Nixon's backers make last stand over Watergate

[n2doc]

By Guy Adams in Los Angeles


Take a healthy dose of paranoia. Toss in dark allegations of a left-wing smear campaign. Finish with a furious dispute over whether to give the American public access to some potentially revelatory tape recordings, and you've got a simmering political controversy that could only really involve one man: the former US president Richard Nixon.

Three and a half decades after Nixon was removed from office, and 16 years after his death, friends and admirers of the 37th occupant of the White House are attempting to prevent his Presidential Library from educating visitors in gory details of a certain little affair called Watergate.

For years, the museum, which stands on the site of "tricky Dicky's" birthplace and former childhood home in Orange County, California, has treated the most notorious scandal in modern history as a sort of minor mishap, relegating the only exhibit about it to a dusty corridor connecting rooms full of such memorabilia as Mrs Nixon's cocktail dresses with the gift shop.

But in 2007, the Nixon Foundation – an organisation of the president's former cronies and admirers which had run the library since it opened in 1990 – agreed to hand control of it to the US National Archive, which runs all of America's other presidential libraries. And the new management immediately set about attempting to properly chronicle the series of events that sparked Nixon's downfall.

more

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/nixons-backers-make-last-stand-over-watergate-2052340.html

[saltpoint]

1. He was a lizard-souled, horrible man.

A miserable public servant, a miserable human being.

[peacebird]

9. hey now - most lizards are actually quite nice creatures! Nixon was vile....

[saltpoint]

12. Yeah, true.

I shouldn't slam lizards like that by comparing them to Nixon.

Also I totally agree with you on 'vile.' That's the word to describe Tricky Dick.

[Bluenorthwest]

2. A few years into W, I got an earful from a Nixon Lie-brary staffer

They were quietly thrilled, he said, because that whole 'worst President thing' was being refilled, and there would be a whole wide world of possibilities for Dick as Second Worst, because his kind of bad is so much more interesting, you see. W's failure was good for the Lie-brary. Who knew?

[Historic NY]

3. Thats like honoring Benedict Arnold instead of his leg.....

[Octafish]

4. Nixon was an unindicted co-conspirator.

The unelected Jerry Ford pardoned Tricky Dick, so he never faced justice.

About 12 years later, Poppy pardoned Weinberger etc and escaped justice.

Anybody else wondering why Dim Son starts two illegal, immoral and unnecessary wars and escapes justice?

[Stinky The Clown]

11. Think about that chronology ......

Repub lawbreaker succeeded by repub who covers for him (Nixon/Ford)

A Dem in the middle

followed in the next round of lawbreaking by

Repub lawbreaker succeeded by repub who covers for him (St. Ronald/Bush The Elder)

A Dem in the middle

Followed by the next round of lawbreaking by

Repub lawbreaker succeeded by hmmmmmm . . . . . . who pretty well covers for him




Just sayin' . . . . .

[Octafish]

14. Goes back to when money was new.

Baron de Rothschild and Prescott Bush,
sharing a moment with what appears photint together.

What capitalism does really well is concentrate power and cash. Particular individuals and families seem to have been born for the job. What's certain, a number of organizations have been created to accelerate the process.

How Nixon Actually Got Into Power

by Mae Brussell
(from The Realist, August 1972)

EXCERPT...

The rise of Richard Nixon in the United States was carefully planned.

An illegal attitude towards the Versailles Treaty allowed American financiers to feed and support Germany's illegal rearmament. An illegal attitude toward the Geneva Accord was also approved by Dwight Eisenhower for Indochina in 1945.(2)

A study of our State department and espionage establishment reveals that we had clandestine, secret armies functioning both abroad and in the United States.(3)

Hundreds of political assassinations related to minority races, labor leaders, spokesman against Fascism have taken place in the U.S. since World War II. In 1963 the political assassination of President John Kennedy in Dallas became necessary for our own hidden, clandestine government to maintain control. The candidate for President in 1968, Robert Kennedy, was murdered by the same people on the night of his victory in election primaries.

United States law courts, plus the Supreme Court, have supported this clandestine government and military regime by lending their name to the concealment of the conspiracies to murder our leaders. They refuse to examine documents that exist, allow truth to remain locked in the National Archives on the basis of the lie, "national security."

Richard Nixon, front man and leader of this illegal government, mistaken for comical by the intellectuals, was administered the oath of president of the United States on January 20, 1969.

CONTINUED...

http://www.maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/How%20Nixon%20Actually%20Got%20Into%20Power.html

Ike, I'm pretty sure based on his words and deeds, was a good man: He did warn us of the "military-industrial complex." Two of the MIC's linchpins, Prescott Bush and the brothers Dulles, also worked to bring their unique perspectives to the present day.



