Watergate: Minor Part of

( Editor's note: Was Watergate simply a weird outgrowth of some poor Monday, staff work, of a so-called "dirty tricks" mentality? In the following series excerpted from the forthcoming issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Associate Editor Howard Kohn details a chilling a Far Bigger and awesome tapestry of events going hack to the 1930's that make the Watergate burglary, coverup and ensuing revelations minor scenes in a May 3,1976 Gainesville Sun 7D far bigger picture. A compelling and fascinating account which may well turn out to be one of the most important pieces of investigative journalism of the year.) Picture By HOWARD KOHN From Rolling Stone President Nixon's immediate answer to news of the Watergate burglary arrests was simple: The CIA, he told 50-year sentence. Other leaders in the agents. Haldeman (as recorded by the White blood-oath Sicilian fraternity still The men in this circle were from House tapes) would close off the considered the Jewish Lansky an well-bred, well-educated backgrounds investigation because "if it gets out outsider and, without Luciano around, with connections at the highest levels of that this is all involved, the Cuba thing balked at his innovations. government and finance. Allen Dulles, would be a fiasco it would make the Lansky saw the Naval Intelligence a former topranking OSS official, and CIA look bad and it is likely to blow deal as a chance to improve his position Gov. Dewey were two of their leaders the whole Bay of Pigs thing..." among the ruling lords of organized both Wall Street lawyers, both on the Watergate, the Bay of Pigs, indeed a crime by opening prison gates for the opposite side of New York from Lansky change of government in the Bahamas don of dons. Lansky persuaded and Luciano, both expecting top. and a paint company going into real Luciano, still the power although positions in Washington. One of their estate and gambling all were woven operating from a prison cell, to have mentors was Dulles's brother, John together, all rooted in a World War II Mafia henchmen patrol the waterfront. Foster. alliance. In turn, Luciano was to be set free. World War II had turned the U.S. into The year was 1942. The U.S. had just As New York City's Mafia-fighting the world's most powerful nation. entered the war. The Department of special prosecutor, Thomas Dewey Dewey, the Dulles brothers and others War was worried that Nazi saboteurs catapulted to the governor's chair by had formed their circle in secret were infiltrating the docks and putting Luciano behind bars. But Gov. because they saw themselves as loyal shipyards along the East Coast. Dewey now agreed to the deal and and pragmatic Americans with a duty Already the Normandie, being transferred Luciano from Dannemora to help shape the country's new converted to a troopship, had burned State Prison, known as "Siberia," to international role. Their project was to and sunk in her Manhattan berth. gentlemen's quarters at a prison near resurrect the OSS. Then a Navy officer suggested Albany. Then shortly after V-E day he No country could stay on top, they seeking help from the Mafia because of signed the parole papers. believed, without a powerful and its influence in the dockworkers' By then the Mafia had developed a independent intelligence agency. Allen unions. In short order Naval working friendship with the Office of Dulles championed this idea among his Intelligence struck a bargain with Strategic Services (OSS), the country's contacts at the Pentagon and in the Meyer Lansky, top aide to the don of first autonomous intelligence agency, Truman administration. Truman dons, Lucky Luciano. set up to oversee all wartime appointed Dulles to head a Back in 1931 Luciano's hitmen had espionage. The OSS-Mafia deal, known three-member commission to study the carried out a bloody purge of the as Operation Underworld, included U.S. intelligence system. Dewey and Mafia's old guard to clear the way for gangland assistance for allied armies others in the circle lobbied Congress. his takeover. Then Luciano employed when they landed in Sicily. In July 1947, Congress passed the Lansky to modernize the Mafia's But at the war's end in 1945 the OSS National Security Act. Truman signed ingrown family structure. But in 1936 was disbanded, a move that dismayed it, as Dulles and Dewey had Luciano had been sent to prison with a both the Mafia and a circle of recom m ended, thereby creating the businessmen, politicians and espionage Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a successor to the OSS. The CIA was charged with protecting