Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA
Jim Hougan (Random House, US 1984)
Those who read Hougan’s last book Spooks will know that the arrival or a new one is something of an event. As expected, his latest has so many trails to follow, intriguing little titbits to ponder that one read is insufficient to do justice to what I expect to be a major work. Having read it once – and then as if it was a political thriller (which it is) – I will be brief and leave it to others to gauge its true status.
Hougan has looked afresh at Watergate from the opposite end of the investigative telescope. Instead of looking at the cover-up he focuses instead on the burglary at the Watergate buildings. He finds the media already lined up to have a go at Nixon, ignoring the details of the burglary and consequently missing the real heart of the Watergate affair.
He sees the burglary as a cover for other illegal activities being carried on in the same district: namely, a CIA-controlled surveillance of a call-girl set-up which is providing information on both Democrats and Republicans in Washington. Problems arose when the operation began to be threatened with exposure because of the overlapping activities of the White House ‘Plumbers unit’.
More importantly, Hougan attempts to show that the ‘Plumbers unit’ was infiltrated by members of the CIA who were still working for the Company. Not only were they working for the CIA, Hunt and McCord were involved in the penetration of the White House: McCord’s CIA section had its own men amongst the White House Secret Service personnel – ponder the implications of that for the Kennedy assassination if there was similar penetration in 1963 – while Hunt appears to have been engaged in building character profiles of the White House staff for the CIA.
In the words of one observer the CIA were engaged in a “coup d’etat in the making’. We are talking here of elite battles at the highest levels of American politics. Nothing surprising to assassination buffs, but curious that only Carl Oglesby’s Yankee and Cowboy War seems to have viewed Watergate this way before Hougan.
It seems the military were also planting spies within the White House and the National Security Council. This episode, ‘the Moorer-Radford affair’, was actually referred to at the time as ‘Seven Days in May’. Hougan’s reading of this period, and the implications of Watergate, build to a chilling ‘black’ view of American power politics, summed up by Alexander Haig in his best Haigspeak: “With respect to Watergate and its consequences, clearly one of the most dangerous periods in American history, change occurred within the provisions of our constitution and established rule of law. This was not a foregone conclusion during those difficult days.” (Newsweek 16 July 1979)
Hougan tackles the identity of ‘Deep Throat’ and comes to two conclusions: one, that it was Haig, a popular candidate; second, although not named, he is situated in the past of Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward. Hougan says that Woodward worked for Naval Intelligence at the highest levels and speculates that Deep Throat was connected to Admiral Zumwalt who was opposed to Nixon’s foreign policy.
Woodward has denied this, as perhaps he would, but has slammed Secret Agenda with such viciousness, it makes one believe Hougan has got near the truth.
A few other titbits. Surprisingly, the R. Mullen Company, a CIA-linked operation which employed Howard Hunt, actually received little attention during the Watergate investigations. Part of the reason for this is that it was (indirectly) linked to the forced retirement of over 2000 CIA employees which may have been a way of getting rid of a Soviet agent inside the CIA. (The Company, it appears, was extremely worried about a mole in the ‘W.H.’ – the White House or Western Hemisphere division of the agency.)
Charles Colson saw the CIA file on Watergate and made some notes on its contents which included a reference to a CIA operation smuggling gold bullion to S.E. Asia. Recently there was a reference (Times 20 March 1985) to Nixon and an episode in 1964 when he apparently went to Vietnam and exchanged gold bullion for American soldiers captured by the Viet Cong. Did this exercise carry on?
Finally, Hougan discusses the story of Woolston-Smith who knew about the break-in of the Watergate building before it took place and warned the Democrats. Hougan attempts to show that Woolston-Smith has strong CIA (and British intelligence) connections. One link Hougan misses is Robert Morrow who was working with Woolston-Smith in the early seventies. Morrow had been in the CIA and claimed to have been involved in anti-Cuban operations which had Nixon’s backing. He dealt with this later in his book Betrayal (Regency, US 1976), and had some influence on members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Morrow wrote that the CIA was heavily involved in the Kennedy assassination which had its roots in the Nixon-Kohly operation in which he was involved.
Woolston-Smith and Morrow both appear in The Pencourt File in which our intrepid journalists Penrose and Courtier blunder into Washington ignorant of all around them. In return for some information on the assassination, which Morrow says they can get from the State Department, Morrow supplies them with information on Harold Wilson and the Thorpe affair.
SD