Let me make this pellucidly clear for the hacks

[Kid Berwyn]

71. They don't call it Capitalism's Invisible Army for nothing.

The Agency. The Firm. Da Outfit. Take Nixon.



HOW THE CIA'S CUBA DEBACLES BROUGHT THE FUTURE WATERGATE CONSPIRATORS TOGETHER

Jefferson Morley on the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, the CIA's evolving plans in Cuba, and the people the Agency brought together.

Excerpt…

Helms relieved Jake Esterline, chief of the Cuba task force. He replaced him with Bill Harvey, the chief of the Berlin base, whom Helms regarded as perhaps the finest operations officer in the DDP. He brought in Ted Shackley, a brusque deputy of Harvey’s, to run the Miami station. He sent his energetic protégé David Phillips to Mexico City to wreak havoc on the Cuban embassy, Castro’s first intelligence outpost in the western hemisphere. Helms had bad news for Howard Hunt. “It was made abundantly clear to me in a very pleasant way that I was to have nothing further to do with Cuba operations,” Hunt recalled.

Helms conferred a consolation prize on Hunt more appropriate for his literary talents. He assigned him to serve as covert action chief in the newly created Domestic Contacts Division, where he supervised what a later generation would call “soft power” activities. Hunt later testified that he took over the Agency’s relationship with Frederick Praeger Publishing Company, which published books that aligned with the Agency’s interests but were not “economically feasible.” With subsidies from Langley, Praeger generated books that advanced the Agency’s mission. In this domestic propaganda operation, Hunt reported to Karamessines. Helms took care of his pal.

***

The deputy director had to deal with the mess left by the inexperienced Dick Bissell. Bob Maheu might have been the right man to introduce Agency officers to organized crime figures. But telling the amoral ex-FBI agent the specific and lethal nature of their interest was a mistake for which the Agency soon paid. As Maheu’s friend, Johnny Rosselli, put it, “If somebody gets in trouble and they want a favor from the G [meaning the U.S. government] we can get it for them. You understand. We have the government by the ass.” Bob Maheu—no surprise—had a feel for blackmail.

Helms knew this terrain better than most gentlemen.

“Let’s leave aside the notion of theology and the morality of all good men for just a moment,” he dilated for TV talk show host David Frost. “If you hire someone to kill somebody else, you are immediately subject to blackmail, and that includes individuals as well as governments.” As Helms knew full well, Maheu was one of those individuals. Maheu had a problem, and he wanted the CIA to fix it. It seems that Sam Giancana, while negotiating with the Agency about the Castro hit, expressed concern that his girlfriend, pop singer Phyllis McGuire, was getting “too much attention” from comedian Dan Rowan, who was performing in Las Vegas. Giancana asked Maheu to bug Rowan’s hotel room to determine “the extent of his intimacy with Miss McGuire,” as the CIA inspector general chastely put it. Maheu hired an experienced “wire man” to plant the bug, but the man wasn’t experienced enough. Hotel security officers nabbed him in the act. When he called Maheu for help, the FBI was listening in. The Bureau decided to charge both men with violating federal wiretapping statutes. Maheu let his friends at the CIA know that, if prosecuted, he would start talking about the Agency’s scheme to kill Castro. The charges were soon dropped. Blackmail worked.

Continues…

https://crimereads.com/cia-cuba-watergate/