Great mysteries grow intertwined (JFK assassination's link to Watergate)

valleystar.com ^ | 06/10/05 | Randy Davidson

[Destro]

Great mysteries grow intertwined

By Randy Davidson

When W. Mark Felt revealed Tuesday that he was "the man they called Deep Throat," it solved one of the greatest mysteries of my lifetime. As ghosts from the Watergate era — some of whom hadn’t been public figures for more than 30 years — made their way to TV news shows this past week — I couldn’t help wonder what amazing riddle would be unraveled next.

There were some great mysteries during the 20th century. Many involved missing persons — from Amelia Earhardt to Judge Crater to Jimmy Hoffa.

But there was one enduring mystery that captured my mind in the wake of Felt’s confirming that he was the confidential source for the Washington Post articles by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. There could be just one topper to Tuesday’s news ... and that would be for the gunman behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll to be unmasked. If there was one, of course.

No mystery during the past 50 years has sparked the interest and the speculation as has the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy.

In reviewing the Watergate scandal and the Kennedy assassination, what’s startling is the interconnectedness of these two episodes in American history. Separated by nearly 10 years and about 1,500 miles, the two crimes — whether in fact or merely by conjecture, since many of the details of JFK’s assassination still are disputed — share a number of characters.

Although one must be careful to note the sources of information on the assassination — and to take each one, even the official ones, with a grain of salt — there appears to be some interesting coincidences, if one can call them that.

For example, two of the five Watergate burglars — Bernard Barker and Frank Sturgis — were tied to the Kennedy assassination by separate sources, according to Spartucus Educational, an extensive British Web site (www.spartucus.schoolnet.co.uk) with in-depth investigations into a wide variety of historic topics.

It reports that one of the Dallas police detectives who found the rifle in the Texas School Book Depository identified Barker as the man on the Grassy Knoll who flashed a Secret Service ID and told people to leave the area.

Marita Lorenz, who claims to have been Fidel Castro’s lover after Sturgis recruited her into the CIA, accused Sturgis of being one of the gunmen in Dallas.

Both Sturgis and Barker also were CIA agents connected with the ill-fated Bay of Pigs Invasion against Cuba, with Barker said to be one of the organizers.

Unbelievably, Barker, one of the five men arrested inside the Watergate complex with $100 bills shoved in their pockets and White House insider E. Howard Hunt’s name in their address books, had the chutzpah to go on TV this week and point an accusatory finger of blame at Felt. (Hunt also had been a CIA man — station chief in Mexico City, where Lee Harvey Oswald traveled in September 1963.)

There is actually a Rio Grande Valley connection to the Grassy Knoll conspiracy theory and to the three tramps who were arrested in the rail yard located just beyond Dealey Plaza. In a 1991 interview with Newsweek, Chauncey Holt identified himself as one the tramps.

Holt worked for Vegas mob boss Meyer Lansky and claimed to have been involved with the Bay of Pigs invasion and the JFK assassination. He fingered Charles Harrelson, another crook who worked for Lansky, as one of the other tramps. (Lansky, incidentally, was said to have blackmailed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover with evidence concerning his too-close relationship with longtime companion Clyde A. Tolson. Tolson, technically, was the No. 2 man to Felt’s No. 3, but was too ill to be considered as a potential successor to Hoover when he died in 1972. President Nixon bypassed Felt with his own man, outsider L. Patrick Gray III. The FBI’s investigation of Watergate was corrupted and Felt became Deep Throat.)

Harrelson, the father of actor Woody Harrelson, had been convicted of armed robbery in 1960 and had a reputation as a hit man. In the late 1960s, after being acquitted on a murder-for-hire charge out of Houston, he was transferred to the jail in Edinburg, where he was charged with the contract killing of Sam Degelia, a grain dealer from Hearne, Texas.

A Hidalgo County jury deadlocked in the case — 11 for conviction and one for acquittal — according to Jack Dean, the Texas Ranger in charge of the investigation. The case was retried in Brownsville in 1974 and Harrelson was convicted. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison and got out in five, determined, apparently, to make himself a poster boy for life-without-parole sentencing.

He made his way back to Vegas, where he met high-rolling drug kingpin Jimmy Chagra of El Paso. Chagra had legal problems of his own, as he was scheduled to appear in a San Antonio courtroom before U.S. District Judge John "Maximum John" Wood. Before the case came to trial, however, Wood was killed outside his townhouse with a single shot from a high-powered rifle, in what became the most significant criminal case in Texas since JFK’s assassination. (Wood’s successor as federal judge, incidentally, was William Sessions, who later headed the FBI.)

