39: The Détente Betrayal

William Douglas Pawley’s support of Richard Nixon in 1968 was based upon a longstanding relationship that began while Nixon was Vice President to Eisenhower, and it was reinforced by a mutual disdain for communists shared by all conservatives including E. Howard Hunt. But the times they were a changing as much as Bob Dylan switching from folk to country rock with his release in April 1969 of Nashville Skyline.

Once sworn in, President Nixon began to head down a different path from ruthlessly battling communism toward embracing détente. In February 1970, Henry Kissinger began secret talks with North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho outside Paris, while the more public, formal peace process ground slowly away in the city. Pawley, like most Americans, was out of the loop on Nixon’s new strategy. 

Kissinger, a Harvard professor, had entered government service after John J. McCloy chose him in 1956 to "chair a study on Soviet American relations" then get a job as a speechwriter for Nelson Rockefeller. McCloy was a hawk who believed peace talks showed U.S. weakness.   

Early in the Nixon’s first term, Pawley, unaware of his friend's evolving policy, had called the White House and told Rosemary Woods to pass along to the President a few comments: “How tremendously proud I am of the great job our friend is doing. All of the disbelievers around here—at clubs, restaurants, etc. are coming around saying—‘Bill, the man’s got it.’ It is excellent—we are getting it from all sources.” Pawley went on to say he spent “several days in Santo Domingo and talked to the President [Balaguer] there for an hour. He is probably one of the finest Presidents ever to have served in the Western Hemisphere. He is not interested in making any money—he is interested in country ... it is fantastic the progress that has been made since Trujillo’s death.”

Pawley then told Woods that Balaguer supported the U.S. taking a strong stance on Peru—“no country that expropriates any American property can participate in the sugar quota.” On that point, “Balaguer says it would be a tremendous mistake to allow countries to think they could appropriate without any fear of reprisals of any kind.” (Nixon passed this on to his national security adviser Henry Kissinger who wrote a note next to Balaguer’s comment: “H.K. Note - This is a very good reason to be hard as hell on Per[u] next time –"). Pawley concluded, “Balaguer whom I respect tremendously as a person of very sound judgement is neither liberal or a conservative—he has two of the opposition in his cabinet. He is doing the same thing our President is doing—trying to unify the country. Trying to get everyone backing him—then when he has to take some action that is not too popular it is not as easy for them to go against him.”1

In January of 1970, following criticism of Nixon’s Vice President Spiro Agnew’s assertion that the media was becoming a monopoly, a group was formed to challenge control by Newsweek-Post Stations of Channel 10 in Miami, which had broadcast coverage in the area of the Nixon Winter White House. The complaint to “the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Greater Miami Telecaster, Inc., lists its chief officer banker W. Sloan McCrea, a business partner of President Nixon’s Florida confidant—Key Biscayne financier C.G. (Bebe) Rebozo.” Among the Great Miami Telecaster’s directors are Frank Smathers, brother of former Senator George Smathers (D-Fla.) and William Pawley, former ambassador to Brazil.” The article in the Cedar-Rapids Gazette noted “Pawley, a close friend of Nixon, ranks high in GOP financial circles.”2 The two organizations would battle in the courts for years.

A Florida real estate investor who became a Braniff Airlines director, Democrat W. Sloan McCrea in 1950 had introduced the newly elected Senator Nixon to Bebe Rebozo at the request of his old high school buddy, George Smathers.3

As thousands died month-after-month in Vietnam, peace talks dragged on throughout 1970 and into 1971. And to Pawley’s dismay Castro and communism remained in power in the Caribbean just 90 miles from his home.

In April 1971, on the tenth anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Miami Herald allowed Pawley to recall the event. Pawley told the Miami Herald’s staff writer, Nixon Smiley (I kid you not), that after President Kennedy called off 35 Air Force and Navy bombers that military experts said were essential for the invasion to succeed, the young President in office just three months “should have ordered the admiral to call off the invasion.” When Pawley learned that among the 1113 exiles captured were Fabio Freyre and George Govin he helped ransom them back along with Nestor Williams to demonstrate that not just the rich should be released. He chose Williams after hearing him answer Castro’s interrogator question him about Miami’s restriction of Negroes like him from the beaches. In Pawley’s eyes William’s demonstrated “great courage” by answering not only that he “loved Miami and the United States” but that “‘I did not return to Cuba to swim in the Havana Country Club pool; I came to fight communism.’” Pawley wished that instead of paying ransom the U.S. had gained “their release by force as we easily could have done.’”4

The tenth anniversary found Manuel Artime, the Brigade 2506 civilian political chief, “now an owner of a baby furniture store in Miami” who “travels to Central America and Mexico where some believe he is planning ‘another large scale invasion of the Communist island.’” The military leader of the Brigade, “Pepe” Perez San Roman, was now working “for a trucking firm.” Ernesto de Olivia, the second in command had gone from being a captain at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina to working in government in the nation’s capital. Others such as Juan Jose Peruyero operated an “automobile paint and body shop” in Miami while vowing to go once again to Cuba to “‘finish the job. There will be no quitting or excuses.’” A former commander of a Bay of Pigs parachute brigade, “Tomas Cruz, a tall dignified Negro” said he was “‘ready’” and that the Nixon administration needed to take action against Castro.5

Nine months earlier, John Martino of Operation TILT had peddled his account of his 1959 arrest by Castro to the Valley Morning Star of Harlingen, Texas6 home of the Confederate Air Force (now the Commemorative Air Force) and rock ‘n’ roll pioneer, Bill Haley.

Pawley’s Miami Herald interview occurred at the same time polls were showing that Teddy Kennedy should run for president against Nixon despite his reluctance to follow in the footsteps of two assassinated brothers and the political flogging he would face over the drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne in July 1969. Kopechne was a graduate of Caldwell College for Women in New Jersey, who worked in Washington, DC for Senator George Smathers. She left Smathers after JFK’s 1963 assassination to join the staff of Robert Kennedy. A year after, RFK’s 1968 assassination, Kopechne drowned in Senator Ted Kennedy’s car in Poucha Pond inlet, at Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. Ted’s failure to save her as well as leaving the scene of the accident made him decide not to run against the incumbent President seeking re-election.

Despite protests in the streets against the war in Vietnam, Nixon was expected to win re- election. So, it was somewhat surprising that on June 17, 1972 that a group of men were arrested for breaking into the Watergate hotel complex where the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had its headquarters. The true motive for the break-in has never been quite clear other than to learn what could be used by either side to win the election. Oddly, the conservative Cuban exiles were arrested for aiding President Nixon who had determined that détente with both the Soviet Union and Pawley’s much-hated communist China would bring an end to a war that was slowly becoming the longest in U.S. history. Conservatives began to question if he and Kissinger were soft on communism.7 A disappointment that hit Pawley as close as Key Biscayne.

