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In Reply to: Bye, bye TAS... posted by mkuller on March 4, 2007 at 21:10:47:
but I still fail to understand how or why so many are willing to convict an entire organization for the actions of an individual. TAS still puts out a great product.At the risk of repeating myself, I'll repeat myself. This is a litigious world we live in. I suspect any action TAS might want to take has to be done with a certain degree of sensitivity. The system frowns on stringing people up from trees these days.
Follow Ups:
. . . the readers are left to wonder if this is common practice at the magazine or not. [I don't believe it is, but that belief is immaterial in the absence of facts.] And whether the magazine will employ safeguards to prevent it happening again.A cover-up never looks good; in fact, it often makes things look worse than they actually are. Remember, Nixon never approved the Watergate break-in; had he come clean and accepted responsibility for it he might have served out his term.
< < Nixon never approved the Watergate break-in > >Well, I suppose that is somewhat open to interpretation, but mostly by those who refuse to study history.
Nixon was recorded (on his own tape recorders!) as responding to the idea that they should break into the Democratic National Headquarters by saying, "Yeah, we could do that!"
And then there was a "mysterious" gap where the tape had "accidentally" been erased by his secretary Rosemary Woods. Nixon claimed that the erased part included the phrase, "but that would be wrong."
And if you believe that, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn for sale. Cheap.
"Well, I suppose that is somewhat open to interpretation, but mostly by those who refuse to study history ... Nixon was recorded (on his own tape recorders!) as responding to the idea that they should break into the Democratic National Headquarters by saying, "Yeah, we could do that!"And then there was a "mysterious" gap where the tape had "accidentally" been erased by his secretary Rosemary Woods. Nixon claimed that the erased part included the phrase, "but that would be wrong."'
I'm curious as to which history books you've been studying. Please be good enough to cite your source for the quote you reference. I’m unaware of any such tape or admission by Nixon. Nor can this admission be found on the so-called “smoking gun tape,” wherein Nixon agrees that his boys should approach the Director of the CIA and ask him to request that the FBI halt its investigation into the Watergate break-in, on the grounds that the break-in was a National Security matter. In so agreeing, Nixon knowingly entered into a criminal conspiracy whose goal was the obstruction of Justice --- a felony, and an impeachable offense. But this tape offers no proof that Nixon had prior knowledge of the break-in. Elsewhere in the tapes, Nixon does make a comment similar to the one you reference, but that had to do with raising a substantial sum of "hush money," in order to keep the lid on the break-in. Again, *after* the fact.
Speaking to Larry King, recently, Bob Woodward had this to say: “And, in fact, in fairness to Nixon, there's no really strong evidence that he knew about the Watergate burglary in advance. Carl and I think he might have, but we don't have evidence of that.”
“Nixon always maintained that he did not have advance knowledge of the break-in and no hard evidence has ever surfaced to indicate that he did. John Mitchell knew, as he admitted to Bob Haldeman.”
Source: George Mason’s University History News NetworkAbout three years ago, an aging Jeb Magruder suddenly insisted that he’d heard Nixon tell John Mitchell, who was running Nixon's re-election campaign in 1972, to go ahead with a plan to break into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex and bug the party chairman's phone. But this revelation contradicted his own memoirs that he’d published decades earlier.
While Nixon was certainly capable of such a thing, I don’t believe he had prior knowledge for the simple reason that he would have taken the necessary steps to conduct a more professional burglary, if you will, rather than the third rate affair that was botched. It’s not for nothing that he was known as “tricky Dick.”
As is so often the case, it’s not the act itself, but the cover-up that destroys a person. Had Nixon, upon discovering what had happened, went public and admitted that some of his overzealous staff had committed a minor burglary, and that he was accepting responsibility and seeing to it that the guilty parties were being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, the American people would have understood and Watergate would be but a minor footnote.
< < Please be good enough to cite your source for the quote you reference. I’m unaware of any such tape or admission by Nixon. > >You are correct, I was mixed up. Nixon didn't allegedly say "it would be wrong" to break into the DNC headquarters. He allegedly said "it would be wrong" to pay hush money to the burglars.
