[CTRL] Watergate to Whitewater Thrillride

[Kris Millegan]

 -Caveat Lector-

from:
http://www.madcowprod.com
<A HREF="http://www.madcowprod.com/">Watergate to Whitewater Thrillride</A>
-----
Excellant.
Om
K
-----
CIA agent Lucien Conein
(the man on the right in this photo)
also belonged to the Corsican Brotherhood,
the biggest heroin trafficking organization
in the world.
Richard Nixon
put him in charge of a super-secret
unit of the DEA.
Barry Seal worked for him.



Special Edition!!
A "Watergate to Whitewater" Thrillride!
starring
(an excerpt from the book-in-progress)
=====
"When you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow."
—Charles Colson, Nixon White House Advisor

------------------------------------------------------------------------

On July 1, 1972, the TV series Bewitched aired its final episode,
Attorney General John N. Mitchell resigned as chairman of President
Nixon's re-election committee because of the brewing Watergate scandal,
and as Sammy Davis JR’s aptly-titled single "Candy Man" began moving
smartly up the charts, Barry Seal was arrested in New Orleans for
conspiracy to export enough C4 plastic explosive to blow the island of
Cuba half-way up the Florida Keys.

The never-before told story of Barry Seal and the CIA’s shutting down
(temporarily) of the "Mexican Connection" might go a long way towards
explaining for the first time what Watergate was all about.

Because the most amazing thing about the most amazing scandal in
American history is that after all these years... we still don’t know.



Was Barry Seal Involved in Watergate?

Remember Watergate? If you’re like most Americans you probably remember
it wrong. Most Americans—most Americans we knew anyway-- cheered Nixon’s
removal as his just desserts for various and sundry unconstitutional
abuses of power which led inexorably to the pathos of that famous last
two-fingered victory salute from a helicopter door on the White House
lawn.

Few mourned his passing, especially since after his election in 1968
with a "secret plan to end the war" Nixon had then, instead, prolonged
the Vietnam War for almost as long as World War II had lasted.

When Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate scandal it was
the Washington Post against the world, fearlessly exposing a level of
corruption that could bring down the government while its competitors
scoffed. Or so we were led to believe. (Of course, by 1996 the roles had
reversed and it was the Post doing the scoffing, at the lid-blowing
investigative effort by Gary Webb in the San Jose Mercury News on CIA
drug smuggling.)

Few people back in 1972 would have suspected that the Watergate scandal
had anything to do with narcotics trafficking and arms smuggling.

But as we learned about Barry Seal and the shutdown of the Mexican
Connection in that Watergate summer of 1972, it began to sound like
something out of a "Gangland" column in the New York Post, like two Mob
families going to war for control of the drug trade. Except these were
federal "families:" the CIA going up against the newly-created apparatus
which Nixon had devised to bring control of "drug intelligence" into the
Nixon White House.

It was a move the CIA clearly resisted.

Maybe America’s top crime families do all end in vowels.



"Everybody knows everybody, right?"

On July 3, 1972, The New York Times reported that Federal officials had
arrested seven men in Texas and Louisiana on charges of conspiring to
smuggle munitions to Mexico.

A DC-4 was seized at the Shreveport Regional Airport. On board were
13,500 pounds of C-4 explosives, 7,000 feet of explosive primer cord,
2,600 electric blasting caps and 25 electrical detonators. The
explosives, said the U.S. Attorney's Office in Louisiana, were destined
for Cuban exiles in Mexico, who were going to use them in an effort to
overthrow the government of Fidel Castro.

The principal players in the affair were Richmond C. Harper, 48,
millionaire rancher and Director of the Frontier State Bank of Eagle
Pass, Texas, Marion Hagler, a former Inspector with the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, Murray Kessler and Barry Seal.

Kessler, a frequent house guest at the Harper ranch, had a record of six
convictions in Federal and state courts on charges of interstate theft,
transporting stolen property, bookmaking and conspiracy to possess
heroin. Federal authorities called him an associate of the Gambino
organized-crime family.

In a surveillance report, a Customs agent described him after he landed
at the San Antonio airport as "50-ish and Jewish-looking, wearing a
open-collar gray shirt with a gray sports suit, accompanied by a
"bleached blond in white slacks and a red polka-dotted jacket."

More importantly, Murray Kessler was "an anti-Castro guy," according to
a former DEA agent who knew him, "which was like a mantra he carried
around with him."

He was also a known associate of Guy Banister and David Ferrie in the
1960’s, according to this same source, who was there. "He had a lot of
familiarity with that group of ‘yahoos’ in New Orleans; that’s how I
figure he met Barry, who was known to have been involved with Guy
Banister and Ferrie back then too."

Richmond Harper, the catalyst and middle-man in the weapons for heroin
deal, was described as a "tall lean guy wearing a cowboy shirt with the
monogrammed initials "RCH," a string tie and cowboy boots," a
description with which Debbie Seal today agrees, having seen him on the
airport tarmac in Eagle Pass after flying in with Barry while they
conferred while awaiting trial. He was not only an associate of Carlos
Marcello's front man, Herman Beebe, but also, according to a statement
Barry Seal issued later, had "very deep ties right into the White
House."

Those ties were to the then-head of the Bureau of Narcotics and
Dangerous Drugs (BNDD)—soon to become the DEA—Myles Ambrose, and to John
Erlichmann’s aide Jack Caulfield, who, in addition to his duties as a
bagman, helped set up the White House Plumbers unit.

Ambrose would come to visit Harper and go hunting with him on his ranch
in Mexico, according to former Customs officials who worked under him.
He had also been a guest at what must have been the wedding of the year
in Eagle Pass, the nuptials of Richmond Harper’s daughter. The event was
commemorated—in a cardiologist’s wet dream--by the slaughtering of 600
steers.

