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Secret Agenda
Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA
Jim Hougan
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eBook - ePub
Secret Agenda
Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA
Jim Hougan
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About This Book
The exposĂ© that reveals "a prostitution ring, heavy CIA involvement, spying on the White House as well as on the Democrats, and plots within plots" ( The Washington Post ) Ten years after the infamous Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon presidency, Jim Houganâthen the Washington editor of Harper's Magazine âset out to write a profile of Lou Russell, a boozy private-eye who plied his trade in the vice-driven underbelly of the nation's capital. Hougan soon discovered that Russell was "the sixth man, the one who got away" when his boss, veteran CIA officer Jim McCord, led a break-in team into a trap at the Watergate. Using the Freedom of Information Act to win the release of the FBI's Watergate investigationâsome thirty-thousand pages of documents that neither the Washington Post nor the Senate had seenâHougan refuted the orthodox narrative of the affair. Armed with evidence hidden from the public for more than a decade, Hougan proves that McCord deliberately sabotaged the June 17, 1972, burglary. None of the Democrats' phones had been bugged, and the spy-team's ostensible leader, Gordon Liddy, was himself a pawnâat once, guilty and oblivious. The power struggle that unfolded saw E. Howard Hunt and Jim McCord using the White House as a cover for an illicit domestic intelligence operation involving call-girls at the nearby Columbia Plaza Apartments. A New York Times Notable Book, Secret Agenda "present[s] some valuable new evidence and explored many murky corners of our recent past... The questions [Hougan] has posed hereâand some he hasn'tâcertainly deserve an answer" ( The New York Times Book Review ). Kirkus Reviews declared the book "a fascinating series of puzzlesâwith all the detective work laid out."
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I
WELL-MEASURED STEPS
1.
Of Hunt and McCord
Of all those who played important roles in the Watergate affair, no two proved more decisive than E. Howard Hunt and James McCord. Here, then, at the very beginning of our reexamination of the scandal it will be useful to look at the careers and personalities of both men, to gain some understanding of the CIA components for which they worked and to take note of the clandestine relationship that existed between them.
Hunt was a GS-15 CIA staff officer in the late fall of 1969 when he approached a fellow alumnus of Brown University, Charles Colson, and asked if there was any possibility that he might come to work for the Nixon White House. Seated with Hunt in the White House cafeteria, Colson demurred, explaining that he himself had only just been appointed to the Nixon team and, as a newcomer, had little influence upon the White Houseâs hiring practices. Despite this, however, Colson tells us that Hunt continued to âpesterâ him for more than a year in an effort to win a consultancy.
While Howard Hunt has been thoroughly deglamorized, and even trivialized, by his participation in the Watergate affair, his life has been more interesting than many imagine.1 A war correspondent for Life magazine in 1943, he joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) that same year, serving in the celebrated 202 Detachment in Kunming and Shanghai, China.2 Demobilized at warâs end, he applied for and received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1946. With that in hand, he spent a year banging around Mexico, working on a novel, and then traveled to Hollywood to try writing screenplays. Becoming bored with that, he joined U.S. Ambassador Averell Harrimanâs staff as a press aide in 1948, moving to Paris as part of the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA). Whether or not this was a cover for actual CIA employment, as journalist Tad Szulc has written, is disputed.3
It was while with the ECA that Hunt met Dorothy Wetzel. Bright and attractive, Dorothy had spent the war years in Bern, Switzerland, working for the Treasury Departmentâs Hidden Assets Division (which was responsible for tracking down concealed Nazi assets abroad). At the end of the war she became a technical consultant on a Dick Powell film, To the Ends of the Earth, about the international narcotics trade. Shortly afterward, she went to Shanghai and, while there, wed a French marquis. The marriage did not work out, however, and she was already divorced when Hunt was paid $35,000âa fortune at the timeâfor the film rights to a novel that he had written, Bimini Run.4 Shortly thereafter they were married. According to Hunt, it was then that he joined the CIA.
