Jeff Morley's article in Politico today

[Matt Allison]

is a good one, and millions of eyeballs are going to see it, which is excellent.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/06/05/nixon-helms-cia-jfk-assassination-00037232

Edited June 5, 2022 by Matt Allison

[Cory Santos]

Very interesting read. 

[Ron Bulman]

"I have done more than my share of lying to protect you (the CIA, not Helms specifically?), and I totally believe it's right to do it."  "I am not going to embarrass the CIA because it served. ... I believe in Dirty Tricks."  They didn't call him Tricky Dick for nothing.

Nixon Knew the CIA was involved in the JFK assassination.  He didn't know the details, but he wanted to.  Then he could hold them over their heads when needed.  Random theory, jmo.

Edited June 6, 2022 by Ron Bulman

[Benjamin Cole]

https://www.kennedysandking.com/articles/biden-trump-the-cia-reflections-in-a-dark-mirror-nixon-vs-helms-1971

 I wrote about this episode in April of last year. 

You may not like a Nixon or a Trump (and I do not)---but really, the elected President of the US can not get requested documents from the CIA? 

The CIA keep spies inside the White House? 

So...who runs America, the Deep State or an elected President? 

PS--I think the Politico article is fine, but misses that point: Nixon, as President, requested documents from the CIA and was sandbagged. That is not a tenable arrangement---does it persist to this day? 

[Sandy Larsen]

On 6/5/2022 at 7:02 PM, Benjamin Cole said:

Nixon, as President, requested documents from the CIA and was sandbagged. That is not a tenable arrangement---does it persist to this day?

 

It gives the president "plausible deniability." The practice has been illegal since passage of the Hughes-Ryan Act of 1974, but the CIA finds ways around it.

 

[Karl Kinaski]

Helms at 31min46sec raising his voice:

"I assured Mr Gray that the CIA had nothing  do involement with the break in. (Watergate.)  No involvement whatever. And it was my preoccupation consistently from then to this tiume to make this point and to be sure that everybody understand ... it dosen't seem to get across very well for some reason that THE AGENCY HAD NATHING TO DO WITH THE WATERGATE BREAKIN! --- I hope all the newspapermen in the room hear me clearly now."

And seconds after that statement the old fox is twinkling to somebody in the audience.  32min17/18sec ... indicating that the contrary was the case ... lol ... Nixon tried to threaten the CIA with his knowledge about the "dirty tricks departement"  instead the CIA forced him to resign by a breakin designed to fail ... it was the second succsessfull coupe d' etat within 10 years ...

 

Edited June 7, 2022 by Karl Kinaski

[Eddy Bainbridge]

What interests me about the story is that, if true, it explains that there is a gap in the knowledge of elected officials, even at the very top. It's probably true that Trump knows nothing about the assassination, but was persuaded it was not in his interests to promote openness. 

[Chuck Schwartz]

Matt, per the Coast to Coast web site, J. Morley will be on the Coast to Coast show on 7/31.

[W. Niederhut]

On 6/5/2022 at 6:50 PM, Ron Bulman said:

"I have done more than my share of lying to protect you (the CIA, not Helms specifically?), and I totally believe it's right to do it."  "I am not going to embarrass the CIA because it served. ... I believe in Dirty Tricks."  They didn't call him Tricky Dick for nothing.

Nixon Knew the CIA was involved in the JFK assassination.  He didn't know the details, but he wanted to.  Then he could hold them over their heads when needed.  Random theory, jmo.

In addition to the censored Nixon-Helm's scene (available in the Director's Cut of Oliver Stone's film, Nixon) there is another key scene where Nixon says, "Just remember.  If Dick Nixon is going down, EVERYONE is going down."  Who was "everyone?"

I need to go back and re-watch that film to remember the context of that remark, but I believe Nixon was talking to Al Haig about the apparent CIA plot to put him over a barrel with Hunt and McCord's bungled Watergate burglary.

Question.  Did Nixon possibly know before the Watergate burglary that CIA assets like Hunt, McCord, Sturgis, et.al., were assisting Mitchell and CREEP with their dirty tricks expertise -- only to later realize that he had, in fact, been double-crossed by Helms and the Company?

I had the impression that Nixon had unsuccessfully threatened Helms and the CIA about "the Bay of Pigs thing" in order to stop the CIA from holding him over the Watergate barrel.

