Caddy was the first executive director of the ultra-reactionary Young Americans for Freedom and a former leader of the Youth for Goldwater movement. With the Washington law firm of Gall, Lane, Powell & Kilcullen, Caddy served as liaison between Robert R. Mullen & Co. and its client, General Foods. At this PR firm, Caddy shared an office with Hunt. Nixonites seem to have a real propensity for General Foods. In September, Attorney General Kleindienst, campaigning for Nixon, gave a major address at General Foods's Westchester, New York, plant.

In May 1961 the dictator of the Dominican Republic was murdered. Political researcher Donald Freed wrote: "Documents would indicate that President Kennedy learned of the plan to kill Trujillo only after the debacle of the Cuban invasion in April 1961." Kennedy's adviser Richard Goodwin ordered the CIA to not supply weapons for the dictator's assassination. Nonetheless, on May 30, 1961, Trujillo was ambushed and gunned down with carbines furnished by Langley. Among those on the CIA payroll and the death squad detail were Hunt and Sturgis."

Hunt had extensive connections to organized crime, especially the national syndicate said to have been run by Seymour Weiss of the Standard Fruit Company (the sponsor of the Guatemalan coup) and Mafia kingpin Carlos Marcello. In 1958, Hunt organized an "antiCommunist" conference in Guatemala. The conference chairman was Antonio Valladores, Marcello's attorney in New Orleans. Also present at the meeting was Maurice Gatlin, whose office at 544 Camp Street was, in the CIA shell-game investigated by Jim Garrison, a base of operations for the Kennedy assassination."

As might be expected, the Hunt cabal in the Nixon White House reeked of felony. Hunt was a close ally to Bernard Barker, a Bolivian bagman. The Cuban "Defense" Fund of Dr. Manuel Artime was a conduit for hush money to the Watergate burglars." In the 1980s, Artime surfaced as the mentor of Ramon Milian Rodriquez, the money-laundering, "freedomfighting" gallivant of Iran-Contra fame. Another of Hunt's allies in Nixon's Plumbers unit was Robert Mardian, a fierce neo-fascist Armenian and assistant attorney general in charge of the security division of the Justice Department under John Mitchell. J. Edgar Hoover once referred to Mardian as "that Lebanese Jew"

Co-felon James McCord was once described by Hunt as "self-centered, devious and sanctimonious.. a weakling determined to save himself at all costs.""Hunt's chain of unholy alliances peaked with the covert operations of the Nixon administration. As Hunt told it, psychiatric care for his daughter Lisa-whose memory was mysteriously wiped clean in 1970-forced him to "retire" from the CIA. On recommendation from Richard Helms, Hunt took a job with Robert R Mullen, a former press aide to Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Mullens public relations firm had established and operated the Free Cuba Committee. Hunt's fellow cold warriors included Douglas Caddy, a Young Americans for Freedom founder and an attorney for General Foods. Robert Bennett, a former Miami operative for the Permindex assassination team, handled the Hughes Tool Company account."

The sort of public relations Hunt engaged in came to light when Louis Tackwood, a former LAPD provocateur, exposed Hunt's Squad 19 plan to incite a riot at the 1970 Republican convention in San Diego. Nobody was over Hunt, said Tackwood, "but the top dogs."

Tackwood: "He was in Dallas when they got Kennedy. He left out of there for the Caribbean." James McCord was "in on the concentration camp thing."

Woodward went inside the courtroom. One person stood out. In a middle row sat a young man with fashionably long hair and an expensive suit with slightly flared lapels, his chin high, his eyes searching the room as if he were in unfamiliar surroundings.

Woodward sat down next to him and asked if he was in court because of the Watergate arrests.

"Perhaps," the man said. "I'm not the attorney of record. I'm acting as an individual."

