Allegations regarding “Butch” Merritt, Watergate, Intelligence Agencies and “Crimson Rose,” Vol. XVII

Endgame – Part Four

Written (and first posted) by Kris Millegan, April 7, 2011

Nixon is involved with the Mafia. – Martha Mitchell

Money does appear to buy respectability. Give it a generation or two and it gets downright smug.

Nixon’s old friend Murray Chotiner has arrived. His Wikipedia page mentions nothing of his Mob ties. “History is written by the victors,” as Winston Churchill said.

For a refresher, from Don Folsom’s “The Mob’s President: Richard Nixon’s Secret Ties to the Mafia“:

Richard Nixon’s earliest campaign manager and political advisor was Murray Chotiner, a chubby lawyer who specialized in defending members of the Mafia and who enjoyed dressing like them too, in a wardrobe highlighted by monogrammed white-on-white dress shirts and silk ties with jeweled stickpins. The monograms said MMC, because – perhaps to seem more impressive – he billed himself as Murray M. Chotiner, though, in reality, he lacked a middle name.

In this cigar chomping, wheeler-dealer, Nixon had found what future Nixon aide Len Garment called ”his Machiavelli – a hardheaded exponent of the campaign philosophy that politics is war.”

When Nixon went on to the White House, both as vice president, and later as president, he took Chotiner with him as a key behind-the-scenes advisor – and for good reason. By the time he became president in 1969, thanks in large part to Murray Chotiner’s contacts with such shady figures as Mafia-connected labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello, and Los Angeles gangster Mickey Cohen, Richard Nixon had been on the giving and receiving end of major underworld favors for more than two decades.

In his first political foray – a successful 1946 race for Congress as a strong anti-Communist from southern California – Nixon received a $5,000 contribution from Cohen plus free office space for a ”Nixon for Congress” headquarters in one of Mickey Cohen’s buildings.

And there was more to come.

In 1950, at Chotiner’s request, Cohen set up a fund-raising dinner for Nixon at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Los Angeles. The affair took in $75,000 to help Nixon go on and defeat Sen. Helen Gahagan Douglas, whom he had portrayed as a Communist sympathizer – ”pink right down to her underwear.”

”Everyone from around here that was on the pad naturally had to go,” Cohen himself later recalled, looking back on the Knickerbocker dinner, ”… It was all gamblers from Vegas, all gambling money. There wasn’t a legitimate person in the room.” The mobster said Nixon addressed the dinner after Cohen told the crowd the exits would be closed until the whole $75,000 quota was met. They were. And it was.

Cohen has said his support of Nixon was ordered by ”the proper persons from back East,” meaning the founders of the national Syndicate, Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky. Why would Meyer Lansky become a big fan of Richard Nixon? Senate crime investigator Walter Sheridan offered this opinion: ”If you were Meyer, who would you invest your money in? Some politician named Clams Linguini? Or a nice Protestant boy from Whittier, California?” [emphasis added]

From Joseph E. Persico’s The Imperial Rockefeller:

He [Nelson] was on the phone much of the day with Republican Party leaders. He had been particularly heartened by a call from Murray Chotiner, a charter Nixon loyalist. Chotiner told Rockefeller that he had urged Nixon to name him as Agnew’s replacement. But the besieged President was not about to put his old nemesis in line for his job, no matter Rockefeller’s present fidelity. The poor kid on the block with the patched pants and hand-me-downs would give nothing to the rich kid up the street who had long scorned him. Nixon picked Gerald Ford. Thus Nelson went back to the tag ends of his remaining months in office and then on to his Commission on Critical Choices.

To move the story along, some more from Gerald Colby’s, Thy Will Be Done:

In July 1972, one month after the Watergate burglary, David Rockefeller hosted a meeting at Pocantico. Some of the most influential foreign policy strategists in the United States, Japan, and Europe gathered to plan the founding of what David called an “International Commission for Peace and Prosperity”: the Trilateral Commission. [emphasis added]

The commission would formally begin its work in July 1973. Columbia University’s Zbigniew Brzezinski, promoter of a “community of developed nations” and professor at the Rockefeller Foundation-funded Russian Institute, would soon be appointed the commissions first director. Under Brzezinski, the commissions dominant topics for deliberation would be consistent over the next two years: “global redistribution of power,” the problems of building a “trilateral community,” and the troublesome “governability of democracies.”

Nelson kept a low profile. He did not attend any of the commissions meetings and never even joined the commission, thereby avoiding any appearance of working behind Nixon’s back. But Nixon’s “economic nationalism,” as it was derided by the Trilateralists, ran squarely against lBEC’s new activities in Brazil.

In November 1972, Nelson visited Nixon at Camp David to get his own commission off the ground. The idea was for a more national version of the Trilateral Commission that would dovetail with many of David’s goals on the international level. Membership would overlap in some cases, to promote a common Rockefeller-led agenda for a new world order that could ultimately include the Russians, although none of this agenda was ever explained to Nixon….

