LOOKING FOR TROUBLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100140072-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 13, 2012
• Sequence Number: 72
• Publication Date: June 1, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/04/13 :CIA-RDP90-009658000100140072-0
LRTIC~ i.IP~.~i~~f0
o~I P~ ~ 3 Z
VdA SHII~TGTONIAN
June 1983
LO~I~ING
TI~,OUBL~
~~_
~ BY RUDY NI~~XA
and Richest Private Eye by Playing It Safe
~ SICK BAST Didn't Become Washington's Toughest
1 never minded a linle trouble.
-Sam Spade, ir. The Maltese Falcor.
It was dusk on a May night in Wash-
ington. and The President's adviser was
confiding his fears to the private eye.
The two men sat outride, on patio fur-
niture ne2r the detective's backyard pool
with its small fountain in the center. a
few feet away, hidden among the aza-
leas, atiny microphone picked up the
splash of the fountain and the desperate
conversation.
''The President is scared as hell, es-
pecially when he's weak and under at-
tack." said the White House confidant.
"He's afraid to alienate the military or
the forei~r.-policy establishment.... If
this happens with us. it could happen to
any President. "
As Labe night air turned cool, he wove
a bizarre tale of the President held cap-
tive in his Oval Office, paralyzed by high-
ranking conspirators in intelligence cir-
cles whose power he dared not chal-
lenge. Was this some kind of quiet coup,
some kind ofreal-life Seven Davs in Mev?
asked the private eve.
"Could have been, could have been."
mused his visitor. "I can't say there was
a conspiracy to do it, but I will say that
was the practical consequence of their
actions.
Charles Colson was in trouble on that
May evening ten years ago. The Water-
gate maelstrom was consuming Wash-
ington. and Colson, once one of Richard
Nixon's top aides. was under indictment
in the scandal's cover-up conspiracy case.
He wanted someone to prove that the
CIA had had a hand in his misfortune.
"What is exculpatory for me," said
Colson, "is if I am able to expose
the fact that there was a major plot
_by the Cl~, and they were responsible
for the cover-ups throughout the in-
vestigation. "
It was a long shot, but Charles Colson
was in big trouble. So much trouble that,
like others before him, he thought only
one man could help: Dick Bast, Wash-
ington's toughest private eye.
You're absolurely the wildest, more un-
predictableman 1' ve ever known. Do you
always care= on so high-handedly?
-Brigid O'Shaughnessy [o Sam Spade
Dick Bast has some of the handsomeness
of a 'SOs movie actor, tall and lean with
dark, slicked-back hair, a scar above an
eyebrow, and a chiseled nose will: flat
tip. He talks in a growl and peppers his
conversations with four-letter words. At
age 50, he still has a tension about him.
a force field that suggesu violence and
anger. He displays none of the world-
weariness that misht be expected of a
man who got his start 25 years ago by
breaking down doors of cheating spouses
for divorce .lawyers.
Since then. when there's been trouble.
there's been Bast:
^ When the FBI couldn't locate a call
girl involved in the Bobby Baker scandal
in the mid-'60s, Bast found Linda Mor-
nson and produced her for Washington
repente_s who wrote about her parties
with defense contractors and government
officials.
^ During the Lyndon Johnson admin-
istration, Bast orchcstratcd the hottest di-
vorce investigation in town, recording
conversations between married socialite
Barbara Howar and Senator Birch Bavh
and surprising her with cameramen as
she lay in bed at a Jamaican resort with
a White House official.
^ Retained by a lawyer for Abscam
defendant Senator Harrison Williams,
Bast last year befriended Cynthia Mane
Weinberg, estranged wife of the con man
who had snared legislators in the FBI
sting. Before her death, Marie Wienber~
told Bast that her husband, Melvin Wein-
berg, had lied under oath, altered an Ab-
scam tape, and pocketed federal funds
meant to bribe political tarseu.
^ When arms merchant Edwin Wilson
was on the lam in the Middle East. Bast
visited him in Tripoli and turned over to
ack~Anderson tapes that included Wil-
son's claims that whiic on the CIA pay-
roil he had worked as an international
representative for the seafatzrs' union and
as an a vance man to ubert H. Hum-
phrey's 1964 campaign.
i hat kind of review makes Bast smile.
Sometirt'tes he investigates out of his
own sense oti righteousness. Bast has
turned over to the Justice Department
information about a Ntafta barman ready
to squeal on higher-ups: evidence of il-
legal bugging of two CIA officials al-
}e~edly involved in a gay affairlBast was
outraged by the bugging, not the affair);
evidence of a federal judge and his court-
room staff erasing on-the-record com-
~ Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/04/13 :CIA-RDP90-009658000100140072-0