He said his name was Douglas Caddy and he introduced a small, "anemic-looking man next to him as the attorney of record, Joseph Rafferty, Jr. Rafferty appeared to have been routed out of bed; he was unshaven and squinted as if the light hurt his eyes. The two lawyers wandered in and out of the courtroom. Woodward finally cornered Rafferty in a hallway and got the names and addresses of the five suspects. Four of them were from Miami, three of them Cuban-Americans.

Caddy didn't want to talk. "Please don't take it personally," he told Woodward. "It would be a mistake to do that. I just don't have anything to say."

Woodward asked Caddy about his clients.

"They are not my clients," he said.

But you are a lawyer? Woodward asked. "I'm not going to talk to you."

Caddy walked back into the courtroom. Woodward followed. "Please, I have nothing to say." Would the five men be able to post bond? Woodward asked. After politely refusing to answer several more times, Caddy replied quickly that the men were all employed and had families-factors that\would be taken into consideration by the judge in setting bond. He walked back into the corridor.

Woodward followed: Just tell me about yourself, how you got into the case.

"I'm not in the case." Why are you here?

"Look," Caddy said, "I met one of the defendants, Bernard Barker, at a social occasion."

Where?

"In D.C. It was cocktails at the Army-Navy Club. We had a sympathetic conversation... that's all I'm going to say."

How did you get into the case?

Caddy pivoted and walked back in. After half an hour, he went out again.

Woodward asked how he got into the case.

This time Caddy said he'd gotten a call shortly after 3:00 A.M. from Barker's wife. "She said her husband had told her to call me if he hadn't called her by three, that it might mean he was in trouble."

Watergate, said Sen. Sam Ervin at the time, was the most publicized event in American political history. Certainly it was our country’s biggest criminal case of the 20th century. For as long as the American republic exists, there will be lingering questions about it.

Most of what you are about to read has never been discussed by the media and is not mentioned in any of the official government investigations into the scandal, such as the Senate Watergate Committee Report, the House Judiciary Committee Report on the Impeachment of President Nixon or any of the special prosecutor’s reports.

Indeed, it is safe to say that some in the judiciary and in the U.S. Department of Justice hoped it would never see the light of day. For those who have learned of it are left invariably asking themselves: Did the conduct of Chief Judge John Sirica in the early days of the case cause the seven Watergate defendants to engage in a cover-up?

Beginning with Hunt’s phone call, I served as the attorney for the seven defendants - Hunt, Gordon Liddy, James McCord, and the four Cuban-Americans. Subsequently, as the result of my being the first witness pulled before the Watergate grand jury, my role was changed--from attorney for the defense to witness for the prosecution.

I became involved as the original defense attorney because I had prior professional relationships with two of the principals: Hunt and Liddy.

From there I drove to the White House annex - the old Executive Office Building, in bygone years the War Department and later the Department of State.

Carrying three heavy attaché cases, I entered the Pennsylvania Avenue door, showed my blue-and-white White House pass to the uniformed guards, and took the elevator to the third floor. I unlocked the door of 338 and went in. I opened my two-drawer safe, took out my operational handbook, found a telephone number and dialed it.

The time was 3:13 in the morning of June 17, 1972, and the five of my companions had been arrested and taken to the maximum-security block of the District of Columbia jail. I had recruited four of them and it was my responsibility to get them out. That was the sole focus of my thoughts as I began talking on the telephone.

But with those five arrests the Watergate affair had begun…

After several rings the call was answered and I heard the sleepy voice of Douglas Caddy. ‘Yes?’

"Doug? This is Howard. I hate to wake you up, but I’ve got a tough situation and I need to talk to you. Can I come over?"

"Sure. I’ll tell the desk clerk you’re expected."

"I’ll be there in about 20 minutes," I told him, and hung up.

From the safe I took a small money box and removed the $10,000 Liddy had given me for emergency use. I put $1,500 in my wallet and the remaining $8,500 in my coat pocket. The black attaché case containing McCord’s electronic equipment I placed in a safe drawer that held my operational notebook. Then I closed and locked the safe, turning the dial several times. The other two cases I left beside the safe, turned out the light and left my office, locking the door.

