How Nixon Blackmailed The CIA Over JFK DD

June 23rd, 1972. 10:04 a.m. The Oval Office. President Richard Nixon sat behind his desk. Chief of Staff HR Halddederman entered. The secret tape recorders Nixon had installed captured every word. They were discussing a problem. 5 days earlier, burglars had been caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.

The FBI was tracing money found on the burglars. The trail led back to the White House. Nixon needed the investigation stopped and he had a plan. Tell them to call the FBI in and say, “We wish for the country. Don’t go any further into this case.” Halddeman understood. They would use the CIA. Tell CIA director Richard Helms to shut down the FBI investigation, claim national security.

Then Nixon said something cryptic, something that would haunt historians for decades. Tell Helms this will open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up. It’s likely to blow the whole Bay of Pigs thing. The Bay of Pigs? The failed 1961 invasion of Cuba. What did that have to do with Watergate? When HR Halddederman wrote his memoir after serving time for Watergate, he revealed the truth.

Nixon wasn’t talking about Cuba. He was talking about Dallas. Bay of Pigs was code for the Kennedy assassination. If you want to understand why Nixon used the JFK assassination to blackmail the CIA into covering up Watergate and what he knew about Dallas, hit that like button because this isn’t speculation. These are the president’s own words recorded, documented, and finally decoded.

November 22nd, 1963. Morning Dallas, Texas. Three future or former presidents woke up within 30 miles of each other. In Fort Worth, President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson prepared for their motorcade through Dallas. In Dallas, Richard Nixon woke up in the Baker Hotel.

Nixon was in town for a Pepsi bottlers convention. He’d held a press conference the night before criticizing Kennedy’s policies. The Dallas Morning News headline that morning read, “Nixon predicts JFK may drop Johnson.” Nixon left Dallas on a flight to New York at approximately 9:30 a.m. Kennedy’s plane landed at Lovefield at 11:40 a.m. Just over 2 hours later.

At 12:30 p.m., Kennedy was shot. Nixon was in a taxi leaving New York’s Idle Wild Airport when a random man ran up and said Kennedy had been shot. According to Nixon’s own account, he dismissed the man as one of the nuts. When Nixon arrived home, his dorman told him Kennedy was dead. Nixon immediately called FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

What happened? Was it one of the nuts? Years later, when the FBI interviewed Nixon about an unrelated claim, they asked when he’d been in Dallas. Nixon initially said he hadn’t been there in 1963, then corrected himself. two days before the assassination. He seemed touchy about it. In a 1992 CNN interview, when Larry King mentioned Nixon was in Dallas that day, Nixon interjected sharply in the morning.

Why so defensive? What was Nixon hiding? Fast forward to 1972, the Watergate scandal. Nixon’s secret taping system recorded him plotting to obstruct justice. The most infamous recording, the smoking gun tape, captured Nixon ordering the CIA to stop the FBI investigation. But it also captured something else. Multiple references to the Bay of Pigs.

On June 23rd, 1972, Nixon told Halddederman to warn CIA director Richard Helms that continuing the Watergate investigation would open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up. Halddederman delivered the message. According to his memoir, Helms exploded. Turmoil in the room. Helms gripping the arms of his chair, leaning forward and shouting, “The Bay of Pigs had nothing to do with this.

I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs.” Silence. I just sat there. I was absolutely shocked by Helms’s violent reaction. Again, I wondered what was such dynamite in the Bay of Pigs story. Why would Helms react so violently to a reference about a failed 1961 Cuba invasion? Because according to Halddederman’s later revelation, both men knew Bay of Pigs wasn’t about Cuba.

It was about Kennedy’s murder. In his 1978 memoir, The Ends of Power, written after serving 18 months in prison, Halddeman dropped the bombshell. It seems that in all of those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs, he was actually referring to the Kennedy assassination. Halddeman explained the logic. The same people involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion, CIA operatives, anti-Castro Cubans, organized crime figures, were allegedly involved in killing Kennedy.

