Watergate: S & D

Nixon’s fear about the file surfacing as a follow-up to the Pentagon Papers was Nixon’s motive for creating Hunt’s burglary team in the first place.

crazy that this turned out to be true, I remember this being speculated upon in Arrogance of Power, I think...?

I checked out one of Parry's books.

Most reporters have given short shrift to the Chennault material. The recent book by those TIME suckups on the ex-presidents inadvertently did more to raise the specter of those signals sent from Texas to the White House during the Nixon years.

which book, Alfred?

I'm thinking Lost History looks like my kinda wheelhouse

http://www.amazon.com/Fooling-America-Washington-Manufacture-Conventional/dp/0688109276

It reminds me of Mark Hertsgaard's On Bended Knee, a superb account of press genuflection before St. Ronnie.

oh that's the new one, right?

hmm

OKAY FINE I'LL GET IT

The BBC picks up the story. Nothing from US newspapers?

I haven't seen a peep from anyone. I want to say 'unbelievable' but it's so totally, depressingly believable.

Yeah, totally. It's like Robert Parry pointed out in the Alternet link Alfred posted, no major US news organization has any interest in embarrassing itself further at this point.

think i first read about this in hitchens' kissinger book. as usual, history turns out to be more sordid and disgusting than any conspiracy theory.

kinda can't help regretting that LBJ didn't follow through with his 'surprise! i'm running again!' plan; four more years of LBJ at his worst couldn't have been worse than four years of nixon.

Hersh's Kissinger book first advanced it but to see it confirmed...

hard to imagine two more vicious bastards than Nixon and LBJ trying to kneecap each other

man throw Walt Rostow on the fucking dung heap too and set it on fire.

anyone see the Robert Redford-narrated doc All the President’s Men Revisited?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OttPE1PCQA

Jeb Magruder dead

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeb-stuart-magruder-jailed-for-watergate-role-dies-at-79/

I saw 'Bud' Krogh on a panel at the National Archives this morning.

One by one, our old friends are gone. Death--natural or not--prison, deported.

Who's left?

shocked to find Big Bob Haldeman died 21 years back at 67.

Kissinger, Dean, and Liddy come to mind (as being alive), although beyond telling Nixon whatever he wanted to hear, I don't think Kissinger had direct Watergate involvement. Maybe I'm forgetting something. Alexander Butterfield's still alive too.

I'm surprised Kissinger didn't show up at Baba Wawa's farewell so she could fellate him AGAIN

Pat and Bob died within six months of each other. After that, Nixon wasn't long for this world.

Did a bit of reading on Magruder yesterday, found out he got his start in '62 working for Rumsfeld, and then he worked for Goldwater in '63. Would love to have seen Pete Frame take on the two American political parties.

http://blog.familyofrock.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/clip2.jpg

anniversary party album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxfZt4vbg4I

Beat me to it. Not just a regular anniversary; 40th.

love that album

lasting legacy from Watergate is in Dick:

"no president will ever lie to us again"

Probably a little blurry:

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/august91974_zpsdca30fbf.jpg

Oops, wrong chart--that's for the week ending August 3, 1974. The correct chart would be towards the end of this issue.

None of (his war crimes) brought down Nixon. However weary the country was with Vietnam, it was regarded as standard policy, however misguided. Only when Nixon attacked a powerful target did his political career collapse.

Unlike antiwar dissidents, the Democratic Party had serious mainstream pull. It was one thing to spy on the Black Panthers and the Yippies; it was quite another to wiretap people connected to corporate and private wealth....

Still, imagine how Nixon would enjoy Obama's NSA and drone wars.

He'd be right at home, along with the rest of us.

http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2014/08/downfall-ii-oval-delirium.html

what brought him down were the tapes

...about ratfucking the Dems

(and covering up)

Perlstein on the 40th anniversary of The Pardon:

First Woodward, then Bernstein, came to conclude there had been no deal, and that this was instead an extraordinarily noble act: Ford “realized intuitively that the country had to get beyond Nixon.” After Ford died in 2006, Peggy Noonan went even further. She said Ford “threw himself on a grenade to protect the country from shame.”

They’re wrong. For political elites took away a dangerous lesson from the Ford pardon — our true shame: All it takes is the incantation of magic words like “stability” and “confidence” and “consensus” in order to inure yourself from accountability for just about any malfeasance.

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/08/watergates_most_lasting_sin_gerald_ford_richard_nixon_and_the_pardon_that_made_us_all_cynics/

I can't remember if it was Mad Magazine or Nixon enemy Paul Conrad who had the best cartoon about the pardoning: President Huntz Hall Ford cheerfully staring into the "things to do your first day as president" list: 1. Pardon Nixon. 2. Don't bomb the Russians

Swear to god, about half the time I vent to someone at work about something, my principal will make casual reference to what I was venting about within a day or two. I need to get a team of plumbers up and running.

That pardon was probably one of the five or ten most important events of the last 1/2 century (in America). Incalculable, nation-altering effect when a criminal President is let off the hook like that.

Since moving back to OC I've bee re-reading Nixonland irregularly. The creation of the silent majority is some evil genius masterminding.

Anybody remember the way Bill Clinton would reference, in a croaky voice, people "who work hard and play by the rules"? Pretty sure I got to hear that more than once, and Hillary brought the phrase back for an encore last year in a speech in Iowa I believe.

His way of trying to re-define the Silent Majority to include those messed over by corporate ruthlessness, without necessarily letting in the P O O R (except for the "deserving" poor, who have to be saints to qualify). So, a slightly progressive redefinition, but probably too compromised to matter.

Is there a recommended bio on Roger Ailes that's heavy on his Nixon years? He's like the villain out of Tomorrow Never Dies.

It's not a biography at all, but I think Joe McGinniss's The Selling of the President 1968 is primarily about Ailes.

Damnit, I actually have this book but haven't read it yet. OK then...

This Salon piece should interest you:

http://www.salon.com/2011/01/21/roger_ailes_fehrman/

2-hour Watergate doc on ABC tonight. Timing!

ooh thx

Woodward & Bernstein revisit their pre-hack years

Huh, guess my brother-in-law was born the day before the break-in

Bill O’Reilly, who was fired from Fox News in April after several harassment allegations came to light, will appear in the special, according to ABC.

oh... never mind.

http://ew.com/tv/2017/05/31/abc-watergate-documentary/

"balance"!

I suspect Nixon was ultimately punished more for approval ratings that were cratering than for the high corruption. If the public had decided Watergate wasn't that big a deal, I'm sure Goldwater and the rest of them would have stood their ground and the impending impeachment would never have reached the stage it did (which I think was a recommendation to proceed with impeachment hearings...I'd have to double-check). I'm not defending Nixon, believe me; I'm just saying I'm not ready to ascribe noble principals to the Republicans who bailed on him (or, to be truthful, to the Democrats who were swarming either). It's politics; most everyone was acting out of self-interest.
― clemenza, Saturday, April 2, 2011 11:35 AM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

curious if anyone has any favorite watergate documentaries. dunno if i'll bother w/ the abc one but would be interested in a good one with lots of original footage.

the clemenza post seems right to me -- but what's astonishing, from this late date, is how sincerely outraged the public got over something as complicated and unsexy as watergate. feels like a high-water mark for democracy that we'll never get close to again.