From Time Magazine, March 11, 1974:
< < Haldeman agreed that Dean told the President that E. Howard Hunt, one of the arrested Watergate burglars, was demanding $120,000 in cash, "or else he would tell about the seamy things he had done for Ehrlichman," presumably as one of the White House squad of secret investigators, "the plumbers." According to Haldeman, Nixon asked how much money.would have to be raised over the years to meet such demands, and Dean replied, "probably a million dollars—but the problem is that it is hard to raise."
The President replied, according to Haldeman, "There is no problem in raising a million dollars, we can do that." Up to this critical point, Haldeman and Dean were still in agreement. Then, Haldeman testified, Nixon added five crucial words: "But it would be wrong." > >
I was going from my memories of the time, nearly 35 years ago when I was still a teen-ager. I erroneously conflated two separate events.
As to your assertion that "Watergate would be but a minor footnote", I disagree. Still one of our worst presidents ever, so Watergate could have been "but a minor footnote" only in comparison to his other abuses of power.
"As to your assertion that "Watergate would be but a minor footnote", I disagree. Still one of our worst presidents ever, so Watergate could have been "but a minor footnote" only in comparison to his other abuses of power."Come on Charles. As a Lib, you'd call any recent Republican president the worst President ever. Some people feel the same way about your boy Bubba. I would give him credit however in that he would have burned the tapes and let his people make potential witnesses forget. Having the Woodwards and Bernsteins of the District in your back pocket, due to their political leanings, sure didn't hurt. Nixon, who incidenatally was not impeached, was man enough to step down.
The evidence of Nixon's complicity in the planning of Watergate, all the while maintaining the CIA-standard doctrine of "plausible deniability," is not seriously disputed by historians of the period. In fact, the weight of the case against Nixon is as close to overwhelming as historians ever see for most events in the past.Then again, we still have some folks who claim that The Holocaust never happened either.
A ringing "Yeah, right!" on both counts.
All the best,
david
Yes, RMN had culpable intent, but he was being manipulated and indeed set up.What started as a more or less legitimate response to the "Moorer-Radford Affair" (if about which you don't know, you literally do not know the first thing about Watergate), was hijacked by people with different agendas.
Such as John Dean. DNC HQ was his target because his girlfriend's name was in a black book used to set visiting Dem big shots up with good-time girls. When the fertilizer hit the ventilator, the first thing he did was arrange a quickie wedding ceremony, so what she knew would not be available to any grand jury.
RMN was a putz, and his willingness to break the law was his undoing, but, there's a lot more to the story.
JM
Also of draft age during the Vietnam War, lost the lottery but they never called me up.
I agree! And just as with JFK there was no one, single "killer".Further note: The abhorrent press still to this day almost invariably refers to Nixon's "expletive-laden" conversations -- yet in the two decades before he was preceded by two truly foulmouthed military men (one of them a *Navy* man fer chrissake) -- and LBJ. But they still hate Nixon.
clark
...JFK, LBJ and Nixon are a potent (and potentially bottomless) discussion.There's not enough time to type it all; it demands good ale, lots of pretzels, and a long evening even to get started....
;-)
(I've *got* to resist these OT threads on American history!)
david
For all you trivia buffs... .(JFK said she was the absolute best. Too bad she worked for STASI.)
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS I agree with that.
And there's a different, long-term strategy,
which I think would be far more explosive.
White House allies are already starting to
whisper about what I'll call the Ellen Rometsch
strategy.
SAM DONALDSON I remember her.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS You remember her.
SAM DONALDSON Oh, yes.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS She was a girlfriend
of John F. Kennedy, who also happened to be an
East German spy. And Robert Kennedy was charged
with getting her out of the country and also
getting John Edgar Hoover to go to the Congress
and say, don't you investigate this, because if
you do, we're going to open up everybody's
closets. And I think that in the long run, they
have a deterrent strategy on getting a lot of
...
GEORGE WILL Monica Lewinsky is an East
German spy? (Laughter)
SAM DONALDSON No, but that's a good point.
