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Re: Nixon (OT)

"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 Network

About 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.

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  • Re: Nixon (OT) - regmac 08:17:39 03/07/07 (2)
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