Nixon was at Bebe Rebozo’s home at 490 Bay Lane, Key Biscayne, Florida in June 1972 when he learned of the arrest of the Watergate burglars, most of whom had been involved in the Pawley/CIA anti-Castro activities in Miami. Rebozo, Nixon and George Smathers would enjoy deep-sea fishing together while discussing anti-communism tactics. President Nixon’s “Florida White House” at 500 Bay Lane was sold to him by Smathers in 1969. In the realm of politics creating strange bedfellows, President Kennedy at the time of his assassination was considering naming Smathers to replace Vice President Johnson because of the scandals swirling around LBJ’s Texas associate Bobby Baker.8 Smathers in a later interview claimed it wasn’t true.9 Baker in 2013 told Politico that his “dear friend,” Smathers, was “the brightest and ablest guy between Nixon, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson” and revealed that Smathers made a fortune buying the land where Winn-Dixie was planning to open its next Florida store and then develop the shopping center.10

The five-year-old Watergate complex already was home to intriguing figures—Anna Chennault who had influenced Nixon’s first election and Walter Pforzheimer who moved from Air Force Intelligence in WWII to laundering money for the Office of Strategic Services which evolved into the CIA where he became the liaison to Congress. At Watergate, Pforzheimer had an apartment for himself and one for his collection of intelligence books “which reached more than 15,000” volumes when they were donated to Yale in 2001.11

The DNC head, Larry O’Brien, not only served his political party from his Watergate office, but he also served as a consultant to billionaire Howard Hughes. Senate investigators in 1974 told the Wall Street Journal that the burglars may have been looking to see if O’Brien knew that Attorney General John Mitchell had tampered with a case involving Hughes’ purchase of the Dunes hotel in Las Vegas, after Hughes funneled two $50,000 contributions through Miamian Charles “Bebe” Rebozo to the Committee to Re-elect the President, which Mitchell headed. Mitchell denied it.

Mitchell did not volunteer that there was another Las Vegas hotel case that was even stickier. Hughes in 1969 had purchased from Frank Carroll the recently built, but never opened, Landmark hotel. The problem was a $10 million contract had already been signed with other investors. Mitchell ruled in favor of Hughes who put up $13 million, paying off Carroll’s debts, which included $5.5 million from the Teamsters Union Pension Fund. The fund also gave as much as a $1,000,000 in cash for Nixon’s secret use. Some may have been used as hush money in 1973 to silence Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt. The burglary may have also uncovered information about Nixon’s December 1971 commutation of Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa's 13-year prison sentence for jury tampering and mail fraud, thus garnering teamster votes in the upcoming election as well as the secret funds.

Hoffa was supposed to remain on the sidelines of the union until March 1980 but instead he tried to gain the reins back from Frank Fitzsimmons, who not surprisingly was a major Nixon supporter. On July 30, 1975, Hoffa disappeared outside of Detroit and a New Jersey teamster, Anthony Provenzano became a suspect.12

There would be speculation that Hoffa’s body was buried in the end zone of the original Giants Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands, but this author believes the body is more likely beneath a stretch of access road that mysteriously went in overnight at the time of the disappearance, according to an unidentified construction worker telling a friend—a photographer of experimental aircraft in California—as they rode the DeCamp bus down Route 3 past the stadium to New York City.

The magnitude of Nixon’s willingness to be more ruthless than his enemies was not learned by the electorate until after he defeated McGovern in November. Then the cover-up grew like “a cancer on the presidency.”13

The burglars and co-conspirators included anti-Castro activists whose names were familiar to Pawley and the team at JMWAVE: Frank Sturgis, Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, James W. McCord, G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, Jr. The Bay of Pigs tie was not lost on Nixon who instructed his Chief of Staff, H. R. “Bob” Haldeman, to alert his domestic affairs adviser John D. Ehrlichman that “‘this whole group of Cubans is tied to the Bay of Pigs.’”14

Nixon may have been concerned that his own role in planning the unsuccessful coup against Castro with Pawley, Dulles and others would come to light, making him look like a failed military strategist or perhaps a potential target if Castro truly had been the influence behind Oswald or perhaps Nixon worried that he would be viewed as a co-conspirator in an anti-Castro exile plot to kill JFK.

During the previous summer, Hunt and Liddy had met with Special Assistant to the National Security Council David Young who wanted a group of “Plumbers” to stop leaks of government secrets such as Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers. “Young stated that the Ellsberg [psychiatric] study had the highest priority and had been requested by Mr. Ehrlichman and Dr. Kissinger” and “the President had been informed.” Hunt hoped to publicly discredit Ellsberg and “expressed interest in being able to refer in a knowledgeable way to Dr. Ellsberg’s oedipal conflicts or castration fears and other similar points” leading to a break-in at Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office.15

E. Howard Hunt, who Nixon had first become acquainted with during the initial planning of the Bay of Pigs, “joined the White House Staff as a Consultant to President Nixon preparatory to the President’s visit to the People Republic of China” according to the Jersey City, New Jersey Journal July 19, 1971. Eight months earlier he had been “granted a Covert Security Approval for use by Central Cover Staff with Robert R. Mullen and Company, Washington, D.C.”16 The company’s Executive Vice President and Director, Robert Foster Bennett, “admitted to the press a former relationship between his firm, Radio Free Cuba, and this Agency [CIA].”17

His cover was processed through QKENCHANT,18 which began in 1952 as “a project for obtaining ... Provisional Covert Security Approvals (PCSA) and Covert Security Approvals (CSA), with the Office of Security in connection with the acquisition of Corporate Cover for Action (CCA).” The “Directorate of Operations guidelines require that a PCSA/CA be obtained in most instances before a corporate entity can be used as a Cover for Action (CA) sponsor.”

Clay Shaw, whom New Orleans District Attorney suspected of involvement in the Kennedy Assassination, went through an earlier clearance process and “received a ‘five agency’ clearance on 23 March 1949.” His eventual boss, Monroe Sullivan, “was granted a security approval in December 1962” which would have been within QKENCHANT.19 The QK prefix appears to deal with propaganda. During Hunt and Pawley’s work on Operation PBSUCCESS, the cryptonym QKFLOWAGE stood for the United States Information Agency.20

In breaking the Watergate story, The Washington Post reported that Sturgis was an “American Soldier of Fortune” who supported Castro in 1954, but “left Cuba in 1950 with his close friend Pedro Diaz Lanz, then Chief of the Cuban Air Force.” The two were “active in Cuban Exile Activities in Miami” but Diaz Lanz “recently has been reported involved in such right wing movements as the John Birch Society [named for an intelligence officer in the Flying Tigers who was killed by the Chinese communists] and the Rev. Billy James Hargis’ Christian

Crusade.” The article noted that Frank Sturgis who was “more commonly known as Frank Fiorini, lost his American citizenship in 1960 for serving in a foreign military force—Castro’s army—but, with the aid of then Florida Sen. George Smathers regained it.21

The break-in was initially thought of as typical political chicanery. Politicians would say or do anything to get elected. In fact, just weeks before the election, on October 22, 1972 Nixon suspended all bombing north of the 20th parallel in Vietnam. Four days later Kissinger proclaimed that “peace was at hand.”

After winning a landslide election over George McGovern, Nixon soon demonstrated his peaceful intent with 12 days of Christmas bombing, during which nearly 2,000 sorties dropped 35,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam. The U.S. lost 26 aircraft and 93 air force men. And with the help of Washington Post reporters, Woodward and Bernstein people began to realize that Watergate was just the tip of the White House iceberg.

On March 26, 1973, William Pawley dined at the Mayflower Hotel with the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger who earlier that day attended a farewell cocktail buffet for Indian Ambassador L.K. Jha and his wife. After discussing India where Pawley had manufactured planes, did the Schlesinger and Pawley feel each other out over their knowledge of the Watergate burglars?22

On May 7, 1973, New York Times writer, author and peace activist Sandford Gottlieb had a long conversation with a Cuban exile journalist regarding the Miami reaction to Watergate. But then “specifically asked about Reinaldo Pico ... Orlando Piedra ... and Rolando Masferrer.”

