203. Watergate: The Spies Who Went Rogue (Ep 2)

How did a former CIA officer and his Cuban assets break into the offices of a Los Angeles psychiatrist? And what did the CIA know about it? Listen as David and Gordon delve into the break-ins the led up to the infamous burglary of the Watergate building. ------------------- Sign-up for our free newsletter where producer Becki takes you behind the scenes of the show: therestisclassified.com/newsletter ------------------- Give The Declassified Club this Christmas. Treat yourself or a fellow fan to a membership: bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, newsletter, and more. Annual gifts come with a special edition T-shirt. ------------------- Get a 10% discount on business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC10. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://HP.com/CLASSIFIED⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more information. T&C's apply. ------------------- Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified⁠ Video Editor: Joe Pettit Social Producer: Emma Jackson Assistant Producer: Alfie Rowe Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:03Speaker 00

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• 0:25Speaker 01

  How did a former CIA officer lead a break-in into the offices of a Los Angeles psychiatrist? And what did the CIA know about it? Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm Gordon Corera.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  And I'm David McCloskey.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  And this is the second of our series on the CIA and Watergate. Last time, we looked at the paranoia of President Nixon in the White House, his anger over all the leaks that were coming out of the administration, his desire to do something about it, and how a team of his White House aides had created a group called The Plumbers to deal with those leaks.

• 1:06Speaker 00

  Not the official name, though.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Not the official name, but that's how they became known. And so these plumbers have in their sights Daniel Ellsberg, who's leaked the Pentagon Papers, details about the history of the US involvement in Vietnam, and they want to get in to his psychiatrist's office, which happens to be in LA. And this is the start of what will eventually become Watergate. First, though, a quick message from our sponsors, HP.

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• 4:45Speaker 01

  So David, we have this desire to go after Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Papers, and they want to get his psychiatrist's files in order to basically smear him, don't they?

• 4:59Speaker 00

  You love a leaker, though, don't you, Gordon?

• 5:01Speaker 01

  I do not.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Gordon loves a leaker.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  A noble whistleblower, revealing the truth and the idea the CIA would go after such a man. Shocking.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  Well, it's not the CIA.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  It's a former CIA guy, Gordon.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  With a little bit of help from the agency, as we learned with some wigs and documents from the agency.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  We should say, and I think this will be a recurring theme of our Watergate series, which is how much did the CIA know about what Hunt was up to?

• 5:30Speaker 01

  What did they know and when did they know it?

• 5:31Speaker 00

  It doesn't seem at this point that they know that the target is Ellsberg's office for his equipment. But we can, we'll come back to that. So as you said, they look at Ellsberg and say, look, if we can get into the psychiatrist's office, we can get a bunch of derogatory information. We can smear him in public. Hunt and Liddy, the dangerous duo, put together a proposal inside the Special Investigations Unit, The Plumbers, that they will break in and take the records themselves. It is approved with a slight amendment to their proposal, which is that Hunt and Liddy should stay away from the premises themselves. So they should find people to do the job. So it's not, don't do this illegal thing. It's, look, you guys find some people to do it for you.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  But given what we know about Hunt, the former CIA officer involved in coups and black bag jobs, and G. Gordon Liddy, the former FIB guy who also kind of likes the Nazis, will they listen to the instructions to keep their distance from the break-in?

• 6:31Speaker 00

  Ish, I would say. Ish, ish. But they need to prepare for it, right? So Hunt is continuing to use the CIA, the Technical Services Division, the spy gadget people, essentially as a quartermaster. So he goes, he obtains a recorder and a typewriter case. He gets business cards and an alias name. He gets a commercial camera. He also gets a wig. Remember, he got his own wig and disguise kit. He gets one for Liddy. He gets an alias, alias documents for Liddy. They put together pocket litter, including a social security card, a lifetime NRA, National Rifle Association membership, a gate-altering device that they slip into their shoe.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  So you walk a different way.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  You walk differently. And a 35mm Tassina camera that is concealed inside a pipe tobacco pouch.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Kind of like they want to play spies, isn't it?

• 7:21Speaker 00

  Well, they are.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  They are kind of spies.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  Hunt is like, Hunt is a spy.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is what they do.

• 7:25Speaker 00

  They have essentially decided, look, we won't do the break-in ourselves, but we will do the reconnaissance work upfront. So in late August, Hunt and Liddy fly out to LA on a government travel voucher and check into the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel. This is just blocks away from Ellsberg psychiatrist, Dr. Fielding, from his office. So they're out there in disguise, posing as tourists.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Wig.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  Wig, the glasses, you know, Hunt's in his gate-altering device like Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects, Kaiser So Se, you know, walking with a lamp.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  They photograph the building. They photograph Dr. Fielding's Volvo in his reserved space. They look at the entryway. They plot escape routes. They case Dr. Fielding's apartment. They return to the offices at the hour that they think they will break in, and they see cleaning equipment in the lobby and they just walk, walk straight into the building. Now Hunt, remember, he's, he's worked extensively with Cubans, so he speaks very passable Spanish. And Hunt tells the cleaner in Spanish that they're just doctors, leaving a note for a colleague. So she unlocks Fielding's office, lets them in, and Hunt kind of keeps her talking while Liddy pretends to write a note, but he's really casing the room.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  And he figures that the lock that she just let them through, the cleaner just let them through, won't be any issue. He's an ex-FIB, and as we'll see, the people they're going to hire to do this are going to have some experience in lockpicking. So not going to be an issue. They then sit outside and they check the police patrols. Because again, they're, you know, they want to get a sense of what the pattern of life is around this office. They feel good after a few days of casing. The reconnaissance is done. They take a red eye home. And then they, they meet a CIA officer who they know as Steve at Dulles Airport, and they hand him the film that they have used to case the psychiatrist's office and have that film developed by Steve at the CIA.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Suggests the level of CIA involvement in this, which is how knowledgeable.

