Ashton Gray

Thanks, James. I'm sorry to be slow responding to this, but I've been attempting to organize a series of articles to post here when I can find a few minutes between work demands, so I'm juggling kittens. I'm going to try to locate a copy of the Kohn article. I'd like to see it. While it may have legs, I currently consider Woodward, with his Naval Intelligence background, to have been all the "Deep Throat" the world needed. I believe his stories likely were essentially written before the events unfolded (at least the way the world has been told the events unfolded), and Bernstein got to ride in the sidecar. I hope you'll follow the series of articles I'm putting together on the purported "first break-in" and related events that Memorial Day weekend. I'd like to get your take on them. Ashton Gray

I've excerpted the article below, "Ameritas dinner break-in attempt, 26 May 1972," from the excellent essay on the purported Watergate First Break-In, which I urge everyone interested in Watergate to read. As opinion only, I personally don't think any understanding of Watergate should even be attempted without a thorough familiarity with every detail of that entire essay. Be that as it may, the fabulously flagrant contradictions in the testimony of the co-conspirators regarding that Memorial Day weekend alone are worthy of a book--which could supplant the endless parade of books (and so-called news "reports") that have failed simply to recognize the preposterous irreconcilability of the conflicting accounts, electing instead to try to "figure them out." As the bard said: "Oh, that way madness lies; let me shun that." Since the whereabouts and activities of Alfred C. Baldwin on the evening of 26 May 1972 are discussed in the article below, and since he has been kind enough to expound on Watergate issues from his direct knowledge, I hope he will step in and help with an understanding of this event using the unique perspective he had, purportedly from room 419 of the Howard Johnson's motel, on that legendary night. Here is the remarkable article, and my questions for Mr. Baldwin follow: Ameritas dinner break-in attempt, 26 May 1972 The Watergate co-conspirators testified that a dinner had been held in the Continental Room at the Watergate on the evening of Friday, 26 May 1972 for the purpose of a first attempt at breaking into the DNC headquarters that night through a corridor leading from the Continental Room to the elevators and staircase. They said the attempt had failed. Briefing for the Ameritas break-in attempt E. Howard Hunt stated that he flew to Miami prior to 22 May 1972 and briefed Bernard Barker about a planned break-in at the Watergate that would be conducted under the cover of a dinner in the Watergate's Continental Room. According to Hunt, Barker told Hunt about the existence of an inactive corporation Barker had formed "sometime before" called Ameritas that could be used to hold the dinner as a cover for the break-in. In sworn testimony, G. Gordon Liddy said "we created an organization called Ameritas" for the purpose of the break-in. Bernard Barker said in congressional hearings that although he had been briefed on the Ameritas dinner being held, the first time he was told that the dinner was a cover for a break-in attempt was on 22 May 1972 at the Mullen public relations firm in Washington, D.C., where E. Howard Hunt worked, after Barker had flown with his men to Washington to attend the dinner. Barker went on to testify that he then briefed the other men about the break-in. Virgilio Gonzalez, the locksmith recruited by Barker and Hunt for the break-in, said in congressional testimony that he heard nothing at all about a planned break-in until late on the night of the dinner, after the meal was over, and that Hunt told him then that that's what they were there for. Whereabouts of G. Gordon Liddy Liddy said in his autobiography that he was at the Ameritas dinner, providing details such as "polishing off McCord's meal," being bored by a film being shown, and finally leaving with the rest of the men (except for Hunt and Gonzalez) when told to leave the Continental Room by a guard at 10:30 p.m. In later sworn deposition, Liddy stated under oath that he "was not at that dinner," saying further: "I was present in the area but not at that dinner." The corridor door alarm In his autobiography, E. Howard Hunt said that before the day of the Ameritas dinner, he and James McCord had inspected the Continental Room when it was vacant and noted "a magnetic alarm" system on the door to the corridor, but that "McCord said he was familiar with the system and would be able to defeat it when the time came." In congressional testimony, Hunt said that he and Virgilio Gonzalez had "noticed there was...a magnetic alarm" only after he and Gonzalez became locked in the Continental Room late that night when the dinner was over. Liddy, in his autobiography, said McCord had "discovered that the alarm was not activated until 11 p.m.," and that was "the key" to their plan, because they "expected the DNC headquarters would be vacant well before 11 p.m," allowing them to get into the access corridor before the alarm was activated. According to Liddy, that plan was thwarted when a guard looked in at 10:30 and told them they would have to leave. Liddy says that he left the Continental Room dinner then with others (see "Whereabouts of G. Gordon Liddy," above). In deposition testimony under oath, Liddy said the alarm on the door to the corridor was supposed to be "disarmed by McCord" after it was activated at 11:00 p.m., "and that would be how we would get in." According to Liddy's sworn testimony, "everything went according to plan until it came time for Mr. McCord to disarm the alarm, and he was unable to do so." Whereabouts of James McCord G. Gordon Liddy said in his autobiography that James McCord "excused himself from the banquet, leaving us with one extra serving." E. Howard Hunt, in his autobiography, said that McCord never came to the dinner. In both accounts, McCord was not there to disarm the alarm. According to Liddy, McCord had two important assignments on the first break-in: "to place a tap on the telephone in the office of Lawrence O'Brien and to place a room monitoring device in the office of Lawrence O'Brien." By 26 May 1972, date of the Ameritas dinner, Liddy had given at least $69,000 in cash to McCord for the purchase of electronic equipment. Liddy says that on the night of the Ameritas dinner McCord was elsewhere, reporting by walkie-talkie whether the DNC headquarters was yet vacant. E. Howard Hunt says that McCord was "across the street"—room 419 at the Howard Johnson's motel. Hunt also has stated that McCord was in walkie-talkie communication with him later in the evening, after Hunt and Gonzalez hid in a closet of the Continental Room, and that McCord was reporting to Hunt on the status of the DNC headquarters in the Watergate. The only room at the Howard Johnson's across the street that McCord had occupancy of and access to on 26 May 1972 was room 419, on the fourth floor. The DNC offices in the Watergate were on the sixth floor. Liddy said in his autobiography: "McCord told me he had rented a room at the Howard Johnson's motel across the street from the Watergate, but it was on the fourth floor. To see into the DNC offices, he'd need one higher up, which he promised to get." McCord did get room 723 in the Howard Johnson's, on the seventh floor, but not until 29 May 1972, three days after the Ameritas dinner. Whereabouts of Alfred Baldwin Alfred Baldwin had been hired by James McCord, and on 26 May 1972 was the "monitor," or lookout, in room 419 of the Howard Johnson's. According to both Liddy and Hunt, one of only four walkie-talkies available that night had been allocated to Baldwin for use in room 419. Another walkie-talkie had been allocated to McCord, who, according to some of the conflicting accounts, also was in room 419 with Baldwin throughout the entire dinner. Whereabouts of E. Howard Hunt and Virgilio Gonzalez Liddy, Hunt, and Virgilio Gonzales have said that Hunt and Gonzalez stayed behind and hid when everyone was told to leave. Liddy says that was at 10:30 p.m. Hunt said in congressional testimony that it was at 11:00 p.m. In his autobiography Hunt said that everyone left earler, at 10:00 p.m., and that he and Gonzalez stayed behind then hoping to "proceed through the corridor before the alarm system was armed at eleven." In congressional testimony Hunt said one reason for having stayed behind at 11:00 with Gonzalez was to open the door to the corridor leading into the office building where DNC headquarters were, but said "we noticed there was an alarm, magnetic door alarm." Gonzalez testified under oath that after everyone had left, he emerged from the closet with Hunt and tried to open the corridor door—"the door going into the building." When he did, Gonzalez said he discovered "that it had the alarm connected," and told Hunt: "If we open that door, the alarm will go off." In his autobiography, Hunt wrote that "the entire banquet subterfuge had been wasted" because McCord had not "neutralized the corridor alarm system as promised." In congressional testimony, Hunt said another reason that he and Gonzalez, the locksmith, stayed behind when everyone else left at 11:00 was to re-open the locked main entry doors to the Continental Room. Hunt says in his autobiography that Gonzalez did attempt to pick the main Continental Room entrance doors, but that despite Gonzalez's "best efforts, the lock would not yield." Virgilio Gonzalez said in congressional testimony that he did not attempt to pick the lock on the main doors to the Continental Room at all because they were glass and "somebody could see me." According to Gonzalez, he never had a chance to pick that lock. All accounts say that Hunt and Gonzalez spent the night locked in the Continental Room. Photography equipment In his autobiography, E. Howard Hunt emphasized the importance of photography for the first break-in. Hunt had told Bernard Barker: "the idea is to photograph the list of contributors the Democrats are required to keep," saying, "the team's prime function...was photography," and that "the photography mission was paramount." Bernard Barker told Congressional investigators that his "only job" on the first break-in was to "search for documents to be photographed" by Eugenio Martínez. Hunt's own detailed account of the Ameritas dinner, where the break-in team was gathered for the purposes of getting access to the DNC offices after hours, does not mention the photography equipment. In a later account of a second failed attempt at the first break-in (see Second break-in attempt, night of 27–28 May 1972), Hunt describes the Cubans having "a suitcase" to carry the photo equipment and lights in, plus "a hatbox" to carry a Polaroid camera and film, but neither Hunt, nor any of the other participants who have described the Ameritas dinner, mention anything about the presence of photography equipment for the break-in being at the dinner. Summary of Ameritas Dinner Other than the testimony of the participants, there is no evidence to support or verify any of the accounts of the events before, during, or after the Ameritas dinner on the night of Friday, 26 May 1972. I was so enamored of that last summary paragraph that for the first time in my life I've come up with a sig: "Fiction doesn't leave a paper trail." However, since that Memorial Day weekend was so important to Mr. Baldwin that he had driven 6 hours back to D.C. from Connecticut that same day, 26 May 1972, in order to participate, my questions for Mr. Baldwin are these: Were you in fact in room 419 at the Howard Johnson's motel throughout the purported "Ameritas Dinner" events conflictingly described above on the night of 26 May 1972? If so:Since a room on a higher floor than 419 was needed (and later gotten) in order to see into DNC headquarters, why were you in room 419 with a walkie-talkie? Was James McCord actually in room 419 with you throughout the "Ameritas Dinner"? McCord purportedly had one of only four available walkie-talkies with him that night and you purportedly had another one. Why were you tying up two walkie talkies in room 419? McCord purportedly was on his walkie-talkie giving reports to Hunt, locked in the Continental Room, about someone still working in DNC headquarters. Can you tell us how this was possible? I thought you were supposed to be the lookout. Why did McCord purportedly come over to room 419 and do your job while you apparently did nothing at all--while tying up a walkie-talkie? Why was McCord with you instead of over in the Continental Room to disarm the alarm, which, according to at least some of the conflicting accounts, he was supposed to do in order to get in at all? Assuming, arguendo, that through some magic the purported "break-in" attempt had been successful, how was McCord going to plant bugs in the DNC if he was over in room 419 when the rest got in? If you were not in room 419 during the "Ameritas Dinner" that night, where were you and what were you doing, and why? I'm sure you can see, Mr. Baldwin, why I need a good deal of help with this--as I think anyone would who has actually acquainted themselves with the "facts" gratuitously supplied by all the co-conspirator talking heads. And, unfortunately, that's all anybody has to go on: verbal legends. I realize that all you can do is add to the verbal tradition about the purported "first break-in" circus on that Memorial Day weekend, but I'm hoping that you, given your curiously invisible but important role, can somehow rescue it from appearing, as it does now, to be the biggest hoax ever maliciously perpetrated on the world. I eagerly await your clarification. Ashton Gray