A few days earlier, Pico had been involved with Bernard Barker, Frank Sturgis and other future Watergate burglars when they disrupted the May 3, 1972 antiwar protest led by Daniel Ellsberg at the U.S. Capitol where J. Edgar Hoover’s funeral rites were scheduled which Barker planned to attend. Piedra had become wealthy as Batista’s overseer of gambling operations. After fleeing to Miami, he may have become a member of Operation 40.23

Reporter Gottlieb also wanted to know if “ITT had an office in Miami, whether Joaquin Sanjenis Perdomo (former Chief of a WH/MIAMI proprietary who departed on amicable terms in 1972) and Juan A. Paula (former WH/MIAMI proprietary employee and former Controller of Revolutionary Democratic Front—FRD—and currently employed by an OGC proprietary were still in the Miami area. Gottlieb also brought up Charles “Bebe” Rebozo’s business associate Edgardo Buttari “who was appointed as ‘political chief of the Republican Party.’”

The CIA Acting Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division, James E. Flannery, who wrote the memorandum about Gottlieb’s phone call, then pointed out that Paula “works for the MHMUTUAL proprietary, McKercher and Avant.” MHMUTUAL was an insurance company set up by the CIA to cover benefits of Brigade 2506 family members, but it also provided cover for various operations and may have held safe houses as part of its investment portfolio. “Marvin L. Evans, Chief, MHMUTUAL ... did say that Howard Hunt was aware of MHMUTUAL when he served as C/CA/EUR.”

Coincidentally, this CIA proprietary shared office space with the attorneys who defended White House Counsel John Dean during Watergate; his testimony would help end Nixon’s presidency. According to Flannery’s memo, the “lawyers are cleared and witting” with regard to MHMUTUAL’s CIA roots. “One of the lawyers told Evans that Dean will be the ‘biggest canary singer of the year.’” And the CIA knew many of the private conversations between Dean and his attorney’s because the MHMUTUAL and the “common receptionist area is manned by MHMUTUAL employees who also monitor all telephone calls, incoming and outgoing for the other law firm. Evans mentioned that there have been numerous calls from the media and outgoing overseas calls to such places as Japan and Europe.”24

Nixon’s détente with the Soviet Union was often overshadowed by the constant drip, drip, drip of Watergate burglary appearing in the Washington Post. Four decades later Executive Editor Ben Bradlee would reveal that one reliable source for information that helped undermine the Nixon presidency came from Pawley’s last great hope for strong leadership, Barry Goldwater. He “was a ‘tremendously useful source’ in the Post’s Watergate coverage.” Goldwater was Bradlee’s mother-in-law’s “‘boyfriend.’”25

Reserve Air Force General Barry Goldwater—the former presidential candidate whom Pawley once believed was the only hope for America—was also the guest speaker Pawley as President of the China National Aviation Corporation Association heard in August 1972 at the 27th annual reunion of the China-Burma-India Hump Pilots Association in Palm Springs, California. After Goldwater had been soundly defeated by LBJ, Pawley went back to supporting the slightly less conservative Richard Nixon who betrayed him with détente.26

CIA Director James Schlesinger tried to get a grasp on why so many of the Watergate burglars were CIA assets. On May 23, 1973, his assistant William Colby sent a memo to all employees on the subject “Agency Involvement in the Watergate Case.” He wrote, “Each employee has been asked and is directed to report to the Director any knowledge he or she has of the Watergate affair and related matters, any persons connected with it, or any other illegal activity in which they believe the Agency has been involved in any way.” The response became known as the CIA’s “Family Jewels.” Those documents were declassified for release June 25, 2007 and can be found with many other documents at the MaryFerrell.org website.27

An attachment to Colby’s memo listed as participants on the Watergate burglary: H.R. Haldeman, John D. Erhlichman, John Dean, Egil Krogh, David Young, E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, James W. McCord, Charles W. Colson, John J. Caulfield, Eugenio Rolando Martinez Careaga, Juan Rigoberto Ruiz Villegas, Bernard L. Barker, Virgilio Gonzales, and Frank Anthony Sturgis.

The individual, Juan Rigoberto Ruiz Villegas, has been the least reported on. He was a young Chilean who was hired “as a Covert Asset in [REDACTED] and continued to be used in [REDACTED] from June 1969 to June 1971. Ruiz came to the United States in August 1971” then “attended Montgomery Community College, became acquainted with Mr. James W. McCord at that institution, and later acquired temporary (and illegal) employment at McCord Associates as sort of a caretaker.”28

During the Senate Watergate Hearings, Pawley’s old assistant in South America, General Vernon Walters, testified that Hunt and McCord were full-time CIA employees. The burglars “were no longer in the employ of the CIA at the time of the break-in except for Mr. Martinez.” Investigators also found that during the Bay of Pigs operation “Sturgis was a participant in that operation and, in particular, was among the personnel who compromised the planned-for but cancelled air support.”29

Martinez (AMSNAP-3) was a high-level risk taker having embarked on 300 infiltration runs in the war against Castro. After he served 15 months for his role in Watergate, Castro’s DGI agents tried to recruit him hoping he was bitter enough to reveal secrets and sway public opinion for peace talks with the U.S. which he learned after becoming a spy on the DGI at the behest of CIA’s Felix Rodriguez and the FBI. As a result, Martinez gained a pardon from President Reagan.30

Another document states “Mr. Sturgis was never recruited by the Agency, but has been associated with Eugenio Rolando Martinez Careaga, an Agency contact since 1960.” The same document indicates that “Barnard L. Barker, a former Captain in the U.S. Air Force, was born in Cuba of American-born parents, and he began cooperating with the Agency in 1959. He was hired on a contract basis in April 1960, and was used primarily to report on Cuban exile activities” until his termination July 31, 1966. He was now in Florida real estate.

“Virgilio Ramon Gonzales-Rosabel, who has used various aliases, is not on record in WH Division/DDP or any other component of the Agency.”31 Virgilio R. Gonzales was aka Virgilio Ramon Godoy, Raul Godoy, Raoul Goody, and Raoul.32

The Watergate burglars shared a common bond of anti-communist sentiments like Pawley’s which had been reinforced by the frustrating failures in their efforts to pull off a coup against Fidel Castro. Amazingly, one of Pawley’s longtime associates, E. Howard Hunt, was aware of Nixon’s softening policy toward Red China—a year before his involvement in the Watergate break-in to plant illegal bugging devices that would bring down a President if they were disclosed. The Family Jewel’s revealed that it was Hunt who requested a lockpicker in the spring of 1972.33

Following the break-in, Nixon White House Aide Charles “Chuck” Colson and the President on June 20, 1972, found it hard to believe that someone as shrewd as E. Howard Hunt could get caught unless as Nixon stated, “it was deliberately botched.”34

In January 1973, Virgilio Gonzalez, E. Howard Hunt, Bernard L. Barker, Frank Sturgis, and Eugenio Rolando Martinez pleaded guilty to various counts of burglary and wiretapping. The locksmith, Gonzalez, joined the operation against the Democrats because “Barker and Hunt had said that the spy operation would advance the liberation of his native land.”35

