In his autobiography, former president Richard Nixon claimed to remember where he was during another momentous event--the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Nixon said that he first heard about Kennedy's death during a taxi ride in New York City. However, a United Press International photo taken that day tells a different story. The photo shows a "shocked Richard Nixon" (as the caption reads) having already learned of Kennedy's assassination upon his arrival at New York's Idlewild Airport--in other words, before his alleged taxi ride. Perhaps Nixon was trying to deflect attention from the fact that the plane he had arrived on had originated from Dallas, Texas. Indeed, Nixon (as he later admitted) had been in Dallas from November 20 to the 22. While in Dallas, Nixon had attended meetings with right-wing politicians and executives from the Pepsi-Cola company.

Journalist Jim Marrs gives this account: "With Nixon in Dallas was Pepsi-Cola heiress and actress Joan Crawford. Both Nixon and Crawford made comments in the Dallas newspapers to the effect that they, unlike the President, didn't need Secret Service protection, and they intimated that the nation was upset with Kennedy's policies. It has been suggested that this taunting may have been responsible for Kennedy's critical decision not to order the Plexiglas top placed on his limousine on November 22."

Other facts linking Nixon to the JFK assassination emerged years later during the Watergate scandal, some of which were revealed by Nixon's former chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman. In his book, "The Ends of Power," Haldeman cites several conversations where Nixon expressed concern about the Watergate affair becoming public knowledge and where this exposure might lead. Haldeman writes:

"In fact, I was puzzled when he [Nixon] told me, 'Tell Ehrlichman this whole group of Cubans [Watergate burglars] is tied to the Bay of Pigs.' After a pause I said, 'The Bay of Pigs? What does that have to do with this [the Watergate burglary]?' But Nixon merely said, 'Ehrlichman will know what I mean,' and dropped the subject."

Later in his book, Haldeman appears to answer his own question when he says, "It seems that in all of those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs, he was actually referring to the Kennedy assassination."

If Haldeman's interpretation is correct, then Nixon's instructions for him to, "Tell Ehrlichman this whole group of [anti-Castro] Cubans is tied to the Bay of Pigs," was Nixon's way of telling him to inform Ehrlichman that the Watergate burglars were tied to Kennedy's murder. (It should be noted that many Cuban exiles blamed Kennedy for the failure to overthrow Castro at the Bay of Pigs, pointing to Kennedy's refusal to provide U.S. military support for the invasion.)

Haldeman also links the CIA to the Watergate burglars and, by implication, to the Kennedy assassination. Haldeman writes, "...at least one of the burglars, Martinez, was still on the CIA payroll on June 17, 1972--and almost certainly was reporting to his CIA case officer about the proposed break-in even before it happened [his italics]."

One of the Watergate burglars was E. Howard Hunt whose relationship with the Cuban exiles traces back to the early 1960's, to his days with the CIA. As a political officer and propaganda expert, Hunt helped create the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC)--a militant anti-Castro organization under CIA control. Hunt would later resign from the CIA (at least ostensibly) to become covert operations chief for the Nixon White House.

Several reports over the years have placed Hunt in Dallas at the time of the Kennedy assassination. In a 1985 trial, eyewitness Marita Lorenz testified that she saw Hunt pay off a CIA-backed assassination team in Dallas the night before Kennedy's murder. (Hunt v. Liberty Lobby; U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida; 1985)

In taped conversations with Haldeman, Nixon is obviously worried about what would happen if Hunt's involvement in the Watergate burglary came to light. Nixon says, "Of course, this Hunt, that will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab, there's a hell of a lot of things, and we feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further...the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again." Click to Listen: Nixon instructs Haldeman (text below)

NIXON: When you get in to these people, say: "Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that..." ah, I mean, without going into the details of, of lying to them to the extent to say that there is no involvement. But, you can say, this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, the President believes that this is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And, ah because ah these people are playing for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI and we feel that...that we wish for the country, don't go any further into this case, period!

References:

[Fetzer] Fetzer, James H., editor. Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK. Peru: Catfeet Press, 1998.

[Haldeman] Haldeman, H. R. The Ends of Power. New York: Times Books, 1978.

[Lane] Lane, Mark. Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK?. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1991.

[Marrs] Marrs, Jim. Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989.

[Summers] Summers, Anthony. Not in Your Lifetime. New York: Marlowe & Company, 1998.

[Twyman] Twyman, Noel. Bloody Treason: On Solving History's Greatest Murder Mystery: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Rancho Santa Fe: Laurel Publishing, 1997.

Nixon Foundation comment: "The charge that the 37th President of the United States had any knowledge of, and indirect moral and operational responsibility in the murder of the 35th President of the United States is so reprehensible that it should render wholly illegitimate any text or narrative in which it is contained."

E. Howard Hunt--CIA political officer and head of covert operations for Nixon--takes aim at Kennedy in his book, "Give Us This Day": "Instead of standing firm, our government [under Kennedy] pyramided crucially wrong decisions and allowed Brigade 2506 [at the Bay of Pigs] to be destroyed. The Kennedy administration yielded Castro all the excuse he needed to gain a tighter grip on the island.... Under the administration's philosophy, the real enemy became poverty and ignorance; any talk of an international Communist conspiracy was loudly derided. Detente and a positive approach to easing international tensions filled the Washington air, to the wonderment of those of us who still remembered Budapest, the Berlin Wall, and the fate of Brigade 2506."

And this from Peter Dale Scott's book, "Deep Politics and the Death of JFK": "Of the more than a dozen suspicious deaths in the case of Watergate...perhaps the most significant death was that of Dorothy Hunt [E. Howard Hunt's wife] in the crash of a United Air Lines jetliner in December 1972. The crash was investigated for possible sabotage by both the FBI and a congressional committee, but sabotage was never proven. Nevertheless, some people assumed that Dorothy Hunt was murdered (along with the dozens of others in the plane). One of these was Howard Hunt, who dropped all further demands on the White House and agreed to plead guilty [to the Watergate burglary in January 1973]." [Scott]

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