Did the CIA make two assassination plans against President Richard Nixon? Such is the purport of a recent story in the Daily Mail. It's a long, weird, not-fully-comprehensible tale of Watergate, Vietnam, the JFK assassination, and much more. The "onlie begettor" of this sonnet is a man named Roger Stone, a former Nixon confidante.
My immediate reaction to Stone's tale can be summed up in one syllable: "Whuuuhhhhh?"
I ran the story past Jim DiEugenio, an expert in the assassination and all of that there stuff. I asked him to give his reaction, even a one-word reaction. Soon thereafter, the word came forth:
"Crap."
Quote unquote.
Another fine JFK researcher, Joe Williams (a.k.a. Trojan Joe, a regular in this blog's comments section), has reminded me that Roger Stone played an ill-understood role in the tale of Dan Rather and those rather notorious Texas Air National Guard documents.
Williams also reminded me of this New York Daily News story from 2008:
GOP operative Roger Stone helped bring down Eliot Spitzer
Stone was the one who tipped off the FBI to Spitzer's dalliances with those hookers.
Spitzer allies blasted Stone's involvement as evidence that the investigation was tainted from the start.
"This whole story does not pass the smell test," Harvard Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz told the Daily News. "What others have done to Eliot Spitzer is far more serious than any crime Spitzer committed."
A source close to the case questioned Stone's account that he found out about Spitzer's involvement through a friend in the Miami sex business.Does Stone's history mean that everything in the recent Daily Mail story is (quote) "Crap" (unquote)? Not necessarily.
Spitzer's sworn enemies in politics or on Wall Street, where he is widely reviled for leading a crusade against corporate corruption, would have had ample motive to dig for dirt on him, the source said.
"[Stone] has no shortage of history involved in bizarre political situations," said a Democratic consultant.
A GOP consultant who has locked horns with the mercurial Stone warned the whole thing could be one of his famed PR stunts.
"How could you believe anything this guy says or does?" the rival said. "I think the guy's got a screw loose."
But...consider the source.
6 comments:
Interesting that Stone was associated with the take down of Spitzer. So he got his info through a contact in the sex business? Makes sense since Stone and his wife used to frequent sex clubs. Roger Stone was known for his costume at the clubs. He liked to wear leather chaps.
The guy has tied himself to Nixon's image. He's trying to rehabilitate Tricky Dick. He's been pushing the "Johnson killed Kennedy" meme. He recently published a book about Nixon that must badly need publicity. Saying the CIA was antagonistic to Nixon makes Nixon look good and distances him from JFK's murder.
Stone posted a retort to a Robert Parry article carried in OpEdNews about Nixon's treasonous deal with the North Vietnamese to derail the peace talks. His avatar was a photo of the Nixon tattoo on his back at the base of his neck. (I think he's developed a few loose screws). This story has a connection with Watergate in that Johnson wrote out a letter detailing Nixon'x involvement in the treasonous N. Vietnam affair. Some believe Nixon's burglars were looking for that letter
Roger Stone tells lies for a living. I wouldn't believe a word he says about anything.
I've been working on this one too. Now that so many files have been released about the JFK hit it's time to throw a monkey wrench in the gears. Stone also wrote a book saying that LBJ was the mastermind of the Kennedy assassination. Here's a good interview with Jeff Morley at his JFK facts website with Stone. there are 104 comments and some are priceless:
http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/poll/why-roger-stones-jfk-book-cant-be-dismissed/
However, it is plausible that there was a plan to kill Nixon if the watergate break-in didn't work. In his book "The Road To 911" Peter Dale Scott describes how Nixon and Kissinger were hated by the emerging neo-con faction. This was for opening talks with China, the Helsinki accords and the way Kissinger circumvented the conventional "chain of command".
Mae Brussell was also convinced that there had been a plot to kill Nixon, and there were several potshots taken at Ford and later an attempt on Reagan.
Back to Stone; the comments on Morley's website interview suggest Stone is a loon.
Dojo, I agree with your take. Stone is hardly a reliable source. But it is true that the hard-liners hated Nixon for pursuing detente with China and the USSR. Also, the far right detested Kissinger even more than the lefties did.
James Jesus Angleton -- still the patron saint of the far right -- thought that Kissinger was a commie. I suspect (but cannot prove) that this may have something to do with the removal of both Angleton and Helms in that period.
A long time ago, there was a book called "The Glass House Tapes" about a guy named Louis Tackwood who basically snitched to the LAPD about what radical black groups were doing. Tackwood claimed that he somehow stumbled across a plot to stage an attack on Nixon during the 1972 Republican National Convention. This might have led to a postponement of electoral politics as usual.
Is this true? I don't know. I once met a guy who kind of knew Tackwood. He liked Tackwood, but said that he was a con artist. Which is what you would expect from someone who became a police informant.
My gut feeling is that something really, really big and weird was in the works in that period. But we need better sourcing. We can't rely on questionable characters like Roger Stone and Louis Tackwood.
Scott Kaiser-
I find it so amusing that so many folks seem to think they have all the answers, but neglects to communicate with folks who do know, like Eugenio Martinez who is still very much alive.
Listen folks, the reason they wanted to take Nixon out is because Nixon shutdown CIA operations into Cuba.
Thirty remaining "frogmen" were stationed in Moa Bay Cuba when Nixon ordered them back to the United States.
By this time Nixon and Helms were already butting heads over the Bay of Pig documents.
Eugenio Martinez was among those thirty remaining frogmen,Eugenio was quite pissed that it all came to an end although he won't admit it directly, anyone with over 350 infiltrations didn't want to give up.
When the two assassination attempts failed that's when the CIA took matters into their own hands, and Eugenio Martinez was more than happy to be apart of it.
By the way, my father just so happened to be the sixth burglar in Watergate none has known about.
Yes, I gave Roger those documents from the Howard S. Libengood papers regarding Nixon's assassination attempts.
Any questions?
The CIA plans described in the article sound a little far fetched. Wasn't a "lone nut" the operable template in those times?
Hello, I'm reading Roger Stone's book on LBJ and the JFK assassination at this time. It doesn't read like the work of a madman. Stone is not the only one to try and "rehabilitate" Nixon by the way, so does liberal-leaning Russ Baker. Partisanship can't always be the ultimate consideration.
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