Hughes, Nixon and the CIA: The Watergate Conspiracy Woodward and Bernstein Missed

[Octafish]

Tricky Dick thought the Democrats played dirty tricks that cost him the White House in 1960 and the governor's mansion in 1962. For those nostalgic for a fellow whose assorted treasons helped usher in our nation's current, eh, situation:

HUGHES, NIXON AND THE CIA: THE WATERGATE CONSPIRACY WOODWARD AND BERNSTEIN MISSED

an investigative report
By Larry DuBois and Laurence Gonzales

THE PUPPET AND THE PUPPETMASTERS
UNCOVERING THE SECRET WORLD OF NIXON, HUGHES AND THE CIA

including

The Buying of the President
The World's Biggest Intelligence Front
The War Within the Hughes Empire
The Untold Story Behind Watergate

EXCERPT...

THE PURCHASE OF NIXON

I can make or break anybody.
-HOWARD HUGHES

The relationship between (Howard) Hughes and (Richard) Nixon goes back at least to 1956. That year, Hughes lent Donald Nixon $205,000 to save a failing restaurant business. For Hughes, giving money in exchange for potential political favors was not unusual. Right after that loan—in a coincidence that investigators have been suspicious of for years—while Nixon was Vice-President, the Hughes Medical Institute was suddenly granted a tax-exempt status after prior refusals by the IRS. The loan to Donald was kept secret for obvious reasons. But four years later, one week before the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon election, columnist Drew Pearson got the story and printed it. The press flashed it across the country and to this day, Nixon and his friends believe it was the news of that loan that was partly responsible for his defeat by Kennedy.

In 1962, Nixon was running for governor of California. The loan again became a campaign issue and Nixon was called on to explain it publicly. Again he lost the race. Later, Rebozo's attorney, William Frates, was to say that Rebozo felt the story "had materially affected the outcome of the 1960 Presidential election and the 1962 governor's race in California." So not once but twice Nixon's relationship with Hughes was connected, at least in his mind and the minds of his friends, with agonizing political setbacks.

In 1968, Nixon was again running for President. Hughes had moved into his penthouse suite at Las Vegas' Desert Inn (known locally as the D.I.). Meier's files are jammed with photocopies of memos from that period, all of which had been handwritten with a ballpoint pen on lined yellow legal pads. Hughes didn't mince words when directing his executives to achieve his goals for him. In reference to political contributions that year, for example, he wrote to Robert Maheu, manager of the Hughes-Nevada Operations: "I want you to go see Nixon as my special confidential emissary. I feel there is a really valid possibility of a Republican victory this year. If that could be realized under our sponsorship and supervision every inch of the way, then we would be ready to follow with Laxalt (Nevada's governor at the time) as our next candidate."

Frank statements like that, as well as court documents from lawsuits against Hughes, show that he desperately wanted four things at that time and was prepared to devote enormous resources to getting them.

1. He wanted to select a Presidential candidate of his own and "go all the way" in funding him.

2. He wanted to purchase an airline. He had been forced out of ownership of TWA and aviation had always been his first love. Air West was for sale and he was determined to buy it.

3. He wanted to expand his Las Vegas empire. He had bought five hotel-casinos and the Justice Department had ruled he could make no more purchases without violating its antitrust guidelines. Hughes's attitude was that Justice could go to hell.

4. With a fury that bordered on the pathological (see A Hughes Vignette on page 182), he wanted the Atomic Energy Commission to stop underground nuclear testing, which caused the D.I. to sway back and forth a few inches.

CONTINUED...

http://www.meier.com/johnhmeier/Playboy_Article.html

The above article is a good read for people interested in learning how we got here.

Please don't forget: For all his faults, Nixon was merely a waterboy for War Inc.

[steve2470]

1. Thank you so much for all your great articles and research

I've learned a lot from them.

[Octafish]

2. Things for America have gone from Paranoid Nixon to Warmonger Bush.

If we're going to help turn things around, we need to know the reality of the situation. For instance, from the article we are reminded that TIME magazine reported the Hughes Org received at least $6 billion in secret CIA contracts. That's about $11.5 million per week, about $1.2 billion a year in Nixon-era dollars -- maybe about 4-times that in today's dollars. The thing is: Today, privatized intel is the norm.

Most importantly: You are most welcome, steve2470. We go back a ways, my Friend.

[laughingliberal]

3. K & R nt

[Octafish]

6. 1976 was when the trail was fresh.

Thanks for reminding me, laughingliberal!