His first posting appears to have been to Vienna, a mecca for Cold War intriguers. He was then sent to Mexico City (1951â52), after which he became chief of covert operations for the Balkans, a post he held while serving in Washington. In 1954 he participated in planning the invasive coup dâĂ©tat against Guatemalaâs left-wing president, Jacobo Arbenz GuzmĂĄn. Only days before the coup was carried out, he was transferred to the CIAâs North Asia Command (comprising China, Japan, North and South Korea, Taiwan, Okinawa, Hong Kong and Subic Bay). Based in Tokyo, he was chief of covert operations in that area until 1956, when the agency appointed him chief of station in Montevideo, Uruguay. This post was to last four years, until, in late 1959, Hunt was brought home to assist in planning for what ultimately became the Bay of Pigs invasion. When the invasion failed, he was named to outgoing CIA Director Allen Dullesâs personal staff. A year later, after Dulles had been ousted, Hunt was appointed the CIAâs first chief of covert actions for the Domestic Operations Division. What this job entailed is unknown, but it certainly included subsidizing news services and books (e.g., Fodorâs travel guides) in which the agency had an interest. According to Hunt himself, the new job also involved spying on GOP presidential candidate Barry Gold water.5 What is more worrisome, though, is that Hunt is said to have played a continuing role in the CIAâs ongoing efforts to assassinate, unseat or harass Fidel Castro in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs.
It was at about this time that Hunt was asked to serve as deputy chief of station in Madrid, a city he liked and one, moreover, that served the CIA as a staging ground for assassination attempts against Castro.6 Huntâs appointment, however, was blocked by the former U.S. ambassador to Uruguay, Robert Woodward, who disliked Hunt and who was then ambassador to Spain. Despite this, Hunt went to Madrid (though not to the embassy) in an undercover capacity during 1965, remaining there until 1966. Returning home from this last posting abroad, he worked at the CIAâs headquarters in Langley, Virginia, under State Department cover until his retirement in 1970.
These, then, were the outlines of Howard Huntâs career in the CIA, though a simple recitation of facts can hardly convey what it must have been like to work behind the lines in China or to carry out assignments in Vienna during the Cold War.
When Hunt first approached Colson for work in the White House, he was still a part of the CIA. His retirement from the agency would not occur until April 30, 1970, and, considering his past record, the possibility that this retirement was bogus is quite real. Indeed, this was the third time that Hunt had left the Central Intelligence Agency.
The first occasion was in 1960, when he was issued fraudulent retirement papers to facilitate his liaison with anti-Castro exiles. When that invasion was launched, only to founder, Hunt returned to the agencyâs staffâhaving never actually left its payroll. Five years later, in 1965, Hunt quit for the second time. The author of more than four dozen pulp thrillers and novels of the occult, Hunt left the agency in furtherance of a counterintelligence scheme that revolved around his literary efforts. The purpose of the scheme, according to government sources familiar with Huntâs curriculum vitae at the agency, was to draw the KGBâs attention to books that Hunt was writing under the pseudonym David St. John. These spy novels alluded to actual CIA operations in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, and contained barely disguised portraits of political figures as diverse as Prince Norodom Sihanouk and the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy. It was the CIAâs intention that the KGB be led to believe that the books contained security breaches, and toward that end the agency created a phony âflapâ that was capped by Huntâs supposedly âforced retirement.â In his memoir of his years as a spy, Hunt does not mention the counterintelligence aspects of the David St. John novels, but writes: âI resigned from the CIA [this second time], and was at once rehired as a contract agent, responsible only to [the CIAâs Deputy Director for Plans, Thomas] Karamessines.â7
Leaving aside the precedents established by Huntâs false retirements in 1960 and 1965, the authenticity of his 1970 departure from the CIA should be questioned on yet other grounds. To begin with, Huntâs transition to civilian life was considerably smoothed by the interventions of the CIA director himself, Richard Helms. Not only did Helms see to it that Hunt received large no-interest personal âloansâ from a special CIA fund,8 but the director also went out of his way to write a personal recommendation on Huntâs behalf, urging the Washington-based Robert R. Mullen Company to hire him.9 Itself a CIA cover, the Mullen Company would become increasingly entangled in the agencyâs affairs by virtue of its impending involvement with the Howard Hughes empire and that empireâs links to the CIA and Project Jennifer.10 The Mullen Company, then, was in a poor position to ignore Helmsâs ârecommendation,â and, indeed, it did not. Hunt got the job.
