Watergate: The Hidden History

[Satan]

For tonight's special edition of Conversations with Great Minds - Thom is joined by Lamar Waldron. Lamar is an author and historian - and was once called "the ultimate JFK historian and examiner," by Variety Magazine's Liz Smith. His extensive and groundbreaking research has been featured in hundreds of newspapers - and was the subject of two Discovery Channel specials produced by NBC News. Lamar has appeared on CNN, The History Channel and other major television networks. He is the author of several books - including his newest, full of bombshells, Watergate: The Hidden History. June 17th marks the 40th anniversary of the Watergate burglary - and just in time for the anniversary is the arrival of an explosive new book that sheds new light on the scandal and on President Nixon.

The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann on RT TV & FSTV "live" 9pm and 11pm check www.thomhartmann.com/tv for local listings

[Satan]

[chefcraig]

And in a related story...the film All The President's Men started a lifelong fascination with journalism for me, one that I eventually attended college to do so professionally. As a result of the 40th anniversary, these guys got together for the first time in decades to share a Washington Post byline.

Woodward and Bernstein share first Washington Post byline in 36 years

By Dylan Stableford | The Cutline/YAHOO (http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/woodward-bernstein-watergate-nixon-washington-post-182257099--finance.html)

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, arguably the two most famous newspaper reporters in American history, did something on Sunday they haven't done in 36 years: They shared a byline in the Washington Post.


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Woodward and Bernstein, who are on a mini-publicity tour surrounding the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-ins, published a joint opinion essay for the Post's Outlook section about what they've learned since first reporting on the scandal: President Richard Nixon, who was forced to resign in the wake of Watergate, was "far worse than we thought."

"The Watergate that we wrote about in The Washington Post from 1972 to 1974 is not Watergate as we know it today," they wrote. "It was only a glimpse into something far worse."

Today, much more than when we first covered this story as young Washington Post reporters, an abundant record provides unambiguous answers and evidence about Watergate and its meaning. This record has expanded continuously over the decades with the transcription of hundreds of hours of Nixon's secret tapes, adding detail and context to the hearings in the Senate and House of Representatives; the trials and guilty pleas of some 40 Nixon aides and associates who went to jail; and the memoirs of Nixon and his deputies. Such documentation makes it possible to trace the president's personal dominance over a massive campaign of political espionage, sabotage and other illegal activities against his real or perceived opponents.

So what did Watergate mean? To Woodward and Bernstein, it was "Nixon's five wars":

In the course of his five-and-a-half-year presidency, beginning in 1969, Nixon launched and managed five successive and overlapping wars--against the anti-Vietnam War movement, the news media, the Democrats, the justice system and, finally, against history itself. All reflected a mind-set and a pattern of behavior that were uniquely and pervasively Nixon's: a willingness to disregard the law for political advantage, and a quest for dirt and secrets about his opponents as an organizing principle of his presidency.

Long before the Watergate break-in, gumshoeing, burglary, wiretapping and political sabotage had become a way of life in the Nixon White House.

On CBS' "Face The Nation" on Sunday, Bernstein said that the op-ed was, in part, an effort to put to rest the notion that the Nixon administration's cover-up of the Watergate scandal was worse that the crime.

"The crimes were enormous, and that's what the tapes show," Bernstein said. "But what we found is, his White House became to a remarkable extent a criminal enterprise such as we've never had in our history."

More from the op-ed:



Nixon had lost his moral authority as president. His secret tapes--and what they reveal--will probably be his most lasting legacy. On them, he is heard talking almost endlessly about what would be good for him, his place in history and, above all, his grudges, animosities and schemes for revenge. The dog that never seems to bark is any discussion of what is good and necessary for the well-being of the nation.

On the day he left, Aug. 9, 1974, Nixon gave an emotional farewell speech in the East Room to his staff, his friends and his Cabinet. His family stood with him. Near the end of his remarks, he waved his arm, as if to highlight the most important thing he had to say.

"Always remember," he said, "others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself."

His hatred had brought about his downfall. Nixon apparently grasped this insight, but it was too late. He had already destroyed himself.


In an odd footnote, CBS' Bob Schieffer admitted that he "bungled" his chance to report on Watergate.

"The weekend the Watergate break-in came to light," Schieffer wrote in a blog post, "I tried to get out of town before I got assigned to the story."

Schieffer, then a junior correspondent at CBS' Washington bureau, had just been assigned to cover the Democratic and Republican conventions in Miami, an assignment "I had dreamed of all my life."

