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| The Watergate - Political Stage (USG Photo) |
We have made a few editorial updates to this 2012 post from since it appears
Mr Kissinger is still not dead and continues to influence US foreign policy
at the highest levels. We had presumed he had been permanently
removed from this arena, but apparently, some in the
Trump Administration regard him as credible.
We regard him as the major representative of the DEEP STATE!
Click here for related story [Washington Post]
The
Washington Post, losing readership faster than Mr Obama is losing his Democrat supporters, is revisiting Watergate, perhaps to distract voters from the gaffes, corruption, scandals, and Intelligence leaks of their beloved incumbent President.
In this feature story, Woodward and Bernstein declare that Nixon was
evil incarnate and, they were not only right in their coverage, they underestimated what a bad guy he really was!
They obviously want to relive the glory of their
singular, if orchestrated, investigative reporting.
But, was it a real event, or a
Byzantine black op?
Apparently, neither reporter ever realized that Watergate was a
Kabuki Drama, and that they were merely performers being guided by a highly skilled group of Intelligence officers, with the plot orchestrated by the greatest spook of all:
Vernon Walters, the invisible Director of Central Intelligence.
So, if Watergate was a political orchestration, what was the real purpose, and why go through such a convoluted process?
In short:
The goal was to dislodge Henry Kissinger, perhaps the greatest threat to US national security in the 20th Century.
To understand this goal, a background scenario is necessary:
[we'll keep it as short as possible]
Nixon felt his place in history was to normalize relations with China.
He brought Kissinger, the
Little Professor, on board based on Henry's academic credentials, his membership in the Council on Foreign Relations, staff consulting with the NSC, and, he was a protege of Nelson Rockefeller [who had his own ambitions for the White House]; Henry played the part of pontificating intellectual to Nixon's naivete and ambition.
Kissinger was Nixon's well-connected political Einstein. Nixon gave Kissinger free rein, and chose not to challenge his unilateral decisions in pursuing Nixon's China Policy -- even though Kissinger's personal decisions and actions were systematically undercutting the US Military and destroying US intelligence operations around the world - as part of the Deep State.
Nixon dreamed of open relations with the People's Republic of China to
1) Neutralize the PRC as a US potential adversary
2) Enhance the PRC as a USSR potential adversary
3) Create a viable trading partner for US goods and
services benefiting both countries
The vulnerability of the process was that Nixon turned over the negotiations for these goals to Kissinger, whose reputation and ego far exceeded his actual capacity.
Vice President Ford accurately pegged him as a pretentious little twit with a phony accent [
Kissinger's brother, a cab driver, spoke harsh Brooklynese]; Pentagon and State Department officials regarded him as a loose and dangerous cannon. But, Nixon backed him, which gave him all the power he needed to get things done, no matter what the cost.
And, Kissinger used his position to block access to Nixon, and to impose "Presidential Directives" on all elements of the Intelligence and Military Communities -- without the knowledge of Nixon.
Kissinger launched his personal diplomatic campaign in 1970, at the height of the Viet Nam War, to open discussions with China, bypassing -- but not unmonitored by -- the CIA and the State Department. Kissinger chose not to use existing CIA or State Department contacts, assets or special resources to initiate discussions, but fumbled around trying to connect via "
friends of friends" at foreign embassies -- thus becoming the laughing stock of international diplomatic circles.
His amateurish maneuvers squandered a century of State Department inroads and expertise, and CIA's direct linkage to Mao's inner circle which dated back to a World War II OSS operation
[
Operation Dixie Cup -- in which US officers advised both Mao and Chiang figuring the US would be pals with whomever ended up in power]. [As luck would have it, that OSS officer's son [
Willis Bird, an Army Intelligence agent], was the escort of Kissinger during the historic visit to China.]
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| Henry, you are indeed a naive simpleton! |
China had mastered diplomacy over a millennium and was light years ahead of Kissinger.
Eventually,
Zhou en Lai, tiring of Kissinger's clumsy and amateurish efforts at diplomacy, contacted him and opened discussions -- in which Taiwan was deemed an expendable ally, and Viet Nam and all of Southeast Asia was declared by Kissinger [in a subsequent letter to Zhou]
to be of no further interest to the United States.
