Chapter Ten

EXCERPTS:

Ehrlichman has been one of the most bitter victims of Watergate.  Sentenced to twenty months to five years in a federal penitentiary for his part in the break-in of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, Ehrlichman said:  

"It's tough when we go to jail for the Ellsberg break-in and the son-of-a-bitch who ordered it gets the Nobel Prize for Peace." The S.O.B. referred to was, of course, Henry Kissinger.

WATERGATE AND THE CIA

     The word "Watergate" was seared into the national conscience when, following President Nixon's carefully crafted landslide re-election in 1972, a series of innuendoes, rumors, and reports began to form an inescapable pattern.  It seemed incredible, but apparently persons intimately connected with the President had been involved in planning a break-in at Democratic headquarters during the Nixon-McGovern campaign.  

     Then came the clincher:  The truth was being smothered at the very top level of government, possibly by the President himself.

     The nation was subjected to a propaganda circus and a national agony unlike anything it had known before in this century.  Did a White House group engage in burglary?  Had a President lied to the public?  Before these questions were answered, incredible new disclosures made headlines.

     The President's Oval Office was bugged, so that each and every conversation was on tape.  The tapes had not been destroyed.  And finally, they proved conclusively that President Nixon had deliberately staged a cover-up.

     By the time the curtain was rung down, thirty persons linked to the President had been convicted.  President Nixon was forced to resign, and he was spared possible conviction only by a special pardon issued by the unelected new President, Gerald Ford.

     The intriguing chain of events seemed to start when an elected Vice President, Spiro Agnew, was forced out of office.  an embattled President named a compromise stand-in choice -- Gerald Ford -- as Agnew's successor.  Then, an inner circle of close presidential advisers was eliminated in one fell swoop. the only person to remain in place, unscathed, was the most powerful figure in the White House besides the President:  Henry Kissinger.

     Nixon's trusted lieutenants were replaced by men who were linked, one way or another, to the Rockefeller-Kissinger team.

     Then, non-elected President Gerald Ford appointed the recently retired Governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, to be the nation's second non-elected Vice President.  And suddenly Nelson rockefeller, the most visible member of the House of Rockefeller, a man who salivated after the presidency with the ardor of a hunting dog on point, was within range of a target he had been chasing for two decades.  Hopelessly defeated in three previous presidential campaign, Rockefeller nevertheless was now the Vice President of the United States.

{NOTE: During his term as VP, Nelson Rockefeller called for a Constitutional Convention.  They failed in that attempt to dismantle the Constitution, and all the sneaky efforts from that point forward to open the Constitution have been thwarted by grass-roots efforts, It should be noted that the 'conservative' Republicans have been the prime movers and pushers of a Con-Con since that failed attempt by Rocky in 1976.  Paul Weyrich's American Legislative Exchange Council almost got the job done.  We are surrounded within by bleeding liberals and phony (controlled opposition) conservative / 'Christian'- conservative leaders, among whom are the likes of Phyllis Schlafly and her cronies in the Council for National Policy. The veiled attempt again - NOW is via the National Initiative, which not surprisingly is being promoted be the American Free Press (the successor to the Spotlight newspaper) - JP - transcriber}

     The House of Rockefeller had been the real power behind Richard Nixon for at least twelve years -- from the time in 1960 when Richard Nixon, with the Republican Presidential nomination already in the bag, flew to New York city to meet with Nelson Rockefeller.

     Republicans everywhere understood the significance of the new Rockefeller-Nixon alliance.  Nixon had traded his independence for approval by the House of Rockefeller.

     In 1968, Nixon followed the Rockefeller game plan to the letter.  For example, had he openly run on a platform promising to devalue the dollar, clamp wage-and-price controls on the economy, "open up" Red China, give away American wheat to the Soviets (in a deal which drove up prices at home), create countless new government agencies, promote the surrender of the Panama Canal, and greatly weaken our military posture, would he have been elected?  Not hardly.

     But, the ploy was to run this "conservative, businessman's" candidate against Liberal Hubert Horatio Humphrey in 1968, and then in 1972 against George McGovern, a man so far out in left field he was not really in the same ballpark.  by engineering the nomination of McGovern at one of the country's more outrageous conventions, the Nixon (read it Rockefeller-CFR) propagandists were able to elect Nixon on rhetoric.