"We tried to warn him [Ambrose]," stated one Customs official at the
time. "Tell him that this guy [Harper] is bad. He wouldn't listen."
(Ambrose's visits to Harper were also discovered in 1976 by the House
banking subcommittee investigating the Texas rent-a-bank scandal.)



>From Watergate to Whitewater...
One Damn Dark Ride
Next: Dog food for the people! Click here.
The DrugMoney Times   copyright 1998  A Caught Holding Company
=====
"Hey, Stop Barking. A Buck’s A Buck."

So, just why wouldn't Ambrose listen?

Mr. Ambrose said he had no recollection of the warning, and after the
visits, he discovered that Mr. Harper had been the defendant in a civil
suit involving the mislabeling of dog food--food not intended for
humans—that was then shipped over the border from Mexico to the United
States. Sheesh!

When Ambrose left office shortly after his friendship with Harper was
revealed, he would not give the New York Times a reason for his
resignation. Years later, Charles Colson told Senator Lowell Weicker
that "Ambrose would set up the CIA in the Drug Enforcement
Administration," and also, that "there were certain Mafia figures who
had cordial relations with Ambrose."

While this may or may not be true--Colson wasn't yet a Christian--the
sense that something was afoot in the illicit dope trade comes through
loud and clear.

The Harper ranch, despite, or maybe because of its inconvenient location
in Eagle Pass Texas, was a favorite watering hole for "the boys." During
his testimony before the Warren Commission, Lee Oswald's CIA
"baby-sitter" George DeMohrenschildt had testified he had visited Tito
and Conchita Harper on the ranch, which straddled the U.S./Mexican
border. After DeMohrenschildt's sudden death by shotgun on the eve of
his testimony to the House Select Committee on Assassinations--which his
wife strenuously said was not a suicide-- his personal address book was
located, and it contained this entry: "Bush, George H.W. (Poppy) 1412 W.
Ohio see also Zapata Petroleum Midland."

Small world—and filled with coincidence.



"Even De Planes Gotta Make Their Bones."

In fact, even the DC4 airplane in which the explosives were loaded at
the Shreveport airport was connected. It was owned by James Boy and Fort
Lauderdale Leasing, and

James Boy and Barry Seal will be arrested together eleven years later in
a big DEA drug bust called Operation Screamer.

And the Customs Service undercover agent who carried out the sting,
Cesario Diosdado? He had Kennedy assassination relevance as well. In one
of the strangest episodes to occur on November 22, 1963, Alpha 66 head
Antonio Veciana reported that after the assassination of President John
F. Kennedy, Caesar Diosdado had mysteriously showed up at his home
unannounced, and questioned him about it.

"You don’t know anything about Kennedy, do you?" Disodado asked.

When Veciana replied "no," Diosdado seemed satisfied. Antonio Veciana
felt he was being tested, and so didn't tell Diosdado that he had seen
Oswald in Dallas a month earlier, he testified, because "he didn't want
to get involved."

Gaeton Fonzi reported: "Veciana said as soon as Diosdado walked in the
door he told him, ‘hey, don't worry about a thing, I don't even know why
I'm doing this, they just told me to do it, interview some Cubans.’"

We recall here, for emphasis, the testimony of Organized Crime boss Sam
Giancana that one of the shooters in the Kennedy hit had been a US
Customs officer.

When the House Select Committee interviewed Diosdado thirteen years
later, he was working for the Drug Enforcement Administration. He said
he worked for United States Customs from 1957 to 1968, not for the CIA.
He stated he never questioned anyone about the JFK assassination.

These are two whopping lies. But…why? Clearly Disodado, according to
HSCA testimony, had showed up at Veciana's. And CIA documents today
confirm that he was a CIA agent. "Presently resident Customs
Agent-in-Charge, Key West, Florida. At this time Subjects (Diosdado's)
salary was being paid by WAVE Station."

When an informant claimed that Diosdado had been selling guns since
1957, and that he had sold arms to Castro prior to Castro's taking over
Cuba, as well as getting individuals in and out of Cuba for a price, the
FBI shrugged, stating they "do not interfere with his activities since
the FBI believes he is acting for the CIA."

And when Diosdado is alleged to be engaged in selling arms to persons
involved in aborted Haitian revolution, a Customs official reported he
was not going to take "any action in this matter, as Diosdado's salary
is being reimbursed to the Customs by CIA."

Even Barry Seal was on to Diosdado. According to Seal, "through records
I have obtained from a private investigative agency in Denver, Colorado,
The Customs Service undercover agent who carried out the sting, Cesario
Diosdado, has been proven to have been an ex-CIA agent who worked in the
Bay of Pigs invasion and had been working both sides of the fence in the
Miami/Cuban area."

So, maybe Disodado is lying out of principle, or maybe just to keep in
practice. Or maybe....But let’s save the speculation for later, and let
the games begin.





"The Dark Side Can Get Really Dark"

In his landmark book " The Mafia, CIA, and George Bush: The Untold Story
of America's Greatest Financial Debacle," author Peter Brewton was the
first to find Seals’ explosives bust significant to the elite deviance
of the savings and loan scandal to come:

"Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal - "El Gordo" - the fat man, also known as
"Thunder Thighs," was from Baton Rouge, Louisiana," Brewton wrote.
"Called the world's greatest pilot, he was at least the youngest-ever to
captain a Boeing 747, at the age of twenty-six. But several years later
he turned to the Dark Side of the Force. He was caught dealing with
Mafia associates and CIA operatives in one of the most bizarre and
inexplicable criminal cases on record."

Brewton continued, "It went down this way: On July 1, 1972, Seal was
taking some sick leave from his job as a captain flying 707s and 747s
out of New York to Europe for Trans World Airlines. As he walked out of
his motel room near the New Orleans International Airport, he was
arrested by federal agents and charged with violating the Mutual
Security Act of 1954, which prohibited the exportation of weapons
without the permission of the U.S. State Department."