found their re-election problems eased America by whatever means — contributions, volunteers, necessary. The Cold War had started. endorsements — and their staffs Communists were the new enemies. peopled with bright young assistants The Communist spread across the introduced by members of the circle. globe was to be stopped. To the Most favors went to young Dewey-Dulles circle, some of whose congressmen with a promising future, members became key CIA officials, politicians who some day might be Capitol Hill leaders wad White House aspirants. that meant theCIA was to be the patron Richard Nixon, a member of the of U.S. multinational companies which House of Representatives, was one had set up in undeveloped countries. recipient. In 1947 Dewey had recruited The OSS's old partner, the Mafia, Nixon's vote to help establish the CIA. was among the leading multinational Dewey liked Nixon's amoral corporations that emerged in the late pragmatism and his fierce Forties. Lansky's moxie in freeing anti-Communism. Luciano had impressed the Sicilian dons. Lansky also had outwitted So in 1948, when Dewey saw a chance Luciano, who was deported to Sicily to embarrass Truman, to bolster the immediately upon his release. But, House Un-American Activities with Luciano's unreserved blessing, Committee (which Truman wanted to Lansky took charge of domestic abolish) and to boost Nixon's career operations and finished the job the two without publicly involving himself, he had started a decade before. Lansky leaked secret CIA information on Alger merged the Mafia's rival gangs into a Hiss to Nixon. conglomerate known as the The Hiss case gave Nixon a national International Crime Syndicate, a reputation. In 1950 he ran for the Senate network that Lansky estimated was against the popular Helen Douglas, "bigger than U.S. Steel," and which he calling her the " Pink Lady." immersed in banking, real estate. According to CIA sources, most of the tourism and gambling. information used by the Nixon At the same time, the exiled Luciano campaign to label Douglas a expanded the Syndicate's overseas Communist came from secret CIA connections. When Communist strikers files. H e won easily. shut down the French Port of In 1952, after only six years in Marseilles in 1947 and threatened to politics, Richard Nixon became ruin American shipping, the CIA called Vice-President. His nomination was on Luciano. He furnished hitmen while shepherded through by Dewey. Having the CIA supplied money and weapons. abandoned his own presidential After several murders the docks ambitions, Dewey threw his support to reopened for American shippers and Dwight Eisenhower. Then, at Dewey's also for the Syndicate's heroin request, Eisenhower picked Nixon as smugglers. his running mate. Like the OSS, the CIA did not shrink Immediately after the election Allen from making deals with the Syndicate Dulles was promoted to the CIA to preserve U.S. interests. Under the directorship and his brother was CIA's charter, such arrangements named Secretary of State. were legal. With Nixon as Vice-President and Dewey and Allen Dulles also realized Dulles as CIA Director, the Justice the CIA needed to safeguard its own Department in 1953 decided not to political base to avoid potential power prosecute Lansky even though the IRS struggles in Washington, an analysis intelligence division found he was that carried the Agency into a evading taxes, and in 1957 the Justice clandestine role in American electoral Department failed to carry through on politics. an attempt by immigration authorities What most concerned the CIA was to deport him. the ephemeral mood on Capitol Hill. Throughout the Fifties the careers of What the CIA wanted from Congress, Richard Nixon, Meyer Lansky and aside from appropriations money, was Allen Dulles prospered. But then the to be left alone_ In the opinion of the affairs of a little island in the Dulles-Dewey circle, Congress posed Caribbean changed that and the greatest danger to CIA autonomy. inextricably bound up the collective As a hedge against any difficulties, the fortunes of the CIA, the Syndicate and circle began to collect Congressional the White House. goodwill for the CIA. Congressmen Lansky first visited Cuba in the fall of . _ . Strange Bedfellows

