mold free broadcast quality video for your media projects and free media. tom. hello tonight we bring you a special edition of the big picture with two of our conversations with great minds in june i had the opportunity to sit down with my friend and co-author lamar waldron amar was once called the ultimate j.f.k. historian and he recently wrote a groundbreaking book on the watergate scandal titled watergate the hidden history now my conversation with lamar will. for tonight's special edition of conversations with great minds i'm joined by my friend will maher walter maher's an author and historian and was once called the

ultimate j.f.k. historian and examiner by variety magazine's list smith is extensive and groundbreaking breaking research has been featured in hundreds of newspapers was the subject of two discovery channel specials produced by n.b.c. news the mars appeared on c.n.n. the history channel and other major television networks is the author of several books including his newest full bombshells watergate the hidden history of our joins me now in the studio lamar welcome great to be with you this is also nixon the mafia and the cia when people talk about watergate they typically bring up three things you know that it was a third rate burglary that the cover up was worse than the crime and that the washington post brought down nixon you start out the book in fact the first three or four pages are devoted to blowing up those myths tell me about as i found out so much that people think it's true about watergate those three myths are totally untrue not a word of truth in that first off it wasn't a third rate burglary because there wasn't just one burglary there were four

burglary attempts at the watergate offices of the democratic national committee at the watergate office hotel apartment complex. in washington and the same crew of nixon's burglarized the chilean embassy here in washington two weeks before the first watergate burglary attempt and these were very sophisticated attempts by experienced people a couple of high level cia former officials. all the watergate burglars were either current or former cia agents and so these were some high level people and they were doing a lot of burglaries in a very short time and people have forgotten that because they think well there was one burglary in the guy's got arrested so that's one myth that's just totally not true the other thing is that the cover up is worse than the crime of course there was one crime there were a lot of crimes and not just with watergate it was just a small part of a massive culture of corruption with dozens and dozens and dozens of serious

felonies that nixon talks about on tape seventy people were either in dieted or played guilty and that whole watergate era so what we think of as watergate was just a little tip of a giant criminal iceberg and finally that watergate that that nixon was brought down by the washington post just isn't true at all in his crimes his many crimes in addition to the watergate break ins brought him down and woodward and bernstein actually only exposed a very small portion of those crimes in their excellently written book but it just didn't it just couldn't begin to cover the massive scope of crimes plus it was it was finished eight months before nixon resigned so so much was unknown when they wrote that book from the smoking gun tape to many tapes that were released by the ninety's so so i guess a lot of people think is true about watergate turns out isn't true after all but the real story is even more amazing and filled with a lot of interesting criminals and criminal activity so if woodward and bernstein didn't bring nixon down who did how did what is the real story well the real story

is what's what's actually out in the end is new after forty years we're coming up on the thirtieth. anniversary you would think after all the congressional investigations the senate watergate committee other ones that followed we would know everything in fact some of the most important information has only come out in recent years in the book for the first time not only as the mafia connected by official watergate committee documents to watergate for the first time it was the mafia has never been mentioned pretty much in the mainstream media with watergate before and only was it involved it turns out from these documents that are published in border gate that is the first time people been looking for for thirty years. the mafia was central to watergate it was the reason for the war to break ins in the chilean embassy break in were nixon's long long time ties to the mafia so something like that a whole area of watergate has just been unknown before the cia is barely mentioned

in all the president's men it turns out you know the fact that all of those guys were cia agents the cia tried to hide that people tried to pick james mccord and he howard haun is a low level kind of bumbling people james mccord was a high level cia security official he howard hunt just a couple of years before he went to work for nixon was the chief of covert operations for all of western europe at the height of the cold war this was no bumbling nobody these were and he was the protege of the cia director for richard nixon richard helms in fact richard helms was so close to you howard hunt two weeks before the first word of the burglary richard helms was pitching a t.v. show to top hollywood executives jack valenti and the head of paramount for a t.v. series like the old f.b.i. series only based on the howard hans hack spy novels you know and that's just all forgotten because the cia knew that would be incredibly embarrassing which which also shows the cia did not set up watergate either to bring nixon down anymore than

the washington post did nixon and his crimes what nixon down and and. you publish in the book. the documents that nick some very sophisticated team to break into the chilean embassy to break into the watergate several times of the democratic national committee headquarters. what was it the these guys were looking for what they were looking for nixon was like and this and this this is borne out in the new war to get documents in the statements of one of the watergate burglars and it's been kind of known and talked about in historical circles for years but it hasn't penetrated the mainstream media because there was no official paperwork about it what it was was it was an almost one hundred page dossier of cia attempts to kill fidel castro that started in one nine hundred sixty one when riggs