Kissinger, not a skilled diplomatic negotiator, but apparently feeling he was the reincarnation of
Machiavelli, gave away the farm and got nothing more in return than what Zhou was already willing to offer for free. Zhou wanted revenue from international commerce, and normalizing relations with the US would serve that purpose.
Recently released National Archive documents recorded Kissinger's unilateral concessions to Zhou on 22 June 1972:
In Kissinger's words:
"... the US respects its Hanoi enemy as a 'permanent factor' and probably 'the strongest entity in the region'. And, we have no interest in destroying it or even defeating it."
[underline added for emphasis]
Note:
This was well over a year before Congress, via the
Case-Church Amendment, declared the end to US Military involvement in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia in August 1973 -- and
nearly three years before Saigon was turned over to North Viet Nam in 1975.
In the interim, more than 1,000 US troops were killed -- fighting and dying for no purpose.
[
Particularly annoying was my brief status as a POW in Laos during August 1973 -- well after Henry had sold out the US Military to the Chinese.]
Zhou would have been perfectly content to simply open trade relations with the US.
Had Kissinger consulted the CIA or the State Department, he would have learned the PRC commercial link with the West had been thriving for years via Hong Kong. Zhou, of course, could not pass up the opportunity to exploit Kissinger's obeisance, extracting as many concessions from Kissinger as he could, and enjoying every minute of the charade.
All of these negotiations were monitored by US Intelligence -- to the great frustration of Richard Helms [DCI] and William Rogers [Secretary of State].
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Kissinger offered all of SEA to the PRC
|
Among the needless concessions, Kissinger agreed to not only turn over Southeast Asia [including
Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Singapore] to Communism, he also agreed to shut down
all US Covert intelligence operations -- to include agent nets throughout the region which had been accurately reporting on military and political issues since World War II.
At the time, we had fully functional and reporting agent nets throughout Indo-China, to include penetration operations throughout the North Vietnamese Army, agents inside the Chinese training camps in Burma, and penetrations into the mainland Chinese training camps which fed the insurgency in Thailand and Malaysia.
In February 1974, Kissinger directed that all such operations would cease immediately {
by order of the president - an order not created by Nixon}; he ordered all Intelligence operational personnel
immediately from the region.
He used the
Church Committee directives as his justification, but those required only that the Intelligence Committees be briefed on the existence of such operations -- not that they be terminated;
termination was Kissinger's unilateral decision!
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| CIA's Guerrillas [a Group Mobile] |
Not only did Kissinger close down all these highly productive clandestine and covert operations, he did so with
the startling proviso that there would be
no attempts to maintain any sort of contact or means of reconstructing
the nets in the future --
by "Order of the President"
[an edict of which Nixon was unaware].
Such actions were
unheard of in the history of diplomacy and espionage, and they put the US at a
major political and military disadvantage both in the region as well as
on a global basis -- from which the US has never recovered.
No country unilaterally gives up its intelligence advantage and can expect to survive.
Among the consequences were the loss of all intelligence feeds on insurgent operations emanating from China targeting Thailand and Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines,
as well as the loss of continuous reporting on American POWs held in Laos, Cambodia, and Viet Nam after the Viet Nam War.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Kissinger became Nixon's personal ambassador to the
Shah of Iran, with the objective of manipulating the world oil market -- and its pricing, and increasing Israel's stature in the region, thus upsetting the Arab world and undermining Middle East regional stability.
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| The Shah, pre-Carter |
Kissinger again by-passed both the State Department and CIA in his manipulations, and, pandering to the Shah, shut down all US unilateral intelligence operations in Iran, exposing US operations, methods and sources, and forcing the CIA to work
solely in bilateral operations with
Savak -- Iran's Intelligence organization known for its brutality.
By shutting down the CIA in Iran, and curtailing all negative reporting on Iran from other US intelligence organizations, the US became isolated and singular in its ignorance of the growing revolutionary forces within, and without.
Aside from alienating the Intelligence Community, Kissinger cut a deal with the Shah by posing no objection to the Shah's abruptly
doubling the price of a barrel [BBL] of oil. In Kissinger's words to Iranian diplomat Ardeshir Zahedi
"
Tell the Shah 'you can push [us] as much as you want [on oil prices]".
