What about Watergate?

[pepsified thinker]

Just wondered--there are a lot of ways that certain events come up as reference points here on RI, but I can't think of and/many times that Watergate has figured into discussions. For what it was on it's surface I'm a bit surprised. I'm not sure just how the two are similar or different, but for comparison's sake, seems like the assassination of JFK has a much more central role in our culture--and that could mean just the RI culture, or the larger culture of the MSM and so on.

I haven't done a search to verify this hunch/shoot from the hip statement, but before someone does that to either verify or disprove my hunch, I'm wondering if it strikes other the same way--that we don't talk much about Watergate, and that not doing so is bit odd.

If it matters, this is coming from preparing to teach about Watergate to high schoolers, and trying to get a grip on what all was involved.
I can't teach everything that I might read and agree with here, but I'd welcome input on the what the RI crowd sees as the important and/or untold stories of Watergate.

Thanks for any feeback.

Oh, and by the way--I tried to google 'timeline of Watergate' and 'flowchart of Watergate' and didn't find much. Maybe doing those searches as google.image searches limited things, but kind of strange that there's not a lot of material online telling that story.

...or maybe not so strange.

[chiggerbit]

My own personal pet theory is that Watergate may have been stage three of a coup d'etat. JFk's assassination was the first stage, then Agnew's removal, then Watergate. Came up with the theory after reading Ed Luttwak's book on how to perform a coup d'etat, not that he was talking about doing one this way, wasn't even referring to one that might be performed in the US. Luttwak would probably be shocked that anyone could get that from his book. The last stage, in my theory, is that Bush intended to win the Republican spot to run for president, but Reagan grabbed it , so Bush "gracefully" accepted the spot as Vice Presidential candidate, and then tried to off Reagan. Tidy and subtle.

[MinM]

Read Jim Hougan's - Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA - IIRC Hougan does a good job of deconstructing the timeline leading up to, during, and just past Watergate.
***
More here:

Jim Hougan: Strange Bedfellows

Rigorous Intuition: The Ballad of "Eduardo"

Jim Hougan: Secret Agenda - The Education Forum

Deep Throat: Shallow story hides deeper history

The Real History of Gerald Ford, Watergate, and the CIA - Democratic Underground

rigorousintuition.ca - View topic - The Real History of Gerald Ford, Watergate, and the CIA

rigorousintuition.ca - View topic - Two things about Al Haig that are not in his obituary

rigorousintuition.ca - View topic - What is up with Sy Hersh?

http://www.blackopradio.com/pod/black473a.mp3
# Listener questions
# Was Nixon a right-winger? - Yes
# Was Watergate a right-wing coup? - No
# Was Jack Anderson a CIA asset? - Yes

http://www.blackopradio.com/pod/black471b.mp3
# Listener's questions:
# On show # 468 Jim alluded to Helms manipulated the FBI over Watergate. How?
# Jim announces Len's upcoming interview with Jim Hougan
# The movie "All The President's Men" was just a cover story
# Hougan was accidentally given access to a hoard of classified FBI, Watergate materials
# Citing a scene in Stone's "Nixon" movie, "Pulling out of Vietnam without a right-wing revolt..."
# Why was Nixon treated the way he was by the powers that existed at the time?

26:49 into the podcast linked above Jim DiEugenio notes how conveniently Seymour Hersh was planted at the New York Times in the midst of the Watergate Story. It would seem ostensibly to buttress the Watergate Cover Story made famous by the Washington Post...

rigorousintuition.ca - View topic - CIA wanted to create fake Saddam Hussein sex video

Show #408
Original airdate: Jan 22nd, 2009
http://www.blackopradio.com/pod/black408b.mp3

# Part Two - Jim DiEugenio
# Robert Maheu begins his CIA career
# The ops against Sukarno and Castro ...
# The Larry Dubois and Laurence Gonzalez Playboy article on Hughes & the CIA
# The article was called "The Puppet and the Puppetmasters" from Sept '76 A snippet here
# How much of Hughes' empire was co-opted by the CIA?
# The attempted covert recovery of the Soviet submarine K129(Project Jennifer)
# The Glomar Explorer's most famous job was "Project Jennifer"
# The ousting of Maheu and the takeover of his empire
# Robert Bennett, Ties to Maheu (Hughes), Howard Hunt and The Watergate burglary
# The RFK Assassination: Was it a Maheu operation?
# Jim Hougan's important book on Watergate, Secret Agenda ...

