During the Watergate scandal, the CIA distanced itself from the burglars arrested at the Democratic National Committee but a newly declassified records, obtain by MuckRock, reveals just how much the agency supported President Nixon’s dirty tricksters.
A previously classified document that the Central Intelligence Agency provided to Congress during the investigation of the Watergate affair shows that G. Gordon Liddy used papers that CIA had provided – without authorization – while traveling to California to break into the office of Dr. Lewis Fielding, Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist.
Ellsberg is the former Defense Department analyst who leaked a massive secret study of the Vietnam War to the New York Times. The so-called Pentagon Papers revealed U.S. presidents and policymakers had been lying to the public how the U.S. prospects for victory. As result, Ellsberg was targeted for retaliation by the Nixon White House.
Two of the burglars, Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt, sought to collect damaging information on Ellsberg by breaking into his psychiatrist’s office. They found nothing and were later exposed, launching the agency into damage control mode.
My only quibble with the article is the phrase “without authorization.” Somebody authorized CIA’s material support and it came from the very top of the agency. The memo quoted here says that
