Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy discussed with Hughes security chief Ralph White a plan to burglarize the offices of Las Vegas Sun publisher Hank Greenspun. The Greenspun caper motive was to protect the secret of the link between organized crime and the “presidential candidate” (as McCord put it in his letter to Judge Sirica), not to acquire it. Because the Presidential Candidate McCord was referencing was Richard Nixon, not Humphrey. E. Howard Hunt was CIA under the cover of Mullen & Company, Robert F. Bennett’s PR agency which had the Hughes public relations account in Washington. Hughes’ holding company Summa Corp was Bennett’s principal client. Bennett got the Hughes account when Larry O’Brien stopped being Hughes’ lobbyist after the Nixon win in 1969. When the CIA’s ties to Mullen & Company, and by extension, the CIA’s ties to Hughes, were uncovered due to the Watergate trial, Bennett closed Mullen & Company and just went directly to work for Summa Corp. Bennett threw Nixon under the bus by feeding cover-up evidence to another intelligence operative (Naval Intel) embedded at a newspaper who dutifully directing media glare at Nixon. This reporter was Bob Woodward. The gambit was successful, and Hughes told Bennett, as he had told Meier, that Hughes always wanted a right-hand man embedded in the Senate. Hughes encouraged Bennett to run for Senate. A seat he won.
2/1/1972