Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 10/1971 Ann Dorothy Chapman, reporter/MI6 agent, killed in Greece.
  
• 10/1/1971 James McCord begins part-time work with CREEP.
  
• 10/1/1971 Saigon: police attack an anti-Thieu Buddhist rally.
  
• 10/3/1971 Elections in South Vietnam saw victory for Thieu, the only candidate; he was reelected to a four-year term as President.
  
• 10/4/1971 Labor leader George Meany urges Congress to take control of the economy away from Nixon.
  
• 10/4/1971 Secretary of State Rogers addresses the UN General Assembly, asking for the seating of Communist China on the Security Council but asking that Taiwan not be expelled from the General Assembly.
  
• 10/6/1971 Los Angeles Times revealed that federal immigration agents had caught 36 illegal immigrants in a raid on a food processing company owned by Romana Banuelos, who three weeks earlier had been named by Nixon to be Treasurer of the United States.
  
• 10/6-13/1971 Newsday publishes a series of articles about Bebe Rebozo, and Dean later testified that he and Caulfield (at Haldeman's suggestion) use the IRS to go after one the authors, reporter Robert Greene.
  
• 10/6/1971 Yasser Arafat was the target of a failed attempt on his life.
  
• 10/7/1971 Nixon told John Mitchell to have the INS raid the Los Angeles Times in search of illegal immigrants and to check whether publisher Otis Chandler's gardener was a "wetback." Nixon stated that he had already ordered John Connally to have the IRS investigate the income tax returns of every member of the Chandler family, "every one of those sons of bitches." Nixon also told Mitchell that "the fellow out there in the immigration service is a kike by the name of [George] Rosenberg. He is out. He is to be out. Transfer him to some other place out of Los Angeles. I don't give a goddamn what the story is!" (Los Angeles Times 3/22/1997)
  
• 10/8/1971 Nixon visits West Virginia and becomes the first president to visit all 50 states.
  
• 10/10/1971 Tape recording exists of a conversation between Nixon and CIA director Richard Helms. Before Helms arrives, Nixon's aide John Erlichman tells the president Helms has been stonewalling his request for documents about the Bay of Pigs. Erlichman makes it clear that he didn't tell Helms his real purpose. "I was kind of mysterious about it," he explains. But they think they have leverage on Helms. At one point Ehrlichman says, "Helms is scared to death of this guy [Howard] Hunt we got working for us because he knows where a lot of the bodies are buried." When the CIA director arrives, Nixon offers some typically awkward and forced small talk about baseball player Ted Williams and then gets down to business. He says he wants to address the "sensitive" issue of the documents he is seeking. He assures Helms that he fully supports what he calls "the dirty tricks department." "I know what happened in Iran and I know what happened in Guatemala and I totally approve of that. I know what happened with the planning of the Bay of Pigs," he says."The problem was not the CIA. My interest there is solely to know the facts." When Helms doesn't say much, Nixon presses his case by reminding Helms he is the president. "First. This is my information," he says, "Second, I need it for a defensive reasons, for a negotiation." When those arguments elicit no response. Nixon tries another justification: He needs the information to protect the CIA. In making his case, Nixon talks about what might be in the records and he utters these words (at around 17:00 in the file): "The Who shot John?' angle. Is Eisenhower to blame? Is Kennedy to blame? Is Johnson to blame? Is Nixon to blame? Etc, etc. It may become, not by me, a very vigorous issue but if it does, I need to know what is necessary to protect frankly the intelligence gathering and the Dirty Tricks Department and I will protect it. I have done more than my share of lying to protect you, and I believe it's totally right to do it."
  
• 10/12/1971 The House passes the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) 354 to 23.
  
• 10/12/1971 Nixon announces he will travel to Moscow in 1972 to meet with Soviet leaders.
  
• 10/12/1971 Sen. Birch Bayh announces he will not run for president in 1972.
  