The Bay of Pigs had created a coalition of Kennedy haters, CIA officers furious that Kennedy refused air support. Anti-Castro Cubans who felt betrayed, mafia figures who’d lost their Havana casinos and wanted revenge. After the assassination, the CIA launched what Halddederman called a fantastic cover up.

According to his account, counter intelligence chief James Angleton of the CIA called Bill Sullivan of the FBI and rehearsed the questions and answers they would give to the Warren Commission investigators. The CIA had secrets, big secrets, and Nixon knew them. How did Nixon learn about the CIA’s involvement in Kennedy’s assassination? According to Halddeerman, the source was William C.

Sullivan, Nixon’s highest ranking loyal friend at the FBI. Sullivan was put in charge of the bureau’s internal investigation of the JFK assassination in 1963. He knew what the FBI knew, what they’d covered up, what they’d coordinated with the CIA. and Sullivan told Nixon. When Nixon became president in 1969, one of his first acts was ordering his aid, John Erlickman, to get all CIA files on the Bay of Pigs.

Nixon wanted the full story, everything. The CIA refused. According to Halddederman, Erlickman reported back, “Those bastards in Langley are holding back something. They just dig in their heels and say the president can’t have it. Period. Imagine that the commander-in-chief wants to see a document relating to a military operation and the spook say he can’t have it.

The president of the United States couldn’t access files from his own intelligence agency. Why? Because those files contained information so explosive that even the president couldn’t be trusted with it. Information about Dallas. So when Watergate threatened to destroy Nixon’s presidency in 1972, he played his trump card.

He ordered Halddeman to tell Helms, “Stop the FBI investigation or I’ll expose the whole Bay of Pigs” thing. Translation: Stop the investigation or I’ll reveal that the CIA killed Kennedy. It was blackmail, pure and simple. Nixon was threatening to blow up the CIA by exposing their darkest secret. And Helms knew exactly what Nixon meant.

That’s why he exploded. That’s why he shouted, because Nixon had just threatened to expose the AY’s involvement in presidential assassination. But here’s the twist. The CIA didn’t comply. Despite Nixon’s threat, Helms refused to stop the FBI investigation. According to later Watergate tapes, Nixon was furious.

He’d played his biggest card and the CIA had called his bluff. Why didn’t the blackmail work? Because Helms calculated that Nixon wouldn’t actually go public. Exposing the CIA meant exposing himself. If Nixon revealed CIA involvement in Kennedy’s assassination, questions would arise. What did Nixon know? When did he know it? Was he involved? Nixon was trapped.

He couldn’t use the information without destroying himself. The Watergate burglars weren’t random criminals. They were the same cast of characters from the Bay of Pigs. E. Howard Hunt, mastermind of the break-in, was a CIA operative who’d helped plan the Bay of Pigs invasion. Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, Vgilio Gonzalez, and Frank Sturgis, all Cuban exiles, all involved in anti-Castro operations, all connected to the CIA.

James McCord, former CIA officer, the same network that allegedly killed Kennedy, was now working for Nixon in Watergate. And when the investigation started closing in, Hunt demanded money. Lots of money. According to White House counsel John Dean, Hunt wanted $122,000 in cash by the close of business yesterday.

Otherwise, he’d tell all about seamy things he’d done for the White House. What seemy things did Hunt know about Nixon’s knowledge of the Kennedy assassination? Was he threatening to expose that? We’ll never know because Hunt got his money and he kept quiet. Did Nixon know the CIA killed Kennedy? The evidence is compelling.

Nixon was in Dallas the morning of the assassination. He initially denied being there, then became defensive when asked. FBI source William Sullivan gave him inside information. As president, he demanded CIA files on Bay of Pigs and was refused. He used Bay of Pigs as code for Kennedy assassination when blackmailing Helms.

