TRUTH ABOUT WATERGATE BEGINS TO SURFACE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000201180019-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 19, 2010
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: November 9, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201180019-9
HUMAN EVENTS
9 November 1985
Truth About Watergate Begins to Surface
More than a decade after the event,
data are emerging that suggest the
Watergate episode of the early '70s end-
ed in a gross miscarriage of justice.
Not that the Nixon Administration
and various of its officials were inno-
cent; there is plenty of evidence that
they sought to cover up the scandal
resulting from the break-in at the
Democratic National Committee. It is
rather that other and arguably more
serious culprits were allowed to get
away scot-free, their misdeeds (and the
ultimate truth about the episode)
obscured in the canonical version of the
story.
Details that go to prove the point
have been pieced together by former
Harper's Washington Editor Jim
Hougan in a volume called Secret
Agenda (hard-cover version published
by Random House; paperback from
Ballantine Books). Many of Hougan's
findings, drawing on previously unpub-
lished FBI reports among other
sources, confirm and amplify points
originally raised by Fred D. Thompson,
minority counsel to the Senate Water-
gate Committee, in his 1975 book, At
That Point in Time (Quadrangle
Books).*
According to the official version,
Watergate was a black-and-white
morality play in which the evil Nix-
onites bugged the Democratic national
headquarters, then tried to cover us) the
mess when their bungling agents got ar-
rested. Among the felonies alleged to
Nixon was that he tried to steer the FBI -
away from investigarivig the matter by,
falsely claiming it:waaa CIA endeavor
and otherwise.iried to make the agency
a patsy for his crimes.
The irony is that, according to the
voluminous data pulled together by
Hougan (and by Thompson), the
fingerprints of the CIA were all over
the operation from the outset. More
than this, there is copious reason to
believe the "third-rate burglary" was a
set-up meant to fail-including the fact
that the Democratic victims were in-
formed about it in advance. These
items were ignori;.the time because
they didn't fit t#te ality play with
Nixon as the .heavy. Among the
specifics:
By M. STANTON EVANS
? Nearly, iill the major actors in the
Watergate break-in~E. Howard Hunt,
James McCord, anda group of Cuban
exiles-were former C,iA functionaries.
Hunt and McCord, indeed, were men
of considerable'stature within the agen-
cy. (And, as.-Hou[ith demonstrates,
there are ample.grounds for question-
ing the "fornar". ignation.)
? When i`,, sedly resigned
from the CIA in 1970, he went on the
payroll of the Mutltn Co., a company
that was used aS'aicover for CIA opera-
tions, then wetti 01. to the staff of the
White Hou%C While in the latter
capacity, he continued receiving
technical aid from the CIA and, as we
leal-it'from Hougan, filed reports to the
V"agetky concerning his nominal new
employers.
? 'After his arrest, McCord was in
continual contact with the CIA-send-
ing at least five secret letters urging a
maximum effort to protect the agency
from adverse publicity resulting from
Watergate. These missives are full of
passionate concern for the CIA - for
whom he supposedly wasn't working-
and detestation of Nixon - for whom
he supposedly was.
? The Chicago supplier who provid-
ed McCord with the bugging equipment
allegedly to be used at the DNC said he
did so because McCord was able to pro-
duce documentation that he was with
the CIA. According to another witness,
this dealer in turn justified the trans-
action by producing a letter of author-
ization from the agency.
? After his arrest, Hunt stayed in
contact with the Mullen Co. So, as it
happened, did Bob Woodward of the
Washington Post. According to CIA
memoranda reproduced by Hougan,
the had of the company bragged that
he had steered Woodward away from
implicating either Mullen or the CIA
and that Woodward had been supplied
with other leads for which he was
"suitably grateful."
? During the' Watergate investi-
gation, former CIA Director Richard
Helms acknowledged that agency
records pertaining to the case had been
destroyed. So, coincidentally, were all
of McCord's records which might have
revealed the degree of his continuing
connection with the CIA. An agency
operative assisted in the burning of Mc-
Cord's papers.
? As interest ing'AIthe CIA irivolve-
ment was the fact th'ati the Dettiocrats
had been informed of the impending
break-in - with most of the dramatis
personae named-two months before
the event, but made no effort to prevent
it or inform the authorities. Equally in-
triguing is the fact that, according to
the FBI reports, the only "bug" found
at the DNC was not discovered until
three months after the break-in, ap-
parently planted for the purpose of be-
ing found.
There is much more in similar vein-
which doesn't answer the question of
why the break-in occurred, but certain-
ly raises the question anew. It also
doesn't mean the people involved in the
cover-up had any love for the CIA,
which they targeted for destruction as
soon as Nixon was disposed of. What
seems quite clear in retrospect is that
the official history of Watergate has
been constructed (most successfully)
for the single purpose of discrediting
? Thompson's book in turn drew heavily on
the Watergate minority report filed by then Sen.
Howard Baker (R.-Tenn.). Much of this same
material is traversed, from a radically different
perspective, by former New 'ell leader Carl
Oglesby in The Yankee and Cowboy War (Sheed
Andrews and McMeel; 19176).
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201180019-9