PODCAST
Watergate was the most impactful political scandal in American history, resulting in the only forceable removal of a U.S. President, Richard Nixon. After seemingly exhaustive investigative reporting by the Washington Post and dozens of books and movies on the scandal since, there are many questions left unanswered.
Through this podcast series, The Mysteries of Watergate, lawyer, author and historian John O’Connor methodically presents the lingering questions, central truths and inconvenient facts of the scandal so we can finally solve the mysteries of Watergate.
If you like what you hear, please leave a 5-star review over on Apple Podcasts and share this with your friends. If you have questions you'd like me to answer on future episodes, please send a tweet to @TheJohnDOConnor or email me through the contact page of this website.
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EPISODE SUMMARIES
Ep. 01a: Big Questions from a Small Burglary
Was Watergate just a “third-rate burglary” or something more insidious? And was the Washington Post investigative journalism depicting the scandal entirely accurate? In this episode we will put a steady gaze to the timing of Watergate and take a deep dive into these two interrelated topics: who was truly responsible for the June 17, 1972 burglary of the DNC headquarters, and did the Washington Post withhold key information from the public about it?
Ep. 01b: What’s Past is Prologue
What do a young widow from California, an alcoholic private detective, a civil rights leader, a CIA poisons doctor and a Washington, D.C. prostitution ring have to do with each other? Seemingly disconnected story lines find themselves woven together in the bizarre 1970s political scandal we call Watergate.
Ep. 02: Infiltrating the White House
How do Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Papers, George Washington’s crushing of the Whiskey Rebellion, and Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation explain the mysterious motives behind the burglary of the DNC Headquarters? Be among the first to understand this little-understood Mystery of Watergate.
Mullen and Company was a worldwide public relations firm specializing in clients who grew fruit in banana republics. Why would the firm hire “retired” CIA agent Howard Hunt as a copywriter? Was it to pen the praises of United Fruit bananas, or some other purpose? And why would it want this full-time employee to work part-time at the White House? The Washington Post in its 3000 articles never explained this oddity, but we'll tackle it in this episode of The Mysteries of Watergate.
Ep. 04: Howard Hunt, Man of Mystery
Retired CIA agent Howard Hunt was hired as a part-time consultant by the White House in 1971 to help discredit Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the infamous Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg exposed the foolishness of the Vietnam War as part of his role handling “sensitive assignments” for the Nixon Administration. If, as speculated, Howard Hunt was also working for the CIA, how would this work help the CIA? When he was arrested and charged in the Watergate burglary, why was he interested in retrieving the cloth-bound Hermes notebook he kept in his White House safe? Would this notebook help solve one of The Mysteries of Watergate?
Ep. 05: CIA Operations Under White House Cover
When FBI Associate Director Mark Felt surveyed the aftermath of the Watergate burglary, he concluded that it had been "a White House operation, a CIA operation, or both." How could it have been “both”? No one has ever testified that the CIA had been involved. In this episode, we will examine whether the earlier burglary of the psychiatrist of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg could be seen as a template for Watergate. That prior Ellsberg burglary failed. Or did it? The first of the two Watergate burglaries also failed. Or did it achieve its hidden purpose? We'll dig into the evidence to help elucidate the puzzling purpose of the second Watergate burglary, which ended in arrests.
Ep. 06: The Undetermined Target
The target of the Watergate burglars has always been a matter of speculation and head-scratching. While many have focused on the knowledge of DNC Chairman Larry O’Brien, who may have possessed dark secrets of Nixon, or illegal “Fidelista” contributions to the DNC by Fidel Castro supporters, the truth is far more stunning, involving lascivious conversations, a rogue intelligence agency and corrupt journalism. We will explore and explain in this highly intriguing episode.
As the Watergate burglary trial approached in December 1972, and January 1973, both burglary supervisor Howard Hunt and Prosecutor Earl Silbert prepared for a trial that would feature the CIA, Mullen and Company, and charges of intended blackmail over racy phone calls. But why is it today that the public still does not know about any such allegations? What happened to this explosive evidence? In this episode we will address this question and solve one more of The Mysteries of Watergate.
Ep. 08: John Dean, Clever Counsel or Conflicted Quisling?
John Dean, the shrewd young White House Counsel who was the main witness to the obstruction of justice which forced President Nixon’s resignation, has consistently cast himself as a Boy Scout assisting bad companions. But is there reason to believe that Dean himself had something to do with the Watergate break-ins, notwithstanding his denials? And if so involved, would it be for reasons other than campaign purposes, albeit with campaign cash? To understand Watergate, we must study closely the largely unstudied role of Dean, arguably the most intriguing of all the Watergate characters. In this episode, we will begin to explore John Dean's ambitious motives, ambiguous role and self-saving actions, seeking to solve yet another one of The Mysteries of Watergate.
