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As the fortieth anniversary of
the June 17th, 1972 Watergate break-in approaches, the momentous
events responsible for bringing about the resignation of President Richard
M. Nixon remain a deeply shrouded mystery to most Americans. The revelation
and confirmation of former FBI deputy director W. Mark Felt as the
legendary whistleblower "Deep Throat" in the Watergate Scandal
brings them no closer to solving that mystery. This is because most of what
they think they know about Watergate is simply wrong.
As a high school history
instructor I have discovered that Watergate is a series of mysterious
events to which my students sadly have little or no knowledge (other than
Forrest Gump had difficulty sleeping in his Washington, D. C. hotel room
because of some flashing lights from the adjacent Watergate complex).
This article will attempt to
focus light upon this subject in the hope such illumination will foster
understanding of this crucial episode in American history.
To older Americans, Watergate
was a vast scandal involving presidential abuse of power.
It was about a Nixon
administration out of control – obstructing justice – concocting enemies
lists of Nixon critics – soliciting illegal campaign contributions – using
"dirty tricks" against electoral opponents – and most importantly
– the June 17th, 1972 burglary of Democratic National Committee
(DNC) chairman Larry O’Brien’s office in the Watergate complex by men
linked to the Republican’s Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) and
the Nixon White House.
It is this last item which
remains the central fact most Americans recall concerning the scandal, for
it was the subject of months of televised public hearings by Senator Sam
Ervin’s Watergate Committee and numerous criminal trials and
investigations.
The events surrounding the
Watergate break-ins were also the basis of the Academy Award winning film, All The President’s Men, starring Robert
Redford and Dustin Hoffman, based on the acclaimed number one best-seller
of the same name, by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl
Bernstein, who Redford and Hoffman portray. In this Watergate of the
imagination, actor Hal Holbrook masterfully captured the cinematic persona
of the elusive informant "Deep Throat."
Few Americans, including I
daresay most journalists, have read the scores of Watergate-related books
and published Congressional committee reports. But they have seen All
The President’s Men. The movie has become their reality of that series
of events that gripped our nation.
The "Good Guys" as
seen by the American public: Washington Post reporters Woodward and
Bernstein who courageously exposed the details of the Watergate Scandal,
the shadowy whistleblower "Deep Throat," and the heroic fired
White House Counsel to the President John Dean, who was the chief witness
against Richard Nixon.
The "Bad Guys" as seen
by the American public: the evil Machiavellian President Richard M. Nixon,
his malevolent Attorney General John Mitchell, his manipulative
presidential aides H. R. Halderman and John Ehirichman, the sinister G.
Gordon Liddy, the enigmatic E. Howard Hunt, and the numerous CREEP/Nixon
administration officials and creepy minions who went to prison.
But Larry O’Brien’s office was
not the target of the break-ins.
John Dean was not
the selfless hero testifying to dark deeds of an evil Richard Nixon.
Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein were not all
they seemed in the mythos of the Watergate legend.
And "Deep Throat," W. Mark Felt, it has been revealed, may have been more motivated by
revenge at not being appointed successor to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover by
Nixon and by protecting the Bureau’s imperial turf from outsider L. Patrick
Gray, than by convictions of conscience and dedication to the rule of law.
Felt was no Hal
Holbrook.
At the epicenter of Watergate
was a sex scandal involving a Washington, D. C. call-girl ring. This
crucial fact is little known to the vast numbers of the American public who
think they know the real story of Watergate but only know the myth created
and fostered by secret forces at the heart of the mystery.
1n 1972, at the offices of the
Democratic National Committee in the vast Watergate complex, the executive
director of the Association of Democratic State Chairmen was R. Spenser
Oliver, Jr. Oliver was the nephew of Robert F. Bennett. Bennett, president
of the public relations firm (and CIA front), Robert R. Mullen and Company,
employed two men who were fierce rivals, Oliver’s father and E. Howard
Hunt, longtime CIA operative and handler of the Watergate burglars (all
former CIA operatives) at the time of the Watergate break-in. According to
investigative journalist Jim Hougan, Bennett was a key source for Woodward
and Bernstein’s Washington Post "investigations." His
mission was to feed them disinformation to steer them clear of the CIA
involvement in the affair and possibly the true significance of his nephew
in the scandal.
