Youthful Bill O'Reilly Interviews Frank Sturgis- Who Was CIA?

[Joe Bauer]

WATCH LATER

ADD TO QUEUE

Bill O'Reilly Interviews Frank Sturgis 1977

 

[Guest]

Christ Joe, if thats taken on face value we know everything we need to. He sounded like he had an axe to grind there. Nixon lucky he didn't get killed 😮
Is there a full length interview available? 

Edited March 4, 2021 by Chris Barnard

[Joe Bauer]

Some would say Sturgis was just an inveterate, even trained xxxx, always promoting and planting false stories.

The main points of Sturgis's statement do seem to check out however.

 Did Sturgis get the identity of "Deep Throat" wrong?

Maybe the Mark Felt story isn't true? 

Or, could there have been another "Deep Throat" besides Felt?   That seems quite plausible imo.

 

Edited March 4, 2021 by Joe Bauer

[Guest]

52 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

Some would say Sturgis was just a inveterate, even trained xxxx, always promoting and planting false stories.

The main points of Sturgis's statement do seem to check out. However, did he get the identity of "Deep Throat" wrong?

Maybe the Mark Felt story isn't true?  Or, could there have been another "Deep Throat" besides Felt?   That seems quite plausible imo.

 

If it is a stage show, we must question the motive for pointing the finger at the CIA, which he really does here. The US President being refused access to files implies that the CIA sit above the POTUS or are not serving the POTUS, it also implies they are covering up the real history of the JFK-A. I'd be interested to hear the upsides to the CIA or promoting a narrative that brings blame upon them. I am sure someone will provide counters here but, they don't immediately spring to my mind. 

It does seem plausible that the Watergate / Deep throat story is in reality different. I just watched a full interview of E. Howard Hunt with William F Buckley Jr, it was very interesting even if you put aside the private relationship between Buckley & Hunt which is in part disclosed at the start. 

[Joe Bauer]

0:26NOW PLAYING

 

WATCH LATER

ADD TO QUEUE

Lee Harvey Oswald, Marita Lorenz and Frank Sturgis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Norman T. Field]

2 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

 

 Did Sturgis get the identity of "Deep Throat" wrong?

Maybe the Mark Felt story isn't true? 

Or, could there have been another "Deep Throat" besides Felt?  

 

The curious will find the book 'Haig's Coup' by Ray Locker very interesting. The book makes it abundantly clear that  Haig was the primary source. Remember that Woodward never held a job in journalism before the Washington Post. His previous job was as a ONI spook in the Pentagon in regular contact with Haig. Nixon never knew what hit him as his chief of staff greased his exit. 

[Joseph McBride]

"Deep Throat" is a character invented by Alice Mayhew. She was Bernstein &

Woodward's agent for the book ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN. After they

turned in their first draft, which didn't contain that character, she suggested

it to them. It provides a convenient composite cover for all of ONI man Woodward's

unacknowledged intelligence sources. He and Bernstein later fingered the

FBI's Mark Felt as "Deep Throat," naming him at a time when he was senile, but he was probably just one of their sources.

[Joe Bauer]

14 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

"Deep Throat" is a character invented by Alice Mayhew. She was Bernstein &

Woodward's agent for the book ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN. After they

turned in their first draft, which didn't contain that character, she suggested

it to them. It provides a convenient composite cover for all of ONI man Woodward's

unacknowledged intelligence sources. He and Bernstein later fingered the

FBI's Mark Felt as "Deep Throat," naming him at a time when he was senile, but he was probably just one of their sources.

Surely true.

[Joe Bauer]

Original post video is mind blowing.

And worth viewing again.

[Guest]

9 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Original post video is mind blowing.

And worth viewing again.

It’s astonishing, so candid. That bit about Nixon being lucky he didn’t get killed. 

[Joe Bauer]

© 2002 Deseret News

WASHINGTON — As another Watergate anniversary arrives — now the 30th — Sen. Bob Bennett again finds himself fielding questions about whether he was the Washington Post's "Deep Throat" informant or involved in the burglary and cover-up that, in the end, toppled Richard Nixon's presidency.

"I was not," Bennett reiterates.

He adds that former investigators tell him he was the "most-injured innocent person" among Watergate figures — dragged into the nation's biggest political scandal because of eyebrow-raising ties he had with key figures.

"It ruined my (public relations) business. It completely changed the course of my career" and evaporated early dreams, Bennett says.

But, he says, he might never have become a millionaire — and today a Republican U.S. senator from Utah — if Watergate hadn't forced him into new paths.

"I'd probably still be a lobbyist," he said.

Bennett's life changed forever 30 years ago Monday, on June 17, 1972, the day GOP operatives were caught breaking into Democratic offices in the Watergate Hotel. He would soon be summoned to testify before investigative committees and would be examined for years by the news media and authors of books about the scandal that took on the hotel's name.

"The reason doesn't seem logical now," he says. "But in those paranoid times, it made sense because of ties I had."