After leaving Baldwin at the Howard Johnson's, Hunt had gone to his office in the old Executive Office Building. There he placed some materials in his safe and removed $10,000 in cash to be used for bail and as a legal retainer. He then telephoned Douglas Caddy to ask that Caddy represent the men who were under arrest. While not usually a practitioner of criminal law, Caddy could be trusted so far as Hunt was concerned: he had recently served as the Washington representative of the General Foods corporation, working out of an office at the Mullen Company. As such, he had been standing at an important intersection between the public and private sectors: it was General Foods' account with the Mullen Company that provided cover to CIA officers abroad.' Whether Caddy knew of this, or was himself a CIA "asset," is unknown. The Senate seems never to have questioned him about his work for Mullen or General Foods.

The bugs in the DNC offices were being monitored in the Howard Johnson by Alfred Baldwin, an ex-FBI man whose name McCord had picked out of the roster of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI. Ordinarily McCord, now employed by the Nixon campaign, would not have accompanied the visitors, but he went along to turn up the volume on his transmitters. The team was busily snapping photos of documents when a security guard noticed tape on door locks and called the police.

Sturgis recalls that he had hardly been booked at the police station when an attorney named Douglas Caddy arrived and told him, "Olympus is watching over you." Sturgis assumed that it was a shibboleth that the fail-safe mechanism was in operation, even though he didn't know that Caddy was close to Howard Hunt and once had had office space in the Mullen agency. But if there was a plan to usher the Miami Four through the judicial turnstile with a minimum of fuss, dismissing them as anti-Castro zealots carried away by the million-dollar rumor, it was spoiled by McCord's name on the police blotter. The press immediately tied him to CREEP.

A former White House consultant and a lawyer who has represented the five suspects in the bugging attempt at the Democratic National Headquarters were linked yesterday for the first time to grand jury and FBI investigations of the incident.

During an extraordinary court proceeding yesterday, it was revealed that the attorney, Douglas Caddy, has been questioned at least twice about the possible involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency in the case.

And Caddy was ordered to testify before a federal grand jury about his relationship with Howard Hunt, the onetime White House consultant.

In the court proceeding, U.S. District Chief Judge John J. Sirica rejected Caddy’s contentions that he did not have to testify about Hunt before the grand jury because he was Hunt’s attorney.

Accordingly, Caddy was again brought before the grand jury, which is now hearing evidence in the break-in and alleged bugging attempt.

In the court yesterday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Earl J. Silbert told the judge that Caddy was first called by the grand jury on Thursday.

When asked about Hunt, Caddy invoked the attorney-client privilege, refused to testify and then asked to leave the grand jury room and consult with his own attorneys, Silbert said.

Silbert told the judge that the grand jury is investigating for possible federal charges of ‘unlawful interception of wire communications’ and “unlawful possession of wire devices,” as well as for local burglary charges.

He told Sirica that Caddy’s conduct was ‘specious, dilatory and…an obstruction of justice.’

At the end of the hearing, the judge said, ‘I don’t think I’m going to make any exception in the case,’ and ordered Caddy to testify before the grand jury. He said the questions put to Caddy were fair ones.

Government prosecutors have revealed that they are asking questions about a person that they identify only as “Mr. X” in a grand jury investigation of alleged bugging of Democratic Party Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.

In papers filed in U.S. District Court here, the prosecutors list Mr. X only as a close friend of E. Howard Hunt, Jr., the former Central Intelligence Agency employee and former White House consultant who has been sought for questioning in the case.

According to the court papers, an important witness before the grand jury, attorney M. Douglas Caddy, is refusing to answer questions about Mr. X on the grounds that he is the man’s attorney and that he is therefore protected by a so-called ‘attorney-client privilege.’

Caddy, 34, is a mysterious figure in the Watergate affair. He first appeared at the arraignment of the five defendants on the day they were arrested inside Democratic headquarters.