(AP Wire Photo to the Sun) KENNEDY ASSASSIN OSWALD IS GUNNED DOWN BY JACK RUBY IN 1963 Ruby's Syndicate Connections Dated Back to Frank Nitti's Days 1933 and befriended Fulgenaa Batista, leading CIA contractor, a position that an ex-army sergeant who had just shielded him from federal prosecution ordained himself dictator. With and Senate hearings. Like the CIA and Batista's sanction, Lansky opened Lansky, Hughes also understood "quid several new casinos, the genesis of the pro quo" and electoral politics. Mafia's international gambling In early 1956, according to a former network. Hughes aide, the tycoon furnished With World War II the tourists Nixon with a secret $100,000 to help the stopped coming, Lansky shut down the Vice-President fight a dump-Nixon Cuban gambling spas, and Batista move by fellow Republican Harold encountered political turmoil. To stay Stassen. in power he had to make concessions Then in December 1956, Hughes that extended Communist influence. loaned $205,000 to Nixon's brother U.S. corporations feared their Cuban Donald for a hamburger restaurant. investments might be nationalized. So The " loan" was never repaid. in 1944, Naval Intelligence asked Shortly thereafter, a Justice Lansky to pressure Batista into holding Department antitrust suit against elections to keep out the Communists. Hughes was settled by a consent decree and the Hughes Medical Foundation was granted a tax exempt status that Lansky, a staunch anti-Communist, had been denied twice before, a status prevailed upon the dictator: elections that saved Hughes an estimated $30 were held, a pro-American candidate million a year. won and Batista left Cuba for eight During the next decade Hughes' years of exile in southern Florida. interests continued to merge with During this period, on Capitol Hill the Nixon, the CIA — and eventually with freshman Nixon was befriended by the Syndicate. fellow Congressman George Smathers, * * * a Miami playboy, and began socializing In 1958 a bearded ex-lawyer with southern Florida's fastbuck descended from Cuba's Sierra Maestra entrepreneurs. Among them were Mountains with a "Yankee-Go-Home" Richard Danner. a former FBI agent, revolution. Lansky lieutenants and Charles "Bebe" Rebozo. smuggled in arms to help Batista, but In March 1952, Batista returned from Castro seized Havana on New Year's exile and resurrected his Cuban Day, 1959, and Batista and Lansky fled dictatorship in a bloodless coup set up Cuba the same day. by La nsky's $250,000 bribe to the At CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. elected president for his abdication. the Agency began hatching plans to One month after Batista's return to retake Cuba, partly to protect U.S. power, Danner took Nixon on a tour of investments, partly to stop the spread the Havana casinos. of Communism, and partly because of Under the new Batista regime the loss of the casinos. Lansky rejuvenated gambling in Cuba. Lansky had masterminded a system He persuaded the other Syndicate that allowed the Syndicate to skim leaders to invest heavily in a new winnings, evade taxes and launder concept: the hotel-casino. illicit funds at the gaming tables. The In a few years the Syndicate's CIA, according to Agency sources, had hotel-casinos in Havana were earning been using the same system to hide its an estimated annual profit of $100 payments to the underworld figures it million. sometimes employed. Meanwhile, by the mid-Fifties, Howard Hughes, sole owner of the country's largest privately held Under the CIA plan, about 1200 Cuban corporation, was also deeply enmeshed exiles would land at the Bay of Pigs, in the dynamics of money and politics. steal through the jungle and establish a Hughes had been accused of influence renegade government, thus providing a peddling during World War U in a ruse for a full U.S. military assault Senate hearing involving a government against the Castro regime. contract. He considered himself a E. Howard Hunt, the CIA agent who patriot and felt he had been unfairly recruited Cuban exiles for the invasion, singled out for practices standard to later reported that Nixon was the Bay most defense firms. of Pigs "secret action officer" at the Hughes began hiring ex-CIA White House. employees as top administrators and As the invasion neared, work began eventually became the country's an a plot to demoralize Castro's forces by killing their leader. The CIA eventually tried several times to murder Castro. It enlisted the help of Robert Maheu, an ex-FBI agent who had worked for the CIA under a special retainer since 1954. Mabel'. authorized to pay $150,000 for the hit, called on John Roselli, Sam Giancana and Santo Trafficante, all members of the Syndicate's ruling elite. President Johnson later discovered that "we're operating a damn Murder Incorporated in the Caribbean." The assassination attempts failed, but they were not the only setback in the plan to retake Cuba. Richard Nixon had been defeated in the 1.960 