Stratfor has a long essay about how Woodward and Bernstein — and Deep Throat, now identified as then FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt — may have brought down not just Richard Nixon, but, over the longer term, journalism itself. Stratfor maintains that Felt, part of the closed J. Edgar Hoover FBI network, saw himself as heir apparent to J Edgar. However Richard Nixon regarded Hoover’s recent death as an opportunity to purge the Bureau of Hoover’s nefarious influence once and for all, something both Kennedy and Johnson had tried to do, but without success. Nixon therefore nominated an outsider, L. Patrick Gray, as part of the purge process. But while Hoover himself was dead, his old boy network lived on. And it would defend itself through Watergate.
Felt expected to be named Hoover’s successor, but Nixon passed him over, appointing L. Patrick Gray instead. In selecting Gray, Nixon was reaching outside the FBI for the first time in the 48 years since Hoover had taken over. But while Gray was formally acting director, the Senate never confirmed him, and as an outsider, he never really took effective control of the FBI. In a practical sense, Felt was in operational control of the FBI from the break-in at the Watergate in August 1972 until June 1973.
But Stratfor argues that Felt had learned well at his master’s knee about how to defend the Bureau against outsiders and those who would seek to destroy its inner ruling circles. And the best tool was to use secrets to destroy its enemies, and the best conduit in this case, maintains Stratfor, was the Washington Post.
Instead of passing what he knew to professional prosecutors at the Justice Department — or if he did not trust them, to the House Judiciary Committee charged with investigating presidential wrongdoing — Felt chose to leak the information to The Washington Post. He bet, or knew, that Post editor Ben Bradlee would allow Woodward and Bernstein to play the role Felt had selected for them. Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee all knew who Deep Throat was. They worked with the operational head of the FBI to destroy Nixon, and then protected Felt and the FBI until Felt came forward.
In our view, Nixon was as guilty as sin of more things than were ever proven. Nevertheless, there is another side to this story. The FBI was carrying out espionage against the president of the United States, not for any later prosecution of Nixon for a specific crime (the spying had to have been going on well before the break-in), but to increase the FBI’s control over Nixon. Woodward, Bernstein and above all, Bradlee, knew what was going on. Woodward and Bernstein might have been young and naive, but Bradlee was an old Washington hand who knew exactly who Felt was, knew the FBI playbook and understood that Felt could not have played the role he did without a focused FBI operation against the president. Bradlee knew perfectly well that Woodward and Bernstein were not breaking the story, but were having it spoon-fed to them by a master. He knew that the president of the United States, guilty or not, was being destroyed by Hoover’s jilted heir.
This was enormously important news. The Washington Post decided not to report it. The story of Deep Throat was well-known, but what lurked behind the identity of Deep Throat was not. This was not a lone whistle-blower being protected by a courageous news organization; rather, it was a news organization being used by the FBI against the president, and a news organization that knew perfectly well that it was being used against the president. Protecting Deep Throat concealed not only an individual, but also the story of the FBI’s role in destroying Nixon.
The damage to Nixon is now a matter of historical record. What’s now coming to light is another tale: about the moment the Press had decided to become a political player in itself: it would not only report the news, but make the news. Stratfor believes that many problems grew from that decision which plague us to this day. If the Press doesn’t fully disclose where its information comes from and the purposes it serves even when it is aware of an underlying agenda, it can become like some of the auditors of the failed Wall Street firms; no longer outsiders but insiders. As long as the editor in chief decides to remain above the fray — to remain an outsider — then the public receives a largely impartial journalistic account. But what happens when the editors tacitly decide to take factional sides?
Absent any widespread reconsideration of the Post’s actions during Watergate in the three years since Felt’s identity became known, the press in Washington continues to serve as a conduit for leaks of secret information. They publish this information while protecting the leakers, and therefore the leakers’ motives. Rather than being a venue for the neutral reporting of events, journalism thus becomes the arena in which political power plays are executed. What appears to be enterprising journalism is in fact a symbiotic relationship between journalists and government factions.
