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I'M NOT
SCREAMING, I'M NOT SCREAMING, TELL ME I'M, NOT SCREAMING. Phil
Ochs
In 1980, Danish
journalist Henrik Kruger collected scraps of suppressed information on
the Nixon wing of Republican politics, then observed in The Great Heroin
Coup, "Assassination became a modus operandi under Richard Nixon." [1]
Political murder, an unplumbed scandal in the bulging file of
criminal acts collectively known as Watergate, went unexplored while
investigative committees and reporters taking dictation concentrated on
milk funds, Nixon's possible knowledge of a routine bugging and the
cover-up.
As a result, the
dankest political horrors -- including the assassination of celebrities
on the left and Nixon's rivals for the White House -- have never been
ventilated by the corporate media. Beneath the surface of Watergate ran
a spring of excesses far more scandalous than any exposed by the
Washington Post, and these never did see the light of day -- for the
simple reason that everything known about the Nixon administration
was planted in the Post by ranking intelligence officers. [2]
The leading candidates for the identity of "Deep Throat," the professed
source of Woodward and Bernstein's most significant Watergate leads:
-
Washington
attorney Robert Bennett, then director of Mullen and Associates, the
firm that founded the Free Cuba Committee, a front that once claimed
Lee Harvey Oswald as a member, employer of White House Plumber E.
Howard Hunt in his glory days.
-
Former CIA
official Richard Ober, director of Operation CHAOS, the most
expansive domestic surveillance and covert operations network in
American history, the intelligence sector's response to the anti-war
and civil rights movements (Bennett and Ober both ran covert
assassination programs, as will be seen.)
-
General Alex
Haig, who gave up the Pentagon but "not to shuffle papers." Formerly
a staffer under General Douglas MacArthur in Korea and scion of the
National Security Council, he was chief of staff at the White House
under Nixon, nosing out some 245 generals for the appointment.
Whoever the
skulking insider may have been, "Deep Throat" proved to be a shallow
well of revelations after all. The depths of CIA corruption under Nixon,
particularly political murder, went unreported by the celebrated authors
of the Post's Watergate coverage because one of them, Bob Woodward,
was himself a cut-out for distant "conservative" forces in the
intelligence and military establishment. [3] This was a "journalist"
who could be counted on to contain the Watergate story, steer it away
from the most serious acts of corruption.
Bob Woodward has
taken a walk around the block repeatedly when asked about his military
intelligence bona fides. On June 13, 1965, three days after his
graduation from Yale, young Woodward was declared a Navy ensign in a
20-minute ceremony conducted by Senator George Smathers in a school
auditorium. (As it happens, the Democratic senator from Florida was a
partner in the real estate holdings of the Lansky Family, [4] a branch
of the Mafia closely aligned with the CIA.) One Naval intelligence
officer on the USS Wright recalls that Woodward held "top secret
'crypto' clearance, which allowed him access to nearly any declassified
[government] document." Reporter Adrian Havill notes that, at the
hub of the nation's defense networks, Woodward "had plenty of time to
ingratiate himself with the nation's military leadership inside the
Pentagon, across the Potomac River from the nation's capital."'
The Nixon
administration rose on a foundation of political murder, a fact obscured
by Woodward and the Post, and it continued to be a useful policy in the
Watergate period, according to Edward Jay Epstein in Agency of Fear
(1990). "E. Howard Hunt, after forging a State Department telegram
implicating President Kennedy in the murder of Diem, showed the forged
document to [Lucien] Conein, who then appeared on an NBC documentary and
divulged its contents. (Hunt also briefed the producer of the program,
Fred Freed, on the 'secret telegram,' which shaped the program in such a
way as to imply Kennedy's complicity in the murder.) However, in an
interview with the Washington Post on June 13, 1976, Conein acknowledged
that he had been brought to the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs
to superintend a special unit which would have the capacity to
assassinate selected targets in the narcotics business." [6]
Assassination
was all the rage among Nixon's inner-circle. One of them, "Eduardo"
Hunt, mustered a pair of professional hit-men to kill syndicated
columnist Jack Anderson -- G. Gordon Liddy, subsequently of Watergate
and talk radio fame, and Dr. Edward Gunn, a toxin specialist and
director of the CIA's Medical Services Division. Liddy's
deposition concerning his recruitment to the murder plot was submitted
to the court in a 1980 suit filed by Hunt against reporter A.J. Weberman.