• 10/12/1971 Cuban exiles in armed boats attack the village of Boca de Sama, on the eastern part of Cuba.
  
• 10/12/1971 Dean Acheson dies at age 78. The White House issued a statement: "The nation, the Western alliance and the world all share in the loss of one of their stanchest champions. It is a measure of Dean Acheson's stature as a man and statesman that almost 20 years after his service as Secretary of State he continued to be recognized as one of the towering figures of his time. He was a man not only of great achievement but also of rare intellect, of rigorous conscience and of profound devotion to his country."
  
• 10/12-18/1971 Gov. Reagan tours six Asian nations as a special presidential representative
  
• 10/14/1971 US forces in Vietnam cut to 206,000.
  
• 10/15/1971 Nixon announced a 10% duty on foreign cars, and a relaxation of the 7% tax on domestically produced cars.
  
• 10/15/1971 Japan agrees to curb the flow of textiles into the US.
  
• 10/15/1971 The Charlotte Observer reported that Billy Graham was being criticized by some Southern Baptists for getting "too close to the powerful and too fond of the things of the world, [and] likened him to the prophets of old who told the kings of Israel what they wanted to hear."
  
• 10/15/1971 Arthur Bremer rented an apartment on West Michigan Avenue in Milwaukee for $138 a month.
  
• mid-October 1971 Hunt had lunch with Tomas Karamessines, CIA's deputy director for plans. During Hunt's previous phony retirement from the Agency, Karamessines had been his case officer. (Secret Agenda p54-55)
  
• 10/16/1971 H. Rap Brown, the fugitive black militant who disappeared 17 months ago, shot and captured by NYC police after an armed robbery.
  
• 10/16-23/1971 Spiro Agnew visits Greece, for a meeting with PM Papadopoulos and a private tour.
  
• 10/17/1971 A Washington study showed that Hispanic families in the US earned more than blacks.
  
• 10/18/1971 The House orders Nixon not to cut funds for school lunch programs.
  
• 10/18/1971 Soviet PM Kosygin was unhurt by an attack near the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa by a protester.
  
• 10/18/1974 President Richard Nixon announces that the army's biowarfare laboratories at Fort Detrick, Maryland, will be converted to cancer research. The military biowarfare unit is subsequently retitled the Frederick Cancer Research Center, and Litton Bionetics is named as the military's prime contractor. The initial task of the Center is "the large-scale production of oncogenic (cancer-causing) and suspected oncogenic viruses to meet research needs on a continuing basis." Special attention is given to primate viruses. Bionetics Research Laboratories, under contract to Fort Detrick, will inoculate a total of 2,274 primates with various viruses. Some of these animals will eventually be released back into the wild. (The first few cases of AIDS will not be reported to the Centers for Disease Control until 1979). Utilizing the latest genetic engineering techniques, virologists force cancer-causing viruses to jump from one species of animal to another - eventually producting new forms of deadly cancer and immunodeficiency diseases. Biowarfare experts undoubtedly take notice of these "supergerms" and their possible use as newly-created biowarfare agents.
  
• 10/20-25/1971 Kissinger visits Peking to arrange things for Nixon's upcoming trip to China.
  
• 10/21/1971 Nixon names Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist to the Supreme Court.
  
• 10/21/1971 Colson memo to Peter Flanigan on the administration's desire to gain "immediate control" of PBS because of its anti-Nixon programming.
  
• 10/23/1971 Ulster: British soldies kill five in riots.
  
• 10/25/1971 Communist China takes Taiwan's seat at the UN.
  
• 10/26/1971 About 300 anti-war protestors are arrested for sitting down in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue during rush hour.
  
• 10/26/1971 Taiwan protests that the UN move is illegal.
  
• 10/27/1971 The Congo is renamed Zaire.
  
• 10/28/1971 House of Commons approved British membership in the European Common Market by a vote of 356 to 244, though polls show that a majority of the English oppose the move.
  