new first president vice president facing a tidal action just as he was in seventy two course we're in election year now in this zero sixty he's vice president he's trying to kill castro castro. kill castro using the mafia about in seventy two he's running for president again running for reelection and he's trying to kill castro using them since he was trying to go castro just five months before the war to break ins again and so there were there was an actual dossier the version we have is ninety pages maybe a little bit longer the one they were looking for but it's basically the same and it started when nixon was vice president and it ended in december one nine hundred seventy one five months before the first watergate break in when nixon cia once again tried to kill fidel castro and so that would have been that enough for it to come out that from the time he was vice president to the president nixon is using a lot of unsavory characters including the mafia notorious mafia godfathers and

mafia dons like johnny really kill fidel that would have been bad enough but at the same time both of those attempts when they started september sixth and in december seventy one some of the same p. . people involved in that first attempt are also donating to a one for one million dollar bribe to richard nixon that is true in december seventy one five months before the first watergate break in in september sixty so twice they bribed next twice they bribed nixon and that was first to stall an indictment of hoffa jimmy hoffa the teamster president in one nine hundred sixty in one thousand nine hundred seventy one some of the mob leaders wanted out of prison where he was imprisoned had been convicted and other mob leaders didn't want to back running the teamsters so it was a million dollars for nixon to personally approve the release of hoffa around christmas of nine hundred seventy one but with special conditions that would prevent him from having anything to do with the teamsters is that because the mob

didn't feel that they could control some of the mobsters were worried they were much happier with frank fitzsimmons then then running the teamsters i should point this out too as we talk about who you know had a it was convicted of crimes and there were many allegations more allegations of corruption she wasn't convicted for you know that the teamsters then it is very different it was always about it was about the teamsters i mean they're good working people i'm a former union stand myself for the u.a.w. but you know the teamsters today very clean union james hoffa jr running it very clean guys that some of the original jimmy hoffa's worst critics say they tell me the teamsters today great union totally uncorrupt in the old days though there were a lot of mafia connections so so it was the bribe to nixon in sixty and the bribed nixon seventy two december seventy one seventy one done by the mob that was in this the nixon was afraid was in this he was afraid it was in the us it was the same people the same mobsters who were bribing him to get off out of jail who are also

the lawyers that he was hiring to kill castro to exactly some of the same ones from september sixth i mean the same month september sixteenth we show in. the you know the cia needs. a long secret report that has ok is these mobsters and these guys are trying to kill for the right before the sixty election and then and then it's the same guys like conti who are donating five months before watergate for a new one million dollar bribe to nixon you know to let those special conditions them off some of them obviously there's money and cash well yes there was cash it was from las vegas chuck colson got one of the payments by the way that only the december nine hundred seventy one bribe was confirmed by the f.b.i. confirmed by time magazine it was in two installments and the other thing nixon always tried to present himself as a very plain spoken regular folks kind of guy who grew up poor didn't grow up poor he grew up for the depression not bad as

a family on the grocery store or the house that was pretty good in the depression but it turns out nixon had a lot he had a lot of secret money he had swiss bank accounts he had a friend his best friend bebe rebozo he was tied into business with bros while nixon was president rebozo made the money for both of them but they're illegal deals with nixon going back to his first race in the forty's. business is he only in cuba business is he on with bozo a huge amount of money so a lot of this money wasn't even going to his campaign because he had a lot of illegal money flowing in his campaign that resulted in a lot of convictions alters but now he would pocket a lot of it swiss bank accounts i mean just huge amounts of your next and corrupt ever since he ran for the house of representatives forty six since the first race and the mafia and that case it was los angeles mob boss one of the two of the los angeles mickey cohen and very in one thousand nine hundred six of the big business tycoons you know the the koch brothers of their day howard hughes was given the

money they were slush funds they were they were big wall street corporations he was a little california congressman he he knew where you know you get the money from the powerful people you do what they want you'll go. it was he was making cohen who did the fundraiser for richard nixon where he brought all these bookies in and showed them that they were a lot of his hotel ballroom locked the doors he had all these books nixon's number one fixer strategists. and had an office in nixon white house but his brother they represented over two hundred bookies from a cohen nixon are there all these bookies are there and you know you guys aren't leave until we raise so much money for dick nixon dick nixon stands up and says a few words and gets the heck out of dodge and and they raise the money when he runs for the california senate he does the same thing and the other important thing here i mean there's so much important new bombshell information but it's so relevant to today because you know when we look at things like that wisconsin

election i mean it's just the these techniques unlike those fake robo calls and anything you want to call campaign dirty tricks when you see candidates making outrageous claims against people like obama over their opponents those things all originated with richard nixon he perfected the template that republicans and conservatives used day in races and they work and it's sad to say but i would love to dig a little deeper into that in just a short stick around more of tonight's special wednesday edition of conversations the great minds right after the break. pepper spray that just burns your eyes right i mean it's like a derivative of actual pepper it's a food product essentially. this is much stronger than anything you buy oh absolutely thousands of times and stronger than any kind of.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so late. you think you understand it and then something else you hear sees some other part of it and realize that everything is. hard because the big picture. into that only military making the deal to bring justice or accountability. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes. i would characterize obama as the care isn't a version of american exceptionalism.

