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Posted on 11/12/2011 5:00:26 PM PST by InvisibleChurch
Former US President Richard Nixon told a US grand jury "I practically blew my stack" when he learned of the long gap on a White House tape sought in the Watergate scandal investigation, according to transcripts released on Thursday.
In one of the biggest political scandals in US history, much has been made of the 18 1/2-minute gap on tapes of Nixon's White House conversations. The key question -- did it include incriminating information about the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters by his campaign operatives?
Nixon spent hours before the grand jury on June 23 and 24, 1975, almost a year after he resigned due to the involvement of his aides and campaign in the attempt to bug his political opponents' offices at the Watergate complex and the subsequent cover-up.
In office from 1969 to 1974, Nixon stepped down in the face of almost certain impeachment over a scandal that damaged national trust in the White House and government.
Nixon, who died on April 22, 1994, was pardoned a month after he left the White House by his successor, President Gerald Ford. He was interviewed by the Watergate Special Prosecution Force before two grand jury members in California.
....
"Rose had thought it was four minutes ... and now the counsel have found that it is eighteen and a half minutes, and I practically blew my stack," Nixon told the grand jury.
At another point, he said he wished they could recover the tape, to which one of the prosecutors, Richard Davis replied, "I think we all do." There have been recent efforts to recover the audiotape with modern technology but those have failed.
(Excerpt) Read more at hindustantimes.com ...
Having sex in the Oval Office, fine. Just don't expect others to go to prison to protect your God-given "right" to have an intern lick your anus. Ref: Starr Report.
I heard somewhere the whole thing started with an investigation of a prostitution ring involving John Dean’s wife, Maureen.
IIRC, right before the gap he talks about the burlgars being cuban, and how if it gets out it could “blow the whole Cuban thing” or something to that affect.
I always wondered if he was referring to the Bay of Pigs, as I believe the Cuban guys in the break-in were involved with Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs.
The whole break-in was Dean’s business anyway - may he rot in hell someday. (From the excellent book “Silent Coup”).
see my post 24.
see my post 24.
political enemies including the lamestream media.
same vigilance caused him to become obsessed with political enemies at home.
If he had succeeded we might not be putting up with the enemies we have at home today. Just sayin'
I would point out that even so, Reagan was taken in on amnesty because of the same fault Nixon had, he made the mistake of believing he was dealing with honorable men.
The American Rat left is like the left elsewhere, they are criminals without honor.
I am not a close student of Watergate but have some acquaintences who have gone the extra mile, including two who actually sat down and read the transcripts of all the tapes. Neither is a professional historian (fairly accomplished amateur historians, however) or a politico with an axe to grind. Both had the impression, which is shared by a number of the published authors on Watergate, that Nixon simply didn't know what had happened. Unless a smoking gun emerges, I will continue to entertain that hypothesis. It's really Occam's Razor: Nixon's mishandling of the whole mess is most simply explained by ignorance. Had he known what was up, he probably could have found a way to cut his losses and contain the damage early.
That leads right back to the big unanswered question: who ordered the break-in, and what was the real target?
Nixon was the worst Republican President this country has had. He got caught being very immoral. I don’t think Ford should have pardoned him. He deserved to be in jail. I can care less about Democrats. The Democrats can deal with their own and we should deal with our own. We deserve better than a crooked Republican President.
Yet, the lead counsel for the Nixon impeachment proceedings, Jerome Zeifman, allowed as how Nixon himself committed no discernible crime and wouldn't have been prosecuted even if Ford had not pardoned him.
Well, sphinx, I think it goes back to loyalty. I agree, there’s nothing that’s ever come out in 41 years that suggests that Nixon knew of, or approved the burglary. His idiot underlings wanted to destroy the democratic nominee by hook or by crook. How ironic, since Nixon crushed McGovern so handily. He had absolutely NO reason to fear McGovern, but people like G.Gordon Liddy thought that the best way to get rid of ones enemies is by cutting off their heads. Read the book “Will”. Liddy’s philosophy is that when America is threatened, you do everything possible to defend her, even by breaking the law. THAT explains the “reason”. Nixon thought he could cover up those misguided fools who were trying to “help” him. The chips fell down and Nixon took the fall. Literally falling on his sword.
Oh, and sphinx, there is a very tangled web that involves Howard Hughes, big Nixon supporter. The plumbers wanted to break into a safe that might contain incriminating evidence about democrats. Hughes REFUSED to allow it, because he had so many skeletons in his own closet and didn’t want them revealed.
The right would be well served to become more obsessed with domestic marxists, the political enemy at home, for they are an order of magnitude more dangerous to the Republic than any country on either side of the Atlantic or Pacific.
The domestic communists must be dealt with.
This is not going to be solved at the ballot box, for the marxists have usurped the Founders Constitution and enfranchised all, turning the Republic in a doomed to fail Democracy.
"Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death." James Madison
Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. John Adams: letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.:Thomas Jefferson
I think the greatest foreign policy achievement was changing our relation with Israel during Yom Kippur war. The effect of Israel defeating her enemies who grossly out numbered Israel and heavily supplied by the Soviet Union with American equipment damaged the Soviet Unions credibility.
Nixon is the most likely candidate to have created the tape gap.
The old book “Silent Coup” by Len Colodny from 1992 is VERY well documented. They surmised that Dean authorized the break-in, but was not truthful to the others in the reason. (His to-be wife was a hooker, and her name was in a little black book that the Dems had or something like that. He was trying to steal the book?)
But, the book goes into MUCH more than that, and how our military was spying on and trying to get rid of Nixon, etc.
Website about the book: http://www.silentcoup.com/
Book, Free Online from the Nixon library:
http://www.nixonera.com/etexts/silentcoup/major01.asp
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