 

Edited July 29, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Ron Bulman]

W, you've watched Nixon closer than I.  I remember watching it but not in detail (the Helms-Nixon exchange excerpt on youtube excepted).  From the little compared to others I've read.  I think maybe, Nixon knew Hunt and McCord in particular were CIA, and a good chance he knew they were involved in CREEP.

 

[Pat Speer]

On 6/5/2022 at 6:02 PM, Benjamin Cole said:

https://www.kennedysandking.com/articles/biden-trump-the-cia-reflections-in-a-dark-mirror-nixon-vs-helms-1971

 I wrote about this episode in April of last year. 

You may not like a Nixon or a Trump (and I do not)---but really, the elected President of the US can not get requested documents from the CIA? 

The CIA keep spies inside the White House? 

So...who runs America, the Deep State or an elected President? 

PS--I think the Politico article is fine, but misses that point: Nixon, as President, requested documents from the CIA and was sandbagged. That is not a tenable arrangement---does it persist to this day? 

1. The "Who shot John?" reference is an old reference that long pre-dates the Kennedy assassination. To my understanding it was an English children's game, with the words being a substitute for "Who was responsible?", but with the attitude that at that point it doesn't really matter. So, no, Morley is dead wrong in claiming Nixons' saying "Who shot John" proves the "Bay of Pigs thing" was a veiled reference to the Kennedy assassination. I do agree that this might have been his intention when he told Haldeman to mention the "Bay of Pigs thing" but his previously using the phrase "Who shot John" does not actually support as much. 

2. I believe Hunt was in direct contact with Lucien Conein during the time he was creating fake documents to insert into the public record. These documents were ordered up by Nixon via his hatchet-man Colson, and were designed to dirty JFK's reputation by implicating him in the assassination of Diem. It's long seemed probable to me that Conein told Helms what was going on, and that Helms' reluctance to assist Nixon during Watergate stemmed from his basic distrust of Nixon, who'd begged for files related to the Diem assassination because he "wanted to know what happened" but who'd in fact then made them available to Colson and Hunt, to assist in their creation of a false history implicating JFK. 

In any event, the Watergate burglars got caught, and Nixon tried (and temporarily succeeded) in strong-arming Helms (via the threat about the "Bay of Pigs" thing) into letting the early investigators believe the burglars were working for the CIA. At a certain point, the assistant director Vernon Walters prevailed and the CIA stopped pretending the burglars were working for them. Within a few months, Helms was forced out. Within a few weeks of his ouster, James McCord, who was 1) fearful of spending years in jail, 2) disgusted with the Justice Dept.s failure to properly investigate the Watergate break-in, and 3) disgusted with Helms' ouster by Nixon for political reasons, decided to blow the whistle on the Nixon administration and admit the "burglars" had all committed perjury to protect Nixon and his minions.

While some like to pretend this was all part of a CIA plot to "get" Nixon, this doesn't stand up to close scrutiny, in that the "burglars" all kept their silence until after Nixon had been re-elected, and after Helms was no longer DCI. The more realistic interpretation is that McCord didn't want to serve the time he was expected to serve if he didn't cooperate, and that his disgust with Nixon and his corrupt administration was sincere. At the time, moreover, McCord became friendly with a number of prominent members of the JFK research community, and they saw him as someone who shared their agenda of fighting corruption and making the government more transparent. 

And yes, I know, it's become fashionable to make the CIA out to be a "boogeyman" in all instances, but when it comes to Watergate it's clear to those who've read mountains of testimony and autobiography after autobiography after autobiography, that the CIA was not the "boogeyman" in this instance, and that in comparison to the Nixon White House, the Justice Dept., and FBI, the CIA was squeaky clean.

 

 

Edited July 29, 2022 by Pat Speer

[Benjamin Cole]

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

1. The "Who shot John?" reference is an old reference that long pre-dates the Kennedy assassination. To my understanding it was an English children's game, with the words being a substitute for "Who was responsible?", but with the attitude that at that point it doesn't really matter. So, no, Morley is dead wrong in claiming Nixons' saying "Who shot John" proves the "Bay of Pigs thing" was a veiled reference to the Kennedy assassination. I do agree that this might have been his intention when he told Haldeman to mention the "Bay of Pigs thing" but his previously using the phrase "Who shot John" does not actually support as much. 