Thanks to the unelected and corrupt Gerald Ford, the trail would remain forever hidden:

The Fox and Establishment Version:

Nixon Pardon Ended Watergate, Sealed Ford's Fate

Screwed over Jerry's chances in '76. For other political descendants of Nixon, the pardon was a greedsend. In fact, the presidential pardon became a family tradition.

Ford died on Dec. 26, 2006, at his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., at the age of 93. “For a nation that needed healing, and for an office that needed a calm and steady hand, Gerald Ford came along when we needed him most,” said President George W. Bush. Source

[glitch]

8. No doubt the familial 'we'

"Gerald Ford came along when we needed him most,” said President George W. Bush.

And what did GHW Bush say at Ford's memorial again? Something about Dallas, and conspiracies?

[Octafish]

20. Poppy said ''after a deluded gunman'' and seemed to laugh.

DUers more familiar with criminal psychology than I called the moment "a tell."



Video, the moment in question is at the 1:03 mark.

"...After a deluded gunman assassinated President Kennedy, our nation turned to Gerald Ford and a select handful of others to make sense of that madness. And the conspiracy theorists can say what they will, but the Warren Commission report will always have the final definitive say on this tragic matter. Why? Because Jerry Ford put his name on it and Jerry Ford’s word was always good..." -- former President George Herbert Walker Bush (a man whose personal contact information was in George DeMohrenschildt's address book) eulogizing former President Gerald Rudolph Ford.

It really is a small world for those in the petroleum business.

[glitch]

21. You are true blue, I knew you'd have it. :) Thanks! Never forget. nt

[laughingliberal]

10. Yep. nt

[Rosa Luxemburg]

4. HOw many others have been 'purchesed' along the road?

[JohnyCanuck]

5. Good question. n/t

[Octafish]

9. It'd be good for the country for a Grand Jury to ask Porter Goss that very question.

Odd how he's managed to stay in a flattering spotlight, even as top officials in his organization are getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

That guy is pretty good at slinging stuff towards Democrats. What's weird is how little they sling back. It's as if they're scared or something.

[CanSocDem]

7. Ah yes...

I remember the articles.

One of the motives of the Watergate break-in, as I remember being proposed by somebody, was to find out if McGoveren had evidence of the "loan".

And indeed HH fit nicely into the geo-political games of the day. You would know that he was the founding financeer/promoter of the original CIA that he hoped would protect his interests from the evil communists.

With his political paranoia becoming pathological, his final years in the care of some shady characters from the Mormon church add further layers to the vast industrial ruling class you remind us of with your timely and historical essays.

And then there was that guy who moved to Vancouver Island and became invisible...Bob Mahieu???

.

[Octafish]

12. CIA's 'Iron Bob' hired Chicago mob to kill Castro

The late Robert Maheu, on the right in the photo.

From DU a ways back: a backgrounder on the man the CIA ordered in 1960 to hire the Mafia in order to assassinate Fidel Castro.

CIA'S 'Iron Bob' hired Chicago mob to kill Castro

By Chuck Goudie | Daily Herald Columnist
Published: 8/10/2008 11:58 PM

For one simple reason, nearly all of the notable and notorious from Robert Maheu's life couldn't make it to his funeral over the weekend.

They were dead.

At age 90, Maheu outlived the oddballs and Outfit members who made him a legend in law enforcement circles. Howard Hughes, the richest-man recluse with fingernails as long as his bank statement; Anthony "The Ant" Spilotro who ended up 6-feet under; Johnny Roselli, the crafty gangland killer; and Sam "Mooney" Giancana of Chicago mobdom fame. They were all Maheu associates who preceded him in death.

The one surviving celebrity from Mr. Maheu's storied past who might have shown up in the pews at St. Viator Catholic Church in Las Vegas on Saturday, didn't come.

Fidel Castro.

Of course Mr. Castro is preoccupied back in Cuba with his own health problems, those pesky reports of his personal demise and that continuing U.S. trade and travel embargo.

The fact is if Maheu's biggest professional project had succeeded, Cuba today would be more a popular tourist haven than the Bahamas and Castro would be a name carved onto an ornate Havana gravestone.

Maheu (pronounced May-hew) worked for the FBI during World War II in counter-espionage. He opened his own private-eye firm in 1954 and the Central Intelligence Agency was his best client, paying him a $500 retainer. The CIA handed him "cut-out" assignments that involved illegal tactics, which if exposed would be untraceable to the federal agency.