In one of Washington’s ironies, Felt later found himself in deep legal trouble for ordering illegal searches on the Weathermen. One of the men who came to his aid was Richard Nixon. The Wikipedia entry says:
After the Church Committee revealed the FBI’s illegal activities, many agents were investigated. In 1976, former FBI Associate Director W. Mark Felt publicly stated he had ordered break-ins and that individual agents were merely obeying orders and should not be punished for it. Felt also stated that acting Director L. Patrick Gray had also authorized the break-ins, but Gray denied this…
Felt and Miller attempted to plea bargain with the government, willing to agree to a misdemeanor guilty plea to conducting searches without warrants—a violation of 18 U.S.C. sec. 2236—but the government rejected the offer in 1979. After eight postponements, the case against Felt and Miller went to trial in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on September 18, 1980. On October 29, former President Richard M. Nixon appeared as a rebuttal witness for the defense, and testified that presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt had authorized the bureau to engage in break-ins while conducting foreign intelligence and counterespionage investigations. It was Nixon’s first courtroom appearance since his resignation in 1974. Nixon also contributed money to Felt’s legal defense fund, Felt’s expenses running over $600,000.
When Ronald Reagan pardoned Felt, Nixon apparently sent him a bottle of champagne. But ironies aside, the entire episode illustrates the ways in which subsequent information changes our understanding of history. The sheep and the goats change places, not once but several times as new data becomes available. What will Woodward and Bernstein be remembered by posterity for? Will it be for unmasking All the President’s Men or facilitating Jimmy Carter’s rise to power?
Patrick Buchannon opines on WND.com;
“After exposure as Deep Throat, Felt wrote in a 2006 memoir, “The bottom line is that we did get the whole truth out, but isn’t that what the FBI is suppose to do?”
No, Mr. Felt, that is not what the FBI is supposed to do.
Do we really want, here in America, our premier investigative and police agency to get the truth out that it decides to get out?
Would it have been right for Hoover to get the “whole truth out” on JFK’s liaisons with suspected German spies, Mafia molls and Marilyn Monroe, and destroy his presidency? Would it have been right for the FBI to get the “whole truth out” of Hoover’s secret files, and ruin all the public careers the FBI could have destroyed?
Isn’t that what the old KGB did to its enemies?
”
This crap throwing episode has taken root in our corrupt government and has been held up by communist sympathizing lefties ever since. The last decade of Bush has been ruined by the CIA and sullied by even the NSA… off with all thier heads.
Richard Nixon’s personal demons were real and his administration laid the foundations for the entrenched socialist control of the economy far more than LBJ’s ad hoc War on Poverty. The Nixon haters and self serving bureaucrats like Felt were uniformly bad people doing bad things for bad motives.
The Republic is a living thing that needs to be nurtured, not an inherited plaything to be consumed. Nixon was flawed but he was attempting to serve interests larger than himself. He genuinely believed in the Constitution and the rights and safety of the demonstrators on the Mall. His enemies who are Bush’s enemies do not care for anything except themselves and a few have outside loyalties to adolescent dreams of Socialism or Greenism.
I am utterly convinced that Richard Nixon would have been protected by the “elites” if he were a Democrat. A couple of underlings would have been permitted to cop a plea, spend a few years in prison, and life within the White House would have gone back to normal. Never forget that Ben Bradlee was not only a close friend to “Jack” Kennedy—he was also his biographer. President Nixon was a flawed individual, but his greatest fault was belonging to the GOP.
I would also advise anyone viewing “All the President’s Men” to realize that Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman were too old to play the parts of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein! They were roughly 34-35 years old while the real life reporters were about 27-28 during the Watergate crisis. In other words, the well known duo were just wet-nose kids who would not have dared to upset the Democratic Party establishment. Moreover, Bernstein was the son of a radical Communist. We can take pretty much for granted that he personally held Nixon in contempt.
Between Bob Woodward and John Kerry it was a bad time for the US Navy.
An untold story of the McCarthy period was that Katherine Graham’s husband Phil was one of only two people outside of the intelligence community and Hoover–who were told about the Venona cables. Judging by his wife Katherine’s consternation over his support for Eisenhower–its not clear she was told about Venona.
The great sad thing is that the Venona business may have been instrumental in the split up of their marriage and Phil’s eventual suicide.
An untold story of the McCarthy period was that Katherine Graham’s husband Phil was one of only two people outside of the intelligence community and Hoover–who were told about the Venona cables. Judging by his wife Katherine’s consternation over his support for Eisenhower–its not clear she was told about Venona. Their joint control of the Washington Post during the 1950′s turned into a civil war for control of the Post by 1961. Phil lost.
The great sad thing is that the Venona business may have been instrumental in the split up of their marriage and Phil’s eventual suicide.
“He bet, or knew, that Post editor Ben Bradlee would allow Woodward and Bernstein to play the role” of useful idiots.
