Coup 2: Electric Boogaloo
We’ve all learned in school that President Nixon was a paranoid freak. And that’s exactly how the CIA wants it.
What you probably don’t know is that he was being aggressively spied on by the CIA and the Pentagon (among others). The Pentagon regularly accessed the White House and stole papers (including out of Kissinger’s briefcase). One of the plumbers (men who engaged the Watergate break-in and precipitated Nixon’s downfall) was an active CIA agent. There was a listening post across the street from the White House, directed at the White House.
So, sure, Nixon was paranoid. But he had a reason. Many reasons. Nearly everyone in Washington was gunning for him.
Why? Nixon didn’t trust the “military industrial complex,” so they didn’t trust him, particularly given his promise (and actions) to end the Vietnam War (which he did). Nixon, even more than Johnson before him, ran his own negotiations and deliberations (“Chennault Affair”), and the Pentagon wasn’t about to permit the White House to operate independently. And many, including Democrats, were upset at his détente and continued efforts to normalize relations with China (which he largely did). The heat on Nixon got particularly hot after his successful China trip.
So Nixon’s foremost enemies weren’t the Soviet Union or ChiComs. His fiercest enemies were within his own government. It wouldn’t be unfair to label Nixon’s impeachment a CIA operation, though the CIA had support from Democrats, the Pentagon, and Republican double-agents (e.g. Dean).
Nixon was aware of all this. The White House Special Investigations Group (the “Plumbers”) was formed to stop leaks of classified material to the press, and in late 1971, they had discovered that Charles Radford had stolen around 5,000 classified documents from the White House, including many top-secret documents. Radford eventually admitted to rifling through desks and briefcases while the White House slept to obtain the most up-to-date documents. Radford, of course, was on the payroll of the Joint Chiefs of Staff-National Security Council. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was Adm. Thomas Moorer, who was effectively running a spy ring inside the White House. Nixon wanted to prosecute Moorer for espionage.
Think about that: the President wanted to prosecute the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for spying. Attorney General John Mitchell cautioned Nixon, and Nixon trusted Mitchell (who was his former campaign chair). Mitchell, of course, was being monitored 24/7 by the FBI (they literally sat outside his house at night — he was told it was for his own protection). Agents monitoring Mitchell typed up notes every day and delivered them to Hoover (FBI Director and technically subordinate to Mitchell). Such detailed surveillance of the attorney general was without precedent and only uncovered via FOIA in the early 2000s.
Oh, it gets crazier. The CIA had infiltrated the Secret Service to keep tabs on Nixon, report White House conversations and, most importantly, bug his office.
Any of this starting to sound familiar?
You know who else is a Joint Chiefs of Staff-National Security Council Liaison (read: CIA) employee? The “whistleblower” who filed the supposed whistleblower report against Trump. It’s straight out of the CIA playbook.
And why did Democrats in 1973–4 cooperate with the CIA/FBI/Pentagon rail-roading of a President? Because they viewed Nixon as illegitimate. Democrats had viewed Nixon’s 1968 victory as accomplished by Nixon’s backdoor efforts with the North Vietnamese to sabotage the Paris talks, which, had they gone well, would have (they thought) put a Democrat in the White House (“Chennault affair”). McNamara was particularly enraged over the “October Surprise.” Hoover sent recordings of Nixon’s people talking to Chennault just to let Nixon know that Hoover was always listening. It was Hoover’s effort to blackmail Nixon just as Hoover had blackmailed many others. Of course, it also made Nixon paranoid that the FBI, among others, were always listening. Because they were.
Really now, doesn’t this sound familiar?
Of course, Nixon didn’t get a fair hearing. Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF) prosecutors secretly met with the prosecution judge to plan court room strategy, a fact that wasn’t known until 2015 when WSPF memos were finally released. Once one begins to appreciate the vast conspiracy that ensnared Nixon, it’s no wonder that — even decades ago — historians sometimes referred to his resignation as a ‘coup.’
So when someone tweets this:
It’s sounds paranoid and somewhat crazy. But it’s also true. There are documented examples for each one of those assertions.
