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How much we still don’t know about Watergate and the Nixon Administration
- idlewords 11y agoI've been greatly enjoying Rick Perlstein's Nixonland [http://www.amazon.com/Nixonland-Rise-President-Fracturing-America/dp/074324303X http://www.amazon.com/Nixonland-Rise-President-Fracturing-Am...], 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 11y agoI greatly enjoy Dick: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144168/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144168/
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoI'm disappointed this wasn't about Dick Tuck.
- DonHopkins 11y agoWow; 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_ShorDurPerSav_Lesson.html http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/goods/shordurpersavs/X0012_... [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
- freehunter 11y agoI'm too young to know Nixon and I've read Nixonland at the suggestion of someone who is old enough to remember him. Very interesting read, not just about Nixon but about the Republican party as you mentioned. Not nearly as dry as I had feared.
- grandalf 11y agoLikely 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.
- stephengillie 11y agoThis is a form of corruption. It's power being used solely for the benefit of the one who held power, and it (minimally) damages the rest of us.
- happyscrappy 11y agoNixon 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 11y ago> 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 11y agoWell, Nixon doesn't appear to have been running a multi-decade pedophile sex ring, for example. Admittedly, that's a pretty low bar.
- grandalf 11y agoIt is absurd to take extreme practices done by others and use them as evidence of our own character.
- happyscrappy 11y agoMaybe he poisoned people with Polonium and stole billions but it seems unlikely.
- snake_plissken 11y agoIf 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 11y agoWhy did they perceive it as a threat to the nation? because it gave opportunities to the USSR ?
- bkeroack 11y agoNixon 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_Presidential_Power_Excerpts_from_a_1977_Interview_with_David_Frost http://www.streetlaw.org/en/Page/722/Nixons_Views_on_Preside...
- kirsebaer 11y agoNixon 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-drugs-how-president-nixon-tied-addiction-to-crime/254319/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-war-on...
- walshemj 11y agoI was intrigued the editor of the Washington post was a drinking buddy of Mother aka James Angelton and had been expelled from France
- drblast 11y agoAnyone 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.
- InclinedPlane 11y agoThis is literally the founding principle of the United States, it's infuriating how much people have lost touch with these important ideas. Power can easily be abused, the only reliable way to prevent the worst abuses is to keep that power in check. Because otherwise it's just a matter of time and bad luck until someone willing to abuse that power gets hold of it.
- joelrunyon 11y agoLupe Fiasco had a great comment on this when he was on the Colbert Report > I always criticize power… Even if you agree with it, you should always criticize power. Unfortunately, people buy into team politics and split up against each other rather than understanding the system in play. [1] http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/d8bi6b/lupe-fiasco http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/d8bi6b/lupe-fiasco
- baddox 11y agoIf 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 11y agoBreaking 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.
- DanielBMarkham 11y agoAs 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.
- michaelhoffman 11y ago> 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? http://millercenter.org/presidentialrecordings/johnson http://millercenter.org/presidentialrecordings/johnson http://millercenter.org/presidentialrecordings/kennedy http://millercenter.org/presidentialrecordings/kennedy http://millercenter.org/presidentialrecordings/eisenhower http://millercenter.org/presidentialrecordings/eisenhower
- danielweber 11y agoHow secure was that deletion of the tape? Has anyone taken 21st century technology and tried to recover what was on it?
- larrys 11y agoA good question but keep in mind that in addition to the deletion it is a tape that is about 42 years old as well and has further degraded.
- xefer 11y agoI remember reading about a concerted effort several years ago to try to recover the lost tape: http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/10.07/nixon_pr.html http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/10.07/nixon_pr.html But the last I heard, they were not able to get anything useful.
- InclinedPlane 11y agoThey were not able to actually obtain enough access to the tape to do anything useful.
- scott_karana 11y agoThat's a fantastic question. If we can use electron microscopes to recover trace data from hard drive platters, how much harder could magnetic tape be?
- Zigurd 11y agoI have not heard of a documented case of erased/overwritten data recovered from a hard drive. I have read articles, like this one, debunking the idea: http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/overwritten-data-guttman.html http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/overwritten-data-guttman.html This is not to say it's the same as recovering audio from analog tape.
- scott_karana 11y ago
- nickpsecurity 11y agoFurther 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 11y agoHeck, Crypto AG is still in business. You can get thoroughly outed in the mainstream press and keep selling the same stuff. Amazing.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoGreat 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
- williesleg 11y agoWho 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.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mangeletti 11y agoAlong 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
- bmir-alum-007 11y agoDe 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.