American Conspiracies - Jesse Ventura [55]
On details of the Watergate burglary, the president seemed confused. Who ordered it? he asked Haldeman. Who was so stupid as to have given a CREEP check for $25,000 to Barker? Then Nixon instructed his aide to tell Helms: “The President’s belief is that this is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And, ah because ah these people are playing for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI in and we feel that ... that we wish for the country, don’t go any further into this case, period!”
That afternoon, Helms and his deputy were summoned to the White House, where Haldeman passed on Nixon’s message. In his memoirs, Haldeman wrote: “Turmoil in the room, Helms gripping the arms of his chair, leaning forward and shouting, ‘The Bay of Pigs has nothing to do with this. I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs.’ Silence. I just sat there. I was absolutely shocked by Helms’s violent reaction.” Haldeman reported back to Nixon that there was “no problem,” any leads “that would be harmful to the CIA and harmful to the government” would be ignored.
The White House tape of that conversation trails off cryptically, full of “unintelligible” remarks. “Dulles knew,” Nixon said, referring to Allen Dulles, CIA director at the time of the Bay of Pigs who was fired by JFK and later named by LBJ to the Warren Commission. “Dulles told me. I know, I mean [unintelligible] had the telephone call. Remember, I had a call put in—Dulles just blandly said and knew why [unintelligible] covert operation—do anything else [unintelligible] .” Those “unintelligibles” might have told us something, wouldn’t you guess?
The next day—seven days now since the Watergate burglars’ arrest—on the tapes Nixon made some more “unintelligible” remarks about Hale Boggs, the Louisiana congressman who had been another member of the Warren Commission and a dissenter to its conclusion that Oswald acted alone. A few weeks after whatever Nixon said about him, Boggs died in the crash of a light aircraft over Alaska. Some suspected sabotage. The Los Angeles Star (November 22, 1973) reported that “Boggs had startling revelations on Watergate and the assassination of President Kennedy.”18
The Mullen company’s man in Washington, Robert Bennett, met with his CIA case officer, Martin Lukoskie, in a Washington cafeteria. Lukoskie’s memo was considered so sensitive that he hand-carried it to Helms, saying Bennett had steered reporters at the Washington Post and Star away from pursuing a coup d’etat-type scenario that would tie the CIA into a Watergate conspiracy. Bennett later admitted feeding stories to Bob Woodward at the Post—“with the understanding that there be no attribution.” It’s yet another black mark against our media that the Post chose not to examine potential CIA complicity to any extent—despite the fact that every one of the Plumbers had a clear-cut CIA connection!
Eleven days after Hunt was arrested, the FBI’s acting director, L. Patrick Gray, was summoned to the White house and instructed by Ehrlichman to deep-six the files from Hunt’s personal safe. Gray recalled being told that the files were “political dynamite and clearly should not see the light of day.” Gray said he took the material home and burned it in his fireplace.19 Hunt began to threaten the White House with public disclosure of his other secret activities, unless he was paid off.
The House Banking Committee was starting to look into the Watergate break-in, so Nixon brought up the name of congressman Gerald Ford. “Gerry has really got to lead on this,” Nixon said. “I think Ehrlichman should talk to him. ... He’s got to know it comes from the top.” Not long after that, the banking committee voted against issuing subpoenas concerning the break-in.
Why Ford? Almost a decade earlier, it was Nixon