• 10/31/1971 Billy James Hargis, pleased to see his media enemies having financial troubles, writes in Christian Crusade Weekly, "Do not lament the passing of Look Magazine. I think it is a good thing for America. I just wish Newseek and Life and Time would follow suit, as quickly as possible. It was encouraging to me when the Saturday Evening Post perished in February 1968…"
  
• 10/31/1971 Saigon begins the release of 1,938 Hanoi POWs.
  
• 10/1971 five-year restriction on JFK autopsy photos and X-rays expires.
  
• 11/1/1971 The Chinese flag is raised at the UN for the first time.
  
• 11/3/1971 US announces it will deny passports to those who refuse to take an oath of allegiance.
  
• 11/4/1971 Northern Ireland: At 5.00am in the morning, the British Army again moved in large numbers into the Catholic areas of Derry; Bogside, Creggan and Shantallow, breaking their way into homes, and taking a further 17 men away for internment. The following day, Derry was at a standstill with factory workers going on strike, and schools and shops etc., closing. Rioting began again on the streets of Derry.
  
• 11/5/1971 US announced the sale to the Soviets of $136 million in grain.
  
• 11/5/1971 A new surge of immigration by Soviet Jews from the USSR is reported.
  
• 11/5/1971 Colson memo to John Scali about John Chancellor's "scandalous, yellow, shabby journalism...We should not bother to call him, we should break his goddamned nose."
  
• 11/5/1971 (6/28/05 AP) President Nixon referred privately to Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as an "old witch" and national security adviser Henry Kissinger insulted Indians in general, according to transcripts of Oval Office tapes and newly declassified documents released Tuesday. Nixon and Kissinger met in the Oval Office on the morning of Nov. 5, 1971, to discuss Nixon's conversation with Gandhi the day before. "We really slobbered over the old witch," Nixon told Kissinger, according to a transcript of their conversation released as part of a State Department compilation of significant documents involving American foreign policy. Nixon's remark came as the two men speculated about Gandhi's motives during the White House meeting and discussed India's intentions in the looming conflict with neighboring Pakistan. The United States was allied with Pakistan and saw India as too closely allied with the Soviet Union. "The Indians are bastards anyway," Kissinger told the president. "They are starting a war there." Kissinger also told his boss that he had bested Gandhi in their meeting. "While she was a bitch, we got what we wanted too," Kissinger said. "She will not be able to go home and say that the United States didn't give her a warm reception and therefore in despair she's got to go to war." Other documents chart U.S. contacts with China, as facilitated by Pakistan, and U.S. concern that India was developing nuclear technology. The archive covers U.S. policy in South Asia in 1971 and 1972. The documents, many declassified only earlier this month, generally cover old ground, several Cold War scholars said. Still, the particulars are intriguing, including rosters of who was in various meetings and quotes from conversations among Nixon, his aides and foreign leaders. "They see everything through a Cold War prism," said Bill Burr, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive at George Washington University. "It's a wholly distorted view." U.S.-India relations were strained for decades as a result of Cold War alliances and have significantly improved only recently. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited India earlier this year, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit Washington in July.
  
• 11/6/1971 The most powerful underground nuclear test conducted by the US is executed on the Alaskan island of Amchitka.
  
• 11/7/1971 India admits its forces entered Bangladesh to stop its artillery.
  
• 11/12/1971 CIA delivers an expanded psychological profile of Ellsberg to the plumbers.
  
• 11/12/1971 Nixon memo to Haldeman: "Pat Boone spoke to me about Goldwater's appearance in Atlanta and told me how effective it was. He urged strongly that Goldwater be used more all across the country."
  
• 11/12/1971 Nixon memo to Kissinger: "I think we ought to find an occasion where we can get Moorer in alone with me without Laird to talk about national defense matters."
  