[
Kissinger later claimed this concept was all Nixon's idea, when it was, in fact, his own version of foreign policy to influence Middle East oil flow, and to protect Israel.]
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The US had no clue about the Ayatollah's political power
-- thanks to Kissinger |
Thus, the growing popularity of the
Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran went virtually unnoticed and unreported, and Khomeini's international support was downplayed - by
Savak, which filtered all US reporting on Iran.
The result:
The US was the only country surprised by the overthrow of the Shah and the Revolution which brought in the Ayatollah, changing the balance of power forever in the Middle East, and opening the door to political power for radical Muslim Mullahs and radical Islamists -- a political dilemma which may lead to a global war.
The unforeseen consequence of this diplomatic blunder was the displacement of the Shah, who would then be replaced by Saudi Arabia as the dominant force in the Middle East.
[Jimmy Carter, after promising the Shah a US Safehaven, would later covertly offer to return the Shah to Iran for trial in exchange for release of US hostages; interestingly, Noriega wire-tapped Carter's negotiations with the Iranians, alerted the Shah, and offered him safety in Panama. (that's another story)]
The Director of Central Intelligence [and CIA] {DCI},
Richard Helms, was by-passed by Kissinger, who succeeded in excluding Helms from the National Security Council and access to the Oval Office. A series of leaks --
believed to be via Kissinger -- regarding CIA activities and operations, made their way to the Media - resulting in Media-hyped scandals leading to a series of Congressional investigations.
To help maneuver Helms out of the way, Kissinger brought in as Deputy DCI (DDCI), Vernon Walters, the affable Military Attache' in Paris who had smuggled Kissinger into Paris for his secret meetings with North Vietnamese officials; in the absence of Helms, Walters became the acting DCI. As DDCI, Walters could manage the CIA while Helms was distracted by Kissinger's political intrigue.
Kissinger assumed the position of Secretary of State after forcing the resignation of the highly skilled diplomat,
William Rogers. The Intelligence Community recognized that Kissinger's elevated status would give him unprecedented power to destroy intelligence and subvert National Security. He had succeeded in displacing both the
Director of Central Intelligence as well as the
Secretary of State, thus becoming Nixon's principal foreign policy advisor and his only link to the international community.
Ultimately, the
Church Committee established Congressional oversight over CIA's operations, severely restricting the capabilities of the US Intelligence Community -- albeit with only a few positive reforms.
With Helms disgraced by the flood of leaks about the CIA, Kissinger persuaded Nixon to demote Helms and reassign him in 1973 as Ambassador to Iran -- where Kissinger, as Secretary of State, could control him.
[Kissinger had also ordered the termination in Iran of all HUMINT and NSA operations, removing all early indicators of the growing influence of the Ayatollah whose rise to political and religious ascendency would disrupt Iranian stability and eventually would force the Shah to abdicate]
That left a gap in CIA leadership - filled by LTG Vernon Walters.
This was the basis for the Watergate Conspiracy, which was already well underway.
Kissinger was completely insulated since he could, and did, as Nixon's Gatekeeper, limit access to the President, so any attempt by anyone outside the White House to persuade Nixon of Henry's destructive actions would be short-stopped, and the messenger would be terminated.
The Washington Leadership [political, Intelligence, and Military, all recognized that Kissinger was succeeding in an ultimate power-grab in which he would control the State Department, CIA, and the Oval Office - manipulating Nixon. And, the only way to neutralize Kissinger was to dislodge Nixon.
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Vernon Walters
[Meet the REAL Deep Throat] |
Walters was one of the most respected officers in the Military as well as in the Intelligence Community, having been a key operative in the
OSS during WW2, and notable for creating operations which remain classified even today.
[NOTE: I worked for General Walters (directly and indirectly at the State Department) while he was President Reagan's Ambassador at Large. He was a major force in later helping me to create the Defense Clandestine Service.]
Kissinger presumed Walters to be an ally since Walters commiserated with Kissinger on CIA problems. Once installed as
acting DCI, Walters was accepted at the Oval Office, and the White House advisors liked and admired him because of his jocularity and intellect.
