Part 3: Ron Tammen and the Watergate ‘burglars’

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I tend to picture Ron Tammen as some kind of Forrest Gump–type character, living his mysterious life in the foreground of America’s most momentous events of the mid-to-late 20th century. I was never a fan of that movie, by the way, and not just because of the way Forrest said the name Jenny, which people have kiddingly been subjecting me to on occasion since the movie came out in 1994. I’m pretty sure that that movie is one of the reasons why anyone named Jennifer who was born after the year 1980 has opted to be called Jen. But yeah, agreed. I’ve managed to insert Ron Tammen into some iconic moments in American history. But I’m not doing this on purpose. It’s where the evidence has led me. And right now, for what it’s worth, Ron’s FBI records have led me to Watergate.

Do you think Ron Tammen might have had something to do with Watergate?

If he did, he seemed to escape detection during the investigation. To date, I’ve found no one who fits his description in books and government records I’ve read on the June 17, 1972, Watergate break-in. I’m not saying he wasn’t somehow involved. I just haven’t been able to locate him.

With that said, when Ron’s records were making the rounds at the FBI, their work was essentially done regarding the Watergate break-in. In January 1973, James McCord and G. Gordon Liddy were convicted for their crimes weeks after E. Howard Hunt, Eugenio Martinez, Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker, and Frank Sturgis had pleaded guilty. But that doesn’t mean the FBI’s work pertaining to Watergate was completely over. 

On May 25, 1973, Harvard law professor Archibald Cox was sworn in as the special prosecutor charged with investigating the additional Watergate-related matters that were coming out daily in the news and during the televised Senate hearings. Watergate was now one very large, writhing can of worms, and man oh man…right away, dude was digging into the dirt, worm by squirmy worm, in search of rock bottom.

Meanwhile, over at the FBI, L. Patrick Gray (pictured below at left) had stepped down as acting director on April 27, 1973, after it was revealed that he’d willfully destroyed crucial evidence pertaining to the Watergate break-in. At the onset of Archibald Cox’s appointment, he and his staff were communicating frequently with the FBI’s acting director, William Ruckelshaus (pictured in the center). In July 1973, with the swearing in of FBI Director Clarence Kelley (pictured at right), the Special Prosecutor’s Office was requesting that FBI agents follow up on all sorts of questions pertaining to Cox’s multipronged investigation.

Were Richard Cox and Archibald Cox related to one another?

Wouldn’t that be crazy? Nah, I’m sure they weren’t. But because I’m lucky enough to be writing about two men with the same last name in one four-part blog series, I’ll be sure to make it very clear which one I’m talking about from here on out.  

What sorts of things was Archibald Cox investigating?

The special prosecutor immediately set his sights on prohibited contributions, illegal wiretaps, election law violations, and other criminal acts by the Committee to Reelect the President, commonly referred to as the ever-so-apropos acronym CREEP, as well as others in CREEP’s corrupt orbit. One obvious area for exploration was the other suspicious break-ins that had been reported at roughly the same time as the break-in at DNC Headquarters.

Tell us more about the additional break-ins

According to FBI records, Archibald Cox sought the FBI’s assistance in investigating roughly 20 break-ins that appeared to be related to Watergate. Although I’m unable to find the original memo with his instructions, I’ve found references that state that he made such a request on June 19, 1973. But look, he and his assistants sent the FBI scads of memos, many one case at a time. It’s possible that they sent several memos versus one omnibus memo. Let’s not sweat it, OK?

First and foremost, Archibald Cox wanted to know more about the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding, in September 1971. As we’ve discussed in the past, Daniel Ellsberg had leaked what became known as the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and Washington Post, and Nixon was so incensed about it, his DOJ charged Ellsberg and his associate Anthony Russo with such crimes as theft of government documents and espionage. The Fielding break-in had initially flown under the radar because a career burglar named Elmer Davis had confessed to the crime and, shortly thereafter, the Beverly Hills PD had quietly closed the case. It was E. Howard Hunt’s testimony before the Watergate grand jury that brought the Fielding break-in into the light, placing Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, and “two of the men from Miami” at Fielding’s office. When prosecutors alerted Judge William Matthew Byrne, Jr., who was presiding over Daniel Ellsberg’s and Anthony Russo’s trial in Los Angeles, about what Hunt had told the grand jury, Byrne ordered that he be given access to Hunt’s testimony, which was also released to the public on May 4, 1973. One week later, on May 11, 1973, all charges were dropped against Ellsberg and Russo because of government misconduct.