His chief of staff confirmed Bay of Pigs was code for Dallas. The Watergate burglars were Bay of Pigs veterans, but did Nixon participate? Unlikely. He was in New York when Kennedy was shot. Did he know who did it? Probably. Sullivan told him the CIA files he couldn’t access confirmed it. Did he use that knowledge to try to save his own presidency? Absolutely.

The tapes prove it. Richard Nixon spent his entire career fighting communism, claiming to be tough on crime, defending American values. But when his own crimes caught up with him, he tried to blackmail the CIA by threatening to expose that they murdered an American president. The ultimate irony.

Nixon was brought down by the same taping system he’d used to record his own blackmail attempt. If he hadn’t recorded those conversations, we’d never know about the Bay of Pigs code. We’d never know he tried to use JFK’s assassination to obstruct justice in Watergate. Nixon destroyed himself by preserving the evidence of his own corruption.

If this investigation made you reconsider both Watergate and Dallas, hit that like button. Share with anyone who thinks Nixon was just covering up a burglary. Subscribe for more investigations into the secret tapes, hidden codes, and presidential crimes that shaped history. Tell us, do you think Nixon knew who killed Kennedy? And do you think he would have exposed them if he could have gotten away with it? Because the Watergate tapes weren’t just about a breakin.

They were about presidential blackmail, about using one president’s murder to cover up another president’s crimes. Thank you for watching and remember when presidents record themselves sometimes they reveal more than they intended.

June 23rd, 1972. 10:04 a.m. The Oval Office. President Richard Nixon sat behind his desk. Chief of Staff HR Halddederman entered. The secret tape recorders Nixon had installed captured every word. They were discussing a problem. 5 days earlier, burglars had been caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.

The FBI was tracing money found on the burglars. The trail led back to the White House. Nixon needed the investigation stopped and he had a plan. Tell them to call the FBI in and say, “We wish for the country. Don’t go any further into this case.” Halddeman understood. They would use the CIA. Tell CIA director Richard Helms to shut down the FBI investigation, claim national security.

Then Nixon said something cryptic, something that would haunt historians for decades. Tell Helms this will open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up. It’s likely to blow the whole Bay of Pigs thing. The Bay of Pigs? The failed 1961 invasion of Cuba. What did that have to do with Watergate? When HR Halddederman wrote his memoir after serving time for Watergate, he revealed the truth.

Nixon wasn’t talking about Cuba. He was talking about Dallas. Bay of Pigs was code for the Kennedy assassination. If you want to understand why Nixon used the JFK assassination to blackmail the CIA into covering up Watergate and what he knew about Dallas, hit that like button because this isn’t speculation. These are the president’s own words recorded, documented, and finally decoded.

November 22nd, 1963. Morning Dallas, Texas. Three future or former presidents woke up within 30 miles of each other. In Fort Worth, President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson prepared for their motorcade through Dallas. In Dallas, Richard Nixon woke up in the Baker Hotel.

Nixon was in town for a Pepsi bottlers convention. He’d held a press conference the night before criticizing Kennedy’s policies. The Dallas Morning News headline that morning read, “Nixon predicts JFK may drop Johnson.” Nixon left Dallas on a flight to New York at approximately 9:30 a.m. Kennedy’s plane landed at Lovefield at 11:40 a.m. Just over 2 hours later.

At 12:30 p.m., Kennedy was shot. Nixon was in a taxi leaving New York’s Idle Wild Airport when a random man ran up and said Kennedy had been shot. According to Nixon’s own account, he dismissed the man as one of the nuts. When Nixon arrived home, his dorman told him Kennedy was dead. Nixon immediately called FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

What happened? Was it one of the nuts? Years later, when the FBI interviewed Nixon about an unrelated claim, they asked when he’d been in Dallas. Nixon initially said he hadn’t been there in 1963, then corrected himself. two days before the assassination. He seemed touchy about it. In a 1992 CNN interview, when Larry King mentioned Nixon was in Dallas that day, Nixon interjected sharply in the morning.

