Originally posted on the Education Forum.
Richard Nixon was told that the Bay of Pigs operation held the key to understanding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It has been suggested that Nixon was given this information about the CIA involvement in the Kennedy assassination by William C. Sullivan, “Nixon’s highest-ranking loyal friend at the FBI”. Sullivan was put in charge of the bureau’s in-house investigation of the assassination. Sullivan was expected to work closely with John M. Whitten, who was running the CIA investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald. Whitten and his staff of 30 officers were sent a large amount of information from the FBI. According to Gerald D. McKnight “the FBI deluged his branch with thousands of reports containing bits and fragments of witness testimony that required laborious and time-consuming name checks.” Whitten later described most of this FBI material as “weirdo stuff”. As a result of this initial investigation, Whitten told Richard Helms that he believed that Oswald had acted alone in the assassination of Kennedy. However, on 6th December, Nicholas Katzenbach invited John M. Whitten and Birch O’Neal, Angleton’s trusted deputy and senior Special Investigative Group (SIG) officer to read Commission Document 1 (CD1), the report that the FBI had written on Oswald. Whitten now realized that the FBI had been withholding important information on Oswald from him. He also discovered that Richard Helms had not been providing him all the agency’s available files on Oswald. This included Oswald’s political activities in the months preceding the assassination. (1)
Nixon told his key aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman about this and said he would use this information to exert pressure on the CIA during his time as president. Haldeman claims in his book The Ends of Power (1978): “Ehrlichman had found himself in the middle of this feud as far back as 1969, immediately after Nixon assumed office. Nixon had called Ehrlichman into his office and said he wanted all the facts and documents the CIA had on the Bay of Pigs, a complete report on the whole project. About six months after that 1969 conversations, Ehrlichman had stopped in my office. ‘Those bastards in Langley are holding back something. They just dig in their heels and say the President can’t have it. Period. Imagine that! The Commander-in-Chief wants to see a document relating to a military operation, and the spooks say he can’t have it.’ ” (2)
Despite the reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein by the summer of 1973 President Nixon looked safe in his job. According to Woodward he asked Deep Throat was there any evidence that Nixon was covering-up the Watergate break-in. Deep Throat told Woodward to try to get presidential aide Alexander Butterfield to testify. After considerable prompting from Woodward, Sam Dash, the committee’s chief counsel, agreed to arrange an interview with this minor official who had no connections to the Watergate break-in. (3) Donald Sanders, deputy minority counsel, interviewed Butterfield, on Friday, 13 July 1973, in a background interview prior to his public testimony before the full committee. Sanders asked if there was any validity to John Dean’s hypothesis that the White House had taped conversations in the Oval Office. Butterfield replied, “I was wondering if someone would ask that. There is tape in the Oval Office.” He said that he knew it was probably the one thing that Richard Nixon would not want revealed. Butterfield then told the investigators that, while he had hoped that no one would ask about the taping system, he had previously decided he would disclose its existence if asked a direct question. (4)
Butterfield was the man responsible for the installation of the taping system which Nixon ordered for the White House in February 1971. Butterfield testified in public before the Senate Watergate Committee on 16 July 1973. The testimony was carried on live television by all the major broadcast networks. It has been argued that Butterfield’s testimony “fundamentally altered the entire Watergate investigation.” William Doyle, in his book, Inside the Oval Office: the White House tapes from FDR to Clinton (1999) has argued that it “electrified Washington and triggered a constitutional crisis”. (5)
Jim Hougan has pointed out that H. R. Haldeman believed that Butterfield was working for the CIA. William McMahon, a technical security expert who had worked for McCord at the CIA, and later for the Secret Service detachment at the White House, was interviewed by Hougan. McMahon believed that “McCord’s seconding of CIA personnel in undercover assignments at the White House amounted to the calculated infiltration of a uniquely sensitive Secret Service unit; the staff responsible for maintain and servicing the presidential taping system and storing its product.” (6)
If it had not been for the Butterfield testimony Nixon would not have been forced to resign. Deep Throat was not one person. Someone who had knowledge of the tapes wanted Nixon removed from office. Was this Butterfield or a senior figure in the CIA?
References
(1) Gerald D. McKnight, Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why (2005) pages 82-88
(2) H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power (1978) page 49
(3) Barry Sussman, The Great Cover-Up: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate (1974) pages 251-253
(4) Aaron Latham, New York Magazine (17 June 1974)
(5) William Doyle, Inside the Oval Office: the White House tapes from FDR to Clinton (1999) page 183
(6) Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA (1984) pages 56-59