• 11/12/1971 Nixon confines US ground forces in Vietnam to a defensive role. He announces withdrawal of 45,000 more men from Vietnam by February.
  
• 11/13/1971 Aubran W. Martin is sentenced to death for his role in the murder of union official Joseph Yablonski, his wife and daughter.
  
• 11/13/1971 Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda bring their FTA ("Free" The Army) antiwar show to areas near US military bases in Southeast Asia.
  
• 11/13/1971 US interplanetary probe Mariner 9 goes into orbit around Mars, the first man-made object to orbit another planet.
  
• 11/14/1971 Three months of wage-price controls are lifted by Nixon, but only to allow wages and prices to rise slightly. This was "Phase II" of Nixon's economic plan.
  
• 11/15/1971 Clay T. Whitehead memo to Nixon about PBS' "slanted public affairs programming...the PBS schedule includes no program in which the moderate to conservative viewpoints are featured to balance the Moyers/Vanocur/MacNeil/Drew/NET type of programming...Unless some reforms are made in the Public Broadcasting Act, CPB [Corporation for Public Broadcasting] will...grow into a US version of the BBC under the constant nuturing of the Democrats."
  
• 11/16/1971 Roger de Louette, a former French intelligence agent, pleaded guilty to charges of smuggling $12 million worth of heroin into the US; he accused Col. Paul Fournier, a high-ranking French counter-espionage officer, of being the head of the conspiracy.
  
• 11/16/1971 First working session of the sixth round of the SALT negotiations is held.
  
• 11/18/971 Arthur Bremer was arrested for the first time in his life, for having his car parked in a no-parking zone. The police confiscated the .38 pistol he was carrying.
  
• 11/19/1971 Sen. Henry Jackson announces his candidacy for the presidency.
  
• 11/19/1971 Demonstrations in Japan against US bases in Okinawa.
  
• 11/20/1971 US to give Turkey $35 million for farmers who stop growing opium poppies.
  
• 11/22/1971 NY Times carried an article by David Belin, "The Warren Commission Was Right."
  
• 11/22/1971 India begins full-scale attack on Bangladesh.
  
• 11/24/1971 D. B. Cooper is a moniker associated with an unidentified man who hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in the northwestern United States on November 24, 1971, demanded and received $200,000 in ransom, and parachuted from the aircraft to an uncertain fate. Despite a massive manhunt and exhaustive F.B.I. investigation, Cooper has never been found or positively identified. To date, the case remains the only unsolved airline hijacking in American aviation history. The suspect purchased his airline ticket under the name Dan Cooper, but through a later press miscommunication, he became known as D.B. Cooper. Hundreds of leads have been pursued in the ensuing years, but no conclusive evidence has ever surfaced regarding Cooper's true identity or whereabouts, and the bulk of the ransom money has never been recovered. Several theories offer competing speculative explanations of events subsequent to his exiting the aircraft. Officially the F.B.I.'s investigation remains open, but published reports indicate that agents currently handling the case believe Cooper did not survive his escape attempt.
  
• 11/26/1971 Saudi king Faisal agrees to let Israeli Moslems visit the holy city of Mecca.
  
• 11/28/1971 Billy James Hargis wrote in Christian Crusade Weekly that Jesus was not a long-haired hippie: "There is solid evidence from the ancient world which undercuts the degenerate idea abroad today that Jesus was a welfare case looking like a shiftless hippie.' If anyone can find any Biblical evidence that Jesus had long hair, please send it along."
  
• 11/28-12/2/1971 White House holds a Conference on Aging.
  
• 11/28/1971 Anglican Church ordains its first two women priests.
  
• 11/28/1971 Wasfi Tal, PM of Jordan, was assassinated in Cairo by Black September Palestinian guerrillas.
  