Why so defensive? What was Nixon hiding? Fast forward to 1972, the Watergate scandal. Nixon’s secret taping system recorded him plotting to obstruct justice. The most infamous recording, the smoking gun tape, captured Nixon ordering the CIA to stop the FBI investigation. But it also captured something else. Multiple references to the Bay of Pigs.

On June 23rd, 1972, Nixon told Halddederman to warn CIA director Richard Helms that continuing the Watergate investigation would open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up. Halddederman delivered the message. According to his memoir, Helms exploded. Turmoil in the room. Helms gripping the arms of his chair, leaning forward and shouting, “The Bay of Pigs had nothing to do with this.

I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs.” Silence. I just sat there. I was absolutely shocked by Helms’s violent reaction. Again, I wondered what was such dynamite in the Bay of Pigs story. Why would Helms react so violently to a reference about a failed 1961 Cuba invasion? Because according to Halddederman’s later revelation, both men knew Bay of Pigs wasn’t about Cuba.

It was about Kennedy’s murder. In his 1978 memoir, The Ends of Power, written after serving 18 months in prison, Halddeman dropped the bombshell. It seems that in all of those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs, he was actually referring to the Kennedy assassination. Halddeman explained the logic. The same people involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion, CIA operatives, anti-Castro Cubans, organized crime figures, were allegedly involved in killing Kennedy.

The Bay of Pigs had created a coalition of Kennedy haters, CIA officers furious that Kennedy refused air support. Anti-Castro Cubans who felt betrayed, mafia figures who’d lost their Havana casinos and wanted revenge. After the assassination, the CIA launched what Halddederman called a fantastic cover up.

According to his account, counter intelligence chief James Angleton of the CIA called Bill Sullivan of the FBI and rehearsed the questions and answers they would give to the Warren Commission investigators. The CIA had secrets, big secrets, and Nixon knew them. How did Nixon learn about the CIA’s involvement in Kennedy’s assassination? According to Halddeerman, the source was William C.

Sullivan, Nixon’s highest ranking loyal friend at the FBI. Sullivan was put in charge of the bureau’s internal investigation of the JFK assassination in 1963. He knew what the FBI knew, what they’d covered up, what they’d coordinated with the CIA. and Sullivan told Nixon. When Nixon became president in 1969, one of his first acts was ordering his aid, John Erlickman, to get all CIA files on the Bay of Pigs.

Nixon wanted the full story, everything. The CIA refused. According to Halddederman, Erlickman reported back, “Those bastards in Langley are holding back something. They just dig in their heels and say the president can’t have it. Period. Imagine that the commander-in-chief wants to see a document relating to a military operation and the spook say he can’t have it.

The president of the United States couldn’t access files from his own intelligence agency. Why? Because those files contained information so explosive that even the president couldn’t be trusted with it. Information about Dallas. So when Watergate threatened to destroy Nixon’s presidency in 1972, he played his trump card.

He ordered Halddeman to tell Helms, “Stop the FBI investigation or I’ll expose the whole Bay of Pigs” thing. Translation: Stop the investigation or I’ll reveal that the CIA killed Kennedy. It was blackmail, pure and simple. Nixon was threatening to blow up the CIA by exposing their darkest secret. And Helms knew exactly what Nixon meant.

That’s why he exploded. That’s why he shouted, because Nixon had just threatened to expose the AY’s involvement in presidential assassination. But here’s the twist. The CIA didn’t comply. Despite Nixon’s threat, Helms refused to stop the FBI investigation. According to later Watergate tapes, Nixon was furious.

He’d played his biggest card and the CIA had called his bluff. Why didn’t the blackmail work? Because Helms calculated that Nixon wouldn’t actually go public. Exposing the CIA meant exposing himself. If Nixon revealed CIA involvement in Kennedy’s assassination, questions would arise. What did Nixon know? When did he know it? Was he involved? Nixon was trapped.

