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NANA NANA NANA
by Peter Dale Scott, Ph.D.
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In Deep Politics and the Death of JFK I write that study of any one of our
deep political crises will tell you more about the rest. Apparently this
prediction holds true for Monicagate as well.
I am not talking about the recurrence of Washington lawyers like Charles
Ruff, who moved into the Washington mainstream with Watergate, and is now
chief counsel for the Clinton White House. Nothing surprising or instructive
about that.
But it is significant that the person who forwarded Linda Tripp's tapes of
Lewinsky to the FBI is a book agent and pseudo-journalist called Lucianne
Goldberg, who in 1972 "told the McGovern campaign that she worked for the
North American Newspaper Alliance." Goldberg's role was not simply that of a
cut-out or messenger for Linda Tripp. On Jan. 22 she told the press "that
she encouraged her friend Linda Tripp... to tape conversations with intern
Monica Lewinsky." (All quotations are from an article in the January 23 San
Francisco Chronicle, p. A11.) She kept the tapes for Tripp and later turned
them over to the FBI. If Tripp instigated Lewinsky, it would appear that
Goldberg instigated Tripp.
Both Tripp and Goldberg are apparently Republicans. Tripp was one of only
two holdovers from the Bush White House. Goldberg was exposed in 1973 as "a
spy for Nixon while she traveled with the press corps" covering McGovern's
1972 campaign. It was at this time that she said she worked for NANA (North
American Newspaper Alliance), and supplied an address for NANA which "is the
same as her current residence" in Manhattan. Watergate investigators "said
the Nixon campaign paid her $1,000 a week."
Not mentioned in the Chronicle story is the relevant fact in 1972, as today,
Lucianne Goldberg was snooping for sex. She told the late Anthony Lukas
(Nightmare, p. 161) that the Nixon people "were looking for really dirty
stuff...who was sleeping with whom, what the Secret Servicem men were doing
with the stewardesses, who was smoking pot on the plane -- that sort of
thing." Her predecessor on this assignment was Seymour Freidin, who at the
time was credibly accused by Jack Anderson of being a former CIA agent. (By
the 1970s NANA was co-owned by Fortune Pope, whose brother Generoso was
another self-confessed former CIA agent.)
Sixteen years later Lucianne Goldberg was involved in another sex and
politics controversy, as book agent for an expose of Senator Kennedy's
behavior at Chappaquidick. The book, by Leo Damore, was originally
contracted for by Random House, which later backed out on the grounds that
Damore failed to provide direct evidence for his accusations. Damore's book
was eventually released by the right-wing publisher Henry Regnery.
Serious students of the JFK Assassination have long been interested in NANA,
which supplied Priscilla Johnson (better known now as Priscilla McMillan)
with the job (or, to some, cover) by which she worked in Moscow, and there
interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald on the urging of U.S. Consul Snyder. After the
assassination, Johnson developed a close relationship with Marina Oswald, in
connection with a book contract originally arranged by C.D. Jackson of Life
Magazine at the urging of Allen Dulles. In this connection, Johnson helped
identify a much-disputed bus ticket stub, belatedly discovered by the two
women in August 1964, which helped to place Oswald on a specific Mexican
bus. (Earlier a now-discredited bus manifest had placed an "Oswld" on a
different bus.) Priscilla Johnson's intelligence connections emerged more
clearly after the CIA-assisted defection of Stalin's daughter Svetlana
Allilueva to the United States. Svetlana stayed at first with Priscilla
Johnson's family on Long Island, and Priscilla translated Svetlana's memoir.
NANA was created by a senior veteran of OSS, Ernest Cuneo, and continued to
have intelligence connections. In 1963, before the assassination, it had
come under Congressional scrutiny for publishing Chinese Nationalist
propaganda, for which it had been paid large sums without registering as a
foreign agent. At this same time its President, Ernest Cuneo, was a member
of the Citizens' Committee for a Free Cuba, a group calling in 1963 for a
more militant anti-Castro policy, and meeting with dissident Cuban exiles.
I am not here suggesting anything about the guilt or innocence of Clinton,
only that at least one of the people making his life difficult has a
background suggestive of past political intrigues. If those intrigues are
truly precedents for the current crisis, we should look behind the seamy
allegations to recent symptoms of deep-rooted divisions in Washington. Among
these are Clinton's controversial realignment with China, the unresolved
allegations about foreign campaign contributions, and recent hints that FBI
Director Louis Freeh might resign his post.
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