• 11/31/1971 On instructions of Maurice Bishop, Antonio Veciana organizes a Castro assassination for his visit to Chile. Bishop coordinates with the Chilean military; Veciana says CIA contract agent Luis Posada was also involved in the planning. Later, David Atlee Phillips, unaware of Veciana's detailed revelations, would admit to the HSCA that Posada worked with him on operations in Chile. (Fonzi chronology)
  
• 12/1971 Nixon devalued the dollar 7.9%. Inflation rate for 1/1971-1/1972 was 3.4%.
  
• 12/1971 Iraq expels thousands of Iranians.
  
• 12/1971 Richard Nixon's special assistant, Murray Chotiner, has finally cleared Jimmy Hoffa's release with the Teamsters and with the Detroit and Chicago mafia families. Accordingly, President Nixon officially pardons Jimmy Hoffa. With the permission of the Nixon presidency, both Jimmy Hoffa and Carlos Marcello are free men in 1971. Hoffa is destined to vanish. Marcello will go on to enjoy the most prosperous period of his life -- a decade during which it is alleged that he will become the richest and most powerful Mafia leader in the western hemisphere.
  
• 12/1/1971 Buchanan memo to Haldeman on how to make the "Conservative Case for Richard Nixon," that is, how to get conservatives to realize they shouldn't challenge Nixon in 1972.
  
• 12/6/1971 Haldeman approves Liddy's transfer to CREEP.
  
• 12/7/1971 McGraw-Hill announced plans to publish Howard Hughes' memoirs, supposedly written in collaboration with novelist Clifford Irving.
  
• 12/7/1971 The state of Ohio drops all charges against defendants in the Kent State riot trials, because of lack of evidence.
  
• 12/7/1971 Libya nationalizes British Petroleum Co.
  
• 12/8/1971 Ken Khachigian memo to Buchanan, recommending that the administration put out some important announcement on the same day Muskie announced his candidacy "to blow Muskie off the front page."
  
• 12/9/1971 Nixon vetoed a child-development bill after a tremendous amount of grass-roots conservative opposition was generated.
  
• 12/10/1971 Nixon sent the Enterprise aircraft carrier and 9 other warships to the Bay of Bengal, without consulting with the Joint Chiefs first. Adm. Zumwalt recalled that this action outraged the JCS (On Watch).
  
• 12/10/1971 Jon Huntsman memo to Ehrlichman complaining about White House staffers leaking to the press Nixon's plan to get Hoover to retire in the near future. (Secret Files 345)
  
• 12/10/1971 Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Willy Brandt.
  
• 12/12/1971 Magruder later testified that he met Liddy for the first time on this date, and Liddy said he'd been promised $1 million for a "broad-gauged intelligence plan." Magruder told him to draw up a plan for Mitchell to see.
  
• 12/12/1971 Former head of RCA and founder of NBC David Sarnoff died.
  
• 12/13-14/1971 Nixon and French president Pompidou confer on the devaluation of the dollar.
  
• 12/14/1971 Krogh and Young are told to find the source of the leaks for Jack Anderson's 12/13 article.
  
• 12/14/1971 NYC Detective Frank Serpico testified to the Knapp Commission about widespread police corruption.
  
• 12/15/1971 Buchanan memo to Haldeman about how to deal with a McCloskey challenge in the primaries: "If McCloskey's campaign can be portrayed - with any legitimacy, as the covert effort of Democrats...then we have a tremendous case to use with every Republican who leans to McCloskey...destroy his credibility as a legitimate Republican." He recommended using the Manchester Union-Leader for the anti-McCloskey campaign.
  
• 12/16-23/1971 Radford is interrogated by DOD investigators who suspected him of leaking documents to Jack Anderson. Years later, Anderson would deny that Radford leaked anything to him: "You don't get these kind of secrets from an enlisted man. You get them from generals and admirals." (Silent Coup 19) Radford was given an lie-detector test, and revealed that he had given classified materials to unauthorized persons, then began spilling his guts about all the spying he had done for the JCS.
  
• 12/17/1971 The first session of the 92nd Congress adjourns.
  