Here's Prescott on Iraq, from 1959:

To Preserve Peace Let’s Show Russians How Strong We Are

By Prescott Bush
U.S. Senator from Connecticut;
member of the Senate Armed Services Committee
The Reader’s Digest July 1959

MAN’S GREATEST danger, it is said, is ignorance. In a very real sense, the Soviet Union’s ignorance of our military strength may be the source of her gravest peril—and ours. Kaiser Wilhelm started World War I because he miscalculated Allied power. Hitler, mistakenly thinking he could blitz the world, launched World War II. Kruschev today lacks firsthand knowledge of our country; he may be given what others think he would like to hear—rather than an objective report on our actual military strength. Although it seems impossible that any sane person could start a war, we would be wise to take no chances.

Why not invite the Soviet high command to the United States for a conducted tour of our military might? We are bringing Russians to see our farms and factories, our scientific laboratories and research centers; we exchange dancers and musicians. Why not have their military leaders over for the most beneficial look of all? Our expressed policy, the aim and purpose of our entire defense system, is to deter the Kremlin from starting a war. What better way to deter than to show?

What we could show is nothing more nor less than the greatest military might ever assembled in the history of the world. If the Soviet high command could see what we have, they should be of our mind—that for them to start war today would be an act of insanity.

We could start in a Pentagon briefing room. There, with maps, globes, films and sound-projection equipment to help illustrate our points, we could give them a good hard look at the distribution of American power. Then we could fly the group to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Montana, where bombers of the Strategic Air Command are on 24-hour alert, many ready to take off within 15 minutes. We could see an awe-inspiring line of B-47’s, any one of which can, in a single mission, deliver explosive power equivalent to that of all the bombs dropped by all sides in World War II. We could invite the commander of the Soviet air force to ride in one of these planes, and see it refueled in the air, thus quietly demonstrating that, while most Soviet bombers would have to fly one-way missions, ours can strike any target in the world and return nonstop.

SNIP...

The demonstration at SAC should effectively dismiss from Soviet minds any speculation about the possibility of their gaining an advantage from all-out war any time soon. But we must face the fact that in a few years the Russians may be able to zero in our SAC bases with ballistic missiles. To drive this temptation out of their minds, we could show them other deterrents.

CONTINUES…

The Reader’s Digest
July 1959 pp. 25-30

For Pres, a son and grandson even occupied the Oval Office, George Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush. Their time in office was put to some kind of use by their cronies and henchmen. With all the warmongering, election rigging, and oil thieving, it's as if they were all part of some empire of evil, or something.

[Stinky The Clown]

16. Most people know all that. You completely missed my comment's point.

Just sayin'

[Octafish]

18. Sorry If I missed your comment's point.

Help me with what I missed, I don't do cryptic, my Friend. If you refer to the bipartisan nature of corruption, I'm there. Over the years on DU, I've often brought up Big Money's hold on things Democratic from Averell and Pamela Harriman to the likes of Jackson Stephens and Clark Clifford.

As for most people: No, most people don't know all that. Perhaps most of your friends or most DUers, but no, most people don't know much about American political history, I'm sad to say. That's why I've devoted so much of my own time to post on DU.

[Stinky The Clown]

19. I think my point was obvious

Succinct.

Within DU rules.

[gratuitous]

5. Never too late to start telling the truth

But Nixon and his supporters will test that.

[Joanne98]

6. ZZZZZZZZZZZZ

:boring:

[EFerrari]

7. TG for Octafish.

Octafish Sun Jan-23-05 09:01 AM
Response to Reply #13
15. "Bush broke out in assholes and shit himself to death." Updated at 11:03 AM

From The Unauthorized Biography of George H.W. Bush



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2978657&mesg_id=2994912

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. I went to a historian's conference near that library

and we went on the tour. I mean we were there. The staff got really flustered as we started discussing that minor affair in sordid detail. We even got a few tourist who were previously listening to the guides come over and listen to a bunch of professional historians and graduate students discussing the affair.

At that point they moved from just flustered to really angry. So they asked us to leave. We did... to the front of the building where we ran an informal sit in.

I mean the tourist asked who the fuck we were... so we told them. One of them turned to the guide and told her, a well meaning 19 year old volunteer, that they'd rather take our word over hers, nuthing personal.

Been over two decades but I still chuckle over that one.

And yes, one of the papers presented was ON WATERGATE. That was kind of hilarious.

[unblock]

10. "tricky dick", not "tricky dicky"

although tricky dicky certainly is more lyrical, the original moniker helen gehagan douglas gave him was "tricky dick".

[niyad]

13. she was an early victim of this bunch of thugs, liars and murderers.

[Johonny]

15. My afternoon at the Nixon Library was one of the funniest I ever spent

If you know anything about history it's comic gold. I couldn't stop laughing moving from one room to the next. I love the video explaining away the smoking gun tape. I highly recommend a visit if your ever in southern california. A non-stop laughfeast!

[EFerrari]

17. I was thinking it would be.

:)