I hate, loathe and despise the practice of old-time, establishment reporters using unnamed sources in their stories. Any credibility that might be there is totally shot, the moment that ‘unnamed’ or ‘highly-placed’ sources are quoted as having something relevant to say about some development or other. Sy Hersh has raised this to a fine art, but at this point, whenever I hear such being quoted, I wonder what the bureaucratic angle is.
I’m sorry, but at this point, the major Washington media has about zilch credibility with me. It’s pretty well accepted at this point that J. Edgar only held on so long because he had a dossier on practically everyone of importance. The fact that the Washington Post was willing to serve as the conduit to the larger world…
Really, does the mainstream press retain any reason to hold them in respect at this point?
LOTHM: Could you elaborate on your notion that Nixon further “entrenched socialism” in this Country? Are you talking about the price control business? Seems like an odd thesis to me as he was hardly the first to do so, and is pretty much backfired on him. How did this “entrench socialism”? Seems more of a cautionary tale to me. (if this price control business is what you refer to.)
I do not recall the mainstream GOP complaining much about it at the time.
It is quite a stretch to call Nixon pro-socialist. He was a staunch Cold Warrior and helped the cause much. Note also, those who say that this was a “peacetime” wage and price control measure are playing with words for we were quite at war at the time, even if neither the cold war or the Viet Nam war were “declared wars”.
It is bizarre to claim that LBJ did less to “lay the foundations of socialism” than Nixon, and the ” War on Poverty” was only one of LBJ’s programs.
No, it was LBJ (the so called “FDR’s 5th term”) that opened the floodgates. This is certainly what Reagan believed, and it is true.
Nixon did wonders in Viet Nam and if he would have not been torpedoed by the Dems on this issue, things would have worked out much differently.
Also, I really doubt that Nixon had any more “demons” (whatever that means) than anyone else that held the office. Certainly he had remarkable less “demons” than FDR, JFK, or Clinton. Carter rather turned out to be a sort of demon in and of himself. Nixon certainly did not betray national security, give away national treasure nor cheat on his wife while in the office.
This “Nixon’s Demons” business is mostly a MSM myth propagated by the usual suspects for the the usual reasons. We heard the same thing about Reagan and most particularly about GWB. Nixon’s Chief demons were (and are) “the usual suspects” and nothing more than that.
Nixon’s great sins where 1) Being a Republican; 2) Being a conservative; 3) Being a staunch cold warrior (particularly in going after Hiss); 4) Being from outside the old pre-war establishment; and 5) Being more intelligent than anyone else in Washington.
It might be his chief sin was that he was not part of the old WASP gentlemen network nor from the New Deal intellectual mafia. He came from the lower orders and made his own way.
He was from the new sunbelt boys that “made it on their own” during WW2 and shortly thereafter. This was the emerging political order: The sunbelt entrepreneurs of the WW2/Cold War efforts and the working and middle classes that benefited from them and worked for them. The old guard of both parties — the country club “gentlemen” — did not like them (or him) much as they substantially challenged the old order. He was certainly more conservative than any other post war president up to Reagan. He was much more conservative than Ike. Remember that the GOP was hardly a conservative party until Reagan came in.
….
I am of the opinion that Nixon did substantially less mischief than Democrats administrations ever did. And he did the honorable thing too. I would wager that 30 years from now Nixon will be viewed much more differently than he is now.
(I also wonder if the democrats could have really have forced him out if there were alternate media back then such as blogs.)
No right thinking American should be happy about how Nixon was treated. The left, the democrats and the MSM would do this to any successful Republican or conservative.
My goodness, the shenanigans under FDR? (Talk about using the FBI/Hoover to go after people. FDR made Hoover who he was.) Truman and the Pendergast Gang? The Joe Kennedy machine? (and do not forget how the Chicago Daley machine came through for Papa Joe, JFK) LBJ? The Clintons? And then there is Obama…
Really, if the true history of these people ever actually got out Nixon’s place in history would change a great deal. This might yet happen some day.
The conclusion to Edward Jay Epstein’s 1974 article in Commentary in which he points out the speculation that Felt was Deep Throat:
“Perhaps the most perplexing mystery in Bernstein and Woodward’s book is why they fail to understand the role of the institutions and investigators who were supplying them and other reporters with leaks. This blind spot, endemic to journalists, proceeds from an unwillingness to see the complexity of bureaucratic in-fighting and of politics within the government itself. If the government is considered monolithic, journalists can report its activities, in simply comprehended and coherent terms, as an adversary out of touch with popular sentiments. On the other hand, if governmental activity is viewed as the product of diverse and competing agencies, all with different bases of power and interests, journalism becomes a much more difficult affair.