Are you suggesting for a moment that what their
beginning to say is that if you investigate
this too much, we'll put all your dirty linen
right on the table? Every member of the Senate?
Every member of the press corps?
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Absolutely. The
President said he would never resign, and I
think some around him are willing to take
everybody down with him.
equating the use of a historical example--flawed though it may have been--to illustrate the futility of coverups, to holocaust denial, might be just a wee bit over the top ?
...or I wouldn't have posted, markrohr.The thread is OT, of course, but it brought out the historian in me. For that, I plead guilty to a crime of posting passion....
;-)
All the best,
david
never persuasive, and mark the polemicist rather than the thinker.In any case, my actual point still obtains.
Regards,
markrohr, draft age in the Vietnam era, and second to no one as a Nixon hater.
...markrohr. My comment was historical and historiographical, not "hysterical"/polemical. It was a casual observation, not intended to stir up hostilities.Looks like the end of this unproductive OT thread; all further flames to /dev/null, eh?
david, a(n) historian himself
It will be interesting to see if it actually happens.I am reminded of that old saying that the truth is stranger than fiction. Personally, I have found the way organizations deal with problems and mistakes to be more telling than when everything seems to be going great.
How about just the guilty party and the editor of the mag? That doesn't seem too unreasonable.
...internally and feel the matter is closed.I believe they need to address it publicly, at the least, to maintain their credibility.
Right...Luigi just ordered some concrete galoshes. No problem.
I thought that was supposed to be "cement overshoes"? :-)Maybe they'll put the BAG on that particular reviewer.
.
From my favorite episode, "A Piece of the Action", where they come upon a planet whose entire culture is based around a book about the 1920s Chicago gangsters.
.
"I believe they need to address it publicly, at the least, to maintain their credibility"And foster yet more unsubstantiated rumours? All we have at the moment are chinese whispers, it does not amount to a hill of beans, until someone actually publishes the details of the incident in print for public consumption, their current course of action is the course of least damage.
Music making the painting, recording it the photograph
...I believe it was Art Dudley's column in the March Stereophile which provided details and that made this issue public.
.
No Guru, No Method, No Teacher
> No you would be wrong, the article contained just, as the previous
> poster put it, chinese whispers.
I think you must be hard of thinking, "bjh." "Chinese Whispers" means
that the message became garbled in its passage. Yet if you compare
what Art Dudley wrote in his March issue column (available in
Stereophile's free on-line archives next Monday) with what Tom Martin
has now stated happened, you will see that Art was essentially
correct.
You may well feel that Art was out-of-line mentioning the Valin
incident, but that is both a matter of opinion and a very different
matter to accusing Art of disseminating a falsehood, which is what I
assume you mean by "Chinese Whispers."
And as Wendell Narrod asked earlier today, why _are_ you so bent out
of shape about what Art Dudley and I say and do, yet you give the
benefit of the doubt to TAS on a continual basis? Do you _work_ for
that magazine?
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
> > No you would be wrong, the article contained just, as the previous
> > poster put it, chinese whispers.> I think you must be hard of thinking, "bjh." "Chinese Whispers"
> means that the message became garbled in its passageI think you must be hard of comprehending as clearly I meant "Chinese Whispers" in the sense used by the "previous poster". Here's the content of the post in question:
---
"I believe they need to address it publicly, at the least, to maintain their credibility"And foster yet more unsubstantiated rumours? All we have at the moment are chinese whispers, it does not amount to a hill of beans, until someone actually publishes the details of the incident in print for public consumption, their current course of action is the course of least damage.
---Get it now, i.e. the part about "unsubstantiated rumours"?
Things such as augmenting the tale, exaggerating details, etc. are all aspect of the operation of Chinese Whispers (or Operator, or any of a number of other common names for it), and from that perspective Dudley certainly took liberties. However not need to recount, I've already had my say on the topic.
No Guru, No Method, No Teacher
the reader/ consumer has never been informed which writer nor, really, which magazine. Unfortunately, he or she might respond by reading all hi fi mags even less than he or she already might, and putting even less stock in what is written. We all lose in this instance.
They need to do something, but I do understand why it might take a little time.
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