Free Republic

A year ago this week, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. He died protecting his country from brutal Mexican gangsters. Two AK-47 assault rifles were found at his death site. We now know the horrifying truth: Agent Terry was killed by weapons that were part of an illegal Obama administration operation to smuggle arms to the dangerous drug cartels. He was a victim of his own government. This is not only a major scandal; it is a high crime that potentially reaches all the way to the White House, implicating senior officials. It is President Obama’s Watergate. Operation...

A year ago this week, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. He died protecting his country from brutal Mexican gangsters. Two AK-47 assault rifles were found at his death site. We now know the horrifying truth: Agent Terry was killed by weapons that were part of an illegal Obama administration operation to smuggle arms to the dangerous drug cartels. He was a victim of his own government. This is not only a major scandal; it is a high crime that potentially reaches all the way to the White House, implicating senior officials. It is President Obama’s Watergate.

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,...

Newly unsealed grand jury testimony by ex-President Richard Nixon shows he warned prosecutors and grand jurors not to probe an episode from 1971, when he discovered that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been spying on him and national security adviser Henry Kissinger. “Don’t open that can of worms,” Nixon told his interrogators in June 1975, when he spent roughly eleven hours over two days’ time fielding – and sometimes deflecting – questions put to him by lawyers for the Watergate Special Prosecution Force and two grand jurors flown in from Washington. *** And he confided what his predecessor in...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Richard Nixon's grand jury testimony about the Watergate scandal that destroyed his presidency is finally coming to light. Four months after a judge ordered the June 1975 records unsealed, the government's Nixon Presidential Library was making them available online and at the California facility Thursday. Historians dared hope that the testimony would form Nixon's most truthful and thorough account of the circumstances that led to his extraordinary resignation 10 months earlier under threat of impeachment. "This is Nixon unplugged," said historian Stanley Kutler, a principal figure in the lawsuit that pried open the records. Still, he said,...

The Time Line of events of Watergate and Monica Lewinsky vs. Gunwalker Perspective Perspective is always interesting in judging events. At what point does a scandal turn from merely being a public relations "snafu" into a real crisis for our modern presidents. The best answer might be found in the timelines surrounding the scandals of presidents who faced the spectre of possible or actual impeachment. How much time does it take for a scandal to reach the actual vote or threatened vote of impeachment. If one dislikes the current occupant of the Oval Office, it cannot happen fast enough and...

Why a gunrunning scandal codenamed “Fast and Furious,” a program run secretly by the U.S. government that sent thousands of firearms over an international border and directly into the hands of criminals, hasn’t been pursued by an army of reporters all trying to be the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein is a story in itself. But the state of modern journalism aside, this scandal is so inflammatory few realize that official records show the current director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), B. Todd Jones — yes the individual the Obama administration brought in to...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJEvxgfcOFw The conspiratorial connection that will blow your mind! ;)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Thirty-six years after Richard Nixon testified to a grand jury about the Watergate break-in that drove him from office, a federal judge on Friday ordered the secret transcript made public. But the 297 pages of testimony won't be available immediately, because the government gets time to decide whether to appeal. The Obama administration opposed the transcript's release, chiefly to protect the privacy of people discussed during the ex-president's testimony who are still alive. Nevertheless, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth agreed with historians who sued for release of the documents that the historical significance outweighs arguments for secrecy,...

The New Watergate By Anne Walker Where I stand depends on where I sit . . . . or in this case . . . . where I used to sit. It is so true. Those of us who lived through the days of what came to be known as “Watergate”, the days of reading about our pals in the Washington Post every day, seeing them accused and vilified, hauled in front of a grand jury for countless hours while their legal bills sky rocketed, go to trial, and be convicted of perjury, not wrongdoing, and end up in...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Even as prosecutors build a case against the Army private suspected of passing hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, the State Department is promoting a documentary film that celebrates Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. Amid its struggle to contain damage from the WikiLeaks revelations, the State Department announced Saturday that "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers" has been selected as one of 18 films that will tour the world this year as part of its "American Documentary Showcase" program. Ellsberg, whom the film portrays as a whistleblower of conscience,...