• 12/17/1971 Transit Agreement between the GDR and DDR is signed.
  
• 12/18/1971 US devalues the dollar by 8.57%; this is designed to increase US exports and end the trade deficit.
  
• 12/18/1971 Nixon signs an Alaska native land settlement bill, granting a total of $962.5 million and 40 million acres of land and mineral rights to native Alaskans.
  
• 12/18/1971 Rev. Jesse Jackson announces the formation of a new black political organization, PUSH (People United to Save Humanity).
  
• 12/20-21/1971 Nixon meets with British PM Heath in Bermuda to discuss world problems.
  
• 12/21/1971 Kurt Waldheim is named to replace U Thant as UN Secretary General.
  
• 12/21/1971 Nixon returned to the White House and was first told about the Radford confession, by Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Mitchell. Nixon decided that Radford's superior, Adm. Robert Welander, should be questioned. Over three decades ago on December 21, 1971, Richard Nixon approved the first major cover-up of his administration. He did so reluctantly at the behest of his closest political advisers, Attorney General John Mitchell, Domestic Counselor John Ehrlichman, and Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman. The public remains ignorant of this seminal event in Nixon's first term and journalists and historians have largely ignored it. The question is why? A recently released Nixon tape transcribed from an enhanced CD produced by the Nixon Era Center provides the clearest answer to this thirty-year-old Nixon secret. On that December day Nixon agreed to cover-up a criminally insubordinate spying operation conducted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff inside the National Security Council because of the military's strong, visceral dislike of Nixon's foreign policy. In particular, the JCS thought Nixon gone "soft on communism" by reaching out to the Chinese and Russians, and they resented Vietnamization as a way to end the war. As early as 1976 Admiral Elmo Zumwalt publicly made these military suspicions and resentment abundantly clear in his book, On Watch: A Memoir. "I had first become concerned many months before the June 1972 burglary," Zumwalt wrote, "[about] the deliberate, systematic and, unfortunately, extremely successful efforts of the President, Henry Kissinger, and a few subordinate members of their inner circle to conceal, sometimes by simple silence, more often by articulate deceit, their real policies about the most critical matters of national security." In a word, Zumwalt, like many within the American military elite, thought that Nixon's foreign policies bordered on the traitorous because they "were inimical to the security of the United States." This atmosphere of extreme distrust led Admiral Thomas Moorer, head of the JCS, to first authorize Rear Admiral Rembrandt C. Robinson and later Rear Admiral Robert O. Welander, both liaisons between the Joint Chiefs and the White House's National Security Council, to start spying on the NSC. For thirteen months, from late 1970 to late 1971, Navy Yeoman Charles E. Radford, an aide to both Robinson and Welander, systematically stole and copied NSC documents from burn bags containing carbon copies, briefcases, and desks of Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, and their staff. He then turned them over to his superiors. The White House became suspicious when Jack Anderson published a column on December 14 entitled, "U.S. Tilts to Pakistan." Such information logically could only have come from meetings of the Washington Special Action Group, December 3 and 4, which discussed the fact that Pakistan was being used as a conduit for the top secret negotiations the Nixon administration was carrying on with China--negotiations that would culminate in rapprochement with that Communist nation the spring of the next year. Clearly someone had leaked the minutes of the WSAG meeting to Anderson and the suspicion fell on the military. The White House immediately ordered an investigation of this leak and Pentagon Chief Investigator W. Donald Stewart subsequently uncovered the JCS spy operation when Yeoman Radford "broke down and cried" during a polygraph test, indicating that he spied with the "implied approval of his supervisor" Admiral Welander. Stewart believed that it was a "hanging offence" for the military to spy on the president and Ehrlichman's assistant, Egil ("Bud") Krogh thought that it was the beginning of a military coup because of the interference it represented "into the deliberations of duly-elected and appointed civilians to carry out foreign policy." Radford's confession not only led to such dire evaluations, but also to the December 21 conversation among the president, Ehrlich man, Haldeman, and John Mitchell. The most striking aspect of this tape is the passive role played by Nixon--the so-called original imperial president. First, he is out-talked by the others throughout this fifty-two-minute conversation. Toward the end of tape, the president can be heard saying to his advisers in a loud voice that the JCS spy activity was "wrong! Understand? I'm just saying that's wrong. Do