All 5 of the Watergate burglars who broke into Democratic headquarters were CIA operatives

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-bernard-barker6-2009jun06,0,6871098.story

What's that tell you?

Don

[Hydra]

1. 1. The truth comes out eventually

2. They call you a tinfoiler until it does, and then they pretend they never said anything.

[wroberts189]

16. haha ...Amen to that. nt

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. They were ordered by Nixon

that tells you something about Reagan and the Bushes

[Tangerine LaBamba]

3. This has been known for a long, long time -

going back to when Hunt's wife died in that plane crash in Chicago - what was it, 1972?

It was always known that they were all old minor league spooks, but, don't forget that there was a time when just about everyone connected with the Federal government, even peripherally - the Post Office didn't count - was a CIA operative....................

[NNN0LHI]

8. You think they teach this in school?

I bet over half the people in America are unaware of the CIA involvement in bugging the DNC headquarters back then.

Don

[Occam Bandage]

9. That's "CIA involvement" only in the same sense

that it would be "MLB involvement" if I had hired some washed-up minor leaguers to play in my softball team's championship game.

[Uncle Joe]

47. I consider the quality of the team hired as irrelevant, the very act

was anathema to our democratic republic and a direct threat to our Constitution and the pardon; of Nixon instead of applying national castigation virtually assured that even worse future crimes would be committed against the People of the United States by the radicalized Republican Party and the CIA.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

10. You have to consider the historical context -

go back to the late forties, the fifties, the sixties, and remember that the Cold War was a very real and very scary thing. People took patriotism to mean a lot of things, but the CIA was a regular on college campuses, signing up all kinds of people.

Today, watching the people of America, I wouldn't be so generous as you. Half? I'm not convinced that half the people in America today even know who Walter Cronkite was or what he did.

But they went completely batshit when Michael Jackson bought the farm.

The ignorance of the American public today is heartbreaking..........................

[Cybergata]

43. Yet it is amazing how quickly it was forgotten . . .

and the people behind Bush were allowed to do worse things. It is a good idea to keep reminding those not living at the time what Watergate was all about.

[billyoc]

4. It tells me that the CIA's training standards are in their ass.

:hi:

[onehandle]

5. I have a close friend who's a CIA operative.

Actually he's a graphic designer for them and pretty darn harmless.

Don't paint the whole division with a few bad eggs.

[Occam Bandage]

7. So do I.

Actually, he once spent a summer translating Chinese newspapers for them. Mind-numbing work, but hey, someone's gotta do it.

[onehandle]

11. My friend has something to do with satellite imagery.

And that is literally all he can tell me. I was interviewed by a CIA guy as a reference for my friend.

He was a grandpa kind of guy with a family here in Georgia.

It's not what we see in the movies.

[csziggy]

21. One of my BILs was recruited by the CIA after he got back from Vietnam

Where he was probably Special Forces. He won't talk about it at all but he got back, finished college and then spent a year in DC working for the CIA.

The problem was that while at college he met my sister - they were the "pro" and "anti" debaters at an Anti Vietnam War demonstration and even though they were on opposite sides, they hit it off. They got together later and my sister converted him to "anti" which probably lost him his clearance. :rofl:

[Occam Bandage]

6. It tells me the President sent men whom he had reason to believe would be good at it.

It also tells me that God Himself must have been responsible for keeping the KGB from taking over the world, because it certainly couldn't have been the incompetent jackasses at the CIA doing it.

[Hydra]

13. As you say, we can take no credit for defeating the red menace

Because from everything I've heard, they were better at getting things done at any cost than we were.

[lib2DaBone]

12. Everyone knows.. the CIA is the home of Rendition, Dirty Tricks and Murder...

The sweat off our brow and our precious tax dollars go to support this band of ghouls.

Maybe Leon Panetta can open the lid of the casket and let some sunlight stream in...

[Maccagirl]

24. The only sunlight that will be "let in"

is the sunlight the CIA wants us to see. Leon Panetta is there to protect their secrets (past and present), not the citizens of this country.