Harrelson eventually was tied to Wood’s assassination and the whole bunch — Harrelson and his wife, Chagra, his wife and his brother Joe, who testified for the state — went to prison. Of the five, only Charles Harrelson remains behind bars. Joe and Elizabeth Chagra are dead. Jo Ann Harrelson divorced Charles and was paroled in 1997. Jimmy was paroled in December 2003.

If this all seems like a giant game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, well, here goes: Mark Felt talked to Bob Woodward, whose stories in the Post helped lead to the formation of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. That committee had as its minority counsel Fred Thompson, who later gained fame as a U.S. senator and movie actor, appearing in "No Way Out" with Kevin Costner, who was in "JFK" with, yes, Kevin Bacon.

Davidson is the Star opinion editor. He was nowhere near the Grassy Knoll in 1963, despite persistent rumors to the contrary. He can be contacted at 430-6289 or by e-mail at randyd@valleystar.com.

[EagleUSA]

Enter stage left --- TOM CLANCY :-)

[Chi-townChief]

[Luke]

Thanks for the post. Very interesting. If nothing else it has great potential as a #1 best seller.

[Destro]

Why post that - this is posted under the Conspiracy and UFO's section.

[muawiyah]

And how can we forget that Bob Woodward did that deathbed interview with CIA Director Casey ~ and may have been preparing for such an event with Mark Felt?!?!?!?*********** * * * * * *

You know the connection between Monica Lewinsky and the "Righteous Gentile" named Consul Chiune Sugihara?

You can tie it all together through the Washington Post and it's secret underground tunnel to the nearby Soviet Legation.

[Mikey_1962]

Elvis told me about this last week in Kalamazoo.

[Destro]

I know zero about the Lewinsky affair - nor do I want to.

[muawiyah]

It's about her Grandfather, not her, of course.

Point being that the degrees of separation among the people most noted in the news are fewer than among we mere mortals.

(You didn't really think there was something salicious in this did you? Shame, shame!)

[Destro]

I honestly have no clue what you ar etalking about - who that person is and what he did what makes him a "Righteous Gentile". You know I must have made many a stain in my life - all I got for some of them was a laundry bill. Become powerful and famous and women save your stains and then tell everyone about it. That being said to lie under oath is wrong and illegal.

[SunkenCiv]

Note to historians:
Waving the Bloody Shirt for the election campaigns of 2006 and 2008 started in 2005.

JFK's fatal head wound: The truth for those who want to know (very graphic)
jmasland.com & others | 11/22/03
Posted on 11/22/2003 5:10:59 PM PST by Wolfstar
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1027256/posts
237 posted on 01/09/2004 8:48:47 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Weblogs are for people with short attention spans.)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1027256/posts?page=237#237

Posada has something on Bush, says expert on Kennedy case
Granma International | April 29, 2005 | JEAN-GUY ALLARD
Posted on 06/01/2005 11:27:53 AM PDT by Destro
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1414565/posts

The JFK Conspiracy: Need Info for High School Student
none | 00/00/00 | None
Posted on 05/11/2005 8:09:00 PM PDT by Go Gordon
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1401426/posts

JFK and the corset that helped to kill a president
Houston Chronicle | 11-23-2004 | By JAMES RESTON JR.
Posted on 11/24/2004 12:03:50 PM PST by weegee
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1287783/posts

All right, who really killed JFK?
cnn
Posted on 01/26/2005 10:44:38 AM PST by jjtwo
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1329073/posts

Notes on a Strange World Facts and Fiction in the Kennedy Assassination
Skeptical Inquirer | 2/22/2005 | Massimo Polidoro
Posted on 02/22/2005 7:54:29 PM PST by mlo
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1349072/posts

Did the PLO Murder Robert Kennedy? (TROP™ got a pass on this one)
The History News Network | March 28, 2005 | Mel Ayton
Posted on 03/30/2005 12:42:26 PM PST by quidnunc
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1374041/posts

selections from:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=jfk

[airborne]

JFK's Assassination Link to Watergate

Arlen Specter

[Jemian]

See! I'm not the only one receiving mind-rays and needing a new tin foil reflector beanie.

[Dog]

LOL!

[rubbertramp]

Despite all the shills (see above), fr still catalogs the best info.

I didn't know those factoids about Sessions and Chauncey Holt. It explains how a lot of no-talents like Harrelson came to fame.

BTW, Who is buried in Arlington National Cemetery pretending to be JFK?

I always pegged E howard hunt as deep throat.

You can answer privately, mon cherie.

[metalbird1]

As muawiyah says above,
"And how can we forget that Bob Woodward did that deathbed interview with CIA Director Casey ~ and may have been preparing for such an event with Mark Felt?!?!?!?"

---

* * * * * *
===
Of course that refers to Woodward's supposed chat up
with the dying Casey, never minding Casey was unable
to speak and guards were posted outside Casey's hospital room.
I believe that took place about as much as Felt was
"Deep Throat," which is to say not very much.