Report: Tapes show Nixon ordered break-ins cnn.com
Meanwhile, an odd historical note I stumbled on last night, while looking for the Nixon impeachment articles that I recalled being voted down. On that one, I found a rather vague ref in a book about 2 additional articles that the House Judiciary Committee voted down, one on tax evasion, one on the secret bombing of Cambodia, but I'd prefer to find a better ref.
This story is datelined 10/26/97, which shows how long it's taken for some of the hidden goodies in the Nixon tapes to come out. The break-ins referred to don't include Watergate itself, but they're pretty much equally scummy.
In its November 3 issue, Newsweek reports the tapes show Nixon wanted to smear past Democratic presidents and try to find documents that would make President Franklin D. Roosevelt look responsible for the success of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
"We're gonna expose, God, Pearl Harbor," Nixon said.
The magazine reports Nixon wanted government files ransacked to find anything that could be leaked to smear Democrats.
Nixon was certain there were untold stories about the Bay of Pigs
incident and the Kennedy administration's 1962 Cuban missile
crisis and brushes with nuclear war over Berlin in 1961.
To get those documents, Nixon would have to break into the National Archives. The magazine reports that the tapes show Nixon aide John Ehrlichman proposing to send "the archivist out of town for awhile," then photographing the documents and resealing them.
"There are ways to do that?" asked Nixon. "Yes," replied Ehrlichman, "and nobody can tell we've been in there."
The tapes were recorded in the White House in June and July of 1971, after the publication of the Pentagon Papers in The New York Times.
Nixon wanted to use the media to "destroy" the leaker of the papers, Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department official. Nixon believed that an Ellsberg conspiracy was being run out of the Brookings Institute.
"I want a break-in," ordered Nixon on June 30, according to the tapes transcribed by the magazine. "Get it done. ... I want the Brookings safe cleaned out. And have it cleaned out in a way that makes somebody else look bad."
Personally, given the "Arkansas Project" / Ken Starr dirt digging expedition that lead to the Paula Jones suit, I'd say the main parallel between Watergate and Bimbogate is that they both had their roots in Republican political dirty tricks and smear campaigns. That's just me, though. As Ronald Reagan said, "Facts are stupid things".
Cheers, Dan. |