you agree?" A little later he called it a "federal offense of the highest order." Up to this point, however, John Mitchell told the president that "the important thing is to paper this thing over" because "this Welander thing . . . Is going to get right into the middle of Joint Chiefs of Staff." In other words, Nixon would have to take on the entire military command if he exposed the spy ring. Moreover, this expose would take place in an election year and when the president had scheduled trips to both China and the Soviet Union to confirm improved relations with these countries--which the military opposed. Taking on the military establishment with such important political and diplomatic events on the horizon could have proven disastrous for the president's most important objectives and revealed other back-channel diplomatic activities of the administration. Later in his memoirs the president said that the media would have completely distorted the incident and exposure would have done "damage to the military at time when it was already under heavy attack." In contrast, at the time all three men agreed with Nixon about the seriousness of the crime committed by the JCS. Mitchell even compared it to "coming in [to the president's office] and robbing your desk." However, they advised him to do no more than to inform Moorer that the White House knew about the JCS spy ring, to interview Welander (who was later transferred to sea duty), and to transfer Radford. Moorer subsequently denied obtaining any information from purloined documents, fallaciously claiming that Nixon kept him fully informed about all his foreign policy initiatives. If this had been true there would have been no need for Moorer to set up a spy ring. Welander, for his part according to this tape, had initially refused to answer questions about the spying he was supervising on the questionable grounds that he had a "personal and confidential relationship" with both Kissinger and Haig. Nixon became incensed when he heard this. "Just knock it out of the ballpark, stop that relationship," he told his aides on December 21. Subsequently in his first interview Welander admitted his role in the naval surveillance operation, and implicated then Brigadier General Alexander Haig, Kissinger's aide and liaison between the Pentagon and the White House, in this criminal operation. Haig ultimately prevailed upon his old friend and colleague Fred Buzhardt, general counsel to the Defense Department, to re-interview Admiral Welander and eliminate the compromising references to him. Still the existence of this first Welander interview continued to haunt Haig because he knew if the president found out there would be no more military promotions for him, let alone a future in politics and so he was determined to see that his role in this affair remained under raps. Haig has succeeded in covering up his involvement down to the present day. For example, he told an interviewer in 1996 that the whole JCS spy ring was nothing more than the normal kind of internal espionage that goes on all the time among executive branch departments. Nonetheless, after he became Nixon's chief of staff, he went to great lengths to ensure that the various congressional investigations never concentrated on the Moorer/Radford affair, thus preventing exposure of his involvement in spying on the NSC while Kissinger's aide. When caught in the tug-of-war between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the White House, Haig's loyalties to the very end remained with the military. This December 21 tape also indicates that Nixon did not trust either Kissinger or Haig. At one point he stated that "Henry is not a good security risk" and that he was convinced that "Haig must have known about this operation . . . It seems unlikely he wouldn't have known." Yet after Watergate forced the resignations of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Nixon appointed Haig his chief of staff! Had the president chosen to ignore the advisce of his closest aides in December 1971 and follow his own instincts about exposing the JCS, Haig's culpability would have become evident and his career under Nixon would have ended and quite possibly prevented him from serving in both the Ford and Reagan administrations. By covering up JCS spy ring (but letting the military know they knew about it) Nixon and his aides apparently deluded themselves into thinking they would have greater leverage with a hostile defense establishment. However, the JCS also knew that Nixon and Kissinger had been by-passing both Secretaries of State (William Rogers) and Defense (Melvin Laird) in making their foreign policy decisions and could have retaliated with the charge that civilian leaders had been deliberately ignored in the administration's back-channel processes. This successful cover-up of the Moorer-Radford affair set the stage for more minor cover-ups ultimately culminating in the mother of them all--Watergate. As a result it should be considered the first and most important of the Nixon cover-ups. Had it not take place perhaps Nixon would have survived his second term in office.
  
