NY Post: He [Nixon] Was Not A Crook

[NJSecularist]

http://www.nypost.com/seven/05182008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/he_was_not_a_crook_111307.htm

May 18, 2008 -- Swarmed by photographers, former Attorney General John Mitchell - once President Nixon's closest adviser, an awesome figure, with his wintry demeanor and trademark pipe, throughout the capital - emerged shaken and unsmiling from a three-hour grilling before the grand jury. It was April 20, 1973, and the Watergate cover-up was fast unraveling. Federal prosecutors and reporters smelled blood.

"Mitchell had good reason to be grim," reported Daniel Schorr. "CBS News learns Mitchell admitted to the grand jury that he authorized payment of legal fees and expenses for the Watergate defendants months after he ended his official connection with the Nixon campaign committee."

This was almost certainly false. For while those grand jury proceedings remain sealed, in none of the ensuing forums - the Senate Watergate hearings; the House impeachment hearings; or U.S. v. Mitchell, the trial of the former attorney general on criminal charges that stemmed, in part, from his unhappy appearance before the grand jury that day - did Mitchell ever admit authorizing payments to the Watergate burglars. Nor did the prosecutors, who tried Mitchell for that exact offense, ever produce, in his indictment or trial, any such grand jury testimony by him.

The Watergate maelstrom - the unprecedented resignation of an American president and the criminal conviction of his top aides, a wrenching political upheaval unequaled in our nation's history - is popularly remembered as a triumph for the Washington press corps. Book deals were signed, acclaimed movies produced, reputations made, myths cemented.

Yet a dispassionate review of the massive corpus of official Watergate evidence - including, for the first time, the internal memoranda of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF) and 5,000 pages of executive session testimony collected by the Senate Watergate committee - reveals Schorr's example was hardly unique, that the news media, for all their prominence in Nixon's downfall, actually got a lot wrong in their coverage of the great scandal.

I don't know what to think about Nixon. I do think he was unfairly treated by the media throughout his career - in 1960 and especially in 1962 after he was left for the dead by the media after he lost in the California gubernatorial race.

[sfaprog]

1. Nixon was not a crook... compared to Bush and Cheney. But he was still a crook,

Shame should not be easy to wipe off.

It won't be for the Clintons.

[ShaneGR]

2. The question comes down to, did Nixon authorize the breakin of the DNC headquarters?

That's the bottom line question. I believe he did. By doing so he was guilty of at a minimum 2 Federal Charges. Conspiracy & Breaking/Entering (At least conspiracy). The Watergate tapes proved that if he didn't know about it from the beginning, he certainly tried to cover it up afterwards. In the end, he had to be impeached and the Democrats had Republican support for that impeachment. The sad thing is that the Republicans impeachment of Clinton in the 90s actually made it a lot harder to impeach Presidents in the future. If there is no hope of conviction, then it's not worth moving forward for the most part. That's the golden rule, and then Republicans pushed it knowing Clinton would never be removed. The same holds true today, if the Democrats were to bring impeachment proceedings now or in the past, he was never going to removed lacking the two thirds majority needed to convict. Catch 22.

[NJSecularist]

5. I don't think it's ever been proven that he authorized the break-in.

Obviously he tried to cover it up. If he had simply ratted out his aides responsible for ordering the break-in, he would have been able to continue on with his presidency. But when he covered up the break-in and tried to cover it up so his aides wouldn't be punished, that was the beginning of the end. The firing of Archibald Cox sealed his fate.

[Crabby Appleton]

8. I agree. nt

[angstlessk]

9. he actually authorized far worse..remember Nixon's enemy's list??

purly political and used to spy on his political enemies...with all that DID come out...ever wonder what the lost 18 minutes said???

