The Book of Bastards (18 page)

Here's a hot one for you: the director of the Central Intelligence Agency was once convicted of perjury, and it was the fault of the president of the United States! The director in question? Career “Company” man Richard Helms. The president? Ol' Tricky Dick himself: Richard M. Nixon.

This is what happened.

Helms was one of the agency professionals who advanced into the Company's upper echelons after the Bay of Pigs debacle gave President John F. Kennedy the excuse he need to purge the “Old Guard” of Allen Dulles and his protégés from the CIA's leadership. In 1963 Helms went to Vietnam and helped overthrow President Ngo Dinh Diem. Within a year he was a deputy director. In 1966 President Johnson appointed him director.

It was no secret that Dick Helms loathed Dick Nixon. After Nixon became president in 1969, Helms spent most of his time trying to keep the agency out of Nixon's way. The president wanted to use them for every political “dirty trick” he could think of to keep his “enemies” under his thumb. When the Watergate scandal broke, Helms successfully kept the CIA from getting sucked into that public controversy as well, refusing to post bail for the Watergate burglars with secret CIA funds.

But Nixon still managed to pull the agency in the direction in which he wanted to go and compromised Helms at the same time. In 1973 Nixon insisted that the CIA assist in a Chilean coup to oust democratically elected, socialist President Salvadore Allende. Helms made sure that the takedown was successful.

By now Nixon infuriated Helms, and the CIA director did his best to keep the Company clear of Nixon's petty wars with the rest of the known world. He clearly realized that Nixon had dug his own grave with Watergate and saw the writing on the wall: that if Helms himself wasn't careful, he could be forced out along with Nixon when his turn came.

So when Nixon suggested later that same year that Helms become the U.S. ambassador to Iran, Helms accepted the nomination and resigned as CIA director. Helms and Iran's ruling monarch, the Shah, had enjoyed a good relationship since their days spent in prep school together. He served as ambassador from 1973 to 1976.

A problem arose when it came to light that Helms had lied under oath while in the midst of his Senate confirmation hearing for his new post. When asked pointblank whether the CIA had assisted in Allende's overthrow that same year, Helms had lied and said no, because the matter was still classified.

In 1977 Helms was convicted of perjury as a result of his testimony before Congress. He considered the conviction a mark of honor, because he'd kept the secrets despite the consequences. His $2,000 fine was paid by friends in the CIA. President Ronald Reagan awarded Helms the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1982.

Shortly before his death in 2002, Helms did something he'd previously sworn never to do: he wrote his autobiography. In it he broke no new ground and defended his participation in the coup that ousted and killed Chilean President Salvador Allende, as necessary “to preserve the Democratic constitutional system.” Never mind the fact that Allende was elected by his own people and that the military goons who replaced him were right-wingers bordering on fascist in their political beliefs.

They say that the ship of state is the only ship that leaks from the top. Perhaps the most famous stateside leaker is Daniel Ellsberg, the RAND Corporation economist who worked on a top-secret government study entitled the “History of United States Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy, 1945–1967.” Today we know this infamous collection of information as the Pentagon Papers. The disturbing findings revealed over the course of the report's seven thousand pages prompted Ellsberg to smuggle the classified papers out of the office. He then photocopied them and leaked them to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1969. This massive doorstop of secrets revealed the Vietnam War as unwinnable by the very people running it.

Ellsberg didn't stop there. Disillusioned by government and inspired by the antiwar movement, he leaked the Pentagon Papers again two years later — only this time he handed them over to the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, and more than a dozen other publications.

All hell broke loose when the
New York Times
published the first installment of the study. The media milked the revelations of the Nixon administration cover-ups about the extent of our nation's involvement in the war — up to and including the bombing of Cambodia and Laos. The Nixon administration charged Ellsberg with espionage and fought the media all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The government got an injunction against the
Times
in federal court, but failed to get one against the
Post.
The cases were consolidated and heard by the U.S. Supreme Court as
New York Times Co. v. United States
. In a 6–3 decision, the high court ruled that the injunction against the
Times
violated the First Amendment, ruling that the government failed to show that “grave and irreparable harm” would result were the injunction not granted.

Back at the White House, John Ehrlichman authorized “Hunt/Liddy Special Project No. 1,” designed to discredit Ellsberg. On September 3, 1971, about a month after the Supreme Court ruling, G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, and three CIA agents broke into Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in a vain effort to obtain evidence against him.

