You have earned the considerable distinction of being the only person ever associated in any slightest way with Watergate to put Barker in D.C. with Hunt during this crucial time frame. I think you have done the world a great service, and that you deserve a gold star. While I say it's from the trivia files, I assure you it is not trivial, and that it will be remembered for a very long time to come.

Hi Doug. You wrote:

As to my meeting Bernard Barker on one occasion some months prior to June 17, 1972...

Ouch. I hate to interrupt you, but can we stop right there for just a moment? I had asked you about "the circumstances under which you had met Bernard Barker about a year before you ended up representing him." You've responded about an incident you characterize as being "some months prior to June 17, 1972."

Sung: "You say 'to-may-to' and I say 'to-mah-to'..."

(Wait; that's the wrong song. Gimme a sec. I'm getting it... I know!)

Sung: "What a difference a day makes... ."

Dinah Washington just tore that up, didn't she? And what a fitting name. And if a day can make such a big difference, just imagine what "some months" can mean. I realize that a year is made up of "some months," but I'm trying to verify what I understand to be your own testimony. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

The cite I'm using for the "year" time period, in this exchange, is your own article: "Gay Bashing and Watergate."

In it, you quote U.S. Attorney Earl Silbert in his closing argument, to wit:

• "Mr. Caddy told you, oh yes, he was going to be in the case. He was going to be in the case of those five. He never met them before except for Barker a year before. He was going to represent those five."
  

I realize that lawyers feel and exercise a certain sense of latitude in their practice, but closing arguments, after all, are crafted with considerable care—I'm sure you'll agree—and are not a very strategic place to be attempting to make material alterations to the trial evidence.

Mr. Silbert, in authoring his closing arguments in this world-watched case, represented that you had met Bernard Barker "a year before" you announced that you were going to represent him (Barker) and the others—which, as you point out, was on June 17, 1972.

That would put the date of your Army-Navy Club lunchtime rendezvous with Mr. Hunt and Mr. Barker sometime in June 1971.

Did Mr. Silbert misrepresent the facts in evidence during his closing argument? I ask that with the full understanding that you, at the time—as you characterized in your article—felt that your hands were "tied" by your attorney-client relationships. But surely no significant distortion of material fact regarding your attorney-client relationship with Mr. Barker, or the time and conditions of your first having met him in the company of Mr. Hunt, would have been allowed into the record without objection—especially with Hunt's own attorney, William O. Bittman, there during your role as a witness for the prosecution.

And your hands certainly were not "tied" at the time you authored your article—electing, in doing so, to quote Mr. Silbert's representation that you had met Bernard Barker "a year before" your taking Barker on as a client.

Therefore, I'm relying entirely on your own record to conclude and state that you in fact met Bernard Barker, in the company of E. Howard Hunt, at the Army-Navy Club in Washington, D.C. in or about the month of June, 1971.

If that's not the case, if your own record is wrong, if Mr. Silbert misrepresented an important material fact without objection during his closing argument—which you repeated in your own article without objection or correction—right now would be a very timely time to emphatically and specifically correct the record as to date. And I don't mean with a vague, airy "some months before." Trust me on this one.

Now I'm going to go find my Dinah Washington collection; my singing is scaring the cat.

Ashton Gray

Thank you for your inquiries into Watergate that are concerned with the back history before the arrests of the five burglars on June 17, 1972. Here are my responses...

It's I who must thank you, now, for your extraordinarily gracious and comprehensive reply, and also must beg your indulgence, in turn, while I give it all due and thorough consideration.

Pending a more responsive response to your response, I'll say that on its face it clears up quite a lot in broad strokes.

One thing it specifically did pique my curiosity about, though, is the circumstances under which you had met Bernard Barker about a year before you ended up representing him. Was that through association with Mr. Hunt, or just one of those "happy accidents" that make life endlessly entertaining? I know you're busy with your book, but if you get a chance.