Sex, drugs and wiretaps. These were the tools used by the CIA to perform social research experiments such MK-Ultra, Project BLUEBIRD and Project ARTICHOKE through its highly secretive Office of Security, which was the only department to report directly to the Director . Stranger than fiction, the truth about the CIA’s illegal experiments involving prostitutes and psychotropic drugs is not only disturbing but also helps answer yet another of The Mysteries of Watergate.
Sexual obsession throughout D.C.’s established institutions leads by labyrinthine path to Watergate. In this episode we meet the White House Call Girl who is a leading character in the drama, along with intelligence agencies looking for illicit sexual dirt.
Ep. 11: The Dog Who Did Not Bark; Jack Anderson and the CIA
One of the lingering mysteries of Watergate is the foreknowledge, or lack of same, of the country’s most famed “muckraker,” syndicated columnist Jack Anderson. Anderson was known as a man with incredibly wide and deep sources at all levels of Washington, D.C. government scandals, and in 1972 won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Nixon Administration’s secret policies regarding the India-Pakistan conflict, seemingly getting inside information from a military spy ring which had infiltrated the White House. Anderson, intriguingly, was later said to be the target of a Nixon order to assassinate or disable him by poison, as testified to by Howard Hunt. Was he? And if Anderson did know of an impending Watergate breakin, wouldn’t he print it? If not, why not? Also, oddly, the CIA also seems to have had interactions of a threatening nature with him in early 1972. Anderson’s role, or lack of role, in Watergate is one of the scandal’s murkiest areas of mystery.
Ep. 12: John Dean’s Historical Blunder
We know that the first wiretapping and burglary were fruitless. Why did the burglars go in a second time, against the wishes of both Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy? How does Richard Nixon's White House Counsel John Dean fit into this story? The resolution of this question, hidden until now, will explain much to solve The Mysteries of Watergate.
While most Watergate histories do not focus on James McCord, except for his dramatic letter to Judge Sirica at sentencing, this enigmatic, “retired“ CIA agent is an important character for those who wish to deeply understand the scandal. In fact, it is his superficial inscrutability that should have led analysts to use him as a Rosetta Stone to unravel several significant curiosities. In this episode, close scrutiny of McCord will resolve some issues earlier raised, while yielding answers which lead to yet deeper questions. James McCord is indeed a cipher, but one who, with patience, helps us to unlock The Mysteries of Watergate.
Ep. 14: Michael Stevens, Bug Fabricator
On the night of May 16-17, 1973, Bob Woodward had his most dramatic encounter with his normally cool source Deep Throat. Agitated, hurried, he warned the reporter that “Everyone’s life is in danger!” The dramatic scene is featured in the movie and book, All the President's Men, but never reported by the Washington Post. In the book, the reporters noted that nothing ever came of these terrifying warnings. Is this true? And what does this have to do with Michael Stevens, the Chicago bug fabricator from whom James McCord purchased bugs? Is Stevens connected in any way with the death of Dorothy Hunt? How so? And do the bugs McCord still had on order with Stevens at the time of the arrests tell us anything about possible involvement of the CIA? Why hasn’t Michael Stevens and his role been widely known? Discussion of this evidence will help us solve several interrelated Mysteries of Watergate.
Ep. 15: Lou Russell, the Sixth Burglar?
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 conventional Watergate narrative, Lou Russell is a mystery who cannot be explained.
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.
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.
Ep. 18: Liddy, Watergate’s Unguided Missile
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 in Watergate did not emerge until the statute of limitations passed, and he gives the lie to many other accounts, to a great degree with innocence and crazed naïveté. You cannot make up this character and with Liddy's story, we solve yet another of The Mysteries of Watergate.
Ep. 19: Analyzing the Evidence
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.
Ep. 20: Deep Throat and the Garage Meetings
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 some other end. And did the Washington Post and Bob Woodward capture the essence of this most misunderstood man? Analyzing the work of Mark Felt, this clever, principled man helps us begin our unpacking of the journalism so integral to the scandal, and in so doing gets us started on a journey of understanding what is good for our democracy, and what is not, about today’s “investigative” journalism.
Ep. 21: The True Watergate Narrative, Part 1
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.
Ep. 22: The True Watergate Narrative, Part 2
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.
Ep. 23: Big Questions About Big Journalism
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 consistently given? There are big questions for the Washington Post to answer in this podcast series, questions posed in this episode and expounded upon in future episodes as we continue our deep dive into the Mysteries of Watergate.
Ep. 24: Burglary Information Gone Missing
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 want to create, rather than solve, one of the Mysteries of Watergate?