• 9:28Speaker 00

  Just troubling.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Troubling, yes.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  As we'll see, though. Hunt throughout, really mid to late 1971, makes a number of these requests for CIA assistance. I don't think that, and we'll see, he runs into an issue here, but up to this point, I don't think that Helms certainly really knows what he's doing. Because again, he's leveraging an old agency network and he's leveraging the deputy director, who heard from the White House, help him out, that kind of, you know, give him carte blanche. He's leveraging all of that to then get essentially technical support.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  We should say for club members, we've got a whole two-part mini-series on the life and times of Howard Hunt, because it is such a wild story. So do join up at therestisclassified.com if you want to hear about that.

• 10:22Speaker 00

  But when the surveillance hall is, you know, given back to him by the technician, CIA techs know, because they've now been involved with him and Lyddie on multiple occasions, that there's another guy involved. There's this ex FBI special agent, G. Gordon Lyddie, who is basically pasted to Hunt at the hip. And that makes the techs anxious and they do route this up the chain to say there's another guy who's involved here. And Deputy Director Cushman's executive assistant writes up a memo. And he basically says, look, Hunt has brought a stranger in who now is privy to all kinds of notionally secret things inside the Technical Services Division. The White House really should have cleared that with us because we don't really know

• 11:07Speaker 00

  who this guy is. The use of all this unique clandestine surveillance equipment, the disguises, the alias documents, if that gets out.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  It's trouble.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  That's trouble for us. And the executive assistant says, look, we should instruct Technical Services to clear all of these requests up through the deputy director's office, implying up to this point, they haven't been.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:29Speaker 00

  And that Ehrlichman, chief domestic policy advisor, and who's the principal for a lot of the reports that Plumbers are writing up, we should make sure that he approves all this, that he knows about it. Deputy Director Cushman agrees with this. He calls Ehrlichman at the White House and explains, like, we can't meet any more of Hunt's request. This has gotten a bit out of control and we're worried about blowback if it gets revealed. Hunt's kind of a pain in the neck. And it's all actually written up in a memo drafted on the 27th of August by Cushman, the deputy director. It goes up to Helms, the director. Helms writes one word on the memo, "good," and initials it RH.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  But what does he mean by "good"? Good that Hunt is a pain in the neck or good that they're now putting on more controls?

• 12:17Speaker 00

  Good that there are controls and that he's being, as we'll see, he's not actually cut off, but that now these requests will have to get routed through a formal chain.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  But of course, it implies Helms knows what's happened so far, because he's read the memo, and that from there onwards, CIA is going to be signing off some of it.

• 12:36Speaker 00

  I don't think that Helms had any foreknowledge of the Fielding break-in, for example. I think it's very unlikely that the developed film would have made its way up to the CIA leadership and that they would know in advance. I think they probably don't want to know, to be honest. But at this point, you do have to kind of wonder why someone hasn't taken stock of this and said, maybe it needs to stop entirely. But again, the White House, it's Ehrlichman, he's Nixon's guy, he's saying, help these guys out, that's what you do. So, I mean, as we'll see, Hunt is like, sort of cut off.

• 13:17Speaker 00

  For example, just a few days later, after this memo, Hunt makes another request. He wants backstopped credit cards. Request is refused. He also, he also wants the support of a particular CIA secretary that he had used in Paris. Agency says no. But he does keep contacting people inside the building. He meets with the deputy director for plans, again, who's the chief of the operational directorate. He contacts an agency officer inquiring about someone to help with a, quote, "weekend entry operation." He asks for help running name traces. And he also pings what was then called the External Employment Assistance Branch. So, once people leave the agency, they help place agency officers in the private sector.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  And he says, look, do you have a retired lockpicker?

• 14:04Speaker 01

  That you can refer me to. It's like a LinkedIn. It's like that lockpicker.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Lockpicker.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, burglar, basically. But I guess the key point is, he is trying to build a team by doing that, because he's been told, don't do the break-in yourself, don't get too involved. They've tased the joint, but for the break-in itself, they're going to look elsewhere. But again, it's going to be with some links to the agency, you know, agency adjacent.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  Hunt worked there for 20 years.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:31Speaker 00

  So everybody he knows.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Has some link to the CIA.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  His kind of agency adjacent. It does seem like his request to the CIA's External Employment Assistance Branch was not particularly helpful, because he ends up going to his old Cuban friends.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Ah, the Cubans.

• 14:48Speaker 00

  He had started to build a team of Cubans even prior to the focus on Ellsberg. So I think as part of his work with the Plumbers, he was understanding that these Cubans would be useful. It's worth talking a little bit about them, because they'll play an important role in the story. One of the recruits is known as Macho. Real name Bernard Barker, but he's Macho. He's got a cryptonym, agency cryptonym, AM Clatter One.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Clatter One is not the name I'd want for a burglar, just saying.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  He's a very interesting guy. So he's a Cuban-American, but in his case, he's not a Cuban exile who happens to be in the States. He's an American who was born in pre-Castro Cuba. He was a longtime CIA asset. He's actually a World War II veteran. His B-17 was shot down on a bombing raid. He spent a year in a German POW camp. After the war, he had joined former Cuban dictator Batista's police force, probably as part of his work for CIA. And he left Cuba after the revolution. He winds up being Hunt's deputy on the Bay of Pigs, so those two are very close. By 1971, he's a Miami real estate guy. He's got agency ties.

• 16:02Speaker 00

  Though they were formerly terminated as an asset by the agency in 1966, but he's one of Hunt's guys.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so it feels like Hunt is tapping up his old contacts that he knew from Bay of Pigs, and those are the people he's going for.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Makes sense.