In March 1973, Nelson announced his Commission on Critical Choices for Americans. To finance it, Nelson had a federal bill drafted allocating $20 million. By the time he began lobbying Congress in May, that figure had drifted down to a more reasonable $1 million. But even that amount was too much for the Senate, and the bill died. Nelson quickly came up with the kind of solution that had made the name Rockefeller unique in American politics: his own $1 million contribution to the commission’s tax-exempt Third Century Corporation. Reliable Laurance kicked in a similar amount, and a few corporate foundations threw in the rest. Then, with himself as chairman, Nelson announced its panels of “prominent Americans.” These were some of the most powerful men-and women-in government, big business, academia, law, banking, science, and the arts-as well as two CIA contractors and, of course, brother Laurance.

Only A Heartbeat Away

The Rockefellers did get one prize from Nixon after his reelection. Nixon reversed the Civil Aeronautics Board’s ruling that had prevented Laurance’s Eastern Airlines from taking over a coveted Caribbean route. But other than that and giving Nelson his Commission on Critical Choices, Nixon did not reward Rockefeller for his loyalty. After all, where was Rockefeller when aid was called for from behind the scenes, when Nixon was battling in the dark to hold his rattled staff in line? Nelson did not respond to letters from Nixon’s former chief of staff, John Ehrlichman, asking for help to pay his legal bills. And he failed to offer consolation to Attorney General John Mitchell after his indictment. During what turned out to be the final days of Nixon’s presidency, Nelson never publicly spoke of his disdain for Nixon or his bitterness over being snubbed by Nixon’s aides when he showed up at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York on election night 1968 to offer Nixon congratulations and was told that the president-elect was resting.

By July 1974, as impeachment articles were being prepared in Congress and the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to surrender the White House tapes, Nixon was drinking heavily. The insecurity of being a poor man trying to rise in, and eventually being in charge of, a rich man’s party had grown into a paranoia over “enemies” that now was destroying his presidency. Kissinger advised Defense Secretary James Schlesinger to intercept any rash orders from the White House and to keep his generals at close rein. He then visited the White House to tell Nixon that history’s memory and world peace required him to consider stepping down.

As Nixon collapsed into teary hysterics, insisting that Kissinger kneel with him in prayer for divine guidance, former Kissinger aide Alexander Haig, now White House chief of staff, set up a cot in the White House Situation Room to carry out a deathwatch over the Nixon presidency. Nixon’s efforts to shift the blame for Watergate to the CIA had failed, just like his wider effort to assert control over the CIA had backfired. [emphasis added]

That night, Nixon told his family it was all over. The next day, he gave a terse resignation note to Kissinger that was drafted by Haig. After giving speeches to the nation and his staff and another longer letter to Vice President Ford advising Haig’s removal as chief of staff, he flew home to southern California, abandoning the White House to Gerald Ford and, it turned out, to Nelson Rockefeller.

The phone call offering Nelson the vice presidency came on Saturday morning, August 21, 1974, when Nelson and the family were at their estate in Mount Desert, Maine. Nelson said he was not sure that he could accept, that he would have to talk to Happy and the kids. He told President Ford that he would call back the next day. It was a shrewd ploy. Raising the specter of an embarrassing refusal put Ford on the ropes. Nelson had built a credible background for a refusal through years of proclaiming no love for the vice presidency. He had known every miserable man who held that office since Henry Wallace, way back in 1941. There was really no question about his accepting. He was getting too old to wait for Jerry Ford to serve two terms before he would have another chance. He would be only a heartbeat away. Besides, he reminded everyone, the country was in the throes of a constitutional crisis, and his country was calling.

But patriotism, despite his public posture, had its limits. Nelson wanted power, a role for the vice presidency that would be more active than anything the country had seen before. Ford was too inexperienced to challenge Kissinger on the formulation of foreign policy. Nor could Ford match Nelson on domestic policy. And Ford knew it. ”I’d like you to do in the domestic field what Henry’s doing in the international field,” he told Nelson.

Nelson called back on Sunday and told Ford that he could not accept unless he was allowed to be an active vice president. Nelson had always said, “I am just not built for standby equipment.” Ford could not deny that Rockefeller would bring executive experience; it was one of his major assets. And Nelson’s Eastern liberal image would help balance his own Midwest conservatism in the public’s perception. But above all, he needed the Rockefeller name to give his presidency the appearance of wealth beyond corruption. Just like Nixon had done fifteen years earlier, he accepted Nelson’s terms – and in writing.