“In any event. the fact remains that it was not the press, which exposed Watergate; it was agencies of government itself. So long as journalists maintain their blind spot toward the inner conflicts and workings of the institution, of government, they will no doubt continue to peak of Watergate in terms of the David and Goliath myth, with Bernstein and Woodward as David and the government as Goliath.
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/watergate.htm
Didn’t Nixon start the EPA, OSHA and a number of other regulatory agencies that while no doubt doing some good put the screws on business also?
His withdrawal from Viet Nam was measured and masterful. If only the 1974 Red Dem class hadn’t
sold out the South, the war would have been won.
Very OT, but if that works out, who knows… maybe we can leave this sorry place to libs and go elsewhere… or vice versa–they can create their fascist paradise at Proxima Centauri.
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/09/chinese-buildin.html
Are things worse now or do we just have more ways of finding out? The press covered for FDR’s role in Pearl Harbor, JFK’s honeys, etc and they’re probably doing it now.
In about 1960 my best friend had a summer job at the local paper. One day over the AP/UPI wire came a picture of Senator Long (Russell?), drunk, urinating into a potted palm in a hotel lobby. It went all over the country.
When he asked how they could print something like that he was told no chance of it, not even a hint. It was just for the in-group entertainment of the press.
But it’s true: after Watergate/Deep Throat the press went from being watch dogs(if they ever were) to attack dogs. Only now they’ve got competition–good riddance.
OTOH, re Proxima… the further they’ll go, the better!
Stratfor writes:
In our view, Nixon was as guilty as sin of more things than were ever proven. Nevertheless, there is another side to this story. The FBI was carrying out espionage against the president of the United States, not for any later prosecution of Nixon for a specific crime (the spying had to have been going on well before the break-in), but to increase the FBI’s control over Nixon.
programmer opines:
If control was the goal, it didn’t seem to work out as planned.
Just as the North won the Civil War, but many of the Southern revisionists were able to write persuasively to “revise” the historical perception, so too, the media of this era always has Dick Nixon to kick around when they want to make a point.
Hence the film “Frost/Nixon” is meant as an allegorical attack on GWB (as is “Valkyrie”), because Nixon is good and dead and can’t defend himself. The “golden boy”, John Dean, still gets mugshots and promos occasionally on the talking head shows, as he has insinuated himself into the Media narrative of the “evil” Nixon. Perhaps only G. Gordon Liddy remains to speak for Nixon, and he has in some ways marginalized himself, and his audience is limited (although he is worth listening to on this subject).
“Useful idiots” is a term frequently misused, but in this case it almost exactly describes Woodward and Berstein. Woodward, a mediocrity elevated far above his abilities, has continued to produce a raft of trash and dis-information, living off the fame from those days. Who is there to question the great Woodward these days? Felt is dead and cannot recant, even if he wanted to.
If a thorough re-examination of the history is ever to take place, it would either have to be a work of scholarship from another country, or come from the alternative media. When the myth has become so strong that the foundations of big media outlets are founded on it, they will never renounce it themselves.
Richard Nixon’s mother was audited for the first three years of the Kennedy administration by the IRS, even though her net worth was a paltry amount. Why?
Kennedy bugged the Lincoln bedroom (Johnson showed that one to Nixon). Why?
LBJ had the FBI bug and listen in on a whole raft of political rivals. Why?
Hoover allegedly had 110 lineal feet of files; personal “intelligence” information at his house upon his death. Who knows who got a hold of all that information?
They all enjoyed and expounded on the executive necessities of the office, just as Clinton started Echelon and rendition, yet GWB has faced the criticism of it (even after 9/11).
Whenever someone starts to say how the Mainstream Media is dead, I really wonder if we know just how far their reach really is?
When an institution or agent within our country becomes its adversary, isn’t it time to wonder whether the fine Machiavellian hand of a competing nation is somehow wielding its influence?
As for Nixon, my recollection is that he suborned or sponsored a host of unconstitutional practices, perhaps not socialistic, but certainly pernicious. OSHA was one of the bad ones. He also abandoned the gold standard, and I think his approach to China was not without self-interest. It may be naive to think that he didn’t give up some useful information.