Following sentencing, Bernard Barker’s attractive, dark-haired, and very serious daughter, Maria-Elena Barker Moffet, stated that the burglars believed they were on a mission to show that Castro was funding the Democrats and now felt “‘used, thrown-out, stepped on and left without any hope of justice” and don’t “‘want to be lumped together with Haldeman and Ehrlichman ... who knew exactly what they were doing.’”36

As the Watergate scandal led to impeachment discussions, Pawley stated “that the jury, at this writing, both literally and figuratively, is still out on former President Nixon’s place in history.”37

Pawley believed that the way out of Vietnam was through U.S. support of Chiang Kai- shek, but President Nixon’s envoy to the Vietnam peace talks had a different perspective. He believed that the U.S. could live with Red China. After the deaths of 45,000 American soldiers, Henry Kissinger told Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in Beijing on June 22, 1972, “‘If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina.’” Their meeting occurred “during stepped-up U.S. bombing and the mining of harbors meant to stall a North Vietnam offensive that began in the spring.” Thousands more would die before “the Paris Peace Accords officially halted U.S. action” in January and more than 800 additional days of combat would continue before the U.S. Embassy in Saigon was overrun by the North Vietnamese in April 1975.38

After Nixon left office in disgrace in 1974, Henry Kissinger who continued as Secretary of State under President Gerald Ford called on William D. Rogers, who had served earlier Democrat Presidents (and also had defended Owen Lattimore when he was accused of working with the Soviets) to negotiate secretly “with Cuban officials from late 1974 until late 1975 to find ways to improve relations, in what could have been a reversal of previous American policies. Kissinger stated, “‘He put a new face on Latin American politics.’”39

It was a very different face from the one on the man whose nickname was “Cuba.” Pawley in early September 1974 wrote his longtime associate Lt. General Vernon A Walters, Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency. “Dear Dick, I am enclosing a copy of ‘Current Cuban-Soviet Relationships—The Challenge to U.S. Policy,’ by Morris Rothenberg of the Center for Advanced International Studies of the University of Miami, as well as copies of my letters to the President and to Senator Goldwater, which are self-explanatory. I am also enclosing an extra copy of the booklet, in the hope that you will encourage the Director of the CIA to read it.”

Pawley’s letter to President Gerald Ford disparaged President Kennedy, whom Ford as a member of the Warren Commission had determined was killed by a lone-nut assassin. “Since President Kennedy after the missile crisis made an agreement with Russia that would in effect prevent the overthrow of Castro’s regime, our prestige in the Western Hemisphere has greatly deteriorated and we have very few friends that we could count on to support any ideas or policies that we might feel in the best interest of Latin America as well as ourselves.” Nowhere did Pawley address President Nixon’s failure to rid Cuba of Castro.

Pawley continued to Ford, “Castro has thousands of subversive agents in this country, not including those working out of the United Nations. I sincerely believe, Mr. President, that irrespective of the views of other members of OAS, we should not under any circumstances reestablish relations with Cuba, which would be tantamount to our sanctioning Russia’s establishing any kind of military base they see fit, only ninety miles from the United States. This would be far more dangerous for the United States than, say, the recognition of East Germany.”

Pawley called Ford’s attention to a provision of the OAS treaty Pawley signed as an FYI. Then he drove home his belief that “Communist Cuba is a greater danger to the United States in my opinion than either Russia or China because Cuba’s proximity to us and its ability to infiltrate its agents with greater ease throughout the entire Western Hemisphere.” In Pawley’s estimation: “Of all the international problems with which you are confronted, I believe none is more important for careful analysis before any decision is reached.”40

On September 20th, The News Tribune’s Daily Capital News in Missouri ran an editorial on America’s evolving China policy titled “Peking apologists ‘restored.’” It stated that “one of the drawbacks to President Nixon’s visit to Peking is that it tended to restore those ‘experts,’ who had been thoroughly discredited for their false predictions in the late 1940’s” which “led to the Communist takeover of mainland China.” Specifically named was “Phillip Jessup, who has been serving in recent years on the World Court at the Hague.” The article pointed out that “Ambassador William Pawley and others attributed the loss of the mainland in 1950 to the ‘mistaken policy of Dean Acheson, Phil Jessup, Lattimore’ and others.”

Unlike Acheson, “Jessup and Lattimore do not” regret their mistake, and Jessup pushed for a “complete withdrawal of (U. S.) naval, air and land forces, its advisers, and its material’ from South Vietnam.” The article pondered that if Jessup “now wants us to surrender all of Indochina to Red rule. It's a fair question, we believe, to ask if there is any part of the world Jessup would like to see kept free?”41

Pawley finished September 1974 with a letter to the editor of the Miami Herald raising warnings once again about Cuba’s threat to security of the U.S. “Castro is a sadistic assassin ... and proclaimed himself to be our bitter enemy.” Pawley stated that Castro converted “Cuba into a Russian missile, submarine and bomber base, greatly endangering the security of the United States” and has powerful weapons “overlooking our Naval Base in Guantanamo (Pawley’s childhood playground). Two months later, Senator Barry Goldwater read a version of Pawley’s letter into the Congressional Record as Henry Kissinger’s détente policy embraced lifting sanctions against Cuba.42

In his autobiography, written contemporaneously with the final years of the Vietnam War, Pawley wrote that he was not alone in his belief that American policy was dooming China to communism. “The tragedy that I and a host of American leaders like Ambassador Pat Hurley, Congressman Walter Judd, General Albert Wedemeyer, Alfred Kohlberg, Henry Luce, Roy Howard, Admiral Yarnell and others had dreaded was now foreordained.”43

While feeling that his friends and China Lobby supporters had helped to thwart Red China from being accepted as a world power, Pawley found irony in the fact it was “that arch foe of communism Ricard M. Nixon—whom he had long supported—was the President who surrendered the mainland to communism.44

In Russia is Winning, Pawley attacked the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy as being “colored with a thin, pasty coating called ‘détente,’ a Communist tactic to prepare the trusting democracies for the kill. Détente, in its present usage, means a lessening of tensions, less confrontation and more peaceful co-operation between the United States and the Soviet Union. We should seek that. But détente must be a two-way street, in which, dealing from strength, we can insist at the very least upon the kind of fair exchange which has been so conspicuously absent when we have met the Soviets at the bargaining table. We gave up far more than we received in the recent economic and SALT negotiations. We took a sound beating on our selling wheat to the Russians, and in agreements for arms limitations. Such lopsided détente becomes appeasement. It can end only in surrender.”45

Bernard Barker (AMCLATTER-1) had only one child, Marielena Barker Harding, born in 1947. In her twenties, she bailed him out of jail after he was arrested with his best friend Eugenio Rolando Martinez (aka “Musculito”), Virgilio Gonzalez, James McCord and Frank Sturgis during the Watergate burglary. Barker had been recruited by E. Howard Hunt who referred to Barker as “Macho.” In speaking to a Miami Herald reporter after her father’s death, Barker’s daughter rejected assertions that he was in some way involved the Kennedy assassination, and instead said Bernard “always suspected that Castro was involved.’”46

In 2009, Martinez asserted in an El Mundo interview that James McCord, an astute CIA security expert, had purposely sabotaged the Watergate burglary by placing tape over the lock in a way that made it visible to the Watergate security guard. Martinez had been led to believe the group of Cuban exiles was recruited to photograph documents proving that presidential candidate George McGovern had Castro backing.47

If McCord undermined the break-in, what was his reason? Protecting the nation from political manipulators? Or discrediting President Nixon before he could establish ties to China, an initiative of global consequence that Hunt was aware of and may have shared with Pawley and McCord? In March 1973, James McCord wrote Judge John Sirica to reveal “details of the [Watergate] case, motivations, intent and mitigating circumstances.” He expressed a desire to restore “faith in the criminal justice system.” He suggests that the “Cubans may have been misled by others into believing it was a CIA operation. I know for a fact it was not.”