It all began, Undercover Customs agent Caesar Diosdado would later
testify, when he was sent to Mexico City late in May to meet with U.S.
and Mexican government agents to map out a strategy for breaking up an
arms smuggling ring. He said that he had been summoned by the Federal
Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and told by a special agent of
the Bureau to investigate a group that had "approximately 10,000
assorted weapons and they trying to trade the weapons for 25 kilos of
heroin.

We interviewed Leland Briggs, who was that "special agent." He told us,
"I knew Diosdado had been working with the CIA in Florida back in the
60’s, but he was with Customs when I called him in. He was a pain in the
ass. Back then the CIA was working against us most of the time. The
Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Customs drug intelligence were being
folded into what became the DEA, and Myles Ambrose was in charge."

While in Mexico City, Riggs witnessed Myles Ambrose fly in, along with
then-Asst. Attorney General Dick Kleindienst and Jack Caulfield, who,
curiously enough, was also a member of Nixon’s Cabinet-level Committee
on International Narcotics Control.

"Caulfield was a good guy, a former New York cop, who was laundering
money at that time for the Republican National Committee," Riggs
remembers. "I set up meetings with the Mexican Treasury Department for
them."




Watergate to Whitewater
Strap in.
Its a dark ride.
=====
"Bagman" Jack Caulfield—Here to Stop a Crime Wave?"

The Mexican Treasury, it must be pointed out here, controlled the DFS,
the Mexican CIA, whose founder, a Captain Chavarri, later went to work
for the country’s largest drug smuggler. According to author Elaine
Shannon, "Most DEA agents who worked in Mexico and on the border
considered the DFS to be the private army of the drug traffickers. They
called the DFS badge ‘a license to traffic.’"

Drug smuggling through Mexico was Meyer Lansky’s main narcotics
operation, and, according to the inestimable Professor Peter Dale Scott,
the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which Ambrose headed, consistently
diverted attention away from this key trafficking pipeline, a pipeline
that was so well-established that Jack Ruby had been involved in it as
far back as 1947, when it was reportedly the biggest drug smuggling
channel into the United States.

Later, during the trial on the explosives charges, it will be revealed
that the Mexican whose report initiated the undercover operation, a man
named Fregoso, was a DFS officer of singular stature, so corrupt that he
will be drummed out of that agency--in what had to rank as a Mexican
first--for accepting a bribe from a narcotics dealer.

So, just what was Nixon ‘bagman’ Caulfield doing in Mexico City, at a
time when 50 million dollars of mostly untraceable cash was flowing into
Nixon’s re-election war-chest?

If you answered, "discussing stopping the flow of narcotics into the US
from Mexico," then your faith in our nation’s political class far
exceeds our own.



"Left Turn at the Nigger Hustlers"

The initial deal was 10,000 automatic weapons for 25 kilos of heroin.
Diosdado met retired INS agent Sandy Hagler in Eagle Pass, and was told
that the operation had a fleet of five DC3’s as well as 3-5 amphibious
PBY aircraft.

But, curiously, after Diosdado produced the 25 kilos of heroin it was
judged to be defective by the Harper/Kessler group. Now, they wanted
cash, and Diosdado wanted explosives. To cover the cost of the
transaction, he deposited $1-million in cash in a safe-deposit box at
Chase Manhattan in New York City, and another $1-million in cash in a
deposit box in San Antonio.

After negotiating with Richmond Harper at his ranch on the Mexican
border in Eagle Pass Texas, Harper put Diosdado in touch with Murray
Kessler, who invited him to visit a steel plant in Newark which Kessler
stated they were using to manufacture their own weapons, as well as to
make spare parts. Diosdado went north to New York to meet "Mr. Big,"
where he placed an initial order of 4,500 M-1 rifles, with 500 rounds of
ammunition for each weapon, after Kessler had boasted of being in
business, in Virginia, with the "biggest arms supplier on the face of
the planet."

This turns out to have been absolutely true. After his arrest, Customs
Agents found in Kessler’s address book the name and phone number of Sam
Cummings of INTERARMS, the CIA’s proprietary armaments supplier.

Samuel Cummings was recruited, while still young, to arm the 1954
Guatemala secret invasion, and for over half a century the genteel
Philadelphian dabbled in guns, rising quickly to the top of the global
small-arms trade. His career is the history of post-World War IIAmerica:
a long run of wars, coups and revolutions, from the '50s to the '90s,
that his company, Interarms, helped equip, sometimes both sides.

Cummings and his Swiss wife lived in jet-set comfort in a 14-room
apartment in tax-haven Monaco and a sprawling chalet, 4,000 feet up, in
Switzerland's Bernese Alps. Though born an American, he had become a
British subject. The guiding principle of Mr. Cummings's business
strategy was the idea that "the military market is based on human
folly-- not normal market precepts. Human folly goes up and down, but it
always exists -- and its depths have never been plumbed."

Whe Sam uttered these words he was, presumably, expressing a heartfelt
dualistic Zoroastrian philosophy, rather than merely rationalizing his
nickname in the trade, where he was known as the "merchant of death."

This was, all in all, not such a good time for Murray Kessler, since his
(literal) partner in crime had just been kidnapped, and his car found at
Newark Airport with blood all over the trunk--never a good sign in
certain New York circles.

"Manny left to meet some people in Jersey," was all he would say about
it to Diosdado.

Kessler’s missing partner was Manny Gambino, nephew to the all-powerful
Carlo Gambino, Mafia don of the family of the same name. He had been
kidnapped and held for ransom, and Kessler was designated as the bagman
to deliver the ransom. Even after the kidnappers received part of the
$350,000 ransom they demanded, Manny Gambino was murdered, and his
corpse found in a New Jersey garbage dump.

And even as the enraged Carlo Gambino sent out his top enforcers to
avenge his nephew's death, suspicion began to focus on whether Kessler
had, indeed, delivered the money to the kidnappers, or merely pocketed
it.



"Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye."

One of the kidnappers, James McBratney, was killed in a Staten Island
bar by three of Gambino's men, one of whom turned out to be John Gotti,
who will be sent to prison for seven years, and then emerge to do some
nifty cocaine business, distributing to the "retail" level massive
amounts of cocaine brought into this country through the remote airport
in Mena Arkansas by... Barry Seal.

But, dead partner and all, Murray was a true pro, rising to the occasion
to regale the stoic Diosdado with his views on life while squiring him
around New York. Disodado, posing as a Cuban living in Mexico, wore a
wire while visiting Kessler and touring his "munitions facility," and
some of the transcripts read like dialogue right out of a David Mamet
gangster movie, with Diosdado trying to cue the agents tailing Kessler’s
limo to their exact location by asking about Manhattan landmarks.

DIAZ: How many lanes in this tunnel?

KESSLER: In the tunnel? Two.

DIAZ: Is this the only tunnel in town?

KESSLER: No, we got the Holland Tunnel, that’s farther down, the Lincoln
tunnel...this takes you right into the heart of Manhattan.

DIAZ: UNINTELLIGIBLE.

KESSLER: You see a lot of nigger hustlers in this part of town.

This last was probably not too useful in helping keep track of
Diosdado’s exact location.

Kessler, maybe because of the fact that his partner has just been
"iced," began to wax philosophical on his methods of doing business.



"This is De Bidness We Have Chosen."


KESSLER: See, one of the biggest problems in this kind of situation is
an untrusting situation, and I know a man has to have some way, where
he’s dealing with somebody with family. This man is not going to do
anything bad because he knows the people he’s dealing with have got to
be bad people, people with blood, you understand? The easiest way, the
way we dealt with previously—would I tell you a lie?—we had a man from
Manhattan, and a girl and five guys would come over every month with two
suitcases--$600,000 or $700,000. We built a hand grenade factory in
Kansas, our own, with a general named Smith. Our own! We started out the
same way (as we are with you), you know...

DIAZ: Yeah?

KESSLER: Then later they said, listen, these people are real people,
they’re not interested in stealing nothing! They’re in this deal, they
want to make what they’re supposed to make. What we agreed and that’s
the game. I’m not interested in dying for money, understand? You must
deal with real people, not in a hotel room, but with people who live
 someplace! People who know, you know, my mother, your mother, my kids.
I know these people, you understand? You are in charge of this...You’re
entitled to make one mistake here. That’s the problem, we pay you,
whatever you make I pay you, but honor, honor! That’s the way I do
business. This is where my children and my family live, and maybe I’ll
get killed, but they’ll say, listen, he got killed doing his job. That’s
the way I like to do business, the only way you can know honor with
people of this caliber. There’s no other way, no other way. People who
trust you, when people who trust you with things like this here--God
forbid you make a mistake!—that you lose something. There’s no going
back and saying you’re sorry. This game has no "I’m sorry’s."

Kessler has just confirmed what we’ve been suspecting all along. "Being
connected means never having to say you’re sorry." But we wondered: who
is this General "Smith" with whom Mafioso Murray Kessler has a grenade
factory in Kansas? Is this kosher?

Kessler then moves on to the cosmic importance of transportation, and
discusses Barry Seal in ways we’d never heard before...


KESSLER: I’m in a position where I’ve got a man that’s flying around the
world all the time. This is no nickel aviator! A real captain, like you
came on the airlines with! Captain! Need him, he’s gold! He’s
experienced. I was in the cigarette business here. I bring cigarettes
from Panama with this guy. He comes into the country, the United States,
and never lands! Throws out everything on Long Island, its a three
hundred yard field, everything, never lands!



Watergate to Whitewater Thrillride
Don't blink--you'll miss something.
NEXT: Why Jesse Helms Loves Smugglers
=====
"The Marlboro Man Gets Into Smuggling"

Barry Seal’s own deposition in this case, made to agents the day he was
arrested, mentions that he had flown to Panama with a Carlos Marcello
associate, Joe Mazzukka, to discuss "importing" cigarettes with an RJ
Reynolds official there. Curiously, this same RJ Reynolds official also
agreed to go into business with Seal and his Mob buddies by fronting for
them in setting up an oil exploration company on the island of Aruba to
facilitate exporting explosives. ( "Call for Philip Morris?")

Kessler also discussed doing business on an international level, and
stated his preferences right into Diosdado’s microphone.

KESSLER: If we had met four or five months ago I might have said, come
on, let’s go to Israel. They’ve got more guns there than you’ve got hair
on your head. Millions of them! What’s going on in the whole United
States I don’t understand, why only a few people in this country do what
has to be done. Because of what happened here in the past 2-3 years, the
thing is they have a gun control law here now. If you go to buy a rifle
you got to show where its going, who bought it, everything. Since the
niggers started with the revolution shit here.

Finally, after finishing their negotiations, they agreed that Barry Seal
will fly with Kessler to Vera Cruz Mexico in advance of the deal, to
check out the airports suitability for landing a fully-loaded DC4.
Kessler turns mysterious, and begins speaking in tongues.

"My driver has to look at the racetrack," Kessler says. "So he knows how
to drive the car on it."

"Mexico: Laundry to the Stars!"

Barry Seal was wilting in the suffocating heat…Vera Cruz in June has
never been known as a vacation getaway, but this early June day in 1972
was a real scorcher. The humid Gulf air was oppressive, and there was no
shade on the isolated airstrip, just a swarm of mosquitoes and a lone
burro idly nibbling refuse strewn along the edges of the single runway
which Seal and two sweltering companions were checking out for an
upcoming mission.