Two days later, Nelson was in Washington for his first formal meeting with Ford. The president, for the first time, officially offered him the vice presidency and, upon hearing Nelson’s formal acceptance, immediately called Richard Nixon. Nelson stood there, astonished, until Ford indicated that he should get on an extension. Nelson heard Nixon praise Ford for choosing a “big man for a big job.” Then he was surprised to find himself alone on the line with Nixon. Ford, with characteristic naiveté, had taken another call and left the two foes alone in awkward silence.

“Hello,” Nelson said.

“Congratulations and best wishes,” said Nixon. “I think you are great to do it.”

“And that was it,” Nelson recalled later.

By mid-October, Nelson was in trouble. The controversy over his contributions to political figures and nonprofits and the scandal of his brother Laurance “investing” $60,000 in a 1970 book attacking Arthur Goldberg, Nelson’s 1970 Democratic gubernatorial opponent, were threatening to get out of control. The House Judiciary Committee decided to broaden its investigation into the Goldberg biography. Nelson tried charm and obfuscation. When they did not work, he took a stab at honesty. Nelson reversed his earlier denials and admitted knowledge that the book would be published, wiring Goldberg an apology.

Worried that this admission could kill his nomination, he called President Gerald Ford, who blandly assured him, “There is no problem.”

Ford was not omniscient, only savvy. Behind the scenes, beyond the glare of television lights, there was a strange serenity in the proceedings, as if despite the ugly show, or, more accurately, because of it, the hearings would lead to the opposite of what many observers thought would happen: Nelson’s confirmation. As attacks came down upon his nomination from the Left and the Right, Nelson smiled; he knew he had captured the vital center, appearing as the moderate between two political extremes. He was used to rolling with the punches in a ring where the rules were set by corporate parameters. Room 5600 had left little in Nelson’s business affairs that was not legally tidy: Tax deductions that were challenged by the IRS were easily adjusted; the Rockefeller family office fired off checks, defusing any legal arguments. Critics who based their case on the size of the Rockefeller wealth and the long reach of its influence met an unenthusiastic response by both Democratic and Republican congressmen and senators.

J. Richardson Dilworth [Skull & Bones], head of the family office, appeared before the committee to explain the world of trust accounts. He listed only “major stock holdings,” although it was unclear if they were the largest in the sense of market values or of a percentage of a company’s total outstanding shares. He gave amounts only in the aggregate and did not break them down for each of the eighty-four family members. Yet he insisted at the same time that each member had sharply different attitudes, that each one set down general guidelines for his or her portfolio managers, and he denied “that this family acts in concert when in fact this has never been the case.”

The $262 million Rockefeller Brothers Fund was excluded, Dilworth explained, since the family office no longer managed its funds. So was the Rockefeller Family Fund, because that, too, had independent investment advisers. Laurance’s controlling interest in Eastern Airlines was left out, as was the Rockefeller Foundation, since, as Dilworth asserted, “the [family] office has no connection whatsoever with the Rockefeller Foundation.”

No one dared question the credibility of Dilworth’s accounting. No one seemed to know how. His list of major Rockefeller stock holdings included only the largest, and of those, only two besides IEEC and Rockefeller Center were near the 10 percent category he conceded as possibly giving the owner control: Coherent Radiation (19 percent), a laser-systems manufacturer, and Thermo Electron (9.79 percent), a thermionic research firm. Dilworth did not include Standard Oil of California, Exxon (Standard Oil of New Jersey), Mobil (Standard Oil of New York), and Chase Manhattan Bank in his 10 percent category, ignoring the fact that no single group of investors in any of these giant companies held as much as 10 percent, and yet all these corporations were controlled by a board of directors representing investors, if not themselves. If anything, Nelsons $1 billion figure for the family fortune was disappointing after estimates of $5-10 billion had been mentioned in earlier testimony: The family members had found even these revelations excruciating, Dilworth told the committee, and that comment seemed enough to satisfy everyone.

The only awkward moments for Dilworth came when New York Representative Elizabeth Holtzman questioned his statement that the Rockefellers and their investment adviser were “totally uninterested in controlling anything” and that the family’s role was as passive investors, using the $60,000 financing of the derogatory Goldberg biography as an example of a financial, not a political, undertaking. It “defies credibility,” said Maryland Republican Laurence]. Hogan, that this was a “straight investment.”

“It was an underwriting, sir,” Dilworth corrected, “not an investment,” inadvertently contradicting his own point about the venture not being a political undertaking and confirming Hogan’s.

But such gaffes did not really matter.

The Congress of the United States seemed grateful that the Rockefellers had merely complied with a partial disclosure before placing Nelson Rockefeller at the head of the line of presidential succession.

Years later, when many of the House Judiciary Committees files were declassified and released by the Ford Presidential Library, historians could see that the congressmen had much more information on Nelsons family than they let on during the hearings. The focus of a good part of the Congressional Research Services investigation was on Latin America. The CRS prepared detailed reports on Nelson’s intelligence activities, his IBEC investments, and on development activities of the American International Association for Economic and Social Development (AIA), including David Lilienthal’s survey in the Amazon and Nelsons extensive holdings in Brazil.