Q: Did Hunt ever discuss any
assassination plots?
Liddy: Well, there came a time in
1972, I think it was around February, when Mr. Hunt came to me
concerning the journalist Jack Anderson. Mr. Hunt came to me, and he
said, "Anderson has now gone too far. He has just identified and caused
the death or imminent death under torture of one of our human assets
abroad." And he, Hunt, had been charged by his principals, meaning his
superiors at the White House, with conferring with me and someone from
the CIA who was represented as retired, namely Dr. Gunn, as to how best
to prevent Mr. Anderson from repeating his behavior.
This meeting was held in the then
existing downstairs luncheon room of the Hay Adams Hotel, now no longer
in existence. And Mr. Hunt brought up that LSD business again. Dr. Gunn
rejected it on technical grounds. I suggested that the only way to
effectively stop Mr. Anderson, was to kill him. Mr. Hunt and Dr. Gunn
agreed. The remainder of the conversation consisted of how we ought
to do it best. The conclusion was that the Cuban assets were to stage a
mugging In Washington which would be fatal to Anderson.
Q: All right. Now if Mr. Hunt had
said he had merely discussed with you and Dr. Gunn nothing more than a
discreditation of Mr. Anderson, would that be correct or
incorrect?
Liddy: That would be absolutely
incorrect.
Q: The story reflecting this
situation occurred in The Washington Post under an article by Woodward
and Bernstein. Are you aware of that article, and were you surprised to
see that that had come to light?
Liddy: I was in prison at the time
.The article was made available to me. I read it at the time. And I was
surprised to see that it was incorrect in that it did not narrate the
incident as I have just narrated it to you, which is what actually
happened. [7]
In July, 1984,
Liddy testified in another lawsuit, this one filed by E. Howard Hunt
against the ultra-conservative Spotlight press, an arm of the Liberty
Lobby, proclaiming that several approaches to disposing of the columnist
were considered -- killing methods with the stamp of the CIA. The Agency
assigned Hunt the task of killing Anderson, employing methods found
routinely in foreign political plots: "We discussed with Mr. Gunn
aspirin roulette in which one takes a single tablet of deadly poison,
packs it in a Bayer aspirin jar, we place it in the man's medicine
chest, and one day he gets the tablet and that's that. Hunt referred to
aspirin roulette." Hunt at this time was employed by the aforementioned
CIA front, Mullen and Associates, then run by Washington attorney Robert
Bennett. "We discussed Dr. Gunn's suggestion of the use of an automobile
to hit Mr. Anderson's automobile when it was in a turn in the circle, up
near Chevy Chase. There is a way ... known by the CIA that if you hit
a car at just the right speed and angle, it will ... burn and kill the
occupant. ... But what I suggested is we just kill him. And they
both agreed that would be the way to go about it, and the task would be
assigned to Cuban assets."'
Hunt's employer,
the Mullen agency, had a long history of participation in political
killings. Rolling Stone reported on May 20, 1976, "The Bay of Pigs
and the Kennedy assassination are motifs that run through the Watergate
affair. Howard Hunt, the chief Watergate burglar, helped establish a CIA
front group for the Bay of Pigs, and Robert Bennett, as head of the
Mullen Agency, played a decisive role in the undoing of Richard Nixon."