Rings of sweat expanded underneath the armpits of the bear-like Seal's
flight suit as he and two smaller figures flanking him peered intensely
at a map of Cuba, spread out on a picnic table near the dilapidated shed
which served as the strip's air terminal. One of them is CIA agent Cesar
Diosdado. The other is Mafia lieutenant Murray Kessler. As the two men
followed his forefinger to a spot on the map, a droplet of sweat dripped
from Barry's forehead directly onto the word 'Havana.'

Could these three huddled figures be—two weeks before the Watergate
burglars are arrested--involved in the complex of scandals that will
come to be known as "Watergate?"

If you're not sweating in the bright sun of Vera Cruz, as Barry Seal was
in June of 1972, its easy to forget just how important the Mexican
connection was to Watergate.

When the hush money finally gets paid to the arrested Cubans, it comes
in the form of Mexican checks, turned over first to Maurice Stans of the
CREEP, who transferred them in turn to Watergate burglar Gordon Liddy.
Liddy then passed them on to Bernard Barker, one of the Miami station
Cubans arrested on the night of the final Watergate break- in. Barker wa
s actually carrying some of this "Mexican" cash left over from these
checks when he was apprehended.

The money for the Plumbers had come from one of George Bush's intimates,
and at the request of Bush, a member of the Nixon Cabinet from February,
1971 on. Just two days before a new law was scheduled to begin making
anonymous donations illegal, $700,000 in cash, checks, and securities
had been loaded into a briefcase at Pennzoil headquarters and picked up
by a company vice president, who boarded a Washington- bound Pennzoil
jet and delivered the funds to the Committee to Re-Elect the President
at ten o'clock that night.



"A Suggestion From
America’s Last Honest Man"

The U.S. House of Representatives Banking and Currency Committee,
chaired by Texas Democrat Wright Patman, soon began a vigorous
investigation of the money financing the break-in, large amounts of
which were found as cash in the pockets of the burglars. The largest
amount had gone into the Miami bank account of Watergate burglar Bernard
Barker, a CIA operative since the Bay of Pigs invasion, $100,000 that
had been sent in by Texas CREEP chairman William Liedtke, longtime
business partner of George Bush.

On the day Nixon resigned the Presidency, Patman wrote to Peter Rodino,
chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asking him not to stop
investigating Watergate.

Though Patman died in 1976, his advice still holds good…but we won't
hold our breath.

How much did George Bush himself know about the activities of the
Plumbers, and when did he know it? George Bush? In 1972? Egad! But,
apparently, Bush was knee-deep in things, as illustrated by the
notorious White House meeting of June 23, 1972, whose exchange between
Nixon and Haldeman--even without taking into consideration the
unexplained 18-and-a-half minute gap in the same conversation-- provided
the coup de grace to the agony of the Nixon regime.

Haldeman says (on the tapes): "Now, on the investigation, you know the
Democratic break-in thing, we're back in the problem area because the
FBI is not under control, because [FBI chief] Gray doesn't exactly know
how to control it and they have --their investigation is leading into
some productive areas because they've been able to trace the money--not
through the money itself--but through the bank sources--the banker. And,
and it goes in some directions we don't want it to go."

To which Nixon's famous answer is, "When you get in-- when you get in
(unintelligible) people, say, "Look, the problem is that this tracks
back to the Bay of Pigs, the whole problem is that this will open the
whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing and the President just feels that ah,
without going into the details--don't, don't lie to them to the extent
to say there is no involvement, but just say this is a comedy of errors,
without getting into it, the President believes that it is going to open
the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again and, ah…they should call the FBI in
and (unintelligible) don't go any further into this case period!

Based on Haldeman's later testimony, that Nixon's references to Howard
Hunt and the Bay of Pigs are an oblique allusion to the Kennedy
assassination, it seems that perhaps Mr. Nixon may have known more about
the killing of Jack Kennedy than he was ever held accountable
for--doubtlessly placing him in company with scores of others.

There then comes the one historical moment which, more than any other,
delineates the character of George Bush. The scene was the Nixon White
House during the final days of the Watergate debacle. White House
officials, including George Bush, had spent the morning of that Monday,
August 5, 1974 absorbing the impact of Nixon's notorious ``smoking gun''
tape, the recorded conversation between Nixon and his chief of staff,
H.R. Haldeman, shortly after the original Watergate break-in, which
could now no longer be withheld from the public. In that exchange of
June 23, 1972, Nixon ordered that the CIA stop the FBI from further
investigating how various sums of money found their way from Texas and
Minnesota via Mexico City to the coffers of the Committee to Re-Elect th
e President (CREEP) and thence into the pockets of the ``Plumbers''
arrested in the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate building.


These revelations were widely interpreted as establishing a {prima
facie} case of obstruction of justice against Nixon. That was fine with
George, who sincerely wanted his patron and benefactor Nixon to resign.
George's great concern was that the smoking gun tape called attention to
a money-laundering mechanism which he, together with Bill Liedtke of
Pennzoil, and Robert Mosbacher, had helped to set up.

When Nixon, in the ``smoking gun'' tape, talked about ``the Texans'' and
``some Texas people,'' Bush, Liedtke, and Mosbacher were to whom he was
referring... The threat to George's political ambitions was great. The
White House that morning was gripped by panic. Nixon would be gone
before the end of the week. In the midst of the furor, White House
Congressional liaison William Timmons wanted to know if everyone who
needed to be informed had been briefed about the smoking gun transcript.


In a roomful of officials, some of whom were already sipping Scotch to
steady their nerves, Timmons asked Dean Burch, ``Dean, does Bush know
about the transcript yet?''

``Yes,'' responded Burch. ``Well, what did he do?'' inquired Timmons.
``He broke out into assholes and shit himself to death,'' replied Burch.


Why would Bush do that? Break out into assholes and shit himself to
death? Could Barry Seal's arrest on explosives charges on July 2, 1972,
have had something to do with the operations of Bush's Republican Texas
money-raising squad of Hugh Liedtke, Pennzoil, and Robert Mosbacher?