Yet, deprived of the meaning that these holdings had for their own lives, most Americans remained uninterested in Latin America, what Nelson was doing there, or what the U.S. government was doing there in their name. Nelson felt free bluntly to confess his support for the Kissinger-Nixon policy against the Salvador Allende government in Chile, which had led to the bloody military coup of the previous year and subsequent executions, terror, and dictatorship. The CRS report on Nelson’s intelligence activities in Latin America, including his possible knowledge of CIA efforts to overthrow Allende and the purported CIA ties of one of the admitted recipients of Nelsons gifts, Bolivia’s Victor Andrade, remained locked away in the committee’s files. Most Americans would never read these reports, but Nelson’s allies in the Ford White House would, and they would keep them from public exposure.

Finally, after eight days of hearings and forty-eight witnesses, Nelson was confirmed by the Senate on November 22. House confirmation followed on December 19. In January 1975 – one month after receiving the Christmas present of his life, confirmation as the vice president – Nelson received his first assignment. It was, considering all that he had gone through in recent months and all that still remained secret, apropos: He was to chair the Presidents special investigation of the CIA’s abuses.

“Was Nixon Watergated?” Chapter 13 of the book The Rockefeller File by Gary Allen.

The Watergate Caper, the coup d’etat that knocked President Nixon out of the White House, was carefully engineered by the two agents for the House of Rockefeller shown above. It is now known that Henry Kissinger was responsible for creating the Plumbers squad in the first place, while the “instant General,” Alexander Haig, made sure that the most incriminating evidence on the tapes was given in advance to the men investigating his boss! Together, the two men forced a bitter and dejected Nixon to resign, thus paving the way (finally!) to get a Rockefeller into the White House without risking an election that Rocky would surely lose.

Newsweek of September 2, 1974 tells us: “Ever since his boyhood meeting with Teddy Roosevelt, it seems, Nelson Rockefeller had been propelling himself toward the Oval Office. Nothing less would suit his ambition. . . .”

But the road to the White House for Nelson has been, if you will pardon the expression, rocky. He has had to settle for an unelected and politically engineered Vice Presidency, a position at which he had previously turned up his nose several times.

Nelson’s first attempt at the Presidency came in 1960, shortly after his election as governor of New York. Richard Nixon had been Vice President for eight years, however, and had spent much of the time making speeches for the GOP. In 1960, he collected his political IOUs from the majority of party activists and Rockefeller had no chance of getting the nomination. When Rocky found he could not win the actual nomination, he moved to dictate policy from behind the scenes. A meeting was thus arranged between Rockefeller and Nixon on the Saturday before the Republican Convention opened in Chicago.

The Republican Platform Committee had been meeting for an entire week, laboriously pounding out a platform reflecting the views of party members from all fifty states.

But, at the meeting between Nixon and Nelson at Rockefeller’s Fifth Avenue apartment in New York City, Nixon accepted everything Rockefeller dictated. The Platform Committee’s sweat-stained document was ash canned and, presto Chicago, Rockefeller’s Liberal platform was substituted. Goldwater dejectedly called Nixon’s surrender to Rockefeller “the Munich of the Republican Party.”

Republicans everywhere understood the significance of the new Rockefeller-Nixon alliance. Nixon had traded his independence for approval by the House of Rockefeller.

The truth is that Nixon had the nomination in the bag; there was no need for him to crawl to Rockefeller to win it. Nixon knew this, but he also knew who held the ultimate power behind both political parties.

Certainly there was never any love lost between Richard and Rocky. They have detested each other for years. Newsweek of September 2, 1974, tells us: “The Nixon Presidency was a painful period for the proud governor. Privately, friends say, Rockefeller despised the self-made man from Yorba Linda. . . .”

Rocky, the man born to economic royalty, must have deeply resented having to operate through this Sammy Glick-type character who looked like a used car salesman, but had clawed his way to the White House. But the two men needed each other. Nelson’s influence in the GOP is immense at the top, but is almost non-existent among voters at the grass roots.

… Rockefeller virtually sat out the 1960 campaign and allowed New York to go for Kennedy. Nixon surprised most observers by quietly accepting the defeat that had been arranged for him, refusing even to protest the vote fraud in Texas and Illinois which deprived him of the election.

Richard Nixon returned to California to practice law but remained at the beck and call of his jealous and hostile boss in New York. One indication of their real relationship was the Joe Shell affair. Shell was a long-time California State Assemblyman who planned to oppose Democrat incumbent Pat Brown for the governorship in 1962. Early in the year, he received a call from Rockefeller, asking whom he would support at the 1964 convention if he were elected. The conservative Assemblyman told Rockefeller that under no circumstances could he support the ultra-liberal New Yorker. One week later, Shell’s office received a call from Rockefeller’s New York office with the news that Richard Nixon would oppose Shell in the GOP gubernatorial primary—even though Nixon had previously assured Shell that he had absolutely no interest in being Governor of California.

