Lee R. Pennington, Family Neighbor...

Robalini's Note: Lee Penington was the next door neighbor of my mom's family when she grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Here is a little biography of him found on the Internet, courtesy of Uncle Fats...

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpennington.htm

Lee R. Pennington was a senior FBI agent who worked closely with J. Edgar Hoover. He claimed to have "70,000 confidential contacts" throughout the United States. Pennington, who specialized in identifying left-wing activists, supplied a great deal of information to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA). It was during this period that he met Lou Russell and James W. McCord.

By the time Pennington retired from the FBI in 1953 he was the third highest rankin agent in the organization. He then went to work compiling files on domestic "subversives" for the American Legion's National Americanism Commission". Later he became director of the Washington office of the right-wing group, the American Security Council.

Pennington also worked for the CIA who paid him $250 a month by "sterile" check, which could not be traced back to the government. It was such a secret relationship that even the director of the CIA was not informed about it. According to David Wise (The American Police State): "once a month Pennington would report to his case officer, Louis W. Vasaly at the Burgundy Room, a restaurant in Chevy Chase." Over a fifteen year period Pennington also provided information to Paul Gaynor, the chief of CIA's Security Research Staff (CRS) and Howard Osborn, director of the Office of Security.

Pennington continued to keep in contact with James W. McCord. Pennington's secretary, Donald Sweany, a former staff member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, married McCord's secretary, Lucille.

On 17th June, 1972, Frank Sturgis, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, Bernard L. Barker and James W. McCord were arrested while in the Democratic Party headquarters in Watergate. Two days later Pennington went to McCord's house where he met Donald and Lucille Sweany. While there he watched as the Sweanys and Ruth McCord destroyed a large number of documents linked to the Watergate break-in. Pennington later claimed he informed his CIA case officer, Louis W. Vasaly, about the burning of McCord's files.

The FBI received information that McCord's files had been destroyed by a former CIA agent called "Pennington". They also discovered that a man named Pennington had driven James W. McCord to his Rockville home following his release on bail. FBI agent, Donald L. Parham, asked the CIA to produce a report on Pennington.

According to the author, Jim Hougan Secret Agenda (1984): "The CIA's response to the FBI's inquiry was to give the bureau the name of a different Pennington - not Lee R., Jr., but Cecil H. The latter was a retired employee of the Office of Security. He had nothing whatsoever to do with the Watergate affair and had not, of course, driven McCord anywhere at any time. Grilled by the FBI for reasons that he could not comprehend, his alibi was quickly verified, with the result that the Pennington lead turned into a dead end for the bureau, just as the CIA had intended."

An unnamed CIA official told the Senate Committee chaired by Lucien Nedzi that: "He (Edward F. Saye) told me at the time... that Mr. Lee Pennington had entered Mr. McCord's office at home, destroying any indication of connections between the Agency and Mr. McCord." The head of the Security Research Staff said that "Pennington was too sensitive and the decision had been made to sacrifice Cecil Pennington instead".

In August, 1972, Richard Helms told Stephen L. Kuhn, the deputy director of the Office of Security, to "Remove the (Pennington) materials from the (Watergate) files and maintain them separately." This message was passed to another CIA officer who refused to comply with the order. He remarked to another officer that the "Agency did not need its own L. Patrick Gray". This was a reference to L. Patrick Gray, the director of the FBI who destroyed the documents in the White House safe of E. Howard Hunt. The two officers placed the Pennington materials in a sealed envelope and marked it for the director's "Eyes Only". In August, 1973, the new CIA director, William Colby, asked to see all files related to the Watergate Scandal. Kuhn instructed the CIA official given this responsibility to collect these documents together, that he was not to include the Pennington envelope in the materials given to Colby.

When interviewed by the Lucien Nedzi and his Senate Committee Richard Helms admitted that during the Watergate investigation he ordered the erasure of all tapes and transcripts of conversations secretly recorded in his office and the French Room (a conference room used by senior officials of the CIA). More than four thousand pages of recorded conversations over a six year period were destroyed.

Helms had been instructed by Mike Mansfield that all documents relating to Watergate had to be preserved. Helms told Nedzi that the destroyed materials had nothing to do with Watergate: "When I heard about tapes and destruction of Watergate-related tapes, the thing that immediately struck me was: "who knows what was on those tapes except me or my secretary? Who in the public can make an allegation that there were any tapes that were Watergate-related?" Lucien Nedzi replied: "The problem is... how can you prove they weren't Watergate-related."

In his book Secret Agenda, Jim Hougan alleges that Pennington was providing Lou Russell and James W. McCord with CIA reports on people like Jack Anderson that were being targeted by those involved in Operation Sandwedge. Hougan claims that "Lee R. Pennington was McCord's cut-out to the Security Research Staff."

