Spies fall out: a Watergate story
Jefferson Morley
June 9, 2022
The buddy-buddy friendship of CIA director Richard Helms and Watergate burglar Howard Hunt did not end well.
My story in Graydon Carter’s AirMailNews
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Is there an audiobook of ‘Scorpions’ Dance?’
Jefferson Morley
June 9, 2022
Yes there is. If you like listening to your spy stories, you can pre-order it here.
CIA tradecraft & JFK’s assassination: ‘The very top people’
Jefferson Morley
June 8, 2022
[ICYMI: Part I: A veteran CIA officer analyzes the death of a president.]
“Why am I doing this?” Rolf Mowatt-Larssen asked the audience at the Coalition Against Political Assassinations’ conference in Dallas. “As a CIA officer it’s a little controversial. What is my goal? My goal is to have an answer [about who killed JFK] for myself and my children.” That may sound overly ingenuous to some, but most people in the room, myself included, had the same agenda.
Mowatt-Larssen was nine years old when he heard the news from Dallas.
…CIA tradecraft & JFK’s assassination: ‘The very top people’Read More »
You’re invited to the Spy Museum’s event on the CIA and Watergate
Jefferson Morley
June 8, 2022
Next month, the Spy Museum in Washington DC will host conversation about Scorpions Dance. I’ll be talking with with James Rosen, author of Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate.
An excerpt from my book:
“As told by the Washington Post, and the movie All the President’s Men, Watergate is the tale of a lawless and paranoid president brought to justice by an independent press. The reports of the Senate Watergate Committee and House Judiciary Committee wove narratives of impeachable offenses committed by a president who had abused his powers, both at home …
…You’re invited to the Spy Museum’s event on the CIA and WatergateRead More »
The Watergate conference starts tomorrow
Jefferson Morley
June 8, 2022
Sponsored by Shane O’Sullivan (Kingston School of Art) and Dr Melissa Graves (The Citadel), the conference features a remarkable array of guests: Register here : The Watergate Break-in: 50 Years Later.
Talking about American power with Parallax Views
Jefferson Morley
June 8, 2022
…..the dual lives and “clandestine collaborative relationship” between CIA director Richard Helms and PresidentRichard Nixon ….
At my neighborhood bookstore
Jefferson Morley
June 8, 2022
I’ll be talking about the CIA in American politics with my historian/activist Eddie Becker at the Lost City Bookstore in Washington DC on Thursday, June 16. Free tickets here.
CIA tradecraft & JFK’s assassination: A veteran officer analyzes the death of a president
Jefferson Morley
June 7, 2022
(This article, titled “Under CIA Eyes,” first appeared in Counterpunch, Vol. 25 published in January 2020.).
“I was struck by the intimacy and the smallness of the whole surroundings,” said retired CIA officer Rolf Mowatt-Larssen after his first visit to Dealey Plaza in November 2019.
Dealey Plaza, a grassy Art Deco entry point to downtown Dallas, is where President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed on November 22, 1963. Hundreds of thousands of people still come from around the world to see the spot where the popular liberal president was ambushed. Many of them have the same reaction to the crime scene: the intimacy, the smallness.
Mowatt-Larssen was not just any tourist.
…CIA tradecraft & JFK’s assassination: A veteran officer analyzes the death of a presidentRead More »
Watergate’s Scorpions: The CIA and White House
Jefferson Morley
June 7, 2022
Morley deftly showcases Helms’s struggle to determine what obligation, if any, required him to provide the intelligence secrets of a past president to that of a current one. Should an intelligence director divulge an agency’s past actions to satisfy a current president’s political inquiries?
Scorpion’s Dance at Politics & Prose Bookstore
Jefferson Morley
June 7, 2022
If you live in the Washington area and want to get out for an entertaining evening, come see me talk about Scorpion’s Dance at Politics and Prose Bookstore on Connecticut Ave on June 13.
In which I undergo the Page 99 test
Jefferson Morley
June 6, 2022
“Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.” –Ford Madox Ford
Source: The Page 99 Test: Jefferson Morley’s “Scorpions’ Dance”
The [Redacted] Truth About the CIA’s [Redacted] Role in Watergate
Jefferson Morley
June 6, 2022
…Key details of the CIA’s relationship with three of the Watergate burglars are still shrouded in official secrecy, even on the 50th anniversary of the break-in that lead to the downfall of President Richard Nixon.
-Source: The [Redacted] Truth About the CIA’s [Redacted] Role in Watergate
The [Redacted] Truth About the CIA’s [Redacted] Role in WatergateRead More »
Nixon’s Plan to Threaten the CIA on JFK’s Assassination
Jefferson Morley
June 5, 2022
From my new piece in POLITICO:
an edgy conversation between Nixon and Helms eight months before the Watergate arrests confirms that Nixon did indeed have JFK’s assassination on his mind when he pressed Helms about the secrets of the Bay of Pigs.
Source: Nixon’s Plan to Threaten the CIA on JFK’s Assassination – POLITICO
JFK, Bob Dylan, and the death of the American Dream
Jefferson Morley
June 3, 2022
From The Nation, Tim Shorrock reconnoiters the terrain of Bob Dylan’s “Murder Most Foul.”
…JFK, Bob Dylan, and the death of the American Dream Read More »
Talking with David Talbot
Jefferson Morley
June 1, 2022
David Talbot and I recently talked about the hidden hand of the CIA in the Watergate affair on San Francisco’s KPFA.