Category: Watergate

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Education Watergate

Remembering Watergate’s Leonard Garment

Leonard Garment passed away this week.  He was President Nixon’s special legal counsel as Watergate became more than just headlines.  Garment and Nixon were close friends in the New York law firm of Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie & Alexander. Nixon joined after serving as Eisenhower’s Vice President.
Leonard Garment
President Nixon appointed Garment to replace John Dean who was fired by Nixon the same day John Ehrlichman and Bob Haldeman resigned due to mounting evidence that crimes regarding Watergate were committed within the White House by members of CREEP.

With the amazing impact the White House taping system had on the Watergate investigation it was Garment who successfully urged Nixon not to destroy the recorded tapes.  This was the critical issue regarding Congress’ power to investigate Nixon.

Garment would actually outlast all of Nixon’s advisors and stay to serve President Ford immediately following Nixon’s resignation.  As a liberal Democrat he was really swimming upstream against Nixon’s conservative inner circle.

Garment eventually left but thrived as a Washington DC attorney more many years representing many future Republicans caught in legal cases – even as a close friend to fellow law partner Scooter Libby.  He was also very influential in the New York jazz community.

Maybe most impressive was Garment’s music ability that led him to play in a jazz band with Alan Greenspan before entering law school.  Yes, that Alan Greenspan. Small world back then in Brooklyn.

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Education Reading Vietnam War Watergate

Nixon’s final act of treason revealed

The Atlantic has picked up an article from the BBC who released audio tapes of President Johnson regarding GOP candidate Richard Nixon’s sabotage of the October 1968 Peace talks in Paris regarding Johnson’s bid to end the US involvement in the Vietnam war.

Nixon Johnson
Johnson ordered FBI wiretaps on the GOP’s candidate that actually caught Nixon manipulating the South Vietnamese Government to boost his own Presidential aspirations in coming the November Presidential election.  Those wiretaps caught Nixon dispatching a GOP supporter Anna Chennault to meet with South Vietnamese President Thieu to promise Nixon would offer the South a better deal if he rejected Johnson’s invite to Paris.

The LBJ tapes were initially released in November 2008. History shows us (again) that Nixon was committing treason against the United States.  This release was even picked up by Slate’s Political Gabfest, but gained no real traction in the media.  Simply put – Nixon is dead.

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Education Watergate

Robert Bork’s Saturday Night Massacre

Robert Bork died this week. While many recall his failed US Supreme Court nomination I will always remember his actions as Nixon’s hatchman during the infamous Saturday Night Massacre. Please jump to the 4:43 mark of this video:

At the time Nixon’s Watergate affair was spinning out of control. Archibald Cox, appointed as the Watergate Special Prosecutor demanded access to newly revealed White House tapes after Alexander Butterfield, the President’s Deputy Assistant acknowledged a taping system was installed by Nixon.

Nixon refused to comply with a court ruling that indeed he turn over his tapes and then ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused and was fired. Nixon then ordered Richardson’s Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox but he also refused and was also fired by Nixon. Next in line was Robert Bork, then Solicitor General. He did comply with Nixon’s order and fired Cox.  Within hours Nixon ordered the FBI to seal off the offices of the Special Prosecutor, The Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General.

It was a clear and last act the Imperial President and it was a watershed moment in our constitutional.  The next day tens of thousands of Western Union telegrams flooded Congress by the American public insisting on impeaching Nixon.

Bork’s role in the Massacre, firing Cox sealed his fate fourteen years later when President Reagan nominated him for the Supreme Court.

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Education Watergate

Watergate’s Chuck Colson

Chuck Colson died Saturday. I think he will be remember more for his post Watergate actions than the Un-American acts he managed in Nixon’s White House. Regrettably today’s short attention span media will focus on the last years of his life rather than painfully share again with America the lessons of those in control of power in the beltway.

Chuck was a member of the Watergate Seven and will be forever tied to the illegal actions of breaking into the private offices of psychiatrist Dr. Lewis Fielding and stealing files relating to patient Dan Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers. We should not look past his role of authoring Nixon’s Enemies List and his role in the Vietnamization of the war in SouthEast Asia.

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Education Reading Vietnam War Watergate

Latest read: In Nixon’s Web

Of all the books written about Watergate and the domino effect those crimes left upon the federal government comes a rather late entry:  In Nixon’s Web: A Year in the Crosshairs of Watergate.

This was is a rather interesting read since L. Patrick Gray wrote his first hand account leading the FBI as Watergate unfolded.

Gray was a political appointment to the FBI by Nixon following the death of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s only Director who served over 48 years as the top federal law enforcement officer to appointed by President Calvin Coolidge.

To many inside the FBI his appointment was considered a shock since he was not a career FBI agent, but rather a former Navy officer who left the armed services to campaign for Nixon.

Gray’s son Edward has authored a website regarding the book.  There are interesting segments not only about Gray’s life before the FBI but also his management style that came from his Navy background as a skipper of subs during WWII and the Korean War.  Nixon appointed Gray Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division in the Department of Justice.

Gray’s biggest lesson from Watergate was, as a life long Republican he was ultimately sacrificed by Nixon’s WhiteHouse over his confirmation hearings with the Senate.  He was lead astray by John Ehrlichman and John Dean.  As Director of the FBI he reported to Ehrlichman and not Nixon.  Nixon’s men controlled access to the President.

Terrorist Attack at Chicago O’Hare
One of the surprises is Gray’s revelation of the terrorist attack planned for Chicago’s O’Hare following the 1972 Olympic tragedy.  It was a rather unique peak into history, to understand how the FBI managed the threat and to learn about Gray’s actions to lead the FBI’s response.

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