     But as usual, while the conservatives were paid in lip service, the Liberals got the action.  The dismantling of American sovereignty and the bankruptcy of the American economy continued at a dizzying pace under Nixon, while the CFR-Insiders made gigantic leaps toward their New World Order.

     So what went wrong?  If Nixon was a Rockefeller agent and had been doing his work so well for the boys in the backroom, why the need for his downfall?  We may never know for certain.  but with the benefit of new information and the 20-20 vision of hindsight, we can make some likely assumptions.

NOTE: One reason might be that Nixon had declared publicly he did not approve of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which has since proven to be a further erosion of America's national sovereignty, and is in the process of creating total social, economic and cultural destruction, as the U.S. Senate was warned in 1994 by billionaire member of the European Parliament, Sir James Goldsmith (who died suddenly after testifying before that U.S. Senate committee). - JP - transcriber}

     Rockefeller admittedly had wanted to be President since he first threw his baby rattle out of his crib. But, the office had eluded him for so long that the former young Republican reformer from New York was eligible to draw social security.

     If Rocky were ever to realize his lifelong dream of sitting in the White House, had had to move fast.  And yet he knew that he was not overwhelmingly popular with the grass roots of his own party.  To become President, he needed to squeeze in through a crack in the back door.

     We believe that Rocky expected Nixon to appoint him as Vice President when Agnew resigned.  Nixon, already under fire for Watergate, may have believed he could hang on to the Presidency by his fingernails by "stonewalling it".  But, he probably feared (correctly) that if Nelson were the Vice President, the heat would be turned even higher so that Nixon would have to resign, thereby making the Standard Oil heir President of the United States without having to go through the electoral process. So Nixon double-crossed Rocky and appointed Ford, Nixon, however, could not hang on and Ford became President and Rocky the Vice President,  Rocky was halfway home.

     The first to fall in the Watergate scandals was the group of personal advisers Nixon brought with him to the White House.  These were men loyal to Nixon, not the Eastern Liberal Establishment.  And to the extent that this Palace Guard was not loyal to the Secret Government, it represented a potential danger.

     These included, most particularly, H.R. Haldeman, White House Chief of Staff; John D. Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President; John Dean III, Counsel to the President; and, the men running the Committee to Re-Elect the President (perhaps appropriately referred to by its acronym, CREEP). When the smoke cleared, they were all gone.

     Ehrlichman has been one of the most bitter victims of Watergate.  Sentenced to twenty months to five years in a federal penitentiary for his part in the break-in of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, Ehrlichman said:  

"It's tough when we go to jail for the Ellsberg break-in and the son-of-a-bitch who ordered it gets the Nobel Prize for Peace."

     The S.O.B. referred to was, of course, Henry Kissinger.  Had Ehrlichman known the full story it is doubtful if his comments would have been as restrained!

     In his book Before the Fall, former Nixon staffer William Safire revealed that Kissinger, one of the strangest appointments to the Nixon team, was perhaps the very first member of the Palace Guard to use wiretaps on a routine basis.

     It is now known that the K had virtually every one of his conversations recorded.  Moreover, while National Security Adviser to Nixon he ordered taps placed on the phones of Richard F. Pederson and General Robert Pursley, who were, respectively, the closest aides of Secretary of State William Rodgers and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird.

     It goes without saying that neither man was remotely considered as a security risk.  The taps were used, Safire reports, to give Kissinger a diplomatic advantage in the jockeying for power that was going on in the White House.  Safire notes:

"Complaining to a correspondent about the perfidy of his archrival, Secretary of State Rogers, Henry then edited the transcript, changing words to reflect stronger support of the President by Kissinger, and then sent the revised version along to Haldeman -- an act of dishonor to the unsuspecting reporter and an act of disloyalty to the President",

     And he adds:

"A man who could do this was capable of eavesdropping on his associates without scruple, and was capable of getting a special thrill out of working most closely with those he spied upon most."

     So eavesdropping was nothing new to Henry Kissinger, the man who acquired total control over White House intelligence even before Watergate.  But, as to Watergate itself -- who on earth planned it?  And why did they plan it?