Meanwhile, I hope you'll also find an opportunity to visit an article I just posted here, There was no "first break-in" at the Watergate, which you may find of some interest in relation to your representation of the co-conspirators in the early going.

Ashton Gray

I am not given to hysterical hyperbole, harebrained hallucinations, or high-wire walking over intellectual punji pits, so it is with no meager amount of sober investigative research and reflection that I state with moral certainty that there was no "first break-in" at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building on May 28, 1972.

The entire legend of a "first break-in" was nothing more, or less, than a singularly malicious, costly, and destructive hoax on mankind. The elaborate staging and production of this hoax was planned far in advance and carried out with malice aforethought by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in collusion with factions of the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government personnel who had interagency clearance and powers.

The purpose of the extravagant charade was to provide an impenetrable and unquestionable alibi for the whereabouts and activities of several of the starring actors over Memorial Day Weekend 1972. It was scripted to create a convincing fictitious illusion of the presence in Washington, D.C. of E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, James McCord, and Alfred Baldwin over those three days. To its credit, the showy farce was executed just well enough to fool the world for decades.

The simple key to how this fraud has held the world in its maleficent thrall for so long is its central plot device of mutual- and self-incrimination. It isn't even a new plot, just a clever and convincing merging of two of the oldest and most common criminal ploys: 1) create an alibi, 2) tumble for a lesser charge. Usually the latter is used only when the former fails. To combine them into one was the genius. Giving the devil his due, it took brilliant criminal minds who also were schooled and experienced in criminal procedure and modus operandi to write the script and perform the roles.

The most curious aspect, though, is that once the hoax is realized for what it is, the sophomoric, pretentious dialog of lies begins to sound like a grammar school play, and the props and rigging of the travesty begin to topple like flimsy canvas stage scenery.

I haven't come to this realization alone or all at once, but by degrees and in association with others whose knowledge on the subject I respect. During that process, and since, I've been somewhat amazed at the percentage of people who, hearing this for the first time, actually respond with some variation along the lines of: "Of course—somehow, I knew it all along." It wasn't that they had known the exact nature of the hoax, just that they had been duped in some way.

For others, simply thinking such a thought brings on denial, rejection, shock, apoplexy, or all of the above. If you fall into that category, do the athletic thing: suck it up and walk it off, then come back and read these foundational articles as an introductory primer to The Great CIA Hoax of the Twentieth Century:

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

SUMMARY: The "Cuban Contingent" was there in the Continental room of the Watergate to open the weekend-long play with a showy presence that would have a record and be remembered. Hunt, Liddy, McCord, and Baldwin were not there (except possibly a brief cameo appearance by one or two of them before leaving on their weekend clandestine mission elsewhere).

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

SUMMARY: There was no "second failed attempt" at all. The testimony and accounts are hopelessly conflicting, with Hunt even stating in sworn testimony that it was just a brief "orientation" trip over to see the DNC door, while expending pages in his autobiography describing a purported break-in attempt that can't be reconciled with Liddy's longwinded account of the same purported event. One of the Cubans likely did intentionally mar the DNC door lock.

G. Gordon Liddy and the Phantom Polaroids

SUMMARY: Liddy claims that on Monday, May 29, 1972 (Memorial Day) he showed Magruder Polaroid photos, taken by Bernard Barker and Eugenio Martinez, of Lawrence O'Brien's office as "proof" of a successful break-in of the DNC on May 28, 1972. Bernard Barker swore in congressional testimony that the "burglars" never reached O'Brien's office at all during the purported "first break-in," even citing that failure as the reason they supposedly went "back" on June 17, 1972.

Liddy, McCord, and the Phantom Watergate "Bugs"

SUMMARY: Liddy and McCord testimony on purported "bugs" supposedly planted by McCord during a "first break-in" is irreconcilably contradictory, and electronic sweeps done days before and immediately after the so-called "second" break-in prove beyond any reasonable doubt that no bugs at all had been planted by McCord (or anyone else) prior to June 17, 1972.