[9]
Liddy's
deposition in the Hunt suit exposed a death squad in the executive
branch: "We had perhaps a dozen men who were willing to come on
board in this connection. And Mr. Hunt, to impress upon me the high
caliber of these individuals, stated that they had accounted among them
for a substantial number of deaths [22], including two who had hanged
someone from a beam in a garage." [10]
Were these the
same "high caliber individuals" who killed gossip columnist Dorothy
Kilgallen, the only reporter to interview Jack Ruby and the author of an
open letter to Lyndon Johnson that appeared in her syndicated column on
December 21, 1964: "MEMORANDUM TO PRESIDENT JOHNSON; Please check with
the State Department ... the leaders of our Armed Forces or our chief
scientists, to discover what, if anything, we are doing to explore the
ramifications of [electromagnetic] thought control ... could change the
history of the world."
Kilgallen, one of
the very few reporters in the country to question the Warren
Commission's findings, told friends in the entertainment industry that
she was going to "bust the Kennedy assassination wide open." But she
never had the opportunity. She abruptly died of acute barbiturate and
alcohol poisoning -- the New York medical examiner could not say whether
Kilgallen died accidentally or was murdered -- on November 8, 1965. Mary
Branum, one of Kilgallen's editors, received a telephone call several
hours prior to the discovery of the body. The anonymous caller informed
Branum that the columnist had been "murdered" [11]
Indisputably, she
had. This was the conclusion of a forensic chemist who reported to Dr.
Charles Umberger at the New York City Medical Examiner's office -- and
was told to keep the chemical analysis under wraps -- in 1978. The
chemist ran an analysis of the glass Kilgallen had been drinking from
when she died, using forensic techniques that did not exist in 1965. The
tests turned up traces of Nembutol on the glass ... but Nembutol was not
found in her blood. The blood analysis revealed a lethal cocktail of
drugs, three from the fastest-acting groups of barbiturates:
secobarbitol, amobarbital and phentobarbital. [12] None of these drugs
were detected on the glass.
The CIA had
assembled a thick concordia of lethal methods. On April 2, 1979, the
Washington Post reported that the Agency had experimented with exotic
poisons that left the subject in a condition that would indicate natural
causes to an unsuspecting coroner. The project began with an
anonymous, undated memo on assassination by "natural causes." "Knock off
key people," the heavily censored document specified, "how [to] knock
off key guys ... natural causes ..."
And then there's a
declassified memo from a CIA consultant to an official of the agency
discussing clandestine methods for killing us softly.
1. bodies left with no hope if the
cause of death being determined by the most complete autopsy and
chemical examinations.
2. bodies left in such circumstances as to simulate accidental
death.
3. bodies left in such circumstances as to simulate suicidal
death.
4. bodies left with residue that simulate those caused by natural
diseases. [13]
Kilgallen was not
the only whistle-blower dispatched in the aftermath of the Kennedy
assassination. In January, 1968, Ramparts magazine reported on the death
of Gerrett Underhill, a staffer at the Army's Military Intelligence
Service and advisor to the Agency. "Immediately after the [John
Kennedy] assassination, a distraught Underhill told friends that a
semi-autonomous CIA clique which had been profiting in narcotics and
gun-running was implicated." A few months later, "Underhill
was found dead of a bullet wound in the head."
Some of the same
"high-caliber individuals" behind the murders of Kilgallen and Underhill
may have turned up yet again in the shooting of George Wallace, the
fiercely segregationist Democratic governor of Alabama who vied with
Richard Nixon for the presidency in 1972.
Wallace was
campaigning at a shopping center in Laurel, Maryland, an appearance that
drew a crowd of some 2,000 supporters. Two critical primaries were a
couple of days off and the polls predicted that Wallace would take
Michigan and Maryland by a landslide. If he survived the primaries,
there was every chance that he could walk away with a sizable share of
conservative votes that otherwise would have gone to Nixon. Wallace was
therefore perceived as a threat. "Remember one thing," Wallace
exhorted all in his last campaign speech, "there's not a dime's
difference between Nixon and McGovern, or Nixon and Humphrey. It's up to
you to send them a message in Washington, a message they won't forget!"