The important point here is that Nixon was not interested in the job until he received orders from his boss in New York. Nixon had everything to lose and virtually nothing to gain by running against an incumbent Democrat governor in a state with an overwhelming Democrat registration plurality.

Following an incredibly inept campaign, in which his chief target was Nelson’s old bugaboo, the “radical right,” not Bungling Brown’s record, Nixon lost the race. His political career appeared to have come to an end. As he put it: “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.”

Apparently, the Nixon candidacy was as much a test of obedience as it was a move to head off a potential Rockefeller opponent. In any case, having thrown himself onto a bed of nails at the behest of Rockefeller, Nixon was thrown a lifeline and brought to New York. He moved into an elegant $125,000 apartment in the same building as Nelson Rockefeller— the very one in which the infamous “Compact of Fifth Avenue” was signed. Nixon was made a partner in a law firm which did a lot of trust and bond business with the friendly folk at Chase Manhattan Bank.

During the next five years Nixon practiced very little law, yet his net worth jumped from practically nothing to over half-a-million dollars. Most of his time was spent touring the nation and the world rebuilding his political reputation. When the Rockefellers needed him in 1968, he had been resurrected from the political trash heap and turned into a legitimate candidate.

Meanwhile, Nelson had been giving the Presidency the old college try himself. He might have made it in 1964 had not his divorce and remarriage alienated a large segment of middle America. Rockefeller learned the hard way that a lot of women don’t forgive a man who abandons a wife of long standing to marry a much younger and prettier one. When the new bride abandons her own children to marry the man in question, it compounds the outrage.

In 1968, Nelson made a half-hearted attempt to wrest the nomination from Nixon. But the handwriting was on the wailing wall. “The old avidity is gone,” groaned Nelson. Once again, he had to settle for owning the team instead of starting as quarterback.

Nixon’s appointments to policy-making positions confirmed that the House of Rockefeller did indeed own the team: they went almost entirely to Rockefeller men. In his inner circle, however, Nixon tried to surround himself with men like H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, who were personally loyal to him, not to Rockefeller. The two most notable exceptions were Kissinger and General Alexander Haig. Both men were known Rockefeller agents, and it is these two men who may have masterminded Nixon’s early retirement.

… the decisive encounter in the battle: Watergate. And as we unravel the twisting threads of this strange saga, we find that each tug that ultimately toppled Nixon from the throne can be traced to Rockefeller.

The burglary at the Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel was not exactly carried out with the precision of a James Bond movie. It was more like the Three Stooges at their most slapstick. It was so clumsy, in fact, that the whole operation smells of a set-up. First: one of the burglars alerted a guard, by replacing the tape over the door locks after the guard had discovered and removed the first one. Even though their efforts had been discovered, the boss of the operation, Gordon Liddy, sent the burglars back to the Watergate. There they proceeded to flash lights, rip the place apart, and in general act as if they had all night to perform their mission. The man posted as lookout saw the police enter the building, but either failed to alert the men inside—or his warning was ignored.

It was as though the burglars were meant to be caught. And when they were, one of them conveniently was carrying the White House telephone number of E. Howard Hunt in his pocket.

Watergate began with the creation of the “Plumbers.” The Plumbers were created by Kissinger to stop leaks on his staff. Both Nixon staffers John Dean and Charles Colson reported that Kissinger got Nixon so upset over leaks that the President decided, at Kissinger’s suggestion, to set up a Special White House Investigating Unit, which later became known as the Plumbers. According to Dean, it was Rockefeller who had Kissinger suckered Nixon into forming the Plumbers. Little did Nixon know that he was being mouse trapped.

Nationally syndicated columnist Paul Scott reports:

“Records of the Senate Watergate Committee investigation indicates that Dean’s testimony concerning Rockefeller was never followed up by the committee’s staff. The reason: Committee members were against calling Rockefeller.”

Kissinger put a member of his staff, David Young, in charge of the unit. You have never heard of David Young? Join the multitudes. He was a Wall Street lawyer who had worked for Rockefeller before being promoted to Kissinger’s staff. After Watergate, Young was spirited off to a cushy assignment in London as a very advanced student, and the mediacracy has dutifully ignored his key role in Watergate.

The Watergate burglary, which was bungled more badly than a Keystone Cops chase, ended with a proven link to the White House But no one ever claimed that Nixon gave the nod for the break-in; it was his role in the cover up that led to his downfall.

Watergate did start in the White House, however. But not by Nixon or any of his men. It was launched by the premier Rockefeller man, Henry Kissinger.