"I had the sinking feeling that [my boss] would pull me off the conventions and assign me to the break-in, a story that made absolutely no sense to me," he wrote. "Why would anyone break into a political headquarters? What secrets could possibly be found there? That's where you kept the yard signs and such. ... Why would anyone--especially anyone as far ahead in the polls as Nixon was at that point--break in to a campaign headquarters?

"So I laid low, got on down to Miami, had a great summer, and that led to a long career covering politics here," he added. "Still, I had made the WORST mistake a reporter can make. I just ASSUMED it didn't amount to anything."

[Satan]

I suspect that Bernstein had a lot more to do with this new article than Woodward, considering Bob has come off as a bit of a BCE apologist in recent years.

[Terry]

When considering U.S. foreign policy during the Nixon years, and the disasterous results that policy had for Vietnam and Cambodia, Watergate seems like such small potatoes. Granted, the circumstances that led to Watergate are directly linked to Nixon's paranoia regarding the large scale vocal opposition towards the Vietnam conflict, and without that involvement many of the subsequent events (Ellsberg, formation of the Plumbers) that resulted in the Watergate break-in and cover-up wouldn't have happened.

I just find it odd that so many consider Nixon resigning for Watergate appropriate, yet hardly a mention is made of the wholesale bombing and killing of the Vietnamese and Cambodian peoples by the Nixon Administration.

Like, Nixon is somehow such an evil man for attempting to cover-up the Watergate break-in, yet someone like Henry Kissinger is given a pass for his role in shaping foreign policy objectives that ultimately resulted in the deaths of millions. Someone like Bill Clinton is the scum of the earth for getting a blowjob by a White House intern, yet George W. Bush intentionally leads the nation into a war in Iraq with falsified intelligence data, which results in the deaths of 100,000 + Iraquis and he is seen by many as somehow more "moral" than Clinton.

When thinking of the larger picture, Watergate seems like a bunch of piffle. Kind of along the lines of what Chomsky wrote around 1974 of indicting Al Capone and Muder Inc. for tax evasion: a crime to be sure, but hardly the point.

[Nitro Express]

What's going on now in Washington makes Watergate look like nothing. Also, it took real reporting to uncover Watergate. That doesn't exist anymore. All we have now are highly paid partisan cheerleaders. None of the dolts in news today would uncover shit.

[Nitro Express]

I think Henry Heinz Kissinger has more blood on his hands than most people know. He soon will join Nixon down in hell along with Pol Pot and Vlad the Impaler.

[Hardrock69]

There is so much blood on the hands of the Nixon administration it is pathetic.

Considering the Vietham War was a fraud perpetrated by the Office of Strategic Services and the CIA, a "war" fought with NO objective, simply to feed the coffers of the Military Industrial Complex Eisenhower tried to warn the public about, it is an absolute crime of genocide and treason. Over 55,000 U.S. servicement died in that conflict.

FOR NO VALID REASON!

I bitch about Chimpy and Dickless murdering over 4,000 of our U.S. soldiers by sending them to Iraq based on lies....that is NOT EVEN CLOSE to the toll in American lives (not to mention the hundreds of thousands of innocents in Vietnam who were needlessly slaughtered).

Nixon was fucking evil. As was Johnson.

The day he resigned, I was a paperboy in Wichita, KS. There were 2 papers....the Eagle, which was the morning paper, and the Beacon, which was the evening paper. Both printed by one newspaper.

The evening Beacon on August 8th had the largest headlines I have ever seen in my life TO THIS DAY.

THE PRESIDENT WILL RESIGN

I had been hearing nothing but all the stuff about Watergate for months.....I did not know enough about politics to form a great opinion, but I still though Nixon was an asshole.

When I got done throwing papers that evening, I knew enough to know that this was history in the making. I still had about half a dozen papers left over, so I saved them.

I have them to this day.

The following morning, the Eagle had the headline:

NIXON RESIGNS

The headline font was not as big as it had been the night before, but again, I knew these would be worth something some day, and I save my left overs.

SO......when typing the above, I went to my closet, and got out the suitcase where I keep my historical newspapers.

I have the Wichita Eagle about the Challenger space shuttle explosion, and the L.A. times newspaper from Desert Storm in 1991. Also have the Wichita Eagle announcing the first landing on Mars in 1976.

In the spirit of this thread, I took photos just now of the 2 Nixon resigning papers and, well, see for yourselves:

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