One of my Facebook friends just shared a post titled “Things I Used To Trust,” a list of subjects in which he no longer has faith. I neither agree nor disagree with the items on his list, but what comes to mind is the rhetorical “why” we don’t trust anymore and “when” did that trust start waning?
I’m going to go back in time, so hang with me here, especially you faithful readers who weren’t even born when all this went down.
Watergate: A New History by Garrett M. Graff, is a 2022 analysis of events fifty years ago that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon on August 9, 1974. Graff did not write anything new, but what he had now was material declassified in the last ten years, and the 2005 revelation of Mark Felt, the FBI associate director under J. Edgar Hoover, as “Deep Throat,” the whistleblower who provided confidential information to reporters Woodward and Bernstein for their news stories and later book All the President’s Men.
Recently, we have heard the phrase, “it isn’t the crime, it’s the coverup.” If you read Graff’s book, you might see many parallels with various events taking place today. The author concludes the Watergate break-in itself was relatively inconsequential, but leading to Nixon’s fall were the efforts to conceal the botched burglary and the motive for doing so, thus the proverbial case of what did Nixon know/do and when did he know/do it.
First, though, is setting the stage. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a RAND analyst, released the Pentagon Papers to local news outlets. The Papers, highly classified, showed the Johnson Administration had conducted secret military missions into North Vietnam, not to protect South Vietnam against Communist aggression, but in reality to try and contain any further movement by China into Southeast Asia. By itself, not a real issue, but these missions were not even disclosed to Congress. Ellsberg thought the public should know (sound familiar?).
According to author Garrett Graff, Nixon did not even know who Ellsberg was, but sent some of his “plumbers” to find out how this new disclosure might affect his re-election bid. The men broke into the office of the Daniel Ellsberg’s psychologist, and later the office of the Democratic National Convention (still not clear why the DNC). All in all, Graff’s research supports the general theory that if Nixon had just laid low, he would have been fine through the re-election process and his second term. BUT, when the burglary was interrupted by the building’s security guard who called the police, things went downhill fast.
Some of the cash confiscated from the pockets of the burglars was traced through sequenced numbered bills to registered funds from Nixon re-election contributors. Digging into that money trail revealed that Nixon contributions themselves were the result of selling ambassadorships ($40k to $200k depending on whether one wanted Chile or Italy), rerouting corporate pay raises (employees in almost 30 US companies were given $10k raises but were expected to “contribute” those funds to given non-profits set up by the Committee to Re-Elect the President or “CREEP”), or raising funds by selling some of Nixon’s personal properties at an over-valued price (those same properties were reported to the IRS at an under-valued price to reduce Nixon’s taxes).
Another irony is that when Nixon took office four years earlier, he had the Oval Office recording devices removed because he did not trust who would have access to the tapes. He then had his own recorders/microphones secretly installed, which would later be used against him…especially when he could no longer delay the subpoena for their delivery, but with minutes missing or large portions that were unintelligible (Nixon would physically move around to those parts of the Oval Office where he knew there were no microphones).
When the whole thing was unraveled, the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against Nixon for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. Additional charges from the Justice Department included tax evasion, falsifying the property values, money laundering, and outright theft of campaign funds (oh, and approving the break-ins). Sixty-nine people under the Nixon umbrella were indicted and forty-plus were convicted. Additionally, almost thirty corporate CEOs were investigated and charged with illegally bypassing campaign contribution limits and accepting promises their companies would receive government contracts or easing of environmental and tax laws that hindered their profit margins. (Sidebar: Roger Stone, yes that Roger Stone, worked as a political advisor on CREEP and later in Nixon’s office of Economic Opportunity. Hillary Rodham, yes that Hillary, as a new lawyer worked on the House Impeachment Committee’s advisory staff…Bill Clinton was originally asked to participate but he declined in order to partake in Arkansas politics…Go Figure).
Another sidebar: In October of 1973, VP Spiro Agnew resigned facing charges of political corruption, accepting bribes, and federal tax evasion. Seems as governor of Maryland, he took bribes to ensure certain companies could do business in his state, and these bribes just moved to a higher level once he became the VP. Nixon appointed Michigan Representative Gerald Ford to replace Agnew. (Ford later had to replace himself when he became President, and he brought in former NY Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and at that point neither the President nor the VP of the United States were in power by being elected by the people. BTW, the other two people Ford considered for VP were Donald Rumsfeld, Ambassador to NATO, and George Bush senior, the Chair of the Republican National Convention.)
Now back to Woodward and Bernstein. They weren’t the only ones who were starting to transition from basic reporting to more of an investigating role. Out in the trenches was columnist Jack Anderson, a founding father of investigative journalism (Teaser: more on my association with Jack Anderson in a later blog). Anderson had made public so much of Nixon’s dirt that allegedly some of the Plumbers plotted to assassinate Anderson but were arrested for the Watergate break-in before any real action. Did Nixon know this; he was recorded on tape stating he wanted Anderson dead!
So, enough rambling, and back to the question of why we no longer trust, and when did it happen. It seems the answers come with the events of the early 1970’s. We had two presidents in a row (Johnson and Nixon) who publicly lied on many levels, especially about the war in Southeast Asia; we had misuse of FBI and possibly CIA and IRS resources against US citizens; we had political corruption involved with many of our national businesses; we had reporters now taking on new and investigative roles; and we had two top governmental officials in power who were not elected by the masses.
Now throw in all the shenanigans that followed with future administrations or were eventually revealed to have occurred in previous ones (Eisenhower/Kennedy), and my guess is the total of all these events and their negative effects on us common folk is why we lack trust and faith in today’s leadership. History seems to repeat itself, and power corrupts…but you already knew these cliches, didn’t you.
Best regards to all, and let’s be safe out there.
