Nixon Vs Helms: 1971

[Kirk Gallaway]

Now we're getting our hopes up on this again. I'd say no chance it's going to happen, and I don't think there's anything left in them anyway. Though maybe Cliff's right that you might get some further clues to the coverup.

[Calvin Ye]

3 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:

Wasn't Nixon Prescott Bush's protege? 🙂

Yes he was

[James DiEugenio]

Well, I would add that he was also under the influence of Edwin Pauley and for his world view, Foster Dulles..

[Benjamin Cole]

On 4/7/2021 at 7:34 AM, Cliff Varnell said:

Benjamin, I like your work on Nixon v. Helms 1971, although I'd add that Nixon tried 3 times to get the files on the Bay of Pigs, the assassination of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, and the overthrow of Diem in So. Vietnam -- soon after he came into the White House in '69, Oct. '71 and May '72.  Helms stiffed him him each and everytime.

I think Nixon would have learned more about the Kennedy Assassination from the Diem files, but who knows?

I'm less enthusiastic about your take on Trump.

Benjamin Cole's text in italic, my response in bold.

Come October, President Joe Biden will make a decision on whether to release the remaining 15,834 still-repressed files that were supposed to have been released under the JFK Records Act of 1992.

The JFK Act required that all the JFK files be made public in their entirety within 25 years, which of course, was 2017.

But back in October 2017, President Donald Trump caved to the warnings of then-CIA director Mike Pompeo, FBI director Christopher Wray, and the National Security State, and left the remaining 15,834 files either redacted or totally under wraps.

However, the mercurial Trump then also ordered the withheld files to be reviewed again within four years, perhaps seeking leverage over his adversaries in the intelligence communities.

Fast forward to present, Trump has been booted from office and the betting is that Biden will also cave before the National Security State, despite the JFK assassination having happened 58 years ago.

Yeah, my money's on non-disclosure.  I'd also bet there's nothing in those files that would tell us anything about the murder of JFK.  The cover-up, yes, but nothing about the murder itself ever made paper.

History is full of confounding realities. For all of his weaknesses, Trump was probably the better hope for full disclosure of the JFK records than Biden.

For Trump was often, perhaps usually, at odds with the National Security State, variously called the “invisible government” or the “shadow government,” and, of late, “The Deep State.”

The Deep State installed Trump into the White House.  In late October '16 the FBI had hundreds of thousands of H. Clinton e-mails on the laptop of a sex pervert married to a top Clinton aide.  They knew these e-mails were duplicates of what they already had. 

They also had the Steele Dossier, as did the rest of the US intel community.

On Oct. 28 FBI head James Comey announced a re-opened investigation into Clinton's e-mails which set off a media firestorm that lasted until the election.  Cable news was Bash Hillary TV 24 hours a day for 11 straight days.  If the Deep State wanted to take down Trump why wasn't the Steele Dossier dropped?

In one of his seemingly ubiquitous running battles, Trump in 2019 detailed then-US Attorney General Robert Barr to investigate the nation’s investigative agencies, to ascertain whether elements of the Deep State illegally colluded to first try to prevent his ascendance to the White House, and then to undermine his presidency.

"Prevent his ascendance"?  They greased his ascendance!

"Undermine his presidency"?  RussiaGate was entirely driven by Trump himself.  The Mueller investigation came about because Trump fired James Comey.  Mueller treated Trump with great delicacy.  He didn't go after the kids, didn't go after the finances, allowed Trump's lawyers to give non-answers to written questions, allowed Bill Barr to publicly misrepresent the Mueller Report for 2 months before giving a low-energy testimony to Congress.

The Mueller Report was a limited modified hang-out that had no repercussions.  The surveillance of Carter Page went no where, ditto the Steele Dossier.  Neither were reported on cable news prior to the '16 election.  The Deep State installed Trump and then covered his ass after he screwed up.

At present, the criminal investigation into what is called “Russiagate” is led John Durham, now special counsel to the Justice Department and the former US Attorney for the District of Connecticut (2018–2021).

Durham, originally tasked by Barr in May 2019 to investigate whether the invisible government had it in for Trump, has left the US Attorney’s Office with the advent of the Biden Administration, but has stayed on and is leading the criminal Russiagate investigation, as special counsel.e.  There;'s nothing to it.

The Dunham Probe was a Trump PR move.  There's nothing to it.

https://lawandcrime.com/awkward/durham-investigation-insiders-say-no-evidence-to-support-obamagate-has-been-found-in-18-months/

Like so many modern-day Washington look-sees, the Durham inquiry promises to be interminable yet inconclusive and spun thereafter by party-based PR machines and media mouthpieces.

