Who in 1972 when Watergate broke could have foreseen that the scandal eventually would lead back to President Trump’s uncle John G.Trump, an eminent scientist at MIT in the 1940’s who was delegated by the government among other classified tasks with reading Tesla’s secret files after his death and investigating the UFO phenomenon and then into the next century to Donald Trump inside the White House in a titanic struggle for global control? Only one person foresaw this: President Richard Nixon who 48 years ago predicted that year 2020 would be cataclysmic not only for America but for the whole planet and who 33 years ago predicted that Donald Trump one day would be president. Robert Merritt was employed by the police and the FBI in spying on the New Left, a task that ultimately led to his infiltration of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a bete noire of America’s right wing. That said, Secret Agenda since its publication has been eclipsed by startling revelations that undercut much of its account of Watergate. For example, scholar Jim D'Eugenio recently wrote in the Education Forum, “I mean has everyone read what Angelo Lane said? He was the chief investigating officer for the FBI. He even goes as far to say either Hunt or McCord tipped off the police. I should add, today Jim Hougan (author of Secret Agenda) agrees with that. He feels he was too mild on Carl Shoffler in his book.”
The work that Merritt did for the FBI dovetails with the numerous revelations of FBI illegal acts described in David Wise’s authoritative The American Police State published in 1976. On June 8, 1972, the FBI terminated its CI contract with Merritt. He was still, however, employed by the MPD as a CI with Shoffler supervising him. What happened next is history as commonly accepted. Shoffler was parked in a police vehicle one block from the Watergate when Frank Wills telephoned the MPD about 1 a.m. on Saturday, June 17, of a possible burglary underway within the Watergate building. The MPD dispatcher alerted Shoffler to Wills’ call and he accompanied by two fellow officers who also had been in the police vehicle entered the building and arrested the burglars. Shoffler knew in advance that a crime was to take place. He had an obligation to report it to his superiors in the Washington Metropolitan Police Department. Merritt had attempted to alert Sgt. Gildon in the Intelligence Division but he cursorily brushed him off. Shoffler then forbade him to have any further contact with Gildon on the matter. Shoffler, the consummate narcissist, dreamed of becoming a famous detective even if it meant creating a constitutional crisis that would lead to the destruction of the Nixon presidency and the defeat of America’s armed forces at war in Vietnam.
Enemies of Nixon were aware of a plan to break into the Democratic National Committee on June 18 and that the break-in would result in the downfall of Nixon from the presidency. Nixon responded that he was aware of a general plan to break into the DNC that had been authorized by the government agencies involved in the Huston Plan. He said he did not know any of the details as to who exactly would carry out the break-in. He said the purpose of the break-in was to gather evidence of a prostitution ring being operated out of the DNC that would be used in his reelection campaign. There was some further discussion about the planned break-in that was wrapped up when the President became quiet and thoughtful and then mused aloud, “I wish I could get a handle on this.”
Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA, was published to acclaim in 1984, I lost no time in buying a copy. I had been the original attorney for the Watergate seven burglars: Howard Hunt, Gordon Liddy, James McCord, Bernard Barker, Frank Sturgis, Eugenio Martinez and Virgilio Gonzalez, having been retained as defense counsel by Hunt and Liddy who had escaped after the five other burglars had been arrested inside the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972. When I checked the index I saw that my name appeared in the appendix. “Among those who are skeptical of the Ervin committee’s investigation of the Watergate affair, there is a school of thought that holds that some Washington police knew in advance that the June 16-17 [1972] break-in was about to occur. Skeptics as politically disparate as H.R. Haldeman and Carl Oglesby point the finger of suspicion at arresting office, Carl Shoffler. Secret Agenda since its publication has been eclipsed by startling revelations that undercut much of its account of Watergate. For example, scholar Jim D'Eugenio recently wrote, “Has everyone read what Angelo Lane said? He was the chief investigating officer for the FBI. He even goes as far to say either Hunt or McCord tipped off the police. I should add, today Hougan agrees with that. He feels he was too mild on Carl Shoffler in his book.”
Why does Hougan feel differently about Shoffler today? One factor may be that Robert Merritt wrote a book that was published in 2010 titled Watergate Exposed: How the President of the United States and the Watergate Burglars Were Set Up as told to me as the original attorney for the Watergate seven. Our book, which contains a number of documents from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, proves that it was Robert Merritt who tipped Shoffler off on June 2 of the plan to burglarize the Democratic National Committee on June 17, not Hunt, McCord or Baldwin. Nixon in the wake of the breaking of the Watergate scandal concluded correctly that there was no longer anyone inside the White House whom he could trust. Alghough he was a college dropout, Merritt had an I.Q. of 138. After six months the CIA told Merritt his services were no longer needed and they parted on good terms. But the whole venture had hooked Merritt on the idea of clandestine work for the government. In October 1971, Merrritt worked with the MPD Intelligence Division for about a year, and was transferred to the Washington, D.C. Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI assignment primarily dealt with targeting the Institute for Policy Studies and the Weather Underground, two organizations deemed radical and dangerous under the government’s COINTELPRO program.
