Why did Nixon order Watergate in the first place?

Well, recent investigations even seem to suggest that Nixon -- no object of sympathy to most of us -- may have actually been set up.

For decades I would have scoffed at this. But that's exactly why Tricky Dicky would have made a plausible patsy.

We think of Nixon as totally corrupt and a rightwinger, but once he got into office, he started doing things which made the establishment who'd put him there nervous: considering rolling back the lucrative oil depletion allowance, pushing pro-environmental policies, opening up China -- all sorts of things the rightwing hated -- to help establish a populist legacy which always makes you look better in the history books.

Not so fast, Richard...

Read "Family of Secrets" by Russ Baker, what some have called "one of the most important books of the last 10 years." It certainly shows the Bush family to have cast a long and malevolent shadow over the last half century (at least) of American politics in a way never suspected by those of us who once saw Bush41 as an affable goof and Bush43 as an arrogant goof.

Time to recalibrate. Even Nixon, of all people, can be a semi-victim.

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Non-sequiturs are delicious.

People should google "The Business Plot FDR Prescott Bush" regarding the 1934 plan to overthrow the gov't (and possibly assassinate FDR) using a respected general to do it.

The intent was to install a Hitlerian-style fascist government in America.

It failed when that general, Smedley Butler, went public with it, saying he was "tired of being a gangster for capitalism." (He had helped overthrow many democratically elected governments in small countries who were resistant to American corporate influence during the '20s).

The press media, already controlled by big business even then, ridiculed Butler and his story, but Roosevelt and the congress took it quite seriously and held public hearings... Nothing was really done because the plot involved some of the biggest families and corporations in America. But 30 years later, the "ancient work" may have been completed when Kennedy died with some of the same shadowy interests possibly involved.

Sound ridiculous? Probably, since 99% of the population has ever even heard of THe Business Plot even after 80 years.

But it's quite checkable.

The point being: as cartoonishly corrupt as Nixon was, there's always somebody bigger and badder and richer and more clandestine. And they have numerous ways to take down the Commander and Chief.

They've done it before and they'll do it again.

Political party has little to do with it.

And the CIA didn't really work for Kennedy nor Nixon, but for Big Money. As it does today.


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Non-sequiturs are delicious.

Again, that's the traditional take on Watergate.

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LBJ's mistress on JFK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXeutDmuRA

The book by Victor Lasky (who wrote a series of anti-liberal, anti-Democrat books) was written in 1975-76 and is mainly a compilation of the various illegal and unethical and unflattering acts committed by FDR, JFK, and LBJ. There is a little bit about Watergate but not much, and what little there is, is difficult to understand. I think Lasky was frankly struggling to figure out how to present Nixon's Watergate transcripts in the most appealing light.

The book by Colodny/Gettlin is interesting for a lot of reasons. It appears to have been originally conceived as an attack on Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. But once it finally got into print in 1991, it covered 4 main areas:
1. Accusing Alexander Haig (Nixon's chief of staff from May 1973 to August 1974) of being "Deep Throat";
2. Accusing John Dean of having given the original "order" to break into the Watergate complex in the first place;
3. An autopsy of the "Moorer/Radford Affair", which involved an ongoing effort by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to monitor the communications between Nixon and Kissinger; and
4. An explanation of what specific information the original 5 Watergate burglars were looking for in May/June 1972.

The bit about Haig-as-Deep-Throat was highly controversial when the book was published and -- according to Monica Crowley -- Nixon himself did not believe that was true. Nearly a quarter of a century later, I don't think anyone really believes Haig was Deep Throat anymore. The overwhelming consensus is that it was Mark Felt of the FBI. Ironically, John Dean himself had written a book ("Lost Honor") in 1982 that also accused Haig of being Deep Throat.

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I have read a lot the available White House transcripts, and a lot of the books about Watergate. I have yet to come across any statements by Nixon, Haldeman, Mitchell, Colson, or Ehrlichman, that would indicate any of them had prior knowledge of the Watergate break-in. Honestly, I don't believe that any of them did have prior knowledge of it. But unless/until we can hear the contents of the famous "18-and-a-half minute gap" on the tape of 20 June 1972 (a conversation between Nixon and Haldeman), I hesitate to say for sure.

I have heard of "Chasing Shadows" and I'd like to read it. I agree that the book's topic -- examining the role of Nixon (+ his supporters, and other people) vis-a-vis the authorities in Saigon and the ongoing negotiations in 1968 between the Johnson Administration and Ho Chi Minh's representatives in Paris -- is a crucial subject, worthy of close study. That said, the South Vietnamese already knew that Nixon was more "hawkish" than Humphrey. They didn't need Anna Chennault or anyone else to explain that to them.

It does seem as if that point is almost ignored -- or some people assume that because he was president, that Nixon was the one running all the intelligence puzzle. And of course he wasn't.

Not to defend Nixon, of course. But Kennedy's problem with the intelligence community came from the fact it was setting policy and acting autonomously. There's no reason to assume that this wasn't still true when Nixon was in the oval office (even if he gave them less hassle).



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LBJ's mistress on JFK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXeutDmuRA

Deep Throat's exact line in the film:

DEEP THROAT: The cover-up had little to do with Watergate; it was mainly to protect
the covert operations.

Good info, Murph. Thank you for the detail.

I admit that Watergate has always been peripheral in my interests and I have only listened to it on the fringes. Nixon got caught, was forced to resign by the Republicans, and would have been impeached and convicted had he not resigned. That's pretty much the end of the story for me. I am grateful that others have had enough in the details of the history to keep us honest with ourselves.


The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.