     What did the Nixon Republicans have to gain from the break-in?  The coming Nixon-McGovern contest was clearly as predetermined as a professional wrestling match; it was not a question of whether Nixon would win, but simply by how much of a margin.  there was absolutely no strategic reason to raid the Democratic headquarters.

     Once the decision was made, however, you would think that the best men available would be used.  You'd expect, in short, a professional job.   but the burglary at the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate Hotel was not exactly carried out with the slick precision of a James Bond movie.  It was about as smooth and professional as a Keystone Kops chase.  It was so clumsy, in fact, that the whole operation smelled of a set-up.

     First, one of the burglars alerted a guard, by replacing the tape over the door locks after the guard had discovered and removed the first one.  Then, even though their efforts had been discovered, the bungling burglars incredibly were sent right back in.  The man posted as lookout saw the police enter the building, but either failed to alert the men inside or his warning was ignored.  

     It was as though the burglars were supposed to be caught.  And when they were, one of them conveniently was carrying the White House telephone number of E. Howard Hunt in his pocket.

     The inspiration for Watergate, it was later revealed, grew out of a secret inner White House group known officially as the Special White House Investigating Unit; but called simply, "the Plumbers".  The Plumbers were created by -- would you believe -- Henry Kissinger to stop leaks on his staff.  both Nixon staffers John Dean and Charles Colson have reported that Kissinger got Nixon so upset over leaks that the President decided, at Kissinger's suggestion, to set up the investigating unit.  John Dean goes even further, and charges that it was Nelson Rockefeller who had Kissinger sucker Nixon into forming the Plumbers.  Little did Nixon know that he was being mousetrapped.

     Nationally syndicated columnist Paul Scott reports:

Records of the Senate Watergate Committee investigation indicate that Dean's testimony concerning Rockefeller was never followed up by the committee's staff.  The reason:  Committee members were against calling Rockefeller.

     Kissinger put a member of his staff, David Young, in charge of the unit.  Young was a Wall Street lawyer who had worked for Rockefeller before being promoted to Kissinger's staff.  After Watergate, Young was spirited off to a cushy assignment in London as a very advanced student, and the mediacracy has dutifully ignored his key role in Watergate.

     So it was the activities of the Plumbers which brought the downfall of Richard Nixon.  but no one has ever claimed that Richard Nixon initiated or even authorized the illegal activities of his so-called supporters.  Why should he?

  But, note that the man who did promote such illegal affairs -- the Rockefeller man who was growing more powerful every day -- emerged unscathed from the whole affair! 

    Remember that Kissinger now ran all intelligence operations, and even the Central Intelligence Agency was under his thumb.  Is it any wonder that former White House aide Charles Colson has said that Nixon suspected the CIA was in the plot "up to their eyeballs".

     Colson says Nixon wanted to fire the director of the CIA and personally investigate what was believed to be a CIA conspiracy against him.

     Nixon never got to investigate the Central Intelligence Agency.  Oh yes, the revelations about Watergate ultimately brought a closer look at the activities of the CIA.  but when a commission was finally brought together; seated at the chairman's spot was Nelson Rockefeller!!!

{NOTE:  And NOW. . .  in the years 2002-2003, seated at the chairman's spot of the committee instructed to investigate the un-answered questions surrounding the World Trade Center holocaust is none other than -- KISSINGER! - JP - transcriber}

     Despite its carefully crafted public image, the CIA is not now and for years has not been an anti-Communist agency.  

     Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt, possibly one of the few authentic anti-Communists within the CIA, revealed in his book Undercover that he was one of the few pro-Goldwater conservatives in the Agency in 1964.  But he admits he executed orders to work against Goldwater to prove his "professionalism".

     Former CIA employee Patrick J. McGarvey in C.I.A., The Myth and The Madness, admits:

"seldom, if ever, will you find a CIA agent who is a dedicated anti-Communist".

    Philip Agee, who was a highly regarded (and highly paid) CIA agent for twelve years, now works openly for world "socialist revolution".  In the early 1950s, it was CIA agents who broke into the offices of Senator Joseph McCarthy.  this came at the time the famous anti-Communist claimed he had been given evidence of pro-Communist infiltration, corruption, and dishonesty within the CIA itself.