2. I believe Hunt was in direct contact with Lucien Conein during the time he was creating fake documents to insert into the public record. These documents were ordered up by Nixon via his hatchet-man Colson, and were designed to dirty JFK's reputation by implicating him in the assassination of Diem. It's long seemed probable to me that Conein told Helms what was going on, and that Helms' reluctance to assist Nixon during Watergate stemmed from his basic distrust of Nixon, who'd begged for files related to the Diem assassination because he "wanted to know what happened" but who'd in fact then made them available to Colson and Hunt, to assist in their creation of a false history implicating JFK. 

In any event, the Watergate burglars got caught, and Nixon tried (and temporarily succeeded) in strong-arming Helms (via the threat about the "Bay of Pigs" thing) into letting the early investigators believe the burglars were working for the CIA. At a certain point, the assistant director Vernon Walters prevailed and the CIA stopped pretending the burglars were working for them. Within a few months, Helms was forced out. Within a few weeks of his ouster, James McCord, who was 1) fearful of spending years in jail, 2) disgusted with the Justice Dept.s failure to properly investigate the Watergate break-in, and 3) disgusted with Helms' ouster by Nixon for political reasons, decided to blow the whistle on the Nixon administration and admit the "burglars" had all committed perjury to protect Nixon and his minions.

While some like to pretend this was all part of a CIA plot to "get" Nixon, this doesn't stand up to close scrutiny, in that the "burglars" all kept their silence until after Nixon had been re-elected, and after Helms was no longer DCI. The more realistic interpretation is that McCord didn't want to serve the time he was expected to serve if he didn't cooperate, and that his disgust with Nixon and his corrupt administration was sincere. At the time, moreover, McCord became friendly with a number of prominent members of the JFK research community, and they saw him as someone who shared their agenda of fighting corruption and making the government more transparent. 

And yes, I know, it's become fashionable to make the CIA out to be a "boogeyman" in all instances, but when it comes to Watergate it's clear to those who've read mountains of testimony and autobiography after autobiography after autobiography, that the CIA was not the "boogeyman" in this instance, and that in comparison to the Nixon White House, the Justice Dept., and FBI, the CIA was squeaky clean.

 

 

Pat S.-

I am aware of the rhetorical "Who shot John" expression.  But Nixon used the expression within a context that was perhaps indicative. 

"On that October morning 50 years ago, the cagey CIA Director Helms was mute in response to Nixon’s “The ‘Who shot John?’ angle” gambit.

Nixon then badgered Helms with a bewildering string of questions regarding responsibility or indirect culpability for Kennedy’s death.

“Is Eisenhower to blame? Is Kennedy to blame? Is Johnson to blame? Is Nixon to blame? Etc., etc.” asked Nixon. “It may become, not by me, a very vigorous issue but if it does, I need to know what is necessary to protect frankly the intelligence gathering and the dirty tricks department and I will protect it.”

---30---

Well, I certainly wouldn't convict the CIA based on a possibly rhetorical question regarding the JFKA. 

But the fact remains, Nixon asked to see the Bay of Pigs files and was sandbagged by the CIA. Whatever you think about Nixon, or any President, if they can be sandbagged on files requests, then...who is running the show? If the intel agencies feel they can disregard a President....

Also, 

"Rob Roy Ratliff, the CIA’s liaison on the National Security Council, in 1974 provided an affidavit to the House Judiciary Committee, when it was weighing articles of impeachment against President Nixon.[8]

Ratliff swore that Hunt, while ensconced in the White House, had used secure agency couriers to send sealed pouches to CIA Director Helms on a regular basis.

Rather than being Nixon’s lever against the CIA, more likely Hunt was a mole for the agency, working in the White House. Like the old joke, Nixon’s paranoia did not mean no one was out to get him."

 

---30---

So...was Hunt still a CIA man, or a Nixon loyalist? 

Hey, I think Nixon should have been impeached and booted from office, and maybe imprisoned, for what he did in Laos alone, let alone the rest of SE Asia.

The Watergate burglary sure had a lot of CIA people involved, and such people almost never cross the agency.  Not in testimony or recollections. If I remember correctly, at least four of burglars were CIA or former CIA. 

Well, long time ago. Nixon also advised burgling Brookings Institution and then setting it on fire to cover the tracks. Who knows? 

