It's a measure of the enormity of the fallout from Watergate that the suffix "-gate" is by now well-understood to denote a scandal, not only in the USA, but almost worldwide, even in several different languages.
― Lee626, Wednesday, 13 June 2012 16:59 (eleven years ago) link
I did kind of suspect that, Alfred--even in the movie, they make it pretty clear that bad stuff started very early.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 13 June 2012 17:02 (eleven years ago) link
i remember in school being surprised that it was the name of an actual building. i thought it was a metaphor from the beginning! as in some kind of dam or lock that had finally broken open.
― goole, Wednesday, 13 June 2012 17:02 (eleven years ago) link
It occurs to me that even before I get to Wrigley or Fenway (if I ever do), I ought to spend a night in the Watergate...Guessing it ain't cheap.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 13 June 2012 17:05 (eleven years ago) link
is it a hotel? i thought it was an apt/office bldg
― goole, Wednesday, 13 June 2012 17:05 (eleven years ago) link
All three, I believe.
http://www.thewatergatehotel.com/
― clemenza, Wednesday, 13 June 2012 17:13 (eleven years ago) link
Correct. I think the five buildings each have different owners by now. Residental units mostly condos, but some are for rent.
― Lee626, Wednesday, 13 June 2012 17:20 (eleven years ago) link
In what may be the most ironic coincidence ever, the first burglary ever reported to police in the Watergate complex, in 1969, was of the residential unit owned by, of all people, Rose Mary Woods
(Nixon's secretary, who would later claim to have accidentally erased that infamous 18 1/2 minutes of a tape crucial to the investigation. Recent forensic examination of the tape shows it was erased in several sections separately.)
I can't think of anyone else whose most famous photo (by far) is in this pose:
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzesz4a6/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/RoseMaryWoodsStretch.jpg
― Lee626, Wednesday, 13 June 2012 17:35 (eleven years ago) link
clemenza, I suggest that rather than reserve a room you park across the street in a Gordon Liddy mustache and sit there for hours.
Those Plumbers were a sleazy bunch all right, former College Republican leaders. The ratfuckers hit all the Democrat campaigns in '72 except McGovern's, bcz they wanted him to get the nomination.
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 13 June 2012 17:43 (eleven years ago) link
Here's where I recommend Thomas Mallon's new novel.
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 13 June 2012 17:45 (eleven years ago) link
recommendation accepted. ding!
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 13 June 2012 18:01 (eleven years ago) link
Happy 40th to the gang!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsx7TZ-r4b4
― clemenza, Sunday, 17 June 2012 15:40 (eleven years ago) link
Psyched!
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/arts/television/robert-redford-to-produce-a-documentary-about-watergate.html
― piscesx, Sunday, 24 June 2012 02:02 (eleven years ago) link
Afaics, the major legacy of this scandal was a determination on the part of the power elite never to allow the media to be independent enough to pursue a story like this, if the elite prefer the story should not be pursued. An independent press is far too much of a danger to those who hold power to allow it to flourish for any reason.
― Aimless, Sunday, 24 June 2012 02:09 (eleven years ago) link
backing up to the Nixon pardon i recommend Barry Werth's short book 31 Days about the Ford transition. anyone reading this thread will eat it up
― (REAL NAME) (m coleman), Sunday, 24 June 2012 11:07 (eleven years ago) link
hell yes Nixon should have gone to jail; the next 25 years might've turned out differently but hey that's water(gate) under the bridge
― (REAL NAME) (m coleman), Sunday, 24 June 2012 11:18 (eleven years ago) link
Yes -- great book.
― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 24 June 2012 11:48 (eleven years ago) link
31 Days sounds great.
― piscesx, Sunday, 24 June 2012 13:00 (eleven years ago) link
i'm no nixon apologist but i gotta say, this is the most devastating end of a long wikipedia article i've ever come across:
Nixon believed that putting distance between himself and other people was necessary for him as he advanced in his political career and became president. Even Bebe Rebozo, by some accounts his closest friend, did not call him by his first name. Nixon stated of this, "Even with close friends. I don't believe in letting your hair down, confiding this and that and the other thing—saying, 'Gee, I couldn't sleep' ... I believe you should keep your troubles to yourself. That's just the way I am. Some people are different. Some people think it's good therapy to sit with a close friend and, you know, just spill your guts ... (and) reveal their inner psyche—whether they were breast-fed or bottle-fed. Not me. No way."(263) When told that most Americans, even at the end of his career, did not feel they knew him, Nixon replied, "Yeah, it's true. And it's not necessary for them to know."(263)
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 29 June 2012 01:16 (eleven years ago) link
After Richardson and Ruckelshaus refused to carry out Nixon’s order, the White House sent a car to the Justice Department to fetch Bork.
He met the car outside the department and found Nixon lawyers Leonard Garment and Fred Buzhardt in the passenger seats. Bork says he joked that he felt like he was being taken for a ride, as in a scene from a gangster movie, but that no one else laughed.
Shortly after he sent Cox a two-paragraph letter, he was taken in to see Nixon. Bork says the resignation and firings should have been called “The Saturday Night Involuntary Manslaughter” because Nixon didn’t plan the episode, but blundered into it.
It was in that conversation that Bork says Nixon for the first and only time offered up the next Supreme Court seat.
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 26 February 2013 17:53 (eleven years ago) link
More excerpts from the Bork memoir.