It was the activities of the Plumbers which brought the downfall of Richard Nixon. And Kissinger, Rockefeller and the CIA were obviously deeply involved. Former White House aide Charles Colson has said that Nixon suspected the CIA was in the plot “up to their eyeballs.” Colson says Nixon wanted to fire the director of the CIA and personally investigate what was believed to be a CIA conspiracy against him. He was persuaded not to do so by General Alexander Haig, the Rockefeller man who replaced Bob Haldeman. Colson portrays Nixon as a virtual captive of Kissinger and Haig in the Oval Office during his last months in the Presidency.

But Richard Nixon would have survived the Watergate scandal had it not been for those damned tapes. At the beginning of the Watergate hearings, no one even knew they existed. The fact that all Nixon conversations had been recorded was revealed almost casually by Alexander Butterfield, White House liaison with the Secret Service. It is hard to believe that this bombshell, which was to remove a President, could be dropped with such an air of innocence. Could it have been planned?

We now know that Butterfield had been a CIA informant. He has been accused of working with (if not for) the CIA when he was in charge of all the tapings in the White House. Had Blabbermouth Butterfield, who was called to testify about other matters—not the tapes—”stonewalled” it, Nixon would not have been forced to resign. Even if asked a direct question about any recordings, Butterfield could have maintained that such matters related to national security and must remain confidential.

Nixon has said that the taping system was installed in the Oval Room at the suggestion of LBJ to preserve his conversations for posterity. Soon the whole White House and even Camp David were bugged. The White House monitoring system kept better track of people than do most prisons. The President could not walk from one room to another without that fact being recorded and a buzzer ringing and a light flashing on a console operated by Butterfield. Voices automatically started the tape recorders spinning. Keep in mind that it was not Mr. Nixon who turned the recorders off and on. It is as though the President were under constant surveillance by others, who wanted to know about his every word and movement.

Why didn’t Nixon have the tape machines shut off the day after the Watergate arrests? Or, failing that, why didn’t he destroy the tapes after Butterfield revealed their existence? Several rationalizations have been put forth, none of which ring true. One is that Nixon was mesmerized by the arrogance of power and did not believe the Supreme Court could or would subpoena the tapes. Since there was no precedent, why take the risk? Nixon must have known his very survival as President of the United States was at stake.

Another explanation is that Nixon is compulsively greedy for money and wanted to keep the tapes for use in writing his memoirs, or to donate to the national archives and take a multi-million dollar tax deduction. Much as Nixon may like money, he would hardly jeopardize the Presidency—and risk a jail term—to keep the tapes. And he is now in the process of writing his memoirs for a million dollar fee without benefit of those tapes.

Remember, releasing the tapes would not exonerate Nixon, they would prove him guilty of every cover-up charge made against him. Why would this cunning politician, this ruthless abuser of power, this man from whom no one would buy a used car, not simply destroy the tapes himself?

Prosecutor Leon Jaworski has admitted that “if Mr. Nixon had destroyed the tapes at the time their existence was disclosed in July, 1973, he would still be President.”

Can anybody believe, as Dr. Susan Huck has asked, that Nixon sat there like a good scout, watching the lynch mob fasten a hangman’s knot out of those wretched tapes, and refuse to destroy the noose? That isn’t the Nixon depicted on the tapes—much less in public life.

Why then did not Nixon, that ultimate political opportunist, burn the tapes? We believe the only logical answer is that either Nixon did not control the tapes, or he knew there was more than one set. In a word, he did not destroy them because he could not.

Have you ever wondered how everybody seemed to know what was on the tapes, and where, before they were “turned over” to committee staffs, special prosecutors, or Judge Sirica? The mediacracy didn’t wonder. So far as we can discover, the only person who has asked this question is Dr. Susan Huck, in the February 1975 issue of American Opinion magazine.

Consider the fantastic detail involved in the requests. On August 14th, for example, judge Sirica demanded the “entire segment of tape on the reel identified as’ White House telephone start 5/25/72 (2:00 P.M.) (skipping 5 lines) 6/23/72 (2:50 P.M.) (832) complete.”‘ I don’t know what all the identifying numbers mean—but you have to agree that only somebody very familiar with the tapes would know. These boys knew precisely what to look for! Here is another sample request:

January 8, 1973 from 4:05 to 5:34 P.M. (E.O.B.)

a) at approximately 10 minutes and 15 seconds into the conversation, a segment lasting 6 minutes and 31 seconds:

b) at approximately 67 minutes into the conversation, a segment lasting 11 minutes;

c) at approximately 82 minutes and 15 seconds into the conversation, a segment lasting 5 minutes and 31 seconds.

As Dr. Huck observed: “It does sound as though somebody—obviously not the President—had been curled up with these tapes for many a long hour, doesn’t it? Somebody knew exactly where the juicy parts are, down to the second.”

