LETTER TO HONORABLE WILLIAM E. COLBY FROM HOWARD H. BAKER, JR.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01495R000500030020-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: January 4, 2017
• Document Release Date: July 7, 2005
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: November 8, 1973
• Content Type: LETTER

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 HOWSL?A. HAG A p TENN., VICE ~.LL Tease 2005/07/22: CIA-RDP80B014 00050003002
HERMAN E. PL~AADGE, GA, 1P11C'1~1W(~lf\2/DTP f`IEFR
DANIEL K. I.:)UYE, HAWAII LOWELL P. WEICKER. in., CONN.
JOSEPH M. MONTOYA, N. MEX.
SAMUEL DASH
CHIEF COUNSEL AND STAFF DIRECT OR
FRED D. THOMPSON
MINORITY COUNSEL
RUFUS L. EDMISTEN
DEPUTY COUNSEL
November 8, 1973
Honorable William E. Colby
Director
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, D. C. 20505
Dear Mr. Colby:
SELECT COMMITTEE ON
PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN ACTIVITIES
(PURSUANT TO S. RES. 60, 03D CONGRESS)
The November issue of Harper's magazine contains an
article by Andrew St. George entitled "How the Cold
War Came Home" which discusses the Central Intelligence
Agency.
It would be appreciated if you would provide your
assessment of the accuracy of the material covered
in the last chapter headed "Supplanting the CIA."
It would be further appreciated if you would provide
answers to the attached questions which are prompted
by statements in this story.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Cniteb , Mcx#ez Zencxte
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Andrew t. eorcre
ro'l
5 E COLD %\T CO. .
The Watergate affair as a necessary consequence of a triumphant technocracy
every major modern metamorphosis-is that
the bias runs, in Susan Sontag's phrase, against
interpretation. The politicians know it; they
have shied away from Watergate like brewery
horses from a boiler explosion. The press has
done better, but, collectively, not all that much
better. With a few stubborn exceptions (most no-
tably, the Washington Post), the media wasted
months echoing the defensive Watergate remark
attributed to President Nixon, "Give me proof."
As for the politicians, they continued to cling
to it for more than a year.
Watergate, said Robert S. Strauss, the Chair-
man of the Democratic National Committee, "is
not anything any Democrat could take pleasure
in." The Democratic National Committee had
filed a civil claim against the Republicans soon
after the burglary of its Watergate office suite
was discovered in 1972; apart from the stip-
ulated damages (S6.4 million), the laws'rit with
its sworn pretrial hearings proved to be a gusher
of background information; Chairman Strauss
said he had tried to have the litigation dropped.
Why on earth? "You are not blaming the Re-
publicans?" asked an incredulous reporter.
Strauss was visibly irritated, "Not all Democrats
have white hats," he said, "and not all Republi-
cans have black hats."
The commercial gaiety that sprang up about
Watergate never caught on. It stayed near the
Andrew St. George, a surface mechanical and mirthless; despite all
veteran observer of clan-
destine operations in the the boozy laughter in the ni_htclubs, all the
Caribbean and else- beepy Waterbuo toys, all the expensively tail-
where, has written arti- ored, sirloin-faced, prime-time biggies working
Iles on the U.S. intelli- to dispel the growing unease with quips, the
gence services for sev- Watergate gag machine sparked no real fun.
eral magazines. This ar-
ticle is drawn from his When spontaneous merriment finally does flood
forthcoming book on the theater of the absurd, it comes as the most
Watergate, to be pub- unpredictable turn in the scenario: on the
lisped in 1974 by Har- second day of John Mitchell's testimony before
per's Magazine Press. the Ervin Committee in July, the Dick Cavett
Much of the research
was carried out with Show was given over to a panel discussion of a
the assistance of the legal issue, the new Supreme Court ruling on
Fund for Investigative pornography, the talk all in earnest, the pan-
Journalism, which, un- elists all serious men and worrren, but when one
der the direction of of them remarked, matter-of-factly, on his way
James Boyd, has fi
s aced profectstber Afpp
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7.tyopp vi3t'11F~6'tt F 6f~~I ~'iP80 072 ir(l3ti~-I DF O Orl~l9tfitfl0Q50QQ OQ2Da&Corci s arrest already.
_N iivI-:vIut. ct 1973 alarm of the great crisis somehow remained and I was very- surprised." C
rapidity of tropical spirochetes engulfing a Nor-
wegian ship's crew.
Their intelligence operations quickly became
intragovernmental, that is, mutually competi-
tive. By the end of 1970, every first-rank .Nixon
aide had to have his own spy shop, or at least
be a partner in one. They internalized their in-
telligence ac.ivities with headlong speed. They
technified senselessly-charts, graphs, bugs, con-
cealed cameras, dart guns, phone taps, the most
expensive monitoring equipment ever to appear
on any agent's expense voucher, where a single
inside source and a few intelligent questions
would have been enough. They began to bureauc-
ratize even while they were a handful, by con=
structing their own model of reality and falling
under its artificial, self-generated norms. Their
failure to perceive other models of reality led
them into the usual errors
Certainl
the
under-
the CIA hierarchs, and it is conceivable that the
CIA arranged fora trap at the Watergate.
On the morning of June 17, 1972, the watch
officer at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virgin-
ia, woke director Richard Helms a little after
seven to tell him about the arrest of "the White
House crew," for that was how the intelligence
professionals had come to think of the agents
hired by John Mitchell and John Ehrlichman
and the other Nixon aides. Both the CIA and
the FBI had long known, of course, about the
existence of the Hunt-Liddy team. The CIA had
infiltrated it with a confidential informant, just
as if Hunt and Liddy had been foreign diplo-
mats, and the informant, an old Company op-
erative named Eugenio lMIartinez, code-named
"Rolando," who had reported in advance on the
Watergate project, was in fact at that moment
himself under arrest for his part in the break-in.
"Ali, well," Helms said, "They finally did
it." Ile chatted for a few moments with the
young watch officer, who said it was "a pity
about McCord and some of those guys." ""Well,
yes," Helms said. "A pity about the President.
too, you know. They really blew it. The sad
thing is. we all think -That's the end of it.' and
it may he just the beginning of something
worse. If the White house tries to ring inc
through central. don't switch it out here. just
 Approved For%~hq~2Q~/07/Zi .elP- D~80B01495R000500
TO: Mr. Lehman
FROM:
Mr. Walsh has asked for OCI's
comments on the last section (sup-
planting the CIA) of Andrew St.
George's article that is attached.
Specifically, could you please
have someone comment. on the old
charge of Kissinger's that has been
brought up again at the top of page
Second, could one of the Watch
Officers search the log of June
17-18 to see if there is any doc-
umentation for the alleged alerting
of Helms on 17 June 1972. Some of
the people who may have been on duty
at that time may still be around.
Perhaps they could be interviewed
to get their recollections. Could
we have your input by midday
Tuesday.
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SUSPENSE '--~---
Remarks!
8 1,110. V 1J73
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