[wroberts189]

14. 2. The CIA can be controlled by rogue agents or other external parties. nt

[bobthedrummer]

15. We are not maligning the entire Agency nor every employee-certainly the Domestic Operations Division

and it's predecessors as well as the Directorate of Operations, Clandestine Services and past "leadership and operations" historically deserve condemnation and prosecution where possible-all the way up to The Executive Branch.

Here's a couple of active threads for those that "get" the distinctions-when I met Ray McGovern in 2004 I got a new perspective entirely about the CIA--very different from the folks that I know who were "assigned duties/loaned" at various times or today's "privateers".

"CIA Domestic Operations Division: A DU collaborative thread" (I started this 7-18-09)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6095958

"Internal Rifts on Road to Torment-Interviews Offer More Nuanced Look At Roles of CIA Contractors" (started by kpete 7-19-09)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6101849

[Gabi Hayes]

17. let's see, off the top of my head: McCord, Hunt, Martinez, at least one other Cuban.

who was the other CIA guy?

weren't there six (including Liddy) arrested originally?

doesn't surprise me at all, and I think it was known pretty quickly they all had CIA ties....as in Bay of Pigs...all four of those I mentioned above certainly did

too lazy to check, but I'm pretty sure this is close

[bobthedrummer]

20. E. Howard Hunt, at one time Deputy to Tracy Barnes first head of Domestic Operations Division

organized and recruited the operatives for the break-in of Democratic HQ at Watergate.

[Gabi Hayes]

23. who fired Barnes? was it that great American Richard Helms, who was convicted of lying

to congress (perjury, anyway), and who LIED about Clay Shaw's CIA ties, but was never taken to task for that little slipup

I'll anybody who doesn't know who Shaw was look him up. not a minor figure (shouldn't be, anyway)

but that opens up a whole different can of worms, doesn't it? something with an 18 minute gap, something having to do with the code words "Bay of Pigs"

all a big coincidence, right?

[bobthedrummer]

28. Bada bing! Richard McGarrah Helms fired Barnes.

Fwiw, Gabi here's a bit about Helms and some of his extended family

"During his final days as Director, CIA, Richard McGarrah Helms" (posted 9-14-06 in an Octafish BFEE parent thread)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2082945&mesg_id=2136243

[Gabi Hayes]

30. thanks.....read lots of that. his daughter is quite the piece of work, too, eh?

I called into a radio show during the days of the JFK assassination archivists, who supposedly went through tons of stuff, in order to release it

I got in arguments with them about the CIA/Helms/Oswald, and other things, during which I found out they didn't even know about Helms' lying about Shaw! they also didn't know much at all about John Newman, even though he was a stone's throw away from them

they didn't really seem to care too much about finding out what really happened. very disappointed in that conversation

[bobthedrummer]

33. I'm much more interested in his niece, Lalli Helms, former US PR spokesperson for the Taliban.

Her husband worked for Chase Manhattan-just like Richard's maternal gramps, Gates McGarrah worked for Chase National. while

Gates McGarrah was also helping out the future Nazi Minister of Economics, Hjalmar Schacht, realize Schacht's dream of a consortium of the world's central banks-including the Federal Reserve. This dream became the Bank For International Settlements/BIS and grandpa Gates McGarrah was its first President and Chairman of the Board from April 1930-May 1933 and significantly helped finance the rise of the NAZIS into the Third Reich.

BIS Former Board link
http://www.bis.org/about/formerboard.htm

Generations of Helms extended family doing business with America's enemies-does that sound like any other prominent family???

