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| Two Dicks: Washington civility |
Richard Nixon truly believed that almost everyone was out to get him, including the CIA and the Eastern Establishment.
After he was elected president, Nixon regularly unleashed his Dobermans to try to raid CIA's secret archives at Langley.
He wanted to use secrets for his political advantage, especially against Ted Kennedy, whom he was convinced would run against him in 1972 and win--even after a woman drowned in Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick.
Nixon knew about CIA's plan to terminate Fidel Castro, not least because it was hatched with his participation, while he was Eisenhower’s Vice president. He wanted to know if and how the Kennedys had tried to execute this hit after JFK got elected to the White House.
Moreover, Nixon suspected that the Kennedys played a role in Marilyn Monroe's "suicide."
Moreover, Nixon suspected that the Kennedys played a role in Marilyn Monroe's "suicide."
So Nixon sent a series of snarling flunkies over to Langely, demanding this and that, trying to disguise their true interests and intentions.
One by one, they were told to f--- off.
Then Nixon sent John Erhlichman--CIA called him "The Rottweiler"--and that round-faced bastard made no pretenses: he demanded agency files on Castro and Marilyn.
CIA told Erhlichman to f--- off, too.
The Establishment, also, had grown weary of Nixon's behavior. Henry Kissinger had been assigned by their Pratt House crowd to keep Tricky Dick's foreign policy in check, but Nixon was too weird for even Kissinger to handle. And Kissinger was weird, too.
Ultimately, the Establishment, from which CIA drew most of its senior officers (such as William Bundy, brother of McGeorge, twice as culpable), wanted the power of the presidency dissipated.
It was not a difficult operation to cripple Nixon, and by extension, the office of the White House.
CIA knew all of Nixon's personality quirks from their psychological profile of him. (CIA employs staff psychiatrists who prepare such profiles of world leaders.)
It was just a matter of playing to these quirks; giving Nixon the proverbial rope with which to hang himself.
CIA arranged for one of its operatives to get a second-tier job at the White House, placed somewhere sensitive, between Erhlichman and Kissinger.
It was CIA's agent that orchestrated the creation of a White House "plumber’s unit" to patch leaks. Hunt, Liddy, Sturgis, et al.
CIA's guy ordered his White House team to break into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex, ostensibly to uncover the dubious black-money links between the DNC's Lawrence O'Brien and reclusive multi-millionaire Howard Hughes, who was already telling CIA anything it wanted to know anyway.
The true objective for the break-in was to get White House operatives caught with their zippers down.
An anonymous phone call to the on-duty security guard was all it took.
Well, not all. It needed a push to get it out of the back pages of the Washington Post, onto page one.
Enter W. Mark Felt, a.k.a. Deep Throat.
Deep Throat provided the Post's Robert Woodward with tit-bits about the kind of election slush-fund that every politician in the history of the United States has maintained--and turned Watergate from a purposely bungled break-in to a catchphrase that gave Nixon insomnia and an increased phobia of the media--and bequeathed to society the stupidity of having to endure every future scandal post-fixed with the word gate.
Nixon sent a new batch of emissaries to CIA--this time to seek its assistance.
But CIA wanted nothing to do with Tricky Dick's criminal issues (which they created), and told him so.
The Dickster fired CIA's director, Richard Helms, in retaliation.
And through their operative, Alexander Butterfield, the CIA revealed the existence of the White House tapes.
And that, effectively, fired Nixon.