Archibald Cox considered the Fielding break-in significant. Stephen Trott, deputy district attorney for the City of Los Angeles, said this about what Archibald had told him: “…as far as constitutional matters were concerned, he thought our case was much more important than the Watergate case itself.” Here was the U.S. government breaking into a private citizen’s office without a warrant hoping to find evidence that they could use to discredit his patient because they felt he’d crossed the line. Said Trott, “Archibald Cox thought these claims raised a significant issue: Can the President authorize the break-in of a psychiatrist’s office to steal the file of someone on trial in order to give it to the Detroit News?”

Archibald also wanted more information about the purported break-in at Hank Greenspun’s Las Vegas Sun office in 1972. Although FBI records claim that it was merely planned and didn’t happen, John Ehrlichman, White House assistant for domestic affairs, had told Nixon that “I guess they actually got in.” Archibald also wanted to know more about a break-in at Dan Rather’s home on April 9, 1972, as well as about 17 others. 

Here are 10 additional noteworthy break-ins singled out by William Ruckelshaus for Clarence Kelley as he was passing the baton to him in July 1973. Because Ruckelshaus was giving Kelley a birds-eye view of the most pressing issues pertaining to the Watergate investigation, I have to presume that these were also on the special prosecutor’s A-list. (Note that the last one was later withdrawn.)

1. Chilean Embassy and Chilean officials residing in New York City
2. Law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver, and Kampelman (Ruckelshaus referred to it as Sargent Shriver’s law firm, though the offices of Patricia Harris and Max Kampelman were also broken into)
3. Robert Strauss, Democratic National Committee Chairman, NAACP
4. Richard Gerstein, Dade County prosecutor
5. Carol Scott, attorney for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW)
6. Michael Lerner, defendant in the Seattle Seven case
7. Lee Holley, attorney for the Seattle Seven
8. Gerald Lefcourt, activist and attorney for the Detroit Weathermen and Chicago Seven (also wiretaps)
9. Washington Free Press
10. National Committee Against Repressive Legislation (this was later withdrawn by special prosecutor)

But the break-ins didn’t end there. According to “The Unsolved Break-Ins 1970-1974,” by Robert Fink, in the October 10, 1974, issue of Rolling Stone magazine, additional victims included those on the list below. Fink points out that “Since the break-ins continued after the Watergate arrests—indeed into this summer [of 1974]—it is a reasonable speculation that other teams of burglars were involved: either additional ‘plumbers’ or special FBI or CIA investigative units.” Fink also estimated that “at least 100 break-ins, apparently political in nature, occurred during the Nixon administration.” 

1. Charles Garry, San Francisco attorney who was general counsel to the Black Panthers, and represented Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton
2. Egbal Ahmad, Pakistani scholar at the University of Chicago’s Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs
3. United States Servicemen’s Fund
4. Federal Reserve Board’s Bank Operations Office, on the eighth floor of the Watergate building
5. NAACP Legal Defense Fund
6. Intertel (Howard Hughes was a client)
7. Tad Szulc – former New York Times investigative reporter specializing in intelligence
8. Sen. Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., Republican member of Senate Watergate Committee
9. Finance office of the National Welfare Rights Organization, a lobbying group representing welfare recipients
10. Potomac Associates, research organization that had published a report critical of the Nixon administration
11. CBS correspondent Marvin Kalb’s office in the State Department
12. Washington Society of Friends Meeting House and adjoining Quaker House – the group was planning a prayer vigil for peace to take place in the White House
13. Institute for Policy Studies – led by former members of the Kennedy administration; one victim’s roommate, Carole Cullums, also had her antiwar office broken into at the same time
14. Offices of Common Cause, including John Gardner, director
15. Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee
16. Goddard College 
17. Louis Harris, pollster
18. Mortimer Caplin, who was commissioner of the IRS under Kennedy administration
19. Sol Linowitz, former U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, and former adviser to Senator Muskie (alleged break-in)

Archibald Cox’s top-20 list of break-ins wasn’t all that he asked the FBI to investigate. He had other requests as well.

