Customer Reviews

Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA

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SECRET AGENDA was the first thorough argument, and perhaps remains the best, for the thesis that the Watergate break-in team was guided chiefly by the CIA.

All the men on the team -- aside from its supposed leader, goofy (pawn?) G. Gordon Liddy -- were CIA officers (E Howard Hunt and James McCord) or contract agents (Frank Sturgis, Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez and Eugenio Martinez, all Hunt's people going back to the Bay of Pigs).

Hunt and McCord each "retired" (early) from CIA, within months of each other, in 1970. Hunt was soon hired by Chuck Colson in the Nixon White House, where he was first tasked with forging State Department cables to indicate that JFK had ordered the assasination of President Diem of Vietnam in 1963. Hunt then hired McCord to help the Plumbers plant bugs.

But one of Hougan's accomplishments is to document the fact that McCord was not (as typically stated in the press even today) a lowly CIA electrician. He was high in the Office of Security -- the "internal affairs" unit of the CIA, rising to head of OS for Europe in 1961, during the height of the Cold War. As such he reported directly to the Director.

Hougan's book remains a must read on the subject. It argues well the case that Nixon was helped in a big way out of office by DCI Richard Helms employing officers Hunt and McCord.

(One might argue that Helms & co. did the country a favor. That would be another book.)

(OR: Read John Ehrlichman's novel THE COMPANY, a roman a clef that paints the Nixon-Helms relationship with care.)

As for SILENT COUP, which came out in 1991, seven years after SECRET AGENDA, and which several reviewers here are recommending rather than Hougan's book ...

Be clear: SILENT COUP is NOT an elaboration of Hougan's thesis, but rather an attempt to eviscerate it (and I imagine the CIA had something to do with its publication). The attempt largely fails.

Which is not to say there's nothing of value in SC. Just that the overall package is a truth-bender clearly designed to accord with CIA public relations.

SILENT COUP details something Hougan had touched on: the late-Vietnam Beltway struggle between the National Security apparat, on the one hand, and Nixon and Kissinger, on other.

The latter were trying, in their way, to bring the Vietnam war to an end with "back channel" diplomacy that cut the Pentagon and CIA out of the loop. But the generals and spymasters were by then accustomed to controlling foreign policy. Nixon and Kissinger (like JFK a decade before) were getting in the way.

SILENT COUP nails this: Nixon's "paranoia" and Ehrlichman's Plumbers were first provoked to active life not by "Leftist" spies/leaks, but by a Pentagon intelligence operation active inside the White House, intent on finding out what the hell Nixon and Kissinger were saying to the Chinese and Hanoi about shutting down the war.

Ehrlichman & co finally stumbled across the spy, a Navy ensign (if memory serves) named Radford, revoked his White House pass -- and acquired signed confessions from the brass running the op in the Pentagon. Shades of SEVEN DAYS IN MAY.

Nixon then decided not to publicize the matter. Nor to even cashier the guilty brass.

Then the Pentagon Papers hit ... And "paranoia" blossomed.

Thus, this chapter of SILENT COUP makes the book worth the coin. But its overarching aim is to clear CIA of Hougan's charge that it was running an anti-Nixon op thru Hunt and McCord -- to some extent by blaming the Pentagon instead (an old pattern, an old Beltway rivalry -- see Fletcher Prouty's THE SECRET TEAM). Hougan seems much closer to the truth.

But wasn't all that stuff already mere history? Why would Langley bother to publish SILENT COUP in 1991?

Answer maybe: Former CIA director (late 70s) and contract agent (early 60s) George HW Bush was still president when SC was published, and hoping for re-election the following year.

Bush pere's ne'er do well oil company, Zapata, had been involved to some degree in the Bay of Pigs affair, rubbing elbows then and there with shady people who later popped up in JFK's murder, Watergate and Iran-Contra (of which Bush as Reagan's VP was a principal manager).

People used to joke in 1988 that if you attend a Bush campaign meeting you should wear a trenchcoat (like everybody else in the room).

That is: a lot of CIA officers/goons were fired during the house-cleaning of the 70s (Rockefeller Commission, Church Committe, House Select Committe on Assassinations). They wanted Bush to win in 1988, to get back some of their own, and they staffed his campaign -- and, lo, the first major failure of exit polls to forecast election results occurred in the 1988 presidential race. Then the polls worked fine. Until 2000. And 2004 ...)

SILENT COUP, then, seems motivated in 1991 by Langley desire to not only defuse Hougan's thesis on its own behalf, but to "clear brush" for longtime Company man Bush's re-election.

The same desire helps explain why the astounding Kennedy books of 1992 -- JFK AND VIETNAM, by John Newman, PLAUSIBLE DENIAL by Mark Lane, and JFK by Fletcher Prouty -- all must reads -- were trashed or (worse) ignored by the press. (Search Operation Mockingbird). And why, the same year, Oliver Stone's film JFK, which drew on Prouty, Lane et al. for support, was attacked with such vigor. The Company was both defending itself and doing its best to keep certain skeletons from tumbling from the closet during Bush's re-election campaign.