Huzzahs for Wretchard and his retinue. This is education and entertainment that causes a smile even in these grim times.
Watergate was a coup d’etat. Woodward and Bernstein became the heroes that all the journos wanted to grow up to be. But they were chumps. I never did like those guys. Even as a teenager the jackals pulling down Nixon failed to impress me.
Consider some alternate history. What would 2008 be like had Nixon served out his second term? Saigon wouldn’t have fallen. No Killing Fields of Cambodia. No Jimmy Carter. Maybe no Ronald Reagan, either. No two decade recovery from defeat. No Powell Doctrine. No Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. No Osama bin Laden. No Al Qaeda. Thanks, Main Stream Media. I hope when the Washington Post dies they leave some headstone or monument upon which I can gleefully void my bladder.
The actions of Bradlee and friends are revolting but frankly not too surprising: The story simply confirms everything we’ve come to believe about the Left.
Nixon:
To quote from wiki,
1) Built the White House Press room over FDR’s swimming pool
2) Deficit spending
3) EPA, hello Al Gore and the thin edge of the wedge
4) OSHA, another full employment for lawyers act.
5) Wage and Price Controls, did anyone happen to see the Constitution around here?
6) Affirmative Action as Federal Policy, the 14th Amendment means whatever Humpty Dumpty says it means.
7) Pay rates for bureaucrats increased dramatically; once that cat is out good luck catching it.
9) Also from the wiki,
Dammit I closed that blockquote and set the font size at -2 in the quotes.
My gripes about the WordPress template here and lack of preview tools etc. remain.
Perhaps we need to revisit the effect of J. Edgar Hoover’s institutional legacy upon American democracy.
If there is to be any real healing of the wounds of Watergate (and they have lingered for a long time), perhaps it can come from recognizing the pernicious nature of J. Edgar Hoover’s power in American politics. Given how the very act of recognizing Martin Luther King Day as a national holiday implicitly turns J. Edgar Hoover into a national villain, opposition to the FBI’s self-appointed role as America’s Praetorian Guard is something around which people from Right, Left, and Center ought to find common ground.
I am concerned that J. Edgar Hoover’s institutional legacy is so thoroughly entrenched not only within the FBI but increasingly within the greater Washington culture that some means may be necessary to isolate and quarantine the FBI’s bureaucratic power.
Richard Nixon was guilty of many sins, but attempting to assert civilian control over the FBI was not one of them. His courage in opposing the FBI’s top brass ought to be remembered.
Excellent post with important information that remains not a part of the conventionally received narrative of Watergate.
I believe that if (I doubt it will ever) everything would ever become fully known about the Clinton presidency, he would make Nixon look like a piker – Nixon operated from a dearth of charisma, to his disadvantage; Clinton seemed to have it in spades.
Further, this Watergate story has echoes, I think, in the “Valerie Plame Affair”, something I still don’t understand (ok, so Dick Cheney, see, after engineering an invasion of a sovereign country to help his oil buddies, destroys this intelligence agent by….hoping she loses her job?)
LOFTM: Nixon was hardly in a position to fight with Congress over OSHA and the EPA. The push at that time was to nationalize workman’s compensation, and other labor issues, and to completely end run capitalism altogether. He had little control over the Dept. of Labor or the old Labor Standard Board, and not much control over appointments at the new OSHA or EPA administrations. It was a compromise between market forces and more intense socialist policies. BTW, included in that compromise was support for Viet Nam, support which the Democrats reneged on. The GOP could at best fight a read-guard action here, and the complete idocy of the old mainstream Republican was not much help, to say the least. He certainly did not invented federal labor institutions’
Nixon must be taken in the context of the times.
FDR pool? This is irrelevant as far as socialism goes, and it is a very odd comment. Frankly, I am glad he did.
Wage and price controls: Plenty of historical precedent for that. The unwinding of wage and price controls took some time after WW2 – it was not instantaneous. Remember that in a very real sense we were at war. In any event, they were not repeated and show to be in effective. So as I said before, this is hardly “entrenching socialism”.
Same for affirmative action. For heaven’s sake we had just come from a decade where we had race riots in the streets — whole parts of major cities were in flames fire in fact — and the whole MLK business. Given what was on his plate, taking the opposite stance would have been a disaster for Nixon, and he would have lost that battle anyway. Again, a compromise. In any event, the GOP was leader in “Civil Rights” legislation throughout the period. Nixon was certainly not “innovating” here.