Oddly, McCord , whose career spanned the FBI, CIA and U.S. Air Force Reserve, states that his motivation for involvement in the Watergate break-in was not the same as Barker, Sturgis, Gonzalez, and Martinez. “My motivations were different than those of the others involved, but were not limited to, or simply those offered in my defense during the trial. This is no fault of my attorneys, but of the circumstances under which we had to prepare my defense.”48

Obviously, Hunt, as a professional psychological warrior, knew he could easily recruit the Cuban exiles by making them believe they could be working on another mission against Castro in their burglary efforts. The concept was not lost on President Nixon, who told his White House Chief of Staff, H. R. “Bob” Haldeman, a few days after the 1972 break-in that the FBI’s investigation of the burglary could open up the Bay of Pigs can of worms.

The transcript of their conversation contained the following comments which relate directly to an informant close to Barker. “Now, on the investigation, you know, the Democratic break-in thing ... the FBI is not under control, because [FBI Director Pat] Gray doesn't exactly know how to control them, and they have, their investigation is now leading into some productive areas, because they've been able to trace the money ... also there have been some things, like an informant came in off the street to the FBI in Miami, who was a photographer or has a friend who is a photographer who developed some films through this guy, Barker, and the films had pictures of Democratic National Committee letter head documents and things ... the only network that paid any attention to it last night was NBC ... they did a massive story on the Cuban ... thing.” Nixon responded, “Right.” Then Haldeman continued suggesting intervention by Pawley’s old aide in South America, Vernon Walters. “That the way to handle this now is for us to have Walters call Pat Gray and just say, ‘Stay the hell out of this ... this is ah, [CIA] business here we don't want you to go any further on it.’ That's not an unusual development.” After "Nixon approved the suggestion," Walters told Gray that an "FBI investigation 'could expose ... CIA cover operations in Mexico.'" But "General Walters refused to put that in writing and abandoned the White House plan, telling Mr. Gray, 'I'm not going to let those kids at the White House kick me around.'" 

Later in the transcript, President Nixon states that Haldeman should caution the FBI to withdraw its investigation because this is a CIA matter with national security ramifications. “When you get in these people when you ... get these people in, say: "Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that" ah, without going into the details ... don't, don't lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, "the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And, ah because these people are plugging for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI in and say that we wish for the country, don't go any further into this case", period!49

Ironically, a few sentences later, Haldeman mentions the “ambitious” nature of Mark Felt of the FBI. “Pat [Gray] does want to. He doesn't know how to, and he doesn't have, he doesn't have any basis for doing it. Given this, he will then have the basis. He'll call Mark Felt in, and the two of them ... and Mark Felt wants to cooperate because ... he's ambitious.” Nixon agreed, “Yeah.” Ironically, Felt later admitted to being “Deep Throat,” the individual who became a source of damaging information against Nixon given to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. 

Was President Nixon fearful that the investigation would lead to some uglier truth than he wanted to guarantee a re-election win after having lost a decade earlier in a close race against John F. Kennedy? Was it about the Teamster’s Pension Fund, or his involvement in the initial planning of the Castro overthrow, or was he simply fearful that the FBI’s investigation would sabotage his China initiative?

Why would the FBI want to keep a lid on matters related to the Bay of Pigs? Whatever the answer, Cuba was still a sensitive topic to those in Washington as well as Miami.

NEXT CHAPTERS

• 40: The Rocky Report
• 41: Was Dallas A Target, Too?
• 42: Luce Lips
• 43: Sunset
• 44: Life and Death
• 45: Culture of Conspiracy
• 46: Assassination Scenarios
• 47: Timeline
• 48: Pawley's Spheres of Influence
• 49: What did Zapruder film?

FOOTNOTES:

1 “William Pawley call to White House 3/25/1969. Re Peru FYI.” Henry A. Kissinger Files. LOC-HAK 1-2-59-3. 

Walter Isaacson & Evan Thomas, The Wise Men; Six Friends and the World They Made: Acheson, Bohlen, Harrisman, Kennan, Lovett, McCloy (Simon & Shuster, 1986). Page 572.

2 “Nixon Friends Challenge Post-Newsweek Channel,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, January 1, 1970. Page 18.

An application complaint filed with the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Greater Miami Telecaster, Inc., lists its chief officer banker W. Sloan McCrea, a business partner of President Nixon’s Florida confidant—Key Biscayne financier C. G. (Bebe) Rebozo.

Among the company’s directors are Frank Smathers, brother of former Senator George Smathers (D-Fla.) and William Pawley, former ambassador to Brazil ...

Pawley, a close friend of Nixon, ranks high in GOP financial circles.

3 “W. Sloan McCrea, 1913-2008: Political broker left mark over 4 decades.” By Elinor J. Brecher and Begone Cazalis. Miami Herald, February 21, 2008. Page B1.

W. Sloan McCrea, a South Florida political kingmaker for four decades thanks to high school friendships with U.S. Sen. George Smathers and President Richard Nixon’s Key Biscayne confidant, Charles "Bebe" Rebozo, died Saturday in hospice care at his Coral Gables home. The banker/food broker/philanthropist, profoundly deaf since his 20s, succumbed to natural causes. He would have turned 95 on March 11 ... In fact, it was McCrea who introduced Nixon to Rebozo, at Smathers’ request.

“Two More Braniff Directors Resign.” The New York Times, September 2, 1981.

Two directors of the Braniff International Corporation ... have quit in recent months. W. Sloan McCrea, a Miami banker, resigned effective Sept. 18 and Pamela Harrison, of Washington, resigned effective immediately.

4 “Pawley: Adlai Threatened to Quit Over the Bay of Pigs.” By Nixon Smiley, Miami Herald, April 17, 1971.

5 “‘Fighters’ Wait for Chance to ‘Free Cuba.’” By Isaac M. Flores Mansfield. Ohio News Journal, April 11, 1971.

6 Valley Morning Star (Harlingen, Texas), July 3, 1970.

7 “Return with Honor.” American Experience, PBS.

“Memorandum of Conversation with Conservative Opinion Leaders, 12 August 1971, 4:00-5:30 p.m.” The White House, Secret. National Security Archive. George Washington University.

In 1968 publishers, intellectuals, and activists on the right had generally supported Richard Nixon’s candidacy. Moreover, William F. Buckley, Jr., publisher of the National Review, had been on friendly terms with Henry Kissinger since the 1950s; while Kissinger tended to dismiss most conservative activists as yokels, Buckley was one conservative opinion leader whom Kissinger, a self-described “historical conservative,” had tried to win over. By the mid-summer of 1971, however, the conservative establishment was in revolt against the Nixon administration. That Nixon and Kissinger were making unnecessary concessions in the SALT talks was one worry, but the biggest blow was Kissinger's trip to Beijing, which the conservatives regarded as a deal with the devil. In a statement published in Human Events on 12 August Buckley and twelve others announced that they had ‘resolved to suspend our support of the Nixon administration.’