Since that time, according to the court papers, Caddy has asserted to the grand jury that he represents not only Mr. X but also Hunt, Hunt’s wife, and each of the five arrested defendants.

He has so far refused to answer more than 55 different questions before the grand jury on the grounds that he has an attorney-client privilege with all of those persons, according to the court papers.

The papers were filed by U.S. Attorney Harold M. Titus, Jr. and other prosecutors as part of a motion to compel Caddy to answer questions before the grand jury.

It was the second time the government has moved to have Caddy ordered to testify before the grand jury. On June 30 the government said Caddy had refused to answer whether he knew Hunt and whether he had known Hunt before 1970, at the time when Caddy was admitted to practice here.

At the time, Sirica ordered Caddy to answer According to the court papers Caddy answered those two specific questions about Hunt but then invoked the attorney-client privilege in response to more than 30 other questions asked of him.

A 34-year-old Washington lawyer was found in contempt of court today for refusing to answer a series of grand jury questions about the June 17 raid on the offices of the Democratic National Committee.

The lawyer, Douglas Caddy, spent several hours in the custody of United States marshals rather than reply to 38 inquiries posed by a Federal panel that is investigating the politically sensitive burglary attempt. Late this afternoon, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia stayed the penalty pending a hearing it scheduled for next Tuesday. Mr. Caddy was then released without bond.

He had briefly represented five men arrested during the Democratic break-in and he reportedly represents E. Howard Hunt, Jr., former White House consultant linked to the case, and a seventh man identified only as Mr. X.

The Government brought up Mr. X earlier this week when it asked Chief Judge John J. Sirica of the United States District Court here to order Mr. Caddy to answer the grand jury questions. Mr. Hunt and Mr. X have been described as friends of Mr. Caddy.

In a hearing before Judge Sirica yesterday, Mr. Caddy argued that because he represents Mr. Hunt and Mr. X he cannot be compelled to answer the questions under the attorney-client privilege.

The judge rejected this argument, evidently accepting the Government view that none of the 38 queries touched on the substance of Mr. Caddy’s dealings with the men. When the lawyer persisted in refusing to answer, he was found in civil contempt.

On the 19th of June, 1972, Gordon Liddy told me that his superiors - the White House - had decided I should leave the country and join my vacationing wife and children in Europe until things settled down in Washington.

I was reluctant to follow such unexpected instructions, feeling I might be regarded as a fugitive even though no warrant had been issued for me (nor ever was). However I went home and began to pack, and soon afterward Liddy phoned me to rescind his previous orders. But shaken by the appearance of confusion and indecision among our sponsors, harassed by the press and lacking even basic legal guidance, I decided to fly to California and quietly await developments.

From there I placed frequent calls to Washington in order to obtain legal counsel. Douglas Caddy, my first--until then only - lawyer, was reluctant to speak with me, as was my employer Robert Bennett. Through press accounts I learned that Caddy had been summoned before a grand jury and then hauled before Judge John J. Sirica who ruled no attorney-client privilege existed between Caddy and myself. He ordered Caddy to answer the grand jury questions and subsequently thrust my attorney in jail.

Sirica’s savage handling of Caddy made me realize how desperately I needed expert legal counsel. Moreover, the cognomen ‘Maximum John’ had begun appearing in the press, and the combined implications were clear: if Sirica was treating Caddy - an Officer of the Court - so summarily, and Caddy was completely uninvolved in Watergate - then those of us who were involved could expect neither fairness nor understanding from him. As events unfolded, this conclusion became tragically accurate.

Among the many legal scholars who were later to criticize Judge Sirica’s conduct of the Watergate proceedings, Dean John Roche of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy had this to say: ‘… there is one sinister relic of that era: Watergate “justice.” one appalling aspect of Watergate was the extent to which liberals and civil libertarians deserted traditional principles of due process. The slogan was: “No due process for the bad guys: get the bastards!” What Sirica did was clearly cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the Bill of Rights. He used the sentencing process as a medieval rack.’ And Douglas Caddy was his first victim.