• 16:16Speaker 00

  It does, it makes sense. And Hunt, he's gone to Miami for all of the memorials. And he uses Hunt when he's with the Cubans, we'll refer to Hunt throughout the story as Hunt, but to the Cubans, he's Eduardo. That is his CIA work name. He meets with Macho, they have lunch at a Cuban restaurant. And Hunt says, look, I'm working with the White House on a very interesting project, and we are building a team to operate where the CIA and FBI cannot. And what we are doing is we're looking at a traitor, Daniel Ellsberg, who has given papers to the Russian Embassy. He's playing off of the fact that the entirety of the Pentagon Papers had made their way

• 16:59Speaker 00

  to some foreign embassies, but he's doing something slightly subtle here in making it seem like Ellsberg's a communist, he's given the papers to the Russians, he's an enemy of the state, right?

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he's framing it as a national security mission, implying that this is probably a kind of authorized thing, perhaps?

• 17:17Speaker 00

  I think so.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  To the Cubans?

• 17:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  At least giving the impression this is, yeah.

• 17:22Speaker 00

  I think the Cubans, it is, it's a very interesting question, and it's actually a bit unresolved, is exactly what the Cubans.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Who do they think they're working for?

• 17:32Speaker 00

  Who do they think they're working for? And I think at this point at least, they very much think that this is the agency.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:39Speaker 00

  Or this is, this is the White House, but it's official, right? It's a very official, in their minds, maybe even legal thing.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Because at least one of the Cubans, this guy Eugenio Martinez, was on a CIA retainer.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  Still.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  So he's another one of these kind of veterans who's been involved in these operations, but he is still on the CIA payroll. I mean, $100 a month, not that much, but, you know, he's been involved in CIA operations into Cuba. So the fact someone on the CIA payroll is being asked to be involved in this operation, again, gives that kind of the looseness of the exact role of the CIA is there, isn't it?

• 18:16Speaker 00

  And it's also, I mean, Martinez's affiliation in particular has become fodder for the belief that, okay, maybe the CIA had advanced knowledge of all the different horrible things that we're going to describe about that are to come.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Which we should say is part of the conspiracy.

• 18:28Speaker 00

  It is part of, and you love, Gordon, is, you've become over the course of our program, slightly more conspiracy adjacent, I think, than when you began.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  I just like the truth, David.

• 18:38Speaker 00

  The truth is out there.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  I just like the truth. That's all I'm saying. Because we haven't really set up the conspiracy idea about this. Maybe we should, we'll come to it later.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  The conspiracy idea is that the CIA was behind all of this.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  Right.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  This was all a setup.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  But the Martinez angle is interesting, because he's meeting with a case officer regularly. And in a meeting with his case officer in Miami, this is after, you know, Hunt has gone down there for this lunch, and he started tapping these contacts and said, look, I have something important for you to be involved in. Martinez tells his case officer, oh, I saw Howard Hunt. Hunt had been in Miami, he said he was doing work for the White House. And the case officer says, that seems odd. Case officer, I think, doesn't particularly like Hunt. And he says, you know, I'll check it out, and he checks it out, and then goes and tells Martinez, well, I don't have any record of Hunt working for the White House. Now, the White House isn't exactly advertising Hunt's employment or the existence of the

• 19:33Speaker 00

  Plumbers, but the CIA case officer tells Martinez that Hunt probably isn't working for the White House. And the Cuban Martinez, I think he then, he presumes that Hunt is using that as cover for some kind of secret operation that the CIA is conducting that his handler in Miami doesn't know about.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Deeper secret.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  It's a deeper secret. But the Miami station guys are now deeply perturbed, and it's a classic kind of turf battle, where they're thinking, well, what in the hell is Hunt up to in Miami on my turf?

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  With my assets?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so cables are going to go back and forth about this.

• 20:12Speaker 00

  And so the COS Miami, chief of station Miami, cables Langley. And he says, look, you know, Hunt comes down here, and he seems like he's promoting business deals of some sort, but he's also said he's told by asset that he's on a White House retainer as a consultant. And he asks that Langley check on Hunt's White House affiliation, because he wants to know if he's actually there on official business. The reply from headquarters, which will end up being quoted by one of the commissions that looked into, the Baker Commission, looked into CIA involvement in Watergate, is basically, Hunt, yes, he is working for the White House.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  It's of no interest to us. And in effect, they say, cool it.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 00

  Just don't, don't worry about it. Don't look into it.

• 21:01Speaker 00

  And I think that the sort of sum total of the provisioning that Hunt's getting from the technical services division, his relationships with higher ups at the CIA, including the deputy director for plans.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  This weird interaction in Miami with the CIA Langley basically saying,

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Leave it, leave it.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  Has created a very fertile ground for, I would argue, conspiracy theorists to claim that the CIA, and there's kind of two variations of this. There's the CIA did Watergate. The CIA is behind it. It's actually a CIA operation. The maybe slightly more defensible version, but I also think incorrect, is that the CIA had four dollars of it. The CIA knows what Hunt is up to and helps him and does not stop it.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause the real conspiracy theory is this idea of the silent coup in which the deep state, the CIA, is actually taking out Richard Nixon by doing Watergate and then leaking it. And then making sure Nixon takes the blame. That's the kind of,

• 22:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  That's the real conspiracy theory. And it's actually where a lot of the ideas of the deep state, you know,

• 22:12Speaker 00

  Come from.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Come from is from that idea. But you're right. There's a next thing on, which is maybe they were, they had knowledge of it, which I think is more plausible. If you look at this, I mean, two ways of reading these interactions. One is to go, the CIA are just like, ah, this guy Hunt, he's getting on with stuff. Just keep your distance and we'll give him the minimum support. There's another bit, which is like, we're giving him what he needs to do it. Now that's not quite the same.

• 22:36Speaker 00

  Because we've been asked by the White House.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  We've been asked by the White House. Yeah.

• 22:39Speaker 00

  I think that it's, it's impossible to overstate the importance of that call between Ehrlichman at the White House and the deputy director where he says,

• 22:47Speaker 01

  carte blanche.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  Give him, give him what he needs. What he needs. And again, you know, it just comes back to the, the point we raised in the first episode around the nature of the CIA at this time. It's role as kind of the president's, literally sometimes, black bag outfit.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:04Speaker 00

  Where when you were asked, even, you know, again, as we saw with Helms and the Johnson years, even when you're asked to do things that violate the agency's charter.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  If the president asks, you do it.