Presidential race, a turn that sesmed to bombers would have to provide air Shortly thereafter he defected to the imperil the entire scheme. The CIA cover for the CIA soldiers. Kennedy Soviet Union, paying a $1,500 travel now had to obtain John Kennedy's refused. fare although his bank account held support. Tension between Kennedy and the only 5203. He claimed to be a Marxist, President Kennedy was presented CIA next flared up in October 1962, but the Soviets believed Oswald was a the Bay of Pigs plan as a "fait during the Cuban missile crisis. Top double agent for the CIA. After two accompli." CIA officials saw the crisis as a prelude years, Oswald returned to the U.S. and, On April 17, 1961 — three months to a second Cuban invasion and alerted despite his prior admissions of treason, after he took office — the CIA army the surviving Bay of Pigs army to stand was handed back his citizenship stormed the beach at the Bay of Pigs, ready. But Kennedy's negotiations with papers. only to be quickly muted by Castro's the Soviets produced an opposite result. In the summer of 1963 Oswald forces. The Soviets agreed to withdraw their surfaced in New Orleans as the CIA officials told Kennedy Air Force missiles from Cuba, and Kennedy organizer of a pro-Castro group with promised to end the U.S.'s undercover himself as its only member. He war against Castro (a promise he was distributed pro-Castro leaflets, picked unable to carry out). fights with anti-Castroists, and seemed As Kennedy moved toward a to seek newspaper and TV coverage. U.S.-Cuba rapprochement he came Oswald's pro-Castro leaflets were further into conflict with the CIA's stamped with the address of a building unforgiving anti-Castroism. Finally, in used by the Anti-Castro Cuban mid-November 1963, he ordered his Revolutionary Council, a CIA front aides to get ready for a more thorough group set up by Howard Hunt during housecleaning of the Agency. the Bay of Pigs operation. "The CIA will have to be dealt with," During this period Oswald was seen Kennedy told aides shortly before conferring with David Ferrie, who had traveling to Dallas for a Nov. 22 worked for both the CIA and the motorcade. On that same day Syndicate. The CIA had used Ferrie Kennedy's personal emissary opened during the Bay of Pigs preparations to talks with Castro in Havana. And, train pilots, and again in 1962 as an according to the Church Committee, instructor in an anti-Castro camp the CIA also chose Nov. 22 to begin yet outside New Orleans. At the same time, another plot to assassinate Castro - in Ferrie was serving as a pilot and legal continuing defiance of administration investigator for Carlos Marcello, a policies. Syndicate leader in New Orleans. By the end of the day Kennedy's In late summer, 1963, Ferrie called a plans were dead with their patron in Chicago phone number listed in the Dallas. name of a young woman who on the day The Warren Commission attributed before Kennedy's death arrived in the Kennedy assassination to the Dallas in the company of a man who personal derangement of Lee Harvey met twice that night with Dallas Oswald, whom they described as a nightclub owner Jack Ruby. pro-Castro zealot. A special counsel to The next night, after Oswald's the Warren Commission was Texas capture, Ferrie drove 1,000 miles to a attorney Leon Jaworski, later to head Houston ice rink where he monopolized the Watergate investigation. a pay phone for several urgent calls. Oswald, as a U.S. Marine in the late Hours later Ruby went to Dallas police Fifties, held a top security clearance to a CIA-sponsored U-2 base in Japan. (See CIA, Page 8D) AP Wire Photo to the Sun) HOWARD HUGHES WAS COUNTRY'S TOP CIA CONTRACTOR "See What Could Be Done About Keeping the War Going" IA P Wire Photo to the Sun) TRUMAN, LEFT, SIGNED ACT CREATING INTELLIGENCE AGENCY Kennedy Refused Air Support for CIA Invasion of Cuba The political power in the Bahamas headquarters and gunned down was Sir Stafford Sands, the Minister of Oswald. Finance and Tourism and boss of the In 1967 Ferrie was named as a Bay Street Boys. conspirator in Kennedy's murder by Lansky offered Sands $2 million in New Orleans District Attorney Jim return for a Certificate of Exemption, a Garrison who announced he had piece of legalese needed to operate a covered an anti-Castro plot in the casino in the Bahamas. Sands. ennedy assassination. Four days later according to his own testimony, instead Ferrie was found dead of a "brain took $1.8 million in legal fees and the morrhage." On the same day, a close Syndicate got the Certificate. The friend of Ferrie who had gone on casinos opened in 1964 