
How much we still don’t know about Watergate and the Nixon Administration - lermontov
http://daily.jstor.org/watergate-nixon-administration/
======
drblast
Anyone who would argue that restrictions on government power aren't important,
that surveillance isn't an issue, and you don't have to worry if you have
nothing to hide should review the events described here.

Even if someone isn't abusing a particular _right now_ , odds are very good
that someone will come along who will. It's much better that the power doesn't
exist in the first place.

~~~
baddox
If Watergate happened now (the parts of it that are public), I think the
majority of Americans would not be upset. I think the president could
literally say "when the president does it, it's not illegal" and the majority
of Americans (okay, maybe only the majority of Americans of the same party as
the president) wouldn't bat an eye.

~~~
e40
Breaking and entering would be viewed as "okay" by the majority of Americans?
I seriously doubt that would be the case. The reason: it's something that
normal people are put into jail for. Now, going to war on false pretenses?
They get away with that, for sure, because it's not something in the
experience of anyone but a POTUS. People can't relate. B&E people relate.

~~~
mangeletti
People here are currently ok with summarily executing suspected foreign
persons and innocent civilians with remote controlled airplanes that launch
"hellfire" missiles...

What exactly do you mean by your question?

------
nickpsecurity
Further evidence against the disinformation that the government can't keep
secrets or any horrible stuff happening right now would be leaked. I've
written counter-points to that in the past. I referenced MKULTRA's, others the
stay-behind armies (eg Gladio), and most recently programs with at least a few
hundred people where only around four (esp Snowden) talked. Others have the
information get out through third parties (esp reporters) while getting no
coverage in or smeared by media. Recently, we've seen that whistleblowing on
executive is itself treated like a crime.

So, it's clear that the more dangerous and professional of the
military/intelligence/LEO community can effectively keep secrets or do damage
control. They have plenty successes for every screwup. Dare I say that all the
people with clearances vs number of damaging leaks show their method works
well enough if only because of good people participating.

So, transparency, whistleblower protection, and strong accountability (esp w/
GAO) are absolutely essential. Further, anyone hiding information in one of
these investigations should be, if this is proven, hit with life in a harsh
prison immediately. Further, a plan of action to split the media from CIA, etc
influence needs to be formed and implemented. It will take such a strong combo
to discourage the corruption we've seen for decades.

But first Americans have to give a shit enough to act. I've seen very little
of that. The 2008 situation was a good example where Americans pay the crooks
off w/ immunity and Icelanders took back their system with prison time on top.
I'd like my country to act like a real democracy, too, which confronted with
provable abuses we've seen over past 14 years. :)

~~~
Zigurd
Heck, Crypto AG is still in business. You can get thoroughly outed in the
mainstream press and keep selling the same stuff. Amazing.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Great point lol. You might find the link below interesting, esp difference
between redactions. Crypto AG's willingness to subvert equipment isn't
debatable at this point. Courtesy of my fellow high-security engineer and
friend Clive Robinson.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33676028](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33676028)

------
DanielBMarkham
As somebody who is interested in history, the Nixon administration has always
fascinated me. The man was probably one of the most complex and dark people to
become president. Because of Watergate, his administration is also probably
the one that is most opened-up to the public (and to the historic record)

But before folks pile on to the guy (and he was widely hated), some things to
keep in mind:

1) As far as taping conversations go, Nixon did nothing new. It's known that
he simply carried on the tradition that LBJ, JFK, and Eisenhower before him
did. Whatever happened to all of those tapes?

2) Before we go praising the Pentagon, I've read reports (I apologize for not
being able to source them) that the Pentagon bugged civilian leadership. They
almost certainly keep extensive dossiers on Congressional members and anybody
in their civilian chain of command. Good luck getting eyes on any of that.

3) Nixon's problem was that he got caught doing something bad enough that
crossed a political line. Lots of folks felt that he did nothing that others
didn't do or try to do. Things like using the IRS for political hit jobs are
perennials in DC. Using spies on reporters? Please. I can go back as far as
Jefferson and show presidents using and attacking the press as they saw fit.