• 23:15Speaker 00

  You do it. It's not to excuse it, but it's to say that that is the sort of brand and the culture in this time period.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  So we've got these Cubans recruited by Hunt. They're going to go out to LA. And they're going to do the break in.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  They do the break in. They do it very loudly. They're trying to make it, make it like it's a drug related burglary. But they do the break in. They don't find anything.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  All that.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  There's, there's, there's no profile in there on Ellsberg, on Daniel Ellsberg. So it's all for nothing. And interestingly, after the break in, because again, they've done this to advertise that there's a break in. The LAPD pick up another guy who's already wanted on several unrelated charges. And they squeeze him and basically in exchange for those charges being dropped, he pleads guilty to breaking into Dr. Fielding's office. So the case ends up being closed, even though this guy had no involvement in it.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  He's been, he's been fitted up.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  He's been fitted up.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Get me the usual suspects.

• 24:17Speaker 00

  The plumbers, as we can see, are, are striking out on their mission here to Tar Ellsberg. So in late October, Hunt and Lydie, they go out to the CIA psychiatrist staff. Cause remember, the whole point of the break in had been to give the CIA psychiatrists more information about Ellsberg so they could use it in their profile. It was just, so basically with no more information, they go out and do the classic policymaker thing of it. Let's just squeeze them again and see what comes out. So they go out, they meet the CIA psychiatrists and they say, okay. The, and actually the agency has written this up in its own internal history of the Watergate investigation. Say, you need to produce a study within a week. The paper should have no signature on it, no watermark. It shouldn't even have Ellsberg's name on it.

• 25:01Speaker 00

  They want to know more information about Ellsberg's sexual proclivities. And it's very clear in this conversation, again, to the psychiatrist, that they are trying to get material they can use to manipulate or defame Ellsberg. The doctors, they do it. A few weeks later, they produce the profile. They send it up with a note saying, we think that this, they don't say this explicitly, but they basically say, we think this violates the agency's charter. Now, we didn't want to have anything to do with this. We think the director should have a chance to comment before it goes out the door. Helms reads it, approves delivery, and he writes that the agency is glad to be of assistance, but that he wishes to underline that its involvement in this matter should not be revealed in any context, formal or informal.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  And Helms writes later in his memoir, just called A Look Over My Shoulder, great title for a memoir, that he is not proud of this.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  I don't find it very impressive because it's basically going to read it, approve the delivery and but say, I want no, no trace of this whatsoever. We're going to cooperate in doing something we know is wrong.

• 26:04Speaker 00

  We know is wrong.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  We know it's wrong, but just, just don't talk about it. So that psychiatrist study is going to be handed over to the White House, to Hunt and Lydie at the White House. This is November now, 1971. Now, what's interesting is we are heading towards a presidential election in 1972, in which Richard Nixon is running for reelection. And I guess that's the context for the next stage in this, which is going to take us towards the Watergate break in itself. Because that December, 1971, Lydian Hunt, our ex-Feeb and ex-agency man, are going to move across to this fantastic organization called the Committee for the Re-Election of the President,

• 26:48Speaker 01

  whose acronyms are Creep. I mean, what, what were they thinking? I mean, you've got to think of your acronyms when you come up with an organization. If you're Nixon's people to call your committee for your reelection Creep.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  They don't call it Creep though. That's just how it's been slandered. They, I, I believe they abbreviated it CRP. But it has been forever called Creep.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, they should have spotted that one.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  And in particular, given what Creep is going to get up to, I think it, it suits.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Because they've got the taste for it now. They've got the taste for what you can do with, you know, break ins and getting dirt on people. And so now you've moved the people who do that from, you know, kind of White House plumbing leaks to politics, to a reelection campaign.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  That's right. Interestingly, Lydie goes over to Creep as chief counsel. So keeping the law first and foremost. Hunt is never actually formally part of it. He stays on his retainer, but he is effectively embedded

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:53Speaker 00

  in Creep's operation. And it is, I mean, to your point exactly, Gordon, shifting into more polit, kind of a political intelligence focus. How can it, how can it gather information or steal information that will be useful in the campaign? So by December of 71, Lydie is at Creep and they are, you know, essentially reporting up through the same structure. There's Coulson, there's Ehrlichman at the White House. And the idea, I think of this in-house intelligence operation has really been swirling around and like, you know, this is very fitting, I think with Lydie's personality.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  He comes up with a very wild scheme to weaponize it. And like all good schemes or elaborate plans, they need elaborate charts to demonstrate their plans. So, so they're, they're putting together these proposals, which we'll talk about in a minute. And they ask the CIA's in-house graphics shop to print and produce them.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  The charts.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  The charts. The CIA does have a good graphics shop, I have to say.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Does it?

• 29:05Speaker 00

  This is, again, a kind of bizarre abuse of agency resources. Now remember, of course, that, I mean, Hunt thinks, well, I've got carte blanche to ask the CIA for stuff. So a graphics shop? Sure. Why not? The CIA's graphics shop produces them. Lydie collects them from a CIA technician on a street corner. They're wrapped up. And they do the, they do the handoff. The big pitch meeting is January 27th of 1972, and it's at the Department of Justice.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Fittingly.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Fittingly.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  For a pitch meeting about break-ins.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Lydie is presenting. In the room are the Attorney General of the United States, John Mitchell.

• 29:49Speaker 00

  The deputy of Creep, along with Nixon's White House counsel. Hunt is not there. Lydhi puts the charts up on easels, calls it Operation Gemstone. Each operation underneath the overall scheme has a code word and that code word is unsurprisingly a gemstone. Diamond is the centerpiece of this. And the idea here is to kidnap anti-war protesters, drug them, detain them in Mexico until the convention is over.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  The Democratic convention.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  Correct. Lydhi, as we've said, fascinated by the Nazis, labels it, I'll try my best German here. Nachtwurzneble.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Night and fog, which were German kind of, you know, detention raids.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  Right. He also described the team, and I think this is quite unsettling, as an Einsatzgruppe.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  The SS kill squads.