     McGeorge Bundy, who certainly should be able to recognize a fellow egghead when he sees one, has said that there are more Liberal intellectuals in "the Company", as CIA employees call their organization, than in any other agency of government.

     This preponderance of eggheads, no doubt, explains why intelligence from the CIA has been so consistently wrong concerning communist plans or personalities.  It was the CIA, you'll remember, that first declared Fidel Castro was an anti-Communist; that said the East Germans would never try to build the Wall; that promoted Ahmed Ben Bella, Achmed Sukarno, Ho Chi-minh, Gamal Nasser, Patrice Lumumba, and literally scores of other Communist butchers.

     With a record like this, an investigation is definitely called for.  But putting Nelson Rockefeller in charge of the inquiry is akin to inviting Wiley Coyote to babysit for infant Roadrunners.  (For the full story of Nelson Rockefeller's many years of service on behalf of the Communists, see this author's previous book, The Rockefeller File.)

     Of the eight members of the commission, five were members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rockefeller-dominated Shadow government.  

     Is it any wonder that Henry Kissinger was able to blue-pencil key information from the Commission's report? (for details, see chapter Eleven.)

     Is it any wonder that the Boston Herald American could report on October 31, 1973:

"Federal investigators have obtained Central Intelligence Agency documents that indicate former Director Richard Helms lied under oath about his role in White House attempts to mask the Watergate burglary as a CIA operations. . .

The new evidence. . . indicates that Helms was behind the CIA effort to limit the FBI probe."

     Yes, the "fix" was put in at the top to protect the Central Intelligence Agency -- just as it was put in two years earlier to "get" Richard Nixon.

     Nixon probably could have survived all of the rumors, speculations, and innuendoes about Watergate had it not been for one thing:  those damned tapes.  But in many ways, they are the most curious part of the whole story.

     the fact that all of the President's conversations -- in fact, virtual all of his movements -- had been recorded was revealed almost casually at the Watergate hearings by Alexander butterfield, white House liaison with the Secret Service.  It is hard to believe that this bombshell, which was to remove a President, could be dropped with such an air of innocence.  Could it have been planned?

     We now know that Butterfield had been a CIA informant.  He has been accused of working with (if not for) the CIA when he was in charge of all the tapings in the White House.  Had Blabbermouth Butterfield, who was called to testify about other matters -- not the tapes -- "stonewalled" it, Nixon would not have been forced to resign.

     Why didn't Nixon have the tape machines shut off the day after the Watergate arrests?  Or, failing that, why didn't he destroy the tapes after butterfield revealed their existence?  Several rationalizations have been put forth, none of which rings true.  One is that Nixon was mesmerized by the arrogance of power and did not believe the supreme Court could or would subpoena the tapes.  Since there was no precedent, why take the risk?  Nixon must have known his very survival as President of the United States was at stake.

     Remember, releasing the tapes would not exonerate Nixon, they would prove him guilty of every cover-up charge made against him.  why would this cunning politician, this ruthless abuser of power, this man from whom no one would buy a used car, not simply destroy the tapes himself?

     Can anybody believe that Nixon sat there like a good scout, watching the lynch mob fasten a hangman's knot out of those wretched tapes, and refused to destroy the noose?  That isn't the Nixon depicted on the tapes -- much less in public life.

     Why then did not Nixon, that ultimate political opportunist, burn the tapes?  We believe the only logical answer is that Nixon did not control the tapes.  

     Have you ever wondered how everybody seemed to know what was on the tapes, and where, before the were "turned over" to committee staffs, special prosecutors, or Judge Sirica?

     Consider the fantastic detail involved in the requests.  Here is one sample:

January 8, 1973 from 4:05 to 5:34 P.M. (E.O.B.)

a)  at approximately 10 minutes and 15 seconds into the conversation, a segment lasting 6 minutes and 31 seconds.

b)  at approximately 67 minutes into the conversation, a segment lasting ll minutes;

c)  at approximately 82 minutes and 15 seconds into the conversation, a segment lasting 5 minutes and 31 seconds.

     As Dr. Susan Huck observed in the February 1976 issue of American Opinion:

"It does sound as though somebody -- obviously not the President -- has been curled up with those tapes for many a long hour, doesn't it?  Somebody knows exactly where the juicy parts are, down to the second."

