![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/062011-takingleave-428x281.png\" "\\"062011-takingleave\\"")
\n(Henry Kissinger on the phone. Photo US Government.)<\/p>\n
\n(Henry Kissinger on the phone. Photo US Government.)<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president wants you to know that if this doesn\u2019t work, Henry, it\u2019s your ass.\u201d
\n– Charles \u201cBebe\u201d Rebozo, longtime Nixon pal to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger on the eve of the invasion of Cambodia.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s great triumph in recreating the house up there for sale, or rent, or something.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Apparently Big Mama\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to understand more about how this all came about,\u201d I said on the phone. \u00a0\u201cThe 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?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know what I think about LBJ and the ambiguity of the transition from Camelot to The Great Society,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d I said thoughtfully. \u201cI 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\u2019t understand why people wanted butter instead of margarine.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a way of saying you could have everything you wanted- expensive wars and social programs. Same story, different time,\u201d said Mac. \u201cIt just happened again if you were not watching.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am resigned to the fact that we will never understand what really happened in the 1960s and 1970s,\u201d I said wistfully. \u201cBut 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJanuary first of 1972,\u201d said Mac. \u201cAnd we worked out of General Hershey\u2019s old Selective Service Headquarters on F Street. Director Helms didn\u2019t want anything to do with community management. \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you were on F Street when the Watergate break-in happened?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, that was in June of that year. Things were about to get very tense between Langley and the White House.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing that all those people who about to become famous- G. Gordon \u00a0Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis- the whole cast of the Watergate Hearings- were just a block away from you in the OEOB!\u201d<\/p>\n
Mac smiled. \u201cYes 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 \u201cduped\u201d into taking part in the Watergate break-in by White House officials.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou mean he as much as admitted the Agency participated?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never were defeated in the field in Vietnam,\u201d I said. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Nixon was out at the Western White House at San Clemente,\u201d said Mac.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou guys sure screwed up my commute to the Pentagon.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSay, that\u2019s right. This is the first time I am actually in the narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBlocking traffic,\u201d said the Admiral dryly.<\/p>\n
\u201cDirector 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWas that the LSD experiments?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAmong other things,\u201d said Mac. \u201cNot 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSounds like some of that stuff came back in the enhanced interrogation techniques in the Black Prisons after 9\/11.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Agency was involved in a lot of things that they did not want made public.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDidn\u2019t a researcher die from a bad trip?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want to call the death of Frank Olson a \u201cbad trip\u201d I suppose that would have to include the blow to the temple that knocked him out before he \u201cfell\u201d out the tenth floor window of his hotel.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWas he high?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cApparently they didn\u2019t like that\u201d Something had been gnawing at me for minutes. \u00a0\u201cSay, wait a minute. Wasn\u2019t 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?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey say a lot of things,\u201d said Mac.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/062011-takingleave2-349x281.gif\" "\\"062011-takingleave2\\"")
\n(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\u2019s father) is in the middle. I think the guy on the tight is a bum.)<\/p>\n
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Henry Kissinger on the phone. Photo US Government.) \u201cThe president wants you to know that if this doesn\u2019t work, Henry, it\u2019s your ass.\u201d – Charles \u201cBebe\u201d 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1258,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions\/1258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}