The Mysteries of Watergate

Clearly the full and correct Watergate story was not reported by the Washington Post. Often a journalist simply gets a story wrong while acting in good faith.  But if the Post was willfully deceitful in its Watergate reporting, not simply negligent, then the entire modern project of slashing “investigative” journalism is built on fraud. Is today’s partisan journalism based on a “proof of concept” that was obtained by fraud? If so, ...

G.  Gordon Liddy, a lawyer, former FBI agent and chief operative in the White House Plumbers unit at the time, was a central focus for Watergate activity, even though he is correctly, and admittedly, seen as a dupe.  But he was an honest man, incapable of insincerity, such that his 1980 memoir, Will, is know to be the most candid and honest of the Watergate confessionals. Liddy, stoutly refusing to seem a “rat,” said nothing about ...

As impeachment was closing in on President Nixon, the CIA could, it seemed breathe a sigh of relief, as it had skillfully and luckily, with the unstinting help of the Washington Post, navigated rocky shoals.  The Mullen cover contract (Ep. 3),  Michael Stevens’ bombshell stories (Ep. 14),  Lou Russell’s involvement (Ep. 15), the desk key found during the Watergate breakin (Ep. 16),  CIA handler, Lee Pennington's document burni...

As of late March 1973, it looked like all the pieces were falling in place for the CIA to avoid exposure of its role in the Watergate scandal and to hide the salacious information actually targeted.  If Watergate continued to be viewed as a campaign fiasco,  John Dean’s and Jeb Magruder’s testimony against their superiors in the White House would be increasingly valuable.  But there loomed, as Watergate burglar James McCord was unl...

James McCord is a highly intriguing character, if an opaque one.  As we described earlier, John Mitchell had wanted a personal security officer, but Alfred Wong of the Secret Service, with thousands of retired agents in D.C., could only find McCord, a “retired” CIA agent with no personal security experience.  So why did McCord’s friend Wong recommend him, and is it a coincidence that McCord came from the shadowy Office of Security ...

If the Washington Post was not intentionally covering up the “CIA defense” which we discussed in the last episode, it would blare a headline about it when it was later documented that Howard Hunt, the Watergate burglary supervisor, had earlier been planning it, correct?  And if the prosecution believed that the CIA defense was truly “spurious,” why did the prosecutors work so hard to rebut it?  Did the prosecution agree that Hunt’s...

 In a trial of profound public significance, it is particularly important that the media informing the public of the prosecution cover all impactful claims and defenses. In the first of two episodes on the trial and prosecution of the Watergate burglars, we will examine whether the Washington Post intentionally covered up the planned defense of burglary supervisor Howard Hunt, a “retired” CIA agent: that the burglary was an appropr...

History has paid little attention to Alfred Baldwin, the Watergate wiretap monitor, and his knowledge.  That is most likely the result of the Washington Post feigning ignorance of his existence for the crucial first several months of the scandal.  Was the Washington Post truly ignorant of his overhearings, which would have radically altered the narrative?  And were Washington Post reporters, as claimed, ignorant of his name and rol...

All five burglars were involved in the ill-fated CIA-planned fiasco, the Bay of Pigs, and one supervisor, Howard Hunt, was a leader in that abortive Cuban invasion.  Since at the time of Watergate, he worked not only part-time at the White House but also full-time at Mullen and Company, a D.C. public relations firm with known CIA ties, an important issue for journalists to examine would have been whether Hunt was an active CIA agen...

The Watergate burglary and arrests were noteworthy, but the scandal did not heat up or capture the public's attention for four months.  So, why does it matter if the Washington Post's widely reprinted burglary arrest reporting was missing key details?  What were those missing details, and were they of history-shaping effect?  And if the Washington Post knew of these details but failed to report on them, why would they wan...

It is not an overstatement to say that American history's most lauded reporting is the Washington Post's Watergate journalism.  There is also no doubt as to its earthshaking impact, both impelling the country's only removal of a president, and also inspiring a new brand of journalism and journalists.  How is it explained, then, that so many salient facts of the Watergate story were missed, and an opposite impression ...

This second part of our discussion of The Narrative explains how otherwise odd, idiosyncratic evidence from The Mysteries of Watergate fits snugly into the revisionist narrative. This evidence, to the extent disclosed and analyzed correctly,  would have explicated the motives of major actors, but in fact was not disclosed or well explained by conventional treatments.

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In this series we have shown solid proof solving specific, discrete Mysteries of Watergate.  But humans understand morality through narratives: there is always a  moral to the story.  In this episode we will add to our series by showing how our specific proofs cohere in a satisfying overall Narrative, explaining what really happened in our country’s most important political scandal.
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The character Deep Throat, who we now know was Mark Felt, the Associate Director of the FBI at the time of Watergate,  is the most intriguing of Watergate characters regarding the journalism so crucial to understanding the scandal.  This episode explores the motive and intent of this source when he meets with Woodward in their first all-night parking garage meeting, and thereafter.  Why did he do it? Was he out to “get” Nixon or so...

We have presented in the previous episodes solid evidence of hidden motives, veiled intentions and outright deceit, involving an intriguing cast of characters in the Watergate scandal.  In this episode we will show  how these strands of evidence of skullduggery are sensibly woven together to support a coherent narrative, out of what appears to be on an initial close examination a wildly indecipherable muddle.
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G. Gordon Liddy’s salience comes from his unmatched centrality to all major factions participating in this odd drama.   He worked with the White House,  the CIA
 Plumbers, the Cuban Watergate burglars, John Dean and Jeb Magruder, even John Mitchell and Attorney General Richard Kleindeinst.  Moreover, while perhaps duped, Liddy is brutally honest and in his own strange way highly principled.  His recounting of his involvement i...

If Martinez, Russell and Stevens form a triple play of CIA involvement in prostitute taping, Lee R. Pennington is a guilty plea to criminal coverup of deep CIA participation.  This episode is packed with facts not contained in any major work on Watergate, facts verified by none other than the CIA. This episode should leave the listener with no doubt about the truth of the narrative we put forth to solve the Mysteries of Watergate.<...

Watergate can only be explained by its target. Yet for the past 49 years the Washington Post and historians have not told us where in the office the burglars were, and what key evidence one burglar tried to get rid of.  And who exactly was Eugenio Martinez?  Would his identity tell us anything?  And what role did mysterious cop Carl Shoffler play?  Tune in for a wild ride with The Mysteries of Watergate.
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Lou  Russell is the most intriguing figure in a scandal full of intrigue.  Perhaps much like Michael Stevens, his potential role could not have been spun by either the Washington Post or the Senate Watergate Committee in a way that avoided the CIA, and therefore the public has heard nothing about him.  But Russell’s participation, if proven, implicates far more than the CIA.  For those skeptically wishing to cling to the convention...