Shane O'Sullivan

Right now, another Watergate book makes about as much sense as another book on the JFK assassination, surely all has been said that could be said on either topic. That’s not true, as new information comes out over time, from newly unsealed files in government vaults, to new revelations from now very aged participants. And there is always the new look from a different set of eyes on old evidence. DIRTY TRICKS: NIXON, WATERGATE, AND THE CIA by Shane O’Sullivan is a little bit of all three, as the author uses sources like the Central Intelligence Agency’s own in-house investigation of its involvement in the Watergate break in, done because a number of participants were either former Agency employees or company assets, a document not declassified until the 2010’s.

The opening section of the book does not concern Watergate though, but the notorious “Chennault Affair” from the closing days of the 1968 Presidential campaign, when President Lyndon Johnson announced a halt in the bombing of North Vietnam in anticipation of a diplomatic breakthrough in the Paris peace talks, a development that might have resulted in a cease fire in the Vietnam War. It also might have resulted in the election of Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic candidate who was fast closing the gap in the polls with Richard Nixon. That did not happen because the South Vietnamese government of President Thieu refused to take part in the talks at the last minute. The opportunity passed, and Nixon won the election narrowly. This came about because Anna Chennault, the Chinese born widow of a prominent World War II American general, and a prominent Republican activist, secretly met with the Theiu government, and told them to hold out, that they would get a better deal with Nixon in the White House. This was rank treason, and though Chennault was called a “loose cannon” at the time (a number of newspapers were on the story), O’Sullivan details how Chennault was in contact with the Nixon campaign through manager John Mitchell, a fact proven by surveillance by FBI, but not confirmed for years. For those not familiar with how Richard Nixon prolonged the Vietnam War to win the Presidency, this section of the book will be learning experience.

The remainder of the book covers the Watergate break in, centering on the men who committed the crime and their targets inside the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the spring of 1972. Nixon and his Palace Guard inside the White House make only fleeting appearances as the spotlight is on E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, the two former Agency employees working for the Committee to Re-Elect the President, the former overseeing the break in, the latter an electronics expert tasked with planting the telephone bugs that would allow them to eavesdrop on intimate conversations. O’Sullivan asserts that Hunt had a much closer relationship with CIA Director Richard Helms than was known at the time, and this raises the possibility that there might have been Agency “mole” in the operation. He also focuses on details and questions that the broader history passes over: if not Democratic National Chairman, Lawrence O’Brien, who was the real target of the Watergate burglars; what were the true loyalties of Spencer Oliver, a lower level party official whose phone was bugged; why was a key to secretary Ida Wells’ desk found in the possession of Eugenio Martinez, one of the burglars, and a former CIA operative; was the apparent incompetence of the Watergate conspirators just a ruse for a black bag job that was supposed to fail; who in the CIA knew what about the plans of Committee to Re-Elect the President, starting with the burglary of the Los Angeles office of Dr. Lewis Fielding, Daniel Ellsburg’s psychiatrist. A lot of attention is given to the “Call Girl Theory,” long pushed by G. Gordon Liddy on his right wing talk show, and though O’Sullivan demolishes some assertions of this out there explanation for the break in, he doesn’t dismiss it completely.

In the end, I have to say that DIRTY TRICKS is best suited to the Watergate junkie, and the conspiracy buff. It’s not an easy read for anyone only casually interested in the history, as much of the latter part of the book gets lost in the weeds of who said what in what report, what obscure piece of evidence was left out on who’s investigation, and who knew who when, and who left out what when questioned where. It’s clear that O’Sullivan did a lot of research – an awful lot – and fell victim to the temptation to shoe horn as much into his narrative as possible. It’s a good thing he included a cast of characters, because it really does become hard to keep these people straight after awhile. Still, there are a lot of readers who love to really get into the weeds, and to whom no detail is too slight or obscure when it comes to history. DIRTY TRICKS is right up their ally.… (plus d'informations)