Even a synopsis of the National Security State vs. Trump could consume a book. The famed Mueller investigation ended in a muddle, followed by a December 2019 report by the Department of Justice Inspector General that concluded that the FBI copiously lied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, aka the FISA court, to gain permission to spy the former Trump campaign staffer Carter Page during the 2016 election.

So what?  Nothing came of it.  Zero.

To critics, Trump’s directives to Barr and Durham were the actions of a paranoid, or rank political theater. That could be. To put it mildly, Trump was and is a man of manifest flaws.

But then, what other aspiring presidential candidate had contemporaneously written about him in the op-ed section of The New York Times, by a one-time director of the CIA: “Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.”[2]

That line was penned by Michel J. Morell, professional lifer in the CIA, a onetime deputy director, and occasional acting director until his retirement in late 2013. 

The Morell missive was run in The New York Times even before Trump became President.

You don't have to be a Deep Stater to notice that Donald Trump has the emotional make-up of a hyper-spoiled 8 year old.

 

Cliff--

I am not here to defend Trump, or Nixon. 

My point is, we have an intel community that does not answer to the elected President. 

It is not OK, just because Nixon and Trump were unpopular in certain circles, and perhaps even deserved their unpopularity. In the case of Nixon, a case can be made he was a war criminal---what he did to SE Asia is heart-breaking. And he knew it was a lost cause.  

I disagree with your take on the Deep State backing Trump. 

I think the US globalist community was aghast at Trump, for good and bad reasons. 

But hey---different opinions is what makes an intellectual stew. I welcome yours. 

 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

On 4/7/2021 at 11:38 AM, Ron Bulman said:

Nixon was subservient to Dulles under Eisenhower just trying to get along.  He wondered if he was implicated himself in the BOP, in turn the JFKA, and more.  Just a thought, partial speculation.

Prescott Bush was Nixon's mentor.  Allen Dulles was Prescott Bush's lawyer.  And I'd guess an associate of his son.

Ron Bulman---

My guess is Nixon was Nixon, and had a high IQ himself. The guy wrote books after all, which are not bad reading.

Who was using who?  Nixon is a strange character, deeply conflicted. His unforgivable sin was his role in helping to murder 6 million SE Asians. 

I suspect Nixon, like so many others, was dubious about the accuracy of the WC's conclusions. He was pressuring the CIA to clean up the Watergate situation for him. 

Once in the Oval Office, Nixon seemed to answer to no one in particular. I am not sure Nixon believed in anything, or felt true alliance with anyone. 

 

 

[Cliff Varnell]

40 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Cliff--

I am not here to defend Trump, or Nixon. 

My point is, we have an intel community that does not answer to the elected President. 

It is not OK, just because Nixon and Trump were unpopular in certain circles, and perhaps even deserved their unpopularity. In the case of Nixon, a case can be made he was a war criminal---what he did to SE Asia is heart-breaking. And he knew it was a lost cause.  

I disagree with your take on the Deep State backing Trump. 

I think the US globalist community was aghast at Trump, for good and bad reasons. 

But hey---different opinions is what makes an intellectual stew. I welcome yours.

Benjamin, did you watch any cable news over the past two weeks of the 2016 campaign?

[Benjamin Cole]

39 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Benjamin, did you watch any cable news over the past two weeks of the 2016 campaign?

No. 

[James DiEugenio]

We are only now beginning to realize how bad Nixon was.

Because, as long as he was alive, he refused to surrender any of his presidential files.  In fact, he hired a fleet of lawyers so as not to turn over anything.

But finally, after his death, slowly but surely they were finally opened.  And we saw why Nixon did not want them released while he was alive. And why Kissinger said to Haldeman, "History will not be kind to us." 