Maheu's most spectacular cut-out assignment from the CIA was to overthrow Cuban dictator Fidel Castro by murdering him. Thirteen million was budgeted to instruct paramilitary soldiers outside of Cuba for a guerrilla assault.

CONTINUED...

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=226765

Mr. Maheu certainly advanced the privatization of intelligence, initiated government by Mafia, and fueled the rise of Texas Oil. In short, his life helped create modern America.

[Skink]

11. Tax free weekend is coming up in Texas.

I'm going to buy some sneakers. It's mostly for the kids that have an ever growing list of school supplies they must buy before the school yearbecause apparently our taxes don't cover it.

[Octafish]

15. Reagan said he'd abolish the Department of Education.

Pruneface Ronnie actually bragged about it. Today, scumbuckets in the media are trying to bring back the idea. Why would conservatives and Rupert Murdoch want a dumbed-down America?

[Odin2005]

13. Why am I not suprised?

[Octafish]

16. It's as if there are two sets of books for America.

One for the "Have-Mores" and another one for the "Haves."

From the Playboy article:

Hughes had said for years that when he died, he intended to leave his entire estate to H.M.I. Meier claims that Hughes instructed him to meet with the institute's president, Ken Wright, to discuss the institute's relationship with the CIA and that on March 8, 1969, Wright told him it was really a CIA front doing only token amounts of medical research in order to protect its tax-exempt status. According to Meier, H.M.I. had taken a long lease on Cay Sal, an uninhabited Bahamian out island 40 miles north of Cuba, to provide a site for covert CIA training operations. Meier's story that the medical institute is actually a CIA front was corroborated recently when a former Pentagon official was quoted in Time as saying that HAC (solely owned by H.M.I.) "is a captive company of the CIA. Their interests are completely merged." In other words, if Hughes left his fortune to H.M.I., control of his whole empire would legally—and secretly—pass to the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA could then—under the guise of tax-exempt charity—fund any project, any covert activity imaginable, working its magic with billions of untraceable dollars through the seemingly legitimate channels of the Hughes empire.

The same seems to hold for "Justice" and "Just-Us."

[hootinholler]

14. I doubt that Woodward missed this...

He was after all tied to Mr Dulles' organization.

-Hoot

[Octafish]

17. That IS the other interpretation...

And I am proud of Carl Bernstein: The CIA and the Media

...and the story goes: "Once your in, you never get out."

[peace frog]

18. Thanks for this blast from the past

nothing like historical perspective to put it all in context.

[Octafish]

19. Files Detail Aid to Bush By Nixon White House

Ian Fleming and Jules Verne would be hard-pressed to write better fiction than America's modern history, to wit:

Files Detail Aid to Bush By Nixon White House

By JEFF GERTH with ROBERT PEAR,
The New York Times
June 11, 1992

WASHINGTON, June 10— In the early 1970's, even as President Richard M. Nixon became enveloped in the Watergate scandal, he helped elevate George Bush, then a former Texas Congressman, to national political prominence.

Now, as the June 17 break-in at the Watergate approaches its 20th anniversary, a review of thousands of files -- many made public in the last few years -- offers interesting new historical details of Mr. Bush's connections to the Nixon Presidency before and after it was overtaken by Watergate.

While the documents in the National Archives hold no major new disclosures, they shed new light on the benefits Mr. Bush received from a 1970 campaign financing arrangement by the Nixon White House, known as the townhouse operation because it was operated out of a townhouse in Northwest Washington, that later came under the scrutiny of Watergate prosecutors. And they provide new evidence of blackmail efforts by the Nixon White House that were little discussed previously.

The documents from the Nixon White House detail the Administration's plan to distribute $6,000 in cash to selected candidates, including Mr. Bush, then a Congressman from Texas who was running for the Senate. The cash was part of an effort both to help fellow Republicans and gain political "leverage" over the recipients, should they later hold important positions.

A month after Mr. Bush lost the Senate race, Mr. Nixon named him the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Then, in early 1973, Mr. Bush became chairman of the Republican National Committee. The documents from the Archives indicate that Mr. Bush asked in July 1973 whether party records of the townhouse operation should be burned. After a long fight, the Watergate prosecutor later obtained townhouse records from the White House.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/11/us/files-detail-aid-to-bush-by-nixon-white-house.html

Those old school ties really, really bind constitutional government.

