The Last Bugs of the Nixon White House

wired.com

One morning in early March 1971, Army counterintelligence agent Dave Mann was going through the overnight files when his eyes landed on something unexpected: a report that a routine, nighttime sweep for bugs along the Pentagon’s power-packed E-Ring had found unexplained – and unencrypted — signals emanating from offices in the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Someone, it seemed, was eavesdropping on the top brass.

Mann was no stranger to bugs. It was a busy time for eavesdroppers and bug-finders, starting with the constant Spy vs. Spy games with Russian spies. But the Nixon years, he and everyone else would soon discover, had extended such clandestine ops into new territory: bugging not just the Democrats, but people within its own ranks. Eventually, most of the Watergate-era eavesdropping schemes were revealed to the public, including the bombshell that Nixon was bugging himself. But the bugs Dave Mann discovered in the E-Ring in March 1971 — and another batch like it — have remained buried all these years. Until now.

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DAS scandal 'worse than Watergate

colombiareports.com
"Far Worse than Watergate," a report by a group of U.S. NGOs, says that the scandal surrounding Colombian security agency DAS is "more shocking than initially reported," involving death threats and possibly the collaboration of presidential aides.

The report is a joint project by the U.S. Office on Colombia, the Latin America Working Group Education Fund, the Center for International Policy and the Washington Office on Latin America.

According to a press release, it "reveals that the Watergate-like scandal in Colombia is even more shocking than initially reported, with the presidential intelligence agency, DAS, not only spying, but also carrying out dirty tricks and even death threats on major players in Colombia’s democracy."

Speaking about the report Kelly Nicholls, executive director of the U.S. Office on Colombia, said “This scandal is far more outrageous that we initially imagined. It includes spying in international territory, sending grotesque death threats, using blackmail, framing a journalist in a fabricated guerrilla video and conducting sabotage against Constitutional Court judges."

The press release goes on to say that "Far Worse than Watergate also details new evidence that shows that this illegal activity may have been carried out with orders from top presidential advisers."

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