What else did Archie request?

Oh! So we’re now using his nickname that was generally reserved for friends and family? That’s fine—he was a good guy, and I think he’d be OK with it. 

Archie was also interested in the infamous “dirty tricks” that Nixon and his cadre of criminals were up to. The chief trickster was an L.A. attorney named Donald Segretti, who’d acquired a skillset in such areas as character assassination, subterfuge, and general assholery while he was a student at the University of Southern California. Segretti’s main purpose was to sabotage the campaigns of the Democratic primary candidates, including Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Henry Jackson, and Edmund Muskie—especially Muskie, since Nixon and CREEP considered him to be the most challenging to beat if he’d won the Democratic nomination. Segretti accomplished this through a variety of nefarious means, from spreading rumors about the candidates’ sex lives to hiring operatives to infiltrate opposition headquarters to distributing false propaganda about their campaigns. He and his minions managed to bring Muskie’s candidacy down with a fraudulent letter published in the Manchester (NH) Union Leader accusing him of laughing when someone on his staff made a disparaging remark about French-Canadians. Muskie’s emotional rebuttal speech to what’s now known as the “Canuck letter” finished Segretti’s job for him since people said Muskie looked like he was crying even though I honestly don’t see it and Muskie said it was just snow on his cheeks. Later on, at the Democratic convention in Miami Beach, Segretti hired people to cosplay as “hippie” protestors, employing antics such as rock throwing and urinating in public to make Democratic nominee George McGovern look bad. Among those who were assisting Segretti with his dirty tricks were several White House Plumbers, including, you guessed it, idea men E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy.

Who at the FBI conducted the investigations?

The division that took the lead for investigating the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Watergate Hotel was Division 6, the General Investigative Division. The Washington Field Office, being the office of origin for Watergate, conducted much of the legwork as well. For the follow-up investigations, those two groups were joined by the Domestic Intelligence Division, Division 5, especially for the other break-ins. This makes sense since I’ve suspected that the scribbles on Ron’s FBI records, including his “see index” notation, appear to have originated in Division 5.

What do you make of all of this?

I see it this way: During the exact same time period in which the likes of James W. McCord, E. Howard Hunt, and Donald Segretti were being investigated by the FBI at the request of the Special Prosecutor’s Office, Ronald Tammen’s records were being scrutinized by agents in the same division and were receiving the exact same notations that the Watergate guys received.

The notation shared by all the major players as well as Ron is the underlined “lf” (a script lowercase l and f), which appears in the righthand margin about midway down the page. Here are a few examples of the lf in its natural habitat:

If only there were some kind of timeline we could look at…

You’re in luck! I’ve created a timeline that lists several key dates tied to Ron’s records (in blue), several key Watergate milestones (in black), and my tally of FBI records covering the additional Watergate-related break-ins or dirty tricks that were given an underlined lf mark during the interim time periods (in italics inside gray box). Note that the Watergate players received lf marks beyond this timeframe, mostly before May 9, but this is where they overlap with the dates on Ron’s documents. After July 11, 1973, the lf’s appear to have stopped. 

• 5/9/73 – Cincinnati Field Office submits Welco man’s fingerprints to FBI Headquarters and inquires if they match Ron’s.

On 5/9/73 and 5/10/73, 6 memos and teletypes were written having to do with Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo, James McCord and illegal wiretapping, and materials that were in L. Patrick Gray’s office before he left the FBI. All received an underlined lf.

• 5/11/73 – All charges are dropped in Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo’s trial due to government misconduct.
  
• 5/18/73 – Senate Watergate Committee begins televised hearings.
  
