Richard Nixon in American Conspiracies
On War & Peace:
OpEd: Panicked on Pentagon Papers because of CIA exposure
He know how to use the carrot and the stick," he wrote. "We're stronger than the Communists, so they were willing to negotiate. Force is what they understand.
And that's why it is difficult for me to understand now, when everybody knows bombing finally got a cease-fire agreement, why people are still criticizing his foreign policy."
FitzGerald, "the talented author of 'Fire in the Lake' [who] was the daughter of the late Desmond FitzGerald, a former deputy of the CIA. The CIA saw his liberal daughter's friendship with
Ellsberg as a threat, and worried that it might lead to the exposure of operations that the CIA hoped would remain state secrets" [including about Castro, Lee Harvey Oswald and JFK].
Source: American Conspiracies, by Jesse Ventura, p. 82-83
Mar 9, 2010
On Drugs:
Coined phrase "War on Drugs" in 1969
In 1986, an FBI information inside the Medellin cartel testified that she's seen the organization loading cocaine onto aircraft that belonged to Southern Air Transport, a company that used to be owned by the CIA and was flying supplies to the Contras.
There was strong corroboration for her story, but somehow the Justice Department rejected it as inconclusive. Senator John
Kerry started looking into all this and said at one closed-door committee meeting: "It is clear that there is a network of drug trafficking through the Contras. We can produce specific law enforcement officials who will tell you that they have been calle
off drug trafficking investigations because the CIA is involved or because it would threaten national security."All this, remember, while we're spending millions supposedly fighting the "war on drugs," a phrase first coined by Nixon in 1969.
Source: American Conspiracies, by Jesse Ventura, p.117
Mar 8, 2010
On Homeland Security:
Warren Commission was greatest hoax ever perpetrated
In a conversation [caught on the White House tapes released during Watergate] about the shooting that paralyzed Alabama governor George Wallace, Nixon suddenly flashed back to the Kennedy assassination and called the
Warren Commission "the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated." Somebody might have been able to ask what the president meant by that, except the tape transcript wasn't released by the National Archives until 2002!
When the presidential tape was released [in 2002, we also heard]: "Well, we protected Helms from one hell of a lot of things," Nixon said on the tape, referring to the CIA Director. "Of course, this Hunt, that will uncover a lot of things.
You open up that scab, there's a hell of a lot of things and we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves."
Source: American Conspiracies, by Jesse Ventura, p. 32&85-87
Mar 8, 2010
Page last updated: Dec 12, 2018