The foremost scholar on this is probably Jeff Kimball.  His two books on the subject, The Vietnam War Files, and Nixon's VIetnam War are, I think, two of the best on that subject. He actually sat down and listened to the tapes and read the transcripts. I could not have written what I did on the Nixon aspect of the Burns/Novick cover up without those two volumes.

https://kennedysandking.com/reviews/ken-burns-lynn-novick-the-vietnam-war-part-four-the-nixon-years

 

 

 

Edited April 10, 2021 by James DiEugenio

[Joseph McBride]

The unbelievable sentimentality of the Nixon funeral was quickly

dashed by the publication soon after that of the Haldeman diaries,

which showed a nonstop parade of screw-our-enemies discussions

and anti-Semitism. I took my son to the Nixon funeral to see that

historic occasion. The actual location was closed, but

we were on the periphery and could hear the booming cannon fire. Five other presidents were there -- Ford, Carter,

Reagan, Bush 41, and Clinton -- and I wanted to find a place to see

them departing. There were several roads out of the closed area

where the funeral was taking place. I did some reconnoitering and saw a Secret Service agent

chatting with a pretty young woman. So I went over to eavesdrop. He

was telling her that this was the road they would use (a major security breach).

So I positioned us near the exit, and sure enough, all four former

presidents rolled past in black SUVs (Bush was the only one behind

dark windows), and Clinton (who was the sitting president at the time) ordered

his SUV to stop ten feet from us. He jumped out to shake hands with the small

crowd of about a dozen people. I took a step

forward with my son on my shoulders to see if we could

shake hands with Clinton, but the Secret Service expertly

did a ballet-like maneuver to block Clinton. He shook hands for two minutes

and left.

Edited April 11, 2021 by Joseph McBride

[James DiEugenio]

Nixon's funeral was sickening.

One guy wrote about it that it was the opposite of Antony's comments about Caesar: all the evil the man did was interred with his bones.

Nixon was so intent on covering up what he did and being lionized as a foreign policy maven that he actually threatened Clinton with a negative Op Ed column unless he solicited his advice on foreign affairs.

But once the files were declassified, he and Kissinger were exposed as the outmoded Cold War hacks they really were.  Kissinger actually oversaw three genocides: Cambodia, Bangladesh and East Timor.

How bad were these guys? After Reagan met with Gorby, he thought he was the real thing. (Even nutcase Thatcher thought that.). But there were still hawks in the WH who did not want any detente.  So Reagan called in Nixon and Kissinger.  They both advised strongly against it.  Before he left Nixon told one of RR's advisors, "Don't leave this guy alone in a room with Gorbachev."

Such was the so called foreign policy guru who wanted everyone to bow down to him. My question would be: For what?  As Joe says,  there is plenty of proof of this in The Haldeman Diaries.  In that book Nixon admitted to Haldeman that he knew he could not win in Vietnam, but he was not going to the the first president to lose a war.

Yech!

 

Edited April 11, 2021 by James DiEugenio

[W. Niederhut]

19 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

We are only now beginning to realize how bad Nixon was.

Because, as long as he was alive, he refused to surrender any of his presidential files.  In fact, he hired a fleet of lawyers so as not to turn over anything.

But finally, after his death, slowly but surely they were finally opened.  And we saw why Nixon did not want them released while he was alive. And why Kissinger said to Haldeman, "History will not be kind to us." 

The foremost scholar on this is probably Jeff Kimball.  His two books on the subject, The Vietnam War Files, and Nixon's VIetnam War are, I think, two of the best on that subject. He actually sat down and listened to the tapes and read the transcripts. I could not have written what I did on the Nixon aspect of the Burns/Novick cover up without those two volumes.

https://kennedysandking.com/reviews/ken-burns-lynn-novick-the-vietnam-war-part-four-the-nixon-years

 

 

 

Outstanding essay about Nixon and Vietnam.  Thanks for posting.

So, it sounds like one possible Nixon motive for the Watergate burglary may have been a quest for documents about Nixon's sabotage of LBJ's 1968 peace negotiations with Thieu.

[Guest]

Just for anyone who missed this video posted by another member on the Nixon V Helms topic the other week. Here is Frank Sturgis stating Nixon was lucky he didn’t get assassinated like President Kennedy:

 

[James DiEugenio]

12 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Outstanding essay about Nixon and Vietnam.  Thanks for posting.

So, it sounds like one possible Nixon motive for the Watergate burglary may have been a quest for documents about Nixon's sabotage of LBJ's 1968 peace negotiations with Thieu.

Thanks.

And yes, that is what Bob Parry thought. And I agree with him.

That is a good interview with Sturgis.  One of the few times he told the truth about anything.

 

Edited April 12, 2021 by James DiEugenio

[Kirk Gallaway]

9 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Thanks.

And yes, that is what Bob Parry thought. And I agree with him.

That is a good interview with Sturgis.  One of the few times he told the truth about anything.

 

Yeah, Sturgis was the first I had heard about that. Jim, you didn't know Sturgis was the inspiration for Secret Agenda?

heh heh