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The spymaster on November 22

Excerpted from Scorpions’ Dance: The President, the Spymaster and Watergate (St Martin’s Press, 2022

“Richard Helms disliked the term spymaster, but no other word captures his extraordinary—and invisible—position in the wake of Kennedy’s assassination. The deputy director had one hand-picked case officer in Miami, George Joannides, running the AMSPELL network, which was generating headlines across the country and around the world that Kennedy had been killed by a communist

The CIA’s reaction to Kennedy’s assassination

[Excerpted from Scorpions’ Dance: The President, the Spymaster and Watergate (St Martin’s Press, 2022)]

“Dick Helms was having a sandwich lunch with John McCone in the director’s suite on the 7th floor of the CIA building when an aide burst into the room. “The president’s been shot,” he cried. McCone turned on a television and watched the news bulletins. Then, Helms recalled, the director “clapped his hat on his head and left to meet Bob Kennedy at his home at Hickory Hill, not far from the agency Headquarters.”

Publisher’s Weekly on Scorpions’ Dance 

In this eye-opening investigation, journalist Morley (The Ghost) scrutinizes the CIA’s involvement in the Watergate scandal. Drawing on taped conversations between Richard Nixon and CIA director Richard Helms, Morley claims that “the Watergate affair originated in the clandestine collaborative relationship” between the two men.

Source: Nonfiction Book Review: Scorpions’ Dance: The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate by Jefferson Morley

What did Nixon mean by ‘the Whole Bay of Pigs thing?’

Helms/Nixon
President Nixon and CIA Director Richard Helms.

It is one of the enduring mysteries of the Watergate affair: Whatever did President Richard Nixon mean when he told aides on June 23, 1972 that the CIA had to shut down the Watergate investigation, lest it blow “the whole Bay of Pigs thing?”

The phrase, said White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, was Nixon’s coded way of referring to the assassination of JFK.

Haldeman was right, and now’s there’s proof.

The CIA Was Reading Lee Harvey Oswald’s Mail

Excerpt from a declassified 1975 Senate memo listing of Americans whose mail was illegally opened by the CIA between 1959 and 1975. Note that the dates are rendered in DAY/MONTH/YEAR format, not MONTH/DAY/Year)

One of the most significant JFK disclosures in recent years is a declassified memo stating that the CIA opened, read, and copied the correspondence of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who supposedly killed President Kennedy.

This spying was conducted by a super secret office in the Counterintelligence Staff, known as the Special Investigations Group, or CI/SIG.

Watergate @ 50: a new history

In the New York Times, historian Douglas Brinkley praises Garrett Graff’s new history of Watergate scandal, that convulsion of American politics in 1972-74 that culminated in the only resignation of an American president. Brinkley also notes some key questions that Graff’s book does not answer. He asks:

Were such central players as Howard Hunt and James McCord cooperating with the C.I.A. even as they orchestrated the break-in?

It’s a central issue that my forthcoming book on the CIA and Watergate, Scorpions’ Dance: The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate, answers that question with a definitive yes.  Both Hunt and McCord had backchannel relationships with CIA director Richard Helms before their arrest.

To get the whole story, pre-order Scorpions’ Dance here.

Source: Book Review: ‘Watergate,’ by Garrett M. Graff – The New York Times

Two-Day Sale: Pre-Order “Scorpions’ Dance,” the Untold Story of the CIA and Watergate

Pre-order Scorpion’s Dance now.

From now through Friday January 28, get 25% off when you preorder my forthcoming book, Scorpions’ Dance, about the CIA and Watergate.

Order online at Barnes and Noble. Click here and use code: PREORDER25.

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