This was the end of a long two-year process beginning with a break in at an office building in Washington DC. The story unraveled slowly....and painfully....with many denials and lots of accusations. It was the topic of discussion almost every Thursday morning at our local public library "Mom's Discussion Group" (An hour of adult conversation while our pre-schoolers enjoyed story time.) As we watched the news and tried to sift through facts we were using newspapers, radio and I think three major networks. This was years before cable TV and the internet. So the story moved more slowly....perhaps more thoughtfully than it would have in today's media market. A few reporters just kept digging and digging and asking and asking. One thread lead to another.....one cover-up piled on top of another.....follow the money.....White House staff resigned....the VP left in disgrace.....hundreds of thousands of dollars of hush money changed hands.....week by week it just got more and more unreal. And Watergate changed the way Americans looked at their government.....trust eroded. Faith in our elected and appointed officials was tested.....replaced by doubt and disbelief.
Yesterday I happened across the Rachel Maddow show....we don't have cable but it showed up on my search engine so I listened. And my jaw dropped....and Watergate flooded back in. I'd watched the Putin/45 press conference after the recent unplanned "summit" so I'd heard the words....I'd seen the men....I'd listened to the interpreters. And then I took the time to watch the Rachel Maddow episode on July 24, 2018 called "White House Leaves Putin Support for Trump Out of Transcript."
The entire show took about an hour, and included three knowledgeable governmental officials (serving previous administrations) to add information, background and reaction to what happened to the tape of the real press conference. The White House was re-writing history to leave something out.....In Russia the government re-wrote this recent history even more and left all of one reporter's questions out of the event.
I watched the press conference....I saw it with my eyes....I heard it with my ears....but now the official version was somehow just slightly and importantly different. I invite you to go to her website and just listen. Really listen......watch the real press conference....and then watch the redacted version. Is it important that one part of one question was deleted? Does it really mean anything?
Looking back, here's a brief recounting how Watergate unraveled a Presidency:
A Brief Chronology of Watergate
1968
- November 1968: Richard Milhous Nixon, the 55-year-old former vice president who lost the presidency for the Republicans in 1960, reclaims it by defeating Hubert Humphrey in one of the closest elections in U.S. history.
- July 23, 1970: Nixon approves a plan for greatly expanding domestic intelligence-gathering by the FBI, CIA and other agencies. He has second thoughts a few days later and rescinds his approval.
1971
- June 13, 1971: The New York Times begins publishing the Pentagon Papers – the Defense Department’s secret history of the Vietnam War. The Washington Post will begin publishing the papers later in the week.
- September 9, 1971: The White House “plumbers” unit – named for their orders to plug leaks in the administration – burglarizes a psychiatrist’s office to find files on Daniel Ellsberg, the former defense analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers.
1972
- June 17, 1972: Five men, one of whom says he used to work for the CIA, are arrested at 2:30 a.m. trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate hotel and office complex.
- June 19, 1972: A GOP security aide is among the Watergate burglars, The Washington Post reports. Former attorney general John Mitchell, head of the Nixon reelection campaign, denies any link to the operation.
- August 1, 1972: A $25,000 cashier’s check, apparently earmarked for the Nixon campaign, wound up in the bank account of a Watergate burglar, The Washington Post reports.
- September 29, 1972: John Mitchell, while serving as attorney general, controlled a secret Republican fund used to finance widespread intelligence-gathering operations against the Democrats, The Post reports.
- October 10, 1972: FBI agents establish that the Watergate break-in stems from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of the Nixon reelection effort, The Post reports.
- November 11, 1972: Nixon is reelected in one of the largest landslides in American political history, taking more than 60 percent of the vote and crushing the Democratic nominee, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.
1973
- January 30, 1973: Former Nixon aides G. Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord Jr. are convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping in the Watergate incident. Five other men plead guilty, but mysteries remain.
- April 30, 1973: Nixon’s top White House staffers, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst resign over the scandal. White House counsel John Dean is fired.
- May 18, 1973: The Senate Watergate committee begins its nationally televised hearings. Attorney General-designate Elliot Richardson taps former solicitor general Archibald Cox as the Justice Department’s special prosecutor for Watergate.
- June 3, 1973: John Dean has told Watergate investigators that he discussed the Watergate cover-up with President Nixon at least 35 times, The Post reports.
- June 13, 1973: Watergate prosecutors find a memo addressed to John Ehrlichman describing in detail the plans to burglarize the office of Pentagon Papers defendant Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, The Post reports.
- July 13, 1973: Alexander Butterfield, former presidential appointments secretary, reveals in congressional testimony that since 1971 Nixon had recorded all conversations and telephone calls in his offices.
- July 18, 1973: Nixon reportedly orders the White House taping system disconnected.
- July 23, 1973: Nixon refuses to turn over the presidential tape recordings to the Senate Watergate committee or the special prosecutor.
- October 20, 1973: Saturday Night Massacre: Nixon fires Archibald Cox and abolishes the office of the special prosecutor. Attorney General Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus resign. Pressure for impeachment mounts in Congress.
- November 17, 1973: Nixon declares, “I’m not a crook,” maintaining his innocence in the Watergate case.
- December 7, 1973: The White House can’t explain an 18 1/2 -minute gap in one of the subpoenaed tapes. Chief of staff Alexander Haig says one theory is that “some sinister force” erased the segment.
1974
- April 30, 1974: The White House releases more than 1,200 pages of edited transcripts of the Nixon tapes to the House Judiciary Committee, but the committee insists that the tapes themselves must be turned over.
- July 24, 1974: The Supreme Court rules unanimously that Nixon must turn over the tape recordings of 64 White House conversations, rejecting the president’s claims of executive privilege.
- July 27, 1974: House Judiciary Committee passes the first of three articles of impeachment, charging obstruction of justice.
- August 8, 1974: Richard Nixon becomes the first U.S. president to resign. Vice President Gerald R. Ford assumes the country’s highest office. He will later pardon Nixon of all charges related to the Watergate case.
Really.....just where does this go from here? Follow the threads....follow the money.....follow the Kremlin......just follow.....
Orwellian!
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