[AntiFascist]

44. Anti-Castro operatives n/t

[Gabi Hayes]

22. oops...Frank Sturgis, duh....Hunt was across the street, yes?

he and liddy got nailed later

liddy became convinced that John Dean/CIA were behind it.....had to do with his wife, Mo, who was claimed to be part of a high end call girl ring with ties to Watergate

they were really in there to REMOVE a bug that had been put there to monitor the ring. they'd alread been in

there was a lawsuit between Liddy and Dean, wnom Liddy threatened, pretty much, to kill him



here you go Silent Coup. somebody gave me the book a long time ago, from wiki:

''An alternative theory to the mainstream media account of the Watergate scandal was advanced in Silent Coup, a 1991 book by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin. The two authors believe that it was Nixon's silent war with the Pentagon that ultimately led to his removal from office.<40> The book was criticized for apparent leaps of logic and the citation of weak evidence and its theories are not widely supported by either professional historians or the general public.<41><42>''

that's a pretty poor synopsis, btw, as it was the CIA, not the pentagon, who were out to nail Nixon. that's why everybody who was arrested, initially, but Liddy, were clearly CIA

[Hannah Bell]

18. nixon got taken down, it tells *me*.

i've always felt there was something *off* about the watergate revelations.

something wrong with the media picture.

[troubledamerican]

25. I concur.

[FreeJG]

19. All here need to read "Barry and the Boys"

by Daniel Hopsicker

You'll learn the entire bottom up structure of our CIA and how it works. Then you understand they run amurika...

[troubledamerican]

27. Anything by Hopsicker is useful.

[hootinholler]

26. Not only that but they were Bay of Pigs operators. More dots.

No wonder Nixon was concerned about that Cuban thing. My money is on they knew a lot about Kennedy too.

-Hoot

[bobthedrummer]

32. Big dots: Tracy Barnes and the Domestic Operations Division (formally created in February 1963 from

the Directorate of Operations) After Domestic Operations Division started up Barnes deputy was E. Howard Hunt.

Tracy Barnes profile
(from Spartacus Schoolnet)
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbarnesT.htm

Prior to becoming head of Domestic Operations Division, Barnes was assistant to Richard Bissell Deputy Director (Plans).
Barnes was so involved in the Bay of Pigs that he wrote the response for Bissell submitted to the CIA's Inspector General. Of course Barnes had been very active in the field, overthrowing governments like that of Guatemala and "eliminating" opposition to "the West".

Below is the official public CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence/CSI page about the Bay of Pigs-as you go through it there is a big portion about Barnes

"The CIA's Internal Probe of the Bay of Pigs Affair" (CIA)
http://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csa-publications/csi-studies/studies/winter98_99/art08.html

The National Security Archive also has a Bay of Pigs Chronology 40 Years After page worth reviewing
"Bay of Pigs 40 Years After"
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/chron.html

[AntiFascist]

45. I've also read that they...

were trying to steal a certain photo showing several operatives in Dealey Plaza:



Perhaps Democrats were threatening to go public with this.

Edit: What do plumbers do? They stop leaks.

[Sebastian Doyle]

54. Yep

When Nixon talked to his Bush Crime Family associates about "that Bay of Pigs thing" he wasn't merely talking about a failed invasion of Cuba. It was also code for what happenned in Dallas in 1963.

Incidentally, Tricky Dick himself was in Dallas on November 22, at a PepsiCo board meeting. Pepsi was one of the companies that used to buy their sugar from Cuban plantations owned by Prescott Bush and his partners, under the Batista Regime. Castro nationalized the sugar industry, so they lost a chunk of change over that one.

Was Nixon himself involved in the murder? Probably not. But I'll bet he knew who was. He definitely knew Jack Ruby (since 1947) And the placement of that board meeting, in retrospect, seems as odd as the Carlyle Group meeting in Washington DC attended by Poppy Bush and Shafiq Bin Laden (among others) on the morning of 9/11/01

[AntiFascist]

57. You should see this article...

written by Don Fulsom, who covered the Nixon White House for United Press International. He has written about Nixon for The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Esquire, Los Angeles, and Regardie's.


http://www.crimemagazine.com/03/richardnixon,1014.htm

...