Merritt decided to bring to Nixon’s attention of the telephone conversation that he overheard while operating the switchboard at the Columbia Plaza Apartments. The conversation revealed that enemies of Nixon were aware of a plan to break into the Democratic National Committee on June 18 and that the break-in would result in the downfall of Nixon from the presidency. The meeting ended with the President telling Merritt that he would be summoned again to meet with him on an unknown date. Merritt’s final meeting with Nixon took place in the second week of July 1972, three weeks after Watergate broke. Merritt found President Nixon distraught with some tears rolling down his checks. Merritt asked Nixon why he was crying. Nixon pointed to an article about the Watergate case in the early edition of the Washington Post lying on top of his desk. He said he was being destroyed, and his presidency was over. He said that he had been betrayed by many in the White House who were motivated by power and money. He could trust no one. He said John Dean was a traitor and Dean had visited Nixon’s enemies on Capitol Hill before and during Watergate. Nixon also singled out by name General Alexander Haig, Carl Shoffler, T.D. (Shoffler’s police buddy) and Captain Edmund Chung as traitors. The President again acknowledged that he knew of the general idea of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee being planned under the Huston Plan but had known nothing of its details. He expressed remorse for not taking more seriously the information that Merritt had provided him at their prior meeting.
Nixon blamed the NSA, FBI, CIA and Military Intelligence for wanting him destroyed. The President spoke about the goals of his presidency that were now in jeopardy. He said it might be years before the historians would realize what he had hoped to accomplish, which was to assure the security and well being of Americans alive and those of future generations. He told Merritt that he was going to give him the letter to deliver to Kissinger. He told Merritt to remain quiet and not say a word as he read the letter out loud. Nixon said, “I took my order from above and have followed it to the T.” Merritt was taken aback by the remark and asked Nixon what he meant. Nixon did not reply directly but instead declared that “the year 2020 would be cataclysmic not only for America but for the world.” Merritt asked Nixon how he knew this would happen. Nixon replied, “Think of me a prophet.” Merritt never saw the President again. He remembers the occasion as one in which the president was distraught throughout.
As recounted in that posting President Nixon told Robert Merritt at their third and final meeting in mid-July 1972: “It was then at Nixon made a cryptic remark, apparently to emphasize the importance of the assignment that he had given Merritt. Nixon said, “I took my order from above.” Merritt was taken aback by the remark and asked Nixon what he meant. Nixon did not reply directly but instead declared that “the year 2020 would be cataclysmic not only for America but for the world.” Merritt asked Nixon how he knew this would happen. Nixon replied, “Think of me a prophet.” The coronavirus entered America’s consciousness in January 2020. Its impact has been horrific and the worst of it lies in the coming months. Nevertheless it does not fit the definition of being a cataclysmic event, which is one of violent change or upheaval, because soon a vaccine will be developed to deal with it. The real cataclysmic event will take place later this year. Actually it will be two events, the first immediately triggering the second. Source: www.amazon.com
Between the late 1950s and the early 1960s Jim Morrison preferred to skip school and visit beatnik hangouts in San Francisco. Two significant events had shaken America. First the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the earth. This sensational event provoked spasms of American self-doubt about being beaten into space by the Russians. It began the so-called missile gap debate that later helped put John Kennedy in the White House. In the summer of 1960, something in Jim Morrison changed. Classmates remembered he seemed to undergo a change of personality. He appeared depressed and angry, and neglected his studies. Apparently he took no interest in the November presidential election—hotly debated in his politically conservative school—in which John Kennedy beat Richard Nixon. But Kennedy’s death occupied a dark corner of the Morrison psyche, making frequent appearances in notebooks and later lyrics. “Dead president’s corpse in the driver’s car” is one of the keystone images from both 'Celebration of the Lizard' and the song “Not to Touch the Earth.” On the same notebook page on which Morrison recorded the Kennedy assassination, he wrote the name of Aldous Huxley. Huxley had died at his home in Los Angeles on the same day Jack Kennedy was murdered. Oliver Stone's "JFK" reprised the circumstances and complexities behind that historic and fateful day: that precise instant when an entire civilization was forever changed.