to the attendant anti-Castro raids with him — E. del buzz of the international jet set. Valle — was found shot and hatcheted But Sir Stafford's arrangement with to death. the Syndicate became so blatant it Garrison's case collapsed with angered local Bahamians. Cuba had Ferrie's death, Garrison claiming that proved the danger of betting everything Ferrie was going to turn state's on a man who no longer enjoyed evidence. popular support, so Lansky pulled As for Ruby, at the age of 15 he was another slick maneuver: he engineered running errands in Chicago for Frank his own revolution against Sir Stafford "The Enforcer" Nitti, heir to Al by having an aide become a secret Capone's gangland empire. He became informant and leak certain information a small time hustler, then a top official about the Syndicate's deal with Sands. in the Scrap iron and Junk Handlers Union where two years later the union The resulting scandal brought in a president was murdered. Ruby was new "clean" government headed by held for questioning in the case, but not Lund en 0. Pindling. However, the charged. Robert Kennedy later singled Pindling campaign was financed by out that murder as a crucial step in the thousands of dollars from Lansky. Syndicate's takeover of the Chicago To complete the "housecleaning," union. Lansky's frontmen were removed and Ruby arrived in Dallas in 1947, a replaced by the Mary Carter Paint Co. representative of the Syndicate's Mary Carter Paint was set up in 1958 Chicago chapter, according to a by Thomas Dewey and Allen Dulles Kefauver Committee attorney. Be with $2 million in CIA money from visited Lansky casino operator Lewis J. Dulles, then CIA Director. During the McWillie, a violent anti-Castroite, in Bay of Pigs operation, according to CIA Cuba in 1958 and in Las Vegas in sources, Mary Carter was a conduit for October 1963. During October Ruby CIA payments to the Cuban exile army. also made phone calls to others with Soon it began buying land in the Syndicate connections such as Paul Bahamas and adopted a more Dorfman, Irwin Weiner and Barney conventional Caribbean name: Resorts Baker. International. Three months after Kennedy's Resorts entered the gambling assassination, according to business in 1965 as partner with two investigative reporter Tad Szulc, CIA Syndicate frontmen. but tried to appear agents met to plan a second invasion of separate and distinct from Lansky. Cuba. Howard Hunt, using the cover of rigorously applauding itself as an alternative to Syndicate gambling. a retired government official, was put in charge and a hitman was sent into After 1966, Lansky's old frontmen Cuba on another Castro murder plot to disappeared from Vegas, just as they precede the invasion. But the assassin did in the Bahamas. The man who was caught and the invasion plan bought them out was Howard Hughes. eventually abandoned. With in three years Hughes was ** * Nevada's biggest employer with a By 1964 the Syndicate had lost payroll of $50 million. He owned a TV interest in Cuba. Meyer Jaasky had station, prime real estate and a string found a new home for the mob's of hotel-casinos. offshore gambling empire in the However, the Syndicate didn't step Bahamas. aside out of kindness, Instead, The Bahamas held some of the same according to several sources, the attractions as Cuba - an easy plane Syndicate formed a partnership of trip from the mainland, hide-and-seek symbiosis with the Hughes tax laws, the warm assurance of benign organization: providing the casino weather. expertise while Hughes lent the returned to the Bahamas as a necessary respectability. presidential candidate and honored While the Syndicate was rebuilding guest at the opening of a new Resorts its gambling network, Richard Nixon International casino. was repairing his political career. In Nixon had met the Resorts board the fall of 1962, after his California loss, chairman, James Crosby, in late 1967, he took a vacation in the Bahamas. He through Bebe Rebozo. Crosby kept an then spent the next half-decade as a account at Rebozo's Key Biscayne Wall Street lawyer renewing his bank. Watergate investigators political currency. In January 1968, he subsequently felt the bank's major function was to abet a skim from Resorts. They did not prove the bank was laundering money for Resorts, but they did learn that Crosby had donated $100,000 to Nixon just before the 1968 New Hampshire primary, the pivot in Nixon's comeback. According to the Senate Watergate Committee, Rebozo did serve Nixon as a courier and launderer of money kept in a secret White House cache shuttling these unattached funds through disparate