Jack Anderson's Nixonian tactics

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Nixon: the gift that keeps on giving. He wasn't the only nasty one back then.

Jack Anderson's Nixonian tactics

The cat-and-mouse game turned more serious when two Nixon campaign operatives, {G. Gordon} Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, began plotting to murder Anderson. They considered breaking into his Bethesda home and slipping poison into one of his medicines, putting LSD on his steering wheel or ramming into his car. Finally, Liddy decided on knifing or strangling Anderson, which he called "justifiable homicide." Feldstein questions how serious the plots were, but notes that Liddy and Hunt both admitted their involvement; Liddy wrote about the plot in his autobiography.

Playing dirty
But just when one sympathizes with Anderson as the target of thugs and loons, the book serves up reminders that he could also play dirty -- even when that meant consorting with his nominal enemies. When George Wallace was gearing up for his 1972 campaign challenge to Nixon, Anderson asked for -- and received -- Internal Revenue Service files on the Alabama governor. White House aide Murray Chotiner provided the confidential tax records, which is a felony. The story damaged Wallace, and Feldstein concludes Anderson was being "disingenuous at best" by praising Nixon in his column for refusing to kill the investigation.

[karynnj]

1. To put current times in perspective, Liddy is a FOX talking head

sitting in judgment on the patriotism and policies of Democrats. This AFTER he wrote about despicable things he did or proposed doing.

[leveymg]

2. Liddy comes across as an old acid-head, himself, but not mellow. He later teamed up with Leary, who

he prosecuted in the mid-1960s when he worked for the Dutchess County DA's office. The two did a very strange stage act together in the 1980s and '90s.

By the way, Wallace was a bastard, too. So no foul in my book by Anderson for going after the racist bastard.

[robdogbucky]

3. Dog, I miss Anderson and Buchwald n/t

[leveymg]

4. Newspapermen had teeth back then.

There are still some good ones, but the industry has changed.