He couldn’t use the information without destroying himself. The Watergate burglars weren’t random criminals. They were the same cast of characters from the Bay of Pigs. E. Howard Hunt, mastermind of the break-in, was a CIA operative who’d helped plan the Bay of Pigs invasion. Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, Vgilio Gonzalez, and Frank Sturgis, all Cuban exiles, all involved in anti-Castro operations, all connected to the CIA.

James McCord, former CIA officer, the same network that allegedly killed Kennedy, was now working for Nixon in Watergate. And when the investigation started closing in, Hunt demanded money. Lots of money. According to White House counsel John Dean, Hunt wanted $122,000 in cash by the close of business yesterday.

Otherwise, he’d tell all about seamy things he’d done for the White House. What seemy things did Hunt know about Nixon’s knowledge of the Kennedy assassination? Was he threatening to expose that? We’ll never know because Hunt got his money and he kept quiet. Did Nixon know the CIA killed Kennedy? The evidence is compelling.

Nixon was in Dallas the morning of the assassination. He initially denied being there, then became defensive when asked. FBI source William Sullivan gave him inside information. As president, he demanded CIA files on Bay of Pigs and was refused. He used Bay of Pigs as code for Kennedy assassination when blackmailing Helms.

His chief of staff confirmed Bay of Pigs was code for Dallas. The Watergate burglars were Bay of Pigs veterans, but did Nixon participate? Unlikely. He was in New York when Kennedy was shot. Did he know who did it? Probably. Sullivan told him the CIA files he couldn’t access confirmed it. Did he use that knowledge to try to save his own presidency? Absolutely.

The tapes prove it. Richard Nixon spent his entire career fighting communism, claiming to be tough on crime, defending American values. But when his own crimes caught up with him, he tried to blackmail the CIA by threatening to expose that they murdered an American president. The ultimate irony.

Nixon was brought down by the same taping system he’d used to record his own blackmail attempt. If he hadn’t recorded those conversations, we’d never know about the Bay of Pigs code. We’d never know he tried to use JFK’s assassination to obstruct justice in Watergate. Nixon destroyed himself by preserving the evidence of his own corruption.

If this investigation made you reconsider both Watergate and Dallas, hit that like button. Share with anyone who thinks Nixon was just covering up a burglary. Subscribe for more investigations into the secret tapes, hidden codes, and presidential crimes that shaped history. Tell us, do you think Nixon knew who killed Kennedy? And do you think he would have exposed them if he could have gotten away with it? Because the Watergate tapes weren’t just about a breakin.

They were about presidential blackmail, about using one president’s murder to cover up another president’s crimes. Thank you for watching and remember when presidents record themselves sometimes they reveal more than they intended.

June 23rd, 1972. 10:04 a.m. The Oval Office. President Richard Nixon sat behind his desk. Chief of Staff HR Halddederman entered. The secret tape recorders Nixon had installed captured every word. They were discussing a problem. 5 days earlier, burglars had been caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.

The FBI was tracing money found on the burglars. The trail led back to the White House. Nixon needed the investigation stopped and he had a plan. Tell them to call the FBI in and say, “We wish for the country. Don’t go any further into this case.” Halddeman understood. They would use the CIA. Tell CIA director Richard Helms to shut down the FBI investigation, claim national security.

Then Nixon said something cryptic, something that would haunt historians for decades. Tell Helms this will open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up. It’s likely to blow the whole Bay of Pigs thing. The Bay of Pigs? The failed 1961 invasion of Cuba. What did that have to do with Watergate? When HR Halddederman wrote his memoir after serving time for Watergate, he revealed the truth.

Nixon wasn’t talking about Cuba. He was talking about Dallas. Bay of Pigs was code for the Kennedy assassination. If you want to understand why Nixon used the JFK assassination to blackmail the CIA into covering up Watergate and what he knew about Dallas, hit that like button because this isn’t speculation. These are the president’s own words recorded, documented, and finally decoded.

