WAS THE CIA BEHIND WATERGATE? AND DID IT BOTCH THE BREAK-IN DELIBERATELY?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100040005-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: December 10, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

I . I . 1 1 1 .1 _ 1L.-IJ _ I, .. .. I Iii 1 _
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100040005-4
1!iRTICL}J
ON PAGE-:y
Jim .Hougan
says yes ..
It's incredible. Millions of dollars
have been spent investigating
Watergate. A president has been
forced out of office. Dozens of lives
have been ruined. We're sitting in
the can. And still nobody can
explain why they bugged the place
to begin with.
- Charles Colson to John Dean, in
federal prison, 1974
By Glenn Garvin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
S o you think you know about
Watergate, buddy? Think you
heard it all? Think just
because half a dozen con-
gressional committees thrashed it
out for three years, and the FBI
launched the largest investigation
in its history, and 150 books have
been published, that you got the
facts?
Think that when Nixon resigned,
.and all those other guys went to jail
- you think that was the end of it?
.Well, wipe that smirk off your smug
face, buster, because Jim Hougan's
got a new one for you:
The Watergate bugging never
happened!
And he doesn't stop there. The
CIA was spying on the White House.
,The Democratic National Commit-
tee office was a whorehouse. And
The Washington Post's Pulitzer
Prize for Watergate should -
-maybe - be over in McLean, Va.,
.hanging inside a CIA trophy case.
Before you put this down to read
something a little, more solidly,
grounded in reality, like the horo-
scope or the Commentary section,
you ought to know that Hougan's got
a couple of thousand pages of pre-.
viously secret FBI documents;
along with some choice CIA
memos, to back him up on a number
of these points.
WASHINGTON TIMES
10 December 1984
Was the CIA
behind. Watergate?
And did it botch
the break-in
deliberately?
Does this make you a little dizzy?
Even faintly nauseated? Will we
never be rid of the damn thing?
Well, it's hurting Hougan more than
it's hurting you.
"Do you think this is easy for me,
talking,about Watergate 10 years
later?" h.e says, pacing the floor of
his tidy Adams Morgan office. "I've
just spent five years looking at the
events leading up to the cover-up. I,
haven't even gotten to the cover-up
yet. Woodward and Bernstein spent
about one year reporting on
Watergate, the whole thing. And
I've spent five years on the bur-
glary-alone,"
He stops, finally, to gaze out the
window. "You bet I'm sick of it," he
murmurs, still peering down into
the street.
But that didn't stop him from
writing "Secret Agenda:
Watergate, Deep Throat and the
CIA:' published a couple of weeks
ago by Random House. And it hasn't
stopped the legions of Watergate
cultists from reopening their fine
old debate: What did [fill in the
blank with your favorite co-
conspirator] know and when did he
know it? .
But "Secret Agenda" is much
more than just another Watergate
book. It is a rich tapestry of con-
spiracies, with layer upon layer of
intrigue, plots within plots, subter-
fuge on top of artifice on top of
machination. It is a book that makes
you want to bang your head every
few pages. Trying to summarize it
is a fool's errand, but the bare bones
go something like this:
. ? Two key.Watergate figures, E.'
Howard Hunt and James McCord
- who claimed to be retired from
the CIA ` were still secret agents
even after they went to work for
President Nixon in 1972. Although
the two men claimed to have met for
the first time in that year, when
Hunt began working at the White
House and McCord at the Nixon re-..
election committee, in fact they had
worked together as early as 1963,
helping to plan covert CIA activi-
ties against Cuban leader Fidel Cas-
tro.
? Hunt was spying on his White
House co-workers, and passing
packages of information about
their . personal lives along to the
CIA.
? Unknown to the other I
Watergate conspirators, McCord -
who lived in Rockville, Md. -
rented a Chevy Chase apartment
that Hunt and various "young girls"
often visited, and where a great
deal of bugging equipment was
kept. Hougan. speculates that was
,part. of some other, as-Yet,-
undisclosed; CIA operation.'. ? At the time': of the Watergate
burglary, there was a call-girl ring I
toperating "in' the . Columbia Plaza
'apartments, three blocks from the
,Watergate. The hookers had'a. re-
cruiting 'agent -..working at the
Democratic National Committee
offices in the: Watergate, who used
.a DNC phone - the same one the
burglars allegedly bugged - to set
up dates, between Democrats and
the prostitutes.;;-:
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100040005-4 ~!