Mr. Dash: Now, what was the first instruction you received to give the money?

Mr. Kalmbach: Again, as I have tried to reconstruct this, Mr. Dash, the first instruction that I received was to have Mr. Ulasewicz give $25,000 to Mr. Caddy. I don’t know much of Mr. Caddy. I understand he is an attorney here in Washington. And, as I recall it, this was probably from approximately July 1 through July 6 or 7. There were a number of phone calls. I would either talk to either Mr. Dean or Mr. LaRue. I would then call Mr. Ulasewicz, who in turn would call Mr. Caddy. He would have some response from Mr. Caddy, and I would call back up to either Mr. Dean or Mr. LaRue.

Mr. Dash: What was the response from Mr. Caddy?

Mr. Kalmbach: Well, the sum and gist of it was that Mr. Caddy refused to accept the funds.

Mr. Dash: In that manner?

Mr. Kalmbach: That is correct. That was the end-all. There were several telephone calls, but the final wrap-up on it was that he refused to receive the funds.

A clubby atmosphere has prevailed in federal court during the three weeks it has taken the government to present their case in the Watergate bugging trial.

The questioning of Republican officials and others has been more polite than penetrating. Entire areas have been left unprobed.

In corridor discussions, prosecutor Earl Silbert has been asked repeatedly by newsmen why he has not posed additional questions to witnesses or called higher Republican officials to the stand.

Silbert’s contention is that the government is submitting only evidence that is necessary to prove charges in its indictment of the original seven defendants last September.

There is no evidence of a wider conspiracy, he has told reporters. Additional testimony could be immaterial and irrelevant, he has said.

Not only have the prosecution’s questions been limited but the defense attorneys at times have even waived their opportunity to cross-examine.

It seems ironic that those most opposed to Mr. Nixon’s lifetime espousal of ends justifying means should now make a hero of a judge who practiced this formula to the detriment of a fair trial for the Watergate Seven. Indeed, Sirica was quite frank about all this with statements during the trial such as ‘I could care less about what happens to this case on appeal…’ and ‘I could care less what the Court of Appeals does, if this case ever gets up there.

Alfred C. Baldwin III, a former FBI agent who monitored the Watergate telephone tap, denied Thursday that he had played any part in deleting his reference to ‘CIA’ from a court transcript in an interview used in the Watergate case.

The question of the deletions - actually the substituting of the initials ‘CRP’ for ‘CIA’ in the transcript has become an issue in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on confirmation of Earl J. Silbert, the prosecutor in the original Watergate case, as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

The matter also raises a broader unsettled question of whether the CIA did, in fact, have any part in the burglary and electronic surveillance of the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex here.

Contradicting testimony by Silbert and Seymour Glanzer, his top assistant in the prosecution of the Watergate break-in, Baldwin said in a telephone interview, ‘There’s no way I would have ever told them I was saying “CRP” (for Committee for the Re-election of the President) instead of “CIA.”’ Silbert and Glanzer told the Judiciary Committee that during the initial Watergate trial they advised U.S. District Judge John L. Sirica that references to ‘CIA’ in the transcript, a Baldwin interview with the Times, should be changed to read ‘CRP.’ They said they advised Sirica of that after Baldwin informed them that the reference should read ‘CRP’ instead of ‘CIA.’

When a committee member asked about the significance of changing ‘CIA’ to ‘CRP,’ Glanzer indicated that he was concerned that the Watergate defendants would inject a ‘phony’ CIA defense into the trial … Silbert and Glanzer told the Judiciary Committee that they realized they had misinformed Sirica on the ‘ matter after Glanzer and Baldwin reviewed tape recordings of the interview.

With them when they interviewed the tapes was Charles Morgan, Jr., a Washington attorney who represented the Association of Democratic Chairmen, the target of a Watergate telephone tap.

‘And it turned out that it was “CIA” rather than “CRP,” and Mr. Baldwin acknowledged to Mr. Morgan, in my presence, that he had made a mistake,’ Glanzer told the committee.