In 1998/2003, the book/movie Easy Riders, Raging Bulls laid down a new stratum of received wisdom: That the 1970s witnessed a "Silver Age" of American film making, after brave young rebel outsiders employed their low budget indie hits as celluloid Trojan Horses, infiltrated bankrupt, boring old Hollywood and rescued it from itself(...) Reinforced by the coincidental companion piece The Kid Stays in the Picture (1994/2002), the "We practically invented cinema, dude!" meme was embraced by the rest of the Baby Boomers (self-congratulatory as ever), hipster Gen-Xers, and precocious Whatever You Young People Today Call Yourselves. Now, some folks have "a...

In the midst of the current crisis—with the dollar having collapsed to barely more than a 1,400th of the value of an ounce of gold, the United Nations calling for a new world currency and Ben Bernanke becoming a political punching bag for the "quantitative easing" that critics fear will ignite inflation—we now have a book containing the secret diaries of the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board during Richard Nixon's presidency, a time of turmoil in currencies and markets and of policies that haunt our economy to this day. Arthur Burns, the pipe-puffing ex-Columbia professor who served as Fed...

Actually... worse... a little tid-bit of info that'll not be seen in your local newspapers and TV news programs: While the Republican gains in the House and Senate are grabbing the most headlines, the most significant results on Tuesday came in state legislatures where Republicans wiped the floor with Democrats. Republicans picked up 680 seats in state legislatures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures -- the most in the modern era. To put that number in perspective: In the 1994 GOP wave, Republicans picked up 472 seats. The previous record was in the post-Watergate election of 1974, when...

Gallup is the oldest major polling organization in America.  It has a strong interest in credibility with the public, because if its polls are wrong then its value drops to nothing.  Gallup Polls, by and large, are fairly accurate reflections of what is actually polled.  So when Gallup asks Americans in different states about their ideology, the reported data seems reasonable.  The problem, however, is that unless one looks at the data and not at how Gallup entitles its polls, big stories are lost.  As one example, Gallup in the last year or so has finally begun asking Americans about...

An e-mail from Rep. Darrell Issa's (R-Calif.) campaign suggested Wednesday that the controversy over Rep. Joe Sestak's (D-Pa.) alleged administration job offer could be President Barack Obama's Watergate scandal. In an e-mail with the subject line "The Sestak Affair - Obama's Watergate?", the ranking member on the Oversight and Government Reform committee focused on "long-standing questions" about the offer Sestak says was made to him to urge him to drop out of the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary.

In a post yesterday, I asked readers to help me figure out if Ron Paul’s accusastions that the Federal Reserve loaned money to Saddam Hussein and paid off the Watergate burglars were accurate in any way. Commenter sailingaway pointed me to this article from The Hill, which then directed me to a few other sources. Turns out that Ron “Get Off My Land” Paul might be on to something. “George Washington” writing at Zero Hedge has this to say: [I]n 2008, the University of Texas published a book by Robert D. Auerbach – an economist with the U.S. House of...

It seems in vogue these days to apologize for wrong doings. I am not really sure why Tiger Woods apologized on worldwide television to golfers, his wife, his mother, to me, to you...to the entire world, for what appears a personal matter, but I tell you who needs to apologize publicly is Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. He needs to apologize for his snarky, condescending attitude toward Congressman Ron Paul when Paul , 1. asked Bernanke about allegations that the Federal Reserve was involved in funneling money to Saddam Hussein, when Hussein was a favorite of the U.S., and 2....

Whenever I post something negative about Ron Paul (which is just about every time I post about him), I get the NASTIEST comments and emails. He doesn't have a lot of supporters but those that do support him do so with a passion. That isn't particularly bothersome, after all people should have some passion. Problem is Ron Paul is a "drooling crazy " type. This guy must have of fallen out the crazy tree and hit every branch on the way down. Today while he questioned Fed Chair Ben Bernanke Paul turned on his Crazy overdrive and made some absolutely...

"Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is a former American military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg _____________________________________________________________ "As a response to the leaks, the Nixon administration began a campaign against further leaks and against Ellsberg personally. Aides Egil Krogh and David Young under John Ehrlichman's supervision created the 'White House Plumbers,' which would later lead to the Watergate burglaries."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg#Fallout _____________________________________________________________ So what is Daniel Ellsberg...

