SCORPIONS' DANCE

A plot-thickening account of Watergate and the CIA’s role in it.

Former CIA director Richard Helms, writes investigative journalist Morley, was just the kind of person that Richard Nixon despised: Harvard-educated, well traveled, a master of languages, suave—all the things Nixon was not. Yet the two shared an abiding belief that the role of the U.S. was to keep the world safe from communism. This entailed activities that the CIA was enjoined from doing—e.g., spying on Americans within the nation’s borders in order to determine whether the anti-war movement was controlled by foreign powers. Forgotten heroes of the era turn up in Morley’s pages, such as moderate Republican Fred Thompson, who, in examination, “noted that Helms had testified, under oath, just ten weeks before, that the subject of Watergate never came up at the June 23 meeting. Helms’s colleague, deputy CIA director Vernon Walters, had stated, under oath, that it did.” That and a few other slips earned Helms a misdemeanor conviction for perjury, a first for a CIA head. Morley explores the ideological views that bound Nixon and Helms and the acts that resulted, including the secret overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende, lying about which was largely what got Helms into trouble. As for the involvement of the CIA in Watergate, Morley draws convincing connections: Burglars, plumbers, handlers, dirty-tricks specialists, Cuban assassins—all trace back to Langley. The author also shows that Nixon authorized more than one break-in of a political opponent’s office, including his own admission that he ordered that classified documents be stolen from the office of Brookings Institution fellow Leslie Gelb: “I want the break-in….You’re to break into that place, rifle the files, and bring them in,” Nixon said. It was one of many steps toward Nixon’s resignation—and, almost as collateral damage, Helms’ own fall.

A work that sheds new light on Watergate half a century after the fact.