I am still trying to figure out how 10 to 20 unarmed Proud Boys could successfully penetrate the Capitol, which has a 3,500-officer force, all armed. And nearly all somewhere else, that day. 

 

 

 

 

[Pat Speer]

6 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Pat S.-

I am aware of the rhetorical "Who shot John" expression.  But Nixon used the expression within a context that was perhaps indicative. 

"On that October morning 50 years ago, the cagey CIA Director Helms was mute in response to Nixon’s “The ‘Who shot John?’ angle” gambit.

Nixon then badgered Helms with a bewildering string of questions regarding responsibility or indirect culpability for Kennedy’s death.

“Is Eisenhower to blame? Is Kennedy to blame? Is Johnson to blame? Is Nixon to blame? Etc., etc.” asked Nixon. “It may become, not by me, a very vigorous issue but if it does, I need to know what is necessary to protect frankly the intelligence gathering and the dirty tricks department and I will protect it.”

---30---

Well, I certainly wouldn't convict the CIA based on a possibly rhetorical question regarding the JFKA. 

But the fact remains, Nixon asked to see the Bay of Pigs files and was sandbagged by the CIA. Whatever you think about Nixon, or any President, if they can be sandbagged on files requests, then...who is running the show? If the intel agencies feel they can disregard a President....

Also, 

"Rob Roy Ratliff, the CIA’s liaison on the National Security Council, in 1974 provided an affidavit to the House Judiciary Committee, when it was weighing articles of impeachment against President Nixon.[8]

Ratliff swore that Hunt, while ensconced in the White House, had used secure agency couriers to send sealed pouches to CIA Director Helms on a regular basis.

Rather than being Nixon’s lever against the CIA, more likely Hunt was a mole for the agency, working in the White House. Like the old joke, Nixon’s paranoia did not mean no one was out to get him."

 

---30---

So...was Hunt still a CIA man, or a Nixon loyalist? 

Hey, I think Nixon should have been impeached and booted from office, and maybe imprisoned, for what he did in Laos alone, let alone the rest of SE Asia.

The Watergate burglary sure had a lot of CIA people involved, and such people almost never cross the agency.  Not in testimony or recollections. If I remember correctly, at least four of burglars were CIA or former CIA. 

Well, long time ago. Nixon also advised burgling Brookings Institution and then setting it on fire to cover the tracks. Who knows? 

I am still trying to figure out how 10 to 20 unarmed Proud Boys could successfully penetrate the Capitol, which has a 3,500-officer force, all armed. And nearly all somewhere else, that day. 

 

 

 

 

Three things on Watergate. One is that the Nixon quote about who shot John was in reference to the Bay of Pigs, and that Morley has extended that into being about the JFK assassination, when it may very well have not been a reference to the JFK assassination. Two is that Hunt's being a mole is pretty silly, seeing as he was hired because he had ongoing connections to the CIA, and could use them to get access to materials (such as disguises) that he could then use while being Nixon's personal spook. These CIA connections were also helpful in the assembly of the "Plumbers" unit, some of whom thought they were working for the CIA, and not just Nixon. These men all kept their silence and were willing to rot in jail for the CIA/Nixon (which they largely saw as equivalent seeing as the Dems to their minds had "lost" the Bay of Pigs, and would almost certainly make nice with Castro.). But McCord had worked with Mitchell and knew damn well who and what was behind it all. Three is that the United States is not a monarchy and that the President does not have ultimate authority to look through every file and/or falsify files and put them in the record just because he feels like it. To my understanding Helms smelled that Nixon wanted access to top secret info so he could use it for political gain, and that Helms pushed back, only to give in to Nixon's wishes. In my opinion this was the right thing to do, but that upon giving in to Nixon's wishes he should have immediately informed members of the Senate Intelligence committee what was happening. 