I wish my conscience would allow me to just sit here and soak up all this approbation, John, but I'm going to have to admit that most of the work was done by the people who put together this timeline that I've mentioned several times. It is a sleek and efficient data machine, and hats off to everyone who contributed. You're a funny guy, John. I'm afraid it's a pedestrian, threadbare favorite old tweed jacket. Did you happen to bring a snack? I have a funny feeling we may be here a while... Ashton Gray

I originally posted some of the questions in this message to Douglas Caddy in a different thread that had to do with Mark Felt. I realized that the questions weren't directly on-topic to that thread, and I think that the issues are deserving of their own thread, so I've amended my original message and am posting it here. I've PMed Mr. Caddy and asked him if he would be kind enough to respond here instead of to the original message in the other thread. Hi, Mr. Caddy. I read your article with a great deal of interest, and while it and your posts that I've read in this forum seem to focus mainly on those dramatic events following the fateful night of 16-17 June 1972, I wonder if you would be able to shed some light on parts of the backstory that are intriguing, but--well, "sketchy." I'll try to be as specific as possible on some of the things I'm curious about, which the available literature doesn't seem to address in any measurable depth. When CIA veteran E. Howard Hunt was hired at the Mullen Company on 1 May 1970, pursuant to a recommendation from DCI Richard Helms, the Mullen company had been cooperating with CIA, including providing overseas cover for CIA agents, for at least seven years. The Stockholm, Sweden office of Mullen was "staffed, run, and paid for by CIA." According to the available record, at least eight people in the D.C. Mullen office, where you worked, had been "cleared and made witting of Agency ties."Were you cleared and witting of the Mullen company's involvement with CIA? If so, what was the nature and scope of your clearances? Who else at Mullen was "witting and cleared"? If you know, did Hunt, or you, or anyone at the Mullen company have any contact, directly or through an intermediary, with Daniel Ellsberg? From my understanding of the record, not many months after Hunt arrived at Mullen--in or around November 1970--you moved from Mullen to Gall, Lane, Powell and Kilcullen (hereinafter "Gall Lane"), and at about the same time, Hunt became a client a Gall Lane, and you were one of the attorneys working with Hunt. You've said you consulted with Hunt regarding probate and "other matters."What were the "other matters"? Did you have CIA clearances or other clearances from any intelligence branch or agency at any relevant time? If so, why? Did the probate matters include Dorothy Hunt's probate? What was Meade Emory's role? Were persons employed at or by Gall Lane "cleared and witting" of Mullen ties to CIA? If so, who? If you know, was Gall Lane in any sort of relationship with CIA that was similar to the relationship that the Mullen company enjoyed? Please bear with me in establishing a brief history for these next questions, but still focusing on November 1970 and your move to Gall Lane: Around the same time as your move to Gall Lane, Robert Mardian approached G. Gordon Liddy and asked Liddy to take an undescribed position that Liddy says was "super-confidential." Liddy had already been granted "special clearances" by CIA a year earlier, in December 1969. Carrying forward to 1971: Hunt (your client) and Liddy had secure lines in Room 16 for communicating directly to Langley. In July 1971, E. Howard Hunt (your client) met privately with CIA's Lucien Conein, CIA's Edward Landsdale, and Deputy Director of CIA Robert Cushman, and was supplied by CIA with phony ID and other items. In August 1971, Hunt (your client) and G. Gordon Liddy met at least twice with CIA psychiatrist Bernard Malloy. In August 1971 G. Gordon Liddy--working closely with your client, Hunt--was in regular communication "with State and the CIA," including direct conversations with DCI Richard Helms, and was briefed by CIA on "several additional sensitive programs in connection with his assignment to the White House staff." Liddy received similar phony ID from CIA as had been provided by CIA to your client, Hunt. In October 1971, your client, Hunt, was in telephone contact with CIA Chief European Division John Hart, had several telephone conversations with CIA Executive Officer European Division John Caswell, and met with CIA Director Richard Helms. Continuing into February 1972, Liddy and Hunt (your client) met with a "retired" CIA doctor to discuss indetectable means of assassination. Liddy met on 22 February 1972 with undisclosed CIA officials in relation to the "special clearances" he was carrying. Within only about a week of that meeting--on or around 1 March 1972--you started doing unspecified "legal tasks" for G. Gordon Liddy leading up to the Watergate activities, so were involved in a legal relationship with both "commanders" of everything Watergate: Liddy and Hunt. Therefore, in regard to the foregoing:What was the nature of the "legal tasks" you were doing for Liddy? Were you doing similar legal tasks for your client, Hunt? Did any of the "legal tasks" you performed for either party require any kind of clearances from CIA and/or any other intelligence branch, organization, or agency? Did any of your legal tasks for either Liddy or Hunt include arranging for possible overseas travel? Did you have any clearances, special or otherwise, from CIA or any other intelligence branch, organization, or agency at relevant times? If so, what was the nature and scope, and why? Taking you back now in time, if I may, to E. Howard Hunt's move, in May 1970, from CIA Central to the Mullen company, he hadn't been "retired" from CIA for more than a month before a special Covert Security Approval was requested through CIA for him under "Project QK/ENCHANT." You were still at the Mullen branch with him.Did you have a clearance for QK/ENCHANT at any relevant time? Do you know anything about why the "retired" Howard Hunt almost immediately needed this special clearance? I'm sorry for having had to include as much establishing information as I did, but it's scattered throughout so many different sources that I thought others here may not be entirely familiar with the context given above, and I didn't want you to have to spend the time explaining it. I'd rather you just be able to focus on the questions themselves, and any light you can shed would be of inexpressible value. Thanks so much for your time. Ashton Gray

Mr. Baldwin, I feel you've been given short shrift in one of the most crucial and pivotal incidents related to Watergate, one in which you must have had a key role--since you drove six hours back from Connecticut on a holiday weekend just to participate--and I, for one, think you ought to get the recognition for it you deserve. Of course you must know I'm talking about the infamous purported "first break-in" at the Watergate building on Memorial Day weekend 1972, and the two purported failed attempts that same weekend. I've read every single account of that fateful weekend by every one of the other co-conspirators, and I'm sad to report that in their accounts you are the Invisible Man. You're like a non-person. You aren't in even a single one of those legendary accounts by name. It's a stunning omission. The few times that, e.g., Hunt or Liddy mention you at all in relation to that weekend, it's just as "McCord's monitor" and similar dehumanizing, impersonal, dismissive references. (Of course Hunt and Liddy both claim they never met you at all until after that weekend, while you testified that you met both of them that Friday, 26 May 1972, but that gets so complicated it's another message entirely.) Then when you were testifying before the Senate Watergate committee, even Senator Lowell Weicker, in his questioning, seemed intent on leaving you entirely out of the picture regarding the "first break-in" and the failed attempts on that Memorial Day weekend. He did ask you about a trip to McGovern headquarters in the early morning hours on Friday night, 26-27 May 1972. But he seemed to go out of his way to entirely avoid any mention of or question about the purported break-in attempts and the purported successful break-in at the Watergate that weekend. He skipped entirely over anything having to do with the Watergate offices that weekend and went right to the first week of June in his questioning. I can't tell you how long the realization of his seemingly purposeful avoidance of that crucial part of your role in Watergate made me sit with my forehead in my hands trying to make sense of it. Maybe I could almost wrap my wits around some justification for the other co-conspirators being coy about your whereabouts and activities that crucial weekend. But Weicker? He was supposed to be investigating Watergate! It's extremely strange. I find it unkind and unfair. After all, as you testified, you had driven on that ponderously important Friday, 26 May 1972, all the way from your home in Connecticut to D.C., on McCord's orders, to be involved in something (that you say you knew nothing about), so your presence must have been of considerable importance: SENATOR WEICKER: Now, Mr. Baldwin, to keep on giving the continuity here--you interrupt me or state if I'm incorrect--that you returned to Connecticut on May the 23rd and came back to Washington on May the 26th. Is that correct? ALFRED BALDWIN: That's correct; Friday. SENATOR WEICKER: And you returned to room 419 at the Howard Johnson's on May 26th. Now, when you entered room 419 on May the 26th, what did you see? ALFRED BALDWIN: When I entered the room, there was numerous items of electronic equipment in the room. When I entered the room it was approximately 2:00 p.m. in the afternoon--I believe about that hour. Mr. McCord was operating one of the receiver units. At that time I didn't know what it was, he explained it. 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-- SENATOR WEICKER: Did you have any questions of him as to exactly what was going on at that time? ALFRED BALDWIN: No. 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." So there you were, after a long drive, with no idea why you had been summoned back to D.C. except that McCord had told you that you "would have to work that weekend"--and there was a bunch of strange equipment in the room. And that night--Friday, 26 May 1972--there was the infamous Ameritas dinner failed attempt at breaking into the Watergate, and nobody has ever said a syllable about where you were and what you were doing that night. (I mean other than the McGovern headquarters event you say took place at 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. that night, but that wasn't related to the Watergate). And the next night--Saturday, 27 May 1972--there purportedly was a second failed attempt at breaking into the Watergate, but not a single soul involved in it ever has mentioned a word saying what your part was, if any. And the night after that--Sunday, 28 May 1972--was the event that changed the world as we know it forever: the purported "first break-in" at the Watergate. And after all the trouble you had gone to so you could be there in D.C. for such a momentous historical event, there isn't a single thing anywhere in the record even to suggest what your role was, or why you were in D.C. at all. (Assuming, of course--arguendo--that you actually were in D.C. that weekend.) There just are vague references to some anonymous, unnamed "monitor" somewhere, with no explanation of what this "monitor" was monitoring, or why. It would be such a relief to have this giant vacuum filled in, and you are in such a unique position to do so here, with an audience that I'm sure is every bit as interested as I in where you were and what you were doing at relevant times that historic Memorial Day weekend in 1972. What were you doing all that time? Ashton Gray

