Douglas Caddy and John Dean

[Robert Merritt]

It is now clear to me that in addition to his long-standing CIA connection, Douglas Caddy had at least one other reason to sabotage my book Watergate Exposed – and that is his connection to the Watergate figure John Dean. During the time I worked with Caddy on the manuscript, it became apparent to me that Caddy was extremely protective of John Dean. In fact, on several occasions he refused to use information I gave him regarding John Dean and his wife to be Mo Biner (Maureen Dean).

Mo and John Dean came up on several occasions. Once when Carl Shoffler, the arresting officer at the Watergate on June 17, 1972, showed me a portfolio that came from the DNC offices. The portfolio included photos of Mo Biner, which were very tastefully done in almost a classy Playboy style – both clothed and nude pictures in a beautiful soft touch. Prior to this I had been with Shoffler when he met with John Dean and some military brass at the Old Stein restaurant in April of 1972. The last time was when I was casually introduced to Mo, her friend Heidi Rikan, Washington porno operator Buster Riggin and the mobster Joe Nesline in 1973.

At the time of our so-called collaboration, I didn’t know about Caddy’s CIA connections, but I was certainly aware that he had a relationship with John Dean. For example, as is now generally known to Watergate researchers, Caddy actually worked for John Dean in the Spring of 1972, which of course was shortly before the Watergate break-in. In fact, on a number of occasions, Caddy talked to me in confidence about John and Mo Dean and his friend E. Howard Hunt - but always with the understanding that Dean would never be mentioned in my book. I expect to be able to elaborate on these subjects in the near future.

[Douglas Caddy]

Men who lack conscience will even lie to themselves – Lauryn Hill quoted in the New York Times of April 23, 2011

In response to the allegations made by Robert Merritt, I wish to state that I stand by my letter of March 31, 2011, to FBI Director Robert Mueller, which I reproduced in this Watergate Topic on April 13, 2011.

As to Merritt’s allegations that I left out material from Watergate Exposed that he wanted included, it needs to be noted that Merritt in late January 2011 approved the galley of the book sent to him by TrineDay Publisher and at that time expressed no reservation to either the publisher or me about information not being included in the book. No publisher will publish a book until the author has signed off on the galley. This Merritt did at the time and TrineDay sent the book to print within 24 hours of Merritt’s approval of the galley. Shortly thereafter the printed book was distributed to book stores. As noted in my letter to the FBI, it was only after the book was printed that Merritt decided to disclose material he wanted included in the book, some of which is overtly criminal in nature. One only has to listen to his interview on March 17, 2011, on KPFK radio in Los Angeles, whose link in included in my letter to the FBI, wherein Mr. Merritt proudly announces that he is disclosing this new information for the first time. His announcement on the radio show rebuts his assertion that I purposely left material out of the book.

I assume that almost everyone reading this response has not read Watergate Exposed. For that reason let me quote from the book so that the reader can get an idea of what type of person Merritt is. These quotes are his own words and were approved by him in the book’s galley:

(1) Merritt was born in West Virginia in 1944 and quit attending high school there two months before being graduated in 1962. He moved to Washington, D.C. to start a new life. His first job in Washington was with at the Trailways bus terminal. “Soon I managed to change jobs at the bus terminal from working in the restaurant to a baggage agent. My immediate supervisor was gay and he quickly promoted me to baggage manager. This did not last long as the terminal manager soon fired me: he was homophobic and constantly made anti-gay remarks; this led me to send about 12 bus loads of passengers’ luggage to the wrong destinations around the country as a means of getting even with him for his smart-ass anti-gay remarks.” (pages 21-22).

(2) At a new job at a hospital Merritt contracted hepatitis B and ran up a $100,000 bill for medical treatment at another hospital. How did he get out from paying the bill? “I simply changed my name to Robert Antoine Chevalier and got a job at the Washington Medical Center in the billing department as an insurance adjuster. In no time at all I managed to misplace permanently all of the billing records for Robert Merritt, right under the nose of my immediate boss.” (page 24).

(3) Later, when he later moved to New York City, Merritt got a job as a property manager. “My job as property manager was to pretend to make repairs on 36 buildings for violations of the housing code. However, my real job was to create more violations of very serious nature, such as opening a gas line in order to cause a serious fire or make the building blow up. Bruce [one of the owners of the investment corporation that owned the buildings] wanted all of his so-called tenants to vacate the building forthwith because they were squatters and it was nearly impossible to evict them because they would bring up publicly the multiple violations of the buildings. On one occasion I did open a main gas line that could have caused the death of many people, but I immediately telephoned the city’s fire department to report gas odors. Firemen arrived within minutes and shut the gas off to the entire building which was precisely what I wanted as this left the tenants with no heat or hot water before Christmas. When they found they had no gas to cook with, many tenants chose to move out but many did not.” (pages 143-144)

(4) Later at a job as superintendent for an exclusive building on Park Avenue, after a confrontation with the building’s owner, Merritt “decided to leave in style. I placed an ad in The New York Times to sublease my [superintendent’s] free apartment at 77 South Park Avenue. I managed to rent out my apartment for $3000 per month plus a $3000 security deposit, for a total of $6000. I rented out my apartment to 10 different people and pocketed $60,000, leaving the owner to straighten out the inevitable chaos….[when] six moving vans showed up, each of which had instructions to move their truck’s belongings into my former apartment. Now I had a small war chest on which to survive as a fugitive from justice.” (page 146)

(5) Not long thereafter Merritt got a job again as a building superintendent in the Washington Heights section of New York City. “I did not like the area, the building and especially the tenants. I had already decided to rent my apartment out as usual but decided to take my time and collect my thoughts…One day several undercover cops arrested me for making calls for the Muslims using ‘illegal’ phone cards…I made the decision that it was time for me to move on and rent out my free super’s apartment. I did this using my tried and true formula but only made about $18,000.” (page 147)

(6) Once again Merritt got a job as a building superintendent, this time for two buildings on 14th Street in Manhattan. “The owner of the buildings, whom I never did believe had converted to Judaism, one day told me when he had three empty apartments that he did not want any ‘niggers or spics, only whites.’ He did not know how much he had offended me. So pursuant to his wishes I rented all three apartments out to upscale whites. As a matter of fact, I rented each apartment at the rate of $1000 per month when he actually wanted $2500 a month. The problem was that I rented each apartment to three different tenants, collecting $9000. I sent the tenants to pick up their apartment keys and their leases from the owner at his Long Island office, all on the same day. The day that I selected was his daughter’s wedding day at his own restaurant.” (pages 156-157).

If you are getting the idea from his proudly asserted admissions that Merritt is not a very nice person, and is probably a sociopath who gets his kicks from wrecking and destroying the lives of innocent persons, you may be on the right track. This is why in 1972 and 1973 he chose not to tell publicly what he knew about the true origins of Watergate but instead put his personal interest and ambition ahead of what was best for the country. In my next installment, I shall disclose how he and his gay lover, Washington Police Officer Carl Shoffler, devised a plan to bring down the presidency of Richard Nixon upon their learning two weeks in advance of the Watergate burglars’ plan to break into the Democratic National Committee. Shoffler and Merritt were in effect a latter day Leopold and Loeb. They planned the perfect crime and, as were Leopold and Loeb, “broken machines.”