As the author points out, what concerns me a tremendous amount is the amount
of information we _don 't know_ about all these other administrations -- up to
and including our current one. With wholesale data collection underway against
the American public, I would be astonished if 100 years from now it isn't
widely known how many folks suffered invisibly from things far worse than
Nixon ever did. The fall of Nixon was a harbinger of leaving an age of
corrupt, small, overtly powerful presidents and entering an age of pervasive,
huge, subtly powerful presidents. (Or rather, the system itself, which
controls or is controlled by various presidents depending on their skills and
staff capabilities)

If I'm still learning what Nixon did, 40 years later, what chance in hell do I
have as a voter to make decisions about the value of any current or recent
president? The office is so controlled by the political/governmental system
and what we can know or not is so constrained, he might as well be anonymous.

~~~
bediger4000
_If I 'm still learning what Nixon did, 40 years later, what chance in hell do
I have as a voter to make decisions about the value of any current or recent
president?_

Your final point should be emphasized. Classification and secrecy make
information so asymmetric that voting becomes of only symbolic importance -
you just can't know.

------
grandalf
Likely the reason this stuff is still classified at all is because it casts
doubt on the legitimacy or appropriate conduct of the US Government.

This seems to me to be an entirely inappropriate reason for something to
remain classified decades after it occurred.

~~~
happyscrappy
Nixon was one of the worst US presidents of the modern era but is a pipsqueak
compared to some of the gnarly, currently still in power, world leaders.
America has to live up to a higher standard but the level of corruption
ongoing in many countries make his offenses look quaint.

~~~
grandalf
> make his offenses look quaint.

How do we know his offenses if the information is still mostly classified?
Perhaps they do not make others seem quaint in comparison.

~~~
bsder
Well, Nixon doesn't appear to have been running a multi-decade pedophile sex
ring, for example.

Admittedly, that's a pretty low bar.

~~~
grandalf
It is absurd to take extreme practices done by others and use them as evidence
of our own character.

------
snake_plissken
If you are up to it and want to go from Watergate day 0 to the end, in a
completely linear fashion and with excruciatingly detailed day by day coverage
of events, get a copy of "Watergate: Chronology of a Crisis". It's an
anthology of the daily reporting by Congressional Quarterly, which was a sort
of daily newspaper about the goings on about Congress.

It is a fascinating read. Watergate is one of those things that you think you
understand and then, after reading in depth about it, you realize how complex
the whole thing was. From the amount of people involved to the campaign
finance part to the lengths Nixon's administration went in trying to combat
what they perceived as threats to the nation. It's something that is often
forgotten, but many of the limits regarding campaign finance and executive
power we have (had) today stem from the aftermath of Watergate.

An interesting outcome I experienced after reading the aforementioned
anthology was the feel I got for Nixon as a person. I found myself almost
admiring him. Say what you will about his methods, and they were dubious at
best, the guy was dedicated to his principles.

~~~
jokoon
Why did they perceive it as a threat to the nation? because it gave
opportunities to the USSR ?

~~~
bkeroack
Nixon said once[1] in all seriousness: "If the president does it, that means
it's not illegal." Reminiscent of Louis XIV: "I am the state."

Anything that was a threat to the Nixon administration in their view was ipso
facto a threat to the nation.

1\.
[http://www.streetlaw.org/en/Page/722/Nixons_Views_on_Preside...](http://www.streetlaw.org/en/Page/722/Nixons_Views_on_Presidential_Power_Excerpts_from_a_1977_Interview_with_David_Frost)

~~~
kirsebaer
Nixon advisor John Ehrlichman told a journalist that the main purpose of the
War on Drugs was to attack Nixon's "enemies" and that they knew the WOD was
based on lies about drugs:

> "You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in
> 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar
> Left, and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't
> make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the
> public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and
> then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We
> could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and
> vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying
> about the drugs? Of course we did."

[http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-war-
on...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-war-on-drugs-how-
president-nixon-tied-addiction-to-crime/254319/)

~~~
curtis
That quote doesn't appear in the linked article. Did you intend to link to a
different source?