Liddy, Baldwin, and the Phantom Phone Logs

SUMMARY: The only records (or "logs") of any purported intercepted oral or phone communications that anyone connected with Watergate ever saw were documents typed by G. Gordon Liddy's secretary, Sally Harmony, not from electronic "bugs," but from the dictation of G. Gordon Liddy.

If you do just that minimal homework, and still would like to return here and attempt to make the case that there was a "first break-in"—as all of us were duped into believing three decades ago and have accepted as an article of faith ever since—I will be more than happy to debate and discuss any evidence you're able to scrape up in support of a "Watergate First Break-in."

Personally, I'd rather have the Augean stables to shovel out.

Ashton Gray

Since I am lagging at the present time in responding to a number of these inquiries in the Forum, please give me two or three days to read these thoroughly, which will be followed by my detailed replies.

Again, my apologies. No slight was intended by my recent failure to respond.

Apologies? For my part, perish the thought! On the contrary, the questions I posed in this thread have been languishing and collecting dust in the "Unasked-Unanswered" basket for 34 years. The prospect of them receiving "detailed replies" in a mere two or three more days is worth standing in line for—the whole two or three days.

Apologies? Not at all. Klieg lights!

Ashton Gray

For me, the question that nearly jumped off the screen was the one concerening "probate matters." What's the over/under on Dorothy having been included in that discussion?

I'm going to just answer frankly—and considerably more broadly than the Dorothy Hunt question—and hope that Douglas Caddy will come back and lay some of these concerns and appearances to rest.

It appears to me that Hunt was insinuated into Mullen generally because of its overseas, European cover operations for CIA (an important factor for later on), and more specifically to hook him up with Caddy, who was already set up at Mullen with CIA clearances. Caddy's planned and briefed destiny was to become the almost completely camouflaged conduit between CIA and both Hunt and Liddy by moving over to Gall Lane, and having, there, the protection not only of CIA clearances, but of the privilege arising out of the attorney/client relationship as well. (Of course there are some things that can pierce that veil, as I believe Mr. Caddy well knows.)

I think that the coy Mr. Caddy has been far, far too modest about his role in what we think of as "Watergate." Of course the role he's played, as the sort of slightly dizzy innocent caught up in a swirling torrent of events that were a mystery to him and over which he had no control, was tailor made for him by CIA as "plausible deniability," and I think he reasonably could be nominated for an Oscar as Best Actor in a Supporting Role. He's sold his cover very well. He practically has made himself a martyr, given his harsh, awful, unfair treatment at the hands of that mean old bullying court.

And all that would evoke a sympathetic tear even from somebody as hard-hearted as me--except for this unresolved little CIA thing, and the curiously precision timing of Caddy suddenly being the only attorney in D.C. who could possibly have been picked to do some "legal tasks" for G. Gordon Liddy, who was still warm from his most recent meeting with CIA officials regarding his CIA "special clearances." All this while Caddy was already in an attorney-client relationship with CIA's golden boy, Hunt, and right at the beginning of the 90-day runway to the purported "first break-in" (which never happened) on Memorial Day weekend.

It's a cozy little threesome, isn't it? Hunt, Liddy, and the almost invisible Caddy.

Then Caddy just happened to be the same Blessed Soul the gods picked to be there and ride herd on the CIA's "Cuban Contingent" in the crucial first hours after the "arrest," and make sure that it all went just the way the CIA had planned--even though Caddy himself says that he was completely unqualified to be there.

As for the Dorothy Hunt probate question, I don't think there's a chance in hell that I'll get an answer. I think there's a decent chance that somebody else might soon be asking the same question, though, who might have all the tools required to get an answer. Meanwhile, it's on the table.

And on the subject of Dorothy Hunt, E. Howard Hunt, and Douglas Caddy, I'll just point out the following:

Right at the end of February 1972, at almost the exact same time that Caddy started doing "legal tasks" for Liddy, who had just come from a CIA briefing, E. Howard Hunt left D.C. on a trip to Nicaragua for absolutely no known reason and for an undisclosed period of time. (Where?) Nicaragua. (Huh?) Right.

