Dialogue Conspiracy No. 51 · July 1, 1972 · KLRB-FM, Carmel
Two weeks after five men were caught inside the Democratic National Committee’s offices at the Watergate, the other story of the week was Martha Mitchell, who told reporters she had been thrown on a bed and given a needle in California . Mae reads the two stories as one. In her account the wife of the man whose committee employed the burglars’ security chief is a political prisoner, held because she saw the four guests who were never caught . Her larger reading ran against the one that later prevailed: the team was the CIA’s Bay of Pigs group, and the danger, as she saw it, was to Richard Nixon himself .
Key Topics
- A caller’s Santa Cruz group named Penn Jones as its national coordinator, and Jones told her he coordinates no such committee .
- The nine guests registered under aliases taken, Mae says, from the spy novels Howard Hunt wrote , and two of the five arrested carried Hunt’s name and telephone number .
- She goes through James McCord’s security firm, incorporated only after it won the Republican contract and, by Maryland’s records, not licensed for security work ; in her reading it is a CIA front .
- From the Chicago Tribune’s report that the State Department is weighing a Nixon trip to Cuba and Brezhnev’s new pledge to Cuba , she argues that the trip would turn the anti-Castro Cubans against the president .
- The burglars carried the letterhead of Ameritas, a Cuban group with no public record , and Robert Bennett, Hunt’s employer, admitted to running “a dummy organization” for the campaign .
- She closes on secrecy, from Jack Anderson’s column on classification to the 75-year seal on the Kennedy evidence .
Notable Quotes
"Out of books of fiction that a man by the name of Mr. Hunt writes for the CIA."Mae Brussell, on the guests' aliases, Mae Brussell Research Center, Broadcast 1 (1 Jul 1972), 7:22
"I'm going slow today, just covering a fraction of this, to show how a CIA operation, the chain of command, breaks down."Mae Brussell, Mae Brussell Research Center, Broadcast 1 (1 Jul 1972), 44:37
"General Abrams has brought the war home. Ten thousand men are coming home this week. Martha Mitchell's got a needle in her behind. Nixon's going to go."Mae Brussell, Mae Brussell Research Center, Broadcast 1 (1 Jul 1972), 51:35
Outline
- 0:00:02 — Opening: the death penalty and a group in Santa Cruz
- 0:06:19 — Nine guests and Hunt’s novels
- 0:09:41 — Martha Mitchell, political prisoner
- 0:19:08 — Time’s “Suspicion”: Mitchell and Gray at the Newporter Inn
- 0:20:53 — A death trap for Richard Nixon
- 0:26:11 — Station break
- 0:27:27 — The five men caught
- 0:31:26 — Howard Hunt
- 0:37:21 — McCord’s security agency
- 0:40:18 — Ameritas and the dummy organizations
- 0:45:48 — Mitchell’s denial and the cover story
- 0:50:16 — Larry O’Brien and Kennedy’s body
- 0:51:35 — Jack Anderson and official secrecy
- 0:54:03 — What she fears next
Mentioned Resources
Press
- Time, July 3, 1972, “Suspicion” — John Mitchell and Patrick Gray at the Newporter Inn
- Chicago Tribune, Eliot Janeway on a Nixon trip to Cuba and the Cuban vote in Florida
- The New York Times on Bernard Barker as a conduit for CIA funds to the exile community
- UPI, AP and Washington Post service reports of Martha Mitchell’s telephone calls
- Jack Anderson’s column on government secrecy
Documents
- The Ameritas letterhead carried by the men at the Watergate
- The Pentagon Papers, read on the previous week’s show
Books and films
- E. Howard Hunt’s novels, also written as Robert Dietrich, John Baxter and Gordon Davis
- Abraham Zapruder’s film of the Kennedy assassination
- Dick Sprague’s articles in Computers and Automation
People
- E. Howard Hunt (CIA officer and novelist, White House consultant)
- Martha Mitchell (wife of John Mitchell)
- John Mitchell (former Attorney General, head of the Committee to Re-elect the President)
- James McCord (former CIA security officer, arrested at the Watergate)
- Bernard Barker (Bay of Pigs paymaster, arrested at the Watergate)
- Frank Sturgis (arrested at the Watergate, also known as Frank Fiorini)
- Eugenio Martínez and Virgilio González (arrested at the Watergate)
- Charles Colson (special counsel to President Nixon)
- Richard Nixon (president of the United States)
- Patrick Gray (acting director of the FBI)
- Robert Bennett (son of Senator Wallace Bennett; Hunt’s employer)
- Hector de la Mera (Miami accountant named on the Ameritas letterhead)
- Al Wong (Secret Service, Technical Security Division)
- Larry O’Brien (chairman of the Democratic National Committee)
- Fidel Castro (leader of Cuba)
- Leonid Brezhnev (Soviet Communist Party chief)
- Pershing Gervais (who said he framed evidence against Jim Garrison)
- Penn Jones (Texas newspaper editor and researcher)
- Dick Sprague (researcher and photograph collector)
- Bernard Fensterwald (head of the Committee to Investigate Assassinations)
- Jack Anderson (syndicated columnist)
- Earl Warren (Chief Justice, chairman of the Warren Commission)
Closing
No. 51 records Mae’s reading of the Watergate two weeks in, before the story settled: a CIA team, a detained witness, and a president she believed was the target.