That same day, some members of the group, without Buckley, met Kissinger at the White House. Doing much of the talking and defending the administration's record, Kissinger denied that the White House ‘has given away anything on SALT’ and treated the opening to China as a ‘necessity’ to balance off the Soviet Union. Not persuaded by Kissinger's arguments, one conservative opined that Nixon foreign policy was not significantly different from Kennedy/Johnson diplomacy, while others showed concern about Taiwan, defense spending, and missile accuracy programs. Trying to square the new China policy with the traditional support for Taiwan, Kissinger made a statement that proved remarkably imprudent in light of what happened only a few months later: ‘The justification of ... our China initiative would be disproved now if the Taiwanese were excluded from the UN.’ While Kissinger pretended to welcome ‘pressure from the Right’, it was evident that he preferred his audience to stay quiet: they were ‘too harsh’ and should ‘stop yelling at us.’ His audience was not persuaded; one saw it as ‘kind of a patronizing performance.’

8 “Number 64, 65, 66, 67 and 68. Forgive My Grief III.” By Penn Jones Jr. Midlothian Mirror, July 31, 1969. Page 83.

>> Baker’s girlfriend, "Nancy Carole Tyler, roomed with one of George Smathers' secretaries ... She died when the plane she was in stalled while flying past the Carousel Motel being built by Baker at Ocean City, Maryland." 

>> "Mary JoKopechne had been another of Smathers' secretaries.”

9 “George A. Smathers Oral History Interview—JFK #4, 5/27/1982.” Interviewer Sheldon M. Stern. JFK Library. 

10 “Sex in the Senate Bobby Baker's salacious secret history of Capitol Hill.” By Todd S. Purdum. Politico Magazine, November 19, 2013.

11 “The Secret Papers of Lee Atwater, Who Invented the Scurrilous Tactics That Trump Normalized. An infamous Republican political operative’s unpublished memoir shows how the Party came to embrace lies, racial fearmongering, and winning at any cost.” By Jane Mayer. The New Yorker. May 6, 2001

“W. L. Pforzheimer, 88, Dies; Helped to Shape the C.I.A.” By Tim Weiner. The New York Times. February 16, 2003.

12 “Hughes Gift Called Watergate Motive.” Tri-City Herald, May 6, 1974.

"'Implosions, Landmark Implosion.'" Las Vegas Sun.
>> The Landmark Hotel sale had been signed for $10 million, and Lionel Ives was to have made a million-dollar commission, when a few days later Hughes offered $13 million, covering money owed to creditors and giving the Justice Department a reason to approve it. The original investors did not want publicity of a lawsuit. Events related to David Price Cannon in 1969 by Lionel Ives in January 1969.

“Investigations: Teamsters Watergate Connection,” Time, August 8, 1977. 

13 “The Watergate Story.” The Washington Post online. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/watergate/index.html

“Cancer on the Presidency” Conversation with John Dean and H.R. Haldeman, March 21, 1973 10:12 to 11:55 a.m. President Richard M. Nixon Watergate Tapes.

JOHN DEAN: I think, I think that, uh, there's no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we’re, we’ve got. We have a cancer—within, close to the Presidency, that’s growing. It’s growing daily. It’s compounding, it grows geometrically now because it compounds itself. Uh, that’ll be clear as I explain you know, some of the details, uh, of why it is, and it basically is because (1) we’re being blackmailed; (2) uh, people are going to start perjuring themself [sic]very quickly that have not had to perjure themselves to protect other people and the like. And that is just--and there is no assurance.... So, let me give you the sort of basic facts’ talking first about the Watergate; and then about Segretti; and then about some of the peripheral items that, uh, have come up. First of all, on, on the Watergate: How did it all start, where did it start? It started with an instruction to me from Bob Haldeman to see if we couldn't set up a perfectly legitimate campaign intelligence operation over at the Re-election Committee.

"History and Politics Out Loud." http://www.hpol.org

14 “The Watergate Story.” The Washington Post online. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/watergate/index.html

15 NARA 104-10104-10145 ~ 8/13/1971 Memorandum for the Record. “Subject: Meeting with Mr. David Young.” Written by (REDACTED), M.D. Chief, Psychiatric Staff. Materials Relating To Preparation Of The Psychological Assessment of Daniel Ellsberg. Page 12 of 24. Released June 13, 2023.

>> The memo author had previously helped Hunt deal with his rebellious daughter.

16 NARA 104-10119-10317 ~ 8/30/1971 CIA Profile “Everette Howard Hunt Jr.” To: AC/CB. From: PES.

>> Hunt’s background check noted that prior to joining the ECA and CIA he had been a writer for publisher Henry Luce’s Time, Incorporated and then member of the Office of Strategic Services in the Far East.

17 NARA 104-10256-1069 ~ 7/13/1972 CIA “Watergate Incident Report.” Subjects: E H Hunt.

18 Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann, Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination.
Page 709.

>> Cites NARA 104-10119-10320 ~ 10/27/1970 “Request for Utilization of Hunt in a project.” Subjects: Hunt, E. H. #23 500. To: Chief, Central Cover Staff, Mr. Martin Lukoskie. From: Deputy Director of Security, Victor R. White.

19 NARA 104-10336-10005 ~ Assassination Record Review Board Request: CIA-IR-06: QKENCHANT. 

>> This document about Clay Shaw and others was withheld until April 26, 2018.

20 Abbreviations and Cryptonyms. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954: Guatemala, Page xvii.

21 “Watergate,” The Washington Post, June 19, 1972.

“John Birch Story-1, Welch Stirs Controversy On Freedom.” By Seth Kantor. The Dallas Times Herald, April 16, 1961.
>> This article details the upcoming speech in at the Baker Hotel in Dallas by extreme conservative Robert Welchwhich is expected to draw 1,000. It cites Robert Kennedy’s belief that the John Birch Society is “ridiculous and I don’t think anybody should pay attention to them.”

22 CIA-RDP80R01731R002100090006-8 ~ “1972-1976 Log of Invitations Extended to and Accepted by DDCI.” March 26, 1973 entry. Page 5 of 14.

23 NARA 124-10292-10135 ~ FBI 8/16/1973 Airtel “Alleged Altercation at U.S. Capitol Building, Washington, D.C. Between Anti-war Demonstrators and Miami-Based Cubans 5/3/72. To: Director FBI. Attention: IntelligenceDivision. From: SAC, MM. Subjects: FS, INTV, Gonzalez, Hiram, Res, BKG, REL, Buss, Assoc, TRA

24 NARA 104-10062-10046 ~ 5/6/1973 CIA Memorandum “Subject: Media Inquiry to Cuban Exile Journalist in Miami re Cuban Involvement in Watergate Case and Attitudes in Miami Area.” For: Deputy Director for Operations. Prepared by: James E. Flannery, Acting Chief, Western Hemisphere Division. Released December 15, 2022.

25 “Watergate’s last chapter.” By James Hohmann. Politico, April 19, 2011.

26 “World War II Hump Pilots 27th Reunion,” The News (Van Nuys, CA), August 6, 1972. Page 44.
>> The event was organized by Ted McKinney, Cliff Henderson, and Herb Fisher for the men whose “operational routes of up to 1,000 miles took them over the highest mountains in the world, the Himalayan Range.” Dr. William Jackson expected up to 400 attendees, among them “Ambassador William Pawley, Gen. Harold George, Gen. Bill Tunner, Gen. C. R. Smith, Gen. Dan Callahan, Gen. James Ferguson, Gen. Don Flickinger, Grover Loening, Robert Prescott ...”