~~~
nl
It appears it was published offline, and the original source is _The Moment:
Wild, Poignant, Life-changing Stories. Edited by Larry Smith, Harper
Perennial, 2012._

See [http://waliberals.org/the-ugly-origin-of-the-war-on-
drugs/20...](http://waliberals.org/the-ugly-origin-of-the-war-on-
drugs/2012/06/21/)

There doesn't appear to be a copy of this online anywhere I can verify it.

------
idlewords
I've been greatly enjoying Rick Perlstein's Nixonland
[[http://www.amazon.com/Nixonland-Rise-President-Fracturing-
Am...](http://www.amazon.com/Nixonland-Rise-President-Fracturing-
America/dp/074324303X)], which traces the rise of modern Republicanism and is
full of interesting anecdotes about this deeply weird man. I'd recommend it to
anyone who isn't old enough to have survived Nixon firsthand.

~~~
DonHopkins
I greatly enjoy Dick:

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144168/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144168/)

~~~
vezzy-fnord
I'm disappointed this wasn't about Dick Tuck.

~~~
DonHopkins
Wow; just wow. Thank you for filling that gaping hole in my education with
Dick Tuck [1] [2]! My new short duration personal savior [2].

Speaking of favorite ShorDurPerSavs: John Gage [4], who was Sun Microsystem's
"Science Officer" and turned the Sun logo 45 degrees on its corner, had the
honor of serving his country on Nixon's enemies list [5] -- a distinguished
achievement that L. Ron Hubbard falsely claimed about himself!

"I didn't hide what I did. I never tried to be malicious. It's just the
difference between altering fortune cookies to make a candidate look funny and
altering State Department cables to make it look as if a former President were
a murderer." \--Dick Tuck on the difference between himself and Nixon's
Watergate operatives.

"The people have spoken, the bastards." \--Dick Tuck's concession speech
following his loss in the 1966 California State Senate election.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Tuck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Tuck)

[2] [http://hoaxes.org/tuck.html](http://hoaxes.org/tuck.html)

[3]
[http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/goods/shordurpersavs/X0012_...](http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/goods/shordurpersavs/X0012_ShorDurPerSav_Lesson.html)

[4] [http://www.zdnet.com/article/suns-gage-looks-
ahead/](http://www.zdnet.com/article/suns-gage-looks-ahead/)

[5]
[http://www.enemieslist.info/enemy.php?ID=463](http://www.enemieslist.info/enemy.php?ID=463)

------
mangeletti
Along this vein, for anyone interested in the conspiracy theories pertaining
Nixon (as well as Kennedy and Bush Senior), I found Dark Legacy[1] really
interesting. I don't know if any of it is true, and I've never taken the time
to research any of the facts therein (far too many), so I cannot recommend it
as information, per se, but if some of what's in there is true, then Nixon, et
al, were engaged in something much worse than just politically inspired crimes
like breaking and entering and stealing. I'd love to hear what somebody else
thinks about the movie after watching it.

1\. [http://thedarklegacy.com](http://thedarklegacy.com) is the official
website, but I watched it on Netflix

------
danielweber
How secure was that deletion of the tape? Has anyone taken 21st century
technology and tried to recover what was on it?

~~~
ams6110
We're talking about recording equipment used by the President, not an average
Dictaphone tape. It was likely erased VERY thoroughly.

~~~
srtjstjsj
We're talking about 40-year-old technology, though. Modern forensic tools are
extremely powerful.

------
walshemj
I was intrigued the editor of the Washington post was a drinking buddy of
Mother aka James Angelton and had been expelled from France

------
bmir-alum-007
De rigueur mention: recall Aaron Schwartz was charged by feds under CFAA for
spidering journals via JSTOR.

R.I.P. @aaronsw

PS: I received a stern warning as an ugrad at a UC uni for `wget -m ...`
Oracle DBMS documentation (ugh, closed payware) using an http proxy back to
the dorms, even though it still was on frick'n campus. Anyone that foists
payware on students in a university when decent open-source alternatives exist
should be hanged in the quad and left to rot.

------
williesleg
Who cares?

Still don't know anything about Benghazi either.

Point is, you can find out a lot about a person by whether or not they are
angered by Watergate or Benghazi. But in reality, it's the jobs, stupid.
Taxes. The American Dream. Get over it.