Below is a transcript of part of the testimony of Alfred C. Baldwin before the Senate Watergate Committee on 24 May 1973. This is not a complete transcript. If the rest of his testimony can be located it will be posted, but this is a substantial portion of it. It contains important information, and as far as I can determine is not easily available elsewhere. It was transcribed from the audio of a broadcast of the proceedings. It has been checked for being accurate to the audio, but there may be minor spelling errors, and the spelling of some of the names mentioned has not been chased down. Ashton Gray ======================== SENATOR ERVIN: Will counsel please call the next witness? VOICE: Will Mr. Baldwin please take the (unintelligible; announcer voice-over introducing Baldwin) SENATOR ERVIN: ...will please identify yourself for the record, giving your name, and your place of-- your office address. BALDWIN'S ATTORNEY: I am Robert Mirdo (unintelligible) 377 Main Street (unintelligible). The last name is spelled "M-I-R-D-O." SENATOR BAKER: Just for record, Mr. Baldwin, would you give your full name and address? BALDWIN: Yes, sir. Alfred C. Baldwin, III, 90 Mountain View Terrace, Northaven, Connecticut. We use a mailing address of Hamden, Connecticut, 06517. Thank you. To make it part of the record my understanding of my status in this total affair, I wish to read the following memorandum into the record at this time. This memorandum was a memorandum prepared by my attorney, Robert Mirdo. It's titled "Memo to the Record of Alfred C. Baldwin, III." It's written on 7/6/72 at 4:40 a.m. [Reading] "On 7/5/72, Robert C. Mirdo, Esquire, J. Terrance O'Grady, Esquire, attorneys known to the government to be representing Alfred C. Baldwin, III, a suspect in the Watergate incident, met with Earl Silbert, Don Campbell, and Seymour Glanzer, all Assistant United States attorneys, and represented to us to be the Assistant United States attorney [sic] handling the Watergate incident. A meeting was held at the United States district courthouse on the morning of 7/5/72, at which time it was represented to us by the government that Baldwin would not be a defendant in the Watergate matter if he cooperated. "The government attorneys stated that if they were satisfied with Baldwin's information, he would not be indicted. Negotiations ceased at 12:30 p.m. so that O'Grady and I could talk to Baldwin. At 5:45 p.m., we notified the government that Baldwin would cooperate. "He identified two photographs from a photographic spread, and generally told of his Watergate knowledge. He was again told, as we were, he would be a witness, not a defendant. "He and O'Grady and I relied on this representation by the government, and plans were made for formal statements in the future. The conference terminated at 7:40 p.m. At the last show-up conference were Campbell, Glanzer, Silbert, FBI agents Lanzo and McKenna, O'Grady, Baldwin, and two or three other persons not known to me by name, but whom I assume to be either agents or members of the staff of Assistant United States attorneys handling this matter." [Done reading] Signed, Robert C. Mirdo; dated in the lower left-hand corner 7/6/72, 4:36 a.m. And then right below that: "This is an accurate account of the happenings of 7/5/72 at the United States District Courthouse, Room 3600 K," again signed Robert C. Mirdo. I have one further thing, sir. I'm still relying on that promise today as I testify here, and from the very beginning of my decision to cooperate on June 25th, to now, I've attempted to tell the whole truth of this incident to the government. I believed then, as I do now, there is only one government, and I have talked truthfully to the United States attorney, as I will do to this committee. I do not regret this decision, although my life was at the time shattered. I cannot now find employment, and I have been without funds. My family has been disgraced. I believe that since I was working for the former Attorney General, and White House officials, I would not question to do what I was asked to do. Now I regret only that decision. Regardless of this, I shall now follow through with my commitment to tell the government and the American people the truth. SENATOR BAKER: Mr. Chairman--would the witness read the first sentence of that statement again? BALDWIN: [reading] "To make it part of the record my understanding of my status in this total affair, I wish to read the following memo into the record at this time." And then I read the memo, sir. SENATOR BAKER: Yes, I know you did, but you made a statement about the same agreement still obtains. Turn to that part of it; read that again for me. BALDWIN: [READING] "I am still relying on that promise today, as I--" SENATOR BAKER: What promise? BALDWIN: On the promise of the United States attorneys that if I cooperated, I would be a witness, and not a defendant. SENATOR BAKER: You conceive, then, that you are here as a witness before a committee of the United States Senate-- BALDWIN: Yes, sir, I do-- SENATOR BAKER: --and any testimony you give us, you will in effect have immunity from prosecution by reason of the, quote, agreement made by the US attorney? BALDWIN ATTORNEY Mirdo: If I may answer that, Senator: we were not given formal immunity. It was our feeling at the time of the conference with the US attorneys that a promise not to prosecute, on which we acted, would be sufficient for our purposes. We do not feel that there is any exposure, since Mr. Baldwin has already spoken and testified on the facts which he will testify to today. SENATOR BAKER: Well, I just want it clearly understood that no promise by the US attorney is binding on this member of the committee. BALDWIN ATTORNEY Mirdo: We realize that. We just-- Our statement (few words drowned out by announcer) that there is only one government, and a promise from the United States attorney would bar any prosecution by the government of the United States. That's our position, and that's why we read the statement into the record. SENATOR BAKER: Do you understand my position? BALDWIN ATTORNEY Mirdo: Yes, I do, Senator. SENATOR ERVIN: Your position is that since the government promised that if you would cooperate, that they would make you a witness, and not a defendant, and-- that was the reason why you cooperated on the trial, and reason you're still cooperating. BALDWIN ATTORNEY Mirdo: That's correct, Senator, and we also cooperated with other Senate committee members. UNKNOWN SENATOR: I would like to defer at the present time, Senator. SENATOR BAKER: Mr. Chairman, Senator Weicker has had an opportunity to interview with this witness on more than one occasion, he's from Connecticut, and I'd recommend, if we may, that we defer to him at the outset. SENATOR ERVIN: I'll certainly agree with you that would be an advisable course. SENATOR WEICKER: (Thanks Chairman, etc.) Mr. Baldwin, on May 1st, 1972, you were contacted by James McCord with regard to employment, is that correct? BALDWIN: That's correct, Senator. SENATOR WEICKER: When Mr. McCord called you, did he say how he had obtained your name? BALDWIN: I don't recall if it was during the first conversation or the subsequent conversation the following day, but he told me that he had obtained my resume from the Society of Ex-FBI Agents in New York City. SENATOR WEICKER: And did he describe the work that he wanted you to do? BALDWIN: In the initial phone call, he didn't go into explicit details. He said it was a matter of urgency; that if it was possible to come to Washington where he would like to interview me, but he did basically inform me that it would involve security work for the Committee to Re-Elect the President. And-- At that particular time, in specific, some services with Mrs. Martha Mitchell, the wife of the Attorney General [sic--Mitchell was not still Attorney General]. SENATOR WEICKER: And did you go to Washington, then, on the next day, May the 2nd? BALDWIN: No, I went to Washington that night. I, uh-- SENATOR WEICKER: That evening? BALDWIN: That evening, yes, Senator. SENATOR WEICKER: And you met with Mr. McCord on May the 2nd? BALDWIN: I met with him the following morning, on May 2nd. That's correct. SENATOR WEICKER: Now on May the 2nd, did you visit the Committee to Re-Elect the President? BALDWIN: That's correct, I did. SENATOR WEICKER: And as a result of that visit, were you employed by the Committee? BALDWIN: Yes, I was. SENATOR WEICKER: Would you describe to the committee, then, your visit of May the 2nd to the Committee to Re-Elect the President? BALDWIN: Well, in the early morning hours, I did not know at that time, but Mr. Hoover had passed away that morning, and there was some confusion at the Committee to Re-Elect the Headquarters [sic--he says "headquarters" just as he would have said "President"]. What I had been told by Mr. McCord was the fact that Mrs. Mitchell would be departing that day for a trip to the midwest. For approximately two hours or so it was undetermined whether or not she would make the trip. After it was determined that she would, Mr. McCord then took me to the office of Mr. LaRue. He stated that I-- (Interruption to have Baldwin speak into the microphone) After it was determined that Mrs. Mitchell would make the trip, I was taken to the offices of Fred LaRue, who I was told would have the final say whether or not I was hired. SENATOR WEICKER: Did you meet Mr. LaRue? BALDWIN: That's correct. I had a very brief interview with Mr. LaRue that lasted approximately two or three minutes. SENATOR WEICKER: And, was the decision to hire you made in your presence, at the moment you had met Mr. LaRue, or did you leave the room and were informed of the decision later? BALDWIN: No, it was not made in my presence. Mr. LaRue asked if I would mind waiting outside of the office. When Mr. McCord joined me in the outer office, he said it's all set. "You're all set to go." I believe he might have even mentioned, "You're on board"--something like that. SENATOR WEICKER: Would it be fair to describe, then, your hiring as having been accomplished by a combination of, initially, Jim McCord, with the final say-so by Mr. LaRue? BALDWIN: Well, I was interviewed by Mr. McCord, but Mr. McCord, in the presence of Mr. LaRue, it was obvious that Mr. LaRue was making the decision. SENATOR WEICKER: Now, at the time that-- Or, after, rather, you were hired, on that particular day, were you given a weapon? BALDWIN: That's correct. I was issued a .38 snub-nosed revolver; Smith & Wesson. SENATOR WEICKER: Would you describe to the committee that particular incident? Was this on the same day, May the 2nd? BALDWIN: That's correct. After we left Mr. LaRue's office. This occurred in the Security Office adjacent to the main reception room on the third floor of the Republican headquarters there on Pennsylvania Avenue. Mr. McCord went over to a file cabinet and removed the weapon either from the first or second drawer of the weapon--uh, of the file cabinet--and stated: "You will need this while you are with Mrs. Mitchell. You know how to use one of these?" SENATOR WEICKER: So, in other words, it's your testimony to this committee that Mr. McCord gave you the .38. BALDWIN: That's correct; he did. SENATOR WEICKER: Now, can you tell me what eventually happened to that weapon? BALDWIN: I retained possession of that weapon through the trip. When I returned to Washington I had possession of that weapon. There was another trip scheduled on the Thursday of the week we returned. I believe we returned on May 8th, and I believe Mrs. Mitchell was scheduled to go out on another trip that Thursday. [NOTE: May 8 was a Monday; that Thursday is May 11.] I was told that the decision whether or not I would go with her hadn't been reached yet, but in all likeli I-- hood I [sic] would be going with her, to keep the weapon in my possession. I had to leave to go to-- back to Connecticut to get more clothing, so the weapon stayed with me back to Connecticut. When I returned from Connecticut, Mr. McCord advised me that Mr. LaRue would be going with Mrs. Mitchell, and he, uh, had other work for me to do, and at that time he said, uh-- I believe it was, uh, "You've still got the weapon?" I said yes. We went downstairs of the Roger Smith hotel, outside the barber shop--he took it. SENATOR WEICKER: So the weapon was returned, then, to Mr. McCord. BALDWIN: That's correct. SENATOR WEICKER: All right, on the-- on that May the 2nd, were there any others that you were introduced to, any other individuals that you were introduced to, at the Committee to Re-Elect the President? BALDWIN: Yes, Mr. LaRue's office is in a cubicle where I believe Mr. Magruder's office is, and I also believe Mr. Odle. As Mr. Magruder passed from his office, I was introduced to Mr. Magruder. I don't believe that I was formally introduced to Mr. Odle, but I believe Mr. McCord pointed him out, and Mr. McCord pointed out several other individuals. I was being introduced mainly to the security force that was present at the headquarters. I met some people in Mr. Mitchell's law offices. I was taken around to Mrs. Mitchell's office and introduced to different people. At each one of these offices I would be going with Mrs. Mitchell as her bodyguard; I was coming aboard. But, uh, several individuals were pointed out to me, but, uh-- SENATOR WEICKER: Was it indicated to you at that time as to the terms of your employment, specifically as to how you would be paid? BALDWIN: That question came up originally, Senator, on the night Mr. McCord telephoned me, because on the resume that was submitted with the ex-agent's society, I had listed a general salary for a year. Mr. McCord-- I asked him about the salary. He told me that because of the fact-- I mentioned to him that there would be no sense in wasting your time or my time if the employment wasn't in the salary range that I was seeking. He did say there would be a discrepancy, that it would involve a matter of approximately $70 a day while I was with Mrs. Mitchell, and there would be a different rate when I was not working with Mrs. Mitchell. However, I was paid the same way at all times. SENATOR WEICKER: Did you believe at that time that your employer was the Committee to Re-Elect the President? BALDWIN: Absolutely. SENATOR WEICKER: Do you have any documents in your possession which you believe to be supportive of that opinion? BALDWIN: No, I have documents in my possession that are contradictory to that position. It was my understanding prior to the criminal trial that efforts were being made to disown me from the Committee, and as a matter of fact I have a-- SENATOR WEICKER: Now, I-- I-- I intend-- I'm just trying to keep this in logical sequence, Mr. Baldwin. BALDWIN: No, I have all the application forms-- SENATOR WEICKER: Do you have in your possession a check from the Finance Committee to Re-Elect the Possession [sic--he says it just the way he would say "President]-- Rather, a Xerox copy of a check issued by the Finance Committee to Re-Elect the President? BALDWIN: That's correct. I received a check and cashed it, and I did make a photostat of the check. That's correct. SENATOR WEICKER: Would you go ahead and present that to the committee, please. [Rustling] Is there any other document that you have in your possession which, again, would indicate your employment by the Finance Committee to Re-Elect the President? BALDWIN: I have what is titled a Schedule D--itemized expenditures, personal service loans, and transfers--and then underneath that it says Finance Committee to Re-Elect the President, and an itemized listing for a period of, I believe it's August 1st '72 through August 9th '72, and on that my name appears. SENATOR WEICKER: All right, and what is the amount listed beside your name? BALDWIN: It's listed $429.84. SENATOR WEICKER: For travel expense? BALDWIN: That's what the purpose of the expenditure-- Under the column "Purpose of Expenditure," that's correct. SENATOR WEICKER: What travel expense do you believe that to refer to? BALDWIN: Well, I was told this was reimbursement for travel expense incurred while with Mrs. Mitchell. Uh, this figure coincides with a figure that I submitted regarding her expenditures spent on the trip. SENATOR WEICKER: So in other words, you believe this figure, listed on Schedule D, and also set forth on the check from the Finance Committee to Re-Elect the President, as coinciding with a voucher which you submitted for travel expenses attendant to your trip with Mrs. Mitchell. Is that correct? BALDWIN: That's correct. A combination of her expenses and my expenses. SENATOR WEICKER: Has the committee-- Has the committee-- Have you presented your copy of Schedule D to the committee? [shuffling] And I would appreciate it, Mr. Chairman, if both these items would be-- SENATOR ERVIN: Let the record show that the two photostat-- Xerox copies of, uh, checks are made exhibits and appropriately numbered, whatever the numbers would be in sequence of previous exhibits. SENATOR WEICKER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Now: as your first assignment, did you make a trip to Detroit and Westchester County as a bodyguard for Mrs. Mitchell? BALDWIN: That's correct. The, uh-- SENATOR WEICKER: And did you return from that trip on May the 8th? BALDWIN: That's correct. We did. SENATOR WEICKER: On your return on May the 8th, or at any other time, were you informed by anyone that you had been fired by the Committee to Re-Elect? BALDWIN: I've never received any official notification from anyone up to this date. SENATOR WEICKER: Did you, at any time, return to the office of Mr. LaRue, and receive from him notification of termination of employment? BALDWIN: No, I did not. SENATOR WEICKER: Now then, to move to May the 12th, Mr. Baldwin: did you return to Connecticut at that time-- or rather, did you return to Connecticut after the 8th-- BALDWIN: I returned approximately the 9th to Connecticut-- SENATOR WEICKER: --and come back to Washington on May the 12th? BALDWIN: That's correct. SENATOR WEICKER: Could you briefly describe your assignments between May 12th and May the 23rd, when you again returned to Connecticut. BALDWIN: On my return to Washington I was advised that Mr. LaRue would be going with Mrs. Mitchell on the trip to Nebraska, and that Mr. McCord wanted me to perform other functions in the Washington, D.C. area, which would cover surveillance activity. At that time, I don't believe that there was any specific organization, but on a day-to-day basis he would give me instructions where to go and what type of activity to perform. SENATOR WEICKER: Where were you housed at this time? BALDWIN: On my return back I stayed at the, I believe