William Colby was eventually given the Pennington file. On 28th June, 1974, he reported to Howard Baker: "The results of our investigation clearly show that the CIA had in its possession, as early as June, 1972, information that one of its paid operatives, Lee R. Pennington, Jr., had entered the James McCord residence shortly after the Watergate break-in and destroyed documents which might show a link between McCord and the CIA."

Lee R Pennington died of an apparent heart attack in October, 1974.

Family of Secrets

From Amazon.com:

Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years
Russ Baker
Paperback: 592 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury Press (November 10, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1608190064
ISBN-13: 978-1608190065

How did the deeply flawed George W. Bush ascend to the highest office in the nation, what forces abetted his rise, and—perhaps most important—have those forces really been vanquished by Obama’s election? Award-winning investigative journalist Russ Baker gives us the answers in Family of Secrets, a compelling and startling new take on the Bush dynasty and the shadowy elite that has quietly steered the American republic for the past half century and more. Baker shows how this network of figures in intelligence, the military, oil, and finance enabled—and in turn benefited handsomely from—the Bushes’ perch at the highest levels of government. As Baker reveals, this deeply entrenched elite remains in power regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.

Family of Secrets offers countless disclosures that challenge the conventional accounts of such central events as the JFK assassination and Watergate. It includes an inside account of George W.’s cynical religious conversion and the untold real background to the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. Baker’s narrative is gripping, sobering, and deeply sourced. It will change the way we understand not just the Bush years, but a half century of postwar history—and the present.

About the Author

Russ Baker is an awardwinning investigative journalist. He has written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Nation, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Village Voice, and Esquire, and has served as a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review. He is the founder of WhoWhatWhy/the Real News Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization, operating at www.whowhatwhy.com.

Praise for Family of Secrets:

“One of the most important books of the past ten years.”
— Gore Vidal

“A tour de force … Family of Secrets has made me rethink even those events I witnessed with my own eyes.”
— Dan Rather

“Shocking in its disclosures, elegantly crafted, and faultlessly measured in its judgments, Family of Secrets is nothing less than a first historic portrait in full of the Bush dynasty and the era it shaped. From revelation to revelation, insight to insight—from the Kennedy assassination to Watergate to the oil and financial intrigues that lie behind today's headlines—this is a sweeping drama of money and power, unseen forces, and the emblematic triumph of a lineage that sowed national tragedy. Russ Baker’s Family of Secrets is sure to take its place as one of the most startling and influential works of American history and journalism.”
— Roger Morris, former senior staff member, National Security Council, and author of Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician and Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America

“Left-wing paranoia? Baker, a solid investigative journalist, works hard to back up his claims – a reader could choke on the complex, interwoven details in Family of Secrets. He's a man on a mission, desperate to stop the “methods of stealth and manipulation that ... reflect a deeper ill: the American public's increasingly tenuous hold upon the levers of its own democracy.”
— San Diego Union-Tribune

“Prodigiously industrious investigative journalist Russ Baker…. connects the dots between the Bushes and Watergate.” —Lev Grossman, Time Magazine

Praise for Russ Baker:

“In an era dominated by corporate journalism and an ideological right-wing media, Russ Baker’s work stands out for its fierce independence, fact-based reporting, and concern for what matters most to our democracy…A lot of us look to Russ to tell us what we didn’t know.”
— Bill Moyers, author and host, Bill Moyers’ Journal (PBS)

“Russ Baker has the three most important attributes of any great investigative reporter: He is skeptical, he is fearless, and he is indefatigable. Whenever he examines anything—including the most allegedly wellcovered topics—he breaks important new ground.”
— David Margolick, author and contributing editor, Vanity Fair

Fred Thompson aided Nixon on Watergate

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070707/ap_on_el_pr/thompson_watergate

Fred Thompson aided Nixon on Watergate
By JOAN LOWY, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jul 7, 2007

Fred Thompson gained an image as a tough-minded investigative counsel for the Senate Watergate committee. Yet President Nixon and his top aides viewed the fellow Republican as a willing, if not too bright, ally, according to White House tapes.

Thompson, now preparing a bid for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, won fame in 1973 for asking a committee witness the bombshell question that revealed Nixon had installed hidden listening devices and taping equipment in the Oval Office.

Those tapes show Thompson played a behind-the-scenes role that was very different from his public image three decades ago. He comes across as a partisan willing to cooperate with the Nixon White House's effort to discredit the committee's star witness.

It was Thompson who tipped off the White House that the Senate committee knew about the tapes. They eventually cinched Nixon's downfall in the scandal resulting from the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington and the subsequent White House cover-up.

Thompson, then 30, was appointed counsel by his political mentor, Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker, the top Republican on the Senate investigative committee. Thompson had been an assistant U.S. attorney in Nashville, Tenn., and had managed Baker's re-election campaign. Thompson later was a senator himself.

Nixon was disappointed with the selection of Thompson, whom he called "dumb as hell." The president did not think Thompson was skilled enough to interrogate unfriendly witnesses and would be outsmarted by the committee's Democratic counsel.