What did Nixon do in Dallas? He arrived on Nov. 20 to attend a board meeting of the Pepsi Cola Company, one of his law clients. Dallas reporter Jim Marrs says Nixon and actress Joan Crawford, a Pepsi heiress, "made comments to the effect that they, unlike the president, didn't need Secret Service protection, and they intimated the nation was upset with Kennedy's policies. It has been suggested that this taunting may have been responsible for Kennedy's critical decision not to order the Plexiglas top placed on his limousine on Nov. 22."

...

[Gabi Hayes]

29. two of my favorite Watergate books:

''The wars of Watergate,'' By Stanley I. Kutler, maybe the most comprehensive of them all, going far afield, to tie many things together nobody had dealt with up to that point.

b
''The Friends of Richard Nixon,'' by George V. Higgins, attorney, and author of great crime books, like The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Digger's Game, Cogan's Trade, and lots of others.

this is an insider's, criminal attorney's, story of the way the various watergate prosecutions unfolded

so there

[Octafish]

31. CIA man James McCord taped the door lock TWICE with the tape showing.

That's what led to the security guard noticing.

For whatever reason -- Detente with the Soviets or the opening to China -- the Powers That Be wanted Nixon gone.

Poppy was there in the middle of the action, at the end of that adminstration, too.

[hootinholler]

35. Where was poppy?

I thought Ford named him director CIA.

-Hoot

[Octafish]

38. For Nixon, during Watergate, Poppy headed the RNC

This tells the story with about the most facts per square inch packed in:

Chapter -XII- Chairman George in Watergate

Nixon also had Poppy in Beijing, that's where the China-Bush Axis of Walmartization of America came in.

WC Ford needed the Church Committee to STFU so he sent Poppy to close the door to the Family Jewels Bill Colby opened.

[hootinholler]

42. Oh DUH! Thanks for reminding me!

He's a slippery bastid, very forgettable.

-Hoot

[H2O Man]

46. Two more things:

First, McCord was an expert at B&E. So taping a door to a hall/room that you have entered can only make sense in the context of trying to get caught. Add to that, he placed the tape sideways across the lock, so that sections of tape hung out the door. This, along with taping it twice, was the insurance that the group would be caught.

[FarCenter]

34. And William F Buckley worked for Howard Hunt in Mexico City

[Octafish]

39. And Hunt worked for Averell Harriman in post-war Europe.

Small world. And very, very bad.

Know your BFEE: Lies Are the Currency of Their Realm

[Gabi Hayes]

58. not theauthor, the CIA Beirut station chief who was taken hostage:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbuckleyWF.htm

[Arkana]

36. Hah...Bernard Barker's dead, eh?

"Bernard Barker, anti-Communist."

[Kablooie]

37. Therefore we NEED the CIA! They bring down corrupt presidents!

They really fell down on the job big time under Bush and Cheney though.

[indepat]

52. The CIA has done much to make the world safe for democracy (unfettered capitalism)

by destabilizing/overthrowing a gaggle, no a veritable plethora, of governments which leaned even a tad to the left. :P

[Wednesdays]

40. K&R

:kick:

[izzybeans]

41. The CIA ranks up there with the KGB, just behind the SS in my book.

[Vidar]

48. Financing crooks isn't enough. We have to finance bad crooks.

[Soylent Brice]

49. thanks for the link.

[bluesmail]

50. Martha Mitchell the wife of AG Mitchell soon before her *death*

said the Mafia was in the White House. That tells a volume.

[omega minimo]

51. Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it.

[boppers]

53. Uhm, the OP title might be a tad misleading.

It was one former CIA agent, who had left the company and was working privately for Nixon, along with 4 people who had been recruited at times in their past as CIA "operatives", aka private mercenary freelancers who would do jobs of questionable legality and authority.

What does that tell me? Not much, really, CRP wasn't going to send a team of lawyers or graphic designers, they needed a break-in and bugging, so they sent guys with presumable experience in that field.

[H2O Man]

55. Actually,

two agents, and three mercenaries.

