In retrospect--knowing all we know now or can best surmise about the Bush Junta, U.S. secret agencies, the MIC/Pentagon, our Corporate Rulers, their 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines (in every state), and, above all, about the lying liars of the Corporate Press, including Bob Woodward and the Washington Psst--Watergate begins to look a lot different than it did then.
Then, it seemed like righteous journalists and a righteous Senate and a couple of righteous government officials did the right thing, and removed a particularly corrupt president for crimes committed (not for his worst crime, Vietnam, but still...). With hindsight, though, I am no longer at all sure that that is what happened. It has occurred to me that certain powers-that-be didn't want the opening to China (or not just then) or to Russia (which Nixon also visited), and that maybe that was why they went after him with such singular purpose.
My other thought about this is that their removal of Nixon had to do with the CIA assassination of JFK (and probably also RFK and maybe MLK). They may have feared that that terrible secret was going to come out--through the Watergate burglars themselves (who were tied to CIA-connected Cuban fascists who hated JFK like the devil), or something those burglars found in their burglaries (the main one, of the Democratic Party national headquarters)--something like that.
I have no doubt in my mind that the CIA assassinated JFK, after reading James Douglass' recent book, "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters." (Douglass really puts it all together.) So, also in retrospect, with that in mind, what might have been going on within the secret agencies and the MIC, to keep a very tight lid on it? And where did Nixon fit in?
Nixon, one of the major beneficiaries of the JFK assassination, wouldn't likely have exposed that secret on purpose. But perhaps he wasn't savvy enough about the very tight lid. That old Sir Walter Scott canard, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive" comes to mind. That conspiracy was a very tangled web, indeed. (Douglass is just brilliant on that--untangling the misdirections, etc.) Nixon may have messed up--hired the wrong people to do his dirty work or was himself a CIA protege and asset, but not in the inner circle, and thought he could control them, maybe tried to blackmail them with it?
I haven't figured it out, obviously--but I've become very suspicious of the accepted Watergate story.
When JFK vowed to "smash the CIA into a thousand pieces," after the Bay of Pigs mess, he probably signed his own death warrant, at that point. But there were additional reasons for his murder, among them his backchannel opening of communications with Soviet Premier Krushchev and with Castro, after the Cuban Missile Crisis, in an effort to get around the CIA, after he realized, at long last, that the CIA was deceiving him and was trying to provoke a nuclear war and was setting up other wars (notably, Vietnam). The CIA/MIC wanted to strike while the U.S. had missile superiority and they told him that the U.S. would "win" with only a few hundred thousand casualties on the east coast. They were trying to force his hand, so he went directly to Krushchev through backchannels.
So the situations of JFK and Nixon had this parallel: Both presidents were undertaking peace initiatives, vis a vis our communist "enemies," that were anathema to "cold warriors" (virulent haters of communists, like CIA Director Allen Dulles and the Joint Chiefs of Staff). In JFK's case, this is known--his war with the CIA is well-documented; and the Joint Chiefs utterly opposed even the slightest effort to make peace with Russia; they wanted to nuke them out of existence. In Nixon's case, I am presuming that, though he may have been a CIA protege and asset, he struck out on his own with Kissinger to make friends of the two biggest communist countries, and ran afoul of the CIA and a couple of their other assets, Bob Woodward and the Washington Psst.
There are BIG differences between JFK and Nixon. JFK, just before he died, was trying to stop the war on Vietnam. Nixon, of course, slaughtered about a million Southeast Asians in that war, after LBJ had slaughtered the first million. (The CIA didn't get to nuke Russia. JFK stood in their way. Then, three days after they assassinated him, LBJ said, "Now they can have their war." He was speaking of the CIA and Vietnam.) JFK was notable for his progressive agenda. LBJ got the credit, but most of LBJ's positive accomplishments were initiated by JFK's administration. Nixon did some interesting things (like starting the EPA) but he was hardly a progressive. He represented business interests. His catch words were "law and order." He was a virulent anti-communist, of the Reagan/McCarthy '50s type ("a communist under every bed"--labor leaders and liberals are all communists), not as retro as Reagan & co., but still no liberal. Nixon's supporters hated the Hippies and the anti-war movement and the vast cultural advances of the 1960s, in civil rights, women's rights and so on. He was the ikon of reactionism.
They were all "cold warriors" to start with--virtually all of our political leaders back then, including JFK and RFK. But JFK was undergoing a significant personal transformation into a man of peace, and his brother along with him, by 1963. They didn't live long enough to create world peace--though those two surely saved us and the world from what would have been an horrendous nuclear catastrophe. It was Nixon who made the "great opening."*
It may be odd to think it, but Nixon--for all his slaughter of a million people--may have been trying to imitate JFK, by going to Russia and China, to open trade. JFK's Wheat Deal with Russia (when the Russian harvest failed) had been completely opposed by the CIA, the MIC and the "cold warriors." Help Russia? Trade with Russia? Never! By Nixon's term, it was not so unthinkable an idea--except to men who still wanted to wipe Russia off the face of the earth, and China as well, and who had murdered JFK for wanting to (and trying to) end the "Cold War."
