access to the tapes and, more important, to any switch that would shut off a recording device. | was a prisoner in the Oval Office. A mobile prisoner, to be sure—I could go to the Cabinet Room or the Lincoln Room—but it didn’ t make any difference; there were bugs everywhere. They even bugged my cabin at Camp David. | was under more surveillance than Larry O' Brien could ever imagine. If | had the tapes in my possession, don’ t you think | would have gotten rid of them? Just the way | did with those microfilms in the Hiss case. Everybody was recommending this—from John Connally to Chuck Colson—but | simply did not have access to the system. | should explain that “Bay of Pigs” was our code word for the assassination of President Kennedy. When we were attempting to put the brakes on the FBI investigation of Watergate, | told Haldeman to get word to Helms that otherwise, because of E. Howard Hunt’ s involvement, the whole Bay of Pigs thing would open up. Hunt was the CIA station chief in Mexico when agent Lee Harvey Oswald made contact there in 1963. The whole world already knows what a fiasco the Bay of Pigs operation turned out to be—that is, the invasion of HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015115