China National Aviation Association, Officers (1971).

• William C. McDonald, Jr., Permanent Chairman 
• Leon F. Roberts, Chairman
• William D. Pawley, President
• Richard Rossi, Vice President 
• Reginald Farrar, Secretary 
• Walter Quinn, Treasurer

27 “Section: May 23, 1973.” CIA Family Jewels. Page 413 of 703.

>> Memorandum “Subject: Agency Involvement in Watergate Case.” To: All Employees. From: William Colby. Released June 25, 2007.

28 NARA 104-10256-10268 ~ “Entry into the Democratic National Headquarters.” Page 10.

29 NARA 1993.06.30.17:53:40:090380 ~ 9/27/1973 Letter “Virgilio R. Gonzalez.” To: John S. Warner, Esquire, Acting General Counsel, Central Intelligence Agency. From: Daniel E. Schultz.

NARA 1993.07.02.11:50:32:710800 ~ 8/22/1973 Memo.

>> Stated that Gonzalez was never recruited or employed by CIA.

30 “The Cuban spy and Watergate burglar who won a presidential pardon. How Cuba and the Kennedy assassination led to the pardon of Rolando Eugenio Martínez.” By Shane O'Sullivan. The Washington Post, December 3, 2018.

In anticipation of the Mueller report, political commentators and historians have drawn numerous parallels with Watergate and the impeachment proceedings against President Richard M. Nixon. A month after Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, President Gerald R. Ford pardoned him. But history has forgotten the only other man granted a presidential pardon for his role in the Watergate crimes, and why the pardon was given.

Watergate burglar Rolando Eugenio Martínez was a veteran of more than 300 infiltration missions into Cuba for the CIA during the secret war on Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. He was also the only Watergate burglar still on the agency’s payroll at the time of the break-in.

He was recruited for the Watergate operation by E. Howard Hunt, the former CIA liaison to the Cuban “government In exile” in Miami before the Bay of Pigs invasion. By the summer of 1971, Hunt had retired from the agency and taken up a new job as a security consultant for the Nixon White House.

Incensed by the publication of the Pentagon Papers, Nixon ordered a smear campaign against whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, so Hunt recruited Martínez and two other Cubans to break into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in Beverly Hills, Calif. Their goal? To find embarrassing secrets that could destroy Ellsberg’s reputation in the press. Hunt subsequently employed an expanded Cuban team to break into the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee in May and June 1972.

Amid rumors that Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern had financial support from Cuba, Hunt sent Martínez into DNC headquarters to find and photograph documentary evidence of collusion between Democrats and Castro. Martínez believed the Ellsberg and Watergate break-ins were “national security” operations being run through Hunt at the White House with the blessing of the CIA. After all, the agency was still paying Martínez a retainer of a hundred dollars a month to report on Cubans of intelligence interest arriving in Miami, and he had repeatedly told his case officer about his contact with Hunt.

After serving 15 months in jail for his part in the break-in, Martínez returned to Miami on parole in 1974 and was warned by former CIA colleagues that Cuban intelligence might try to recruit him. Three years later, in May 1977, the Cuban pitch came. Thinking Martínez was embittered by his Watergate experience, the Cuban intelligence service (Direccion General de Inteligencia — DGI) requested a meeting in Kingston, Jamaica.

Martínez, however, remained loyal to the U.S. government and reported the approach to the CIA through agency veteran Felix Rodriguez. He was told to contact the FBI, who approved a double-agent mission to infiltrate Cuban intelligence. After meetings in Mexico and Jamaica, Martínez sailed to Cuba on Castro’s Bluebird yacht and met Interior Minister José Abrantes. He was debriefed for several days in Havana and given a sum of money. According to Rodriguez, the Cubans wanted Martínez to use his heroic status in the Cuban exile community in Miami to support the joint efforts of Cuban exile banker Bernardo Benes and the new Carter administration to reestablish diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Instead, Martínez shared the Cuban plans with the FBI, securing himself a presidential pardon from Ronald Reagan in 1983. Reagan denied similar requests from Hunt and Nixon’s deputy campaign chief, Jeb Magruder, causing many to suspect that Martínez’s pardon was a political move intended to strengthen Reagan’s popularity with Cuban voters in Miami ahead of his 1984 reelection campaign.

Only those closest to Martínez in intelligence circles knew the role his secret mission to Cuba had played in Reagan’s decision to grant clemency. And Martínez’s mission had an intriguing subplot that threatened the CIA’s very existence at the time. The agency initially suspected that the Cuban pitch to Martínez was part of a broader propaganda campaign to implicate the CIA in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and further damage its morale and reputation after a series of scandals.

Kennedy had initiated his own back-channel diplomacy with Castro in the final months of his life, and his death was being reinvestigated by the House Select Committee on Assassinations at the time of the Cuban approach to Martínez. One of the committee’s key witnesses was Cuban exile leader Antonio Veciana, who told investigators that he and his CIA case officer, Maurice Bishop, had met Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas two months before the Kennedy assassination.

In April 1977, one month before approaching Martínez, Cuban intelligence had met another FBI double agent in Mexico City: Felix Zabala Mas, Veciana’s close friend and business partner. Together, the Cuban exiles had previously mounted two unsuccessful assassination attempts against Castro — with a bazooka in Havana in 1961 and with a gun hidden in a camera in Chile 10 years later. Cuban intelligence thought they had “turned” Zabala Mas against his friend. They hoped that their former enemy could give them the inside track on Veciana’s congressional testimony, Castro assassination plots and current anti-Castro terrorist activity.

Declassified FBI and CIA documents reveal, however, that the Cubans had been deceived by an elaborate plot, designed by Veciana to sabotage President Jimmy Carter’s push to restore relations with Cuba. Veciana scripted Zabala’s approach to Cuban intelligence and what he divulged in subsequent meetings, aiming to incite Castro to publicly rail against the CIA assassination plots, damage relations with the United States and establish Veciana’s name as a CIA agent. Castro refused to take the bait, however, and while efforts at detente floundered in 1977, Castro lived to see the restoration of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba in 2015.

Veciana survived a Cuban assassination attempt in 1979, and both he and Martínez lived to see the death of Castro. Martínez is now 96 and rues that his covert operations failed to free Cuba and resulted in the “loss of two presidents” — the assassination of Kennedy, which he believes was an act of revenge by Castro, and the resignation of Nixon.

A genial character, Martínez refuses to discuss anything that didn’t “come out” during his CIA-approved Watergate testimony, like the key to a DNC secretary’s desk drawer that he tried to hide from arresting officers in the early hours of June 17, 1972. When I asked him recently why he had the key that night, he told me with a chuckle, “I don’t remember and I don’t want to remember. I want to be consistent with what I said before. I don’t want it to come out, I’m sorry.” His undiminished loyalty to the intelligence community has repaid the trust shown in him by Reagan 35 years ago. The file detailing who recommended his pardon remains classified, and beyond what he told Watergate prosecutors, his secrets remain sealed. [Emphasis added by D.P. Cannon.]