They include:

"I employed Howard Hunt," an ex-CIA agent and architect of the break-in, Bennett says. He adds it's "a near certainty" that Hunt planned Watergate in the offices of Robert Mullen & Co., a public relations and lobbying firm, founded by a press secretary for President Eisenhower, that Bennett had purchased.

"Howard worked for me part time, and for the White House part time," Bennett says, adding he didn't know then what Hunt did for the White House.

"I had been in the Nixon administration at a relatively high level, and I had a number of contacts at the White House," Bennett says.

He had worked in the Transportation Department and also worked for years in Washington as an aide to his father, former Sen. Wallace Bennett, R-Utah. He knew officials in the Nixon administration so well that many thought he was the "Deep Throat" informant that helped Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein crack Watergate cover-ups.

"Mullen & Co. was a front for the CIA," Bennett says — adding he didn't know that until after he bought the company and discovered contracts allowing the CIA to use its foreign offices as fronts for its operations.

Bennett said that helped fuel speculation either that the CIA was trying to spy on Nixon (which some of his aides claimed) or that Nixon used the CIA for political espionage.

Watergate burglars broke into the offices of Lawrence O'Brien, whom Bennett had replaced as the public relations handler for billionaire Howard Hughes. "That coincidence made many reporters say I was someone they better look at closely," Bennett said.

Bennett was tied somewhat to recruitment of political spies. Hunt had approached a nephew of Bennett, Robert Fletcher, to work for Nixon's campaign. When he wasn't interested, Fletcher suggested Brigham Young University student Thomas Gregory.

Gregory became a GOP spy in Democratic Party offices. He was even asked to help with a break-in by leaving doors unlocked. Gregory was troubled by such requests and came to Bennett for advice. Bennett says he recommended that he quit.

Congressional investigators later asked why Bennett had not warned authorities that he was told a break-in might be planned. Bennett said he had consulted with a lawyer who told him he didn't know anything truly concrete, and he thought any break-in may have been prevented when Gregory left.

Bennett also acknowledged to investigators that he once agreed to help Watergate figure Charles Colson hire a woman to spy from the inside on the Ed Muskie campaign. However, he said he never actually did it.

Bennett was involved in other frowned-upon activities. For example, he lied to the press about whether Mullen & Co. had ties to the CIA. He says his contract required him to deny any such ties.

He also acknowledged he once sought information on how much it would cost to bug the office of writer Clifford Irving, who was writing a book about Howard Hughes. Bennett said Hughes officials sought that at a time of high emotion; cooler heads later prevailed, and no bugging occurred.

With all that, questions arose for years about whether Bennett was involved in planning Watergate — or was possibly Woodward's source, Deep Throat.

Nixon himself once believed Bennett was Deep Throat, according to a book by his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman. Many other Watergate figures also have speculated that Bennett was that informant. Bennett was even quoted by name as a source by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their Watergate book, "All the President's Men."

Bennett said, "My standard reply is that if I were Deep Throat, I would have gone on the lecture circuit and gotten rich."

Many books speculate that Bennett was in on Watergate planning, but Bennett says investigative committees did not agree — and ruled that he did nothing wrong.

He said a top investigator for the Rockefeller Commission's inquiry told him years ago, "We've come upon many innocent people who were hurt by this. But I can't think of anyone who has been more damaged and destroyed than you."

Bennett notes that Mullen & Co. was destroyed by Watergate. "I lost all my clients but one," and he realized that dreams of possibly running for the U.S. Senate in Utah in 1976 were dead.

Bennett said he ended up working full time for his one remaining client, Howard Hughes, and became a vice president of his Summa Corp. But when Hughes died, he said new corporate officials "fired all the Mormons."

Bennett said he was in his late 40s, and no one would hire him. The only work he found was working with start-up or troubled companies. His experience in helping them led him eventually to time-management company Franklin Quest. He helped it grow into a giant, and he became a multimillionaire.

"I can see now that wouldn't have happened without Watergate," he said. It also allowed him to build a reputation and wealth that allowed him to run for the Senate in 1992 — when he knew Watergate would be an issue.

"Wayne Owens (his opponent) tried his very, very best to make it a campaign issue, but nobody was interested," Bennett said.

"Our research at the time showed that it wasn't that people didn't believe what he was saying, it was just that they didn't care," Bennett said. He went on to win that race and subsequently a second term.

One day in the Senate, Bennett said he was talking with Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., who as an investigator with the Senate Watergate Committee had once interviewed Bennett for 3 1/2 hours about his role. When Bennett said that, Thompson couldn't remember it.

"He said, 'I have absolutely no memory of that. You must have been a minor figure,' " Bennett said.

He adds that he hopes and expects that more people will come to the same conclusion.

"I don't think that many people care about Watergate anymore. It's been a long time," he said. "I think people will probably quit caring (about anniversaries) once the identity of Deep Throat is finally revealed."