American Conspiracies - Jesse Ventura [53]
Soon after this, Nixon renewed his pursuit of the CIA’s records. He sent an order to Ehrlichman: Tell Helms to fork over “the full file [on the Bay of Pigs] or else.” So Ehrlichman went to see Helms, twice within four days. At the second meeting, Helms asked to see Nixon privately once again. A transcript of their tape-recorded session in the Oval Office on October 8, 1971, was released by the National Archives in 2000. Would somebody tell me why a potential bombshell like this had to wait thirty years for us to know about, after all of the participants are dead? Before Helms came into the room, Ehrlichman briefed Nixon on the CIA director’s latest excuse for not turning over the documents:
“[Helms] said that his relationship with past presidents had been such that he would not feel comfortable about releasing some of this very, very dirty linen to anyone without first talking it through with you, because he was sure that when you become a former president you would want to feel that whoever was at the agency was protecting your interests in a similar fashion. This is incredibly dirty linen.” Ehrlichman then continued: “Helms is scared to death of this guy Hunt that we got working for us because he knows where a lot of the bodies are buried. And Helms is a bureaucrat first and he’s protecting that bureau.”
When Helms arrived, Nixon pounded his desk and shouted: “The president needs to know everything! The real thing you need to have from me is this assurance: I am not going to embarrass the CIA! Because it’s (certainly?) important. Second, I believe in dirty tricks.” (Ehrlichman’s notes quote Nixon as saying to Helms: “Purpose of request for documents: must be fully advised in order to know what to duck; won’t hurt Agency, nor attack predecessor.”)
Helms, at least pretending to be contrite, responded: “I regard myself, you know, really, as working entirely for you. And everything I’ve got is yours.” He held up a file folder and continued, “Should I turn this over to John [Ehrlichman]?” Nixon said, “Let me see it.”12 It was a slim report by a Marine colonel who’d been assisting the CIA during the Bay of Pigs planning. In his memoirs, Nixon would complain that what Helms gave him was “incomplete ... The CIA protects itself, even from presidents.”
The day after the meeting with Helms, Ehrlichman sent a staffer to Las Vegas for a four-hour chat with Hank Greenspun. It wasn’t long after that when Hunt and his team of Cuban exiles began their discussions about burglarizing Greenspun’s safe. The CIA’s Office of Security already had 16 agents shadowing columnist Jack Anderson, who then was invited by Helms to a long lunch. Ostensibly Helms wanted to try to dissuade Anderson “from publishing certain sensitive classified material in his forthcoming book.” A week after that, Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy started drawing up plans to “neutralize” Anderson. The CIA Office of Security was using another “retired” agent, James McCord, to keep tabs on the columnist. McCord also began working part-time at the White House for the CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect the President). Nixon would be gone when, in 1975, the CIA admitted to Congress its “practice of detailing CIA employees to the White House and various government agencies,” including “intimate components of the Office of the President.” And we thought double agents only worked against foreign elements!
Hunt and McCord had been acquainted since the mid-Fifties, although Hunt lied under oath that they didn’t meet until April 1972. McCord, according to the New York Times, was “believed to have played a role in the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.” The CIA denied that, but recently released documents show that in early 1961, “James McCord and David (Atlee) Phillips ... launched a domestic operation against the FPCC.” That’s the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, the same organization that Oswald suddenly joined in 1962. And David Phillips was not only involved in the