Monday, July 2, 2012

June 30, 1972 (part 2)

(Still a bit behind)

John Dean is busy. Previously, he had transferred the contents of Hunt's safe to Patrick Gray. But there are so many fronts to tend to, and one of them is the five arrested men, Hunt, and Liddy. Dean now went to Vernon Walters at the CIA to see if the CIA would be willing to pay off the men (many of whom, remember, had CIA contacts of some sort). In three White House meetings over three days, Walters turned down Dean's request, writing memos about it for his files at the CIA. Dean then went to Nixon's personal lawyer and fund-raiser, Herbert Kalmbach.

Kalmbach -- summoned in from California -- was asked to raise money for and arrange for it to be delivered to the defendants. Dean made it clear the order came from above him, and laid out a plan. Dean or Mitchell's assistant Fred LaRue would tell Kalmbach the amounts, and Kalmbach was to use Tony Ulasewicz, a former NYC cop who had done security and dirty tricks for the White House pre-Plumbers, to get the money where it needed to go.

As Emery tells it, Kalmbach's first stop is to Committee to Re-Elect finance chair Maurice Stans, who delivers $75K in cash to Kalmbach on June 30, who tells him only that the White House asked for it.

So on Dean's end, the bad news is that the CIA isn't co-operating at all any more in the effort to "turn off" the FBI; thus the plan to move the responsibility up one level from the five burglars to Liddy. But the good news is that the effort to pay people off to keep them on board with whatever story they concoct is beginning.

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