But it was Wallace
who received the message when, after stepping down from the podium, a
short, plump, smiling 21- year old man in sunglasses pushed through the
crowd. "Hey, George. Over here! Governor Wallace turned toward the voice
of a grinning Arthur Bremer, an unemployed busboy from Milwaukee, who
produced a snub-nosed .38 caliber revolver and fired four rounds into
the candidate from Alabama. Three of the governor's entourage were also
wounded before the gun was pried from Bremer's hand.
Wallace survived
but spent the remainder of his life in a wheelchair, his legs paralyzed.
He took potent anti-depressants for years after the shooting. Bremer was
summarily convicted on four counts of assault with intent to kill and
was led away to serve a 53-year prison sentence. It was quickly
determined that he had acted alone. Subsequent events suggest otherwise.
A few minutes
after the shots were fired, Nixon aide Charles Colson directed E. Howard
Hunt to fly to Milwaukee, break into Bremer's apartment and recover all
"embarrassing evidence," according to Woodward and Bernstein in All the
Presidents Men. Gore Vidal, novelist and literary critic, opined that
Hunt actually penned Bremer's diaries. Wallace himself stated
openly, "my attempted assassination was part of a conspiracy."
All told, the
four victims suffered 18 bullet wounds -- but Bremer's gun was a
five-shooter. Arthur told his brother that he had accomplices who had
paid him handsomely to shoot George Wallace. Bremer was out of
work, so who picked up the tab for his repeated stays at the opulent
Waldorf-Astoria in New York?
Milwaukee police
files on Bremer portrayed him as a "subversive" with ties to Students
for a Democratic Society (SDS). These were seized after the shooting and
classified secret by the ATF acting "under the highest authority."
Tim Heinan, a
Marquette University student who moonlighted as an undercover agent for
the Milwaukee Police Department's Special Assignment Squad, learned that
Arthur Bremer had ties to a CIA operative named Dennis Salvatore
Cossini, a federal "counter terrorist" who specialized in the
infiltration and control of radical organizations including the local
SDS chapter the gunman had joined. The agent was fired after Heinan
confessed his links to Bremer. Cossini headed for Toronto and was next
seen dead, slouching in a parked car with an overdose of heroin in his
veins. One of the police investigating the death mused "Somebody
gave him a hot shot." [14]
Heroin "overdoses"
would recur in the coming hit parade, and the Nixonites would
dance on the graves of the casualties in a covert war that
ultimately altered the political course of the country.
NOTES
1. Heinrik Kruger,
The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence & International Fascism,
Boston: South End Press, 1980, p. 164. Kruger and others have
documented assassination and extermination campaigns in Vietnam,
Guatemala, Argentina and Brazil -- represented in Latin America by local
death squads. "The White House appears to have sponsored a secret
assassination program under cover of drug enforcement. It was
continued by the DEA, which seemingly overlapped with the CIA in
political rather than drug enforcement. Until 1974 the training
of torturers [and] Latin American death squads came under the auspices
of the CIA and USAID's Office of Public Safety."
2. Henry
Kissinger, an old CIA hand, was untouched by the scandal. He lied
repeatedly to Congress concerning illicit wiretaps placed by his office
on the telephones of newspaper reporters and National Security Council
staff, yet gracefully escaped leaving the administration in disgrace
with Richard Nixon (See, John Marks, "The Case Against Kissinger:
Rolling Stone, no 166, August 1, 1974, pp 10-14). Throughout the
Watergate exposures, the media sustained a hands-off policy toward
Kissinger, despite the revelation of his threat to "destroy" anyone who
leaked information on the secret bombing of Cambodia. He was portrayed
by the press not as a perjurer or wire-tapper, but at all times as an
eminent statesman and moral bulwark against Communist tyranny.
3. Adrian Havill,
Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, New York:
Birch Lane, 1993, p 43.
