The Mysteries of Watergate

Prior episodes have shown that the Nixon Presidency, churlishly cynical though it may have been, was the victim of deceitful journalism by the Washington Post which cast it far more villainously than deserved.Was the harm of this journalism limited to this particular epoch? Unfortunately, no. This episode will show but a few examples of how this greatly ballyhooed style of “investigative” journalism caused far more harm than partisan electoral advantage. In its effort to prosecute a target, s...

Clearly the full and correct Watergate story was not reported by the Washington Post. Often a journalist simply gets a story wrong while acting in good faith. But if the Post was willfully deceitful in its Watergate reporting, not simply negligent, then the entire modern project of slashing “investigative” journalism is built on fraud. Is today’s partisan journalism based on a “proof of concept” that was obtained by fraud? If so, our country has been divided horribly by the Washington P...

G. Gordon Liddy, a lawyer, former FBI agent and chief operative in the White House Plumbers unit at the time, was a central focus for Watergate activity, even though he is correctly, and admittedly, seen as a dupe. But he was an honest man, incapable of insincerity, such that his 1980 memoir, Will, is know to be the most candid and honest of the Watergate confessionals. Liddy, stoutly refusing to seem a “rat,” said nothing about the scandal until this book, and therefore it was no...

As impeachment was closing in on President Nixon, the CIA could, it seemed breathe a sigh of relief, as it had skillfully and luckily, with the unstinting help of the Washington Post, navigated rocky shoals. The Mullen cover contract (Ep. 3), Michael Stevens’ bombshell stories (Ep. 14), Lou Russell’s involvement (Ep. 15), the desk key found during the Watergate breakin (Ep. 16), CIA handler, Lee Pennington's document burning (Ep. 17), the CIA Defense offered duri...

As of late March 1973, it looked like all the pieces were falling in place for the CIA to avoid exposure of its role in the Watergate scandal and to hide the salacious information actually targeted. If Watergate continued to be viewed as a campaign fiasco, John Dean’s and Jeb Magruder’s testimony against their superiors in the White House would be increasingly valuable. But there loomed, as Watergate burglar James McCord was unleashing to Judge Sirica about the White House, ...

James McCord is a highly intriguing character, if an opaque one. As we described earlier, John Mitchell had wanted a personal security officer, but Alfred Wong of the Secret Service, with thousands of retired agents in D.C., could only find McCord, a “retired” CIA agent with no personal security experience. So why did McCord’s friend Wong recommend him, and is it a coincidence that McCord came from the shadowy Office of Security ("OS") within the CIA, as did Watergate burglary sup...

If the Washington Post was not intentionally covering up the “CIA defense” which we discussed in the last episode, it would blare a headline about it when it was later documented that Howard Hunt, the Watergate burglary supervisor, had earlier been planning it, correct? And if the prosecution believed that the CIA defense was truly “spurious,” why did the prosecutors work so hard to rebut it? Did the prosecution agree that Hunt’s motives sprang from his Mullen and Company employme...

In a trial of profound public significance, it is particularly important that the media informing the public of the prosecution cover all impactful claims and defenses. In the first of two episodes on the trial and prosecution of the Watergate burglars, we will examine whether the Washington Post intentionally covered up the planned defense of burglary supervisor Howard Hunt, a “retired” CIA agent: that the burglary was an appropriate national security CIA operation. If the Post ...

History has paid little attention to Alfred Baldwin, the Watergate wiretap monitor, and his knowledge. That is most likely the result of the Washington Post feigning ignorance of his existence for the crucial first several months of the scandal. Was the Washington Post truly ignorant of his overhearings, which would have radically altered the narrative? And were Washington Post reporters, as claimed, ignorant of his name and role prior to October 1972? Is there a circu...

All five burglars were involved in the ill-fated CIA-planned fiasco, the Bay of Pigs, and one supervisor, Howard Hunt, was a leader in that abortive Cuban invasion. Since at the time of Watergate, he worked not only part-time at the White House but also full-time at Mullen and Company, a D.C. public relations firm with known CIA ties, an important issue for journalists to examine would have been whether Hunt was an active CIA agent working undercover during the Watergate burglary. ...