FBI Documents Reveal Nixon, Reagan Intimidated Rehnquist Witnesses, painkiller addiction

[Ian David]

FBI Documents Reveal Nixon, Reagan Intimidated Rehnquist Witnesses, and Detail the Late Chief Justice’s Addiction to Painkillers

Newly released FBI documents reveal how the Nixon and Reagan administrations used the FBI to intimidate witnesses set to testify against the late chief justice William Rehnquist at his confirmation hearings. The documents also reveal Rehnquist’s dependency on pain medication once lead him to try to escape a hospital stay in his pajamas after convincing himself of a CIA plot against his life. We speak with the reporter who broke the story. Newly-released FBI documents reveal dramatic details about former Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s two confirmation battles and his 1981 hospitalization and dependence on a painkiller. The documents show that both the Nixon and Reagan administrations ordered the monitoring of witnesses set to provide testimony critical of Rehnquist during his 1971 and 1986 confirmation process.

The documents also reveal that during Rehnquist’s 1981 hospital stay, doctors reported that he exhibited severe withdrawal after he stopped receiving the highly toxic drug Placidyl. Rehnquist was said to have had hallucinations and once tried to escape from the hospital in his pajamas after convincing himself of a CIA plot against his life. The FBI released 1,561 pages of documents on Rehnquist in response to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act following Rehnquist’s death in September 2005. They’ve withheld an additional two hundred pages in the file and say one entire section cannot be retrieved.

Tony Mauro is with us now from Washington D.C. -- He is the Supreme Court correspondent for the Legal Times. Tony was the reporter who filed the Freedom of Information Act requests on Rehnquist.

More:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/05/1541237

[acmavm]

1. Just more confirmation on what a couple of whacked out

criminals Reagan and Nixon were.

I call Reagan a criminal for all the people he killed when he opened the doors to the mental institutions and threw helpless people on the street to try to fend for themselves. How many do you think he killed. I call Reagan a criminal for all the people with AIDS or who were HIV positive that he killed because he was such a horrible horrible mean little man. I call Reagan a criminal for all the old folks and the poor that did without medical care or food because he had to have money for all his little criminal schemes.

In regards to Nixon, I am assuming I don't have to explain why I call him a criminal.

[pacalo]

2. Surprise, surprise...John Bolton's name came up in the Legal Times article...

In July 1986, when President Ronald Reagan nominated Rehnquist to be chief justice, the Justice Department asked the FBI to interview witnesses who were preparing to testify that Rehnquist had intimidated minority voters as a Republican Party official in Arizona in the early 1960s. According to a memo in the Rehnquist file, an unnamed FBI official cautioned that the department “should be sensitive to the possibility that Democrats could charge the Republicans of misusing the FBI and intimidating the Democrats’ witnesses.” But then-Assistant Attorney General John Bolton — who more recently served as ambassador to the United Nations — signed off on the request and said he would “accept responsibility should concerns be raised about the role of the FBI.” It is unclear whether the FBI ever interviewed the witnesses.

http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?id=1167732122395&hub=TopStories/

This country has been taken over by a cabal of thugs who keep their sticky fingers in the pot, going from one position to another in Rethug administrations. An impeachment would go a long way in calling attention to the way they operate.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. I'm curious about that Renquist/CIA thing.

Knowing the CIA has always favored the RW authoritarian side, and he was himself a RW authoritarian, why would he be paranoid about the CIA. Did he know something that was not safe to know? Was he on the Warren Commission? Or involved in some other shady CIA connected thing in his early years? Wouldn't you expect him to be paranoid about the KGB or even Mossad, rather than the CIA?

Guilty conscience talking, there?