[boppers]

56. McCord was an agent, once. That's pretty much uncontested.

Who else was once an agent?

[Gabi Hayes]

59. sturgis is frequently named as a contract agent of the CIA. as in Valerie Plame's case,

nobody is going to officially verify that

google Sturgis CIA for as much info on that as you'd care to ever read

also, the Cubans have all been identified, at one time or another, as CIA contract agents

point is, they all were involved in the Bay of Pigs, which was a CIA op all the way through, so however one choose to describe these guys, they knew where their bread was being buttered.

their connections, like those of Felix Rodgriguez (Bush/Iran Contra/killed Che), are all in dispute, which is the way they like it

[boppers]

60. Rockefeller commission (1975) cleared him from being CIA agent

Page 172 onwards details it pretty well.
http://history-matters.com/archive/contents/church/contents_church_reports_rockcomm.htm

But yes, they certainly weren't totally non-connected.

[Gabi Hayes]

61. so who buys the Rockefeller commission, and do they discuss contract agent status?

there's no question he was heavily tied for years and years to the CIA, despite their boxes within boxes (or is it boxes outside boxes) approach to plausible deniability

now much do you rely on the Zelikow-controlled 911 commission, for one example?

or the various Iran/Contra whitewashes?

I understand your point, but for them to have 'cleared' Sturgis because they don't have the pay stubs, or somesuch is silly. wink wink, etc.

have you ever read John Newman's "Oswald and the CIA?" well worth a look, with more than a hundred pages of documents (course, it all depends on whom/what one chooses to believe)

[boppers]

62. Contractor, Informer, former employee (and a few other types) were discussed

As far as their approach goes, yeah, I'm quite aware of the game, and have been part of it at times... a bit about me:

I could say that "I'm linked to the NSA, CIA, and DoD, and I wrote software for the worlds largest surveillance system, inspecting every web page, every email, every IM, every network packet, every bit of text or data on a wire that can be harvested", which sounds sexy to people who glamorize (or fear) intelligence, or I could say "I worked as a third-party software contractor, for a private company, that had large government contracts, for hardware and software to manage large-scale network compliance", and both phrases would actually be true.

So, yes, I know the game. Intimately.

On the 9/11 commission, meh, it was too politically "prudent" in what it chose to include. The Iran-Contra whitewashes were similar.

As far as "clearing" Sturgis, yes, you're right, but this is part of the game. Part of the message I've been trying to get out there is that going after NSA, or CIA, or other silliness such as with the Church Commission *DOESN'T WORK*. These aren't government employees, these are outside contractors, and putting regulations on official employees, on official policy, is a pointless exercise. You can blame the CIA, the NSA, whatever, and reshuffle the deck chairs, but it won't change much.

On Oswald, I haven't read Newman's book, but it's pretty clear Oswald had CIA ties. Lots of folks did, and still do, (me, for example), but that doesn't mean that Kennedy's death was a CIA hit, it means that Oswald worked the systems for a while (he also had the whole Soviet thing going on, too, gaming both sides).

[Gabi Hayes]

63. I'm with you up until the very last. how on earth could the CIA be as incompetent

w/Oswald and his little USSR adventure?

dunno who did the thing, but I just can't buy the proposition that Oswald did it by himself. part of the reason it's so hard to follow all the threads is that who knows the provenance of all the myriad threads in the first place?

not that it matters, as things aren't going to change for the better. leastwise, I don't see how.
we've always been at war (with--insert your Oceania substitute here), and we always will be. it would be nice to get some reins on their reign, but I don't see that happening. you know what happens to anyone with the effrontery to speak too directly to certain topics, especially to the point of actually effecting real change

interesting CV, by the way

[boppers]

64. How could the CIA be incompetent? Really?

You might have had the privilege of never working for a vast, sprawling, organization, with myriad goals and missions, constant churn, and mountains of paperwork, and I hope you never have to. It breeds, and feeds, and seethes, incompetence.

I'm shocked when something actually gets *done*.