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Hoover
Beloved by No-One |
Coincidentally,
J Edgar Hoover died, conveniently (
he had been in excellent
health but succumbed to a Breitbart-style heart stoppage), a month before the break-in,
thus he was unavailable to lead an FBI investigation into the Watergate event.
At
the suggestion of Helms' Deputy Director, Nixon appointed
L Patrick Gray, an inexperienced DOJ lawyer, by-passing
Mark Felt [who would later be
dubbed (mistakenly) as
Deep Throat].
As acting Director [DCI] of all US Intelligence agencies, Walters ensured that the FBI was kept out of any meaningful investigative role in Watergate; instead, he personally provided a programmed feed to the FBI's new Director Gray.
What no one realized was that Walters was orchestrating the entire Watergate debacle with Washington Post Editor, including the leaks to Bob Woodward, and even to Mark Felt.
The anomalies of the scandal, though crystal clear to Intelligence officers, never got in the way of the
Washington Post reporting - orchestrated by Walters, and
Ed Bradley, the Managing Editor of T
he Washington Post.
[
Note: Much later, Woodward (hyping his book) appeared as a guest speaker at the National Press Club (where I co-chaired the National Journalism Awards). I took the opportunity to introduce myself while he paraded around with the guests; so I took the opportunity to ask him if he continued his relationship with Vernon Walters after the Watergate Sting was concluded. Oddly, his face turned bright red and he stormed out of the Press Club, and I did not receive an answer to my question.]
The Event [aka: The Sting]:
On 17 June 1972, five men were arrested for breaking and entering the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate complex.
a. They were discovered after a well-meaning but inept building security guard found the
door to the office repeatedly propped open with tape -- which he removed, each time
re-locking the door, and each time, the tape was replaced and propped open again
-- guaranteeing their discovery.
b. Cash found on the burglars was somehow connected by the FBI to a GOP Reelection
Committee Slush Fund.
[
Interesting forensics there, even for today's experts and technology.]
c. The burglars' expertise included senior career intelligence officers notable for their
experience in
second story Black Ops, to include weapons, demolitions, surreptitious entry,
PsyOps, special security, money laundering, espionage, and assassinations.
[Why were highly skilled, senior level intelligence operatives involved in a simple break-in?]
These guys were all highly experienced spooks, e.g.,
(1)
G Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent, directed "
The Plumbers"
to break in to the
DNC Watergate office.
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| G Gordon Liddy |
(2)
James McCord had been an FBI security expert and
also headed CIA security;
(3)
Frank Sturgis, with 30 years experience, had served as
a Marine in WWII, operating behind enemy lines. He ran
covert operations in Communist Berlin, and infiltrated
Fidel Castro's inner circle.
(4)
Bernard Barker, was a veteran of
Operation 40,
the
Bay of Pigs, and
Cuban Secret Police.
d. Nixon commented, upon learning of the event:
"It sounded preposterous.
The whole thing made so little sense. Why in such a
blundering way? Anyone who knew anything about
politics would know that a national committee headquarters was a useless place place to go for inside information.
The whole thing was so senseless and bungled that it
almost looked like some kind of set-up."
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Cub Reporters
Breaking News |
e. Two
Washington Post cub reporters,
Woodward and Bernstein,
just happened to be assigned to
Night Court to witness the five burglars being charged.
1) Interestingly, Woodward had recently been released from US Naval Intelligence as a junior officer)
(2) Oddly, the intelligence operatives, who had lived both covert and clandestine existences and were completely used to subterfuge, cover identities, arrests, torture, and lying their way out of similar situations, immediately blurted out in
Night Court that they worked for the CIA.
(3) Standard procedure in this type of situation would have been a quick phone call, a release in anonymity -- and then to disappear forever.
(4) Instead, trained, experienced professional spooks spilled their guts in front of two cub reporters, without any prompting, much less an inquiry by the judge.
(5) The only conclusion, from an intelligence perspective, is that these
Plumbers had purposely made a series of highly visible blunders and left a paper trail that a
Cub Scout/Reporter could have followed, creating a highly visible story for them to report.
[But, that would not have eliminated Kissinger, and fortunately,
the naive Woodward and Bernstein were artfully manipulated by Walters and Bradlee.]