Bennett was also plugged into
Washington super-lawyer and powerbroker Edward Bennett Williams,
whose important clients included the Democratic National Committee, The
Washington Post, CIA director
Richard Helms, and Senator Edward Kennedy. Watergate Judge
John Sirica was one of Williams’ closest friends – "I owe my career to
Ed Williams."
Spencer Oliver, Jr. was a
longtime associate of the sleazy attorney/pimp
Phillip Mackin
Bailey who set up the DNC connection to
Heidi Rikin’s Columbia Plaza call-girl operation. Bailey arranged with
an inside DNC contact to have a secure phone and confidential descriptive
information on the call-girls available for potential clients. It was the
desk and telephone of Oliver’s secretary, Ida Maxine Wells that was the
target of the Watergate break-ins. Burglar Eugenio Martinez had a key to
that desk when arrested on June 17th, 1972. The key lay in the
National Archives for two decades before anyone realized its significance.
Oliver later became chief
council for the Senate committee investigating the 1980 Reagan campaign
"October Surprise" scandal (which resulted in a similar massive
cover-up of evidence and truth of that affair) while his uncle, Robert
Bennett went on to a vice presidency of the Summa Corporation, reclusive
billionaire Howard Hughes’s flagship operation.
The CIA had allegedly been
secretly running Summa for decades.
Robert
Maheu, the CIA’s middleman in the
CIA-Mafia assassination plots against Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, was
Hughes’s right-hand man and alter ego. According to Jim Hougan, the
"super-connected" Robert A. Maheu
Associates firm found office space with Kennedy family spook Carmine
Bellino, sharing Bellino’s secretary and telephone. Many persons assumed
Maheu and Bellino were partners. Bellino had served at John F. Kennedy
and Robert F. Kennedy’s side on the McClellan Senate Investigating
Committee on Labor Racketeering, targeting New Orleans Mob boss Carlos
Marcello, Chicago Mob boss Sam Giancana, and Teamster president Jimmy
Hoffa. Indeed Bellino was a key figure in RFK’s war against Hoffa. Bellino
was appointed chief investigator for the Senate Watergate Committee.
Robert Maheu was also closely connected
with attorney Edward Bennett Williams.
Earlier in the 1950s, Maheu was
instrumental in the multinational oil companies’ conspiracy to destroy
Greek oil tanker tycoon Aristotle Onassis, which involved Vice President
Richard Nixon, CIA director Allen Dulles (former senior partner of the
nation’s most powerful law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, who represented the
Rockefeller’s Standard Oil interests), future Chief Justice of the United
States Warren Burger, the Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank chairman John
J. McCloy, and attorney Edward Bennett Williams.
Nixon nemesis Onassis later
married Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of the slain JFK.
Dulles and McCloy later served
on the Warren Commission.
Warren Commission Special
Counsel Leon Jaworski, who investigated Lee Harvey Oswald for possible CIA
or FBI connections, and found none, was later selected by Richard Nixon to
be Watergate Special Prosecutor, after firing Archibald Cox in what was
described as the "Saturday Night Massacre."
In the last days before his
death, former CIA official and Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt, in a
recorded confession to his son St. John Hunt described his involvement in a
conspiracy to kill President John F. Kennedy. Other alleged conspirators named by Hunt included CIA
operatives Cord Meyer, David Atlee Phillips, Frank Sturgis, David
Morales, William Harvey, and vice president Lyndon Baines
Johnson.
Warren Commission member Gerald
R. Ford succeeded Nixon as president, pardoning him of all crimes he may
have committed. Ford, in an intriguing post-Watergate gesture, offered the
Directorship of the CIA to Edward Bennett Williams. Williams declined the
position. The appointment was later accepted by Nixon
loyalist, George H. W. Bush, the chairman of the Republican National Committee
during the unfolding Watergate Scandal.
Again, citing Jim Hougan: "Organized in 1954, Robert A. Maheu
Associates became the prototype for the ‘Mission Impossible’ television
series, handling CIA assignments so sensitive that the federal spooks dared
not perform themselves. In short, it was dirty work, involving prostitution,
pornography, illegal wiretaps, (and) assassination. . . According to Joe Shimon, one of Maheu’s oldest friends, ‘Bob was a pimp for the Cookie Factory. What I mean is, The Agency (CIA) would
call him up when Sukarno or Hussein (the late King of Jordan long on the
CIA’s payroll) was coming to town, and ask him to get some girls."