The national press was co-opted by its mass participation in the JFK cover up, and has not yet recovered its "freedom." The First Amendment can't protect something that died. Hougan's SECRET AGENDA was a blow for that freedom. SILENT COUP was mostly The Company Strikes Back.

Finally: One of the best conversations about American politics since the end of the war (1945) is a book that tries to make sense of the domestic terrorism the US experienced from the murder of JFK thru Watergate: THE YANKEE AND COWBOY WARS by Carl Oglesby. It also happens to be wonderfully written -- a rare grace in the genre.

Jim Hougan is an able investigative reporter with an interest in the "underworld" of Spooks and Spies. Hougan's book "Spooks", in many ways a companion volume to "Secret Agenda", was the product of a four year investigative project. Hougan does his home work.

"Secret Agenda" raises questions about Watergate and the numerous CIA connections in the case. In particular Hougan explores the implications of the Radford spy ring, an "unofficial" Pentagon spy operation directed at Kissinger's secret diplomacy, and a Washington DC based "Call Girl" ring over which the CIA's general security unit had some influence.

It is difficult to assess how Hougan's theory holds up today. During the famous Frost / Nixon interviews, Nixon himself alluded to some national security angles to the Watergate affair and recently Gordon Liddy has made statements in support of some of Hougan's ideas in connection with a recent court case. Still Hougan's pick for the identity of "Deep Throat" has not panned out. One person he explicitly passed over, the FBI's Mark Felt, turned out to be the one. Still as Hougan has commented from his web site, having Felt, the former chief of the FBI's Cointelpro operations as "Deep Throat" raises new questions.

Hougan's writing style is professional, clear and entertaining. Since retiring from investigative journalism, Hougan now applies his talents to spy and detective fiction.

A few days after the Watergate break, the American news media published details of the background of the Watergate buglars, all of whom had many years ( 20 - 30 ) of intelligence experience. Because of the taping of the service entrance was discovered by the security guard the burglars were caught, at the time I asked myself with all this experience how could the break in men such a mistake ? My answer, at the time, was because THEY wanted to be caught or at least the tapper did, who we found out later was McCord. Why would any member of the break in crew want to be caught ? To get rid of Nixon, of course. Later as the story inraveled Woodward, a new comer to journalism in general and a novice at the Washington Post would have great contacts. How would a very young reporter gets so many good contacts in such a short career. My answer then was that Mr. Woodward be an intelligence agent of some sort. Well finally by 1984 Mr Hougan answers my questions and it seems that I was on the right track, at the time of the break in no reporters even asked such ovivious questions as I had thought of at the times of the events, just like the no asking reporters at the time of the build up to the Afganistan - Iraq invasions. Mr. Houghan and Peter Dale Scott in many books relating to the JFK assassination - Watergate connections have done the American public a great deal of good in many ways to show, among other things, that the American press is a pawn of the American hidden government and is not to be relied on. Albert Jenner, the Republican counsel on the Senate Watergate Committee, was fired by the GOP after Mr. Jenner said that Mr Nixon should be impeached. Mr Jenner, a Chicago lawyer, was also a counsel to the Warren Commission, even thought he was the persoonel lawyer to Henry Crown the largest stockholder in General Dynamics a large defense contracter, who had just lost a big contract to Boing, the TFX, which possible ruin Mr. Crown.

Mr. Hougan has writen a great book and I hope that more Watergate books will be published in the coming years and the truth will be removed on why Mr. Nixon was removed. Could it have someting to due to ' the militiary - complex and/or the JFK - RFK - MLK murders ? 5 STARS

Hougan's book is excellent. It demythologizes Watergate. Front and center is the CIA. For a great overview of what actually happened, and all of the behind the scenes machinations, this book can't be beat. I've read almost everything there is on Watergate--as well as Hearings Transcripts and White House Transcripts. This is the single best book on Watergate.

Unfortunately, as the title suggests, Hougan's thesis is that McCord, the master spy, "shut down" E. Howard Hunt's operation as it got too close to an on-going prostitution ring likely being used by the CIA. This was the "Secret Agenda" at play during Watergate.

Personally, I think Hougan was too close to the Spooks he had contact with, and they spun his story.