Ep. 25: Mullen and Company’s Covered Up Cover Contract
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 agent working undercover during the Watergate burglary. Do we have proof that the Washington Post knew of Mullen and Company’s role? And if it did, was that merely a minor failing in its Pulitzer prize-winning work? Or could this omission have potentially world-changing effect?
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 role prior to October 1972? Is there a circumstantial way to prove the Washington Post's early knowledge of Baldwin, if the Post claims otherwise?
Ep. 27: Covering Up the CIA Defense
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 appropriate national security CIA operation. If the Post did so intentionally, the paper can justifiably be accused of a coverup far more significant than a coverup of checks routed through Mexico which caused President Nixon to resign. But what is the proof that the Washington Post covered up Hunt's defense and, far more seriously, that our chief intelligence agency had infiltrated the White House and was working at cross-purposes to our elected Executive? We will present our proof in this episode and later follow with the Washington Post’s coverage of, or failure to cover, other prominent issues.
Ep. 28: Blacking Out Blackmail
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 motives sprang from his Mullen and Company employment as a CIA cover company, and that the object of the burglary was blackmailing with sexual information? If so, doesn’t this planned prosecution sound much like the CIA defense, only presented so that Hunt would not be acquitted if he employed it? If a blackmail motive was posited by ethical career prosecutors, wouldn’t the great Washington Post feature that in headlines? Tune in for a startling view of Watergate’s “paper of record” as we tackle yet another of the Mysteries of Watergate.
Ep. 29: Misrepresenting McCord’s Conduct
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 ("OS") within the CIA, as did Watergate burglary supervisor Howard Hunt? Did the Washington Post truthfully report on what appeared to be stunning evidence of McCord’s work as an undercover CIA agent? What is this evidence that the Post so clearly withheld from the public, dramatic evidence that would have changed public perception of our country’s most serious scandal? In this episode, we will solve one more of the Mysteries of Watergate.
Ep. 30: Stranger Danger, Hiding Stevens and Russell
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 unleashing to Judge Sirica about the White House, two serious dangers to this view of Watergate: Michael Stevens and Lou Russell. They worried Dean and Magruder more than they threatened the CIA. Stevens and Russel especially threatened a newspaper which was about to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize for its Nixon-targeted reporting. Can you guess which paper, and whether it reported truthfully about Russell and Stevens? Could that paper have helped avoid at least one needless death?
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 burning (Ep. 17), the CIA Defense offered during the burglary trial (Ep. 27), blackmail claims (Ep. 28), and Bittenbender's reports had all been avoided in the public narrative. So nothing could derail our country’s first presidential impeachment, correct?
But what if an honest CIA Security Officer, wishing not to be obstructive, forced disclosure of previously concealed CIA documents to the Senate? The Democratic Majority would not wish to touch them, but what about the Republican Minority, led by Tennessee Senator Howard Baker, heretofore cowed into submission by the Washington Post? And with the televised hearings long concluded, how would the Republican Minority reach the public? Tune in to this chapter of Watergate, regarding the little-read Baker Report, that has been lost to history.
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 the scandal until this book, and therefore it was not until 1980 that the public could learn many behind-the-scenes facts, implications of which required detailed Watergate knowledge to understand. These implications were, properly presented, explosive. The perceived expert on all things Watergate, Bob Woodward, did a full book review, the public’s last best chance to truly understand Watergate. Would this famed reporter truthfully inform the world of these earthshaking facts, and more importantly, explain to the uninformed why these facts are so significant? As news was proceeding to become history, would Woodward and the Washington Post be an aid to truthful history or would they put in historical concrete a false narrative for generations to consume? Tune in to this most enlightening evidence of how our democracy is dying in darkness.
Ep. 33: Watergate Journalism, The Seeds of our Discontent
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, our country has been divided horribly by the Washington Post’s Watergate journalism, the seeds of our discontent.
Ep. 34: Watergate Journalism’s Bitter Harvest
Prior episodes have shown that the Nixon Presidency, churlishly cynical though it may have been, was the victim of deceitful journalism by the Washington Post which cast it far more villainously than deserved.
Was the harm of this journalism limited to this particular epoch? Unfortunately, no. This episode will show but a few examples of how this greatly ballyhooed style of “investigative” journalism caused far more harm than partisan electoral advantage. In its effort to prosecute a target, such journalism must by its very nature conceal and distort, which, when applied to matters of national security, can endanger us all, either by excessive manacles placed on our intelligence agencies, enabling terrorist attack, or, at the other extreme, allowing these same agencies carte blanche skullduggery when they are pursuing a partisan domestic target to the benefit of a foreign adversary. In short, for decades American society has been reaping Watergate journalism’s bitter harvest.