CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, June 13, 2005

Watergate burglaries: The rest of the story?

Prior to the two Watergate surreptitious entries (that’s a term of art within the spook community, but it means to break-in without getting caught) in June of 1972, President Nixon’s pollsters were telling Nixon that he would win every state except South Dakota, the home state of Democrat nominee Senator George McGovern. And, that’s what happened.

This soldier was not a Nixon fan except when Nixon released us from the handcuffs applied by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and allowed us to go into Cambodia to clean out that huge rat’s nest of North Vietnamese units and supplies. Were it not for Watergate, the Nixon-Kissinger Paris Accords of 1973 might well have held up and the armed occupation of South Vietnam in 1975 might not have occurred.

Saddled with an anti-war Democrat Congress, the politically crippled President Gerald Ford stood by and grieved as the North Vietnamese broke the Paris Accords and the U.S. Congress failed to honor our nation’s solemn pledge to return to South Vietnam and repel a North Vietnamese invasion.

Back to Watergate: My contention is that Nixon, the consummate poker player who had the playing skills to be on today’s World Poker Tour, did not conceive of or order the burglary of the office of Larry O’Brian at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the posh Watergate complex. Why? Because, with victory assured, Nixon had no need for the break-ins. Moreover, the risk of a bungled break-in was high.

For example, one of the burglars broke with established procedure and taped back the locking bolt on the door to the Watergate’s underground parking garage horizontally instead of vertically. That goof-up allowed the tape to be seen by a passing security guard who removed the tape. When the horizontally-applied tape appeared again, the guard called the D.C. police, and the rest is history. Obviously, at least one of the burglars was a rank amateur at surreptitious entry.

So, who had a motive to send campaign operatives into Larry O’Brian’s office? Go back to the Democratic National Convention held in Miami and the Democrat’s “love boat.” Some Democrat operative got the idea to station a big yacht in Miami harbor and staff it with call girls from the D.C. area. The idea was to keep a “little black book” on the delegates who decided to avail themselves of a trip or trips to the love boat. Post-Democrat Convention, the little black book was thought to be hidden somewhere in Larry O’Brian’s Watergate office.

The 1991 book Silent Coup: The Removal of a President, contended that White House lawyer, John W. Dean, masterminded the Watergate burglary to obtain documents that might have linked his wife-to-be to her former roommate who was alleged to be the madam who arranged for the call girls on the “love boat.”

Dean was convicted as one of the Watergate conspirators; however, he turned state’s evidence against his fellow conspirators and, thereby, only served four months in prison.

Dr. George Friedman of Stratfor.com suggests J. Edgar Hoover, and therefore, W. Mark Felt, were running a long-time White House penetration operation. Perhaps, using some means of electronic surveillance. But, more likely, Hoover developed, via blackmail, a network of his own agents within the White House domestic staff or even the Secret Service.

When Hoover died, and Nixon denied Mark Felt the FBI directorship, Felt must have continued to operate the White House penetration operation and that is why Felt as “deep throat” alone knew everything about the Watergate break-ins from its sorry beginnings to sorry end. Rather than reveal the FBI’s White House penetration operation to a federal grand jury, Felt used two cub reporters to punish the President who denied him the job Felt had sought for 30 years.

William Hamilton, a syndicated columnist, a featured commentator for USA Today and self-described “recovering lawyer and philosopher,” and is the co-author of The Grand Conspiracy and The Panama Conspiracy, spent some time as a “spook” during which he was trained in methods of surreptitious entry.

©2005. William Hamilton.

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com