This assessment comes from audio tapes of White House conversations recently reviewed by The Associated Press at the National Archives in College Park, Md., and transcripts of those discussions that are published in "Abuse of Power: The New Watergate Tapes," by historian Stanley Kutler.

"Oh shit, that kid," Nixon said when told by his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, of Thompson's appointment on Feb. 22, 1973.

"Well, we're stuck with him," Haldeman said.

In a meeting later that day in the Old Executive Office Building, Baker assured Nixon that Thompson was up to the task. "He's tough. He's six feet five inches, a big mean fella," the senator told Nixon.

Publicly, Baker and Thompson presented themselves as dedicated to uncovering the truth. But Baker had secret meetings and conversations with Nixon and his top aides, while Thompson worked cooperatively with the White House and accepted coaching from Nixon's lawyer, J. Fred Buzhardt, the tapes and transcripts show.

"We've got a pretty good rapport with Fred Thompson," Buzhardt told Nixon in an Oval Office meeting on June 6, 1973. The meeting included a discussion of former White House counsel John Dean's upcoming testimony before the committee.

Dean, the committee's star witness, had agreed to tell what he knew about the break-in and cover-up if he was granted immunity against anything incriminating he might say.

Nixon expressed concern that Thompson was not "very smart."

"Not extremely so," Buzhardt agreed.

"But he's friendly," Nixon said.

"But he's friendly," Buzhardt agreed. "We are hoping, though, to work with Thompson and prepare him, if Dean does appear next week, to do a very thorough cross-examination."

Five days later, Buzhardt reported to Nixon that he had primed Thompson for the Dean cross-examination.

"I found Thompson most cooperative, feeling more Republican every day," Buzhardt said. "Uh, perfectly prepared to assist in really doing a cross-examination."

Later in the same conversation, Buzhardt said Thompson was "willing to go, you know, pretty much the distance now. And he said he realized his responsibility was going to have be as a Republican increasingly."

Thompson, who declined comment for this story, described himself in his book, "At That Point in Time," published in 1975, as a Nixon administration "loyalist" who struggled with his role as minority counsel. "I would try to walk a fine line between a good-faith pursuit of the investigation and a good-faith attempt to insure balance and fairness," Thompson wrote.

When Dean began testifying on June 25, he implicated Nixon in the break-in and cover-up. But his testimony had little legal impact because it was his word against the president's.

During Dean's testimony, Baker asked the question that became the embodiment of the Watergate scandal: "What did the president know and when did he know it?" Thompson is sometimes credited with supplying the question to Baker.

The question was widely perceived at the time as an example of Baker's willingness to press for truth at the expense of his party's leader. Historian Kutler, however, said he believes that in the context of Dean's testimony, the question was Baker's attempt to point out that the evidence hinged on one witness's word.

It was not until three weeks later — after the disclosure of the existence of tape recordings that might either corroborate or disprove Dean's testimony — that Baker's question took on new meaning, Kutler said.

At a hearing on July 16, Thompson asked former White House aide Alexander Butterfield: "Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?"

Butterfield's confirmation of the recordings set off a cascade of events that led to Nixon's resignation 13 months later.

The question made Thompson instantly famous. His political Web site — http://www.imwithfred.com — prominently notes: "Friends in Tennessee still recall seeing the boy they'd grown up with on TV, sitting at the Senate hearing-room dais. He gained national attention for leading the line of inquiry that revealed the audio-taping system in the White House Oval Office."

What rarely is mentioned is that Thompson knew the answer to the question before he asked it. Investigators for the committee had gotten the information out of Butterfield during hours of behind-the-scenes questioning three days earlier, on July 13.

Thompson was not present, but a Republican investigator immediately tracked him down at the Carroll Arms Hotel bar where he was meeting with a reporter. Thompson called Buzhardt over the weekend to tip off the White House that the committee knew about the tapes.

"Legalisms aside, it was inconceivable to me that the White House could withhold the tapes once their existence was made known. I believed it would be in everyone's interest if the White House realized, before making any public statements, the probable position of both the majority and the minority of the Watergate committee," Thompson wrote in his book.

Scott Armstrong, a Democratic investigator for the committee who was part of the Butterfield questioning, said he was outraged by Thompson's tip-off.

"When the prosecutor discovers the smoking the gun, he's going to be shocked to find that the deputy prosecutor called the defendant and said, 'You'd better get rid of that gun,'" Armstrong said in an interview.

The committee chairman, Sen. Sam Ervin, D-N.C., had agreed to allow Thompson to question Butterfield first at the July 16 hearing as a show of bipartisanship because a GOP investigator had elicited the initial information from Butterfield.

"Fred (Thompson) and Baker carried water for the White House, but I have to give them credit — they were watching out for their interests, too," Kutler said. "They weren't going to mindlessly go down the tubes for this guy."
___
On the Net:

Nixon presidential materials: http://tinyurl.com/2bqg9a