The circumstances of Huntâs retirement from the CIA are important. If it can be shown that his departure was merely an operational convenience, useful for the purposes of deniability and, perhaps, infiltration, then it would appear that the CIAâand not the White Houseâwas Huntâs real principal throughout the Watergate affair. And there is much to suggest this.
For example, internal memoranda of the CIA establish that the agencyâs Central Cover Staff reviewed and extended Huntâs top-secret security clearance prior to his retirement, and that, moreover, this was done in anticipation of Huntâs continued âutilizationâ by the CIA.11 Other agency memos establish that Huntâs continuing utility was due to many things, including his âaccess to Colonel Whiteâ12 and Huntâs role in negotiations between the CIA and the Mullen Company.13
The intention that Hunt continue to be used by the agency while employed at the White House is easily demonstrated. Not only does Hunt appear to have made timely reports to important CIA officials concerning his approaches to Colson,14 but he met regularly with top officials of the CIAâs operations directorate for more than two years after leaving the agency.15 While Hunt claims that these meetings were merely lunch and tennis dates, there is reason to wonder: social luncheons are a standard pretext for meetings between agent handlers, case officers and their wards.16 Such circumstantial evidence, however, is by no means the only reason to believe that Hunt continued to work for the agency after leaving it. On the contrary, the FBI tells us that Hunt was used by the CIA on an âad hoc basisâ while he worked at the White House.17 Similarly, a sworn statement by a worried CIA officer describes how Hunt made frequent, secret reports to CIA Director Richard Helms and others at the agency, using CIA channels on the National Security Council (NSC), while supposedly working exclusively for the Nixon administration.18
Moreover, when it came time for Hunt to undertake a series of questionable intelligence operations, ostensibly on behalf of the White House, it was the CIA that provided him with the extensive âtechnical supportâ that the missions required.19 In a similar way, Hunt relied upon veteran CIA contract agents to help carry out these operations, and even applied to the CIAâs External Employment Assistance Branch (EEAB) for help in locating men skilled at lock-picking, electronic sweeps and entry operations.20 He used the agency to conduct computer name traces as required,21 and had a sterile telephone installed in the White House to ensure the secrecy of his regular telephone conversations with unidentified officials at the CIA.22 To these facts still others might be added, but to do so would only belabor the point: Huntâs retirement from the CIA was dubious in the extreme.
James McCordâs own retirement from the CIA is also questionable. On August 31, 1970, four months after Hunt joined the Mullen Company, McCord gave up his federal employment, saying that he needed to earn more money in order to care for his retarded daughter. The difficulty with this explanation is that McCord seems to have made few, if any, plans to supplement the CIA pension due him after nineteen years of service. Although he did manage to work part time as an instructor for a course in industrial security at Montgomery County Junior College, this did little to alleviate the financial burdens that he said afflicted him.
Whatever his reasons for leaving the CIA, his career with the intelligence agency had been a murky one. A former FBI agent, he joined the CIA in 1951 after handling counterespionage assignments for the bureau. His first task with the agency was in a ârearguardâ capacity, identifying CIA employees whose left-wing pasts might prove embarrassing should Senator Joseph McCarthy learn of them. As a part of that assignment, McCord came into daily contact with the inner circle of Cold War Red hunters, including two men who would play crucial roles in the Watergate affair: HUACâs Lou Russell and the American Legionâs Lee R. Pennington.23
For most of the 1950s and early 1960s McCord was attached to the Security Research Staff (SRS), a component of the Office of Security, whose mission was to combat Soviet attempts to penetrate the CIA.24 Becoming depu...