Shimon appeared as the mysterious "Doctor Peters" featured in the
A & E documentary, The Plot To
Assassinate President Kennedy. He was the chief of detectives for
Washington’s upscale Northwest quadrant where almost all of our nation’s
capitol’s foreign embassies are located. Shimon was a close friend of
Mob figures Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli, both involved with Maheu
in the CIA-Mafia Castro assassination plots and both brutally murdered for
what they knew. Shimon was at early Miami meetings of these anti-Castro
conspirators.
Billionaire Howard Hughes was one of
Robert Bennett’s principal clients, a contract held earlier by Larry
O’Brien, chairman of the DNC at the time of the break-ins. Bennett was the long-time United States Senator from
Utah recently defeated in the 2010 GOP primary. (Do not get this Robert F.
Bennett confused with Robert S. Bennett, President Clinton’s lawyer in the Paula Jones
sexual harassment affair, Enron’s Washington attorney, Reagan
administration Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger’s Iran-Contra Scandal
lawyer, and attorney for the Keating Five in the Reagan administration’s
1980’s multibillion dollar Savings and Loan Scandal. That Robert Bennett is
the brother of Neoconservative warmonger and former Reagan Drug Czar, the
crazed William J. Bennett.)
Who Was "Deep Throat?"
For decades, the nation’s elite
news media played a "parlor game" concerning the Watergate
Scandal. The "game" was to keep the nation guessing the true
identity of Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein’s
famous source of information on the scandal, who they labeled "Deep
Throat" after a notorious porno movie of the period starring actress
Linda Lovelace. In an ironic twist of fate, Richard Nixon and Linda
Lovelace both died on April 22nd, the former in 1994, the later
in 2002.
Speculation was
rife. "Deep Throat" candidates included Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, former director of the Office of Naval Intelligence,
the National Security Agency, and deputy director of the CIA (who used to be briefed by Bob Woodward
when he was communications duty officer of the Chief of Naval Operations, one of the most elite and trusted assignments for a
young officer in the National Security Establishment); or Washington
powerbroker and fixer Edward Bennett Williams; or CIA counter-intelligence official Richard
Ober – a close friend of Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee;
or former NATO Commander/Nixon White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig
(also briefed regularly by Woodward when he as a briefing officer at the Pentagon).
A host of Nixon administration
appointees suspected of disloyalty to their chief were also tossed in the
ring.
But all that came to an end in
2005 with the May 31st Vanity Fair story revealing that
Felt was "Deep Throat." You could see the utter disappointment on
the faces of the Cable News Network talking heads and their guests the day
the news broke.
This self-interested
"parlor game" was part of the media misdirection/disinformation
effort to keep the public focused on "Deep Throat," and not on
the real story of Watergate – why were the two break-ins undertaken by Hunt
and Liddy’s burglars?
To paraphrase X (Colonel L.
Fletcher Prouty played by actor Donald Sutherland in Oliver Stone’s movie,
JFK) – "Who planned the break-ins? Who stood to benefit? And who has
the power to cover it up? Who?"
The answer: John Dean.
John Dean masterminded the whole
Watergate affair, from the break-ins, the cover-ups and obstructions of
justice, to ratting out Nixon, and emerging as the hero of the scandal.
Why were the break-ins planned? The first
was planned by John Dean to get sexual dirt on the Democrats concerning the
Columbia Plaza call-girl ring which had the DNC at the Watergate as one of
its contact points for clients. Nine days after this initial break-in,
Phillip Mackin Bailey was busted by federal authorities. Upon examination
of the evidence compiled by the assistant U. S. attorney
in charge of this case, John Rudy, Bailey’s address book was discovered by White House
Counsel John Dean to have the name and phone number of "Mo Biner"
under the reference "clout." Mo was Dean’s vivacious blonde
girlfriend, Maureen Biner, roommate of Erika L. "Heidi" Rikin
(aka Cathy Dieter), the madam of the call-girl ring and mistress of
Washington, D. C. Mob boss Joseph Nesline – an associate of the powerful
organized crime Syndicate’s Meyer Lansky – and also roommate of Josephine Alvarez, Nesline’s wife.