Watergate to Whitewater thrillride
Keep your hands inside the boat.
Next: Hush Puppy Hush Money.
=====
"Hush Confidential"

Not only conspiracy buffs maintain there was more involved at Watergate
than meets the eye... H. R. Haldeman suspected that "the CIA was an
agency hostile to Nixon, who returned the hostility with fervor," and
adds that throughout the Watergate investigation, "the multiple levels
of deception by the CIA are astounding." Haldeman tends to support the
thesis that Watergate was, in fact, a highly sophisticated CIA plot to
destroy Nixon, and that Jim McCord, a former CIA security chief who was
intensely loyal to the agency, deliberately sabotaged the Watergate
break-in in order to cripple the Nixon White House and frustrate its
attempts to centralize control of the intelligence community. But we
haven’t seen Nixon taking control of all intelligence, just drug
intelligence.



Today a consensus among scholars agrees with the conclusions of the book
"Silent Coup:" Nixon was done in--deliberately--by two CIA agents, E.
Howard Hunt and James McCord, who bundled the burglary on purpose. See,
for instance, Haldeman's contention that "the overwhelming evidence
leads to the conclusion that the break-in was deliberately sabotaged."

So what we all thought had happened during Watergate was, sadly, just a
gossamer fairy tale for us chumps out in the cheap seats. Because it
wasn't the righteous indignation of the American people, coupled with
the vigilance of a free press, that brought Richard Nixon down--it was
the CIA.

So, what's the first thing the White House is frantically looking for,
after the burglars are discovered and "driven downtown?"

Money. Hush money. And lots of it. John Dean quickly summons CIA
war-horse General Vernon Walters to the White House to try squeezing
money from the burglars' old employer.

When the general arrived in Dean's White House office, according to the
participants later recollections, they fenced a bit: Dean said the
"bugging" case was becoming "awkward," and that one of the FBI's
theories was that it was done by the CIA, which Walters denied
vehemently. To quote Walters later memo, "Dean then said that some of
the accused were getting scared and 'wobbling'. I said that even so they
could not implicate the Agency."

This barely-veiled threat was because the CIA had long relationships
with everyone involved. Hunt was then 'working' for the Mullen Company,
a known CIA front. There were many reasons the CIA would have wanted to
keep such ties quiet.

Dean seemed taken aback, Walters noted later with some satisfaction, at
the CIA's refusal to come up with cash, but asked again if there was
anything the CIA could do. Walters agreed to carry the request to Helms,
even though Walters told Dean he was sure he knew what Helms would say.

Next day, Walters was again summoned to Dean's office at eleven in the
morning, and reported that in the interim he had spoken with Helms, who,
as Walters had suspected, did not want to pay the burglars. In his memo
of this second day Walters recalled raising the metaphorical ante of his
warning to Dean: "Involving the Agency would transform what was now a
medium-sized conventional explosive into a multi-megaton explosion and
simply was not worth the risk."

Dean, Walters reports, looked "glum" but "said he agreed with my
judgment in all of these matters."

On Wednesday the twenty-eighth of June, the two men met for a third
time. As Walters later wrote, Dean asked, ostensibly on behalf of the
White House, "whether there was not some way that the Agency could pay
bail for [the burglars]. . . . He added that it was not just bail, that
if these men went to prison, could we (CIA) find some way to pay their
salaries while they were in jail out of covert action funds."



"We COULD Do It—But It Would Be Wrong."

Walters became grim after this request, and turned it off quite
decisively.

A scant five days later Barry Seal was arrested in a plot to send 13,500
pounds of C4 plastic explosive to anti-Castro Cubans in Mexico, that was
supposed to be arms for heroin until the arms-sellers abruptly decided
they would really rather have cash, thank you very much... This is
probably more mere damn coincidence, but we couldn’t help but wonder.
Could this have been a White House attempt to 'tide the Cubans over'
with untraceable cash?

Dean's desperate search to find money was, eventually, the plot's
unraveling, as it was the $200,000 in hush money paid to Hunt which
finally exposed the scandal. But almost all of the "support" money
raised for the burglars' legal and personal expenses eventually became
hush money given to Howard Hunt alone. This money, meant to take care of
the Cubans, never made it to them. Was this just a case of Hunt's greed?
The CIA, after all, is known to have a virtual blank check. But... maybe
somebody wanted the burglars to talk?

Clearly, as scholars now agree, the fix was in, the knives were out, and
Nixon was going down.



Did Dick Nixon "Do the Hank Panky?"

Is it a coincidence that the Watergate burglars were anti-Castro Cubans?
Of course not…but we are, of course, not the first to postulate the
existence of a "secret team," a shadow government that runs the
government of the United States.

We are merely placing a uniform on one of the starters on that team,
Barry Seal. But placing Barry with "the boys," not only puts the drug
scandals of the Eighties in a new light, it also offers a new angle on
Watergate.

President Nixon's right hand - H. R. Haldeman - wrote in 1977's "Ends of
Power

"And when Nixon said, 'It's likely to blow the whole Bay of Pigs' he
might have been reminding (CIA Director) Helms, not so gently, of the
cover-up of the assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, a CIA operation
that may have triggered the Kennedy tragedy and which Helms desperately
wanted to hide."

Haldeman wrote in his memoirs that Nixon was clearly concerned that Hunt
knew a great deal and might talk. On the White House tapes, Nixon is
recorded as saying, "It would be very bad to have this fellow Hunt
(talk), he knows too much...". Nixon earlier told Erlichman, "This
fellow Hunt... will uncover a lot of things... you open that scab...
this involves the Cubans, Hunt and a lot of hanky panky."'

So we had failed in our one previous attempt to obtain CIA cooperation
and now in Ehrlichman's office on June 23, 1972, the CIA was
stonewalling again: 'Not connected.' No way.' Then I played Nixon's
trump card. 'The president asked me to tell you this entire affair may
be connected to the Bay of Pigs, and if it blows up, the Bay of Pigs may
be blown'."