November 22nd, 1963. Morning Dallas, Texas. Three future or former presidents woke up within 30 miles of each other. In Fort Worth, President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson prepared for their motorcade through Dallas. In Dallas, Richard Nixon woke up in the Baker Hotel.

Nixon was in town for a Pepsi bottlers convention. He’d held a press conference the night before criticizing Kennedy’s policies. The Dallas Morning News headline that morning read, “Nixon predicts JFK may drop Johnson.” Nixon left Dallas on a flight to New York at approximately 9:30 a.m. Kennedy’s plane landed at Lovefield at 11:40 a.m. Just over 2 hours later.

At 12:30 p.m., Kennedy was shot. Nixon was in a taxi leaving New York’s Idle Wild Airport when a random man ran up and said Kennedy had been shot. According to Nixon’s own account, he dismissed the man as one of the nuts. When Nixon arrived home, his dorman told him Kennedy was dead. Nixon immediately called FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

What happened? Was it one of the nuts? Years later, when the FBI interviewed Nixon about an unrelated claim, they asked when he’d been in Dallas. Nixon initially said he hadn’t been there in 1963, then corrected himself. two days before the assassination. He seemed touchy about it. In a 1992 CNN interview, when Larry King mentioned Nixon was in Dallas that day, Nixon interjected sharply in the morning.

Why so defensive? What was Nixon hiding? Fast forward to 1972, the Watergate scandal. Nixon’s secret taping system recorded him plotting to obstruct justice. The most infamous recording, the smoking gun tape, captured Nixon ordering the CIA to stop the FBI investigation. But it also captured something else. Multiple references to the Bay of Pigs.

On June 23rd, 1972, Nixon told Halddederman to warn CIA director Richard Helms that continuing the Watergate investigation would open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up. Halddederman delivered the message. According to his memoir, Helms exploded. Turmoil in the room. Helms gripping the arms of his chair, leaning forward and shouting, “The Bay of Pigs had nothing to do with this.

I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs.” Silence. I just sat there. I was absolutely shocked by Helms’s violent reaction. Again, I wondered what was such dynamite in the Bay of Pigs story. Why would Helms react so violently to a reference about a failed 1961 Cuba invasion? Because according to Halddederman’s later revelation, both men knew Bay of Pigs wasn’t about Cuba.

It was about Kennedy’s murder. In his 1978 memoir, The Ends of Power, written after serving 18 months in prison, Halddeman dropped the bombshell. It seems that in all of those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs, he was actually referring to the Kennedy assassination. Halddeman explained the logic. The same people involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion, CIA operatives, anti-Castro Cubans, organized crime figures, were allegedly involved in killing Kennedy.

The Bay of Pigs had created a coalition of Kennedy haters, CIA officers furious that Kennedy refused air support. Anti-Castro Cubans who felt betrayed, mafia figures who’d lost their Havana casinos and wanted revenge. After the assassination, the CIA launched what Halddederman called a fantastic cover up.

According to his account, counter intelligence chief James Angleton of the CIA called Bill Sullivan of the FBI and rehearsed the questions and answers they would give to the Warren Commission investigators. The CIA had secrets, big secrets, and Nixon knew them. How did Nixon learn about the CIA’s involvement in Kennedy’s assassination? According to Halddeerman, the source was William C.

Sullivan, Nixon’s highest ranking loyal friend at the FBI. Sullivan was put in charge of the bureau’s internal investigation of the JFK assassination in 1963. He knew what the FBI knew, what they’d covered up, what they’d coordinated with the CIA. and Sullivan told Nixon. When Nixon became president in 1969, one of his first acts was ordering his aid, John Erlickman, to get all CIA files on the Bay of Pigs.

Nixon wanted the full story, everything. The CIA refused. According to Halddederman, Erlickman reported back, “Those bastards in Langley are holding back something. They just dig in their heels and say the president can’t have it. Period. Imagine that the commander-in-chief wants to see a document relating to a military operation and the spook say he can’t have it.