Dean quickly
married Maureen, for
a wife cannot testify against her husband. A photograph of "my
very dear friend Heidi" who attended their wedding appears in Maureen
Dean’s book, Mo: A Woman’s View of Watergate.
"Heidi" had performed as a stripper at Washington’s Blue
Mirror Club in the mid 1960s and had long been associated
with prostitution in the D. C. area.
The second break-in was
necessary for John Dean to find out if Mo’s picture and confidential
information was in the sexual client book in the locked desk of secretary Ida Maxine Wells in the DNC’s Watergate office, and thus possibly lead
back to implicating him.
In other words, the real
unanswered question of Watergate was never: "Who was ‘Deep
Throat?’" or "What did the President know, and when did he know
it?"
The real question remains:
"WAS MO A HO?" But the elite media will never go there in a
million years.
And since the
infamous John and Maureen Dean/G. Gordon Liddy civil law suit about all
this controversy was settled without going to trial, and the wiretap
transcripts of Ida Maxine Wells’ bugged phone used for the
sexual liaisons have been sealed by a federal judge, we may never know the full truth.
On March 27th of this
year I had the distinct honor of addressing those two wonderful fabulists,
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, spinners of the yarn known as Watergate.
These aging gatekeepers of the mainstream media were in town to deliver the
University of Tulsa’s Presidential Lecture (sponsored by the Darcy O’Brien
Endowed Chair). After these gentlemen had once again returned the
spell-bound yet geriatric audience to those thrilling days of yesteryear
four decades past, re-telling the lurid tales of Nixon, Liddy, Hunt,
McCord, Mitchell, Halderman, etc. I expressed to them just how pleased I
was to finally meet the Brothers Grimm of our national mythos, and that one
day in the future I will perhaps meet Hans Christian Anderson himself, John
Dean. Then we may finally address the real question at the heart of
Watergate. It was not, of course, the identity of "Deep Throat,"
or "What did the president know and when did he know it." The
real question remains: "Was Mo a Ho?" The audience gasped! You
should have seen the look on Woodward’s face as he struggled to explain (or
as he put it, decode), the meaning of my interrogatory. Priceless! I then
stated that my true question was actually directed at Mr. Bernstein, author
of the brilliant article, "The CIA and the Media." I pointed out
that he had outlined in his piece how the Central Intelligence Agency had
engaged in covert activities with the nations’ press described as "the
Mighty Wurlitzer" or "Operation Mockingbird." Was the intelligence community engaged in
such activities today? We can all sleep better tonight since Bernstein reassured
me that all that kind of stuff ended at the conclusion of the Cold War.
Woodward equally reassured us that "the system worked" because
Gerald Ford did the right thing in pardoning Richard Nixon.
The Saturday Night Massacre
Congress had passed legislation
providing for an independent special prosecutor to investigate Watergate.
Nixon Attorney General Elliot Richardson appointed his former Harvard Law professor Archibald Cox.
Cox was the epitome of a card-carrying member of the Ivy League, eastern seaboard,
anti-Nixon liberal Establishment. He had served as
JFK’s 1960 campaign speechwriter and later as Kennedy’s Solicitor General
in the Justice Department.
Among those present at the ceremony of Cox
repeating his oath of office were two longtime friends, Senator Edward
Kennedy and his sister-in-law Ethel Kennedy, widow of Attorney General
Robert Kennedy, under whom Cox had served.
Eliot Richardson
himself came from the liberal Rockefeller-wing of the eastern
Establishment, and was chosen by Nixon to placate these elements.
Nixon was deeply suspicious of
Cox and his motives in widening his investigation beyond the Watergate
break-ins and cover-up, and with good reason: of the thirty-seven lawyers
Cox recruited, all but one were Ivy Leaguers, eighteen from Harvard; most
were Democrats; many had worked in the Justice Department under Bobby
Kennedy or Nicholas dfB. Katzenbach who succeeded Kennedy. They were
determined to get Nixon.
On October 20,
1973, Nixon ordered Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused and
resigned. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Rucklehaus to
fire Cox, Rucklehaus refused and was fired. Nixon then ordered the acting
Attorney General, Solicitor General Robert Bork to fire Cox, which
he did.
