CIA Data Leaked to Red Website

The Morning Paper-Special Edition ^ | 11/11/05 | vanity

[Verginius Rufus]

There was that "smoking gun" conversation six days after the break-in that caused the collapse of Nixon's remaining support in Congress and his decision to resign.

It never was conclusively shown one way or the other, as far as I could tell, if Nixon knew about the break-in in advance. Remember the June 17 break-in was the second break-in, intended to replace a tap that was not working. John Mitchell was in charge of people involved in Watergate, and was also having frequent conversations with Nixon. Nixon had a reputation for micro-managing. There were conversations between the two of them which were never released, as far as I know, so it's possible that Mitchell told Nixon...but perhaps not, to provide "deniability."

The other thing is the 18 1/2 minute gap...it's almost certain that it was erased by human action, and the official version of Rose Mary Woods doing it accidently was always very dubious. It may well have been Nixon himself who discovered that there was explosive material in that part of that tape and erased it himself...I believe there were handwritten notes (maybe Haldeman's) from that conversation which indicated that the topic of conversation was Watergate during the time period that the erased tape covered. We'll never know--those who might have known are dead now.

[CyberAnt]

Well .. what we might or might not "believe" about this situation doesn't matter. What matters to me is that I will not just stand by and allow people to make misstatements about Nixon. Yes, he made a terrible mistake, but he knew how the vultures in the media would react. And .. at the time the media had much more power than they do now.

[Verginius Rufus]

I have mixed feelings about Nixon. He was good on some issues, not so good on others. The liberals hated him for his early anti-Communist activities (helping to bring down their hero Alger Hiss), and he returned their hatred. He had the 1972 election in the bag but wanted an overwhelming victory, and that seems to be what led to the campaign abuses that resulted in his ultimate downfall.

What he should have done in 1973 when Agnew resigned was to pick Ronald Reagan for V.P. (Two people from the same state are never on the ticket because electors can't cast both votes for people from their home state, but that wouldn't matter since Nixon would never run again.) That might have dampened the Democrats' enthusiasm for getting rid of Nixon, or if not would have meant Reagan would have been at the helm in early 1975 when the crisis in South Vietnam arose.