[bobthedrummer]

22. To Save Dan Mitrone Nixon Administration Urged Death Threats For Uruguayan Prisoners

In Response Uruguayan Security Forces Launched Death Squads to Hunt and Kill Insurgents (The National
Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book 324 posted 8-11-10)
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB324/index.htm

These are the parents and other relatives of current employees of folks in US government and contracted "privateers" routinely employed to continue the torture once taught by American citizen Dan Mitrone and now universally applied by homicidal sociopaths holding political power.

Just a sidebar to this thread, sir-in the context of GEMSTONE. K&R.

[Octafish]

25. That poor government agent was identified and paid the price. for Nixon's treasons.

Mr. Mitron was a specialist on loan, perhaps on CONDOR business.

Nixon was only doing what came natural: working for scale. The guy knows how to work the system, from way back in his Operation 40 Days.

Thank you, bobthedrummer, for giving a damn about government by mafia. With you and DU, We got a darn good chance, my Friend.

[Ignis]

23. K&R

[Octafish]

30. Watergate exposed some of the Monster.

What Hunter S. Thompson said upon the passing of President Nixon:

HST Says Farewell

"He Was a Crook"

By HUNTER S. THOMPSON
CounterPunch
February 21, 2005

Editor's Note: How Thompson said goodbye to Richard Nixon is as good a way to remember the high priest of gonzo as any. AC/JSC

MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL AFFAIRS DESK

DATE: MAY 1, 1994

FROM: DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON

SUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON:

NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER....HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA. ...BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.

"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is becoming the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."--REVELATION 18:2

Richard Nixon is gone now and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing--a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that I know Iwill go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."

I have had my own bloody relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, andI am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hatedNixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.

Nixon laughed when I told him this. "Don't worry," he said. "I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you."

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive--and he was, all the way to the end--we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instinctsof a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.

SNIP...

For Nixon, the loss of Hoover led inevitably to the disaster of Watergate. It meant hiring a New Director--who turned out to be an unfortunate toady named L. Patrick Gray, who squealed like a pig in hot oil the first time Nixon leaned on him. Gray panicked and fingered White House Counsel John Dean, who refused to take the rap and rolled over, instead, on Nixon, who was trapped like a rat by Dean's relentless, vengeful testimony and went all to pieces right in front of our eyes on TV.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/thompson02212005.html

Thank you, Ignis! Means the world to me.

[Ignis]

35. Oh, the good Doc was right about more than a few things.

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics...

He had that effect on quite a few of us. ;)

:hi:

[amborin]

24. K&R

[Liberation Angel]

26. Woodward was Book and Snake at Yale in in the same Naval intelligence unit

though at different times, as Lee Harvey Oswald.

Book and Snake is a sister society to skull and bones (a sub-section really) which specializes in intel and science.

Woodward did not miss the story....

He killed that story.

Because he was a spook it seems...

[Liberation Angel]

27. Jeez - am I a thread-killer or what?

Just asking.

I at least wanted someone to raise a denial or accuse this of being CT.

Oh well.

[Octafish]

29. That is the key to the whole Watergate Thing.

An investigative reporter I know says you only ever really know about 10-percent of the story. No matter how much you dig, you find more of the crooks' hidden iceberg. Imagine how much more it is when it comes to crimes of the national security state. That means Watergate was more than a constitutional crisis. It was an existential crisis, as the powers that be were afraid the jig was up.

Instead, Poppy and his intel crew actually put down their icy tumblers and put in some serious overtime on Watergate. They've jumped through hoops of real fire more than a few times since then, like the time the October Surprise morphed into Iran Contra and BCCI and Inslaw/PROMIS.

All that is forgotten now that September 11 has given them the ability to run roughshod over whatever they want. Check out Operation SHAMROCK and then think back to 2007 and how we learned how ATT and Verizon and every phone company but QWEST turned over every call, email, text etc that A.G. Ashcroft asked for. About the only thing truly scarier would be a national security state represented by the merger of Old Money, the Mafia and the NAZIs. Oops. Ha ha, a funny.

[Liberation Angel]

33. Yessir Octa, they been there. They done that, They got the Nazi t-shirt and BTW

I have a lot of stuff on the Nazis etc and other material in my archives on youtube (see my pllaylists)

It is explained there in my comments but it is a work in progress.

www.youtube.com/user/LiberationAngels

You will like it I think and it is a useful way to store data on video and audio on these subjects.

Keep it up!

La Luta Continua!

Veneceremos!

Liberation Angel (Always a Pacifist)

[PufPuf23]

28. I am on page 462 of Baker's Family of Secrets

Highly recommended.