31 NARA 104-10256-10268 ~ “Entry into the Democratic National Headquarters.” Pages 2-4.

32 NARA 124-10202-10485 ~ 9/16/1976 FBI Airtel. To: Director, FBI. From: SAC Alexandria. ROSKIL.

33 “The CIA's Family Jewels—Agency Violated Charter for 25 Years, Wiretapped Journalists and Dissidents.” The National Security Archive website: http://www.nsarchive.org

34 “Nixon: Downfall After Stonewall.” By James M. Naughton and Anthony Marro. Daytona Beach Sunday News Journal, May 1, 1977. Page 1.

35 “4 More Admit Guilt As Spies on Watergate.” By Walter Rugaber. The New York Times, January 16, 1973. Page 1.

36 “The Nation: The Forgotten Cubans.” Time, September 24, 1973. 37 Pawley, Russia Is Winning. Page 452.

38 “Kissinger Papers: U.S. OK With Takeover.” By Calvin Woodward. Associated Press, May 27, 2006. 

National Security Archives website offers access to 20 of the documents.

“Kissinger-Zhou transcript.” The National Security Archive website.

39 “William D. Rogers Is Dead at 80; Planned U.S. Policy in Latin America.” By Douglas Martin and Sarah Abruzzese. The New York Times, September 30, 2007.

>> William D. Rogers is no relation to William P. Rogers, Mr. Nixon’s first Secretary of State.

40 CIA-RDP80R01731R002300040029-6 ~ 9/5/1974 Letter. To: Lt. General Vernon A Walters, Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, DC 20505. From: William Pawley at 260 Northeast 17th Terrace, Miami, Florida 33132.

Dear Dick,

I am enclosing a copy of “Current Cuban-Soviet Relationships—The Challenge to U.S. Policy,” by Morris Rothenberg of the Center for Advanced International Studies of the University of Miami, as well as copies of my letters to the President and to Senator Goldwater, which are self-explanatory.

I am also enclosing an extra copy of the booklet, in the hope that you will encourage the Director of the CIA to read it.

With warm regards, I am Very sincerely yours, Bill William D. Pawley

 >> In his copy to President Ford, Pawley added important comments (bold emphasis added by D.P. Cannon): 

Dear Mr. President:

I am enclosing a copy of "Current Cuban-Soviet Relationships The Challenge to U. S. Policy" by Morris Rothenberg of the Center for Advanced International Studies of the University of Miami. As the rumor seems to be growing that Cuba may be recognized, I would greatly appreciate it if you could find the time to read this brief article, which I feel gives a concise and accurate view of the odds against us in this recognition question.

Since President Kennedy after the missile crisis made an agreement with Russia that would in effect prevent the overthrow of Castro's regime, our prestige in the Western Hemisphere has greatly deteriorated and we have very few friends that we could count on to support any ideas or policies that we might feel in the best interest of Latin America as well as ourselves.

Castro has thousands of subversive agents in this country, not including those working out of the United Nations. I sincerely believe, Mr. President, that irrespective of the views of other members of the OAS, we should not under any circumstances reestablish relations with Cuba, which would be tantamount to our sanctioning Russia's establishing any kind of military base they see fit, only ninety miles from the United States. This would be far more dangerous for the United States than, say, the recognition of East Germany.

The treaty establishing the OAS (which I had the privilege of signing) a copy of which is enclosed, has a provision which I think is applicable in this case and I have marked it for your information.

Communist Cuba is a greater danger to the United States in my opinion than either Russia or China because of Cuba's proximity to us and its ability to infiltrate its agents with greater ease throughout the entire Western Hemisphere.

Of all of the international problems with which you are confronted, I believe none is more important for careful analysis before any decision is reached.

With warm personal regards, I am

Very sincerely yours. Bill

William D. Pawley

>> Pawley also copied Senator Barry Goldwater.

41 “Peking apologists ‘restored’.” The News Tribune’s Daily Capital News (Missouri), September 20, 1972. Page 4.

Jessup was roundly condemned by Dr. Anthony Kubek and other historians of that period for doing so much to bring about the loss of China to the Free World. Ambassador William Pawley and others attributed the loss of the mainland in 1950 to the “mistaken policy of Dean Acheson, Phil Jessup, Lattimore” and others.

Mr. Acheson regretted his mistake. But Jessup and Lattimore do not. Recently, Jessup introduced a resolution in Norfolk, Conn., to “begin at once the complete withdrawal of (U. S.) naval, air and land forces, its advisers, and its material” from South Vietnam.

Jessup does not regret the fall of China to the Communists. Instead, he now wants us to surrender all of Indochina to Red rule. It's a fair question, we believe, to ask if there is any part of the world Jessup would like to see kept free?

42 “William Pawley, Cuba.” Letter to the Editor, The Miami Herald, September 30, 1974. “Cuba,” Congressional Record-Senate, 93rd Congress, 2nd Session, November 26, 1974. 

43 Pawley, Russia Is Winning. Pages 79 and 80.

>> Walter H. Judd (1898-1994) was a U.S. Representative from Minnesota for twenty years ending in 1963. A frequent delegate to the Republican National Convention, Representative Judd received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981.

>> Alfred Kohlberg (1887-1960), an American entrepreneur, headed the China Lobby and was allied with Robert Welch, founding director of the John Birch Society, named for the first American killed by the communist Chinese after the end of World War II. Birch had been an intelligence officer for the Flying Tigers.

>> Admiral Harry Ervin Yarnell (1875-1959) had a naval career that spanned from the Spanish-American War through World War II, when he served the Secretary of Navy as Special Adviser to the Chinese Military Mission.

>> Roy Howard (1883-1964) conducted the first American interview with the Emperor of Japan in 1933. He went on to preside over one of America’s top newspaper chains, E. W. Scripps Co., Time, September 29, 1952.

>> Patrick J. Hurley (1883-1963) served as U.S. Secretary of War, 1929-33, and U.S. Ambassador to China, 1944- 45.

44 Pawley, Russia Is Winning. Page 279. 

45 Pawley, Russia Is Winning. Page 4.

The whole pattern is now colored with a thin, pasty coating called “detente,” a Communist tactic to prepare the trusting democracies for the kill. Detente, in its present usage, means a lessening of tensions, less confrontation and more peaceful co-operation between the United States and the Soviet Union. We should seek that. But detente must be a two-way street, in which, dealing from strength, we can insist at the very least upon the kind of fair exchange which has been so conspicuously absent when we have met the Soviets at the bargaining table. We gave up far more than we received in the recent economic and SALT negotiations. We took a sound beating on our selling wheat to the Russians, and in agreements for arms limitations. Such lopsided detente becomes appeasement. It can end only in surrender.

46 “Bernard Barker 1917-2009: Bernard Barker Watergate 'plumber' was a hero to exiles,” Miami Herald June 6, 2009.

47 Manuel Aguilera Cristóbal, “‘No lamento mi papel en el Watergate’ Uno de los cubano-americanos implicados,” El Mundo, July 7, 2009.
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2009/07/18/internacional/1247945765.html

48 Watergate Chronology http://watergate.info/chronology/73-03-19_mccord-letter-to-sirica.shtml

49 “Transcript of the recording of a meeting between President Nixon and H. R. Haldeman in the Oval Office on June 23, 1972, from 10:04am to 11:39am.” Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. National Archives.

"Gen. Walters Quits C.I.A.; Bush 'Wants His Own Team.'" The New York Times, April 23, 1976.