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Spookdblog debriefing
"WaPo Editor" Ben Bradlee
at the National Press Club |
Thus, the bait was set, Woodward and Bernstein ran with it,
Ben Bradlee blessed it [
in collusion with Walters] and the story grew legs.
[Bradlee was well acquainted with the Intelligence Community and despised Kissinger, and was only too happy to assist.]
Each time the story got stale, our erstwhile reporters were fed some new tidbits and leads by Bradlee, who was fed by Walters - who would then meet covertly with reporter Woodward. [Bradlee told me he regarded Woodward and Bernstein as Useful Idiots.
Meanwhile Congressmen and Senators were urged into outrage and action, until finally, Nixon was forced to resign.
[As a sidelight, the Impeachment investigation included Hillary Clinton's Obstruction of Justice in which she concealed exculpatory evidence from Chief Counsel Zeifman; so, it seems her political corruption record goes back to Watergate]
Kissinger, a Deep State/Shadow Government operative, who had managed the demise of a number of developing countries for the Deep State, was the intended target of this scheme, nimbly exited the Oval Office "Conspiracy Group" to the safety of the Seventh Floor of the State Department, where he could claim ignorance of the alleged plot and crime.
Although Kissinger escaped removal from White House power, his true power base, Nixon, was neutralized. In the final analysis, the Deep State/Shadow Government succeeded in removing both Kissinger and Nixon, and replacing Nixon with Ford, who was a willing stooge for the Deep State and the Shadow Government.
Even so, Kissinger continued to influence foreign policy, but he was not afforded special status by President Ford, who made it a point to regard Kissinger as nothing more than a bothersome popinjay. Kissinger also found himself exiled from the National Security Council.
Such events, once set in motion, are subject to the
Law of Unintended Consequences.
The CIA was not spared its dismantling and the gutting of the
Directorate of Clandestine Services, first by Kissinger, and then by his successor and protege,
Zbigniew Brzesinski; and finally, Carter's DCI,
Stansfield Turner, who delivered the
coup de grace by firing 800 Clandestine Service operatives, world-wide. By the time Reagan took office, the US Human Intelligence capability had been virtually destroyed.
Footnote:
There are those who believe that
Nelson Rockefeller played a role in manipulating the situation to dislodge Nixon and open a path through which he could take to the Oval Office [
i.e., as Vice President]. There may be some truth to that premise, but, Ford did not win re-election, closing that door to Rockefeller, who later died unexpectedly of "
heart stoppage"-- perhaps of the
Breitbart Syndrome.
Predictably, Kissinger continued to pontificate on foreign policy and influences the Media, though most experienced policy-makers regard him as a buffoon. At the first hint of an international crisis, he was been known to show up at local TV stations, demanding that they interview him. Many now ignore him.
[Update: unfortunately, he apparently has advocates in the Trump Administration, which throws us into a panic!]
Kissinger's legacy:
1) The Domino Theory fulfilled, to include the Communization of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia
-- notably the Killing Fields leaving millions of dead and suffering in Cambodia.2) Following Kissinger's removal of US Military and all Intelligence operations in Asia,
he sent a letter to Chou en Lai, advising the US would not object if China were to
"expand its influence into Southeast Asia", Chinese troops invaded northern Thailand in 1975
from Laos [but were defeated by troops from Thailand, Taiwan, and Burma].
2) Middle East turmoil immersed in Muslim extremism which is spreading throughout the
Middle East and Muslim countries around the world.
3) Destruction of the US strategic capability in clandestine and covert Human Intelligence
eliminating predictive intelligence in the Middle East and the Far East.
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Grigori Rasputin
[Reincarnated as Kissiinger?] |
4) There are those who speculate that Kissinger is the reincarnation of Grigori Rasputin, the confidant of the Tsarist family, and acting "
Tsar"with
Empress Alexandra while Emperor Nicholas was leading his Military in World War 1.
Rasputin was loathed by all [except the Empress];
he essentially disrupted and destroyed the Tsarist government,
leading to the
Bolshevik [communist] overthrow of the
Comparisons of Kissinger with Rasputin seem quite accurate
in that both manipulated their way into the most senior levels
of power and influenced the erosion of both power structures.
The KGB could not have been more effective in
destroying the US Intelligence capability
if they had hired Kissinger themselves