Nixon was a protege of Prescott Bush but Watergate was on action to remove Nixon by War Inc.

Woodward is likely CIA.

CIA and DoD are heavily imbedded in media and academia (and other sectors too, like the internet lolol).

[Octafish]

38. Baker found Poppy Bush was CIA doing company business in Vietnam in 1968

Russ Baker is a must-read. In addition to going over the FBI-Bush memos, The guy chronicles the Texas connections between Poppy and the "and that must make a lot of people angry. Page 462 starts out about how Dicky Thornburgh and Lou Boccardi helped officially kill the Smirko-Texas ANG document story. My only beef is I thought it was Ashcroft, not Thornburgh, who draped the nudes at Justice.

Here's a bit more Baker found on Poppy -- he was CIA during the Vietnam era, something Poppy denied when he was lying to Congress in his CIA director confirmation hearing:

Bush Senior Early CIA Ties Revealed

By Russ Baker and Jonathan Z. Larsen | The Real News Project

January 8, 2007

NEW YORK--Newly released internal CIA documents assert that former president George Herbert Walker Bush's oil company emerged from a 1950's collaboration with a covert CIA officer.

Bush has long denied allegations that he had connections to the intelligence community prior to 1976, when he became Central Intelligence Agency director under President Gerald Ford. At the time, he described his appointment as a 'real shocker.'

But the freshly uncovered memos contend that Bush maintained a close personal and business relationship for decades with a CIA staff employee who, according to those CIA documents, was instrumental in the establishment of Bush's oil venture, Zapata, in the early 1950s, and who would later accompany Bush to Vietnam as a “cleared and witting commercial asset” of the agency.

According to a CIA internal memo dated November 29, 1975, Bush's original oil company, Zapata Petroleum, began in 1953 through joint efforts with Thomas J. Devine, a CIA staffer who had resigned his agency position that same year to go into private business. The '75 memo describes Devine as an “oil wild-catting associate of Mr. Bush.” The memo is attached to an earlier memo written in 1968, which lays out how Devine resumed work for the secret agency under commercial cover beginning in 1963.

CONTINUED...

http://realnews.org/rn/content/zapata.html

PS: Sorry so late in reply. My copy of "Family of Secrets" was under the bed.

[jotsy]

31. Justice seems so far gone

and the bar so low.

Thanks Octafish. I repeat, you do such good work! Didn't catch this til this morning, or I'd have given it an enthusiastic rec.

At the damn eulogy? This crew couldn't splice together a single soul between them. And they think people should look up to them?

BFEE=Ipecac

[Matariki]

32. Interesting. So is this:

http://www.famoustexans.com/howardhughes.htm

<snip>

It was in the '30s that Hughes built the Texas Theater, the movie house in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas in which Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in 1963. The closeness of both men to the CIA makes it all but certain that the Texas Theater would have become a clandestine meeting place for spies.

........

Military-Industrial Complex: Throughout the 1950s, as the power of three entities grew -- the Hughes empire, organized crime, and the new Central Intelligence Agency -- it became all but impossible to distinguish between them. By the end of the decade, Hughes' chief of staff, Robert Maheu, had orchestrated the CIA's dirtiest secret -- plots to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro with the help of two heads of organized crime. Vice President Richard Nixon was the White House action officer in the clandestine attempts to oust Castro. Zapata Off-Shore, the oil company owned by future CIA director and U.S. president George Bush after he split it off from Zapata Oil partner Hugh Liedtke in 1954, had a drilling rig on the Cay Sal Bank in 1958. These islands had been leased to Nixon supporter and CIA contractor Howard Hughes the previous year and were later used as a base for CIA raids on Cuba. Nixon lost the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy largely because of a scandal over a never repaid $205,000 "loan" Nixon's brother received from Hughes. As attorney general, Robert Kennedy secretly investigated the Hughes-Nixon dealings.

[pipoman]

34. Not a fan of the Nixon presidency,

but my favorite president to collect...I always have liked cartoon characters..

[defendandprotect]

36. Late K&R -- Howard Hughes wanted to OWN America --

[G_j]

37. great post!

some remarkable history

[MinM]

39. Robert Foster Bennett (R-UT), recently primaried, wrested away control of the Hughes Empire

Bennett: The GOP Is A Party Of Slogans, Not Ideas


JOHN F. KENNEDY TAPES: Richard Nixon is Psychotic

The Nixon Presidency was the culmination of a Right-Wing Coup


http://journals.democraticunderground.com/MinM/170