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.
As I show in my forthcoming book, Scorpion’s Dance, Nixon himself explained the JFK reference in a tense, twisted conversation with CIA director Richard Helms several months before the arrest of five burglars at the Watergate office complex that would sweep both Nixon and Helms to disgrace.
Known as “the man who kept the secrets,” Dick Helms understood exactly what Dick Nixon was talking about, which is why the phrase made him angry.
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