Posted on 09/14/2010 6:32:36 AM PDT by RKV
Nearly 40 years before the Obama White House denounced the WikiLeaks website for publishing classified documents, another president, Richard Nixon, was even more obsessed with the same phenomenon.
Only Nixon and his top aides went to far greater lengths to deal with the problem: They launched an extraordinary campaign to smear and discredit the journalist who, more than anyone else, was bedeviling them by publishing government secrets: newspaper columnist Jack Anderson.
The White House obsession with Anderson — whose "Washington Merry Go-Round" column was the WikiLeaks of its day — is detailed in a new book being published this month, “Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture,” by journalism professor Mark Feldstein.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Nixon was never one of my favorites and he did make some mistakes but he should be defended against this type of revisionist history.
What Nixon and a few others were doing in the 1960’s and 1970’s was an attempt to stop the slide into the stinking liberal morass we live in today.
There were, and still are, laws against the disemination of classified documents. But liberals believe laws they don’t like or that are inconvenient to their agenda can be disregarded at will. So Nixon is cast as the ogre who didn’t believe leftists, communists and “progressives” should be allowed to ignore our laws and flaunt conventions.
Nixon and traditionalists have lost that battle for the time being, and we now have been reduced to living in a country run by whining brats who never learned the meaning of respect, restraint, ethics or honor.
Like spoiled children, they want what they want and they want it right now. The motto of their generation was “If it feels good, do it” and they have lived their lives accordingly - the law be damned.
Obama not only is actively against America but also vehemently against white people. Obama is mean, hateful and vindictive. A Chicago politician and community organizer through and through.
The hopeless old radicals forget that most of their net-roots group weren’t born when Dick Nixon and Anderson squared off. Dick Nixon’s indiscretions and that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves are about equal in their minds. The only modern comparison has to by the Internet scrubbing, election stealing, reporter threatening, and radical appointing that this Regime is doing. Aren’t they somehow urinating on themselves?
"So Nixon called in Bob Haldeman, his chief of staff and said, 'Why is this son of a bitch allowed to make so much trouble for us? Tell J. Edgar Hoover to look into this guy and get something on him.' Haldeman called the FBI and said, 'The boss wants you to look into the background of a correspondent named Daniel Schorr.' He made a mistake there because the word 'background' has a special meaning at the FBI. To them it means a check on somebody who is about to receive a presidential appointment. And the FBI misunderstood, sending people all over the country asking for reactions about Dan Schorr."
"One of my bosses called me and said, 'What the hell is this? Are you going to work for Nixon? You're out of your mind!' But I had no idea why they were investigating me. So, the Washington Post runs this story that FBI is investigating Daniel Schorr, and refuses to say why. Whereupon, the White House staff gets together with Chuck Colson, and says we've got to have a story we can put out on this. We'll have to say that we are actually considering him for a White House appointment, that the background check had started before we could get to him, and the President is very sorry about that. Of course in testimony to the impeachment committee they admitted it was all a lie, and there never was any job for Schorr."
"Twenty years later I go to dinner where Nixon was speaking. At the end of his speech -- which was pretty good, he had just come back from the Soviet Union, and gave a good rundown on what was happening there -- I walked over to him, couldn't resist. 'Mr. Nixon, I'm not sure you'll remember me. My name is Daniel Schorr.' He put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Sure, Dan Schorr, damn near hired you once.'"
Damn gays, always messin’ with Nixon! This is a riot, Nixon saw conspiracies everywhere, and actually there were. This Radford clown should have been in jail, and Jack Anderson selling rosy columns for dictators. I wonder how much of this goes on today? I know Reason magazine will sell it’s editorials.
They worried a new generation of voters hasn’t heard of the bogeyman.
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Correct.
Richard Nixon's famous and largely fabricated paranoia was highly justified.
After efficiently and effectively, publicly nailing Commie hides to the wall during the HUAC hearings, the Reds were gunning for him, via their attack dogs in politics and the LeftMedia.
I belive it was Kissenger who said (correctly I might add) “Even paranoids have enemies.” And yes, given the nature of commie infiltration into our institutions (and his own actions) Nixon was targeted by the reds. That said, there was plenty he did from a policy perspective that could be criticized.
Actualy he’s using a typical tactic.
Jack Anderson did not leak military secrets, just political ones. The comparison to WikiLeaks doesn’t work, Spikey.
Thanks for relating that tale.
That's a nice piece of history.
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Nixon seemed to almost enjoy having enemies, he certainly understood that politics had laws similar to physics. One of those laws was enemies are a part of doing business, regardless of which side you were on. If you’ve ever listened to some of his tapes, they really are amazing, and you’ll learn more about big time politics in 20 minutes than you could otherwise in 3 semesters of college.
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