Kennedy's death established a milestone that American society had reached unknowingly. It became more significant the further away in time we got historically from that event. The assassination was a huge tragedy that created an inability for the nation to find firm footing after it had been knocked off balance. Leonard Pitts, Jr., a columnist for “The Miami Herald,” wrote: "Whatever you think of the 60's one thing is undeniable: They tore us apart, ripped American society to pieces and threw those pieces in the air so they rained down like confetti, falling into new configurations, nothing where it used to be. It was an angry time—we are still sifting through confetti pieces, trying to find a way.” The events of the 1960's set up the impulse toward “psychic disintegration” we are now encountering in recent times.
Morrison saw what was happening to our souls as a society and reported as a witness to "the vultures descending on the scene for curious America aplomb," a nation possessed and frozen in time. JFK and Jim Morrison seemingly had in common health ailments and a sex addiction, but whereas the President had multiple liaisons with Hollywood stars (Gene Tierney, Marilyn Monroe, June Allyson, Arlene Dahl), Morrison juggled female journalists and groupies. Although often exhibiting a lusty attitude, Morrison was usually both mild-mannered and passionately inclinated with women. He liked to cite John Stuart Mill's quote: "Women are a subject of which most men know absolutely nothing." Inspired by the 60s tumultuous days, Morrison wrote “Peace Frog,” with innovative guitars by Robby Krieger. For Morrison it was a song not only of isolation but a complete rejection of what America had become that suggested an inevitable and violent end. He unconsciously intimated that mayhem in America would become epidemic. In the song’s opening line there is a chorus chanted in counterpoint. “She came” is the chorus that follows Morrison's opening warning, “There's blood in the streets, it's up to my ankles.” “She came,” has a dual meaning. It is an easy reference to sexual climax. But the phrase also refers to a line in the first break, “Just about the break of day, she came, and then she drove away, sunlight in her hair.” The sunshine in her hair is a brilliant image that might be just Pamela Courson. She is a fleeting, unreachable image when she leaves the city, and she remains beyond us, unobtainable, the queen of the highway, beckoning to us on the edge of town.
Dennis Jacob: Pamela said something I will never forget: “I feel sorry for Mary.” I knew it meant she was not threatened by the emergence of Mary Werbelow in Jim's life. That something had long been settled between Pam and Jim. A relationship deeper than either one of them had ever had before. I’d begun to suspect that something had been settled between the two of them – unbreakable except by death itself. Nietzsche once said: 'In the end what a woman wants is a warrior'. Perhaps the women who gravitated toward Jim Morrison were attracted to this quality. Morrison felt that women had a greater future perhaps than most men would have because most men were concerned with the accumulation of empty numbers. Morrison was the contemplative type, hardly the freak that popular consumption would have us believe. He was Apollonian in his life, and Dionysian on stage. He aimed at the heart of American Democracy. He believed in it. —"Summer with Morrison: The Early Life and Times of James Douglas Morrison, A Memoir" (2011) by Dennis C. Jakob and "Some Are Born to Endless Night: Jim Morrison" (2011) by Gerry Kirstein
Jim Morrison: "Most men chase power and control, but they miss the meaning of life. Women have a comic approach to life. They are noble creatures who carry on your name with dignity after you die."
"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness.” -Marcus Aurelius
Oliver Stone's JFK (1991) is the way most Americans learn about one of the most traumatic events in their recent history. According to Robert Brent Toplin, JFK has probably “had a greater impact on public opinion than any other work of art in American history.” Indeed, the movie remains a great source of pride for Stone, if not his masterpiece. Hollywood had been chasing the Jim Morrison story over the years. The Doors story had been pursued by eight directors: Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, William Friedkin, Walter Hill, Paul Schrader, Ron Howard, Barry Levinson, and Francis Ford Coppola. "I read hundreds of transcripts from people who had known Jim," Stone said. However, Jerry Hopkins contradicts Stone saying there were roughly "less than 100 transcripts, and most were mine". Stone expounds: "It was like Citizen Kane in a way, because every one of these people had a different point of view. Still, the Doors script was always problematic. I wrote it quickly that summer 1989 in Santa Barbara. The script was written more as a tonal poem. The concept was that the movie was all in Jim's lyrics. I picked the songs I wanted and wrote each piece of the movie as a mood to fit that song. The motivations of the characters were murky to some, clearer to others. I trusted to his lyrics to tell his tale. I tried not to put my rationalizations about his motivations. Jim looked at everything as an artistic creation. It's almost like he constructed his life in the same way as he would labor over a piece of poetry or a song. I think Morrison looked at his life as an epic poem, as if it were a long suicide note. He had sexual problems, he was an alcoholic in the severe sense in that he had a cut-off point, so he couldn't really enjoy drinking; for him it was an all-or-nothing affair. He couldn't even enjoy most drugs any more, he had to go beyond, into heroin. Everything got jaded." As 1989 drew to a close, Stone's second draft was completed and circulated among the concerned parties. Immediately, there were problems. When Morrison died, he left everything to Pamela Courson, including the rights to his poetry and his share of the rights to the music of The Doors. When Pamela died in 1974, all this went to her parents; after a series of lawsuits, it was now controlled jointly by Morrison's parents and the Coursons. The Coursons weren't at all pleased with Stone's script and tried to slow the production down.