Just days later, on 3 March 1972--eight months before Dorothy Hunt died in a plane crash--the psychiatrist of Dorothy Hunt disappeared forever while on a pleasure boat trip from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. No trace of the psychiatrist, his wife, or the captain of the pleasure boat, or of the boat they were on, was ever found. You can use internet maps to see the relationship of Nicaragua to St. Lucia if you think it might be of any interest or relevance. I wouldn't know.

What I know is that eight months later Dorothy Hunt also was dead. What I know is that Douglas Caddy was handling probate matters for E. Howard Hunt. Caddy said so himself. It's not at all unusual for an attorney handling "probate matters" for one spouse to do the same for the other.

Want more details? Ask Caddy. If you can locate him.

Ashton Gray

You probably believe that electronic "bugs" (wiretaps, listening devices) were planted inside DNC headquarters at the Watergate building on the night of Sunday, 28 May 1972, by CIA veteran James McCord, purportedly acting on orders from G. Gordon Liddy. You may believe there were two phone taps, or you may believe there was one phone tap and a "room monitoring device," or you may be a little hazy on the exact details: you just believe, with conviction, that one or more such bugs had been planted that night, and that that's ultimately the reason a president of the United States was chased from office.

But there were no such "bugs" planted inside the Watergate building at all.

Excerpted below, from an exceptional article on the so-called Watergate First Break-In, is the relevant section on the purported electronic "bugs":

• The first break-in bugs
  G. Gordon Liddy had recruited James McCord as an electronics expert because McCord had "a background as a tech in the Central Intelligence Agency" and also had a background "in the FBI."
  McCord testified in congressional hearings that all instructions and priorities for the first break-in came to him from Liddy, and that in the first break-in the "priorities of the installation were first of all, Mr. O'Brien's offices... ."
  Liddy later testified in a sworn deposition that during the first break-in, McCord had been instructed to place only two electronic bugs: "to place a tap on the telephone in the office of Lawrence O'Brien and to place a room monitoring device in the office of Lawrence O'Brien. ...There were two things they were to do. One was the telephone of Larry O'Brien, wiretap, and the other was a room monitoring device of Larry O'Brien's office."
  McCord stated under oath in congressional hearings that during the first break-in, acting on Liddy's instructions, he had placed one bug in a phone extension "that was identified as Mr. O'Brien's," and a second phone bug on "a telephone that belonged to Mr. Spencer Oliver" (Chairman of the Association of Democratic State Chairmen).
  Liddy said in his autobiography that on 5 June 1972 he and McCord discussed problems with a "room monitoring device" that McCord had planted. According to Liddy, this conversation between him and McCord about how to fix problems with a "room monitoring" bug is what led to a second break-in.
  McCord said in congressional testimony that the reason a second break-in was planned was that Liddy wanted a problem with one of the phone bugs fixed, and also wanted "another device installed...a room bug as opposed to a device on a telephone installed in Mr. O'Brien's office... ."
  According to Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin in their book Silent Coup, just a day or two before the break-in on the night of 16–17 June 1972—where the burglars actually were caught with bugging devices in their possession—the telephone company swept the DNC phones for bugs and found none at all.
  Shortly after the burglars were caught on the morning of 17 June 1972, the police and the FBI also made sweeps of the DNC headquarters and also found no bugs at all.
  The only independent evidence regarding bugs allegedly planted during a purported first break-in on 28 May 1972 is actually strong evidence that no bugs ever had been planted at all.
  

Perhaps you're now thinking: "There had to be at least one bug, because there were logs that Alfred C. Baldwin made... ."

If I may interrupt the early stages of denial, allow me to direct your attention to another article in this forum: Liddy, Baldwin, and the Phantom Phone Logs.