it's the Roger Smith, a block up from the Committee headquarters. Mr. McCord advised me that he would like me, then, to move to the Howard Johnson, where he had obtained a room [room 419], and that to cut down expenses I should stay at the Howard Johnson. SENATOR WEICKER: I don't want to have us get ahead of ourselves here. On May the 12th, on May the 12th you were still at the Roger Smith hotel, is that correct? BALDWIN: On my return from Connecticut, I stayed at the Roger Smith; that's correct. SENATOR WEICKER: And Mr. McCord would come to the Roger Smith hotel and give you instructions. BALDWIN: We-- That's correct. We had a breakfast meeting at-- SENATOR WEICKER: All right. And what did those instructions consist of? BALDWIN: Well, the first instructions were to move to the Howard Johnson, and from there he would brief me on the activities that were upcoming. There was a planned news conference on that Friday with-- Rene Davis was due in town, and he wanted me to go to the news conference and obtain any information I could. SENATOR WEICKER: Would it be--in order that we don't take overly much of the time of the committee--would it be fair to state that during the period between May the 12th and May the 23rd you were principally engaged in surveillance activities of various activities, organizations, and occurrances in the Washington, D.C. area. BALDWIN: That's correct, Senator. SENATOR WEICKER: Now, at any time were you sent to the Capitol area to conduct these surveillances? BALDWIN: I believe it was the day after Governor Wallace was shot that I was assigned to go to the Capitol rotunda where there was planned sit-ins. SENATOR WEICKER: During this period of time, were you sent to areas outside the offices of various senators and congressmen to observe persons in those areas? BALDWIN: That's correct. SENATOR WEICKER: Now, Mr. Baldwin, would you try to the best of your ability to recall these areas, or the specific offices, to which you went in order to observe persons in those areas. BALDWIN: I'm going to do some great injustice to some of the representatives, I'm sure, with their names. But I know I went to Senator Kennedy's office-- SENATOR WEICKER: Why did you go to Senator Kennedy's office? BALDWIN: Well, on one particular day, at the Capitol, a large number of demonstrators had been receiving Senate passes to the gallery area. This was also the day that the three astronauts appeared, and the information circulating amongst the different security officers up there was the passes were being issued by, I believe it was Senator Kennedy's office, and-- I'm not sure. It might have been Senator Gravell's (spelling?) office at that time. On one of my phone calls to Mr. McCord I advised him of this, and he advised me to go to the Senator's office to determine what groups were in the area, how the passes were being handed out or distributed, who was doing it, obtain any literature that was being handed out, and basically try to determine what groups were in the area of the senator's office. That's how that particular incident-- SENATOR WEICKER: Now, you mentioned Senator Kennedy's office, and possibly also Senator Bell's [sic] office. Are there any other representatives or senators whose offices you recall going to in order to observe persons moving about those areas. BALDWIN: Representatives from New York, I believe. It was Bella Abzug and--is my pronunciation correct on that? And Representative Chisholm (sp?) and-- I believe Mandell (sp?)-- SENATOR WEICKER: At any time-- BALDWIN: Gravell I menti-- SENATOR WEICKER: At any time did you visit the office of Senator Muskie? BALDWIN: To the best of my recollection I don't recall being in the area of Senator Muskie-- SENATOR WEICKER: Senator McGovern? BALDWIN: No. Those names I would have recalled. SENATOR WEICKER: Senator Javitz? BALDWIN: That's correct, because it's Mr. Javitz on the door. SENATOR WEICKER: Senator Proxmire? BALDWIN: That's correct. SENATOR WEICKER: Congressman Koch? BALDWIN: I believe-- If he's the gentleman from New York, I believe that possibly is one of the other gentlemen from New York. SENATOR WEICKER: All right, aside from that type of surveillance, did you also engage in the surveillance of demonstrations in the capitol area? BALDWIN: I participated in the demonstrations in the capitol, that's correct. I'm sorry, my attorney just reminded me: there was also Representative McClowsky (sp?). SENATOR WEICKER: And Representative McClowsky's office is another one which you-- BALDWIN: That's correct. SENATOR WEICKER: You've already mentioned a Rene Davis news conference, the surveillance on the Hill. At any time did you leave Capitol Hill to engage in surveillance activities? BALDWIN: There was a planned demonstration at the air force base the day that the President was leaving for Moscow, on a Saturday morning. SENATOR WEICKER: And who instructed you to go to Andrews Air Force base? BALDWIN: Mr. McCord. SENATOR WEICKER: Did you receive, in other words, your instruction from Mr. McCord as to your surveillance activities, where they should take place? BALDWIN: That's correct. SENATOR WEICKER: Now, at the time of your return on May the 12th, you've already stated that you moved to room 419 at the Howard Johnson's on Virginia Avenue, across from the Watergate. In whose name was the room registered? BALDWIN: I didn't know that-- McCord had just advised me that he had a room there, but subsequently when I went downstairs, um, to ask for mail, I was told that it was under the name of McCord Associates. And I gave the desk clerk my name, and asked if any mail was received there, to put it into McCord Associates room. SENATOR WEICKER: Now, there've been reports that in fact you were not employed by the Committee to Re-Elect the President. And you've stated here already that you believe you were employed by the Committee to Re-Elect the President. Did any event during this period of time serve to confirm that belief in your mind? BALDWIN: Well, I was instructed that if any time I was stopped by any government agency or law enforcement body regarding the weapon, or regarding my presence in a particular area, that I was to do two things: number one, advise them that I worked for the Committee to Re-Elect the President, that I was in the security office at that-- of that department, and if that didn't work to go on and then say that I was working for the former Attorney General, John Mitchell, and then as a last resort I had Mr. McCord's business card that said "James McCord, Director of Security, Committee to Re-Elect the President," and a telephone number. I was to give the person that card, and that they would call and verify. So on at least three or four occasions, that process had to be followed, where I had to identify myself. SENATOR WEICKER: When you say three or four occasions, can you state to the committee several of those occasions when you had to use Mr. McCord's card and telephone number as a means of identifying yourself. BALDWIN: Well, I had no authority to carry the weapon, so when I flew home to Connecticut I would declare the weapon, and I was flying Allegheny Airlines, so that every time I would fly I would have to declare the weapon. And they would verify the fact; they would call right in front of me. The ticket agent and the manager would come out, usually, of the office. They would make a call, and they would say, "No problem." They would hand the gun back to me. Another time I was questioned by the FBI Liaison Officer on the Capitol Hill. He verified it. And then the day at Andrews Air Force base, I was stopped by the Air Security Police, and they had to call down to the Committee headquarters and verify it. On all occasions I was told everythings' okay, all my items of identification were returned to me, and I was on my way. SENATOR WEICKER: Were you given any sort of an identification pin as belonging to the Committee to Re-Elect the President? BALDWIN: Yes I was. I was issued a lapel pin that was red and white in appearance, and had an eagle on it. This pin allowed me-- SENATOR WEICKER: Where is that pin now? BALDWIN: That was turned over to the United States attorney at-- prior to the criminal trial. SENATOR WEICKER: Now, Mr. Baldwin, to keep on giving the continuity here--you interrupt me or state if I'm incorrect--that you returned to Connecticut on May the 23rd and came back to Washington on May the 26th. Is that correct? BALDWIN: That's correct; Friday. SENATOR WEICKER: And you returned to room 419 at the Howard Johnson's on May 26th. Now, when you entered room 419 on May the 26th, what did you see? BALDWIN: When I entered the room, there was numerous items of electronic equipment in the room. When I entered the room it was approximately 2:00 p.m. in the afternoon--I believe about that hour. Mr. McCord was operating one of the receiver units. At that time I didn't know what it was, he explained it. SENATOR WEICKER: In other words this is the first time that you had seen electronic equipment in room 419 of the Howard Johnson's? BALDWIN: This particular piece of equipment that he was working on, that was the first time I had seen that. On the couch there was a piece of electronic equipment which was contained in a briefcase that had been described to me that I had previously seen at the Committee to Re-Elect the President headquarters. This was called a debugger and a monitoring unit. SENATOR WEICKER: In other words you had seen a portion of the equipment. BALDWIN: A portion I had seen previous at-- SENATOR WEICKER: At the Committee to Re-Elect the President-- BALDWIN: That's correct. But the equipment that he was working on when I entered the room, I had never seen that before. 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? 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-- SENATOR WEICKER: Did you have any questions of him as to exactly what was going on at that time? BALDWIN: No. 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. 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. I'll be introducing them as--" SENATOR WEICKER: What was the alias that he gave to you? BALDWIN: He asked me to use the alias of Bill Johnson, the alias I had used calling in on my reports while on the surveillance operation. It was the same alias I had used. SENATOR WEICKER: All right, then would you like-- Would you continue your narrative to the committee as to what happened that afternoon. BALDWIN: Are you asking regarding the introduction to the individuals that came to the room, Senator? SENATOR WEICKER: Well, I gather from what you've already told the committee that you were told that there was to be a visit by certain individuals connected with the security operation. Is that correct? BALDWIN: That's correct. Well, they came to-- SENATOR WEICKER: And that you were given an alias. BALDWIN: That's correct. 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 that-- SENATOR WEICKER: He hadn't used the alias which-- BALDWIN: That's correct-- SENATOR WEICKER: --you were supposed to use, in your conversation-- BALDWIN: That's correct. SENATOR WEICKER: --with these individuals. BALDWIN: 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? BALDWIN: That's correct. In the FBI photographic display they were identified as Mr. Liddy and Mr. Hunt. SENATOR WEICKER: Now that same evening, the same evening of May the 26th, was there a trip to McGovern headquarters? 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. 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. Prior to arriving there we stopped--he had to buy some batteries. He sent me in to buy them. 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? 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? BALDWIN: It was Mr. Liddy. SENATOR WEICKER: And did you succeed in getting into the McGovern headquarters on that evening. BALDWIN: No. 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. 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? 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 WEICKER: With reference to overheard telephone conversations, and excluding anything to do with personal lives of those who were overheard, can you tell the committee the content of any conversations of a political nature? SENATOR ERVIN: Ah, Senator, I'm afraid we made a mistake when we passed the Omnibus Crime Act, but it may be illegal to spring out anything about the contents. I think maybe we were very foolish when Congress passed that law, but I believe it is the law. BALDWIN: Well, I would decline to answer that respectfully, Senator, based on 18, Section 2515--Prohibition of Use of Evidence of Intercepted Wire or Oral Communications--which specifically states under this federal statute that if I divulge those contents, I'm subject to possible prosecution. SENATOR ERVIN: On reflection, I think we were very foolish when we passed a law like that, but we apparently did. SENATOR WEICKER: About how many calls did you monitor? BALDWIN: Approximately 200. SENATOR WEICKER: Will you describe how you recorded these. BALDWIN: Initially, the first day, it was on a yellow legal pad. Nr. McCord took the actual longhand copy that I had made. Subsequently he returned to the room--I believe it was on Labor Day, Monday [May 29, 1972]--with a [sic] electric typewriter. He asked me to transcribe my notes into typewritten form, making up duplicate copies: an original and an onionskin. And that's what I proceeded to do. SENATOR WEICKER: And then who would you-- Who would you transmit those logs to? Mr. McCord? BALDWIN: Mr. McCord received both the original and onionskin. That's correct. SENATOR WEICKER: At any other time-- At any time, did you hand those logs to an individual other than Mr. McCord? 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: Now, during these first two weeks in June, did you engage in any other activities. Specifically, did you go over to the Democratic National Committee? BALDWIN: That's correct. I did. SENATOR WEICKER: Would you describe that particular incident. BALDWIN: Mr. McCord appeared in the room on Monday--I believe it was the 12th of June--and advised me that-- Well, he furnished me a $100 bill, and said, uh, "You're really gonna have a ball this week. You're gonna go over to the restaurant. I want you to hang around in the cocktail lounge, the restaurant, and do visual surveillances of anybody from the Democratic headquarters. I'd also like you to--" He gave me a pretext to take a tour of the Democratic headquarters. I didn't agree with his approach and I asked him if I could do it a different way. I followed that way and I was given a tour of the Democratic headquarters that day. SENATOR WEICKER: Prior to the weekend of June 16th, did Mr. McCord discuss the plans for the rest of that weekend and any subsequent plans. In other words, what was the weekend-- What was the schedule of events for the weekend of June the 16th? BALDWIN: Well, after the tour, Senator, of the McGovern [sic] headquarters, it was obvious that Mr. Lawrence O'Brien was not in the Washington area, and that he had been in Miami, and had been working in Miami, so now-- SENATOR WEICKER: May I ask you this question, Mr. Baldwin: did you mean the McGovern headquarters or the Democratic National Committee--? BALDWIN: I'm talking about the Democratic National Committee headquarters. After my tour there, part of the information I received was the fact that Mr. O'Brien had not been in Washington for the past month or so or longer. He had been in Miami, and Mr. McCord was quite pleased to hear this. And it appeared to me that it called for a rescheduling of the timetable, because he got quite upset to the fact that I would have to-- He would try to make some arrangements for me to go to Miami-- Uh, he had already discussed with me the fact that I would be appearing at-- I would be going to both the Democratic and the Republican conventions, but in view of this information that Mr. O'Brien was in Miami, uh, this seemed to change his timetable and he-- For the rest of that week-- That week, at several different points he told me he would like to get me--get my identification sewed up--and get me down to Miami. He had to confer with some other individuals regarding this, and as soon as it was approved I would be going to Miami. SENATOR WEICKER: All right. Now, on June the 16th, at around 4:30 p.m., did Mr. McCord appear in the room at the Watergate [sic]? BALDWIN: Yes, he-- SENATOR WEICKER: I beg your pardon: I mean the room at the Howard Johnson's. BALDWIN: Yes, he appeared at the Howard Johnson's. SENATOR WEICKER: And what were your activities, and his activities, between 4:30 in the afternoon and 10:00 in the evening? BALDWIN: Do you want every detail, Senator? SENATOR WEICKER: I'd like you to tell, in a broad narrative sense, the committee as to what-- BALDWIN: Well, he gave me several instructions to buy some items for him, which I did. I tried to obtain some batteries--some regular flashlight batteries--and some what he called speaker wire, which is regular wire-- I couldn't get the wire, so subsequently he had to-- He left the room, and went out. Part of the activities: he tested some type of a device on the phone. He tested a free-standing device next to the television, a, uh-- It had on it "Fire Alarm Unit," I believe. So, basica-- And he had me soldering some batteries together. During the course of that time he made a phone call, I believe received one or two phone calls in the room. It was that general activity up to the point where he decided, uh-- The difficulty was there was a gentleman working in the Democratic National Committee-- SENATOR WEICKER: Did you know at that time that he had planned to go into Democratic National-- BALDWIN: No, not until, uh-- SENATOR WEICKER: --Committee headquarters? BALDWIN: --not until he was on the phone at one point and he said, "We still can't go over there because there's somebody working," and then I looked across and there was somebody working in the Democratic headquarters. He then told me, um, "We don't know whether we're going to abort." Approximately a half hour or so later, this individual left, and the decision was made, uh, to go across the street. SENATOR WEICKER: At 10:00 p.m., then, is it your contention that Mr. McCord left the room? BALDWIN: I don't know the exact time-- Oh, no, no: he left the room later than 10:00 p.m. You mean to go to the Democratic headquarters? SENATOR WEICKER: Mm-hm. BALDWIN: He left at one point to buy some equipment at a radio discount store or some place, and he returned. Then subsequent to that, he again went acro-- Then he left to go to the, uh-- Across the street to the Democratic National Committee.