• 12/22/1971 Ehrlichman questioned Welander in the former's White House office; Welander initially refused to admit to spying, but Ehrlichman's disarming mood led him to make a detailed confession. Ehrlichman taped the conversation (with Welander's knowledge). He revealed that he reported only to Adm. Moorer, and not to any of the other chiefs. Welander had a close relationship with Haig. But then Welander pulled back from his confession, and at one point tried to blame the whole thing on Radford. He several times alluded to Haig, who was in the position to convey information from the JCS to the White House and vice-versa. David Young wondered if Haig wasn't aware of Radford's actions. Welander would later admit to the authors of Silent Coup that he had turned Radford's documents over to Moorer, but he didn't think it was espionage; he also felt that Haig knew Radford was transmitting information to the JCS. Immediately after meeting with Welander, Ehrlichman and Young met with Nixon, Haldeman and Mitchell; Nixon quickly decided to keep quiet about the spy ring. Ehrlichman feels this was because he wanted to preserve his backchannel communications, and that didn't want anyone to know he had been spied upon; Nixon explained in RN that he didn't want to further demoralize the military and create a public scandal. Nixon also kept Moorer on, knowing that he would now have the chairman on a short leash. (Silent Coup) Nixon also hoped that he could find some sinister link between Radford and Jack Anderson, and blame it all on them. Mitchell, who had not heard the tape of Welander's confession, then talked to Moorer, who denied knowing about any spy ring.
  
• 12/23/1971 Nixon commutes Jimmy Hoffa's sentence.
  
• 12/23/1971 Nixon told Ehrlichman to tell Kissinger not to make a big deal about the JCS spy ring, keep quiet about it, and don't blame Haig for it. The JCS liaison office was closed. That evening, Haig called Young and yelled at him for impugning Welander with only circumstantial evidence. (Silent Coup 53,59)
  
• 12/24/1971 Young wrote a memo to Ehrlichman: "I am all the more convinced that it is now up to only you and Bob to protect Henry; i.e., it is very difficult for him to say no to Haig. Haig's change from enthusiastic retribution against Welander to outrage over the dismissal of Welander is odd." That morning, Ehrlichman played the tape of Welander's confession to Kissinger and Haig.
  
• 12/26/1971 Nixon orders resumption of bombing of the North.
  
• 12/26/1971 A group of Vietnam vets seized control of the Statue of Liberty in an anti-war protest.
  
• 12/27/1971 Adm. Rembrandt Robinson, Radford's previous boss, was interviewed by Ehrlichman about the spy ring, and dissembled a great deal; before the interview, he had been primed by the Pentagon's Fred Buzhardt about the questions he would be asked. (Silent Coup 59)
  
• 12/28-29/1971 Willy Brandt of West Germany visited Washington; Haig sat in with Nixon during their meeting because Kissinger was ill.
  
• 12/28/1971 Nixon signs a bill requiring most persons receiving welfare to register for jobs or job training.
  
• 12/28/1971 Justice Dept sues Mississippi officials for ignorning the ballots of black voters.
  
• 12/29/1971 Daniel Ellsberg and Rand co-worker Anthony Russo were indicted for espionage and conspiracy.
  
• 12/29/1971 Nixon signs a bill extending unemployment benefits.
  
• 12/31/1971 US troops in Vietnam reduced to 156,800, with 53,900 Allies; 45,626 US troops killed to date. A Cornell University study found that by the end of this year, the US had dropped 6 million tons of bombs and other munitions in Indochina, three times the total tonnage in WWII.