White House Plumbers Explores The Most Fascinating Conspiracy Theory You've Never Heard Of
Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck's "White House Plumbers" started out as a broadly comedic dramatization of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President's bunglingly criminal efforts, but as the miniseries has dealt with the legitimately tragic dimensions of this inept operation, the laughs have grown fewer and fewer. Indeed, this week's episode, which concludes with the jarring crash of United Airlines Flight 553, occasionally takes on the eerie tone of Alan J. Pakula's "All the President's Men."
The Watergate break-in was so poorly orchestrated that it casts into doubt the numerous conspiracy theories that grew up around it or were drawn into it. Given E. Howard Hunt's CIA background and involvement in the Bay of Pigs, Gregory and Huyck have entertained his alleged connection to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This is intriguing, but, again, if Hunt was as much of an oaf as he appears to be in the first two episodes, how did the purported conspiracy to kill Kennedy not fall apart like a house of cards as well?
"White House Plumbers" doesn't endorse any of these notions, but it does posit that ex-spy Dorothy Hunt (Lena Headey), who is depicted as far more capable than her husband, boarded Flight 553 to spill her guts about the Watergate operation — and perhaps more — to CBS reporter Michelle Clark. And this might've led the shadowy cabal that changed the course of U.S. history on November 22, 1963 to take drastic action.
Why did United Airlines Flight 553 crash?
The theory that Flight 553 was brought down by the CIA is not new, but it hasn't gotten nearly as much play over the years as other paranoid '60s and '70s notions. The National Transportation Safety Board's official explanation was pilot error (which is backed up by the black box audio), but Chicago-based private investigator Sherman Skolnick alleged a conspiracy between the FBI, United, air traffic controllers, and the NTSB to bring down the plane due to 12 of its passengers' alleged connections to Watergate.
Dorothy Hunt's presence on the flight certainly adds a degree of intrigue. She had $10,000 in a suitcase, which was being disbursed to key participants in the Watergate operation. The "White House Plumbers" episode shows Dorothy exchanging glances with a suspicious man, suggesting that someone might've been tailing her (she definitely believed she was being followed, and, at some level, was probably right). She then takes her seat next to Clark, and begins unloading.
The final moment finds Clark asking for an off-the-record comment on what Howard knows about the JFK assassination. As Dorothy starts to comment, the plane crashes (and it's one of the most disturbing depictions of a plane crash I've ever seen, so kudos to director David Mandel). The insinuation is that, backed into a corner, Dorothy knew far too much, and, unlike her husband, was savvy enough to leak that info to the press. In the context of the show, the casting of the ever-intimidating Headey makes this very easy to buy.
The trouble with conspiracy theories
But why go to the trouble of downing a 737 with 45 passengers when you could just as easily (presumably) sabotage Dorothy's car? Is it suspicious that the FBI arrived at the crash site ahead of the NTSB (which is, from what I've read, highly uncommon)? Unquestionably. But Occam's razor cleanly slashes through this conspiracy theory. There are too many moving pieces, too many people who have to take their secret to the grave.
As always, we want to believe the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK, men who represented the hope of a more compassionate and enlightened future, were the work of some nefarious collective determined to keep America in the clutches of bigoted, war-mongering white men. We've had the opportunity for course correction over the last 50 years (e.g. the elections of Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama), but the country's political system, in particular the woefully outmoded electoral college, is designed to maintain the ignorant status quo. The conspiracy is out in the open, and, to date, we've proven incapable of overturning it. No need to crash commercial airliners. We do it to ourselves.