I couldn't agree with you more, John. And I wonder if the wheels aren't finally starting to come off of the Watergate locomotive in a shuddering, metal-on-metal screech. Ashton Gray

Of course that's correct, and I should have recalled the specific point you had made in your Senate testimony that you were flying Allegheny Airlines. I've gone into the vaults and pulled the whole transcript now instead of using just the excerpts I'd been referring to before, and I'll quote that part of your testimony in a moment, but I owe you a public apology up front for having let that slip by. Thanks for that explanation. I don't quite know where to put it, though, because I can't fit all that anywhere onto the May 1972 calendar, particularly with the way you explained the same events in detail to Senator Weicker during your sworn testimony. Why don't I just get out of the way here for a moment and let you review the relevant sections of that testimony regarding your only trip with Martha (and I bet traveling with her was a trip), your return from that, and your subsequent trip to Connecticut--for which you had gotten the round-trip ticket after your meeting with John Mitchell. If you'll permit me, I'll put a few of my own brief annotations in italic, and a few phrases from the testimony in bold for clarity: SENATOR WEICKER: ...Now: as your first assignment, did you make a trip to Detroit and Westchester County as a bodyguard for Mrs. Mitchell? ALFRED BALDWIN: That's correct. The-- SENATOR WEICKER: And did you return from that trip on May the 8th? [May 8th is Monday.] ALFRED BALDWIN: That's correct. We did. SENATOR WEICKER: ...did you return to Connecticut after the 8th-- ALFRED BALDWIN: I returned approximately the 9th to Connecticut-- [May 9th is Tuesday.] SENATOR WEICKER: --and come back to Washington on May the 12th? [May 12th is Friday.] ALFRED BALDWIN: That's correct. SENATOR WEICKER: ...Now, can you tell me what eventually happened to that weapon? ALFRED BALDWIN: I retained possession of that weapon through the trip [with Martha Mitchell]. When I returned to Washington I had possession of that weapon. There was another trip scheduled on the Thursday of the week we returned. I believe we returned on May 8th, and I believe Mrs. Mitchell was scheduled to go out on another trip that Thursday. [May 11th is Thursday of that week.] I was told that the decision whether or not I would go with her hadn't been reached yet, but in all likelihood I would be going with her, to keep the weapon in my possession. I had to leave to go to-- [sic] back to Connecticut to get more clothing, so the weapon stayed with me back to Connecticut. Well, I'll just say "Thanks for the Memories"--neither of us would want me to sing it--and I'll try to make some sense out of this. You empathize with my difficulty here, don't you? You arrived back in D.C. with Martha Mitchell on Monday, May 8th, and met with John Mitchell according to the new information you've just supplied. (There's another interesting little side note here: on the day you arrived back in D.C., Liddy gave your boss, McCord, at least $4,000 in cash.) Martha Mitchell was scheduled to leave D.C. again that Thursday, May 11th, on another trip. You "in all likelihood" would be going with her, and for that reason you say you had been instructed to keep the gun. Then on Tuesday, May 9th--the day after your arrival back in D.C. with Martha--you went through a good deal of trouble and risk to board an Allegheny commercial plane on your way home to Connecticut, carrying a snub-nosed .38 revolver for which you had no permit, and you were traveling on a round-trip ticket that wouldn't put you back into D.C. until Friday, May 12th--the day after Martha was scheduled to leave D.C. Is there any way at all to untangle this? (If anybody can help me figure this out any better, I won't have to keep sitting here wondering, for instance, if this has anything to do with why Martha Mitchell wound up one night just a few months later thrown forcefully down on a bed in a California hotel with a butt full of drugs pumped into her after she was rash enough to call a reporter saying she knew "dirty things" and that she was a "political prisoner.") I'll just move along and see if things clear up: Allegheny must have been the most down-home, good-ol'-boy, howdy-neighbor airline in the skies at the time, then, to allow you to board one of their planes--on the strength of nothing a business card and a phone call--carrying a gun for which you had no permit. After eight airliners had been hijacked to Cuba in 1969, the FAA had created the Task Force on the Deterrence of Air Piracy. Metal detectors and profiling were being implemented, and by September 1970 Nixon had announced a comprehensive anti-hijacking program that included the Federal Marshal program you've alluded to. The first passenger death in a U.S. hijacking had occurred less than a year earlier than your trip to Connecticut, in June 1971. And not two months before you were getting onto a plane with a gun for which you had no permit, bombs had been discovered on three airliners. So you done good. You done real good getting that gun to Connecticut and back on a commercial plane. I have to tell you, though, Mr. Baldwin, that I still can't think of a single justifiable reason why you'd bother. I'm sorry, but I have to ask you again: why would you go to all that trouble to carry that gun on a plane to Connecticut and back, since the one and only need you purportedly would have for a gun at all would be if and when you departed from D.C. again on a trip with Martha Mitchell? According to your testimony, when you originally were issued the gun on Tuesday, May 2nd, it was no more formal than McCord taking it out of a drawer of a file cabinet at CREEP: SENATOR WEICKER: Now, at the time that-- Or, after, rather, you were hired, on that particular day, were you given a weapon? ALFRED BALDWIN: That's correct. I was issued a .38 snub-nosed revolver; Smith & Wesson. SENATOR WEICKER: Would you describe to the committee that particular incident? Was this on the same day, May the 2nd? ALFRED BALDWIN: That's correct--after we left Mr. LaRue's office. This occurred in the Security Office adjacent to the main reception room on the third floor of the Republican headquarters there on Pennsylvania Avenue. Mr. McCord went over to a file cabinet and removed the weapon either from the first or second drawer of the weapon--[sic] uh, of the file cabinet--and stated: "You will need this while you are with Mrs. Mitchell. You know how to use one of these?" SENATOR WEICKER: So, in other words, it's your testimony to this committee that Mr. McCord gave you the .38. ALFRED BALDWIN: That's correct; he did. So the still-grawing question I have is why you didn't just drop the .38 back into the "first or second drawer" of the file cabinet on your return to the CREEP offices on Monday, May 8th, where you say you met with Mr. Mitchell. The gun would have been right there where you could have picked it back up before leaving on another trip with Martha Mitchell--if that even became necessary--and you wouldn't have been subjecting yourself (and CREEP) to possible severe liability that could arise from your carrying a gun for which you had no permit across state lines on a commercial carrier. If you had left it, the gun also would have been available for Fred LaRue (or whoever) to carry with them if replacing you as a "bodyguard" for Mrs. Mitchell--and you've always assterted that there was some doubt about you going with her at all on the May 11th trip. So why didn't you just leave the gun there in D.C.? I also have to express my sense of wonder that your fellow Connecticut resident, Lowell Weicker, didn't ask you these same rather obvious and pertinent questions--unless he had been reading from a script. I'm also still trying to come to an understanding of why in your sworn testimony you made it sound as though you had taken that gun on a plane quite a few times. Let me flip back to the transcript and show you what I mean: ALFRED BALDWIN: I had no authority to carry the weapon, so when I flew home to Connecticut I would declare the weapon, and I was flying Allegheny Airlines, so that every time I would fly I would have to declare the weapon. And they would verify the fact; they would call right in front of me. The ticket agent and the manager would come out, usually, of the office. They would make a call, and they would say, "No problem." They would hand the gun back to me. Maybe that's why that Allegheny thing just went out of my head momentarily: I might have gone temporarily unconscious trying to figure out why, when talking about carrying the gun on a commercial plane, you said things like "every time I would fly I would have to declare the weapon" and "usually" and "they would." According to your testimony, you only could have been carrying the gun on a plane--illegally, as I understand it--twice: once to Connecticut and once back. I briefly tried to rationalize this by thinking, "Could he have gone through this rigamarole while traveling with Martha Mitchell?" Surely not. And then I thought, no: she more likely was being flown top drawer, in one of the fleet in the stables out at Andrews. (I'm going to make an educated guess here and say it was the Jetstar 61-2492--the one that had no government markings and was used for some clandestine missions. Let me know if I've missed the mark on that.) Anyway, after all that trouble to lug that revolver all the way to Connecticut and back--for no reason I can fathom--you said in testimony that you handed it over to McCord in front of the barber shop in the Roger Smith hotel when you got back to D.C. (I sure hope nobody was getting a straight-razor shave when you did that. That could have resulted in a nasty nick.) Here's your testimony on that: ALFRED BALDWIN: When I returned from Connecticut [Friday, May 12th], Mr. McCord advised me that Mr. LaRue would be going with Mrs. Mitchell, and he, uh, had other work for me to do, and at that time he said, uh-- I believe it was, "You've still got the weapon?" I said yes. We went downstairs of the Roger Smith hotel. Outside the barber shop--he took it. SENATOR WEICKER: So the weapon was returned, then, to Mr. McCord. ALFRED BALDWIN: That's correct. I won't even approach trying to figure out why you say McCord asked you if you still had the weapon, or the Moebius Time Strip where McCord told you Fred LaRue "would be going" on a trip that LaRue must have left on the day before. But I will, with your kind indulgence, approach this: is there anybody besides you and CIA veteran McCord--standing there in that Copalla-esque moment in front of a barber shop--who could corroborate the fact that the gun ever got turned back in at all? Is there any kind of a paper trail for the gun? Is there any evidence anywhere on the face of the earth of what became of that weapon? It isn't a personal issue, Mr. Baldwin; it's an issue of evidence and verifiable fact about a loose-cannon .38 revolver, the last account of which we have from you as being slipped nonchalantly into James McCord's pocket in front of a hotel barber shop, just three days before Govenor George Wallace, a presidential candidate, was shot with a .38 revolver not many miles away. Surely as an ex-FBIer, you understand this completely. I sure wish my business cards had that kind of mojo. Okay, seriously: according to your testimony, McCords words were considerably more long-winded than your description of his "exact words" above, and using the business card was what you described in testimony as a "last resort." Here's your sworn testimony on that point: ALFRED BALDWIN: Well, I was instructed that if any time I was stopped by any government agency or law enforcement body regarding the weapon, or regarding my presence in a particular area, that I was to do two things: number one, advise them that I worked for the Committee to Re-Elect the President, that I was in the security office at that-- of that department, and if that didn't work to go on and then say that I was working for the former Attorney General, John Mitchell, and then as a last resort I had Mr. McCord's business card that said "James McCord, Director of Security, Committee to Re-Elect the President," and a telephone number. I was to give the person that card, and that they would call and verify. So on at least three or four occasions, that process had to be followed, where I had to identify myself. I've tried in good faith to take your current explanation of the facts concerning the gun and the various trips into fair and prudent account, and compare the current explanation fairly to the sworn record you made for the Senate--which came only after you had made the same record for the US Attorneys, according to your opening statement read into the record at the Senate hearings. (I'm going to post my transcript of your Senate testimony into this thread, because I believe it's crucial, and that everyone should have it available.) But after a good deal of effort on my part, I have to speak frankly to you, Mr. Baldwin, and say that I still can't make any sense out of why you took the gun to Connecticut at all, or out of your supplied and contradictory timelines of events surrounding Martha Mitchell's trips. I still can't conceive why Senator Weicker or the US Attorneys didn't raise these crucial issues with you concerning the gun and its disposition, but that's not all Senator Weicker seemed to give a lick-and-a-promise to after the other senators had deferred to him for your questioning. Some of the things he skirted completely in his questioning I find almost as troubling as this issue of the gun. In an effort to keep this message from going far too long, I'm going to post the other questions arising from your testimony in a separate message, and will urge you to please continue to do all you can to help clarify, and to help everyone interested in healing this supperating wound on our nation's history to a better understanding of things for which no understanding, so far, has been possible. You, of all people, given your crucial role in important events, are in a unique position to do just that. I respectfully thank you for the time you already have invested in such laudable effort, and if my tone at any point seems at all argumentative or adversarial, it arises not from disrespect toward you, but solely from the inability to resolve severely conflicting information. Ashton Gray