• 5/22/73 – FBI HQ sends fingerprint results to Cincinnati Field Office.
  
• 5/22/73 – James McCord tells the Senate Watergate Committee that G. Gordon Liddy and other White House Plumbers had planned to burglarize Hank Greenspun’s office.
  

Between 5/22/73 and 5/24/73, 3 memos and teletypes were written about James McCord and illegal wiretapping as well as FBI testimony concerning the agency’s prior relationship with G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt. All received an underlined lf.

• 5/25/73 – Archibald Cox is sworn in as special prosecutor of the Watergate investigation.

Between 5/31/73 and 6/4/73, 11 memos and teletypes are written on several Watergate-related matters, including the investigation by the Special Prosecutor’s Office. All received an underlined lf.

• 6/5/73 – Ron’s missing person records are removed from the “Ident” [Identification] files.
  

Between 6/5/73 and 6/18/73, 22 memos and teletypes are written on Watergate-related matters, including the investigation into Donald Segretti. All received an underlined lf.

• 6/19/73 – Archibald Cox asks the FBI to investigate ~20 burglaries that could involve the White House Plumbers.

Between 6/19/73 and 6/27/73, 26 memos and teletypes are written on Watergate-related matters, including, a new request from the special prosecutor, James McCord and illegal wiretapping, and Donald Segretti. All received an underlined lf.

• 6/27/73 – This is the last date stamp on Ron’s FBI records. Note that that’s when they arrived on someone’s desk; we don’t know when they were done looking at his file.
  
• 7/9/73 – Clarence Kelley is sworn in as FBI director.
  

Between 7/9/73 and 7/11/73, 3 memos and teletypes are written on the FBI’s investigation into the burglary of Hank Greenspun’s office as well as James McCord and illegal wiretapping. All received an underlined lf. They are also the last records that I know of in which the lf’s appear.

• 7/13/73 – Alexander Butterfield reveals the existence of the White House tapes during a closed-door session of the Senate Watergate Committee, and then, three days later, during televised hearings.
  
• 7/23/73 – Archibald Cox subpoenas President Nixon for the White House tapes.

For those readers who may not know how this saga ends, on Saturday, October 20, 1973, Richard Nixon instructed Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Archibald Cox for his relentless pursuit of the White House tapes. Richardson resigned in protest and William Ruckelshaus, who became Richardson’s deputy AG after his stint as acting FBI director, was fired for also refusing to sack Archibald Cox. Solicitor General Robert Bork followed through with Nixon’s order. The event is infamously known as the Saturday Night Massacre, and history will forever look kindly upon Archibald Cox, Elliot Richardson, and William Ruckelshaus for standing up to political corruption and government malfeasance. As for Richard Nixon, who resigned from the presidency on August 9, 1974, and Robert Bork, whose Supreme Court nomination went down in flames in 1987, not so much.

Back to the timeline. During the short window in which at least 71 Watergate-related records were given underlined lf’s, Ron Tammen’s FBI records received 4 of the same distinctive lf’s. With that said, I suppose I should let you know about one outlier document that received an underlined lf during this same period.

What document was that?

It’s an FBI laboratory report dated June 15, 1973, and it had to do with a bomb threat to a federal courthouse in Madison, Wisconsin. The way I see it, the person who was monitoring the FBI’s investigations into the Watergate-related burglaries and dirty tricks was also interested in bomb plots against federal buildings. What can I say? He was a multitasker. Although my opinion may change sometime down the road, I continue to believe the person making the underlined lf’s was Leon Francis (Frank) Schwartz, the FBI’s liaison to the CIA. 

Incidentally, the bomb plot was given lots of 10s on subsequent records, and one of the persons who was investigated for the bomb plot had the first name of Ronald. But I don’t think he was our Ronald. 

What makes you so sure?

Don’t get me wrong—I find him interesting. The bomb suspect’s full name was Ronald Dean Kessenich, and judging from the news articles I’ve read, he made some poor choices during his life. These include robbing a Las Vegas bank in 1967 and, in 1976, sending threatening letters to the judge who presided over the trial as well as the prosecutor and defense attorney. The threatening bomb plot letters were mailed while Kessenich was incarcerated in Leavenworth Prison.

