A WHOLE NEW ARSENAL FOR THE WATERGATE SKEPTICS!

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000201030007-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 25, 2010
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: December 10, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/25: CIA-RDP90-00845R000201030007-5
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE__~--
WASHINGTON TIMES
10 December 1984
A whole new arsenal for
the Watergate skeptics!
Saga suggests CIA dupli city brought Nixon down
r As John Dean wrote in his
book Blind Ambition, "it's
incredible. Millions of dol-
lars have been spent inves-
tigating Watergate. A president has
been forced out of office. Dozens of
lives have been ruined. We're sit-
ting in the can. And still nobody can
explain why they bugged the place
to begin with."
For most Americans, Watergate
symbolizes the struggle between a
"duplicitous, authoritarian, and
vengeful" president on the one
hand, and tireless advocates of the
public good on the other.
According to the accepted his-
tory of the affair, individuals work-
ing for the Nixon re-election
campaign broke into the Demo-
cratic National Committee head-
quarters at the Watergate during
May and June of 1972. The purpose
} of the break-in was to bug the
phones of two DNC officials for
political intelligence. In order to
repair a wiretap on one of the
phones, a second break-in was
undertaken on the night of June
16-17. The burglary was discov-
ered, the culprits arrested. .
Almost immediately, a connec-
tion was established to the
administration of President Rich-
ard M. Nixon, but the White House
began a massive, cover-up. Only
through the diligence of ' certain
reporters, prosecutors, and mem-
bers of Congress was the whole
affair resolved when the president
resigned in disgrace, revealing the
sordidness of his entire administra- i
tion for all to see.... a, -
One does not have to be an
admirer of the Nixon presidency to
recognize that there are just too
many holes in the received
Watergate saga to justify many of
the conclusions that have been
drawn. Now skeptics have been pro-
vided with a whole arsenal of new
ammunition, thanks to Jim
Hougan's new book.
Mr. Hougan - his two earlier
books were Decadence and Spooks
- has written a "political detective
story" that offers a great deal of
new evidence in the form of FBI
documents pertaining to
Watergate, almost none of which
were available to the Senate com-
mittee chaired by Sen. ;yam Ervin
of North Carolina. In addition, by
employing the Sherlock Holmes
technique of asking why the dog
didn't bark, the author throws new
light on old evidence.
By concentrating on the break-in
itself rather than on the cover-up, as
others have done, Mr. Hougan
arrives at some startling conclu-
sions: Howard Hunt and James
McCord were still working for the
CIA during the time they were
ostensibly employed by the Nixon
re-election campaign, and were
engaged in domestic intelligence
operations which included spying
on the'administration itself.
McCord's real targets, for which
the Watergate operation was a
cover, were the clients of prosti-
tutes working out of the Columbia 1
Plaza apartments, not far from the
Watergate. In order to protect the
real CIA operation, which was in
danger of being compromised by
the Committee to Re-elect the Pres-
ident enterprise, Hunt and McCord
sabotaged the Watergate break-in,
duping G. Gordon Liddy along the
'way.
Then, the CIA manipulated the
story by means of connections with
the press, in particular the editors
and reporters of The Washington
Post, again diverting attention
toward the cover-up and away from
the'agency's ownj operation.
Secret Agenda: W.-Itergate,
Deep Throat and the CIA
1 13 1, Jim 11ollga?l
BOOK REVIEW / Mackubin Thomas Owens
As might be expected, such con-
clusions are not always as clearly
supported by the evidence as one
would wish, but even in those areas
where Mr. Hougan's reasoning is
strained, his position is at least as
plausible as that established by the
received history.
In the course of his narrative, Mr.
Hougan calls attention to some
interesting connections that in
themselves might cast doubt on the
accepted version of Watergate:
? Post reporter Bob Woodward's
extensive background in naval
intelligence and his role on a spe-
cial intelligence briefing team that
provided him access to high-level
intelligence sources, one of which
may have been "Deep Throat."
? Second Post reporter Carl
Bernstein's connection to the "noto-
rious Washington pimp" Buster,
Riggin, who was associated with
prostitutes at the Columbia Plaza,
and the journalist's participation in
a "swingles" club involving CIA
officers, their wives, and girl-
friends.
? The relationship between Mr.
Woodward's source, Robert Ben-
nett, and the CIA; and the threads
-linking Mr. Bennett, the lawyer
Edward Bennett Williams, Judge'
John Sirica, the Democrats, and the
editors and publisher of The Post.
While these interesting (but
unknown or ignored) connections
may have only had a circumstantial
relationship to the way the
Watergate story has emerged, the
fact remains that they are possible
explanations for why the dog didn't
bark.
While Secret Agenda may serve
to deflate - the reputations of the
"investigative journalists" and cer-
tain partisan hacks who labored so
strenuously to bring down the pres-
ident and all his men, its conclu-
sions cannot but trouble those of us
who love constitutional republican
government. For if Mr. Hougan is
right, the president was brought
down by his own intelligence ser-
vice.
STAT
WOW"
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Unfortunately, the writer does
not provide any real motive for such
CIA action. lb understand why the
CIA acted as it did, one has to know
that there was a great deal of ani-
mosity between the agency and Mr.
Nixon dating back to at least 1960.
Richard Nixon believed that the
CIA had fed information to John F.
Kennedy before the presidential
debates of that year and had gener-
ally favored candidate Kennedy
with leaks during the campaign.
Meanwhile, Mr. Nixon had
become aware of CIA misdeeds
during the Kennedy presidency,
including the plan to assassinate
Fidel Castro and agency
involvement with organized crime
in an effort to implement that plan.
These points may indicate why the
agency would place its own secret
agenda above the survival of a via-
ble executive branch.
As Mr. Hougan himself admits,
his book leaves many loose ends,
and in some cases raises more
questions than it answers. But it
provides the opportunity to begin?a
re-examination of Watergate now
that passions have cooled.
Those who believe that such a re-
examination is not necessary might
want to consider how different the
political landscape of the Republic
and the world at large would be had
the Watergate affair not occurred,
or had it been defused early in the
going.
The executive branch would not
have Very nearly been destroyed,
and with it the ability to articulate
and implement a coherent foreign
policy.
The fragmentation of authority
in Congress might not have been
hastened along.
The radical wing of the Demo-
cratic Party; buried in 1972, would
not have been resurrected by the
scandal.
Had there been no Watergate, it
is quite conceivable that South
Vietnam would still exist as a sov-
ereign political entity, that
Afghanistan would not have been
invaded, that few Americans would
know the names Ayatollah
Khomeini or Daniel Ortega. These
are reasons enough, it seems, to set
the record straight.
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