welcome to the capital account i'm laurin. welcome back to our special wednesday edition of conversations in the great minds with lamar waller author and historian has extensive and groundbreaking research has been featured in hundreds of newspapers and was the subject of the discovery channel special conspiracy files j.f.k. assassination he's the author of several books including his newest full of

bombshells watergate the hidden history nixon the mafia and the cia let's get back to this lamar. first of all just just to recap. the the the watergate burglary was nixon was looking for this ninety page what you published in the book this this dossier that was compiled of his collaboration's with the cia and the mafia to kill castro that would have shown his affiliation with the mafia and the fact that they had been bribing him ever since i want to say it could have shown that and by the way the dossier didn't just cover nixon it started when nixon was vice president ended with that attempt to kill fidel castro in chile in december seventy one while he was president it took to do include all of the cia so so they did put together this dossier fidel castro did apparently after the failed attempt to kill him in chile in one thousand nine hundred one he was like hey enough is enough we're

supposed to you know nixon nixon is the one who agreed not to invade cuba by the way not kennedy and apparently they were so put out that they compiled this dossier but by the way you you did interview one time one of the gentlemen that went to kill for the castro in chile antonio vesey on it yes i remember it well. and i got to have you go talk to him but you know. so this is when we were working on another book the early ninety's so the dust included all of those attempts and the cia only had a little piece of it now the cia director richard helms had continued the cia mafia plots under j.f.k. without telling j.f.k. or his own cia director helms that continued the plotting under l.b.j. when he became cia director without telling the whole beach and so by by nine hundred seventy two richard helms was nixon's cia director nixon knew some of this stuff because he had started the whole ball rolling and so you had the cia director

and nixon didn't want this step to come out they had a little slice of that long almost one hundred page dossier they needed the rest of it so that is why the cia director's protege. howard hunt anyhow once assistant from one nine hundred sixty who would worked on the cia mafia plots for an hour barker and other cia and castro veterans that's why because people want to buy all these any castro cubans and what does what do they come up from miami well that's why because if you could find that dossier they would recognize the names they knew all the key names some of them had participated in the plot so if you just had non cuban non cuban exile non cia people they might find part of the dossier and not even know what they were looking about not these guys these arrows had enough films to photograph fourteen hundred pages it was going to page they had and the reason that they thought that the democratic party had. the late embassy we know this thanks to james mccord who was a supposedly retired cia official and i supposed he was retired but the same was

bugging the chilean embassy and apparently they picked up word something about the dossier and so they first go to the chilean embassy which at that time chile was run by this socialist very progressive day nixon had a huge covert campaign trying to eliminate him to be in chile he did die as a result of that campaign against him and so they look for their they apparently only find a piece of it and you know it's not the peace they want it's not one nine hundred sixty or december seventy one so they've got to go back and and it was thought especially as it looked like mcgovern was going to be the nominee and by the way there's a whole other side discovered in the book of all the dirty tricks nixon pulled to eliminate the front runner musky in a torpedo other candidates because nixon wanted to run he gets mcgovern because if this had come out he felt like maybe he could prevail against mcgovern so it would probably beat him musket was quite what it was it was simply more of an appealing

candidate to middle america you know i personally voted for mcgovern my first presidential vote but i mean most musky had broader appeal that's why he howard. it was had three teams there were two other dirty tricks teams criminal activities against musky so they had to get this dossier to see what it said i mean if they knew what it said the if the democrats had it they could possibly spin it a certain way or put out something nixon had to try to fake cables showing that j.f.k. had ordered the assassination of the prime minister of south vietnam in november of sixty three i mean just the fake cables. that never made sense to people before now it does so there was nixon was worried it would come out that he was trying to assassinate a foreign leader so one way to knock yourself out of j.f.k. was trying to assassinate a foreign leader too and he actually had tried to fake tables that would show that nixon didn't know what the da ca said completely he was worried what it might say

because he knew what he could say he knew his crimes he knew the senate could send him to prison exactly what he wanted the election but he could go to prison if those mafia bribes came out you know because some of his buddies wouldn't mind that he was trying to kill castro but he was using the mafia to do it you know it is nixon nixon as the protege for the for the republican party today as it's kind of a grand old man i understand he actually once ran a democratic party organization. twice now the words if for a second one for a long release for a second run for congress he first did something with an exactly illegal he sent a postcard to all of his constituents talking about how great he was and how much he'd done for the district and not me and he was a republican so he actually won the republican primary and the democratic process. he wanted both primary and that was technically legal and he didn't really have opposition anyway so you know when he had the deep money from howard hughes them and walsh and then the mob but then in sixty two after he lost