The purported wiretap "logs" were dictated by G. Gordon Liddy to his secretary, Sally Harmony. There were no actual logs of any electronic bugs.

There were no bugs.

And as you'll know for yourself after a full reading of the Watergate First Break-In article, there was no "Watergate first break-in" at all.

It is the biggest, most vicious, most costly, most disastrous hoax ever perpetrated on the world.

Ashton Gray

You probably believe there were "logs" of purported electronic bugs that supposedly had been placed inside Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate building on the night of Sunday, 28 May 1972 by the so-called "Watergate burglars."

You might be a little hazy and vague on the exact nature of these purported records of people's intercepted conversations, and think that they might have been summaries of the conversations, or even actual transcripts of what was said.

I have a question for you: have you ever seen any such records, be they logs, summaries, or transcripts? I'll apologize immediately for asking you a rhetorical question, because I already know you've never seen any such records of purported wire-tap interceptions. (While attorneys aren't my role models, they do have one golden rule that I think has some value at times: never ask a question that you don't already know the answer to.)

The reason I know you've never seen them is because they are a no-see-um. They are a fantasy. They are a fiction. They never existed.

The immediate objection (I've been through this now more than a few times, including with myself) is that "people testified to having seen the logs!"

But who said they saw them, and what did they say they saw?

Allow me to direct your attention to the few sketchy "facts" in testimony that exist concerning these phantom logs. Below is a relevant excerpt from a detailed analysis of "testimony" concerning the purported "Watergate First Break-In":

• Wiretap phone logs
  Several people have testified to the existence of logs of conversations from bugs purportedly planted in the DNC on the first break-in.
  G. Gordon Liddy said that he was the recipient of all written records of the bugs, and said in sworn testimony: "I wasn't getting any tapes, nor was I getting transcriptions of anything. I was getting logs. ...And the stuff was just of no use at all."
  James McCord was responsible for passing the written records from Alfred Baldwin—who was making the records using an electric typewriter—to Liddy. James McCord said in congressional testimony that the records he received were not just logs, as Liddy reported. McCord said the records had "a summary of what was said."
  Alfred Baldwin was questioned under oath in congressional hearings about what he had typed up while monitoring the bugs:
  

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

• Sally Harmony was G. Gordon Liddy's secretary. She testified in Congress that she had typed up logs of telephone conversations G. Gordon Liddy had supplied to her, and that she typed them on special stationery Liddy also had supplied with the word "GEMSTONE" printed across the top in color.
  G. Gordon Liddy later admitted in sworn testimony that what he had supplied to Ms. Harmony was actually his own dictation, which Liddy claims he did from what Baldwin had produced, saying, "On Monday, 5 June [1972], I dictated from the typed logs to Sally Harmony...editing as I went along."
  

So Sally Harmony typed some kind of records, purportedly of phone conversations, with a showy "GEMSTONE" logo on the stationery that Liddy had gotten printed up, and a tiny handful of select people supposedly saw (or got some kind of glimpse at), these purported wiretap records, and according to Liddy (who would never tell a lie), a set of some of them was placed--in a sealed envelope--on the corner of John Mitchell's desk. Nobody can say if anybody opened the envelope, or exactly what happened to the envelope, of course, except that it likely was destroyed.

Right.

And what was on these "GEMSTONE" pages typed by Sally Harmony?

Dictation from G. Gordon Liddy. That's it. That's all she ever typed: what G. Gordon Liddy had dictated onto a tape that he gave her.

And if Mr. Baldwin isn't too busy with handlers right now trying to come up with new, fresh explanations for some of the other questions I've asked him in other threads, I sure would like an answer to this:

When, where, and how did you learn to type so incredibly well that you were able to type "almost verbatim" running transcripts in real time of approximately 200 phone conversations on an electric typewriter, including having to roll in-and-out and line up pages and pages and pages of not one piece of paper at a time, but also an onionskin and carbon paper? (The onionskin copy isn't in the excerpt above, but is in your testimony posted elsewhere in this forum.)