Nixon was trying to salvage a disaster in Viet Nam along with pursuing a broad contest in the Cold War, and by that time the Democrats had gone thoroughly over to the dark side. You had McGovern out there for Pete’s sake. At the time the New Deal/Wallace/McGovern “fellow traveler” factions, the Union factions and the “soft socialist” factions of the Democrat party were in the ascendant. The Truman/Scoop Jackson wing was in apparent and real decline.
Toss on some real financial problems brought on in part by the JFK and LBJ years and in part by normal business cycles and his back was against the wall. We should be thankful that he was there as another Democrat Administration that was to the Left of LBJ would have been a disaster, particular as regards the Cold War — we well might have lost it.
There was not this board conservative movement in this country then, one has to remember that.
The GOP would never had gotten elected to any office had they stood in the way of affirmative action and much else. This is the genius of Reagan: He built up that coalition and turned the Reagan Democrats against the the Hard Left Dems. The Reagan Democrats were strongly pro-union, do not forget that. The country was not ready for conservatism back then, at least not overt conservatism,, and it is doubtful that anyone but Reagan could have pulled off what Reagan managed to do when his time came. Look at what happened to Goldwater. At the time, anyone that espoused true conservative positions was ridiculed broadly as a paranoid “Bircher”. The GOP was dominated by the Country club and “Rockefeller Republicans” wings of the GOP and they held the Conservatives in contempt (they had little love for Nixon either, BTW). I will point out that GWB has faced many of the same political issues and factions as Nixon did, or at least inherited the remnants of the sources of Nixon’s political travails.
Up until Reagan we were not really this “right of center nation” — we can only be seen as such by comparison to Europe.
If he had not attempted to compromise, things would have been much worse. LBJ’s programs where met with broad acclaim in this country.
So one has to take Nixon in context. This is one of the reasons Conservative is failing in this Nations, conservatives do not want to use the same real politic incrementalism that the Left has mastered.
The Cold war was a close run thing, and rthe Democrats were just as treacherous and a treasonous back then as they are being today with the WOT. Nixon did the best that he could.
It is absurd to lay the blame on creeeping socialism on Nixon, The obvious culprit is the Democratic party and their minions in the MSM, academia, NGO’s, international institutions and the Unions. Nothing could be more Obvious.
old mainstream Republican was= old mainstream Republicans were.
Waco and Ruby Ridge show that the FBI has not abandoned its Praetorian Guard/Gestapo outlook. FBI agents took the fifth when called before Congress. Nothing short of public executions will bring those mad dogs to heel.
In order to understand Watergate it’s necessary to read two books:
Will, (latest edition) by G. Gordon Liddy, and
Silent Coup, by by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin
After reading those two books you’ll realize everything you’ve been told about Watergate are left-wing lies.
The FBI is supposed to be the Federal bureau that does investigations. The Nixon Administration secretly established its “Plumbers Unit” to investigate leaks of secret information. The FBI leadership that learned about the Plumbers Unit might have perceived it to be a violation of the FBI’s own presumed investigative monopoly. That might have been a major part of Felt’s motivation to expose and ruin the Plumbers Unit.
Felt’s personal resentment about being passed over for the FBI Director position probably was a major motivation too.
Count me as one of those people who agrees with the thesis of the book Silent Coup.
Beyond staging silent coups, a particularly unhealthy feature of the political symbiosis between the press and the FBI is that it dissipates focus away from the real problems. During the mid-1980′s (Wm. Webster’s directorship), I was going to my university office early on a Sunday morning. The streets were nearly empty. At a traffic light, I stopped behind a car occupied by four men. As the light was changing, one of them pointed a camera at a large bank building on the nearby corner. I then noticed that the men appeared to be Middle Eastern, probably Iranian, so I dropped back and followed from a distance. When they turned on to campus, I got closer and saw the camera come up again at the ROTC building. I jotted down the plate number and went to my office to phone the FBI. I got a young agent in the New Orleans office, but he was completely uninterested. He told me that photographing buildings was not illegal and he did not want the plate number, though I read it to him anyway. This was well after the embassy and Marine barrack bombings in Lebanon and, of course, after the embassy seizure in Iran. But the perfumed princes atop the FBI weren’t interested in who was scouting targets in the homeland. 9/11 was inevitable given an FBI leadership focused on politics not policing.
Nixon had a conscience and a moral code. When he was caught he resigned.
