Scorpions' Dance by intelligence expert and investigative journalist Jefferson Morley reveals the Watergate scandal in a completely new light: as the culmination of a concealed, deadly power struggle between President Richard Nixon and CIA Director Richard Helms. Nixon and Helms went back decades; both were 1950s Cold Warriors, and both knew secrets about the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba as well as off-the-books American government and CIA plots to remove Fidel Castro and other leaders in Latin America. Both had enough information on each other to ruin their careers.
A consistently engaging and sometimes riveting history ... Scorpions’ Dance takes its time getting to Watergate, and by then, the reader can’t help but feel that the burglary and its subsequent cover-up are among the administration’s lesser abuses of American democracy ... We may face a new set of threats to American democracy, but works like Scorpions’ Dance remind us that this democracy has always been something of an illusion.
This thoroughly researched book also draws on recorded conversations between Nixon and Helms that took place between February 1971 and June 1972 ... With a complex cast of characters, Cold War espionage, and tense courtroom drama, Morley’s timely book will appeal to readers seeking an in-depth understanding of both Watergate and CIA history.
Morley shares more of his insights into the role of the CIA in America’s recent history ... The centrality of Nixon and Helms to so many pivotal moments in history makes Morley’s revelations about their sparring even more intriguing.