"Turmoil in the room, Helms gripping the arms of his chair, leaning
forward and shouting, 'The Bay of Pigs had nothing to do with this! I
have no concern about the Bay of Pigs!'

"Silence. I just sat there. I was absolutely shocked by Helms' violent
reaction. Again I wondered, what was such dynamite in the Bay of Pigs
story? Finally, I said, 'I'm just following my instructions, Dick. This
is what the president told me to relay to you.'" Haldeman had been
speaking in code to Helms. Haldeman explained: "It seems that in all of
those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs he was actually referring to
the Kennedy assassination."

Judging from the Helms reaction, the message from Nixon was understood.

"I went back to see the President and told him his strategy had worked.
I had told Helms that the Watergate investigation 'tracks back to the
Bay of Pigs.' So at that point... he said, 'We'll be very happy to be
helpful.'

Nixon, too, later admitted that he had been in Dallas on November 22--at
a Pepsi Convention.



Watergate to Whitewater Thrillride
Stragglers will be shot.
Next: Poppa Says Pepsi,Please.
=====
"Choice of the New Generation."

Thirty years of covert operations--and the political scandals that
follow-- have apparently drawn upon the same (cess)pool of talent. They
are the handiwork of the same crowd, and the dramatis personae remain
consistent, like TV actors with familiar faces moving from one god-awful
series to the next.

Author Georgie Anne Geyer points out the obvious: "...an entire new
Cuban cadre now emerged from the Bay of Pigs. The names Howard Hunt,
Bernard Barker, Rolando Martinez, Felix Rodriguez and Eugenio Martinez
would, in the next quarter century, pop up, often decisively, over and
over again in the most dangerous American foreign policy crises. There
were Cubans flying missions for the CIA in the Congo and even for the
Portuguese in Africa; Cubans were the burglars of Watergate; Cubans
played key roles in Nicaragua, in Irangate, in the American move into
the Persian Gulf."

Felix Rodriguez tells us that he was infiltrated into Cuba with the
other members of the "Grey Team" in conjunction with the Bay of Pigs
landings; this is the same man we will find directing the contra supply
effort in Central America during the 1980's, working under the direct
supervision of Don Gregg and George Bush. Theodore Shackley, the JM/WAVE
station chief, will later show up in Bush's 1979-80 presidential
campaign.

As we have seen, it is revealing to take individuals who appear in one
scandal and compare them with the cast of characters from other
scandals…We have already seen how Howard Hunt, to take just one example,
shows up as a confirmed part of the overthrow of the Guatemalan
government of Jacob Arbenz in 1954, as an important cog in the chain of
command in the Bay of Pigs, as a person repeatedly accused of having
been in Dallas on the day Kennedy was shot, and as one of the central
figures of Watergate.

According to an internal CIA memorandum allegedly written in 1966 by Tom
Karamessines, an assistant to Richard Helms, Hunt, while working for the
CIA, was in Dallas on the day President John F. Kennedy was murdered.
The memo, allegedly read and initialed by Richard Helms and Sammy
Helperan, discusses a concern among the CIA bosses that the presence of
Hunt at Dealey Plaza might be uncovered.

Victor Marchetti, the author of "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence,"
suggests that the CIA had thought about taking a "limited hang-out," and
was willing to concede that CIA agents may have been involved in an
assassination plot against the late President. CIA executives were
admitting that a "renegade" band of agents acting on their own may have
made the hit.

Hunt vehemently denied this, and sued the authors of "Coup D'Etat in
America," a book by A. J. Weberman and Michael Canfield which maintains
that Hunt was one of the tramps photographed in Dealey Plaza just after
the murder.

Hunt lost.





Richard Nixon: Drug Kingpin?

Why not? Is anyone still so naive as to believe that the notorious
practice of covert operatives "looking the other way" when drug
trafficking is afoot began during the Contra Cocaine 80’s? Later in our
story, we will even hear some persuasive evidence that Nixon’s buddy
Bebe Rebozo had been the "money man" behind top Medellin cartel drug
kingpin (and Barry Seal associate) Carlos Ledher.

According to "The Great Heroin Coup," Nixon's antidrug campaign was in
reality a bid to establish his own intelligence network. Egil Krogh
wanted the White House, instead of the CIA, handling the drug
intelligence work, allowing Nixon's staff to decide which drug
traffickers to pursue. So they reorganized.

When Howard Hunt told Krogh he could enlist for the office experienced
CIA figures, starting with CIA veteran Lucien Conien at its head, it was
a ballsy move, since

the CIA had just been acutely embarrassed by the discovery that a huge
proportion of the smugglers arrested in the big Justice Department
Operation Eagle drug bust in 1970 were Cubans, and Bay of Pigs veterans
to boot.

When Nixon chose William Sullivan instead, who had once been second to
J. Edgar Hoover in the FBI, "the boys down at the Masonic Lodge," as
we’ve heard them referred to, could not have been overjoyed. Clearly,
the White House was out to gain control of narcotics intelligence at
home and abroad. But even that wasn't enough. Nixon's staff also sought
to control enforcement itself, and that required effective strike
forces.

So in January of 1972 the White House set up the Office For Drug Abuse
Law Enforcement (ODALE), according to a plan conceived by Gordon Liddy.
Nixon named the soon-to-resign-in-disgrace Myles Ambrose to head of the
newly created Drug Enforcement Office, which later became the Drug
Enforcement Administration.

It became the domestic strike force which soon became notorious for its
record of illegal raids, no-knock entries into private homes, and
beatings of innocent people. Some called it the American Gestapo.

So, who was upset by all this maneuvering? What organization might have
their noses put collectively out of joint by news that there was a new
drug "enforcement" outfit muscling onto their turf? Who did Cesar
Diosdado, the man who set up Barry Seal and his associates, actually
work for?

