White House by the Sea by Kate Storey

Author:Kate Storey [Storey, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2023-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

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Clifton DeMotte had worked at the Yachtsman Motor Inn in 1960, when the press and some of the campaign staff had stayed there during Jack’s presidential campaign. He’d moved on to other jobs: he’d worked for the Department of Transportation, and then in navy construction in Rhode Island. Cliff had been talking. He’d been telling his colleagues he knew all sorts of stuff about the Kennedys from his time in Hyannis. He’d been saying he had dirt, particularly on Ted.

One afternoon in the summer of ’71, he got a call. He was asked to meet a man named Ed Warren. They agreed to talk at a motel near the Providence Airport. Ed Warren placed a microphone on the table between them then asked DeMotte if he knew of any women-chasing from the Kennedy boys. DeMotte said he wanted to help the upcoming Republican campaign. He mentioned women who’d been involved with the Kennedy entourage. And that he knew about their drinking habits, particularly those of Jack’s press secretary, Pierre Salinger.

They wrapped up the conversation. Warren put away the tape recorder and thanked DeMotte for his time. They talked one more time. But that was the end of it. DeMotte didn’t know the whole story: that he’d been talking to a spy for President Richard Nixon. Ed Warren was actually E. Howard Hunt, an ex–CIA man with a fresh, new assignment on Nixon’s Special Investigations Unit. The White House was looking for a source who could provide access to the Kennedy family. Someone who’d been stationed in Hyannis Port seemed like he’d be perfect to kick up some dirt on Ted in particular.

But after their conversations, Hunt decided DeMotte wasn’t their guy.

“I felt that he was a nonsource,” Hunt said in the 1973 hearings investigating the CIA’s involvement in Watergate, “and that his previous self-advertisement as being a repository of hard information on the Kennedy camp was valueless, that he had oversold himself.” They’d have to keep looking.

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