[struggle4progress]

15. 18.5 minutes of erased tape said more than enough

[originalpckelly]

3. Bullshit longer than four paragraphs may be a sign of serious medical condition known as revisionism

n/t

[Jack Rabbit]

4. Jack Rabbit: It [the NY Post] is not a newspaper

[angstlessk]

6. the nypost is the equal to the wash times...a reight wing rag!

trust me, Nixon would not have resigned EXCEPT that he was guilty!!!

[NJSecularist]

7. I live in NJ. I get the New York Post every day.

While it does lean to the right, it is still a reputable news paper that millions read.

Nixon was guilty of covering up a crime. For that he was guilty. But the question that needs to be asked is that did the media cover the Watergate incident fairly?

[shraby]

10. I remember the hearings on t.v. such as it was

at the time. Watched them all. The man was an abomination in the office..had no business being president one minute longer than he was and even then it was too long. I didn't have the New York papers to read about it in, just our own local fishwrap. The biggest crime was that he was allowed to resign and then was subsequently pardoned.
Maybe you don't remember him rounding up a ton of protestors and locking them in a stadium. That also was an abuse of power...his trademark.

[MidwestTransplant]

11. The wingnuts are also trying to rehabilitate Joseph McCarthy

[Ichingcarpenter]

13. And Richard Nixon n/t

[kentuck]

12. Nixon loved being part of dirty tricks...

At heart, he was a merry prankster. However, when the pranks turned into criminal acts, he decided to cover it up, rather than expose it and hold those responsible that initiated it - people like G. Gordon Liddy and the "plumbers"...He would have been most happy in charge of the CIA rather than as President, in my opinion.

[struggle4progress]

14. Nixon was a scumbag. He never believed he could win an election without dirty tricks -- and so

there's plenty of slime around all of his campaigns. He started off as a McCarthyite liar. As President, he handed entire departments over to the industries they were supposed to regulate and attacked countries that had not attacked the US (such as Cambodia and Chile), leaving a trail of blood and misery

You think the press was unfair to Nixon after he lost the California race in 1962? He whined whenever he lost -- and the day he lost in 1962, he called a press conference in which he blamed everybody else for his misery: "Now that all the members of the press are so delighted I lost I would like to make a statement ... You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore ... "

A decade later, as President, he was back to his dirty tricks and lies --- and (of course) when he got caught, he reverted to his favorite game plan: namely, blame everybody else

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

16. Exactly, Nixon was a scumbag.

My father hated Nixon from 1950 when he ran against Helen Douglas for the Senate in CA. The Pukes can try and rehabilitate Nixon, just like they tried with Joe McCarthy, but they'll never succeed. Besides in the few more months they'll be trying to make Chucklenuts into the second coming of Ronald Reagan.

[brindis_desala]

17. I think you've outlasted your trolling coefficient

[Forkboy]

18. LOL....hopeless.

[MiniMe]

19. And Larry Craig is not gay, and has never been gay

Of course he could be bi.

[struggle4progress]

20. Watergate Tapes Online: The Smoking Gun

President Nixon and H.R. Haldeman
June 23, 1972

This conversation occurred six days after the arrest of the burglars at the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office complex. Here, the president and Haldeman, his closest aide and chief of staff, discuss a plan to stop the FBI's investigation into the break-in. They plan to have Vernon Walters, deputy director of the CIA, ask L. Patrick Gray, the acting director of the FBI, to "stay the hell out" of the Watergate investigation because it involved CIA national security operations. This conversation is called the "Smoking Gun" because it proved that Nixon was aware and helped plan the cover-up from almost the very beginning.

This conversation, originally subpoenaed by the Watergate Special Prosecution Force in the fall of 1973, was not turned over to the prosecutor until Aug. 2, 1974. The transcript of the tape was made public on Aug. 5 and the president resigned on Aug. 9.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/watergate/watergatefront.htm

[L. Coyote]

21. Thanks. Nixon Was Not A Crook, He Was a Felon. He Accepted a Pardon.

Accepting a pardon is an admission in this case, of guilt.

[spanone]

22. to new york post: yes he was