Remember, all White House conversations—in person and on the phone—had been “bugged” for at least a year. There were literally miles of tapes in storage somewhere. But it is obvious the investigators already had the evidence they sought when the various subpoenas were issued!

Who then controlled the tapes, or had access to a duplicate set? There is (understandably) very little information available on this crucial question. It is worth noting, however, that while LBJ’s recording system had been installed by the Army Signal Corps, the Nixon monitors were established by the Secret Service. So it is of more than passing significance that Newsweek on September 23, 1974, reported:

“While former White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman awaits trial for his part in Watergate, the Secret Service chief he ousted from the White House last year has landed a plum job. Robert H. Taylor, 49, who tangled with Haldeman over Nixon security procedures, is now head of the private security forces for all the far-flung Rockefeller family enterprises.”

Hmm. Once Nixon is deposed, the head of the Secret Service—the man in charge of the agency, which was in charge of the tapes—gets “a plum job” with the Rockefeller Empire. And what of the Rockefeller’s number one man in the White House?

Nixon did not know Kissinger well; in fact, he had only met the man once before in his life—at a cocktail party. And Kissinger was on record as standing 180 degrees to the left of Nixon’s campaign utterances. Clearly, Kissinger was put in the Nixon Administration by Rockefeller (who sent his protégé off to Washington with a tidy little gift of $50,000). In his Vice Presidential hearings, Nelson Rockefeller even acknowledged that Kissinger took the job because Rocky asked him to do so.

While it was Henry Kissinger who set Nixon’s head on the chopping block, it was another Rockefeller agent, General Alexander Haig, who applied the axe. Haig was appointed—at Kissinger’s suggestion—as an interim replacement for the hastily deposed Bob Haldeman.

Like Dwight Eisenhower and George Marshall, two generals whose careers had a bad case of the blahs until anointed by the House of Rockefeller, Haig’s career took off like a Saturn rocket when he joined the Rockefeller team through the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1969, he was a colonel. Four years later he had miraculously become a four star general, having skipped the three star rank entirely. What happened to trigger this remarkable rise? In 1969, Haig became an assistant to Kissinger; subsequently, he was catapulted over 240 general officers when Nixon raised him to four-star rank. Such a promotion should mark Haig as one of the great military leaders in our history. But, his promotions did not come as a result of military achievements—there were none. They were political. Haig was now a general in the Rockefeller Army, an army which tells other armies when to march.

Syndicated columnist Jerald Terhorst, who did a short stint as Ford’s press secretary, tells us:

“For most of the final Nixon year, as Haig himself would agree, he [Haig] was the acting president of the United States. With a troubled President drawing more and more within his shell, everyone in the government, with the possible exception of [Haig’s sponsor] Kissinger, was working for Al Haig.”

William Safire, a Nixon speech writer, says in the November 11, 1973 New York Times magazine: “Haig is far more powerful than Haldeman ever was; but he exercises it more gently….Haig learned this technique from the past master, Henry Kissinger. . . .” In his new book, Before The Fall, Safire calls Haig “Kissinger’s alter ego.” Significantly, the Washington Post‘s Barry Sussman refers to Haig as “Butterfield’s former colleague.”

You see, it was Alexander Haig who had control of the vault where the Watergate tapes were kept. Two months after Haig became the keeper of the keys, his former colleague Butterfield tipped off the Watergate Committee about their existence. Since it is perfectly clear that the subpoenas for the tapes were written by persons already possessing a detailed familiarity with their contents, it is painfully obvious that Haig had already provided them with copies of the pertinent excerpts.

It was now time for the axe to fall. In the June 8, 1975 issue of Parade magazine, Lloyd Shearer tells us: “From May 1973 to August 1974, Haig was Nixon’s chief of staff. It was he who adroitly engineered, orchestrated and choreographed Nixon’s resignation from the Presidency.”

According to Shearer, Nixon was determined not to resign. “Yet Haig knew that he must.” The reason for Haig’s insistence, according to Parade, was that if the President insisted on a trial and lost, he would lose his pension and other government benefits. You will pardon us for believing that Haig had much more compelling reasons for giving Nixon the final push.

How did he do it? Haig “orchestrated the resignation march,” says Shearer, by taking the evidence against Nixon to Republican Congressmen, Presidential speech writers and others close to Nixon. “Haig saw to it that Senator Barry Goldwater, the conservative bulwark of the Republican Party, was provided with the damning tape transcripts of June 23,” Shearer reported. Get that? The President’s chief assistant finds out the boss won’t budge, so he takes copies of the most damning tapes to the few supporters Nixon had left! Why didn’t Nixon fire Haig and burn the tapes?

Again, the most obvious, most logical answer is that he did not because he could not.