However, Baldwin denied ever even discussing any aspect of the matter and Morgan denied that he had ever heard such an acknowledgment from Baldwin. ‘That’s a baldface lie,’ Morgan declared in an interview. ‘That’s not the first time Mr. Glanzer and Mr. Silbert have misrepresented the facts and their handling of the Watergate case.’

Morgan, director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, has vigorously opposed confirmation of Silbert as U.S. Attorney. Informed of Baldwin’s denial, Glanzer said, ‘Well, he may deny it, but that’s what he did.’

Told of Morgan’s denial, Glanzer said, ‘I don’t know what to make of it. I can’t understand it.’

Mr. Estes was a member of a four-member group, headed by Lyndon Johnson, which committed criminal acts in Texas in the 1960's. The other two, besides Mr. Estes and LBJ, were Cliff Carter and Mac Wallace. Mr. Estes is willing to disclose his knowledge concerning the following criminal offenses:

I. Murders

1. The killing of Henry Marshall

2. The killing of George Krutilek

3. The killing of Ike Rogers and his secretary

4. The killing of Harold Orr

5. The killing of Coleman Wade

6. The killing of Josefa Johnson

7. The killing of John Kinser

8. The killing of President J. F. Kennedy.

Mr. Estes is willing to testify that LBJ ordered these killings, and that he transmitted his orders through Cliff Carter to Mac Wallace, who executed the murders. In the cases of murders nos. 1-7, Mr. Estes' knowledge of the precise details concerning the way the murders were executed stems from conversations he had shortly after each event with Cliff Carter and Mac Wallace.

In addition, a short time after Mr. Estes was released from prison in 1971, he met with Cliff Carter and they reminisced about what had occurred in the past, including the murders. During their conversation, Carter orally compiled a list of 17 murders which had been committed, some of which Mr. Estes was unfamiliar. A living witness was present at that meeting and should be willing to testify about it. He is Kyle Brown, recently of Houston and now living in Brady, Texas.

Mr. Estes, states that Mac Wallace, whom he describes as a "stone killer" with a communist background, recruited Jack Ruby, who in turn recruited Lee Harvey Oswald. Mr. Estes says that Cliff Carter told him that Mac Wallace fired a shot from the grassy knoll in Dallas, which hit JFK from the front during the assassination.

Mr. Estes declares that Cliff Carter told him the day Kennedy was killed, Fidel Castro also was supposed to be assassinated and that Robert Kennedy, awaiting word of Castro's death, instead received news of his brother's killing.

Mr. Estes says that the Mafia did not participate in the Kennedy assassination but that its participation was discussed prior to the event, but rejected by LBJ, who believed if the Mafia were involved, he would never be out from under its blackmail....

II. The Illegal Cotton Allotments

Mr. Estes desires to discuss the infamous illegal cotton allotment schemes in great detail. He has recordings made at the time of LBJ, Cliff Carter and himself discussing the scheme. These recordings were made with Cliff Carter's knowledge as a means of Carter and Estes protecting them selves should LBJ order their deaths.

Mr. Estes believes these tape recordings and the rumors of other recordings allegedly in his possession are the reason he has not been murdered.

III. Illegal Payoffs

Mr. Estes is willing to disclose illegal payoff schemes, in which he collected and passed on to Cliff Carter and LBJ millions of dollars. Mr. Estes collected payoff money on more than one occasion from George and Herman Brown of Brown and Root, which was delivered to LBJ.

I have been portrayed as a super right-winger when in fact today I am a progressive-liberal who supported Al Gore for President in 2000 and Howard Dean for President in 2004 and belong to People for the American Way, ACLU, and other organizations of similar character. It is true that one time I was pretty conservative, being involved in launching the modern conservative movement in the 1950s and '60s, but I later came to realize that the movement had been hijacked by sociopaths and opportunists. I have not voted for a GOP presidential candidate since 1984.