Ronald Kessenich was born in September 1944 in Madison, Wisconsin, which would make him roughly 11 years younger than Ron Tammen. He died in January 2008, which falls within the same window of time in which I believe Tammen died.

Ronald Kessenich was a son, two-times husband (possibly three), and stepfather, so I think he was a real person, not a pseudonym provided to someone else courtesy of the CIA. The most compelling reason that I think Ron Tammen was associated with the Watergate crowd versus the bomb plot is because of the stamp combination that Ron shared with James McCord. As you longtime Good Man readers know, I’m talking about the stamp combo that first launched me down the FBI “stamp and scribble” rabbit hole: ST-102, REC-19. According to my records, James McCord received the ST-102, REC-19 stamps beginning on July 26, 1973, roughly a month after the last date stamp on Ron Tammen’s FBI records. From what I can tell, there are 21 records with the two stamps on McCord’s records and they end sometime on or before August 10, 1973. (The last date is partially concealed.) The topics aren’t consistent, but many involve requests made by the Special Prosecutor’s Office and the FBI’s reports on those requests. 

In contrast, eight of Ron Tammen’s records have the ST-102, REC-19 stamps on them, with the most recent record dated May 9, 1973. That was the Cincinnati Field Office’s request for a comparison between Ron’s and the Welco man’s fingerprints. To the best of my knowledge, only records pertaining to the FBI’s investigation into James McCord’s potential involvement in Watergate-related break-ins and Ron Tammen’s missing person records were ever given that stamp combination.

Have you learned anything new about the ST-102, REC-19 stamp combination?

Two of the documents with that stamp combination focus on a letter that had been sent to the Department of Justice on July 26, 1973, by a prisoner in San Quentin State Prison named Vladimir A. Zatko. In his letter, Zatko claims that he’d been given $25,000 by “two close associates of President R. Nixon” to kill Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of assassinating Robert F. Kennedy. Zatko also said that “I still have in my possession (at my residence in Beverly Hills) several letters written to me by E. Howard Hunt (who is also involved in the Watergate affair).” (Apparently Vladimir Zatko enjoyed using parentheses as much as I do.) Naturally, Archibald Cox found this allegation to be of interest, and, on August 6, 1973, he requested that the FBI interview Zatko. If the San Francisco Field Office followed Cox’s and FBI Director Clarence Kelley’s orders, and I have to presume they did, I’m unable to find their report online.

But have you guys ever heard of Mae Brussell? She was an independent investigative journalist and radio personality who began her investigative journey when she had serious doubts about the Warren Commission’s conclusions about JFK’s assassination. Don’t let the term “conspiracy theorist” on her Wikipedia page throw you. Mae herself would be fine with that label. She embraced it even. Her radio program was called “Dialogue: Conspiracy.”  But she was a tenacious researcher who managed to dig up some fascinating details about JFK, RFK, Watergate, mind control, Operation Paperclip, and other subjects that, as it turns out, we’ve discussed on this site as well. Her delivery of accusations can be dizzying and I couldn’t possibly buy into all of her claims, but I respect her tenacity for research.

According to the book “The Essential Mae Brussell: Investigations of Fascism in America,” written and compiled by Alex Constantine, Vladimir A. Zatco (Mae spelled it with a ‘c’) wasn’t the man’s real name. Rather, it was the name of a man who’d died in a car accident in Italy in 1968. According to Brussell, the man’s true name was Eugen (I’ve also seen it spelled Eugene) Wrangell, who Brussell claimed was “sent to San Quentin for the purpose of murdering Sirhan Sirhan.” Furthermore, she said that “$25,000 cash is in an account, deposited by one of the White House Plumber teams from the CIA,” which coincides with the information contained in Zatko’s letter.