At the risk of repeating myself, let me repeat myself: The "Pentagon Papers" leak was a CIA op. If St. Ellsberg was one of your lifetime heroes, you may want to stop reading now, because what you will be reading is sheer heresy. I'm posting this in the Watergate forum because without the "Pentagon Papers," there would have been no Watergate. If you're astute, you may be thinking right about now that if the "Pentagon Papers" was a CIA op, then so was Watergate. Well-- Yes. (Of course the fact that E. Howard Hunt, James McCord, Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Frank Sturgis, and Eugenio Martinez were all current or "former" CIA operatives, and that G. Gordon Liddy had "special clearances" from CIA at the time, might have given anyone who could fog a mirror a clue in that direction--but that's another thread.) Back to St. Ellsberg and his heroic, selfless act for world peace: it's a complete fraud, and the CIA had already created the total plan for getting him off scott-free before he ever delivered the CIA-provided "secrets" to Neil Sheehan, his old buddy from 'Nam--who he had been hooked up with there by CIA's Robert Komer and Lucien Conein, both long-time CIA pals of E. Howard Hunt. If there is a "strangest part" among the strangeness, it might be that it's all in the public record. It doesn't even require prying secrets out of the cold, clammy hands of America's favorite spooks. The perps have admitted to all of it. They just admitted it at so many different places in so many different time frames that nobody ever put all those stray pieces together until recently, and the picture the puzzle forms is ugly indeed. Ellsberg's "psychiatrist," Lewis J. Fielding, had been staff psychiatrist at the Veteran's Administration way back in the late '40s and early '50s, just when the VA was feeding unfortunate veterans into the hungry tormenting maw of CIA's mind-control beast, Operation Bluebird (and its bastard children--ARTICHOKE, MK-ULTRA, etc.), to be used as guinea pigs under the loving eye of Richard Helms, Sidney Gottlieb and friends--where Hunt, Conein, and Komer sang along in three-part harmony. There are lots of tiny details that make up the big picture, and I won't lay out every one of them here in this introductory message in this thread. They've actually already been laid out meticulously in a very thorough timeline I've read, which I'll provide a link to at the end of this message if anybody wants to visit it themselves. But there are several important pieces that are worth laying out. One of them is that E. Howard Hunt and his wife Dorothy went to Miami and met with Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, and Felipe De Diego on Saturday, 17 April 1971, almost two months before the leak of the Pentagon Papers. So? So, these happen to be the exact same three CIA-connected Cubans who Hunt later uses to stage a "break-in" at the office of psychiatrist Lewis J. Fielding--purportedly as part of the "response" to the leak of the Pentagon Papers--the claimed purpose of which will be to get the psychiatric file of Daniel Ellsberg. (Stay tuned...) The next piece to lay out is that well prior to the Labor Day weekend "break-in" of Fielding's office, the CIA supplied E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy with: Phony IDs CIA "disguises" that didn't disguise them at all A CIA camera So? So on 26 August 1971, Hunt and Liddy took these CIA-supplied items and flew out to Los Angeles and went to the Beverly Hills office of Lewis J. Fielding, purportedly to "case" the place for the upcoming break-in. And they put on their ill-fitting CIA wigs, and took photos of each other with the CIA-supplied camera standing in front of Fielding's identifiable office door. As inconceivable as this is already, we aren't done yet--not by a long shot. Liddy and Hunt flew back to D.C. and were met at the airport by CIA's Stephen Greenwood, who took the film from the CIA-supplied camera, took it back to CIA headquarters, and had the photos developed there, giving a copy to Hunt, and keeping a copy in CIA files. Okay: I know you think I'm pulling your leg, but I swear it's the precise truth, admitted by CIA, and it only gets better. Just over a week later, on Friday, 3 September 1971 (Labor Day weekend) the purported "break-in" took place at the office of Lewis J. Fielding. The three Cubans Hunt had met with earlier (two months before the Pentagon Papers had even been leaked) did the dirty work. It seems worth mentioning in passing the reason Liddy gave in his autobiography for getting the Cubans to do the break-in. I'm going to say it, but if you fall out of your chair laughing and hurt yourself, don't sue me; sue the CIA for reckless endangerment. But here it is: just after Liddy and Hunt had taken photos of each other at Fielding's office, Liddy says they got a go ahead for a break-in (from NSA's David Young--but that's another thread), but that Liddy and Hunt "weren't allowed to be anywhere near the place." Once you recover, we'll move along here... The Cubans (all with CIA histories) made the "break-in" real subtle: they broke a window--even though Gonzalez was a locksmith. (This is another curious twist: in the anecdotal accounts of the Fielding break-in, none of the people involved ever mention that Gonzalez is a locksmith. Yet in their tales of the similar Watergate op just nine months later, it becomes the whole reason for Gonzalez being on "the team." Of course, if they had made an issue out of it in the tales of the Fielding "break-in," the broken window would look a little suspicious. I repent for bringing it up.) In the much-later revelations of the "break-in," the CIA shills involved couldn't even get their stories straight. Liddy, Hunt, and the Cubans all claimed there was no Ellsberg file at all, but Fielding reported that there had been a fat Ellsberg file in the office when they broke in, that he found it lying open on the floor when he next came to the office, and that it was "evident" that someone had gone through the file. Who you gonna' believe? Does it matter? They were all in on the CIA op together. As a final note on the "break-in," Liddy and Hunt at the time, as the "commanders" of the op, supposedly were running around Beverly Hills like Keystone Cops, trying in vain on Radio Shack walkie-talkies to raise the Cubans and doing other endearing things. The problem is they were in New York City the same night checking into the Pierre Hotel on a completely impossible timeline. But, hey: it's a CIA op. Don't be so nitpicking. If all of this buffoonery isn't enough, it's time to take a giant step now, all the way across 1972 to early 1973: Wednesday, 3 January 1973, to be precise. On that day, Daniel Ellsberg went on trial for felony crimes in the leaking of the "Pentagon Papers." And on the same day--the same exact day--the CIA sent a courier named Anthony Goldin, one of their own agents, to hand-deliver to Watergate prosecutors a nice, official, sealed CIA envelope. And what do you think it contained? Are you even able to guess? If you said "photos of E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy mugging in front of Lewis J. Fielding's office," I'd be willing to wager your breath can fog a mirror. And so on the very day his trial began, Daniel Ellsberg was given a custom "Get Out of Jail Free" card, tailor-made for him by CIA and their jolly operatives. It wouldn't be passed along to the Ellsberg court and made public for several more months, but it was hand-delivered by CIA the very day the Ellsberg trial began. It had been planned far, far in advance just that way. "But why," you might be asking. The obvious answer to "why," from the record, was to provide a big, brazen, scandalous excuse for the CIA to shove Liddy and Hunt into the White House through the back door and get them White House credentials and lots of operational latitude. In fact, there's a little detail from one of the Watergate tapes that has gone almost completely unremarked: way back on 2 July 1971--the day after NSA's David Young had been appointed to work with Egil Krogh at the White House Domestic Council, just days after Ellsberg had been indicted for the "Pentagon Papers"--CIA Director Richard Helms is revealed to have been back-channeling to the White House staff, lobbying for Hunt to be taken on. In a tape of an Oval Office conversation that date, Haldeman tells Nixon that Helms has been whispering in his ear about Hunt: "Ruthless, quiet and careful, low profile. He gets things done. He will work well with all of us. He's very concerned about the health of the administration. His concern, he thinks, is they're out to get us and all that, but he's not a fanatic. We could be absolutely certain it'll involve secrecy... ." On or about the same day, Daniel Ellsberg's ex-wife contacted the FBI and gave them a tip about psychiatrist Lewis J. Fielding knowing "all about what Daniel has done." Within five days, Hunt was hired as a White House "consultant." There's more, but how much more do you need? If the new burning question is "why did the CIA so badly want Hunt and Liddy in the White House," well, that's another story for another day. While I'm not going to attempt here to supply an answer, I have an even better question: If their real purpose was to "stop leaks"--and hence the famous nickname, "the Plumbers"--why did they never, ever stop even one leak, and never, ever do anything effective regarding any leak? It's not an idle question. The timeline I'm about to give a link to may or may not provide a possible answer to these burning questions that's satisfactory to you, but what it surely will do is provide a handy, well-researched, well-cited reference for dates and events related to Watergate, more detailed and accurate than any I've ever seen. I've relied on it heavily for this article. Here's the link. Happy reading: Remote Viewing Timeline Ashton Gray