• 30:43Speaker 00

  Which are SS kill squads that shot people across Eastern Europe.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  Murder squads.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's just the Attorney General of the United States is sitting in this meeting.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  He's smoking his pipe.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Smoking a pipe.

• 30:57Speaker 00

  And listening to this.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  In this meeting, in the Department of Justice, in which they're talking about Einsatzgruppe and Nachtwurzneble raids. And what, he takes the pipe out of his mouth and asks where Lydhi could find men like that.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it's not an objection to the plan. He's like, where are you going to get guys who are going to do this?

• 31:14Speaker 01

  I know some guys.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  And Lydhi says organized crime. And the Attorney General says, well, how much is this going to cost? This kind of seems expensive.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  The obvious question if you're the Attorney General.

• 31:24Speaker 00

  And Lydhi said, look, these guys are pros, they're not cheap. I think Lydhi is probably referring to the Cubans here.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:31Speaker 00

  Not actual kind of.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  US mafia.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  US mafia. The Attorney General puts the pipe back in his mouth and says, no, it might be unwise to contribute, you know, to the coffers of organized crime. So, you know, you kind of point in the meeting where Lydhi's like, who, maybe that didn't land as well as I wanted it to. Let's move on.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  And then he's got this wild list of the different gemstones, which are the different operations. Let's run through them quickly. Ruby, planting spies in the Democrat campaigns. Coal, laundering money to Democrat campaigns to sow division. Emerald, a chase plane to eavesdrop on the Democratic nominee's aircraft. I mean, Sapphire, prostitutes to seduce Democratic power brokers aboard a houseboat, wired for sound at the Miami convention. I mean, that's, I mean, that is.

• 32:22Speaker 00

  Sapphire is the best one so far.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Sapphire sounds actually quite plausible to me. Opal, four black bag break-ins on the model they've already, you know, done at the psychiatrist against Democratic candidates and their headquarters. Turquoise, Hunt's Cuban operatives sabotaging the convention hall's air conditioning to break, to bake the nominee and make him sweat live on television. I mean, it's a bit like famously Nixon himself sweated in the 1960 debate with Kennedy. It's like my revenge on the Democrats is I'm going to make them sweat at their convention. I mean, they range from the kind of comet to the nu, I mean, it's, it's nuts. These, these are nuts.

• 33:03Speaker 00

  The, the Attorney General, apparently at the mention of the destruction of the air conditioning, smiles, presumably puts his pipe back in his mouth. And Garrett Graff, in his new history of Watergate, wrote, this is when, quote, misguided national security impulses morph into Democratic politicians essentially being treated as enemies of the state.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  There is, and it might be a subtle distinction for our listeners, but I think an important one, which is Ellsberg, in the minds of many of the people involved in the story, is an actual enemy of the state because he has leaked classified information that hostile powers now have access to. It's not excusing what they did, but it's an, it's an easier, logical kind of train to get to than, well, essentially using the exact same tactics on just.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Political opponents.

• 34:00Speaker 00

  Political opponents.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  But it's that leap, isn't it, to say political opponents are enemies of the state or in bed with enemies of the state, which is made. I mean, we have heard.

• 34:09Speaker 00

  Luckily, we don't deal with this problem anymore.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Well, I was going to say, David, we do, we have had a little hints of that, haven't we? Like, you know, Antifa and the left and, you know, some of those Democrats in the US, you know, and, and their links to left-wing terrorism. You can see elements of that. I think that is the really interesting parallel and the argument that that can then justify the use of certain powers to go after them. I think that's the really interesting parallel. But here, I mean, they're barely hiding the fact that this is, let's just go after our political opponents.

• 34:38Speaker 00

  Well, they have charts.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  They've got charts.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  They've got charts, they're up on an easel. And the Attorney General's reaction to all of this? He says, how much is this going to cost?

• 34:47Speaker 01

  It's the obvious question.

• 34:48Speaker 00

  There's a lot of charts, this sounds expensive, a chase plane.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:51Speaker 00

  Following the Democratic nominee's plane around all the time, that's going to be super expensive. And as I was reading this while preparing for the episode, this was a point where I laughed out loud because Lydhi's response is $1 million.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  It is Dr. Evil for hostile powers, $1 million.

• 35:12Speaker 00

  Except in the early 70s, $1 million is actually a lot of money. And, and the Attorney General pauses, works, refills his pipe, relights it. And then he says, $1 million is a hell of a lot of money, much more than we had in mind. Go back and come up with something more realistic. And Lydhi is crestfallen. He's standing in front of his charts. This hasn't worked. And then the AG, the Attorney General, tells him, he says, and Gordon, burn those charts and do it personally. I don't like having these giant charts around showing us renting a houseboat in Miami and seducing Democratic power brokers with prostitutes. Get rid of them.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  So a week later, Lydhi is back.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  He's back.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  He's back because he's worked on his pitch, you know, he's been slightly pushed back first time around. So it's a more streamlined pitch this time, no charts.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  No charts.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  No charts. I think he's learned.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  It's very sad. I tried to figure out if there were pictures anywhere of the charts or if someone had ever reproduced them. And I think Lydhi did follow his word and got rid of them.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'd be great if you still had the charts.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  If you had the charts.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  So this time, no charts. And sadly, some of the most ambitious plans have gone. You know, the, the houseboat filled with prostitutes, gone.

• 36:25Speaker 00

  Mixed, budget cuts.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  The spy plane, gone.

• 36:28Speaker 00

  Gone.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  You know, so what's left?

• 36:30Speaker 00

  Black bag jobs.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Breaking and entering.