4. Kruger, p. 155.
Senator Smathers was a controlling shareholder in the Major Realty
Co. with Lansky subordinates Ben Siegelbaum and Max Orovitz.
5. Admiral
Moorer, Woodward's superior officer, was the stereotypical hard-bitten
Pentagon hawk, a close friend to two of the most powerful Nixon
appointees, Henry Kissinger and John Mitchell. He was an enigma to
most employees at the Pentagon, best known for his temper tantrums. The
Admiral, a ferocious anti-communist, pushed for open warfare with the
Soviet Union and denounced as a "dirty bastard" and "unshaven peacenik"
anyone who disagreed with him on this score or any other. He was the
most feared official in Navy history. Mark Perry, a Nation
correspondent, found that Moorer's "apparent lack of intelligence was
his most important quality." Thus the Nixon administration's "secret
plan to end the war" echoed Moorer's sentiments. The "plan": the
US should step up the Vietnam war to pressure North Vietnam to concede.
Nixon considered Moorer to be a model "loyalist," a figure he could
respect. The Admiral won a reappointment to chairman of the Joint
Chiefs in 1972, and continued to urge Nixon on to more devastating
levels of military violence in Vietnam.
Under the watch
of Admiral Thomas Moorer, Bob Woodward held authority over all
communications to the Naval wing of the Pentagon, including the
Secretary of the Navy's office. The Admiral and former Secretary of
Defense Melvin Laird both stated on tape in 1989 interviews that
Woodward's duties included briefing Alex Haig at the Nixon White House.
"Later," Havill found, "Moorer attempted to back away from his recorded
statement."
The Admiral
back-stroked, made "contradictory statements and [sounded] befuddled.
Laird said he was 'aware that Haig was being briefed by Woodward.'"
6. Edward J.
Epstein, Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America, Verso
Books, 1990. First published in 1977 by Putnam.
7. Liddy
Deposition, September 30, 1980. Hunt v. Weberman.
8. Hunt's
testimony, July 11, 1984 Hunt v. Spotlight, USDC Miami, Florida.
9. Howard Kohn,
"The Hughes-Nixon-Lansky Connection: The Secret Alliances of the CIA
from World War II to Watergate," Rolling Stone, May 20, 1976.
10. Hunt v.
Weberman.
11. Lincoln
Lawrente, Mind Control, Oswald & JFK: Were We Controlled?
Kenn Thomas, ed, Kempton, IL Adventures Unlimited, 1997, pp. 162-63.
12. Lee Israel,
Kilgallen, New York, Delacourte, 1979, p. 441.
13. Jim Marrs,
Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, New York Carroll & Graf, 1989,
p 557. A significant CIA leak confirms that the Agency has a keen
interest in the lethal arts. Barry Rothman, a CIA assassination methods
specialist, was interviewed by Playboy in January, 1977, and explained
that he'd been enlisted by an unidentified spy with "an encyclopedic
knowledge of guns, particularly Nazi weaponry." The recruiter was "a
fascist, basically. He had a deep- seated, violent prejudice against
anything that wasn't Aryan." Rothman was recruited in 1952 and graduated
from the development of certain explosives to sophisticated biochemical
warfare toxins. Not an agency to let talent go to waste, the CIA
requested that he write a handbook on improvised weapons systems. He
surveyed plant poisons. "Common things you can walk out and find right
now in your backyard can, if treated properly, yield very deadly poisons
that are not easily detectable. I think I included about forty plants
and instructions on how to use them. The Agency was very pleased with
it." He moved on to biological agents that "can be made without
too much grief. There are a fair number of those." But there was "one
peculiar thing" about the CIA assignment that disturbed him. "I was
specifically instructed to orient [the handbook] toward domestically
available materials and plants. Plants that grow in the U.S. and
materials that are sold in the US. What that means, I don't know, but it
makes you wonder."
14. Eric Norden,
"The Shooting of George Wallace -- Who Really Wanted Him Dead," Apri1
1984, pp 21ff.
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