Nixon, the CIA and the 'Who Shot John? Angle'

[Nevilledog]

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Fernand R. Amandi
@AmandiOnAir
Did @realBobWoodward + @carlbernstein miss the most potentially explosive aspect of the #Watergate scandal —despite their legendary, award winning reporting?

@jeffersonmorley makes a persuasive case they may have in this blockbuster new @politico story.👇🏼

politico.com
Nixon, the CIA and the ‘Who Shot John? Angle’
President Nixon’s obsession with “the whole Bay of Pigs thing” has intrigued historians, journalists and conspiracy theorists. A largely overlooked tape provides answers.
11:03 AM · Jun 5, 2022 from Miami, FL

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/06/05/nixon-helms-cia-jfk-assassination-00037232


The Washington Post dubbed it “the smoking gun tape.” It was the recording that doomed the presidency of Richard Nixon. The transcript of a conversation that took place on June 23, 1972, when made public by Supreme Court order in July 1974, became the climactic revelation of the Watergate affair, proving beyond all doubt that Nixon used CIA director Richard Helms to suborn the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate burglars.

Fifty years after the botched break-in that transformed American politics, the gangsterly dialogue of the smoking gun tape is less shocking than Trumpian. Blackmail as a mode of White House politics? President 45 had nothing on President 37.

“We protected Helms from one hell of a lot of things,” Nixon growled on the tape. “You open that scab there’s a hell of a lot of things, and we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, [ex-CIA man and Watergate burglar Howard] Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves.”

Nixon advised chief of staff H.R. Haldeman on how to get the CIA director to kill the FBI’s probe.

“Say, ‘Look, the 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 sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again.’”

*snip*

[Walleye]

1. I've always suspected Nixon's people in the assassination of JFK

I know it sounds crazy but Oswald spent time in Cuba, Nixon use Cubans for his crime. Nixon always thought he was on the side of righteousness because he was anti-communist. He could’ve rationalized the whole thing. Of course nobody would even want to think that much less accuse him

[rsdsharp]

2. Oswald spent time in Cuba? I know he went to Mexico in 1963

to try to get a visa to visit Cuba, but he was unsuccessful. Did he actually go to Cuba? If so, when?

[Walleye]

4. I guess I had that wrong.He did spend time in Russia though I think

[Midnight Writer]

6. Yes, he defected to Russia. That is where he met his wife, who was raised by a KBG officer.

He figured that, since he was a former Marine who knew of some classified operations, that he would be treated as a valuable person by the Soviets. Instead, they didn't trust him and gave him a factory job and a modest apartment.

Interesting that his wife had previously dated another American defector before Oswald.

[Walleye]

8. That is interesting. Russia has been our enemy for a long time. Screw the Republicans

[rsdsharp]

7. Yes, he lived in Russia from the time he got out of the Marine Corps in 1959

until he returned to the States in 1962.

[Midnight Writer]

3. Oswald is not known to have gone to Cuba, but he did have a lot of Cuban connections.

He tried to go to Cuba, but never got there.

[Walleye]

5. Yes I guess it was the Cuban connections that made me suspicious

[moondust]

11. Perhaps explaining--

along with being brainwashed by his wife and Russian propaganda--his hatred of JFK over his anti-communism and the Bay of Pigs. So much so that he saw a golden opportunity present itself upon learning that the motorcade would be passing directly beside the place where he worked. Seven months earlier he had tried to kill Major General Edwin Walker who was a stark anti-communist.

[Boomerproud]

9. A retired FBI agent told my friends' family over dinner back in 1973

About the real power lying with the banks, oil and military. He used the words "black ops" being used both internationally AND domestically. It was a long soliloquy but I've never forgotten that conversation I had with my then 17 year old best friend. I didn't hear the words black ops until I saw All The President's Men 3 years later.

[Gaugamela]

10. In the hearings Haldeman was asked what Nixon was referring to when he

mentioned the “the Bay of Pigs thing”. Haldeman responded without blinking an eye, “The President was referring to the assassination of JFK”. The senator who asked the question immediately changed the subject and the topic was never brought up again in the hearings.