Nixon dug deep for dirt on Ted Kennedy

Think this might combat to some degree the idea that Watergate/Nixon was a big nothing ...
it's just the underlying thinking, however, I wouldn't presume that it ended there!

Also, thought the nixontapes.org website interesting --

http://nixontapes.org/

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Nixon dug deep for dirt on Ted Kennedy
By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 2 mins ago

WASHINGTON – President Richard Nixon considered Ted Kennedy such a threat that he tried to catch Kennedy cheating on his wife, even ordering aides to recruit Secret Service agents to spill secrets on the senator's behavior.

"Do you have anybody in the Secret Service that you can get to?" Nixon asked his aide John Ehrlichman in a stark series of Oval Office conversations about Kennedy before the 1972 election. "Yeah, yeah," Ehrlichman replied.

"Plant one," Nixon said. "Plant two guys on him. This could be very useful."

Nixon made clear that the Secret Service protection afforded Kennedy before the 1972 election would be rescinded after. Then, said the president, "If he gets shot, it's too damn bad." His aides disdainfully referred to Kennedy supporters as "super swinger jet set types."

Tape recordings from the Nixon White House betray a preoccupation with the Kennedy mystique and how that might be used against the Republican president by the last surviving brother, who died Tuesday at age 77. Nixon wanted a sharp and private eye kept on Ted Kennedy's movements after the Chappaquiddick scandal, hoping to expose another misstep with a woman other than his wife, Joan.

Nixon's men had investigators tail Ted Kennedy on a Hawaii vacation and when he was at his Martha's Vineyard haunts.

Mortified, they told Nixon that Joan Kennedy wanted to wear "hot pants" to a White House function until her husband talked her out of it. But Ted's behavior? In the aftermath of his scandal, he was careful not to step out of line, the tapes suggest.
"Does he do anything?" Nixon asked in a September 1971 meeting. "No, no, he's very clean," Ehrlichman replied. "He was in Hawaii on his own. He was staying in some guy's villa. He was just as nice as could be the whole time."
Nixon shot back: "The thing to do is watch him."

also --

"President Nixon never forgot his humiliating defeat in the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy," said Luke A. Nichter, a leading authority on the Nixon White House recordings and assistant history professor at Texas A&M University. "Nixon did not intend to simply win in 1972; he wanted to destroy his opponent."

"If that opponent was a Kennedy, Nixon cautiously welcomed that opportunity but left nothing to chance," Nichter said. "That is what these long-obscured recordings show us."



and

"You understand what the problem is," Nixon told Haldeman and Ehrlichman on Sept. 7, 1972. "If the (SOB) gets shot they'll say we didn't furnish it (protection). So you just buy his insurance.
"After the election, he doesn't get a ... thing. If he gets shot, it's too damn bad. Do it under the basis, though, that we pick the Secret Service men.

"Understand what I'm talking about?"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090828/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_kennedy_and_nixon_4

Ironic that the real dirt got dumped on him.

"...Do it under the basis, though, that we pick the Secret Service men.

"Understand what I'm talking about?"



Wow! Thanks for the heads-up, defendandprotect. I'm heading for the archives...

No one could have done all that crap in one lifetime. Filthy liars.

I haven't had time to try to dig up the actual tape, but the reference is on the
internet somewhere . . .

At any rate . . . Dean is in the Oval Office, I think getting Nixon to sign something,
and he says, "wouldn't Teddy Kennedy be surprised at the bear trap he's walking into."

This was the Friday before the Cappaquiddick event --

IMO, not only did all of these foul deeds come out of the Nixon presidency, but from
the power group that bought him, paid him over and above his Congressional salary --
and ran him -- and who it seems constantly cleared the field for him.

As they mention, court proceedings re Watergate are to be kept secret "forever" - some
of the evidence has disappeared --

And, meanwhile, John Dean may look like the hero to some but on the tapes he can be clearly
heard pushing to have the IRS and other government agencies/resources used to help them
get their "enemies."

I think John Dean is a fascinating part of this especially that he's managed to say alive.
I do think he knows a lot more than he's told us.
That may be why he's still alive?

Dean is one of the single most interesting characters in Watergate.

You may be right. The reason he is still alive is that he revealed so little. I wonder if we will ever hear any deathbed type of confession from him regarding Watergate, and his dealings with Nixon and Nixon's gang.

one reason he can't tell is because he'd incriminate himself and lose the
"whistleblower" status he seems to have now which provides for his acceptance
as a commentator on TV and semi-authority on Nixon administration - author, etc.

Then, too, my feeling is that those who have so completely corrupted government and
especially those who put Nixon in the White House ... are still in control.

That's the really scary thing to realize. I hope I'm wrong!

Dean had an odd background of dishonesty if not something almost illegal which,
I think, is why the White House sought him out for employment.

But, I always try to watch if John Dean is being interviewed --


:)

Digging deep for dirt. You usually dig through dirt. You dig deep to unearth XX - not sure what XX would be though. Funny how these phrases get started.