bank accounts and then shelling them out to indulge Nixon. By 1968 Hughes was close to becoming the world's richest man and Robert Maheu was ensconced as Hughes' "charge d'affaires" on a $520,000 annual retainer. In the spring of 1968 Hughes instructed Maheu: want you to go see Nixon as my special confidential emissary. I feel there is a really valid possibility of a Republican victory this year. If that could be realized under our sponsorship and supervision every inch of the way, then we would be ready to follow with Laxalt as our next candidate." In December 1968, after Nixon's election, Maheu took $50,000 in $100 bills to Palm Springs and drove to the house where Nixon was staying and sent a

consort inside. Apparently it was Hughes' intention that the money be delivered to Nixon personally, a risky IT APPEARS THE CIA BLEW NIXON'S COVERUP TO SAVE ITSELF procedure at which Nixon balked. At Right, Jim Garrison, Whose Key Witness Was Murdered Maheu took the $50,000 back to Vegas and shortly thereafter Rebozo sought out Richard Danner, the ex-FBI agent who 20 years before had introduced Nixon to Rebozo. Rebozo discussed a During the Bay of Pigs operation, donation; Danner took the message to Maheu who agreed to send the $50.000 to according to CIA sources, the Mary Nixon through Rebozo. At the time Hughes had at least four Carter Paint Co. was a conduit for favors in mind: His lagging helicopter division faced CIA payments to the Cuban loss of its major market if the Vietnam war ended. Hughes memoed Mallet, in early 1969 that "he should get to our exile army. friends in Washington to see what could be done about keeping the war in Vietnam going." He wanted a halt in the Atomic Energy Commission's testing under the Nevada desert (these tests were subsequently moved to Amchitka Island off Alaska). He needed White House approval tool of coercion — an indictment before he could take over Air West Maheu reacted by taking information Airlines. (Hughes received Nixon's about the $100,000 Nixon transaction to personal go-ahead in 1969 at about the Hank Greenspun, publisher of the Las time the first $50,000— $10 bills cinched Vegas Sun, who immediately talked to in bank wrappers and stuffed in a columnist Jack Anderson. manila envelope — was delivered to On Aug. 6, 1971, ten months before the R ebozo .) Watergate burglary, Anderson's He wanted antitrust laws waived so column described the bare details of he could purchase the Dunes Hotel in the $100,000 transaction. Vegas, where he already owned six big On Sep. 26, 1971, Greenspun cornered hotel-casinos. Danner met with Nixon advisor Herb Klein and warned Attorney General John Mitchell three that the $100,000 could "sink Nixon." times in early 1970 and Mitchell gave In October, Greenspun was visited by the green light. Maheu then authorized Kalmbach, the Nixon lawyer, asking the second $50,000, again carried to his knowledge of the $100,000. In Rebozo by Danner in a manila February 1972, G. Gordon Liddy was envelope. given a go4head to scout prospects for Three years later as Watergate breaking into Greenspun's safe. Liddy closed in, Rebozo became alarmed the turned the job over to Howard Hunt, $100,000 from Hughes would be who met with Hughes security director. discovered. According to Nixon lawyer Ralph Winte. Herbert Kalmbach. Rebozo was Hunt, Liddy and Winte met in Los worried because part of the $100,000 Angeles Feb. 19, but later claimed preparations broke down and that the robbery did not take place. (A White had been spent by Nixon's secretary House tape has Ehrlichman saying it and his two brothers. did and was successful, Greenspun Howard Hughes' $100,000 payment to says his office was broken into but that Nixon's secret cache would almost nothing was stolen.) certainly have stayed undetected if The Plumbers next focused on Hughes had not fired Robert Maheu in Democratic Party Chairman Larry December of 1970. O'Brien, who had been Hughes' chief For more than ten years Maheu had Washington representative in 1969 and handled assignments for the CIA and 1970 when the $100,000 took its journey. for the Hughes organization. In the O'Brien had been hired by Maheu, and espionage, business, and criminal was dismissed along with Maheu. If netherworlds his connections were Maheu had evidence about the $100,000, invaluable. so might O'Brien. But Maheu got caught up in an According to Senate testimony, internal power struggle Hughes was Mitchell authorized a second burglary offered a chance to substitute intertel, — the burglary of O'Brien's office at a firm with even better CIA contacts, Democratic national