[Gabi Hayes]

66. I get you, but are you saying that he just flounced over from Atsugi without

anybody seeing all the red flags his maneuverings from that point to where he got to the USSR?

I just can't buy the extent of incompetence/coincidence that this sort of situation would entail.

then again, they've done their job quite well, because I don't know what to believe.

while we're on the subject, what do you make of Hunt's telling contradictory stories (including on the witness stand during his libel suit against that Florida rag....which he lost, in a retrial) concerning his whereabouts during the crucial days of the assassination?

here's the link with a tidbit about it.

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:b0OWe9_W2y0J:www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKhuntH.htm+e+howard+hunt+libel+suit&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

and what do you think about mcadams' supposed CIA ties, and the lies he's told about them?

[boppers]

67. Hanlon's Razor.

http://tinyurl.com/yk6na4

On McAdams, the whole topic makes me giggle, as it's a mega-long newsgroup dust up, an amusing distraction.

edit: fix URL

[AntiFascist]

68. Did Sturgis co-found the International Anti-Communist Brigade?

At the time, it sounds like the anti-Castro operations worked with various "soldiers of fortune" and former mob members. Here's a timeline with info on Sturgis, and mention of the training camp near Lake Ponchatrain:


http://www.jfklancer.com/cuba/castroplots.html

[boppers]

69. Sturgis worked with pro, and anti, Fidel (and communism)

He's not a person bounded by ideologies.

His motive was profit. He was always a merc.

[AntiFascist]

70. Sturgis was also a former Marine...

later served as a hitman for the mafia, and apparently LHO tried to infiltrate the International anti-Communist Brigade. Here's some solid information about all these connections:

http://truthalliance.net/News/Vault/tabid/67/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/366/Default.aspx

James Files had previously known Oswald from being an arms handler who tranfered weapons from Chicago to Clinton, Louisiana for a CIA operation that armed anti-castro Cubans training for a war with Cuba. The CIA and mafia were working very close together on this in the 50s and 60s and the CIA, in fact, hired the mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro in which the mafia later failed three attempts to do so. Most of this information has been declassifed and a lot of it has come to light only recently. The mafia had hotels and casinos in Havana, Cuba where they set up controllers in Florida to handle the flow of money. The CIA operations in Louisiana and Florida, which were connected to the mafia, contained the conspirators in the assassination and James Files is one of the connections researchers were waiting for. Further down in this article, information has been gathered to show all of this in further detail.

...

Born Frank Angelo Fiorini, Frank Sturgis served in Fidel Castro's revolutionary army as a soldier of fortune, and later trained Cuban exiles for the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Frank Fiorini Sturgis' family moved to Philadelphia when he was a child. In 1942, Sturgis joined the U.S. Marine Corps and, during the Second World War, served in the Pacific. As fate would have it, Sturgis had met Lee Harvey Oswald in Miami shortly before the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Oswald had tried to infiltrate the Anti-Communist Brigade there.

According to a memo sent by L. Patrick Gray, Director of the FBI, to H. R. Haldeman in 1972: "Sources in Miami say he (Sturgis) is now associated with organized crime activities". In his book, Assassination of JFK (1977), Bernard Fensterwald claims that Sturgis was heavily involved with the Mafia, particularly with Santo Trafficante and Meyer Lansky activities in Florida.

The Rockefeller Commission of the U.S. Congress in 1974 investigated Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt in connection with the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Specifically, it investigated allegations that E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis were CIA agents and were present in Dallas at the time of the assassination and could have fired the alleged shots from the grassy knoll.

This article also details all of the former mafia confessions.

[H2O Man]

71. Tha's one interpretation.

But it's not the only one.

I do not think the Rockefeller Commission, for example, was a complete effort to uncover the truth. Nor would I venture that they necessarily could have uncovered the truth, had they wanted to. But I'm certainly okay with people who put more faith in it than I.

[karynnj]

65. Could they have been hired by former CIA boss, GHWB

who was then head of CREEP