Hughes, Nixon, and the CIA: The Watergate Conspiracy Woodward and Bernstein Missed - Playboy Article

[Iamwhomiam]

Excellent work, MinM. My compliments.

[Elvis]

I recommend "Silent Coup: The Removal of a President" by Len Colodny & Robert Gettlin.

http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Coup-Presi ... 0312927630

The authors have a website, with followup articles etc., here:
http://www.silentcoup.com/

One of things that was going on, it seems, was that Nixon and Kissinger's secret "back channel" negotiations---bypassing the State Dept. and Pentagon etc.---caused the Joint Chiefs to wonder, "What the hell is this guy up to?" Nixon was making them extremely nervous. I won't go into the detailed theses of the book here, but I think the authors did some great work. E.g. their analysis of Bob Woodward's Watergate reporting---and his past as a Naval intelligence officer and his relationship to Haig---is interesting to say the least.

(I think it was Haig's "job" as Nixon's Chief of Staff to put Nixon into a position where he had no choice but to resign.)

I followed Watergate closely when it was happening, and continued studying it off & on over the years; "Silent Coup" really opened up a lot of intriguing stuff.

I'd be interested on anyone's take of this work, e.g. has it been rebutted to any effective degree?

(btw for some great new(ish) material on Nixon, I recommend "President Nixon: Alone in the White House" by Richard Reeves. It focuses on Nixon as a loner, mostly based on Nixon's copious daily "memos to self" and of course the 1000s of hours of White House tapes.)

(PS I've always had a special fascination with Nixon, ever since my mother told me about him in the early '60s. So I was delighted to use the Nixon/Elvis photo as my avatar. I have no similar fascination with Elvis Presley; "Elvis" was just an easy-to-remember and light-hearted name to use here.)

[H_C_E]

There's also this -

Nixon mentioned on at least one occasion in recorded conversations in the WH
that it was imperative that what he and his "plumbers" were doing couldn't be found out.
His concern that it might bring to light the "whole Bay of Pigs thing" which was code for
the JFK assassination.

See Peter Dale Scott's "Deep Politics" and\or Dick Russell's
"The Man Who Knew Too Much" for more on that.

[Elvis]

There's also this -

Nixon mentioned on at least one occasion in recorded conversations in the WH
that it was imperative that what he and his "plumbers" were doing couldn't be found out.
His concern that it might bring to light the "whole Bay of Pigs thing" which was code for
the JFK assassination.

Yes! To the general public, "Watergate" was made to look pretty simple: crooked election campaign operatives get caught, a few Presidential misdeeds are uncovered, the guy resigns; The System Works! Yay!!

But the overlap with the JFK assassination is just one facet of the scandal's complexity. There were numerous agendas at play, some to help Nixon, some to hamper Nixon, some to keep the lids on various things.

(another tangent: I always suspected it, but Reeve's book makes it explicitly clear that Kissinger, as National Security Adviser and then Secretary of State, was on the phone regularly to David Rockefeller, reporting everything---and probably taking some instructions, too, since Kissinger essentially was a Rockefeller protegé.)

[cptmarginal]

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2 ... rgate.html

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Take a look at two of my threads, one about ONI Bob Woodward and the other about a USIA video spook who wrote a whistleblowing book exposing CIA media tricks used against his boss during Watergate, Richard Nixon-

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board/v ... 842#192842
Bob Woodward: top-secret Naval Intelligence Agent

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board/v ... hp?t=18584
How They Slant TV From A - Z, by USIA psy-ops expert

Lt. Co. L. Fletcher Prouty, the Air Force liasson between Pentagon and CIA from 1955-64, said that Gen. Alexander Haig was part of the 'Secret Team' of CIA insiders running the government during Watergate. That opens up a can of Watergate worms regarding Pentagon spying on the Nixon Oval Office known as the Moorer-Radford Affair.

This was all turned into a whitewashed myth by a fake liberal named Robert Redford.
Redford. Radford. Get it? Yup. Decoy time again.

[Elvis]

Lt. Co. L. Fletcher Prouty, the Air Force liasson between Pentagon and CIA from 1955-64, said that Gen. Alexander Haig was part of the 'Secret Team' of CIA insiders running the government during Watergate. That opens up a can of Watergate worms regarding Pentagon spying on the Nixon Oval Office known as the Moorer-Radford Affair.

Yes, a big can of worms. "Silent Coup" focuses a lot on the Moorer-Radford business.