Shearer continues:

“And at the next and final Cabinet meeting, with at least half the members expecting him to resign, Nixon rambled on about inflation, declared his intention to stay on, ordered them to pass the word.

Haig and Kissinger exchanged glances. When the Cabinet meeting was over, Kissinger stayed behind. Gently he suggested that the President resign.”

Later that same afternoon, “Haig played his final card.” Republican Senate leaders Hugh Scott and Barry Goldwater, joined by House Minority Leader John Rhodes, visited Nixon and told him his support in the Senate had evaporated. “That night,” reports Shearer, “after again talking to Kissinger and Haig, Richard Nixon decided to resign.”

And that is how the Three Musketeers for the House of Rockefeller engineered the coup d’etat that removed Nixon from the White House, and put Nelson in. There must have been quite a celebration that night in Pocantico Hills.

Please do not misunderstand us. We are not claiming that Richard Nixon was an innocent lamb done in by the big bad wolf. It was more like Al Capone rubbing out Bugs Moran and then sending flowers to the funeral. The point is that the entire scenario—from the creation of the Plumbers, through the incredibly bungled Watergate break-in, to the revelation of the existence of the tapes, to the preservation of the tapes and their use to force Nixon to resign—was written and directed by Rockefeller front men.

It is not without meaning that only those connected with the Rockefeller empire survived Watergate, while nearly everybody else was in disgrace – some pounding big rocks into little rocks.

Alexander Haig, the “instant General” as Dr. Huck called him, was quick to get his reward. Haig is now Supreme Allied Commander Europe, the general in charge of the NATO military command. In order to replace Haldeman, Haig had to retire from the Army. Can you imagine chucking four stars for a ride on the Titanic? Not bloody likely. There can be little doubt that Haig had been promised instant reinstatement and a very posh life jacket when the good ship Nixonia slipped beneath the waves. He got both.

Henry Kissinger is another big Watergate winner. Despite the fact that he not only bugged his own staff, but newspaper reporters as well, nary a word of criticism appeared in the press. Then came the disclosure that Kissinger was responsible for creating the Plumbers. Ho hum. During the Watergate scandals, Kissinger rose to the high office of Secretary of State while retaining his position as National Security Advisor. He had unprecedented power over foreign policy and intelligence. The source of his power was his sponsor, Nelson Rockefeller.

Kissinger proved, once again, that no man can serve two masters. Just as Haig had said that he “was never a Nixon man,” Kissinger had boasted of Nixon, “I would never work for that man.” He didn’t. He worked for the Rockefellers.

Another beneficiary of the Watergate fiasco was that “staunch mid-western conservative,” Gerald Ford. As usual, the image created by the media moguls and the truth are light years apart. Despite what some wags have said, Ford showed, while serving on the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy, that he had not played football without a helmet once too often: he proved he could keep his mouth shut about a major cover-up. At the time he was made Vice President, Ford had attended Bilderberger meetings and, had been appointed by Rockefeller to the National Commission on Critical Choices.

The catalyst who arranged Ford’s appointment was former Wisconsin Congressman Mel Laird. Laird had been Secretary of Defense under Nixon and later – a Presidential advisor. A member of Rockefeller’s CFR, Laird knows where the power lies. If you will pardon the pun, he keeps his standards well oiled.

Acting as what Paul Scott calls “Mr. Inside” for Rockefeller, Laird succeeded in talking Nixon out of nominating former Treasury Secretary John Connally to succeed Agnew. He convinced the President that Connally could never be confirmed by Congress and suggested the compromise nomination of Gerald Ford as Vice President.

But of course, the ultimate winner of the Watergate roulette was Nelson Rockefeller. He is now only the proverbial heartbeat away from his lifelong ambition – to be President of these United States. (And just recently, two women have pointed pistols at jovial Jerry and his limousine was in an automobile accident. Understandably, Jerry doesn’t look quite so merry anymore.)

When Bobo Sears Rockefeller was obtaining a divorce from the late Winthrop Rockefeller, she exploded two bombshells at the trial. The first was that Winthrop had one of the largest and most valuable collections of pornography in the world. (The punch line is that the pictures were not of girls.)

Revelation number two from the bizarre divorce proceedings was the disclosure that the Brothers Rockefeller would get together from time to time – to brainstorm on ways they could make Nelson the President, without the benefit of an election. (They realized he could never get into the Oval Office via the ballot box.) [emphasis added]

So Rockefeller became an appointed Vice President. And, he was named by a man who was not elected, who was appointed by a man who resigned because he was about to be impeached We doubt if the Brothers Rockefeller could dream up anything quite this wild even after the fifth martini. Or could they?

to be continued…

Watergate Exposed: How the President of the United States and the Watergate Burglars Were Set Up (as told to Douglas Caddy, original attorney for the Watergate Seven), by Robert Merritt is available at TrineDay, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The Book Depository, and Books-a-Million.