• 36:33Speaker 00

  Breaking and entering. And the DNC, the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate are now, it seems, on the list. There's a bit of debate about when the Watergate is added. At this point, it's not the top of the list, certainly, but it's floating around now in this kind of gemstone ether as a potential target for a black bag job.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  And we should say the Watergate is where the Democratic National Committee, the kind of Democrat Party's offices are based.

• 37:02Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Which is one of their targets.

• 37:03Speaker 00

  Now, the Attorney General, I think this is very, is a very interesting way to deal with Lydhi because it gets at some of the ambiguity that has, I think, really characterizes so much of, of this story. Because he doesn't say no, he says, I'll think about it. Kind of classic, you know, kick the can down the road. The White House counsel, who had arrived late, apparently is horrified by this, but not so much horrified by the job itself or the idea of doing illegal things to collect political intelligence. But he's really horrified that this conversation is happening in this room in kind of an open way.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  In the Attorney General's office.

• 37:43Speaker 00

  It's like an operational security concern that he has. Meeting kind of breaks up awkwardly and I think Lydhi probably leaves the meeting thinking, did I, what was the answer?

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Yes or no.

• 37:54Speaker 00

  What do you want me to do? The White House counsel apparently goes to Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, and says, look, I don't know if this should be happening. Haldeman says, oh yeah, I agree with you, but then doesn't do anything to stop Lydhi and the plumbers. Nobody says no. No one's really said yes. You can tell that, I, I think, G. Gordon Lydhi with the Nazi fascination and, and Howard Hunt, these kind of guys are, they're a bit spooky and people don't want to be super close to them, right?

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:23Speaker 00

  So there's, there's a bit of distance that's created, but again, they're not, they're not formally told, hey, cut it out. None of what they're proposing is out of step with the Nixon mindset. And it's not out of step at all with some of the proposals that Nixon had tried to approve earlier in his presidency.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, with Hoover and people.

• 38:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it's, it's just, it's, it's the same set of tactics, it just happens to be focused on Democratic enemies of Richard Nixon.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  So there with neither a no nor a yes for the breaking and entering into the Watergate and the Democratic National Committee. Let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll see if they take that as an opportunity to just stop and sit back or whether instead they prepare for action. See you after the break.

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• 40:45Speaker 01

  Welcome back. G. Gordon Liddy, Howard Hunt have been given a kind of ambiguous answer, haven't they, David, from the top Nixon officials, but they're not going to take that as a no. They're going to get ready to push ahead.

• 40:59Speaker 00

  That's right. I mean, I think any ambitious underling should take a lesson from this, which is when ambiguous guidance comes down from on high.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Treat it as a yes.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  Get ready for yes.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  Treat it as a yes. Get ready for yes. So while they wait for a decision from the Attorney General of the United States on whether breaking and entering should be permitted under their gemstone plan, they get the infrastructure in place. So February and March, Hunt and Liddy basically run a cross-country recruiting trip.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Traveling first class.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  They travel first class.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Stay in good hotels.

• 41:35Speaker 00

  Stay in good hotels. The whole idea behind the expenditure here is they want to make their recruits think that this is an important and well-funded and official exercise on the part of the White House. And remember, a big part of this upfront is this Ruby Plan, one of the gemstones, which is let's plant spies in various Democrat campaigns. So a lot of the recruiting they're doing is for that because Hunt's Cubans will supply a lot of the manpower for the black bag jobs. One of the best scenes, though, Liddy takes a woman to dinner in California. He wants her to be one of these spies inside a campaign.

• 42:18Speaker 00

  And his idea in this dinner is I want to show this woman how tough and how loyal I am, how I can stick things out. And he tells her to hold out a lighter. And then he places his palm over the flame and holds his eyes, like locks eyes with this woman as the flesh on his palm starts to smoke and char and blacken. And then finally, once he's burned, and he's kind of like, it's like the Indiana Jones.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  He's like holding, he takes his hand away, thinking that this woman is now.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  It's going to be impressed.

• 42:53Speaker 00

  It's going to be impressed.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  What woman wouldn't be impressed by that?

• 42:56Speaker 00

  She's totally freaked out.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  She says no.

• 42:58Speaker 00

  She says, no, I don't want any involvement in this. I mentioned Hunt's Cubans, and in particular, Macho, who had been his deputy at the Bay of Pigs. What Hunt wants, at least to start, is a squad of counter demonstrators and technical specialists. And he does another run down to Miami, and he ends up interviewing about a dozen guys. Hunt, who likes to boast, tells Liddy that between them, the Cubans he was going to hire had killed 22 people, including hanging two of them from a garage beam.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Liddy likes that.

• 43:36Speaker 00

  Liddy loves this. This is catnip to Liddy. He's like, these are the guys. We want these guys involved.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  He gets his locksmith.

• 43:42Speaker 00

  He gets his locksmith. Yet another guy like Macho, who had been part of Batista's secret police in Cuba. locksmith didn't have a connection to CIA.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  He didn't get him through CIA.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  He didn't get him through the external employment branch of CIA. They do get some breakthroughs on the recruitment of spies into Democrat campaigns. One of them, who Hunt recruits, is a Utah college student who they codenamed Ruby Two. Ruby Two will come back and be an important role in some of the early black bag jobs. So we'll return to him. Eventually, as the Attorney General had been thinking.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Still thinking about it. Yeah.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  There's a, there's a key meeting down in Key Biscayne, Florida on the 30th of March. Now.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  It's always Florida.

