The CIA hatched two plots to assassinate Nixon

The CIA hatched two plots to assassinate Nixon

[link to www.dailymail.co.uk]

The CIA plotted twice to assassinate President Richard Nixon during the years before the Watergate scandal because the agency was angered when 'Tricky Dick' turned dovish and began to withdraw troops from Vietnam, according to an explosive book from a longtime Nixon confidant due for release on Monday.

One hit was planned to occur at Nixon's Key Biscayne, Florida vacation house. A second plot to kill him was to culminate during a Miami speech in 1972.

When both plots failed, writes best-selling author Roger Stone in 'Nixon's Secrets: The Rise, Fall and Untold Truth about the President, Watergate, and the Pardon,' the CIA settled for driving Nixon out of office by sabotaging the Watergate break-in.

'I first learned about this from Howard Liebengood,' Stone told MailOnline on Wednesday, referring to the Republicans' minority counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee in the 1970s.

'The president was supposed to be assassinated,' he quotes Liebengood saying in his book. 'The first place he was supposed to be assassinated at was in Key Biscayne, the second place was when he was supposed to give a speech at the time of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War [VVAW] convention in Miami Beach 1972.'

'Veteran CIA assassin Edwin Kaiser was to supply the weapons to assassinate Nixon with.'

Kaiser, an anti-Castro revolutionary, had killed for the CIA before, but Stone claims he and fellow CIA contract killer Frank Sturgis backed out of the mission when they learned who they were expected to kill.

Stone said he obtained Kaiser's papers from his son Scott, who has his own book in the works. 'Edwin Kaiser's Covert Life: And His Little Black Book Linking Cuba, Watergate & the JFK Assassination,' will be published in October.

'I got confirmation from Kaiser's papers,' he told MailOnline.


Stone claims in his book that Liebengood, who died in 2005, told him that Kaiser and Sturgis 'both insisted that they had not been informed that Richard Nixon was the target until after the intended weapon was obtained.'