The nation was outraged by this
series of impromptu actions. Bumper stickers soon emerged around the
country proclaiming – IMPEACH THE COX SACKER!
Nixon then appointed Leon
Jaworski as Special Prosecutor.
The Tapes Which Brought Down A
President
Alexander
Butterfield had enjoyed a distinguished
career in military intelligence when he went to work for the Nixon White
House senior staff. He was one of the most important persons surrounding
Nixon. Butterfield was involved in virtually every aspect of activity
relating to the day-to-day decisions of the president.
Butterfield was
also a CIA plant within the highest echelons of
the White House, and his pivotal role in the ensuing outcome of the
Watergate Scandal cannot be overestimated. He was not the only such covert
agent spying on the Nixon White House for the National Security
Establishment. The Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, distrusting
certain Nixon foreign policy initiatives, had run an elaborate military
espionage operation within the administration. There were secret
forces who wanted to see Nixon go.
Butterfield was
called to testify before the Senate Watergate Committee. He revealed the
existence of a sophisticated White House Oval Office taping system which
had recorded every important conversation relating to Watergate and the
crimes of the Nixon administration. [Then
APPOINTED FAA CHIEF…?!]
The shocking contents of the
June 23rd, 1972 Oval Office tape discussing Richard Nixon’s and
John Dean’s strategy for the obstruction of justice regarding the June 17th
Watergate break-in has gone down in
history as the "smoking gun," which led to Nixon’s ultimate destruction and
resignation.
The Washington Post and the CIA
The Washington Post has long held a close relationship within the
Washington power elite Establishment. In the 1950s under the direction of
CIA Director Allen Dulles, the Agency formulated a vast strategic program
for infiltrating and manipulating the American news media. The plan was
designated "Operation Mockingbird." It was devised by Frank
Wisner, director of the Office of Policy Coordination, the covert action
arm of the CIA; his aide Richard Helms; and by Washington Post
publisher Phillip Graham. Graham committed suicide in August of 1963 after
reported mental instability and ravings about CIA manipulation of
journalists. His estranged wife Katherine Graham took control of the Post.
Katherine was daughter of Washington powerbroker Eugene Meyer, who was
chairman of the War Finance Board under Woodrow Wilson, chairman of the
Reconstruction Finance Corporation under Herbert Hoover, Governor of the
Federal Reserve Board under Franklin Roosevelt, and President of the World
Bank under Harry Truman. Meyer purchased the Post in 1933.
Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, who supervised Woodward and
Bernstein’s Watergate investigations, was well connected in Washington
circles of power. He had been a close friend of President Kennedy and his
wife Jacqueline. In fact, Bradlee’s sister-in-law, Mary Pinchot Meyer, former wife of high-ranking CIA counter-intelligence
official Cord Meyer, had a sexual affair with JFK, allegedly involving the
use of Marijuana and LSD. Mary Pinchot Meyer was mysteriously murdered in
1964. Richard Helms, instrumental in the creation of "Operation
Mockingbird," was a close friend of Bradlee’s since childhood.
Helms was CIA Director during the Watergate Scandal.
He was later convicted for lying to Congress concerning CIA activities in
Chile.
Woodward, former Naval
Intelligence elite briefing officer of the highest ranking officials of the
National Security Council and the Pentagon, is now editor of the Post.
In the nearly forty years since the Watergate Scandal he has built his
career reputation as author of a series of best-selling books on America’s
military/intelligence Establishment. Bob Woodward has indeed proved to be a
good and faithful servant to those secret forces within the corridors of
power of the National Security Establishment responsible for the downfall
of Richard Nixon, and loyal to the elusive man which contributed so much to
building that reputation, W. Mark Felt.
[Coming SOON to
BlackNET near you:
J. Edgar’s FOPPISH-TWEE
GAY BOY…and THE LAVENDAR BUND, NYC/Baltimore MOB-owned Gay BAR Circuit.
Even HAVE their own enforcement division, surpervised by Chicago Outfit
attorney Sid Korshak. DEM, the skirt-chaser par excellence.]
A streaming video
version of the classic A & E documentary, The Key To Watergate,
which inspired this article, is available at this site.
June 16, 2012
Charles A. Burris [send him
mail] teaches history in the Murray N. Rothbard Room at Memorial
High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Copyright © 2012 Charles A.
Burris
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