Constitutional Law, Military, Politics

Forty Years Later: The Lessons of Watergate

180px-WatergateFromAir220px-Nixon-departToday I will join a distinguished panel to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Watergate. I will be speaking with Liz Holtzman, member of the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate; Daniel Ellsberg, of Pentagon Papers fame; and Fritz Schwarz, Chief Counsel, Brennan Center for Justice and former Chief Counsel to the Church Committee. We will be discussing the legacy of Watergate in terms of our current controversies over FISA, war powers, presidential papers, and other executive abuses.


The event will be held in the National Press Club and is being organized by Common Cause. The panel will be held at 3:30 pm on March 13, 2013 at 529 14th St. NW, Washington DC 20045.

You can register to watch the conference here

69 thoughts on “Forty Years Later: The Lessons of Watergate”

  1. Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America by Russ Baker

    When you consider that the Watergate break-in was by experienced operatives, why would they put tape on the lock, they were already in, so it could be seen by the nightwatchman? And why would they replace it when the nightwatchman first removed it?

  2. Interesting concept: Government by scandal …

    Several speakers indicate that is a structural portion of our history in the sense that sometimes to get something proper done there has to be a scandal.

  3. New panel is beginning now.

    “Government officials need to be judged on more than ‘absence of criminal behavior'” …

  4. There is a book on the Bush family that postulates how GHWB always managed to stay in the background but still manipulate events. Apparently Nixon owed Bush and never outed him. At the same time, Bush used that trust to plant John Dean in the administration. Nixon did appoint Bush as UN ambassador and made it a Cabinet position (or at least included Bush in Cabinet meetings) So Bush always knew what was going on. It indicates that Bush was involved in setting Nixon up.

    I can’t remember the name of the book, but it will come to me or I’ll find my kindle, and I’ll post later.

  6. The number one lesson?

    Nixon should have spent the bulk of his remaining days in prison like any other criminal. -Gene H.

    Yep.

  7. The number one lesson?

    Nixon should have spent the bulk of his remaining days in prison like any other criminal.

  10. Malisha,

    Speaking of Katherine Graham–she’s mentioned in this piece by Charles Pierce:

    The Woodward Myth
    By Charles P. Pierce
    2/25/13
    http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Woodward_Myth

    There was a lot of buzz over the weekend about Bob Woodward’s piece in which he blamed the president for The Sequester Horror. He was mildly, but seriously, reproved in several quarters for neglecting to point out that the whole spit-and-duct-tape contraption was devised to try and keep the government running despite the best efforts of congressional Republicans to shut the whole thing down and open a tattoo parlor. Ezra Klein was particularly firm-but-fair, pointing out that his “good friend” apparently slept through the 2012 election. But more fascinating to me was the chortling over on the conservative Twitch-O-Sphere to the effect that Bob Woodward, Liberal Hero, had turned on our socialist president, and nyah-nyah, where’s your Moses now?

    The fact is that, back during the heady days of Watergate, the work that Woodward and Bernstein did was seen only as an act of liberalism only by the various alibi manufacturers and professional paranoids and conspirators to obstruct justice employed by the Nixon Administration. Nobody else paid much attention. (Hardly any other newspapers picked up their most groundbreaking stories and their work didn’t materially affect the 1972 presidential campaign at all.) The actual liberal heroes of the time were people like John Sirica, Archibald Cox, Elliot Richardson, and Peter Rodino. Only after these people did their work did Woodward and Bernstein — which latter actually was a liberal — get lumped into the great lefty conspiracy to bring down Richard Nixon.

    This became even more clear in the aftermath. The one abiding effect of Woodward’s Watergate work is that it scared the living piss out of the elite political press over the possibility that it might have to “bring down” another criminal president. The late sainted “Katie” Graham was quite explicit, giving a speech in 1988 at CIA Headquarters in which she said, “There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.” This, of course, was during the reign of George H.W. Bush, who’d been hip-deep in the Iran-Contra scandal under President Ronald Reagan. The Post and its properties determined early on that they weren’t going to “bring down” another president or two over what clearly were impeachable offenses. (Ben Bradlee as much as says so in an interview with author Mark Hertsgaard for the latter’s On Bended Knee, the definitive account of the dive the elite press took during the Reagan years.) Having done its Watergate thing, the Post slipped comfortably back into its place in the respectable D.C. power structure. Woodward went with it, producing periodically weighty doorstops filled with establishment stenography. He’s no more a liberal than he is a member of Motley Crue. He’s a courtier to all the right people, the scribe to powerful. He’s a journalistic Sadducee. He tends the Temple grounds.

  11. Frankly 1, March 13, 2013 at 11:46 am

    Bron – your ignorance of Watergate is showing. The entire operation goes well beyond the break in at the Watergate and includes torpedoing all the other candidates so that the big Dick could run against McGovern. It was a coup, the investigation uncovered it and the criminals got away without punishment.

    To call the investigation of the crimes a coup is to ignore that actual evidence for political convenience. In the end the evidence was so clear that even the Republican’s would not support Nixon any longer and he quit to avoid the humiliation of being convicted in the Senate.
    ============================================
    One of the lawyers on the current panel pointed some of that out Frankly.

    He said that Nixon’s campaign, in addition to sabotaging the Vietnam War Peace Talks, infiltrated the campaigns of the other party’s candidates during primaries, burglarizing, sowing discord, and other things.

    The purpose was to get a weaker candidate to run against.

  12. The panel going on now say that all the lessons of Watergate have been lost or unlearned.

    They said the drone memos of the current DOJ are pure “Nixonian” in the sense he could have written them (“when the president does anything it is thereby made legal”).

  13. “What did you know and when did you know it.” Along w/ “At this point in time.” These are two phrases from the Watergate Hearings that have become part of our vernacular.

  14. Bron – your ignorance of Watergate is showing. The entire operation goes well beyond the break in at the Watergate and includes torpedoing all the other candidates so that the big Dick could run against McGovern. It was a coup, the investigation uncovered it and the criminals got away without punishment.

    To call the investigation of the crimes a coup is to ignore that actual evidence for political convenience. In the end the evidence was so clear that even the Republican’s would not support Nixon any longer and he quit to avoid the humiliation of being convicted in the Senate.

  16. wasnt the arms to Iran to raise money for the Contras? That is how I remember it.

  18. The first panel is finished. Next is the congressional oversight and media scrutiny panel. Coffee break at the moment.

  20. JohnLouisville 1, March 13, 2013 at 10:04 am

    Alternet.org had a good article the other day about both Watergate and Iran-Contra: http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/shocking-new-evidence-reveals-depths-treason-and-treachery-watergate-and-iran
    ====================================================
    Your link includes documentation showing that Reagan colluded with Iranian Khomeni to get the American Hostages held until after the election so Carter would be defeated. Then in payment they gave Iran weapons.

    Nixon sabotaged the Vietnam Peace talks by colloborating with Vietnamese officials promising a better deal if he was elected.

    Now the Republicans are into gerrymandering and voter suppression.

Comments are closed.