There are important and permanent milestones in the long, somber march toward the truth since 1963, and I just want to add one more small voice of thanks to Doug Horne for his courage and his perseverance in getting these documents into the light of day by any means, and to John Simkin for providing a means. They will stand in the sunlight as one of those important and permanent milestones marking the way for others who follow. The casual, supercilious indifference of the so-called "media" will be their epitaph, and is deserving of nothing more than casual, supercilious indifference. Well done, Doug. Ashton Gray

UPDATE This post was not really on-topic for this thread, so I've expanded it a bit and put it into its own thread, and hope that Mr. Caddy will be gracious enough to put any replies there instead of here, which I also have asked of him in a private message. Hi, Mr. Caddy. I read your article with a great deal of interest, and while it and your posts that I've read here seem to focus mainly on those dramatic events following the fateful night of 16-17 June 1972, I wonder if you would be able to shed some light on parts of the backstory that are intriguing, but--well, "sketchy"--and that go to whether "Deep Throat" has any more substance than Marley's ghost, or a morsel of undigested cheese that might have given rise to such an apparition. I'll try to be as specific as possible on some of the things I'm curious about, which the available literature doesn't seem to address in any measurable depth. When CIA veteran E. Howard Hunt was hired at the Mullen Company on 1 May 1970, pursuant to a recommendation from DCI Richard Helms, the Mullen company had been cooperating with CIA, including providing overseas cover for CIA agents, for at least seven years. The Stockholm, Sweden office of Mullen was "staffed, run, and paid for by CIA." According to the available record, at least eight people in the D.C. Mullen office, where you worked, had been "cleared and made witting of Agency ties."Were you cleared and witting of the Mullen company's involvement with CIA? If so, what was the nature and scope of your clearances? From my understanding of the record, not many months after Hunt arrived at Mullen--in or around November 1970--you moved from Mullen to Gall, Lane, Powell and Kilcullen, and at about the same time, Hunt became a client a Gall Lane, and you were one of the attorneys working with Hunt. You've said you consulted with Hunt regarding probate and "other matters."What were the "other matters"? Did you have CIA clearances or other clearances from any intelligence branch or agency at any relevant time? If so, why? Did the probate matters include Dorothy Hunt's probate? What was Meade Emory's role? Please bear with me in establishing a brief history for these next questions, but still focusing on November 1970 and your move to Gall Lane: around the same time Robert Mardian approached G. Gordon Liddy and asked Liddy to take an undescribed position that Liddy says was "super-confidential." Liddy had already been granted "special clearances" by CIA a year earlier, in December 1969. Carrying forward to 1971: Hunt (your client) and Liddy had secure lines in Room 16 for communicating directly to Langley. In August 1971 Liddy was in regular communication with "State and CIA," including direct conversations with DCI Richard Helms, and during that month both Hunt (your client) and Liddy were provided with CIA documentation for phony IDs. Continuing into February 1972, Liddy and Hunt (your client) met with a "retired" CIA doctor to discuss indetectable means of assassination, then Liddy met on 22 February 1972 with undisclosed CIA officials in relation to the "special clearances" he was carrying. Within only about a week of that meeting, on or around 1 March 1972, you started doing unspecified "legal tasks" for G. Gordon Liddy leading up to the Watergate activities, so were involved in a legal relationship with both "commanders" of everything Watergate: Liddy and Hunt.What was the nature of the "legal tasks" you were doing for Liddy? Did you have any clearances, special or otherwise, from CIA or any other intelligence branch or agency at relevant times? If so, what was the nature and scope, and why? Taking you back in time, if I may, like some ghost of Christmas past, to E. Howard Hunt's move, in May 1970, from CIA Central to the CIA Mullen branch, he hadn't been "retired" from CIA for more than a month before a special Covert Security Approval was requested through CIA for him under "Project QK/ENCHANT." You were still at the Mullen branch with him.Did you have a clearance for QK/ENCHANT at any relevant time? Do you know anything about why the "retired" Howard Hunt almost immediately needed this special clearance? I'm sorry for having had to include as much establishing information as I did, but it's scattered throughout so many different sources that I thought others here may not be entirely familiar with the context given above, and I didn't want you to have to spend the time explaining it. I'd rather you just be able to focus on the questions themselves, and any light you can shed would be of inexpressible value. Thanks so much for your time. Ashton Gray