The president of the United States couldn’t access files from his own intelligence agency. Why? Because those files contained information so explosive that even the president couldn’t be trusted with it. Information about Dallas. So when Watergate threatened to destroy Nixon’s presidency in 1972, he played his trump card.

He ordered Halddeman to tell Helms, “Stop the FBI investigation or I’ll expose the whole Bay of Pigs” thing. Translation: Stop the investigation or I’ll reveal that the CIA killed Kennedy. It was blackmail, pure and simple. Nixon was threatening to blow up the CIA by exposing their darkest secret. And Helms knew exactly what Nixon meant.

That’s why he exploded. That’s why he shouted, because Nixon had just threatened to expose the AY’s involvement in presidential assassination. But here’s the twist. The CIA didn’t comply. Despite Nixon’s threat, Helms refused to stop the FBI investigation. According to later Watergate tapes, Nixon was furious.

He’d played his biggest card and the CIA had called his bluff. Why didn’t the blackmail work? Because Helms calculated that Nixon wouldn’t actually go public. Exposing the CIA meant exposing himself. If Nixon revealed CIA involvement in Kennedy’s assassination, questions would arise. What did Nixon know? When did he know it? Was he involved? Nixon was trapped.

He couldn’t use the information without destroying himself. The Watergate burglars weren’t random criminals. They were the same cast of characters from the Bay of Pigs. E. Howard Hunt, mastermind of the break-in, was a CIA operative who’d helped plan the Bay of Pigs invasion. Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, Vgilio Gonzalez, and Frank Sturgis, all Cuban exiles, all involved in anti-Castro operations, all connected to the CIA.

James McCord, former CIA officer, the same network that allegedly killed Kennedy, was now working for Nixon in Watergate. And when the investigation started closing in, Hunt demanded money. Lots of money. According to White House counsel John Dean, Hunt wanted $122,000 in cash by the close of business yesterday.

Otherwise, he’d tell all about seamy things he’d done for the White House. What seemy things did Hunt know about Nixon’s knowledge of the Kennedy assassination? Was he threatening to expose that? We’ll never know because Hunt got his money and he kept quiet. Did Nixon know the CIA killed Kennedy? The evidence is compelling.

Nixon was in Dallas the morning of the assassination. He initially denied being there, then became defensive when asked. FBI source William Sullivan gave him inside information. As president, he demanded CIA files on Bay of Pigs and was refused. He used Bay of Pigs as code for Kennedy assassination when blackmailing Helms.

His chief of staff confirmed Bay of Pigs was code for Dallas. The Watergate burglars were Bay of Pigs veterans, but did Nixon participate? Unlikely. He was in New York when Kennedy was shot. Did he know who did it? Probably. Sullivan told him the CIA files he couldn’t access confirmed it. Did he use that knowledge to try to save his own presidency? Absolutely.

The tapes prove it. Richard Nixon spent his entire career fighting communism, claiming to be tough on crime, defending American values. But when his own crimes caught up with him, he tried to blackmail the CIA by threatening to expose that they murdered an American president. The ultimate irony.

Nixon was brought down by the same taping system he’d used to record his own blackmail attempt. If he hadn’t recorded those conversations, we’d never know about the Bay of Pigs code. We’d never know he tried to use JFK’s assassination to obstruct justice in Watergate. Nixon destroyed himself by preserving the evidence of his own corruption.

If this investigation made you reconsider both Watergate and Dallas, hit that like button. Share with anyone who thinks Nixon was just covering up a burglary. Subscribe for more investigations into the secret tapes, hidden codes, and presidential crimes that shaped history. Tell us, do you think Nixon knew who killed Kennedy? And do you think he would have exposed them if he could have gotten away with it? Because the Watergate tapes weren’t just about a breakin.

They were about presidential blackmail, about using one president’s murder to cover up another president’s crimes. Thank you for watching and remember when presidents record themselves sometimes they reveal more than they intended.