"I've come to you this morning with a topic that probably in an earlier age would have sounded a little bit absurd. And that’s the question of whether character matters, whether it has anything to do with public service. Now even as recently as a generation ago, probably no one would give a commencement talk on that address to educated people -- people getting their degree -- because education was considered to be not only the acquisition of knowledge, but the formation of moral character. That’s what education was all about." ..."Twenty-five years ago this summer, I was converted to...

Serious question: was Keith Olbermann this upset over Umar Mutallab's attempt to kill everyone aboard NWA 253? Olbermann predictably led this evening's Countdown with the James O'Keefe story—the arrest in connection with the apparent attempted interference with Sen. Mary Landrieu's phone system of the young man who exposed ACORN. Faith-based readers should actually be encouraged, because Olbermann appears to have gotten religion. Keith is clearly praying—fervently—that this will turn out to be, as the Countdown graphic suggests, "Watergate Jr.," with Republican officials revealed to be behind O'Keefe's latest venture. Read more:

ACORN critic Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is mystified that both the Democratic-controlled Congress and the Obama administration aren't doing much about the tax-subsidized organized crime syndicate ACORN even as evidence of its wrongdoing continues to pile up. In an exclusive interview, the House Judiciary Committee member describes the ACORN saga as "the largest corruption crisis in the history of America." "It's thousands of times bigger than Watergate because Watergate was only a little break-in by a couple of guys," said King. "By the time we pull ACORN out by its roots America's going to understand just how big this is."...

Nixon's own composition, set to concerto form with "15 Democratic violinists." Nixon takes a dig at Harry Truman just before playing.

UN officials likened the Climategate controversy to Watergate today, claiming that computer hackers who stole thousands of e-mails sent by a senior climate scientist were probably paid to do it by people intent on undermining the Copenhagen summit. Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said the theft from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was not the work of amateur climate sceptics but a sophisticated and well-funded attempt to destroy public confidence in the science of man-made climate change. He said the fact that the e-mails were first uploaded to a...

Forensic investigators have been called in to solve one of the greatest mysteries of US presidential history by discovering what exactly Richard Nixon knew about the Watergate break-in. Thirty-five years after Nixon was forced to become the only US president to resign, government investigators remain determined to find out the extent of knowledge of the raid on the Democratic National Committee's offices in Washington. Investigators appointed by the US National Archives are to analyse notes taken by the White House chief of staff HR Haldeman at a meeting with the late president just three days after Nixon campaign members were...

September 19, 2009 Obama waist-deep in ACORN corruption and more ObamaCare atrocities By Sher Zieve While the ObamaCamp and many Democrat (aka New Marxist) "leaders" continue to desperately search for hiding places from the latest outing of ACORN as an organizational nut that is rotten to the core, Obama continues to remain mum on the issue. But, then Obama has been at least waist-deep in ACORN's corruption for almost two decades. And what might actually come from both the US Senate and House of Representatives calling for a real investigation of Obama's ACORN? Possibly nothing. There is every indication that...

Mystery of Watergate Tapes' Missing Minutes Soon Could Be Solved Wednesday, July 29, 2009 One of the great political mysteries — what was said by President Nixon during a suspicious 18-minute gap on the Watergate tapes — could soon be solved thanks to a keen-eyed amateur sleuth and modern crime-fighting technology. The missing section of a 79-minute conversation between Nixon and his Chief of Staff, H. R. “Bob” Haldeman, was erased. It had been recorded during a meeting on June 20, 1972, three days after operatives connected to the White House broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee...

The Watergate Hotel was taken back this morning by the German bank that foreclosed on its debt-ridden owners at an auction that failed to attract any bids, despite international attention. But the fate of the 251-room hotel that will be forever linked with the scandal that brought down Richard Nixon is far from decided. PB Capital, a subsidiary of Deutsche Postbank AG, made a $25 million credit bid for the property, which has views of the Potomac. The bank, which is owed $40 million by developer Monument Realty, will now market the 12-story hotel to interested buyers in a private...

July 20, 2009 Hotel that launched the Watergate scandal goes up for auction Tim Reid, Washington The Watergate Hotel, scene of the 1972 burglary that destroyed Richard Nixon’s presidency, is to be auctioned off tomorrow. The owners of the hotel, who bought it in 2004 with the hope of restoring it to its former glory as one of Washington’s most luxurious establishments, defaulted on a $40 million bank loan, and a repossession order expired last week. It is an extraordinary development for the hotel, which is part of the complex that gave its name to America’s greatest political scandal. President...