• 44:24Speaker 00

  It's always Florida. The Attorney General has, by then, he's left DOJ to run the campaign. So he is no longer officially in government. Also present for this are the deputy of Creep, the committee to reelect the president, and who's, he's a superior to Liddy, and another campaign staffer. They have a scaled down version of the gemstone proposal that Liddy had made that's on the meeting agenda, but it's kind of near the bottom and it's a long list. The three guys involved in this meeting had totally different recollections of what happened.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Of course they do.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  Shockingly. And it's also complicated by the fact that the former Attorney General's wife, Martha, is eavesdropping on part of it.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  And will later testify about this. Mitchell, the former Attorney General, says he had rejected the plan outright.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Of course he did.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  And to his grave, he denied ever approving gemstones. One of the staffers remembers him, the Attorney General, instead of being non-committal, like this isn't something we have to decide now, which feels very on brand. The Creep deputy, though, says that the Attorney General, former Attorney General, okayed it outright. And he says so in his memoir and under oath. The former Attorney General's wife, Martha, says the discussion focused not on whether the dirty tricks were a good idea, only, and again, this is also on brand, how much money to spend on people and on wiretapping and on and on. I think it's very likely that after the discussion, the Attorney General puts

• 45:55Speaker 00

  off the decision yet again. And the Creep deputy, who, again, he's being hounded by Liddy, I think, for.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  For formal approval.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  Says, just go ahead and do it.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Because that's what it feels like, is that he's probably thinking, I want them to do it, because I know the president wants it.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  President wants it.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Wants it.

• 46:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  But I don't want to have said that I'm giving it formal approval.

• 46:17Speaker 00

  Right.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  But I'd quite like you to just get on with it.

• 46:19Speaker 00

  Just get on with it.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  So kind of like, that's what it feels like it's going on. And so the momentum is building, isn't it?

• 46:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  For this to happen, even though you've not quite had that kind of formal sign off. You don't need that.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  But as we'll see, maybe the formal sign off doesn't really matter.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Because the guys who are going to do it get the sense that something has been approved.

• 46:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, because the Creep deputy walks out of the meeting, goes and plays tennis, and then the next day approves $250,000 for a wiretapping and burglary fund, and reports up to the White House that the campaign now has a sophisticated political intelligence gathering system at its disposal. And that is a euphemism for the scaled down gemstone plan.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  I love the fact, all the way through, it's described as political intelligence.

• 47:04Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  That's the phrase that's used in the Nixon White House for what they're after, political intelligence. So if you ever hear someone saying, I'm after some political intelligence, it means bugging and burgling.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  It's not, well, it's not so much, it is political intelligence.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  It is.

• 47:16Speaker 00

  It's just how do you get the political intelligence?

• 47:19Speaker 01

  The emphasis is more on the intelligence. But anyway.

• 47:21Speaker 00

  There are different accounts of the prioritization of targets, in particular for these black bag jobs, that comes out of this meeting. Some of the accounts, the Creep deputy, say Watergate was prioritized right away. I think it's unlikely because the planning doesn't seem to really begin for another four or so weeks. But what is clear is that after this approval, after they get the money, Liddy begins planning break-ins, and it's part of that Opel gemstone category, against George McGovern's headquarters. Now, McGovern will end up being the Democratic nominee for president in 1972. They also plan break-ins against the Miami Convention Center, where the.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Democrats are going to meet.

• 48:02Speaker 00

  Convention will be held. Watergate's, again, on the list, but not quite at the top. Now, I think it is interesting, all this conversation about money and the budget, the break-ins, I think are attractive because they are a direct way to gather this political intelligence. And also, they're not particularly expensive. Liddy thinks that each one is going to cost about $10,000, and that's going to be payments to the Cubans.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Bit of travel.

• 48:30Speaker 00

  Airfare, travel, hotel.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Cars. Yeah, it's not that much.

• 48:34Speaker 00

  Embedded in that, though, is a bonus of one month's salary each for the two supervisors who are going to be taking the professional risk. That's Hunt and another CIA man who has just joined the Creep team in the spring of 1970.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Oh, another CIA man.

• 48:51Speaker 00

  There's another one.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 48:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Surprise. And the CIA has nothing to do with this, of course. But here comes another person linked to the CIA.

• 48:57Speaker 00

  This is James W. McCord. He'll play a big, big role in this story and its unraveling.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  And he's been in the Office of Security for the CIA for 19 years, retired 1970, which I guess, as we were saying previously, the Office of Security is the bit that does the kind of dealing with the mafia, you know, the kind of.

• 49:17Speaker 00

  Done some odd things over the years.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Office of Security, it's not just kind of building security and vetting, is it?

• 49:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  It's a little bit more murky business.

• 49:24Speaker 00

  Robust.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  Than that.

• 49:25Speaker 00

  Robust. He is a career security and surveillance professional. He's not really a case officer. So McCord's job is physical and technical surveillance. He does also seem to have Cuba connections. He'd been involved in planning some operations there prior to Bay of Pigs. He may have even handled some Cuban assets out of the Office of Security. When he retires, he sets up McCord Associates, which is a private security consultancy. The CIA actually refers retiring personnel to him for possible employment. And then by 1972, he has become the head of security for both the Republican National Committee and the Creep, which is where he meets up with Liddy and Hunt.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  So he's kind of McCord for this story is the tech and electronics guy.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you're imagining your team in any good spy thriller movie, where you always have the tech guy.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  He's the tech guy.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Who knows how to do the kind of, if you're assembling the group. He's the tech and surveillance guy.

• 50:22Speaker 00

  Because again, to get this political intelligence, you're going to need one of these guys.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  You're going to need someone who's got eavesdropping gear, who's got bugs, walkie talkies, tape recorders, things like that.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  And he's the guy who can get it, basically.

• 50:33Speaker 00

  He's the guy who can get it. Now, in keeping with the theme for this story, where does McCord, who's left the CIA, go to get this gear? He, of course, knows that there's a Chicago-based CIA contractor who supplies a lot of the technical equipment to the CIA. So McCord goes to him and says, you know, he goes with his wish list, essentially. And this Chicago-based contractor says, are you on official agency business? And McCord apparently shows him agency credentials to get the stuff. Now, I don't know what credentials, it was, sort of, they're not clear on what credentials.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Your CIA pass.

• 51:13Speaker 00

  He showed. But the contractor leaves this meeting with a distinct impression that McCord is still on CIA business.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  And Hunt and McCord, they don't really, they don't actually get on that well.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  No.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Even though they're both ex-CIA guys, they should be friends. You know, both work Cuba, but Hunt thinks McCord's a bit of a thug?