Now, two points on Trump. One is that upon his potential return to power, he plans on re-making the government so that every employee in the executive branch is personally beholden to him and personally loyal to him. The litmus test for their continued employment would be whether or not they think he won the last election. That's crazy town but also familiar. In Haldeman's book he relates that Nixon planned a similar purge in his second term, but that these plans were de-railed by Watergate. In any event, I think most Americans would agree that it's not a good idea for a President to surround himself with unqualified and marginally-qualified sycophants, at the expense of seasoned professionals. Such a thing is a recipe for fascism/disaster. Two is that your statement about the Proud Boys is deceptive. It wasn't 10 to 20 Proud Boys vs. 3,500 officers. It was 10-20 Proud Boys mixed in with what? 5,000 rioters...against a thousand or so officers under orders not to shoot...seeing as these rioters were supporters of the sitting President and were there at his urging. Although I haven't followed the investigations as close as I'd like, it was clear from the get-go that there was a lot of foot-dragging among the military about supporting the police and helping to fight the riot, and that what little help arrived came at the urging of Mike Pence, who saw that Trump was behind the riot and knew if he didn't act nothing would get done. This is what you should be worried about, IMO. We had a President who'd lost the faith of his cabinet, but they wouldn't invoke the 25th amendment when they saw he was grossly derelict in his duties, and was actively seeking the physical harm of congress and the potential murder of his vice-president. 

So, in short, the real threat is not not the "deep state." The real threat is the obsequious nature of suck-ups, who will let a President indulge his whims and revenge fantasies, at the possible expense of democracy. 

[Steven Kossor]

Pat, I sincerely appreciate the depth and breadth of your analytic skills.  Thanks so much for weighing in here.

[W. Niederhut]

     Based on my reading of Jim Hougan's book, Secret Agenda, and a number of previous commentaries on the subject by forum members here, I beg to differ with Pat Speer's (above) thesis that Watergate wasn't, essentially, a CIA op-- with a major assist by the CIA's mouthpiece at WaPo, Bob Woodward. 

    (Apologies in advance, Pat, if I'm misinterpreting your position.)

    The burglars, obviously, weren't all the President's men.  My question (above) was whether Nixon and Mitchell believed, before the Watergate burglary botch job, that CIA men like Hunt and McCord were actually assisting Nixon's re-election campaign (CREEP) with their dirty tricks expertise-- only to realize later that the CIA had double-crossed them and put them over a barrel.

    Here's a salient Peter Dale Scott reference on the subject of CIA motives for setting up Nixon in Watergate, from an old forum Secret Agenda thread, posted by Robert Montenegro in May of 2020.  (Italics mine.)

 

In Professor Peter Dale Scott's "The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America", we find the following startling information about USN Lt. Woodward's boss, ADM. Moorer on pages 46-48:

QUOTE — "...Other leaks of Nixon-Kissinger excesses in foreign policy, notably the December 1971 of the 'tilt toward Pakistan,' provoked frenzied investigation by the White House Plumbers. Eventually this investigation revealed that the source of the leak, navy yeoman Charles Radford, had been systematically stealing White House documents and passing them, via his navy superior, Admiral Robert Welander, to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Admiral Thomas Moorer. In retrospect, it seems clear that the primary JCS motive for conspiratorial spying on the White House was dislike of Nixon's and above all Kissinger's policies of detente and coexistence with the Soviet bloc and China. As historian Stanley Kutler wrote in his Wars of Watergate: 'Moorer bitterly remembered what he regarded as foolish and soft policies toward North Vietnam. His successor as chief naval operations, Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., came close to accusing Nixon and Kissinger of treason and Kissinger of being a Soviet sympathizer'..."

"...James McCord, the principle architect of the Watergate break-in, which was surely set up to be disclosed, expressed a paranoia about Kissinger that exceeded even that of Moorer and Zumwalt. In a newsletter he put out in the aftermath of Watergate, 'McCord put forward a right-wing conspiracy theory that the Rockefeller family was lunging for complete control over the government's critical national security functions, using the Council on Foreign Relations and Henry Kissinger as its surrogates.' McCord's mind-set is of interest not only because he was a principal conspirator in the Watergate break-in, but also because of his role as an Air Force Reserve colonel in an obscure program of the Office of Emergency Preparedness (the predecessor to FEMA). His group was responsible for contingency plans, 'in the event of a national emergency...for imposing censorship [and] preventive detention of civilian 'security risks,' who would be placed in military 'camps'..."

"...Much more threatening to the presidency was probably the opposition of James Angleton, head of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton eventually came to "pronounce Kissinger 'objectively, a Soviet agent.' But Angleton had a more immediate reason to oppose Nixon after November 20, 1972, the day Nixon at Camp David notified Richard Helms he would be replaced as head of CIA. Helms and Angleton had been two of the last survivors of the Dulles "inner circle" within CIA..." — END QUOTE.

 

Edited July 29, 2022 by W. Niederhut