Hugh, do you have a link handy for more on what Prouty said about Woodward?

all turned into a whitewashed myth by a fake liberal named Robert Redford.
Redford. Radford. Get it? Yup. Decoy time again.

I agree 100% that "Watergate" is a whitewashed myth, but despite the worm-cans, surely the similarity between "Redford" and "Radford" is just a coincidence...? These things do sometimes just happen.

[chump]

http://www.blackopradio.com/archives2010.html
FWIW, This Dave Ratciffe interview contained a lot of interesting background as described by Mr. Prouty.

[MinM]

Take a look at two of my threads, one about ONI Bob Woodward and the other about a USIA video spook who wrote a whistleblowing book exposing CIA media tricks used against his boss during Watergate, Richard Nixon-

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board/v ... 842#192842
Bob Woodward: top-secret Naval Intelligence Agent

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board/v ... hp?t=18584
How They Slant TV From A - Z, by USIA psy-ops expert

Lt. Co. L. Fletcher Prouty, the Air Force liasson between Pentagon and CIA from 1955-64, said that Gen. Alexander Haig was part of the 'Secret Team' of CIA insiders running the government during Watergate. That opens up a can of Watergate worms regarding Pentagon spying on the Nixon Oval Office known as The Moorer-Radford Affair.

This was all turned into a whitewashed myth by a fake liberal named Robert Redford.
Redford. Radford. Get it? Yup. Decoy time again.

Fox News' James Rosen on The Moorer-Radford Affair. An earlier episode in U.S. History where Haig 'took charge'...



Jim Hougan: Strange Bedfellows: Deep Throat, Bob Woodward and the CIA

Zumwalt, Felt and McCord were by no means alone in their deep mistrust of the Nixon White House. Within the Pentagon, a military spy-ring was pillaging Kissinger's secrets on behalf of Adm. Thomas Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since 1970.

Within the offices of the National Security Council, and on secret missions to China, Kissinger's briefcases were rifled and his burn-bags ransacked. In all, perhaps a thousand top-secret documents were stolen and transmitted to Moorer's office (if not elsewhere, as well) by Yeoman Charles Radford, a young Mormon acting on orders of Adm. Robert Welander.

Here, matters become a bit incestuous.

Admiral Welander was an aide to Moorer. But he was also a mentor of Lt. Bob Woodward, whose commander Welander had been aboard the USS Fox. Reportedly, it was at the urging of Welander---who had yet to be implicated in "the Moorer-Radford affair"---that Woodward extended his tour of duty in 1969, going to the Pentagon to serve as Communications Duty Officer to then-CNO Tom Moorer.

In that capacity, Woodward presided over the CNO's code-room, reading every communication that went in and out, while acting, also, as a briefer and a courier. This, he tells us, is how he met Deep Throat, while cooling his heels outside the Situation Room in the White House. It was 1970 and, according to Woodward, Mark Felt was sitting in the next chair.

The Moorer-Radford Affair is not usually considered a part of the Watergate story, though it deserves to be. The Nixon Administration learned of the Pentagon spy-ring in late 1971, but the affair did not become public until almost three years later. By then, the Watergate story was almost played out.

While president, Nixon was determined to keep the affair secret, telling Kissinger aide David Young, "If you love your country, you'll never mention it." But the Pentagon's chief investigator, W. Donald Stewart, was more forthcoming. Asked how seriously the affair should have been taken, Stewart replied with a rhetorical question: "Did you see that film, Seven Days in May? That's what we were dealing with...

Alexander Haig and the coup against Nixon

The weird world of Alexander Haig

rigorousintuition.ca - View topic - Two things about Al Haig that are not in his obituary

[Bruce Dazzling]

There's quite a bit of information at History Commons.

http://www.historycommons.org/searchRes ... &search=Go

[Stephen Morgan]

I'm surprised no-one's mentioned Daniel Hopsicker's "Barry and the Boys", his book about the JFK killing, Iran/Contra and other related matters. He believes Nixon was trying to muscle in on the CIA's action to take over the drug trade through Mexico and that Watergate was a CIA coup to keep control for themselves.

[chiggerbit]

With regards to the theory of a gradual coup, I forgot to mention the stolen elections of 2000 and likely 2004. Luttwak has argued that a military coup d'etat wouldn't work with such an entrenched democracy as we have here in the US. It didn't need to be a military one, and well he knows it.