I have to tell you, Mr. Baldwin, I have a friend who has a background as an executive secretary and who helps me out sometimes, and I can't see her fingers when she types. They're just a blur. And after I read your testimony, I asked her if she would perform a little experiment with me and a willing associate. Here was the deal: he and I would have a casual phone conversation for a few minutes, and I was going to set her up on an extension with headphones. I asked her if she would do what she could to type a running, real-time transcript of what we said into a word processor on a laptop--not even dealing with carbon copies and an electric typewriter.

Now, she's a very sweet lady, somewhat conservative, and always polite. When she finally stopped laughing, I was astounded at the words that came out of that pleasant mouth: "Have you lost your (adjective) mind?"

She went on to describe to me her experience with transcribing recorded interviews and meetings. She described her foot-pedal arrangement for hands-free starting, stopping, and rewinding of tapes, which she constantly has to do to transcribe conversations. She gave me some insights into court reporting (which she doesn't do), and asked me if I'd ever noticed that they don't use electric typewriters.

I tried to save face by saying I was only kidding.

She just chuckled as she left the room, and said, "Who are you trying to kid?"

I realized after the fact that might be a good question for you, Mr. Baldwin: who are you trying to kid?

But more importantly: why?

Ashton Gray

You probably believe there were some Polaroid photos taken inside Lawrence O'Brien's office at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate building. You probably believe that these photos had been taken as "proof" of a purported successful "first break-in" on the night of Sunday, 28 May 1972. Supposedly, G. Gordon Liddy had shown these Polaroid photos to Jeb Magruder in the CREEP offices on Monday, 29 May 1972 (which nobody seems even to have noticed was Memorial Day).

There never were any such Polaroid photos. It is a lie. It is a bald faced lie. They never existed.

I can hear the denial creeping in. I've been there.

There are no such Polaroid photos and there never were any such Polaroid photos. Have you ever seen any such Polaroid photos? No, you haven't. Why? Because they never existed.

"But the evidence was destroyed," says the creeping denial.

Really? Yes, evidence was destroyed, but it was evidence about the actual whereabouts and activities of G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, James McCord, and Alfred Baldwin on that Memorial Day weekend (which wasn't anywhere near the Watergate building in Washington, D.C.), and it didn't include any "Polaroid photos of Lawrence O'Brien's office," either.

Here is a relevant excerpt from a detailed analysis of the hopelessly clashing testimony given by the co-conspirators about the purported "first break-in" at the Watergate:

• Polaroid photos of Lawrence O'Brien's office
  G. Gordon Liddy has stated in his biography and in sworn testimony that on Monday, 29 May (Memorial Day) 1972, he delivered to Jeb Magruder Polaroid photographs of the interior of the Watergate office of Democratic National Committee Chairman Lawrence O'Brien. Liddy says that the Polaroids had been taken by Bernard Barker on the night before, 28 May 1972, during a "successful entry" into the DNC offices at the Watergate:
  "On Monday morning, 29 May, I reported to Magruder the successful entry into Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate. For proof, I showed him Polaroid photographs of the interior of Larry O'Brien's office, taken by Bernard Barker."
  Bernard Barker testified in congressional hearings that he never was in Lawrence O'Brien's office during the "first break-in," stating that the burglars never "came to the office of the Chairman" until the "second entry" on 17 June 1972, the night the burglars were apprehended.
  

There were no Polaroid photos because there was no "first break-in" at all at the Watergate on Memorial Day weekend. There is not now, and never has been, a fingernail clipping's worth of physical evidence of any such break-in. There's only the hopelessly irreconcilable testimony of the co-conspirators themselves, and their patently false testimony about being in the Watergate on Memorial Day Weekend is the biggest malicious hoax ever perpetrated. One reading of the full article excerpted from above is all any reasonably prudent person needs to know that all of these men are lying to provide a fictional account of where they were and what they were doing that weekend.