headquarters in for Maheu and to take over the casino the Watergate office building. operation in the Bahamas from All the burglars were veterans of the Resorts, where investigators were Bay of Pigs operation. Now all were beginnimg to uncover the Lansky ties. employed in the White House Plumbers The Syndicate did not want a major unit and again their chief was Howard investigation in the Bahamas; Hughes Hunt. could provide a much better front When Hunt, who claimed to have For Hughes it was a chance to put the retired from the CIA in 1907, began western hemisphere's two premium working with the Plumbers on a gambling centers in his name. But the " free-lance" basis, he was employed at deal was good only if Maheu was the Mullen Agency, a public relations eliminated. firm owned by Robert Bennett. Maheu's significance might have Bennett, a Mormon and a friend of both ended there. But Nixon came to view Maheu as a threat because the ex-aide's loyalties had been cut adrift and because he knew too much. The IRS was asked to examine Maheu's bank account, to search for a to Woodward Colson and Hunt, was asked to loan According to an ex-CIA operative Hunt to the White House by Colson_ familiar with Bennett and CIA Bennett took a surprising interest in infiltration of the White House, Bennett the White House's undercover activities was acting on orders from CIA and also was close to the Hughes people higherups in talking to Woodward. since he had been hired as their Bennett, who still enjoyed access to the Washington representative, taking the White House, passed along everything place of Larry O'Brien. he learned of the White House coverup Nixon's men apparently did not know to Woodward, the ex-CIA operative about Bennett's other connections— he said. E ventually, according to the also was a CIA man. operative. Bennett assumed the code The arrest of the Watergate burglars name "Deep Throat" and became the placed the CIA in an awkward spot. The enduring catalyst for the Post's men behind bars had demonstrable CIA Watergate investigation. backgrounds. Even more Bennett scrupulously sheltered the embarrassing was the CIA's careless Hughes organization from "Post" outfitting of the Plumbers with agency scrutiny. Woodward and Bernstein equipment never learned of the Hughes-White Most of the documentation that could House plan to burglarize Greensptm's have linked the CIA with the Plumbers safe. was destroyed soon after the burglary. Other CIA loyalists — Frank Sturgis McCord's papers were burned, Helms and James McCord— joined Bennett in disposed of all his taped Watergate unraveling Nixon's ill-fated coverup conversations. But when prying reporters discovered that Hunt's while protecting the CIA. confiscated paraphernalia contained At the same time Howard Hunt was CIA gadgetry, media suspicion about demanding up to $1 million in White the CIA's role in the burglary leaped House money for his silence. Alexander into headlines. Butterfield, who had once headed a Bay Reporters began pestering Hunt and of Pigs rehabilitation program the other Plumbers with unsettling reportedly financed by the CIA, questions. The burglars managed to disclosed to the Watergate Committee maintain a professional silence. Then that Nixon had taped all his Oval Office Bennett began holding audiences with a conversations, a turning point in the few of the media's most influential scandal. newsmen. Nixon was besieged. Public opinion These newsmen began appraising the was demanding he appoint a special burglary as the dementia of anti-Castro prosecutor to investigate Watergate. partisans or, at the worst, the result of Finally he chose Archibald Cox. some unspecified political hijinks. They Within months his office was zeroing began to accept Bennett's word that the in on Rebozo's handling of the $100,000 CIA had not been involved_ from Hughes. Nixon sent word to Cox According to a CIA memo, Bennett through Attorney General Elliott also estabtished a "back door entry" to Richardson to lay off and when Cox the law firm representing the refused, Nixon fired him in the Democratic Party in a civil suit against "Saturday Night Massacre" that the Plumbers, an opportunity he used drained irretrievably the president's to steer the investigation away from the popular support. CIA. Nixon then encountered escalating Two young Washington Post trouble from the new special reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. A decade Bernstein, continued to do the before Jaworski had been a special Watergate story. Their persistence counsel to the Warren Commission and began to unnerve the CIA. So Bennett a