Turkish Watergate - First Audio Eavesdropping Tapes - Now Video

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government has been ensnared by a series of anonymously leaked audio tapes of purported corruption, said his administration may face a new threat from covertly recorded video recordings.

“In these incidents, there is not just wiretapping, there is also filming,” Erdogan said in Ankara yesterday, according to state-run Anatolia news agency. “It’s even been stretched to the extreme of filming extramarital affairs, invading a family’s privacy and totally ignoring moral values.”

Speaking to local reporters after the release of audio tapes that the opposition said placed Erdogan at the center of a bribery scheme, the premier lashed out at the tactics. (more)

Turkish Watergate - Surprise - The Guard Gets Blamed for Bugging the Place

Turkey - A police officer only known as S.D., allegedly responsible for placing a bugging device in Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's study inside his Ankara residence, has reportedly been working as a bodyguard for Saudi Arabian businessman Yasin al-Qadi, the Taraf daily claimed on Tuesday.

“It has come out that S.D., who has been accused in connection with the bugging device discovered in Prime Minister Erdoğan's Ankara house, was assigned to protect Yasin al-Qadi,” Emre Uslu wrote in his Taraf column, which was also the daily's headline story.

Four covert listening devices, as Erdoğan explained in December 2012, had been discovered in the office of his Subayevleri home in Ankara, without detailing exactly when the devices had been found, adding that an investigation was being launched. (more)

Ireland's Watergate Reveals Bug Sweeps (TSCM) are Common Business Practice

Ireland - The Department of Finance and the National Treasury Management Agency carry out regular sweeps to ensure they are not subject to any bugging or surveillance.

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan confirmed the steps were taken due to the commercial sensitivity of issues being discussed within the department... Mr Noonan said he was “aware of the importance of maintaining security given the commercially sensitive meetings held in the department and the sensitive information held by the department”...

A spokesman for the NTMA said it also carries out sweeps.

“Given the sensitivity of the business activities of the NTMA and its various linked business units, including Nama, the agency carries out regular, comprehensive security checks, including sweeps for any evidence of bugging. ” (more)

Last of the Nixon Tapes Go Online

Forty years after President Richard M. Nixon turned off his secret tape recorder, the federal government on Wednesday finally released the last of the historic recordings that have provided an unparalleled insight into the workings of one of the nation’s most dramatic presidencies...

The 94 tapes released on Wednesday cover conversations from April 9 to July 12, 1973, after which the secret taping system was dismantled when a Nixon aide, Alexander Butterfield, disclosed its existence to Congress. (more)

Get yer hot Tricky Dicky tapes. 
Get yer hot tapes here.

Today in Eavesdropping History

On Aug. 8, 1974, President Richard Nixon announced he would resign following damaging revelations in the Watergate scandal. (more)
 

He submitted his official resignation the following day...

Watergate Redux

The Dallas, Texas offices of law firm Schulman & Mathias were broken into two weeks ago by two burglars caught on surveillance camera. The two stole three computers. Damon Mathias, a partner at the firm, said

Attorneys said the burglars may have been hired to steal documents related to State Department whistleblower Aurelia Fedenisn, who is represented by the firm...

In early June, Fedenisn gave CBS News a draft State Department Inspector General report which offered the details of allegations that alleged sex crimes involving diplomats — including one U.S. ambassador who allegedly visited prostitutes — were ignored by State Department top officials. (more)

Time to sweep the office.

Watergate's Next Watergate

A history professor hopes that a federal court's recent order to release long-sealed Watergate documents will shed light on the motivations behind the infamous 1972 scandal and help set an example for how to unseal court records.

Federal District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, D.C., on Friday ordered the National Archives and Records Administration to review and release some of the documents within a month. The order came in response to Texas A&M history professor Luke Nichter's 2009 informal request to Lamberth to unseal a trove of documents relating to the 1973 trials of Watergate conspirators G. Gordon Liddy and James McCord.

Nichter's letter said that some of the sealed materials "purportedly will demonstrate that exposing a prostitution ring was the real motivation for the break-in." Liddy had alleged a similar theory in the mid-1990s, although he claimed that motive was unknown to him when he orchestrated the break-in. (more) (previous report)

John "Jack" Caulfield, Nixon White House operative, dies at 83

John J. Caulfield, a security operative who was responsible for wiretaps and other so-called “dirty tricks” of the Nixon White House died June 17 in Vero Beach, Fla. He was 83. 

Mr. Caulfield was best known as the White House official who extended an offer of clemency, cash and future employment to James W. McCord Jr. if McCord, a convicted Watergate burglar, refused to testify against members of Nixon’s inner circle... Among other things, he revealed that the president’s brother, Donald Nixon, was under surveillance by the Secret Service and had a wiretap on his telephone. 

After Nixon was elected, Mr. Caulfield assumed a vaguely defined role as a White House staff assistant, with responsibilities that ranged from bodyguard to collector of intelligence.

Mr. Caulfield left the White House several months before the Watergate break-in occurred in June 1972 and was never prosecuted. But his Senate testimony did include some jaw-dropping revelations about the Nixon White House’s intelligence-gathering efforts. (more) (book)

Interesting: Caulfield received NYPD shield #911, June 1, 1953, long before the number took on greater meanings. It is also ironic that Nixon called upon 911 to solve his problems.

Illegal Watergate Wiretaps Requsted to be Released

A historian of the Richard Nixon presidency wants to review sealed wiretap materials stemming from the 1972 burglary at the Watergate hotel and subsequent criminal prosecutions.

In a pending case in Washington's federal trial court, the U.S. Justice Department on May 3 said "the request for the content of illegally obtained wiretaps poses an unusual legal issue that the department intends to address in its response."

Justice Department lawyer Elizabeth Shapiro asked Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for two more weeks to respond to the request from Luke Nichter, an assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University. The earlier deadline was May 5.

“These and other sealed materials may be the key to determining why the Watergate break-in occurred, who ordered it, and what the burglars were looking [for],” Nichter, who specializes in American political history, wrote in a letter (PDF) to Lamberth in 2010. Nichter is researching whether exposing a prostitution ring was the real reason for the Watergate burglary. (more)