Dirty Tricks: Nixon, Watergate, and the CIA

The victories of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan in the US presidential elections of 1968 and 1980 depended on "October Surprises" keeping the South Vietnamese government away from peace talks in Paris, and delaying a resolution to the Iran hostage crisis until after the election. These treasonous "dirty tricks" were both engineered by the same key figures in the Republican Party, who had close ties to the CIA and the national security state.

There is growing evidence that the CIA and other players in the national security state were also behind the Watergate break-ins during Nixon's 1972 campaign, which led to his downfall. CIA Director Richard Helms's relationship with E. Howard Hunt was much closer than previously disclosed; and the post-Watergate career of the Cuban CIA agent inside the plot reveals much through his connections to a web of intelligence agencies.

Including previously-unpublished details, Dirty Tricks corrects the myths and deepens our understanding of the "dirty tricks" that undermined democracy during these election campaigns and defined the political climate of the seventies and eighties. These political scandals emerged from two powerful interest groups?the coterie of senior CIA officers around Helms and Hunt, and the lobbyists and national security advisers in the Nixon and Reagan administrations. A wide swath of characters from vastly different backgrounds fit together to tell this unbelievable story of deception.

"Mr. O'Sullivan knows how to spin a yarn." Steve Dollar, New York Sun