And when someone tweets this:
It sounds paranoid and desperate. Except it has happened all over the world, many times. Including in Washington, D.C.
When Senator Schumer appeared on Rachel Maddow’s show in January 2017, he said, referring to Trump: “you take on the intel community [and] they have six ways to Sunday to get back at you.” Regarding Trump’s lack of deference to the entrenched Washington powers, the Senator said, “from what I am told they [CIA etc.] are very upset.”
The intelligence community can leverage the usual media stooges to pollute the national conversation with fear and loathing and thus divide and conquer the nation. That’s evident in that the media refer to the CIA analyst as a “whistleblower,” when, in fact, he’s a spy just doing what spies do.
The media provides the propaganda, the opposing political party provides legitimacy and political cover, and the spies stir up shit until something sticks. The story is so remarkably similar that it starts to get boring, except that it keeps working.
Most baffling in all this is the question: when did the American people start trusting the CIA?
At the risk of being a pedant, I suppose there’s no need to remind you that “Deep Throat,” who provided all the documents to the WaPo stooges that began Nixon’s downfall, was an FBI agent named Mark Felt.
You know all those progressive magazines that launched in the 50s and 60s? You know many were CIA-funded (e.g. Gloria Steinem and Ms. magazine)? And that modern art was partially funded and promoted by the CIA? Crazy, right? Conspiracy theories, eh? Well, a lot of leftist (counter-culture) art of the 60s was CIA-funded. The CIA had no problem with wack-a-doo socialist leftists as long as they were under control. This is a decent start: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html
Sources
There are many books and reports on what happened in Watergate; the truth really started to come out in the 1980s. Here are a few:
The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate. The Strong Man is the first full-scale biography of John N. Mitchell, the central figure in the rise and ruin of Richard Nixon and the highest-ranking American official ever convicted on criminal charges. https://www.amazon.com/Strong-Man-Mitchell-Secrets-Watergate/dp/0385508646/
Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA. The author presents startling discoveries that indicate that the American public has been seriously misinformed about the Watergate Scandal and reveals the actual culprits, sexual scandals, and malicious interagency spying. https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Agenda-Watergate-Deep-Throat/dp/0394514289/
Silent Coup. This is the true story of betrayal at the nation’s highest level. Unfolding with the suspenseful pace of a le Carre spy thriller, it reveals the personal motives and secret political goals that combined to cause the Watergate break-in and destroy Richard Nixon. https://www.amazon.com/Silent-Coup-Len-Colodny-ebook/dp/B015M9SQHM/
Nixon and the Chiefs. In the last days of 1971 President Richard Nixon and his closest aides met to discuss the astonishing discovery that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been spying on the White House. Transcripts of Nixon’s secret tapes of these meetings, published here for the first time, offer a case study in Nixon’s paranoid style of governing — and his surprisingly successful efforts to salvage advantage from misfortune. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/04/nixon-and-the-chiefs/302473/
Nixon and His Aides Discuss the Pentagon Spies December 21 1971. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn7juedeuGI
Dean as double-agent. https://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2008/11/james-rosens-inconvenient-truths.html
2016 FOIA uncovers the CIA operating undercover within the White House. https://www.judicialwatch.org/documents/jw-v-cia-watergate-complaint-00146/and https://www.ammoland.com/2016/09/judicial-watch-uncovers-cia-watergate-history-report/
Trump, Nixon, and the Deep State. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-nixon-and-the-deep-state
Senator Schumer on MSNBC/Maddow Jan 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3p2zKPQSgI
About Nathan Allen
Founder of Xio Research (A.I.), Applied Magic (A.I.), and Andover (data). Strategy and development leader at IBM. Academic training is in intellectual history; his most recent book, Weapon of Choice, examines the creation of American identity and modern Western power. Don’t get too excited, Weapon of Choice isn’t about wars but rather more about the seeming ex nihilo development of individual agency … which doesn’t really seem sexy until you consider that individual agency covers everything from voting rights to the cash in your wallet to the reason mass communication even makes sense…. Lectures on historical aspects of media, privacy/law, and power structures (mostly). Previous book: Arsonist.
