(Henry Kissinger on the phone. Photo US Government.)
“The president wants you to know that if this doesn’t work, Henry, it’s your ass.”
– Charles “Bebe” Rebozo, longtime Nixon pal to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger on the eve of the invasion of Cambodia.
I swear, looking back on it, we took leave of our collective senses. I said as much to my pal Mac as we tried to figure out a time to get together at Willow. He is headed for the Outer Banks with his family at the end of the week and I am headed for Toronto for the weekend. Then I will take some leave and head to Michigan and attempt to pay the workmen for Annook’s great triumph in recreating the house up there for sale, or rent, or something.
I got a note from her this morning- I am stealing bandwidth from a neighbor, the bastards at Comcast have seen fit to take away my internet access after all the travail of installing the new modem- and she is home safely.
Apparently Big Mama’s green Dodge Stratus is at an airport, though I did not know which one. Maybe that will get clearer, in time, as I hope many things will. I told Mac that I hoped that would be true for a lot of things, including his experiences at a pivotal time in the Intelligence Community.
“I have to understand more about how this all came about,” I said on the phone. “The Schlesinger Report was a reflection of the fact that Dick Nixon did not trust his DCI, and everyone knew that J. Edgar Hoover was a thug and a blackmailer. So, the Executive branch was at war with itself?”
“You know what I think about LBJ and the ambiguity of the transition from Camelot to The Great Society,” Mac said carefully, as though he wanted to ensure he was not overheard. He cannot get over the fact that his suspicions about LBJ are pretty widely held these days.
“Yeah,” I said thoughtfully. “I remember wondering about it as a kid. I never understood the guns-and-butter thing, or even the reference. I mean, I understood the guns part, but I didn’t understand why people wanted butter instead of margarine.”
“It was a way of saying you could have everything you wanted- expensive wars and social programs. Same story, different time,” said Mac. “It just happened again if you were not watching.”
“I am resigned to the fact that we will never understand what really happened in the 1960s and 1970s,” I said wistfully. “But the official story of what went on is strange enough. You went to CIA at the behest of Bronson Tweedy to take the heat off Director Helms, so he could claim to be following the recommendations of the Schlesinger report.”
“January first of 1972,” said Mac. “And we worked out of General Hershey’s old Selective Service Headquarters on F Street. Director Helms didn’t want anything to do with community management. ”
“So you were on F Street when the Watergate break-in happened?”
“Yes, that was in June of that year. Things were about to get very tense between Langley and the White House.”
“It’s amazing that all those people who about to become famous- G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis- the whole cast of the Watergate Hearings- were just a block away from you in the OEOB!”
Mac smiled. “Yes they were, and President Nixon, too. Mentioning those names brings back memories. Five of the burglars had direct connections to the Agency, which was sort of curious. Director Helms testified during the Watergate Hearings that the CIA had been “duped” into taking part in the Watergate break-in by White House officials.”
“You mean he as much as admitted the Agency participated?”
“You could take it that way. But, see, Helms was fired the next year for not stonewalling the Watergate investigation. He knew something was coming, though. The protests against the War were what started it all in motion.”
“We never were defeated in the field in Vietnam,” I said. “The war was lost right here in Washington and in the streets near the universities. In fact, that was the first time I was here in Washington as an adult. I flew down for the May Day 1971 demonstrations. They said they were going to shut down the government, and I wanted to see it.”
“President Nixon was out at the Western White House at San Clemente,” said Mac.
“You guys sure screwed up my commute to the Pentagon.”
“Say, that’s right. This is the first time I am actually in the narrative.”
“Blocking traffic,” said the Admiral dryly.
“Director Helms knew that the Congress was going to try to assert authority over the Agency, so that is when they started to hunker down. He insisted that they start to get rid of the MK-ULTRA files on the experiments they had been conducting since the 1950s. It was remarkable that any of it survived to be in the Family Jewels.”
“Was that the LSD experiments?”
“Among other things,” said Mac. “Not many documents survived, but it was evident that methods were explored to alter individual mental states and brain functions though clandestine introduction of drugs and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, and verbal and sexual abuse.”
“Sounds like some of that stuff came back in the enhanced interrogation techniques in the Black Prisons after 9/11.”
The Agency was involved in a lot of things that they did not want made public.”
“Didn’t a researcher die from a bad trip?”
“If you want to call the death of Frank Olson a “bad trip” I suppose that would have to include the blow to the temple that knocked him out before he “fell” out the tenth floor window of his hotel.”
“Was he high?”
“No, the story went that he had been dosed him up at an off-site and he had a bad trip and became depressed because of it. He went to his bosses and told them he wanted to quit.”
“Apparently they didn’t like that” Something had been gnawing at me for minutes. “Say, wait a minute. Wasn’t there a story that claimed that E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis were two of the three tramps who were arrested and released in Dealey Plaza the day that JFK was shot?”
“They say a lot of things,” said Mac.
(The tramps of Dealey Plaza. Maybe Howard Hunt is the one on the right? Others say a man named Charles Rogers is on the left and Charles Harrelson (actor Woody’s father) is in the middle. I think the guy on the tight is a bum.)
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com