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 7 March 2013 22:31 (eleven years ago) link
The War Powers Resolution, passed by Congress over the veto of Nixon in November 1973, expanded congressional control over the limits of presidential authority in the use of force abroad. Had the president asked for my advice, I would have suggested that instead of vetoing the Resolution, and thus giving it the dignity of a statute, Nixon should have returned the bill to Congress with a note saying he thanked them for their essay on his constitutional powers and, when he found time in his busy schedule, he would send them an essay of his own on his understanding of his constitutional powers. This would have treated the War Powers Resolution with the frivolous gesture it deserved.
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltvvfjiYw71qdbxx9.gif
― goole, Friday, 8 March 2013 17:12 (eleven years ago) link
More goodies, freshly unconvered.
The disruption of Johnson’s peace talks then enabled Nixon to hang on for a narrow victory over Democrat Hubert Humphrey. However, as the new President was taking steps in 1969 to extend the war another four-plus years, he sensed the threat from the wiretap file and ordered two of his top aides, chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, to locate it. But they couldn’t find the file.
We now know that was because President Johnson, who privately had called Nixon’s Vietnam actions “treason,” had ordered the file removed from the White House by his national security aide Walt Rostow.
Rostow labeled the file “The ‘X’ Envelope” and kept it in his possession, although having left government, he had no legal right to possess the highly classified documents, many of which were stamped “Top Secret.” Johnson had instructed Rostow to retain the papers as long as he, Johnson, was alive and then afterwards to decide what to do with them.
Nixon, however, had no idea that Johnson and Rostow had taken the missing file or, indeed, who might possess it. Normally, national security documents are passed from the outgoing President to the incoming President to maintain continuity in government.
But Haldeman and Kissinger had come up empty in their search. They were only able to recreate the file’s contents, which included incriminating conversations between Nixon’s emissaries and South Vietnamese officials regarding Nixon’s promise to get them a better deal if they helped him torpedo Johnson’s peace talks.
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 15 March 2013 16:18 (eleven years ago) link
Man.
What Rostow didn’t know was that there was a third – and more direct – connection between the missing file and Watergate. 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.
Rostow apparently struggled with what to do with the file for the next month as the Watergate scandal expanded. On June 25, 1973, fired White House counsel John Dean delivered his blockbuster Senate testimony, claiming that Nixon got involved in the cover-up within days of the June 1972 burglary at the Democratic National Committee. Dean also asserted that Watergate was just part of a years-long program of political espionage directed by Nixon’s White House.
The very next day, as headlines of Dean’s testimony filled the nation’s newspapers, Rostow reached his conclusion about what to do with “The ‘X’ Envelope.” In longhand, he wrote a “Top Secret” note which read, “To be opened by the Director, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, not earlier than fifty (50) years from this date June 26, 1973.”
In other words, Rostow intended this missing link of American history to stay missing for another half century.
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 15 March 2013 16:20 (eleven years ago) link
holy crap
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, 15 March 2013 16:37 (eleven years ago) link
I have been thinking about this all morning
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, 15 March 2013 18:54 (eleven years ago) link
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...?
― his girlfriend was all 'ugh and he wears a solar backpack' (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 15 March 2013 19:15 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 15 March 2013 19:18 (eleven years ago) link
which book, Alfred?
I'm thinking Lost History looks like my kinda wheelhouse
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, 15 March 2013 20:18 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 15 March 2013 20:23 (eleven years ago) link
oh that's the new one, right?
hmm
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, 15 March 2013 20:24 (eleven years ago) link
OKAY FINE I'LL GET IT
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, 15 March 2013 20:27 (eleven years ago) link
The BBC picks up the story. Nothing from US newspapers?
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 18 March 2013 15:58 (eleven years ago) link
I haven't seen a peep from anyone. I want to say 'unbelievable' but it's so totally, depressingly believable.
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 18 March 2013 19:29 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Darth Magus (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, 18 March 2013 19:55 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 18 March 2013 20:19 (eleven years ago) link
Hersh's Kissinger book first advanced it but to see it confirmed...
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 18 March 2013 20:46 (eleven years ago) link
hard to imagine two more vicious bastards than Nixon and LBJ trying to kneecap each other
― his girlfriend was all 'ugh and he wears a solar backpack' (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 18 March 2013 20:48 (eleven years ago) link
man throw Walt Rostow on the fucking dung heap too and set it on fire.
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 18 March 2013 20:49 (eleven years ago) link
anyone see the Robert Redford-narrated doc All the President’s Men Revisited?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OttPE1PCQA
― piscesx, Wednesday, 29 January 2014 20:14 (ten years ago) link
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.
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Friday, 16 May 2014 22:40 (ten years ago) link
One by one, our old friends are gone. Death--natural or not--prison, deported.
Who's left?
― clemenza, Friday, 16 May 2014 23:29 (ten years ago) link
shocked to find Big Bob Haldeman died 21 years back at 67.
― piscesx, Friday, 16 May 2014 23:46 (ten years ago) link
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.
― clemenza, Saturday, 17 May 2014 00:06 (ten years ago) link
I'm surprised Kissinger didn't show up at Baba Wawa's farewell so she could fellate him AGAIN
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 17 May 2014 03:25 (ten years ago) link
Pat and Bob died within six months of each other. After that, Nixon wasn't long for this world.
― pplains, Saturday, 17 May 2014 04:10 (ten years ago) link
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
― clemenza, Saturday, 17 May 2014 11:36 (ten years ago) link
anniversary party album
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxfZt4vbg4I
― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 9 August 2014 04:30 (nine years ago) link
Beat me to it. Not just a regular anniversary; 40th.
― clemenza, Saturday, 9 August 2014 05:04 (nine years ago) link
love that album
― "trough lolly"??? (stevie), Saturday, 9 August 2014 09:59 (nine years ago) link