Did Clinton? If not, why not?
We can blame this all on some demonic influence of the Democrat party, or we can accept it at face value that some leaders suck and represent the morals of the voters.
Nixon lied and resigned. Clinton lied until it became normal. That really represents the generational power shift from the busters to the boomers.
Now what shall we make of Obama? Time will tell.
The real story of Watergate was not told in All the Presdient’s Men but in a book that came out years later, Silent Coup.
In reality the break in was done because RNC employee James Dean was trying to obtain a list of hookers the DNC had, a list which included his girlfriend. He knew that his ambitions were over if the DNC found out who was on that list and so concocted a scheme to steal the it.
When Silent Coup came out Woodward, Berstein, and the Washington Post sued the publisher and authors. Their legacy was being attacked and they wanted it stopped.
Don’t we think that the WaPost and the NY Times have done exactly the same sort of covert operation against Bush as they did against Nixon, complete with leaks from the State Department, the Pentagon *and* the CIA in addition to the CIA?
The difference is that this time around, the press and the bureaucrats were *not* able to de-throne an elected sitting president, and there’s a very good possibility that those good members of the press who were involved in the effort over the past four years will not be around for the next election cycle.
We have the internet to thank for that, I think, because from what I can see Bush wasn’t good at all at protecting his flanks from the nipping in-house wolves.
The problem now remains the same problem as back in Nixon’s time: an entrenched bureaucracy that makes up its own policy based on perks, promotions and territoriality and not what’s best for the country. And you know the current President elect is *not* going to go out of his way to rock that particular change canoe.
Is there any way the army of Davids that make up the internet can take on and defeat the entrenched Goliaths that make up the FBI, the CIA and the State Department?
Is there any way the army of Davids that make up the internet can take on and defeat the entrenched Goliaths that make up the FBI, the CIA and the State Department?
No. Bush had the opportunity to clean the muck out of all those stables, but he didn’t. The legions of Left-wingers that the Clintons installed remained where they were. Even when they colluded with the press to bring positive harm to the country — and numerous times, not just once — the Bush team did nothing. The press wasn’t charged with anything. Nobody inside any agency was charged with anything. Nothing was done.
The Bush team should have gone after them hammer and tongs and left no stone unturned. People should have gone to prison. Some, likely, should have gotten their last cigarette and a blindfold. Yet Bush didn’t even seem to get angry about it.
Obama will further consolidate the Left in these organizations.
peterike;”No. Bush had the opportunity to clean the muck out of all those stables, but he didn’t.”
See how well that worked out for Porter Goss. The muck has a history of resorting to extra-legal methods when their empire is at stake. Even if it means devouring their own.
You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down.
Not having commented here in days, I find that comment somewhat perplexing.
I also am perplexed as to where my original comment disappeared to. It was relevant and succinct, but unfortunately has disappeared into the aether. Oh well. Merry Christmas, all.
I got one of those “posting too quickly” notices, too, before I even hit the first send key. I think the FBI has hooked up to this thread and is tracing our ISP’s back to send the black helicopters out after us.
The Post had a choice between helping Nixon get the FBI and helping the FBI get Nixon.
But, we do not know what the FBI had on the Post.
We do know that the FBI has illegally been bugging people and tailing them since before J. Edgar went after Martin Luther King.
We also know, now, that J. Edgar had odd tastes in cross-dressing and other personal peculiarities that the Russians might have found of interest in a blackmail sort of way.
We have never, ever, seen any of the dinosaur media go after the FBI for *their* illegal bugging and surveillance in the same way they’ve gone after Bush and the NSA the past few years, nor have we ever seen them dog Hoover or his other old boys the way the media have set up and pilloried people like Libby.
I’m just wondering to myself now what will happen when Hillary gets to State. I can’t see her allowing the same sort of brain meld done to her that Condoleeza Rice accepted, but on the other hand, Hillary is *such* an inner old-Washingtonian I don’t see her cleaning out that cesspond either. My guess is that she’ll bring in a few of her own trusted right-hand people and set up an inner fiefdom which excludes all the lifer bureaucrats as much as possible.
Be fun if she’d take it seriously and set say, Bill (who is a VERY clever little devil when he puts his mind to it) the task of outing the more traitorous of them.
I would add “Secret Agenda” by Jim Hougan to the books as it covers some angles to the Watergate story that aren’t in the others.
I’d add only that journalists are notoriously undereducated.