Go ahead. Say the secret word. You may win a hundred dollars.



Watergate to Whitewater thrillride
Next: The Trials of the C4 Seven.
=====
It ain’t all fun and games with the boys...with them, there’s—almost
always—blood on the tracks...

"Whatever we come up with has got to be watertight," Erlichman told
Nixon, in a taped White House conversation in July of 1972. Nixon
responded, "The coverup, the coverup thing will be... John, if they had
the confessions of some, that's really what..."

Erlichman interrupts to agree, saying, "And they'll not only have the
five burglars, but the two mystery men: (G. Gordon) Liddy and (Howard)
Hunt.. That'll give the public a lot of blood..."


"This is blood money," Diosdado had told Kessler in New York, attempting
to persuade him that he was not a man to be trifled with...

And there’s blood on the floor of the storage facility from which the
seven tons of plastics explosives came from, Southwestern Pipe, as well.
Owned by Carlos Marcello’s banker, Herman Beebe, Southwestern Pipe was
also a George Bush-related oil-drilling supplier--the same George Bush
who will later be affiliated during the Iran-Contra 80's with veteran C4
plastics explosives killer Luis Posada, who killed 79 people in cold
blood in an airliner bombing, was imprisoned in Venezuela, and then was
sprung free to go work with Felix Rodriguez. Armed with C-4 explosives,
endlessly conspiring, cherishing their spy craft like chivalry, riding
back streets in Jeeps, defiant, dreamily-detached from the mess they
make and the blood they spill...

These are the people we are talking about here.



When, later, on a private plane flying blissfully above the clouds, one
of the best friends Barry Seal ever had told him that he was glad that
Barry had been busted—glad!—because just think of how many bodies would
have been maimed by seven tons of C4—Barry Seal broke down and cried so
hard that his friend had to take over the plane’s controls.

So it wasn’t all fun and games. But the moments when covert operatives
stare the results of their handiwork in the face pass quickly...and life
is back to whatever passes for normal.

The day after Barry Seal’s arrest a remarkable photo was published in
the New Orleans Times-Picayune, of Seal being led in handcuffs into the
Federal Courthouse to face the multiple felony charges that he must have
known would ruin his airline career as a pilot with TWA.

Yet, flanked by grim-faced federal marshals, Barry Seal was laughing as
the flash bulbs popped, sporting the widest grin imaginable.

When we first saw it, this picture had convinced us that there was far
more to the Barry Seal story than had ever been publicly revealed. We
wondered: why is this man smiling? Was it just that he had ice water in
his veins…or did he know something we didn't?

Turns out, he did. Turns out, even back then Barry Seal was privy to
secrets only ever known to a few....secrets which, as we shall see, will
protect him from the serious trouble he was in.

When Harper was arrested he said, "It's the most ridiculous thing I ever
heard of." Barry Seal said, "All I need is a bunch of Cubans after me."





The ‘72 Trial of Barry and the "boys"

Somehow, "Intentional misconduct on the part of the prosecutor," which
is what the US Court of Appeals eventually ruled, is somehow slightly
easier to swallow than the tired old "lost the documents" trick we have
seen the CIA pull over and over again in our story so far.

Besides, no was in any real hurry to prosecute Barry Seal and the other
co-defendants. It became clear as the trial delays dragged on that
putting the Mexican pipeline out of commission for the duration of
Nixon’s agony was the goal of the operation.

When the case finally, briefly, came to trial, it was notable more for
moments of humor than anything else.

Outside the courtroom one morning, the irrepressible Barry Seal
approached one of the undercover agents he had been with that hot day in
Vera Cruz two years previous, DEA Group Supervisor Frank Maldanado.
Maldanado, today retired, remembers what happened next.

"Barry brought over his young wife, Debbie, and said, ‘Frank, was it hot
when we were in Vera Cruz?’"

"Very hot," I told him.

"And I was wearing a suit, and sweating a lot, wasn’t I?" Barry then
asked.

"Yes, you were," Maldanado replied slowly, not sure where this was
going.

"And the bus broke down on our way back into Vera Cruz, right?" Seal
asked.

"I saw you standing beside it, yes, as we drove by on our way back into
town," Maldanado confirmed.

"Well," Seal grinned, "tell my wife that. She thought I had a good
time."





Meanwhile back at the trial...

"It was a clear case of entrapment," stated retired DEA agent Dick
Gustafson, about the government’s evidence at the trial.

But just in case, when the trial finally got underway nearly two years
later, government prosecutors placed in evidence an automatic weapon
that had nothing whatsoever to do with the charges against Seal and his
compatriots. "Intentional misconduct," is what the Appeals Court called
this move, in throwing out the government’s half-hearted motion to
re-try the men.

The Baton Rouge Advocate published an editorial about the case, called
"Why False Evidence in Government Trial?"

"Some serious questions may be raised about the intentions of
prosecutors serving the US Government following the failure to obtain a
conviction in New Orleans of five men arrested for conspiracy to smuggle
explosives to Mexico," stated the editorial.

The editorial writers flay around for a reason behind the intentional
misconduct on the part of the federal prosecutor, who, had he been a
pitcher, could have been accused of throwing the game. But US Attorneys,
back in those more innocent times, were hardly thought likely to do
something like that. And while the editorial writer waxed indignant, he
could never figure out quite what was going on—and said so.

Had he been told that the "boys" had wanted merely to interrupt the
"Mexican Connection" temporarily, just until Mr. Nixon could be removed
from the money end of its feeding tube, he would no doubt have passed
out from sheer surprise.

A mis-trial in the case of the "C4 Seven" was declared on June 29, 1974.


Six weeks later Nixon resigned.



Watergate to Whitewater Thrillride
Thank you for your patronage.
Watch your step while exiting.
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris

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