Nixon one night went out into the crowd of tens of thousands of anti-war protestors around the White House, apparently trying to understand why they were so against him. Was he worried about his image, his fate, how history would treat him? Of course, his burglars were also breaking into anti-war activist Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist office, to get dirt on him, to smear him. And things got so bad that the National Guard open fired on students at Kent State. But there is this other side of Nixon. Was he trying to recompense for the slaughter in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, by going to Russia and China? Trying save his presidency? Trying to save his soul? The man was raised by Quakers! Quakers! Did that heritage come back to haunt him? Did he feel guilt about JFK's death and tried to be more like him? And did he think that he would get away with peace initiatives to the communist giants, whereas JFK did not get away with it?
Dunno. My thoughts are a muddle, as I try to decide what I think about Watergate. I was VERY caught up in it, at the time. Watched all the hours of the Senate hearings. Ate it up. I blamed Nixon for continuing the Vietnam War and wanted him brought down. I was very, vary glad when he resigned. Was it all fake? A CIA dumb show?
Was the CIA afraid of Nixon? Did he know what they'd done? Was he blackmailing him? Did E. Howard Hunt tell him all about it and he was holding it over the CIA, and they decided to teach him who's boss? Or was he in on it but had become a shaky conspirator, not able to control a potential leak?
The CIA had removed Nixon's obstacles to the presidency, one by one. First JFK, who defeated Nixon in 1960. Then RFK, who would likely have defeated him in 1968. And MLK, that same year, who was registering the Black South to vote. Nixon was the racists' candidate. Maybe the CIA was behind the violence at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, too--they were known for just such rotten methods--and thus removed the obstacle of Humphrey from Nixon's path. (Humphrey almost beat him anyway, in 1968--but the anti-war protestors have always been blamed for the Chicago cops' brutality disrupting that convention and dividing the Democratic Party.) Nixon owed a lot to the CIA (if any one of these guesses is correct.)
I figure that RFK knew what was what (who killed his brother) and THAT obstacle was directly moved from Nixon's path, as well as removing probably the only man who could have done something about his brother's murder. If my guesses are correct, how much of it did Nixon know? What was his relationship with the CIA? Was he going through the same struggle with them that JFK had gone through and lost? Or something similar? The CIA controlling the presidency? Did he balk at their control, their arrogance, their power? Were they sabotaging the eventual Nixon-Kissinger peace talks with Vietnam? Were they pushing him to nuke Vietnam, the way they had pushed JFK to nuke Russia? Were they still trying to provoke the big one--an all-out nuclear war that they madly averred that we would "win"?
If the veil was ripped off Watergate--if it was not as it seemed--what would we find?**
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*(I was in Leningrad in 1972 and heard the personal testimony of Russians as to how big a deal Nixon's visit was to them. It was hugely meaningful and inspirational to them, that a U.S. president visited their country. I was with a group of Americans that didn't care for Nixon and who vociferously hated his on-going mass murder in Vietnam. The Russians were shocked that anybody opposed Nixon. They didn't seem to care much about Vietnam. They thought he was a great peacemaker. If he was--apart from Vietnam, or in recompense for Vietnam-- a great peacemaker in the 'Cold War," that is the very offense for which his predecessor--the man who defeated him in 1960--was assassinated. Instead of assassinating Nixon for this similar offense, they did Watergate?)
**(There was a theory I read somewhere that McGovern and the Democrats had the goods on JFK's assassins and were going to blow the lid off, or at least had some pieces of it and were a danger to the CIA and others involved, including, as I recall, Nixon--and that THAT was what E. Howard Hunt was looking for in DNC headquarters. I didn't give this theory much credence, because I couldn't imagine anybody being that stupid, as to keep such very, very "hot" and dangerous evidence in the DNC headquarters main office. It would be in a lawyer's safe or a safe deposit box or buried in a deep cavern in Alaska, to be unlocked and hauled out when the time was right. While this theory may be wrong, there still could be a connection. JFK's assassination--and probably the string of assassinations, JFK, RFK, MLK, within the space of five years--would be the MAIN THING that the CIA was wild to cover up--would do ANYTHING to cover up--during that period and as long as possible. It is an intuitive connection, but a strong one. I believe there was an oblique reference to the JFK assassination on the Nixon tapes--something to the effect of keeping a lid on it. Can't recall exactly what it was, but the gist was that the Nixonites knew something and were concerned about it being revealed.)
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