Hi, Mr. Baldwin. Thanks very much for your reply. I appreciate your citing the 302 document, but I don't know of any easy availibility. I do, though, have access to your sworn congressional testimony, which I hope will be agreeable to you as a means of refreshing your memory, and which is reasonably contemporary with the events at issue. Referencing that source, perhaps I could be more specific than I was when I wasn't certain whether you could be reached. According to that testimony, there were two incidents within about a month when you went back to your home in Connecticut, and just to obviate any possible confusion about the two separate incidents, the first occured on 9 May 1972, with your returning on 12 May 1972. That's the trip we've been discussing in which you carried the gun. In the second event, you left D.C. on 23 May 1972, and returned on 26 May 1972--the same day as the purported Ameritas "first attempt" at a "first break-in." Focusing, with your indulgence, on the first event, I'm still a bit perplexed, and please allow me to explain why. In your reply to me, above, you said you kept the .38 because: "with further possible deployment where the weapon could be used for personal defense it woul have been and was normal for the weapon to remain on my person at all times after it had been issued to me." The "further possible deployment" you are referring to, according to your congressional testimony, was a possible second assignment to travel in the capacity of a bodyguard with Martha Mitchell. You already had done so once according to your record, leaving on 2 May 1972, arriving back in D.C. on 9 May 1972--the same day you left for Connecticut. I was a bit surprised to hear that you flew to Connecticut on your 9-12 May trip to collect some personal things (since you had driven to D.C. originally, and you drove yourself on the second trip), and learning that you flew also actually compounds, a bit, my confusion concerning this trip you took, and your carrying the gun with you, for these reasons: 1) In your sworn testimony you said that the trip that was scheduled for Martha Mitchell on which you might have a possible second assignment of traveling with her, leaving from D.C.--the supplied reason for keeping the gun with you--was scheduled for 11 May 1972. Yet you didn't return to D.C. until the day after her scheduled departure from D.C.: 12 May 1972. If you and the gun were in Connecticut on 11 May 1972, the day she was scheduled to leave on her trip, how could you (and the gun) have been factored in for a possible bodyguard assignment? 2) I'm sorry, but I still don't understand any rationale for having the gun in Connecticut, when the assignment for which it purportedly was issued would be departing from D.C. You didn't have Martha Mitchell with you in Connecticut. You took no gun with you on your second trip to Connecticut (23-26 May). Why, then, did you need one with you on the first trip there--especially when you didn't return at all until the day after Martha Mitchell already had left, on 11 May, with Fred LaRue instead of you? I can't make this make any sense to me. 3) If you flew, did you buy a round trip ticket with a return date a day later than your possible assignment? 4) Did you take the gun on the plane, and if so, did you have to report that to anyone? 5) Did you have a permit for carrying the gun? I'm sorry to be a pest, but the details have been pestiferous for me, and I cannot easily express my gratitude for this opportunity to lay these nagging questions to rest. Thank you again, and in advance, for your help. Ashton Gray

While it is true that Nixon benefitted from the Wallace shooting (on an awfully temporary basis), there was an entirely different set of very deep undercurrents throughout 1971-1972, but that had been developing for decades. These factors remained completely out of sight until 1995, and even then only the vaguest, and very dishonest hints were dropped by CIA. In the last 10 years a great deal more has been dug out of the mud and muck about it: it was a very secret program that the CIA started on Sunday, 1 October 1972--only two weeks after the "burglars" had been indicted and all the fingers were already pointing directly at the White House--to develop parapsychology for military intelligence purposes. There is no indication that Nixon ever knew anything about it. When the CIA started the secret program, Nixon's White House was already under heavy fire, and Watergate absolutely riveted media attention. From all indications, this program was, and had been, an extremely high priority and a major focus for CIA leading up to and throughout everything known as Watergate. There is no doubt that Wallace could have become a very big impediment indeed to the CIA plans for this program in a variety of ways. So could Hoover (who was found dead 15 days before Wallace was shot), and L. Patrick Gray filled Hoover's vacated shoes just long enough to destroy evidence from the safe of CIA's golden boy, E. Howard Hunt. The development of CIA's secret program precisely parallels Watergate in time, and it presents a massive amount of data--and motives--that have never been analyzed and evaluated against Watergate. I believe its omission--or, really, its cover-up--has completely crippled any chance of a complete investigation of Watergate, and that it is the reason why so many questions have gone unanswered to this day. Ashton Gray

Although I clearly recall reasonable and rational people speculating along those very lines (and further) when the Watergate events were unfolding, and although even the people closest to the investigation at the time believed it was a CIA operation in the first few days (which the public only really found out years later), the Washington Post somehow was anointed very quickly as the bellwether to lead everyone to "the truth." (Even if by the nose. And I won't bring up Woodward's intelligence background at the moment. Or did I just?) I've seen new compilations of data gathered from a very wide range of sources recently that lead me to believe that there were no mistakes: that every connection to the White House was carefully planned with malice aforethought, that there was no "first break-in" at all, ever, and that on the night of 16-17 June 1972, the CIA "veteran" McCord did whatever he had to do to get the phone call placed about a burglary in progress. One aspect of this that I have never seen very thoroughly explored at all is why these "burglars" (every one of them, without exception, having CIA connections) almost couldn't wait to implicate themselves and each other (and of course very soon thereafter Liddy, Hunt, and Baldwin) on additional criminal counts (for which there was absolutely zero physical evidence) by volunteering the "confessions" that they purportedly had broken in weeks before, on 28 May 1972. They practically fell all over each other to volunteer "admissions" of these other, earlier criminal acts, when no one had even accused them of any such earlier break-in, and when there was no way at all that any law enforcement authorities could have known or found out about it otherwise. I don't know of anything in all the annals of crime that compares. Yet this extremely curious behavior goes almost completely unremarked. You've listed quite a thorough list of these presumed mistakes, and I won't attempt to address them individually right now, but am very interested in taking some of them up in relation to other data and events at a later time. Meanwhile, I've begun another thread on "The Problem of the First Break-In," and since it is utterly pivotal to everything the world knows as "Watergate," I'm interested in exploring that in searching detail, because I have come to believe that it is the key to every enduring mystery still surrounding this unhealing wound on history like a shroud. Ashton Gray

Hi Dawn. I'm neither of the people you invoked, but a) I agree with you about the George Wallace shooting having been relatively lost in the intense compaction of events that happened in that pregnant month of May, 1972, and, b ) Sandwedge has also been of considerable interest to me, for related and for different reasons, and, c) I'd very much like to ask Mr. Baldwin about some of the events in early-mid May 1972--but he appears to have left the building. I realize I'm responding to a message that is six months old, but since it's a discussion about one or more unsolved mysteries that are over 30 years old, I'll forge ahead. On Sandwedge, I don't believe that it simply was a failed precursor to the various versions of the "Gemstone" plans. I've also found evidence that the Sandwedge proposal was completed in July 1971--considerably earlier than most sources claim. On the Wallace shooting, there is an odd concatenation of events beginning 1 May 1972 culminating in the Wallace shooting on 15 May 1972, not the least of them involving McCord having issued a .38 revolver to Alfred Baldwin on 1 May 1972, which purportedly was turned back in by Baldwin to McCord on 12 May 1972--three days before Wallace was shot in Laurel, Maryland with a .38 revolver. Even more curious is that on 10 May 1972, McCord is on record as having been in Rockville, Maryland, which is only about 6 miles from Laurel, and on that date, Baldwin--still in possession of the McCord-issued .38--purportedly had traveled back to his home in Connecticut to "get more clothes." This extraordinary sequence of coincidences is part of what I'd like to gain more understanding of from Mr. Baldwin, particularly why he took the .38 with him on a trip home to "get more clothes." There's more about this, and a very comprehensive timeline I've been referred to that has all of this information, including the Sandwedge documentation, laid out uniquely in very detailed and fully cited sequence. If you'd like to discuss this further, let me know. And if anyone can reach Mr. Baldwin and ask if he would return and help clarify some of these points, that would be very beneficial.

This is my first post in the Education Forum. I'm honored to have the opportunity to discuss topics of interest to me with minds more astute and acute, particularly on the subject of Watergate. While I hope to be able to contribute something to the many other threads here, I'm originating this thread to seek other views on the most exhaustive analysis of the purported "first break-in" that I've ever encountered. Having studied it in detail and compared it to my own research, records, and notes from over the years, I am at once mesmerized by the thoroughgoing detail and accuracy in its comparison of the various available accounts, and troubled by the implications arising from the number of contradictions in testimony that it documents. It is not an essay I can merely describe. I would like very much to discuss it with anyone who has thoroughly familiarized themselves with it. You can read it at Watergate First Break-In. Ashton Gray

I am a writer and editor, and my keen interest in later years is investigative writing. My career in the field began long ago with the Kansas City Free Press and I went on to write in various capacities for, e.g., Random House, Universal Studios, and PBS. Recently I have ghosted a published non-fiction book for a gentleman who for many years was a principal of elementary and high schools, and went on to be a superintendent of schools. My wife and I ran a small private school in Los Angeles for a short time, and we home-schooled all of our four children. I am vitally interested in Watergate; I believe that no truthful rationale for, or explanation of, what actually took place ever has emerged, although I believe one to exist. I greatly value the discussions that have taken place at the education forum and respect the minds that pursue the truth, and believe I can contribute to the forum in some small ways.