• 51:32Speaker 00

  McCord, I think, is also not anxious to work with Hunt because they've had a run-in over all things of, essentially, a disagreement over whether Hunt could publish a memoir about Bay of Pigs. And Hunt had not cleared it with the agency, had written this whole thing, and then seems to, under a pen name, have tried to get it published.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Imagine.

• 51:59Speaker 00

  And now, I will say, for those of you who are getting our newsletter, and I should say, everyone here should go and sign up for that newsletter at therestisclassified.com. I'll be writing a little bit more for this week on how the agency's pre-publication review process works.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  But because you feel how Hunt's pain, don't you, here?

• 52:18Speaker 00

  I feel a little. I feel a little bit of Hunt's pain, but at the same time, he basically just didn't clear it. And then McCord ends up involved in the investigation, so.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Hence a bit of tension.

• 52:30Speaker 00

  Hence a bit of tension. Big thing happens on the 2nd of May. J. Edgar Hoover dies.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  He dies.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  The chief.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, the chief fee, the man who'd run the FBI for decades and been involved in so many things. I mean, it's a big moment, isn't it, for the White House? And bizarrely, it plays a role in getting this team together. I mean, Hoover's just just kind of looming over this story, never directly involved, but even here, he plays a role.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  He plays a role because there is an anti-war protest that is scheduled outside the Capitol while Hoover's body lays in state. And that protest is going to be led by Daniel Ellsberg and Jane Fonda.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Actress and great anti-war activist.

• 53:14Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  In Vietnam, yeah.

• 53:15Speaker 00

  And.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  They don't like that.

• 53:16Speaker 00

  No.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  These are, these are lefty radicals.

• 53:19Speaker 00

  These are hippie radicals.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  In modern parlance, they would definitely be on the woke side of things, wouldn't they, those two? More than that, they'd be Antifa.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  This is, this is an Antifa gathering.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  At the Capitol. And the White House says, we got to protect the casket. What if these anti-war hippies?

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Get to Hoover's body.

• 53:35Speaker 00

  Get to Hoover's body. What if they start pulling Hoover's limbs off on, you know, inside the Capitol Rotunda? So they send Creep. And Hunt calls up several of his Cubans, who are, you know, obviously tough, tough guys, Bay of Pigs veterans in some cases. And they have a meeting with Liddy at the offices of Mullen Company, the PR firm. And Liddy shows them photos of the anti-war leaders and starts a briefing on how to work the crowd and like heckle these anti-war demonstrators. If there's any Viet Cong flags that they're flying, you should take them. If there's any rush at the casket, you need to physically block it. So they go out there prepared for action. And it really comes to nothing, except I think one of them does trade punches with a protester.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  There's no, there's no rush to them.

• 54:21Speaker 00

  There's no bum rush on the casket. But now.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  They're all in town.

• 54:25Speaker 00

  We have a burglary team in tap. And, and so, you know, these guys are probably sitting around after, you know, after participating in the demonstration or the counter-demonstration, thinking,

• 54:35Speaker 01

  What should we do now?

• 54:36Speaker 00

  Well, we might as well get to work on some of these other gemstone plans. So that same night, Liddy, Hunt, and some of Macho's Cubans, Case McGovern's headquarters on Capitol Hill.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  The Democrat candidate.

• 54:48Speaker 00

  Democrat candidate. Now, remember Ruby Two, that Utah college student that Hunt had recruited? Well, he's been placed inside the McGovern campaign. And he's been reporting from inside the campaign since April. So, so he's going to be, he's an insider. They've got an inside man. Liddy and Hunt have also, they've been casing the building from Liddy's green Jeep. There are going to be two break-in attempts on McGovern HQ. And the first one, Ruby Two, this inside guy, smuggles McCord inside with him posing as a visiting uncle. And McCord walks around the offices of campaign leaders, scoping out where to place the wiretaps, where to place the bugs.

• 55:32Speaker 00

  But how are they going to get a full team in? The plan is for Ruby Two to hide in the building's furnace room until dark and then let McCord in. And he does hide in there, but then someone on the campaign sees him.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  Why are you hiding in the furnace room?

• 55:47Speaker 00

  Why are you in the furnace room? And the attempt has to be abandoned. They try again, using the rear door. But now Ruby Two, again, he's a college student who's been recruited by Hunt, is terrified.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  He's a bundle of nerves, Hunt says.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  Hunt in his memoir is like, he's a bundle of nerves. So Liddy, he uses an air pistol to shoot out the street floodlights near the back door to darken the approach. But they still, they still can't.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  They're really bad at this.

• 56:14Speaker 00

  Get in, right? I should also say that, I think it's around this point in his memoir, where Hunt has a great line about Liddy, where he says that Liddy should be a candidate for decaffeinated coffee. With, you're just thinking, with the air pistol, this guy is just a psycho.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  He's wild.

• 56:31Speaker 00

  Right? He's absolutely nuts. Ruby Two, though, it's a sad ending for Ruby Two. He basically says, this is getting too deep for me. The failed break-ins, you know, the being caught in the furnace room, he's out. And what that means is that the break-in at McGovern headquarters is deprioritized. And the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel bumps up on the list. And it's a place that they've also been doing some casing. And in fact, Liddy, driving his green Jeep during one of his casing runs, he's been doing this with Macho. He points over at the Watergate complex and he says, that's our next job, Macho.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  And how's that going to turn out? Well, the DNC headquarters at the Watergate Hotel have been chosen as the target for the break-in for this slightly crazy team. Let's stop there. Next time, we'll come back and we'll see how the break-in doesn't go entirely to plan and how the ensuing scandal brings down a president.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  But of course, if you want to hear that episode in this entire series now, go and join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com. Get early access to all of our series, all of the bonus content that goes along with them. We'll see you next time. See you next time.

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