My political philosophy has always been that the American eagle needs two strong wings to fly. At one time in the 1950s and '60s the eagle was tilted somewhat too much to its left wing. However, at the present time the eagle is dangerously weighted in favor of its right wing, so much so that its very survival as a symbol of liberty and democracy is at risk.

John Simkin: I believe in the past you represented Billie Sol Estes. On 9th August, 1984, you wrote to Stephen S. Trott at the U.S. Department of Justice. In the letter you claimed that Billie Sol Estes, Lyndon B. Johnson, Mac Wallace and Cliff Carter had been involved in the murders of Henry Marshall, George Krutilek, Harold Orr, Ike Rogers, Coleman Wade, Josefa Johnson, John Kinser and John F. Kennedy. You added: "Mr. Estes is willing to testify that LBJ ordered these killings, and that he transmitted his orders through Cliff Carter to Mac Wallace, who executed the murders." Did Billie Sol Estes provide you with any evidence that suggested his story was true?

Douglass Caddy: My relationship with Billie Sol Estes began in 1983 when Shearn Moody, a trustee of the Moody Foundation of Galveston, Texas, asked me to visit Billie Sol who was incarcerated in the federal prison at Big Spring, Texas. Billie Sol had telephoned Mr. Moody at the suggestion of a fellow inmate who knew Moody from past days when that inmate had been a lobbyist in the state capital. Billie Sol told Moody that he wanted to tell the story publicly about his long and close relationship with Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) as LBJ's bagman and requested Moody's assistance in getting this done. Moody was happy to oblige.

I met with Billie Sol in prison, who related his desire to tell all. I suggested that he do so in book form and that I would be helpful in any way that I could since I already had two books published.

Moody and I heard nothing more from Billie Sol until soon after his release from prison in early January 1984. At that time he called Moody and Moody again asked me to visit Billie Sol at the latter's home in Abilene, Texas.

There Billie Sol presented me with a copy of the recently released book that his daughter, Pam Estes, had written based on my suggestion to him when he was in prison. Its title was "Billie Sol: King of the Wheeler-Dealers" and it had caused a minor sensation. Based on its limited success, Billie Sol said that he wanted to have his own story published. His daughter's book only told her personal story of the tribulations of the Estes' family in the preceding 20 years.

However, Billie Sol said that before he could tell his full story in book form that he had to get immunity from prosecution by the Texas law authorities and by the U.S. Department of Justice as there is no statute of limitations for murder. A friend of mine, Edward Miller, a former Assistant Director of the FBI, arranged for Miller and myself to meet with Stephen Trott, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, to discuss the question of granting immunity to Billie Sol.

Miller and I met with Trott several times. The Forum has already in its discussions among its members remarked upon the letters exchanged between Trott and myself. In the end the immunity effort came to an abrupt halt when Billie Sol got cold feet at the last moment and backed out of a meeting with three FBI agents sent by Trott to meet with him and myself in Abilene in September 1984.

The contents of the letters between Trott and myself speak for themselves. Billie Sol did not provide me with any evidence that his story, as detailed in the letters, was true. I never heard nor saw the clandestine tape recordings that he claimed that he had in his possession that had been made years earlier, which allegedly supported his contentions.

However, there is quite a bit of supporting evidence from other sources. This is as follows:

(1) In 1964, J. Evetts Haley, a distinguished Texas historian, wrote "A Texan Looks at Lyndon." Millions of copies of this paperback were widely distributed. Haley's book provided concrete evidence concerning most of the murders outlined in my correspondence with Trott.

(2) In attempting to get Billie Sol immunity in 1984, I worked closely with Clint Peoples, U.S. Marshal for the Northern District of Texas. Peoples had followed the Estes' story for many years, having been assigned to the Estes' pending criminal case in the 1960's when he was a Texas Ranger. Peoples had several large file drawers containing materials about Estes and the murders that he showed me when I visited him in the U.S. Courthouse in Dallas. He was on good terms with Estes and constantly encouraged me to do my best to get Estes' story out. When he retired he became head of the Texas Rangers Museum in Waco, Texas, and in 1992 was killed in an automobile accident. Where Peoples' extensive files on Estes and the murders are today is unknown.

