Introduction
In January something very unusual happened in America: one of the major items of American parapolitics got aired in court.
In the years following the events which led to Nixon’s resignation, there were many Watergate books, not least those written by the participants in the drama – Dean, Haldeman, Colson, Ehrlichman and Nixon himself. They all offered up variations on the themes established in 1974/5. But in 1984 Jim Hougan produced one of the great pieces of research in post-war American politics and gave us a completely new account of Watergate, his Secret Agenda (New York, Ballantine, 1985; no UK edition). Hougan’s research was subsequently reworked by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin in their Silent Coup (London: Gollancz, 1991). This is a fine book but the authors were mining seams already cut by Hougan.
Somewhere along the way these books came to the attention of Gordon Liddy, one of the convicted Watergate burglars, and Liddy incorporated some of their material into his public speaking and radio broadcasts. As a result of which Liddy was sued for $5.1 million for defamation by Ida ‘Maxie’ Wells, the former Democratic National Committee secretary who claims he hurt her reputationby saying she kept photos of call girls in her desk at DNC headquarters, the scene of the burglary by the White House ‘plumbers’ which started the whole Watergate business
The trial was reported in the Washington Post, and I read some of this on-line. The Post’s coverage didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me – why is explained by Jim Hougan below – but I saw a reference in the coverage to Jim Hougan’s book being used by Liddy’s defence team and sent Hougan an e-mail asking him about the case. This was his reply.
Jim Hougan writes:
As to the Liddy business…… I was ‘the star witness’ (according to Liddy’s attorney, John Williams) in Liddy’s defence. I testified for three hours, putting forward what amounted to ‘the alternative theory of Watergate’. That testimony did much to persuade the judge and jury that Liddy had every right and reason to make the statements that he did. To the extent that Liddy’s trial was, as Liddy himself contended, the first legal test of the alternative theory, the good guys won.
Curiously, my testimony was not reported in the Washington Post. The Post covered the beginning of the trial, when the plaintiff’s case was argued, but found better things to do when the defendant began his rebuttal. The Post then returned to cover Liddy’s own testimony, and the lawyers’ summations. What this meant, of course, is that the public was once again treated to the orthodox version of the Watergate affair, while coverage of the alternative theory was effectively suppressed (except to the extent that Liddy himself was able to articulate it). Readers of the newspaper can only have been perplexed by the jury’s 7-2 ruling in favour of the defendant, and the judge’s directed verdict in Liddy’s behalf.
And by the way, it wasn’t just my testimony that was censored – the Post ignored the testimony of other key witnesses on Liddy’s behalf: i.e. the videotaped depositions of Charles Colson; former Assistant U.S. Attorney John Rudy, who was investigating links between the Columbia Plaza prostitution ring and the Democratic National Committee; and Carl Shoffler, the arresting officer who prevented one of the burglars from disposing of a key that he had in his possession – a key that was subsequently found to fit the plaintiff, Maxie Wells’s, desk. The significance of the key is that it is the only piece of physical evidence with respect to the burglars’ actual target. Ms. Wells took the position that any discussion of the key was defamatory because it inevitably led to a discussion of the prostitution ring – which necessarily implicated her, because it was her desk that the burglars were attempting to crack.
It’s an interesting business. The plaintiff’s case, having been instigated by John Dean, whose attorney argued the case on behalf of Ms. Wells, was betrayed by Dean himself, who appears to have suffered a failure of nerve at the last minute. After rattling his sabres in the press all the way up to the trial, he failed to appear to give testimony.
What is most relevant to me, however, is that Secret Agenda was validated in federal court, with the judge speaking forcefully on behalf of the book. Here’s how he began his remarks: ‘I’ll tell you one thing – Jim Hougan’s no flake!’
There are, of course, two alternative theories of Watergate. The first is my own, which argues that there were multiple agendas among the burglars, and that Gordon Liddy was deceived by Howard Hunt and James McCord. The secret purpose of the break-in, set in motion by John Dean (in likely collusion with Howard Hunt), was to obtain documents believed to be in the desk of DNC secretary Maxie Wells – who facilitated a liaison arrangement between call-girls at the nearby Columbia Plaza Apartments and the DNC.
This argument is also embraced by Len Colodny, who wrote Silent Coup about seven years after Secret Agenda came out. Colodny, however, goes further than I did – and perhaps too far (which is why he was not asked to testify in the case.) He insists that John Dean’s then girlfriend and later wife, Maureen Biner, was one of the call-girls, and that it was this which motivated him in ordering the break-in at the DNC. The evidence of Biner’s involvement is iffy, though, and I think Colodny is wrong when he asserts that the burglars were after photographs of the call-girls that were said to be in Wells’s desk. While it is true that the desk contained photographs of the call-girls, according to their pimp, Phillip Bailley, the pictures are said to have been discrete. And even if they weren’t discrete – even if they were pornographic – I don’t see why Dean would have wanted to obtain nude pictures of his girlfriend. What would he have done with them? What jeopardy would they have held for him? None, that I can think of.
What, then, were they after? I think they were looking for a real or imagined calendar or appointments book – not photographs. The way the arrangement worked, visitors to the DNC would be directed to the office of Maxie Wells’ boss, Spencer Oliver. They were told that the telephone would ring, and that, when they answered it, they’d be speaking with….. (here, a photograph would be taken from Ms. Wells’ desk and shown to the visitor). They could make whatever arrangements they liked.
Now, having seen copies of prostitutes’ ‘trick books’, including a trick-book from the Columbia Plaza, one thing is clear: the men making the appointments don’t use their real, or full, names. They’re known as Jack or Birdman or Buffalo Bill – not as ‘Frank W. Ripley, of the Boston Ripleys’. The only person in a position to know who was making dates with the call-girls was the woman who directed the visitors to the telephone in Spencer Oliver’s office – and that would have been Ms. Wells. Did she keep an appointments’ book? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. Did John Dean think she did? I suspect so.
One other thing: a second difference between my ‘alternative theory’ and Len Colodny’s is this: I insist that inasmuch as no bugging devices were found inside the DNC, despite repeated, targeted searches by the FBI of every telephone in the office, no bugs had ever been there to be found. I argue that the bug monitored by James McCord’s employee, Alfred Baldwin, was actually in the telephone at the Columbia Plaza – and not in the DNC office of Spencer Oliver.
Which prompts the obvious question: why didn’t McCord do as he was told and bug Larry O’Brien? To which I’d reply: as the former director of physical and technical security for the CIA, McCord knew that O’Brien had recently been Howard Hughes’s Washington liaison – and, in that capacity, O’Brien had helped negotiate arrangements between Hughes and the CIA. Those arrangements involved the CIA’s plans to use the Hughes organisation as a cover for an operation to raise a sunken Soviet submarine in the Pacific Ocean. This was ‘Project Jennifer’, using the Glomar Explorer.