Sure, it sounds like something out of a movie. Former hawk risks a life in prison to hand over top-secret documents revealing the Vietnam War as unwinnable to the media, hoping it'll help end the war. But this wasn't a movie. This was real life. And it set the stage for the most devastating of all American political scandals: Watergate.

Spiro T. Agnew was governor of Maryland when presidential nominee Richard M. Nixon picked him to be his running mate in 1968. Republicans gave Agnew the nod because they hoped that a moderate from a quasi-Southern state like Maryland would keep the Deep South happy without alienating Northern voters. In selecting Agnew as his running mate, Nixon extolled the Maryland governor's virtues: “[Agnew] has real depth and genuine warmth. He has the attributes of a statesman of the first rank.”

Once sworn in as vice president, however, Agnew quickly lost Nixon's respect. Nixon didn't think Agnew smart enough to be vice president. Nixon's Oval Office tapes reveal that he had thought about kicking Agnew off of the ticket for the 1972 election and replacing him with former Texas governor and then Treasury Secretary John Connally, who had also been governor of Texas earlier in his career. The president and his trusted staffer H. R. Haldeman hatched ingenious plans to dump Agnew, including coming up with the idea of giving Agnew a television station to run.

Agnew saved Nixon the trouble, however. He was forced to resign on October 10, 1973, when he pled no contest to a single charge of tax evasion. It all began with a bribery scandal during his time as the governor of Maryland. As it turned out, Agnew had been taking steady payoffs of nearly $150,000 over a ten-year period while he was governor. He received his last $17,500 “balloon payment” bribe after he was sworm in as vice president! In return for the single plea, Agnew agreed to resign as vice president. Later, a lawsuit filed by a group of George Washington University law students forced Agnew to repay the state of Maryland the nearly $300,000 he took in bribes.

Agnew tried to rehabilitate his reputation years later when he published a memoir entitled
Go Quietly … or Else
. In the book, he claimed that Nixon and his aides had threatened to have him killed if he didn't resign as vice president. He also claimed to have been framed and that he had never taken a bribe. Released from attorney — client privilege by this claim, Agnew's attorney stated flatly that his client had lied.

After leaving office Agnew moved to California and developed another career as an international dealmaker. He helped oil-rich Arab sheiks acquire foreign business and made millions in the process. He died in 1996.

The dour son of California Quaker parents, Richard Milhous Nixon was born ambitious. During his career he became a congressman, senator, vice president, and successful corporate lawyer. In due course Nixon ascended to the presidency where he cloaked himself in secrecy and suspicion, only to resign the office in disgrace before the end of his second term. In the end he was a victim of his own demons and of the scandal to end all American political scandals: Watergate.

G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, of the White House “Plumbers” unit responsible for stopping leaks to the press, masterminded the break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee located in Washington, D.C.'s Watergate office complex on June 17, 1972. The plot was a failure. Then — U.S. President Richard M. Nixon was forced from office when it was revealed that high officials in his campaign organization, the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), orchestrated the break-in.

A security guard called the police when he found that a door latch had been re-taped open after he had un-taped it. Police arrested five men in the DNC's headquarters. Searches of their hotel rooms revealed thousands of dollars in cash; sub-poenas of their bank records turned up $89,000 in donations by the men to Nixon's reelection campaign.

All five men later pleaded guilty to various charges including burglary and wiretapping; Hunt and Liddy were convicted after a trial and sentenced to prison. One of the burglars, former CIA agent James McCord, implicated White House Counsel John Dean in a letter to U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica. McCord also told Sirica that the burglars pleaded guilty and perjured themselves under political pressure from the White House.

A special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, was appointed to investigate the matter. When he learned that the White House had a taping system installed, Cox sub-poenaed the tapes. Nixon refused to provide them, citing executive privilege. He demanded that U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned, as did his assistant, William Ruckelshaus. Eventually Solicitor-General Robert Bork, acting head of the Justice Department, fired Cox.

Leon Jaworski, Nixon's next appointment as special prosecutor, pressed forward with the subpoenas for the tapes. Nixon's claim of executive privilege was ultimately shot down by the Supreme Court.

After Nixon supplied the tapes they were played in court. The smoking gun was revealed on August 5, 1974. A tape dated June 23, 1972 — six days after the Watergate break-in — recorded Nixon and White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman discussing how to coerce the CIA director into getting the FBI director to stop the Watergate investigation. Facing certain impeachment and removal from office, Nixon resigned the presidency three days later.

Several of Nixon's aides did jail time as a result of the scandal. Pardoned by Gerald Ford, Nixon never spent a day in jail.