a very close race to. j.f.k. no matter all of the help nixon got much more help from the mafia than the case ever been accused of giving. he ran for governor nixon did a california sixty two and they did try to they did commit crimes there caspar weinberger was the head of the california republican party and nixon had a lot of his other people h.r. haldeman his later chief of staff who was a mad man a wall street i'm sorry madison avenue type advertising executive you know they put together a fake democratic party organization and you know some sort of middle of the road democrats and and hey maybe we should vote for nixon and they were sending out these postcards under these you know using the u.s. mails to defraud california democrats they were caught but you know there was really no criminal penalty there were some small fine but i mean and that's just the tip of the iceberg i mean nixon later on. launcher was when it any cost and he

committed so many crimes to win elections both in sixty eight and seventy two here's what b.j. called treason where nixon torpedoed personally torpedoed the peace deal for vietnam it was supposed to take effect right before the nine hundred sixty eight election and if that peace deal had taken effect nixon personally intervened to have his representative get the head of south vietnam the dictator who ran south vietnam to say he would not be part of the deal to publicly say that and so the vietnam war dragged on for another over twenty thousand more deaths. american billion dollar via the means to easily and nixon was willing to do that just to win the election i just to his credit or whatever a week or so after the election he's he had his people get in touch with the head of south vietnam and say ok now you can do the deal like he could turn that on and off like a faucet in the south vietnamese had was like no you know so i mean what are the links he would go to to win an election are just stunning but so much of what we

see today whenever you see someone making outrageous claims about their opponent you know they know that will get the media attention it will distract from their own in america. right and they keep saying if people want it well it's been proven he is well it works you know advertising works the more people hear a message in advertising the more it works and i'm always shocked when i see the obama america is a muslim and sure it's a lot of republican conservatives but look sometimes and it'll be small sometimes single digit independents in single digit democrats but those are that's the difference in an election as this one and nixon knew that nixon was like karl rove dick cheney and george bush wrapped up together and multiplied by ten i mean and the techniques those people used to get elected nixon was the man appealing to middle america but he was the really a hands on political strategist he could manipulate liberals i mean he we have it on tape he'll say well if i put out the stories you know the liberals will react

this way and and then we'll put out this story and and that's the story we really want to get out and they're still busy responding to this earlier which we don't even care about anymore and he was always playing chess and he was always two steps ahead and the press people talk about well the press hated nixon well yeah after watergate became a big story it was not a big story a week after it happened it faded from the news it was zero factor in the seventy two election it was not until march of seventy three. and that was well after the november seventy two election the watergate happened in seventy two that it became front page news again because most of the mainstream press tend to want favored nixon nixon had in the electress nixon had a great relations with the press he had ten thousand journalists he called them the ten thousand he could put out anything they would say and so when we see the

mainstream media tilting toward clearly conservative republican candidates we see a lot of times that conservatives are driving the agendas of what few liberal journalists there are because they. they create these all very active and they know that's keeping people away from looking at like the corruption investigation of the governor and less constant i have been busy writing this eight hundred page book and catching up on wisconsin the last few days i'm like oh i don't hear that there's this corruption investigation that could involve the governor where's that you know so but and nixon was the same way he knew you you take the air out of the room with all these outrageous charges you know these people are communists his good friend was filled mccarthy but nixon was smarter than mccarthy he knew you can't go too far you have other people make the claims and then you start making new claims you know and he could control that news cycle so well and and that's why it took him it took him it was june of seventy two he didn't resign until august of

seventy four even after it became front page news again in the spring of seventy three he hung on just about another year and a half because he was so good at manipulating the news and and. how how is it we have just a minute left lamar how is it that republicans have learned these lessons and democrats have well because that history has been hidden in the words the richard helms made it the goal of the cia as an agency to hide his own misdeeds and unauthorized operations so even today there is phony propaganda put out that fidel castro killed j.f.k. and all this kind of stuff so this stuff is being kept hidden people don't realize there are between fifty thousand and one million pages of files related to watergate that are still secret today so a lot of the history is simply not known and republican circles if you look at you know one of nixon's chief celt one of nixon's counsels was donald rumsfeld rumsfeld's assistant was dick cheney roger ailes rand media for richard nixon

starting in sixty so so many of the people today came out of that whole nixon operation so that they learned those lessons firsthand they had to get him out of the hole that's absolutely incredible. thanks so much thank you so much to really really appreciate. it.

welcome to the capital account i'm lauren lyster. just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old a good job a true. incessant get of friends that i love driving hip hop music and.