...My ears lit up because the taped discussion was about Vernon Walters.
In this particular tape recording, President Nixon was meeting with his top aides, including Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman.
Nixon's aides were clearly worried about the FBI probe of the Watergate break-in.
Haldeman is clearly heard on the tape suggesting that he should call "Dick Walters at the CIA" and ask him to call the FBI and invoke national security to call off the FBI investigation.
Nixon's response to Haldeman's plan seemed exculpatory, as he clearly directed Haldeman not to do this and to in no way impede the FBI investigation.
Later, with or without Nixon's consent, efforts were made to have Walters intervene. Walters courageously balked.
Still, the tapes give an insider's account of the inner workings of government the public never sees...
newsmax.com
....Appointed by President Nixon, General Walters was deputy chief of the C.I.A. from 1972 to 1976. Just weeks after Mr. Nixon sent him to the agency, the White House tried to involve the C.I.A. in the Watergate scandal that eventually forced Mr. Nixon's resignation.
According to later Congressional testimony by John W. Dean 3d, the President's counsel at the time, Mr. Nixon had picked General Walters for the job in order to have a "good friend" in the intelligence agency.
Two Nixon aides, H. R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, asked General Walters to caution the Federal Bureau of Investigation to limit its inquiries lest they compromise C.I.A. operations. "It simply did not occur to me that the chief of staff of the President might be asking me something that was illegal or wrong," Mr. Walters wrote in his memoir.
But on orders from his superior, Richard M. Helms, the director of central intelligence, the general rescinded his advisory to the F.B.I. According to General Walters, Mr. Dean subsequently asked him repeatedly to pay off the Watergate burglars with secret C.I.A. funds, but he refused to do so and threatened to resign publicly if there was one more such call....
nytimes.com
I guess it is still unclear if Dean had any authorization to do what he did. I believe the NYTimes is wrong, that Walters was the Acting Director of the CIA. |