(3) I arranged for Lucianne Goldberg, then a literary agent and now sponsor of http://www.lucianne.com/, to visit Billie Sol in Abilene in 1984 in an effort to get his story published. Lucianne there disclosed to us that she had once met Malcolm (Mac) Wallace, who was the stone-cold killer retained by LBJ, when she had worked in the White House in LBJ's administration.

(4) The Texas Observer, a highly respected journal of opinion, published a thoroughly researched article by Bill Adler in its November 7, 1986 issue titled, "The Killing of Henry Marshall." The article is required reading for anyone interested in the murders.

(5) In 1998, a video titled "LBJ: A Closer Look" was released, having been produced by two Californians, Lyle and Theresa Sardie. The video contains interviews with key persons who knew of the murders and of the LBJ-Billie Sol connection.

(6) In 2003, the book "Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ murdered JFK" was published. Its author is Barr McClellan, father of Bush's current press secretary in the White House, Scott McClellan. Barr McClellan was a lawyer with the law firm in Austin that handled LBJ's secret financial empire before and after he became President.

(7) Also in 2003, the History Channel showed "The Men Who Killed Kennedy: The Final Chapter." Much of this show drew on McClellan's book and my letters to Trott. After it was telecast several times, immense pressure was brought upon the History Channel to withdraw the video from being offered for sale to the public. For the first time in its own history the History Channel succumbed to this outside pressure that was orchestrated by Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Pictures Association of America and former LBJ aide, and reluctantly withdrew the video from public circulation.

(8) Both Barr McClellan and I, among others, have in our possession documents and papers, too numerous and lengthy to detail here, that help to round out the full LBJ-Billie Sol story, including letters from LBJ to Billie Sol.

John Simkin: Could you explain in more detail what you mean by the phrase that the conservative movement in "had been hijacked by sociopaths and opportunists"?

Douglas Caddy: I became active politically while still in high school in New Orleans in the early 1950's. Later, as a student at Georgetown University, I helped organize the National Student Committee for the Loyalty Oath in 1959. This led to the creation of Youth for Goldwater for Vice President in early 1960 and later that year to Young Americans for Freedom. This was the genesis of the modern conservative movement in the United States.

In 1961 the first mass conservative rally, sponsored by YAF, was held in Manhattan Center in New York City. The next year an even larger rally was held in Madison Square Garden.

If I were to pinpoint when the conservative movement was first hijacked by sociopaths, I would say it took place in 1974, just after President Nixon was forced to resign. His resignation opened the way for the sociopaths to take over.

In late 1974, the board of directors of the Schuchman Foundation met. Robert Schuchman was the first national chairman of YAF. In attendance at the meeting, in addition to the foundation's directors, were Edwin Feulner, Paul Weyrich and Joseph Coors. Coors, president of Coors Beer Company, told the foundation directors that unless they did exactly what he and Feulner and Weyrich directed them to do, he would destroy them and their organization.

The Schuchman Foundation directors brushed aside Coors' threat. Shortly thereafter, Coors, Feulner and Weyrich organized the Heritage Foundation and the Committee for a Free Congress. The latter two organizations, extremely well funded in the last 30 years, have crafted the national legislation and federal regulations that have enriched the wealthy and crucified the poor and disabled in America.

Since 1974 the conservative movement and the Republican Party, dominated by sociopaths with no social conscience whatsoever, have successfully engaged in what I call "The Politics of Death."

In addition to the sociopaths, a large group of opportunists moved into the conservative movement and the GOP and gained power. The emerging Abramoff lobbying scandal, which leads directly to members of Congress and to the White House, is an example of this opportunism.

Before this scandal has run its course, other opportunists such as the hypocritical Christian leader Ralph Reed and his cohorts will be exposed for sacrificing the public good for their personal gain.