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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTapes reveal that George HW Bush obstructed justice on behalf of Spiro Agnew in 1973.
Nixon and Haig are devising this plan, in secret, to interfere with this ongoing investigation. They then start putting this plan into action.
But the middle man they end up using-- the guy who they drag into this obstruction scheme-- ultimately isnt Mel Laird. Who they end up using for this obstruction effort is the Chairman of the Republican National Committee at the time. A man by the name of... George Herbert Walker Bush.
The future President of the United States-- George Bush-- gets enlisted in this effort to reach out to Senator Glenn Beall to have him pressure his brother to shutdown this investigation.
Listen to this phone call between Richard Nixon and Al Haig.
The audio here is a little bit distorted, but the first voice here is Nixon and hes talking to Haig about enemies of the White House who are now going after everybody:
NIXON: Its amazing, isnt it? By golly, the way they start to go after everybody, dont they?
HAIG: Yeah, theyre after everybody. And the Vice President has been very nervous, he called me three times here.
NIXON: I know and you decided to have Harlow try to, well hes isnt here
HAIG: He isnt here, so I did it through George Bush on the first run
.
This didnt ever stick to George HW Bush... maybe because these audio tapes have just been collecting dust for the last four decades. But George Bush was brought in to a potentially criminal effort organized and directed by the then-President of the United States Richard Nixon to obstruct an ongoing investigation into his Vice President.
And George Bush did it.
U.S. Attorney George Beall ended up donating his papers to Frostburg State University in Maryland. And if you go to those archives, you can now see an official memo-to-file that U.S. Attorney George Beall wrote that Summer of 1973. In that memo to file, it is made quite clear that after the White House came up with this plan, George H.W. Bush did, in fact, contact U.S. Senator Glenn Beall and he tried to have Senator Glenn Beall get word to his little brother the U.S. Attorney about this investigation.
This is what he wrote in the file: With respect to conversations with my brother Glenn, the discussions were most superficial and very guarded. He occasionally mentioned to me the names of persons who had been to see him or who had called him with respect to [this] investigation. Names of persons that I remember him telling me about included Vice President Agnew ... and George Bush.
https://www.nbcnews.com/msnbc/maddow-bag-man-podcast/transcript-episode-4-turn-it-n935286
Beakybird
(3,333 posts)I went to the White House covered head to toe in leaves, and I said that I was George Bush. It was a good disguise, but it didn't fool Bush junior. He wasn't that stupid.
I knew he H.W. was a schmuck, but this brings it to another level.
Caliman73
(11,744 posts)Nixon committed treason by interfering with peace talks with Vietnam...LBJ got wind, but felt he couldn't do anything for risk of burning the country down. Nixon went on to be President and helped spawn the careers of Pat Buchanan, Roger Ailes, Donald Rumsfeld (who in turn gave us Dick Cheney). Haig served as Secretary of State under Reagan another bastard who committed treason by interfering with the hostage negotiation in Iran (then selling weapons to a 'state sponsor of terror'), we know Bush Sr. was VP for that crooked administration. At the end none of them ever so much as got indicted or charged or anything.
Straight up corruption and treason from the 1960's to the 1990's and Beyond in the case of Cheney and Rumsfeld with, of course, another Bush, and they call the Mafia gangsters. Those guys are straight up gangsters.
UniteFightBack
(8,231 posts)Caliman73
(11,744 posts)From what it seems of a cursory read, LBJ went into a self destructive binge after leaving office. I wonder if it just ate him up the whole Vietnam War, the treachery of the Nixon Administration, etc...
He didn't live long enough to see Nixon go down for Watergate. He was a very complicated man, but I think at his core, he seems fundamentally decent. I don't know if I can say the same for the other people I mentioned in my previous response.
Thunderbeast
(3,419 posts)by secretly cutting a deal with Iran...calling on Iran to hold the hostages until after his election and inaugiration. Illegal arms shipments followed.
Treason and obstruction are well-used tools by the criminal enterprise known as the Republican Party.