     Remember, all white House conversations -- in person and on the phone -- had been "bugged" for at least a year.  There were literally miles of tapes in storage somewhere.  but it is obvious the investigators already had the evidence they sought when the various subpoenas were issued!

     Who then controlled the tapes, or had access to a duplicate set?  There is (understandably) very little information available on this crucial question.  Remembering that the Nixon tape monitors were established by the Secret Service, it is of more than passing significance that Newsweek on September 23, 1974, reported:

While former white House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman awaits trial for his part in Watergate, the Secret Service chief he ousted from the White House last year has landed a plum job.  robert H. Taylor, 49, who tangled with Haldeman over Nixon security procedures, is now head of the private security forces for all the far-flung Rockefeller family enterprises.

     Hmmmm.  Once Nixon is deposed, the head of the Secret Service -- the man in charge of the agency which was in charge of the tapes -- gets a "plum job" with the Rockefeller empire.

     What of the Rockefeller's number one man in the White House?  We know that Henry Kissinger was deeply involved in wiretapping his own staff and several journalists.  But the one member of the White House staff who apparently never had his remarks taped in the Oval Office was Herr Kissinger -- who also, as it happens, was chief of all U.S. intelligence gathering operations.  And who also, we no know, was responsible for establishing the Plumbers in the first place!

     But through all of this, Kissinger's loyalty was not with the President, but with the Rockefellers!  Kissinger had been through three losing campaigns with Nelson Rockefeller and openly spoke of despising Nixon.  

     Biographer David Hanna quotes Kissinger as stating, after Nixon's nomination in 1968:

"That man is unfit to be President.  I would never work for that man.  He is a disaster."

     Watergate reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward have revealed that Henry the K was often openly contemptuous of Nixon, referring to him in front of other White House staffers as "our meatball President" and delighting in passing on the most despicable gossip and confidences about the President and First Lady.  With a "friend" like Kissinger, you don't need any enemies!

     Teaming up with Kissinger to administer the coup de grace to Nixon was another rockefeller man, General Alexander Haig.  Haig is an intriguing case.  Just as other associates connected with Kissinger jumped from virtual obscurity into key positions of influence (and as Kissinger himself had come out of nowhere into the second-most-powerful position in the Western world), Haig's meteoric career is as intimately linked to Henry the K as the latter's is to the Rockefellers.

     Haig, a colonel when he joined Kissinger's staff in 1969, had been jumped to the rank of four-star general in four short years -- skipping the third star completely.

     For a man with an absolutely undistinguished military record, this catapulting over 240 other general officers was most impressive indeed.

     In the closing days of the Nixon Era, it was Haig who became more and more the acting President -- and it happens that it was Alexander Haig who controlled the vault where the Watergate tapes were kept.  Blabbermouth Butterfield, who tipped off the Watergate Committee to the existence of the damning tapes, was a former colleague of Haig.

     Lloyd shearer in Parade magazine noted how Haig "orchestrated the resignation march" by taking the evidence against the President to that dwindling number of GOP congressmen who were still loyal to Nixon. the final decision to resign came after two sets of talks -- first, with Nixon's formerly loyal Republican confidantes, and second, with Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig.

     Those final months and days of Watergate have been variously described.  Kissinger himself has said that Nixon "barely governed" during his last months in office, that he had been an "odd and artificial man".

     Charles Colson has said that Nixon was a virtual "captive" of Haig and Kissinger during the final months in the Oval Office.

     Curious, isn't it, that the three big Watergate winners turned out to be Gerald Ford, Nelson Rockefeller, and Henry Kissinger?  And is there anyone in America who truly believes that it is the President who tells the Vice President and Secretary of State what to do or say?  As columnist Paul Scott has said, Ford can no more fire Henry Kissinger than he can tell his wife Betty to shut up!

     the man who got the whole thing started, of course -- who tapped the first telephone and toppled the first domino -- was Henry Kissinger, proving once again that no man can serve two masters.  Just as Haig had said that he "was never a Nixon man", Kissinger had boasted of Nixon, "I would never work for that man".  He didn't.  He was an agent for someone else.