Nixon Today
It’s interesting to examine the connections between various Washington scandals from the recent past. In doing so, we can learn how, for example, the republican party’s machine goes about attempts to smear those Democrats that they fear and hate. Few politicians put as much energy into smearing his opponents than Richard Nixon. Indeed, while the modern republican party most often uses a white-washed image of Ronald Reagan as their “poster boy,” the truth is that their party still worships at the alter of Nixon.
Let’s take the issue of the Pentagon Papers, which were made public by Daniel Ellsberg. He had attempted to interest various media sources in the classified documents for some time, before The New York Times was willing to publish them in 1971. Some of Nixon’s top aides were outraged by this leak. But, at first, the President viewed them as a way to smear both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
However, when Nixon realized they documented US involvement going back to Truman, and went into the illegal invasions of Cambodia and Laos, Nixon fumed. This resulted in the administration’s attempt to trump Amendment 1, and prevent their publication. On June 30, 1971, the US Supreme Court made its historic 6-3 ruling on the government’s attempt at prior restraint.
It doesn’t take an Einstein to recognize that the energy the Nixon administration was investing in this wouldn’t be destroyed by the Supreme Court’s decision: it simply changed form. The most obvious example of this was charging Ellsberg with stealing the documents. The eventual outcome of his trial -- which could have been an easy conviction for Nixon’s Justice Department -- would be determined by Nixon’s channeling that energy into a new form.
Nixon’s infamous Oval Office isolation had begun well before the issues of Watergate appeared on the horizen. Indeed, that isolation lead to the various criminal enterprises that are today referred to as “Watergate.” In his own mind, Nixon was convinced, for example, that the murder of Diem could only have happened with President Kennedy’s consent -- for in his experience as vice president, he knew that President Eisenhower had okayed similar events in several other countries.
That the Pentagon Papers did not include any documentation of JFK’s okaying the murders of Diem and his brother were “proof” -- at least in Nixon’s paranoid mind -- that such papers had been removed from the official record. Where could Nixon find these records? He was convinced that they were housed in the Brooking Institute. Those in the Nixon administration who were already preparing for the 1972 re-election campaign were convinced that the Brooking Institute was the nucleus of the Kennedy family’s “shadow government.” Hence, White House tapes from June 30, 1971 (among others) include Nixon ordering H.R. Haldeman to oversee a burglary that would bring the Institute’s Vietnam files to the President’s desk.
During that period, other aides to Nixon would suggest a search for secret files on the Cuban Missile Crisis, that might damage Kennedy’s reputation. Next, they suggested focusing on the Bay of Pigs -- a suggestion that Nixon was extremely uncomfortable with. He deflected this by suggesting they find evidence that FDR knew in advance that the attack on Pearl Harbor was about to happen.
All of this created great tension within the isolated President’s mind. He became obsessed with the thought that his “enemies” in the Democratic Party just might have documents about the Bay of Pigs, which they would release just before the November 1972 election. Those documents would bring to light VP Nixon’s unholy role in planning the Bay of Pigs, including his ties to the CIA and mafia. He was aware that Cuban leader Fidel Castro had a package of documents delivered to several democratic leaders in Washington.
Nixon was obsessed with knowing what was in them. Where might they be stored? In the Brookings Institute? In the office of the chairman of the Democratic Party? He simply had to see these documents -- it was clearly a matter of national security.
Thus began the obscene growth of criminal behavior by the Nixon administration, under the direction of Richard Nixon. It would be, up until the Reagan administration, the most corrupt presidency in our nation’s history. The Ellsberg trial was derailed by Watergate. The Attorney General ended up a convicted felon, serving time. Only Richard Nixon would escape legal consequences for the wide-ranging series of crimes that he directed from the Oval Office.
Recently, on DU:GD, I engaged in a conversation with a person who claimed that there was “proof” that President Kennedy had ordered the murder of Diem in 1963. Gracious! Of course, E. Howard Hunt had infamously forged a document -- for President Nixon -- that they hoped would convince the media that JFK was responsible. In this day and age when, if a lie is repeated enough times, it can be mistaken for accepted fact, I suppose that a member of this forum might have been fooled by republican lies. I wouldn’t want to wrongly accuse anyone of purposely spreading such filth.
I think of how the Wall Street Journal had 36 editorials that focused on the suicide of Vince Foster. Of how that “respected” journal did its best to create doubt about the tragic death of this man, simply to create the type of doubt that would make Richard Nixon proud. I picture Nixon, with a big grin, looking down from hell at the WSJ’s editors, saying, “Now, that’s how it’s done!”
History is a fascinating subject. Sometimes, it provides lessons on how things are done, that are worth our keeping in mind as 2016 approaches.
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