It also is the real cover-up. It's the cover-up within the cover-up, the play within the play.

And the curtain hasn't come down. Yet.

Ashton Gray

Like I said, a grain of salt.

I have a complete salt block set aside for each of the co-conspirators.

And speaking of blocks, I'm beginning to wonder now if the prolific Mr. Caddy has developed sudden writer's block over these few simple questions I've asked (now in their own thread).

Ashton Gray

Relying on the painstakingly researched essay, Watergate First Break-In, as I did in the message about the "Ameritas Dinner," I've excerpted and reproduced below the section concerning a purported "second failed attempt" at a "first break-in" that is claimed to have taken place on the night of 27 May 1972.

One thing that's striking in this excerpted article (among a host of contradictions in testimony) is the absence of Alfred C. Baldwin. It's almost as though he doesn't exist. Yet the day before, 26 May 1972, he had driven six hours from Connecticut to D.C. to participate over that Memorial Day weekend--even though, according to his sworn testimony, he had no more motivation for making the drive than McCord telling him he "had to work" that weekend, without McCord having said what the nature of that "work" was supposed to be. If we are to accept this testimony without question (as Senator Weicker seemed determined to do), Mr. Baldwin didn't bother to ask why he had to come back to D.C. on a holiday weekend; he simply got into his car and drove there.

That is his record, though, and since he has been a recent participant in this forum, I'm hoping somewhat deperately that he can step in and salvage this train wreck of conflicting testimony given by his co-conspirators. I have some questions at the end of the article that I would very much appreciate his attention to and help with.

Here is the article:

• Second break-in attempt, night of 27–28 May 1972
  Several of the co-conspirators have said that there was a failed second attempt at a first break-in on the night of Saturday, 27 May 1972, continuing into the early morning hours of Sunday, 28 May 1972. The two most detailed accounts come from the co-commanders, Liddy and Hunt, whose accounts not only contradict each other, but expose other contradictions and omissions.
  According to Hunt, on the evening of Saturday, 27 May 1972, he had Bernard Barker and Eugenio Martinez (a.k.a. Rolando) come to the room that Hunt and Liddy were staying in at the Watergate Hotel. Hunt says he had them set up the "lights and photography equipment," and simulate photographing documents while he watched them. He then briefed them again on the importance of photographing Democratic "account books, contributor lists, that sort of thing." They then packed the photography equipment and lights into a suitcase to carry with them in the new break-in attempt, along with a hatbox carrying a Polaroid camera and film.
  No such photography dry-run had been done prior to the previous night's Ameritas dinner.
  Both Hunt and Liddy say in their respective accounts that later on the evening of 27 May 1972, Barker, Martinez, Gonzales, and Frank Sturgis went to the garage-level entrance to the stairway, where McCord had "taped the locks," and there met up with McCord. Hunt and Liddy, though, give conflicting accounts about when during the night this is supposed to have occurred.
  Hunt has said that there was a "guard change at eight o'clock," after which McCord had taped the locks. He then states that "a little after ten o'clock" word came from McCord--in room 419 of the Howard Johnson's--that the DNC headquarters were empty, so the Cubans left then to meet McCord in the garage.
  In Liddy's account, the failed break-in attempt happened two hours later. According to Liddy, there was not a "guard change" at eight o'clock, but "a building inspection." According to Liddy, they all were waiting for hours after that for word that the DNC headquarters were empty, which didn't come until "too close to the midnight shift change and building inspection" for Liddy's comfort, so they "waited until that was accomplished and sent in the team."
  Hunt and Liddy do agree that the Cubans met up with McCord at the garage-level entrance and climbed six flights of stairs to the DNC headquarters, where Gonzalez attempted for some time without success to pick the lock on the main door.
  Gonzalez had been recruited for the job because he was a locksmith. On or about Tuesday, 23 May 1972, Gonzalez had been taken overtly up to the sixth floor of the Watergate by McCord to view the entrance to DNC headquarters, so Gonzalez had gotten to see the actual DNC lock four days before this second break-in attempt. Hunt states in his autobiography that on Wednesday, 24 May 1972, he had gone up "to the glass doors of DNC headquarters" and had "pressed a lump of plasteline against the door lock." With it, Hunt says he "made a plaster cast from which Virgilio Gonzalez was to be able to determine the kind of lock-picking devices he would need for the entry."
  Plasteline is a non-hardening clay. Pressing plasteline into a lock generally results in a lock filled with plasteline, not an impression of the key for the lock. If Hunt did end up with something from which a plaster cast could have been made--which would have required the intermediate step of a rubber mold--he would have had a plaster casting of the key needed to unlock the door.
  Given that Hunt says that he made the plasteline impression on Wednesday, 24 May 1972, the locksmith Virgilio Gonzalez would have had a model of the key to DNC headquarters for two days before the Ameritas dinner on the night of 26 May, and three days before the 27 May second attempt.
  Hunt and Liddy provide different accounts of how they learned of the lockpicking failure:
  Hunt says that he and Liddy had waited in their "command post" room at the Watergate Hotel (not room 419 of the Howard Johnson's), getting reports by walkie-talkie of the men's progress to DNC headquarters, then getting a report that Gonzalez was working on the lock. Hunt says that about an hour passed after that, when "Barker came on the air to report that Gonzalez was unable to pick the lock" because he "doesn't have the right tools." In Hunt's account, Liddy then ordered the men over walkie-talkie to leave the building and report back to the "command post."
  Liddy says that he and Hunt waited to "learn by radio" that the attempt had been successful, but that no radio report came. Instead, he says, the men merely showed back up at the "command post" in "about forty-five minutes," and that there, in person, Barker reported Gonzalez's failure to pick the lock. Liddy goes so far as to say that he was concerned enough about the lock having been damaged by Gonzalez that he took the risk of going up the elevator to the DNC headquarters himself and inspecting it while Hunt and the others waited in the "command post." Liddy says the lock had "marks of tampering," but they "weren't obvious," so he returned to the room.
  Liddy goes on to say that he "overrode Hunt's objections and ordered Gonzalez to return to Miami the following morning for the correct tools." Hunt says that he, not Liddy, "excoriated" Barker and Gonzalez, and told Barker that he "wanted Villo [Gonzalez] to return to Miami in the morning, pick up whatever tools he might need and return by nightfall."
  In congressional testimony, Hunt was asked if there had been a second unsuccessful break-in attempt after the Ameritas dinner. Hunt replied under oath:
  "I recall something about that, but it seems to me that was more in the nature of a familiarization tour, that McCord took not more than one or two of the men up there and walked them down [sic] to the sixth floor to show them the actual door. Then they simply got back into the elevator. It was simply a familiarizing with the operational problem of the two glass doors that opened into the Democratic National headquarters."
  Summary of second failed break-in attempt
  Other than the testimony of the co-conspirators, there is no evidence to support or verify any of the accounts of a second break-in attempt on the night of Saturday, 27 May 1972.
  

Setting aside as much as possible, with some effort, the inconsistencies in this disconsonant tale, I have these questions for Mr. Baldwin if he can help in any way:

1. Were the activities on the night of 27 May 1972 simply a "familiarization tour" of glass doors--as E. Howard Hunt said in sworn testimony--or was it a full-blown failed attempt at breaking in, as both Hunt and Liddy claimed in their autobiographies?
   
2. Where were you and what were you doing?
   
3. How could McCord have reported from room 419 that "the DNC headquarters were empty," when room 419 didn't provide a view into the 6th-floor DNC headquarters across the street?
   
4. Were you, Liddy, Hunt and McCord actually in D.C. at all, or were you in fact somewhere else entirely, doing something else entirely that night?
   

I look forward to any light you can shed, Mr. Baldwin.

Ashton Gray