I’ve done some looking into this matter as well. I’ve found one man named Eugene Wrangell who’d worked in pulp mills in Alaska for 25 years starting in the 1950s. But there were no vital records for him on Ancestry—no Census records, no birth or death records, nothing. I’ve found no one by the name Eugen Wrangell. Likewise, I found no Vladimir Zatco, but I found Vladimir A. Zatko. According to his Social Security Death Index listing, he was born in 1946 in what’s now the Czech Republic, or Czechia, and he died in California in 1999. I also found numerous news articles, other FBI records, and lawsuits concerning a prisoner named Vladimir A. Zatko. Apparently, he was well known among prison staff for his copious complaints about prison conditions as well as for making some oversized claims about himself, and not in a complimentary way. He once told a federal court in Memphis that he was responsible for MLK Jr.’s assassination. In 1988, he wrote a letter to Senator Robert C. Byrd, informing him of a KGB assassination plot against him and the Pope. He was also litigious, and he wasn’t afraid to aim high. In October 1973, a few months after he wrote to the DOJ about Sirhan Sirhan, he filed a lawsuit against the United States of America, including Congress and Richard Milhous Nixon. (The Congressional Record doesn’t tell us the basis of that suit.) I guess he also sued the Shah of Iran at one time. When Clarence Kelley was passing along Archibald Cox’s request to the San Francisco SAC, Kelley told him that Zatko was described as being “schizophrenic” and a “compulsive liar “ and that Archibald Cox was aware of his “unstable background.” (Those descriptions have all been redacted from the above version.) Still, the special prosecutor requested that he be interviewed. As for Eugen or Eugene Wrangell, I don’t know where Mae Brussell got her information. Because Brussell was known to correspond with inmates regarding how they were being treated in prison, Vladimir Zatko may have been her source. I don’t know.

Based on the additional information I’ve learned, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Vladimir A. Zatko’s allegations about a plot to kill Sirhan Sirhan were likely untrue. But I do have to ask: how wild is it that Ronald Tammen’s FBI records carry the same elusive stamp combination found on two records having to do with Archibald Cox’s investigation into an alleged plot by the White House Plumbers to kill Sirhan Sirhan? I still find that interesting.

Did any of the other break-in victims receive an lf?

Not that I can tell. I’ve looked up the cases listed in William Ruckelshaus’ memo to Clarence Kelley as well as the additional cases described in the Rolling Stone article, and, as of today’s date, the only lf marks that I could find were on the records that I’ve described here. By all appearances, these were also the most high-profile cases under investigation. That someone at the FBI would somehow tie Ron Tammen’s missing person records to the most notorious of the White House Plumbers and dirty tricksters remains inexplicable to me. I will say this—at least it could help us understand why Ron was given a 2-D on the first page of his FBI records.

What 2-D? 

In the left margin of the first page of Ron’s FBI records, beneath the words “see index,” is the notation 2-D. In a former post, I discussed my belief (in which I remain 100% confident) that the D refers to the Department, as in the Department of Justice. The 2 indicates that the DOJ received two copies of either that first document or the entire file. The DOJ wasn’t notified about every FBI investigation—only the more sensitive or extreme cases. Those D’s signify an elevation in importance, with a 2-D being even more elevated than a 1-D.

In addition, the FBI is adamant that it doesn’t investigate missing persons cases, so it wouldn’t make sense for the DOJ to receive two copies of someone’s missing person records unless it was something major. It’s rare for any missing person case to warrant even a 1-D on their FBI records, though it sometimes happened. One of Richard Cox’s records had a 1-D. So did one of Charles McCullar’s. But if Ron was somehow lumped in with the Special Prosecutor’s Office investigations, then his 2-D would make sense. After all, Archibald Cox had been appointed by the attorney general, Elliot Richardson, head of the DOJ. If Ron Tammen’s name and alias had bubbled up in the FBI’s investigations called upon by the special prosecutor, they would have likely needed to alert the DOJ to this discovery. Maybe one of those two copies went to Elliot Richardson and the other went to Archie himself. It’s just a hypothesis, but it’s a fun one.

OK. Time for a breather. Maybe we should get a snack or something before moving to Part 4. You’ve earned it.