director of a private foundation that approached Woodward and according laundered funds for the CIA. to the CIA memo "...has been feeding The Jaworski-led Special stories CO Bob Woodward with the Prosecutor's office found no illegalities understanding there would be no involving the Hughes organization or attribution to Bennett. Woodward is the CIA. But it did indict Haldeman, suitably grateful for the fine stories and Erlichman, Mitchell and others for bylines he gets and protects Bennett" their role in the White House covenzp. Bennett, as a Colson confidante, was And the Special Prosecutor won a privy to several White House "dirty landmark Supreme Court decision that tricks" that were only tangential to the delivered the crucial White House tape Watergate burglary, which he supplied recordings and produced incontrovertible evidence that Nixon had ordered the coverup. Faced with Castro m urder conspiracy. The scandal certain impeachment, Nixon resigned. helped force out William Colby as CIA EPILOGUE director. Allen Duties died in 1969 after ** * spending his last years extolling the Roselli and Robert Mahal testified CIA in two books "The Craft of before the Church Committee about Intelligence" and "The Secret their roles in the Castro Plot. But they Surrender." Thomas Dewey died in only confirmed a scenario already known to Senate investigators. They did not elaborate on the expense of the C IA-Syndicate imbroglio. 1971, his age and health having kept him from accepting the Supreme Court's chief justiceship offered by Sam G iancana, however, did not get Nixon in 1969. a chance to talk to the Senate ** * Committee. On June 19, 1975, the day Bebe Rebozo escaped indictment in before his scheduled appearance, an the Watergate case despite strong assassin interrupted a late-night snack circumstantial evidence of tax evasion at his Chicago mansion with seven .22 and bribe taking. George Smathers, caliber bullets. A few months earlier retired from the Senate, is prospering Richard Kane. the Giancana henchman in Florida. Their old crony, Richard who helped the CIA recruit its Bay of Danner, still works for the Hughes Pigs army, had been executed in a organization. Chicago restaurant. ** * Another Syndicate figure, Jimmy Howard Hughes died at age 70 on Hoffa, was kidnapped and presumably April 5, 1976, from kidney disease. At killed on July 30, 1975, in Detroit. the time of his death Hughes was ** * earning $1.7 million each day from U.S. The Watergate investigation also has government contracts. Eighty Percent dissipated without full disclosure. had been awarded without competitive Richard Nixon, now exiled to San bidding. Thirty-two were from the CIA, Clemente, has never explained why he the most held by any single contractor. thought Watergate "would make the ** * CIA look bad (and) blow the whole Bay Because Robert Bennett's CIA cover of Pigs thing." was exposed by the Watergate scandal, * * * he has closed down the Mullen Agency. Nixon aide Chuck Colson, in 1974 He now works for the Hughes organization as a vice-president and CIA liaison. ** * remarks to a private investigator, Meyer Lansky today lives described Nixon's fear of Hughes and undisturbed in Miami Beach. Now 72, the CIA and said: "The President and I he spends his time walking his dog and talked about it one Sunday for about an visiting with old friends. In December hour and a half...1 have seen CIA files. I 1974 The New York Times printed a know what's in them. I can't prove little-noticed story about Limit)? It there was a conspiracy (to dump said that the federal government, in Nixon) but I would say that was the effect, has abandoned the effort begun practical consequences of what they by the K ennedys to put Lansky behind did. bars. "The excesses of the Nixon * * * Administration were pretty bad. But After three decades, the CIA's what these guys are doing -- one relationship with the Syndicate has not doesn't justify the other — what these changed. When several Syndicate guys are doing is worse...The members went on trial in New York in frightening thing is that there is nobody 1971 for taking union kickbadcs_ the controlling the CIA. I mean nobody. I'll head of the local CIA bureau turned up tell you one thing that scares me the in court as a character witness for the most. They're all over the place. gangsters. Deportation proceedings Almost everywhere you turn they've against John RoseLli were dropped in got their tentacles." 1969 at the behest of theCIA_ ( The Agency was embarrassed slightly in 1975 when the Senate CIA Committee discovered the Agency's alliance with the Syndicate in the