"Be sure, the truth will find you out." Interesting phrase, isn't it? Not "you will find the truth ..." Not even the biblical promise, "You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free," in the Gospel of John, 8:32...................... He has paid his team of lawyers almost a million dollars to produce a Certification of Live Birth, a "short form" document, a print-out of information that has been entered – at some point in time, by someone – into a computer database. This is not a birth certificate. The state of Hawaii does not accept a Certification...

The famous hotel could be open for bids next week The Watergate Hotel made famous by a presidential scandal is expected to be on the auction block next week. Alex Cooper Auctioneers is announcing that it will take bids Tuesday on the Washington landmark. [snip] The Watergate complex was made famous by the 1972 burglary that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation.

Et tu, Brute… Shortly after becoming director of the Nixon Library in 2007, Dr. Timothy Naftali invited the nation’s press in to witness the removal of the Nixon Library’s Watergate exhibit. Declaring, “I can’t run a shrine,” he gleefully presided over the destruction of the exhibit, which resulted in numerous articles reporting that the “whitewash of Watergate” was over at the Nixon Library. Dr. Naftali went on to assert, “The challenge is to present a controversial, traumatic and important story in a fair and historically accurate way.” By any measure, he has failed his own definition of success. Two...

Officials at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., have invited John Dean to speak there on the 37th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, slapping the faces not only of those sympathetic to the former president but, more important, history itself.

MIAMI – Bernard Leon Barker, one of the five Watergate burglars whose break-in led to America's biggest political scandal, died Friday in suburban Miami. He was 92. The Cuban-born former CIA operative who also participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion died at his home after being taken to the Veteran's Administration Medical Center the night before, said his stepdaughter, Kelly Andrad. He appeared to have died from complications of lung cancer, and he had also suffered from heart problems. Barker was one of five men who broke into the Watergate building in Washington on June 17, 1972. A piece...

The Watergate break-in eventually forced a presidential resignation and turned two Washington Post reporters into pop-culture heroes. But almost 37 years after the break-in, two former New York Times journalists have stepped forward to say that The Times had the scandal nearly in its grasp before The Post did — and let it slip. Robert M. Smith, a former Times reporter, says that two months after the burglary, over lunch at a Washington restaurant, the acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, L. Patrick Gray, disclosed explosive aspects of the case, including the culpability of the former attorney general,...

It's not news that newspapers are in huge trouble — victims of technological change and a mini-depression. What is news is the unadorned glee that is greeting the demise of newsprint. When auto or city workers lose their jobs, there's talk of bailouts and extra measures to cushion the trauma, and even mournful country songs written in tribute. And when newspapers close? The blogs are full of self-congratulations at the demise of the journalistic establishment. "Seeing newspapers fall apart brings me joy," writes an anonymous essayist in a broadside reprinted on the blog Reflections of a Newsosaur. Then there was...

When conservative Eagle Scouts conducted themselves in partisan fashion in support of their President, it was criminal and the scandal which defined an entire generation. When liberal communists do pretty much the same thing. Nobody cares.

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum." Of the dead, nothing but good. So said Dean Acheson of Sen. Joe McCarthy on his death in 1957. "Tailgunner Joe" had bedeviled the secretary of state for his lassitude toward communist penetration of State in President Truman's time. But the passing of Mark Felt, associate director of the FBI in the later Nixon years, lately exposed as "Deep Throat," the source for the Woodward-Bernstein stories, calls forth some rebuttal to the tributes lavished upon Felt as the honest lawman who saved our republic. When the Watergate break-in was traced to the Committee to Reelect...

When I decided to write something on Mark Felt who passed away this week at 95, an online friend, Narciso, wrote of the “incremental irony of Mark Felt.” When I asked him to elaborate he wrote back: He conducted illegal or at least dubious surveillance against the Weathermen, he then faults Nixon for the same tactics, he undermined his own agency and ultimately almost ended up in jail. Besides sage words about being wary of the motives of government employees bearing tales of corruption to the press, Narciso’s words constitute as complete an epitaph of Mark Felt as I can...