To those who want to know what Watergate was really about, I would ask you to focus on one single question: Was Daniel Ellsberg a CIA asset? If this is true, then the entire Watergate saga must be re-written. Interestingly, if you read the book "Wild Man", a biography of Ellsberg, the opening chapter gives us an entirely different version of what the burglars did when breaking into Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, one at odds with what Hunt tells us happened. And, what do we find in "Wild Man"? Well, it starts out with the funeral of a heralded CIA fighter, who Ellsberg just happened to know from Vietnam. (BTW, when in Vietnam, Ellsberg was 'dating' the daughter (journalist--a quaint and common CIA cover) of the #2 guy in the CIA.) We also find out that when Ellsberg is at trial, his co-defendant (well, not exactly a co-defendant because Ellsberg asked that their trials be separated, much to the consternation of Anthony Russo) came to court one day with a "red book". The biographer, for reasons unknown, doesn't tell us what the book was (I happened to research it in a library, on microfiche). It turns out to be Fletcher Prouty's "Secret Team"!! Why didn't the author identify the book? Why didn't he look into any possible CIA connection Ellsberg may have had. For Russo, reading Prouty's book---wherein Prouty, the Air Force liaison to the CIA during the 50's and early 60's, identifies Ellsberg as a CIA asset---helped him to make sense of Ellsberg's behavior. It should do that for all of us as well.

Just look at the time line in all of this: April 1971, the putative "Pentagon Papers" arrive at the NYT; May 1971, Hunt visits south Florida for his Bay of Pigs buddy Bernard Barker; June of 1971, the Pentagon Papers are published. June 1971, Colson hires Hunt; September 1971, Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office is broken into.

And why was it broken into? So that the CIA could do a "psychological profile" on Ellsberg. But, you see, if Ellsberg was a CIA asset, then so, too, was his psychiatrist. And there would have been no need whatsoever for the CIA types to break in. The real reason for the break-in was that Ellsberg would later on be let off any charges against him on the grounds that the government never informed his lawyers of the break-in. Ellsberg wasn't going to release the papers unless he was sure he wouldn't spend years in jail. He got his insurance policy via E. Howard Hunt.

From what I can tell, Watergate was just part of a war of survival on the part of the CIA. Hoover knew just how treacherous they were. He didn't trust them. During the Vietnam War Years, the CIA and military intelligence--as well as Wm. Sullivan's CoIntelPro--were infiltrating protest groups. The FBI did this somewhat legally; but MI and CIA had no authorization to be doing domestic spying. Hoover didn't trust these agencies one bit (cf. the Huston Plan). Hoover stopped the "black bag jobs" because he wanted police agencies to know that any black bag jobs were not FBI jobs. This pulled the cover out from underneath MI and CIA. To those who are sophisticate enough, you will see that a 'smear campaign', much like the Post's and Times' job on Nixon, was unleashed by the CIA (cf the Church Committee's findings---I had to go to a Law library). The CIA used Liddy (the apparent dupe in all of this) to go after Hoover. When Nixon wouldn't force Hoover to resign, the smear campaign started. Hoover, tough as he was, knowing who he was dealing with, was not flustered by any of this. And then.........he dies. What do you know about that!

The Pentagon Papers were let out by the CIA (they were actually National Security Council papers---it seems to me "Pentagon Papers" is a great misnomer) to point the finger at JFK and to all the dirty stuff connecting him with Liem's assassination and the Bay of Pigs fiasco. "The Company", by Erlichman, brings this side of things out nicely.

So this was the tainted milieu within which Watergate unfolded. Per Haldeman, Nixon's fall in Watergate happened because Nixon, after the '72 election, had asked that EVERY federal employee resign, so that he could hire back "his own people". But, of course, the CIA had, and has, people in all parts of the government, some needing years to get into places of power. They weren't about to let that happen. And, so, when Nixon wins the election, and makes this decision to force resignations, guess what, next thing to happen is James McCord sending a note to the White House saying that if DCI Helms were forced out, "all the trees in the forest will fall." That's a fairly apt description of Watergate, isn't it?

McCord then changed lawyers, and, before you know it, he's written a note to Sirica saying that perjury had taken place. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The only book that even gets close to what really happened are Haldeman's, "The Ends of Power", and Hougan's. This book will sweep away all of the media nonsense we, the unsuspecting public, are force-fed by the (CIA influenced) media.

Just a great book. A must for anyone interested in the subject. Also a good price & condition. 5 stars

This was an interesting book. There are a lot of details in here that you did not get from All The Presidents Men. I would recommend reading the book for the extra information. The book was adequately written but did not drag. I think the better book is Silent Coup, but this book is still worth reading.

This is an important book, but mainly because it inspired the book SILENT COUP: THE REMOVAL OF A PRESIDENT. SILENT COUP expands to a great degree what this book establishes.

For an education on the Watergate scandal, I recommend you read (in order): 1) Will by Liddy; 2) Silent Coup by Colodny & Gettlin; and then 3) this book. Forget Woodward and Bernstein entirely. These first two books are OUTSTANDING. This last one will fill in a few details, though I would not regard it as the final word. I suspect you're here because of Silent Coup, anyway. Hougan makes a few egregious left-wing points in his book that are real howlers, but they are off to the side of the story, and he is primarily concerned with establishing the facts.

Who knows what the 4th book should be? Or the 5th? Maybe it has yet to be written. I suppose in continuing the education, it might be fair to turn next to a conventional account of the history, perhaps to Stanley Kutler; or to the perspectives of Dean or Magruder or Haldeman.