The producers had already agreed not to portray Pamela Courson as having anything to do with Morrison's death (some believe Morrison accidentally snorted Pamela's heroin stash). Manzarek was equally unenamored of Stone. "Oliver Stone was over there in Vietnam and the hippies were back here smoking dope and practicing free love, and he was jealous. Oliver Stone is using the Doors to get revenge." Kathleen Quinlan seemed to enjoy playing the free-spirited Patricia Kennealy. The Kennealy character is a composite of different women who were part of Morrison's life and was originally named Annie O'Riordan, but later changed to Kennealy. "Meg was much more about control than Kathleen," Stone said. "Quinlan in dealing with the sixties seemed to understand it immediately and was able to work easily in that framework. I combined several women from Jim's life and by rights I should have used an alias for the name Kennealy because it's somewhat misleading." —"Stone: The Controversies, Excesses, And Exploits of a Radical Filmmaker" (1995) by James Riordan
John Haeny: "I would never say that I was especially close to Jim. I actually rather doubt that anyone (besides Pam) was truly close to Jim. When I saw Jim with others he always seemed to be somewhat preoccupied and distant, caught up in his own thoughts, always wary of others. Jim was always warm and polite around me. From time to time we would sit on the desks at the back office at Elektra and have social chats. Over a very long career I have never been intimidated by any ‘star’. I always accepted them as normal people, respecting them as artists but never allowing them anymore than that. I think Jim sensed that in me. I did notice that in really intense situations when Jim and I were in the same studio control room we would exchange brief glances and quiet smiles. Although Morrison was essentially a lonely and tortured rebel, he was likable and engaging in all kinds of conversation. Jim and I had about a half dozen meetings at my house in Coldwater Canyon to discuss and plan the project "American Prayer". Jim was always clear minded, softly spoken and exceedingly polite. Jim also left me his entire collection of notebooks so I could become more familiar with his work at a formative level. The time came when I heard through the grapevine that Jim had left The Doors.
I had always known that Jim considered himself firstly a filmmaker and a poet. His Rock and Roll life was an unexpected development that was thrust upon him. Now he felt tired of that role. After Jim’s death his notebooks were scattered to the four winds. I think there are still some missing, some sitting in private collections, other lost forever. I resisted every legal, civil and social pressure to give up those initial recordings, especially during the lawsuits regarding the estate of Jim. The Doors then attorney, Max Fink, threatened to send up the Sheriff to pick up the tapes. I told Max to go ahead and try. If he did I would deliver a pile of ashes and he could figure out if they were the ashes of the real recordings or not. It was somewhat similar during the making of Oliver Stone’s film “The Doors” although with a bit less threat on display. When Oliver’s people contacted me to ask for access to the poetry tapes I simply said “no”. I felt Stone's portrayal of Jim was embarrasing, by the way. The estate of James Douglas Morrison was shared between Jim’s parents and the parents of Pam Courson, Jim’s wife. Individually I always found The Doors reasonable, even warm and funny. But collectively there emerged what I called “The Doors Mentality”. They would become aggressive, greedy, extremely distrustful and could easily become litigious. There were also a big stack of tapes known as “The Endless Night Tapes” recorded during an all night session at a motel room in Palm Springs. But, we had a problem. Jim’s voice was buried in the roar of a cheap air conditioner in that Palm Springs motel room. We had to reclaim Jim’s story from those tapes. This was going to ultimately involve a trip to Salt Lake City, Utah. The brilliant and highly advanced work of Dr. Thomas Stockham of Soundstream helped us salvage that recording. Dr. Stockham had also created a highly complex digital restoration process called ‘Blind De-Convolution’. Eventually we had all our materials sorted. Jim only occasionally titled his poetry and never dated them, creating a huge dilemma for us. We had to discover a way to make order out of seemingly chaos. This was the single biggest challenge we faced during the making of the album. Source: johnhaeny.com
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