Watergate 'Deep Throat' W. Mark Felt Dies at 95 SAN FRANCISCO — W. Mark Felt, the former FBI second-in-command who revealed himself as "Deep Throat" 30 years after he tipped off reporters to the Watergate scandal that toppled a president, has died. He was 95. Felt died Thursday in Santa Rosa after suffering from congestive heart failure for several months, said family friend John D. O'Connor, who wrote the 2005 Vanity Fair article uncovering Felt's secret. The shadowy central figure in one of the most gripping political dramas of the 20th century, Felt insisted his alter ego be kept secret...

Mark Felt, the FBI official who as the anonymous journalistic source "Deep Throat" helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon, died on Thursday at his home in Santa Rosa, Calif. He was 95. Felt suffered from congestive heart failure but the immediate cause of death was not known on Thursday night. "He was an important person for the history of our nation, but also such a gem and such a treasure to our family," said his grandson Nick Jones, who confirmed the death. "He was a great man." Jones said the family would issue a formal statement on Friday. In...

"Fox News journalist Chris Wallace on Monday evening defended President Bush against criticism by Hollywood filmmaker Ron Howard that the president has abused his office in a way similar to President Richard Nixon..."

At 0230 I typed the words THE END into my manuscript of UNCERTAIN PARADISE: 1973 ***The Latter Days***. It was electronically submitted to my publisher...the contract is signed. I told my wife I was within ten or so pages of finishing it yesterday morning. Her reaction: "Hmmmm." After nearly thirty years of marriage I was able to translate: wake me up when we're rich. She's got to be kidding. Barack Obama mentions a book and it's a best seller. He'll never read my stuff. Part One of Uncertain Paradise: 1973 deliberately left several threads unresolved. That is, after all, what...

Hi everyone! So, I saw a promo for something like a movie or TV show about Watergate the other day, and that sort of sparked my curiousity about what the whole scandal was about - up until I started researching it, I only had some vague understanding that there was a break-in, a big scandal, some partially erased tapes, and Nixon resigned. Well, after researching it quite a bit I have a much better understanding of the whole fiasco, but there are still a few things that I don't understand or can't make sense of yet. I'm also wondering if...

Thirty-five years ago this month, the edifice began to collapse. “People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook,” said President Richard Nixon at a televised press conference on November 17, 1973. “Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got." Of course, Nixon was a crook, and less than a year later he would resign from the White House, his legacy saturated with scandal. Nixon’s disgraceful departure inflicted a wound upon the American psyche that would not be fully healed until the election of Ronald Reagan six years later. Some believed that Jimmy Carter’s...

John McCain suggested Sunday that Barack Obama’s record-breaking fund raising was a gateway to corruption. During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” the Republican nominee expressed concern over the amount of money his Democratic opponent was raising — and spending. Obama brought in a jaw-dropping $150 million in September, eclipsing his past record of $66 million. In talking about the news, McCain repeatedly referred to the Watergate scandal that resulted in the impeachment of former President Richard Nixon. McCain pointed to that incident, which included Republicans breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices, as an example of the kind of...

John McCain suggested that his Democratic rival Barack Obama’s record-shattering fundraising haul will lead to scandal in their presidential race and future races, and he hinted that there may already be funny business going on with Obama’s legions of small donors. Obama announced Sunday morning that he pulled in $150 million in September, which McCain described on “Fox News Sunday” as “completely breaking whatever idea we had after Watergate to keep the cost and spending on campaigns under control. First time, first time since the Watergate scandal. And I can tell you this: that has unleashed now in presidential campaigns...

But that feud exploded into the race for the White House after an independent investigator concluded that Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, unlawfully abused her power as Alaska governor to push for her former brother-in-law to be sacked as a state trooper. The politically-charged finding ensured that the so-called Troopergate controversy dominated political headlines barely three weeks before the Nov 4 presidential election. The report found that Mrs Palin violated a state ethics law prohibiting public officials from using office for personal benefit - in this case, pursuing her family's grudge against Trooper Mike Wooten following his messy divorce...

Publisher Peter Osnos, who admits to personally working with former Bush White House press secretary Scott McClellan on his new book, What Happened, began his career as an assistant to I.F. Stone, the pro-communist "journalist" named as a Soviet agent of influence who was the uncle of Weather Underground communist terrorist Kathy Boudin. But the connections don't end there. Boudin's son Chesa was raised by Barack Obama associates Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who were Boudin's comrades in the communist terrorist group, after Kathy Boudin went to prison for her involvement in an armed robbery and assault that took the...