Nixon
in the cross-hairs in 1974 (Click on photo to enlarge)
Look at his eyes and you
see the frightened look of a paranoid and insecure man who knows that his own
tapes and fear based decisions have revealed in no uncertain terms that the
game is up ~ his presidency is over. Tim Weiner’s remarkable new book, One Man Against the World: The Tragedy
of Richard Nixon was
recently reviewed by Tom Engelhardt who correctly points out ~ Put it all together and you
have something like a White House-centered, first-draft version of the way the
national security state works quite “legally” in the twenty-first
century: Allen L Roland, PhD
“Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you
don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.” ~ Richard M. Nixon
Retired
four-star general and former NATO commander Wesley Clark's remarks to MSNBC
News last Friday in support of placing “radicalized” and “disloyal”
Americans in World War II-style internment camps must be taken as an urgent
warning that the end result of our Orwellian national security state is the
growing specter of military dictatorship.
To
fully understand our present day paranoia we must go back to its full flowering
in the Nixon administration as well as the unsettling realization that we still
live in a Nixonian world.
I
vividly remember as I sat with my family in Tiburon and watched in amazement
that night on November 17th, 1973 when President Nixon said, during a news
conference, that he had not obstructed justice and was not a crook whereby he
immediately crossed his arms and assumed a defensive position awaiting
questions. At that very moment I exclaimed to my wife and children ~ "He's
a crook"
One
minute video of that moment ~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5tgrssDn1w
The news conference did nothing to
end questions over Mr. Nixon’s honesty. His declaration “I’m not a crook”
was used against him ~ and the line would forever be the fodder of Nixon jokes and all associated with the Watergate era especially Tricky Dick.
In April 1974, the Internal Revenue
Service ordered that the president pay more than $400,000 in back taxes for
making improper deductions ~ and the
Watergate investigation continued to uncover misconduct regarding Nixon.
In August 1974, with the House
Judiciary Committee having recommended impeachment along with the release of a “smoking
gun” tape, that dramatically showed
Nixon had approved a cover-up ~ the president finally resigned in
disgrace.
But
now, 40 years later, we have access to the last of the secret Nixon White House tapes ~ finally
made public some 40 years after the first of them were turned over to courts,
prosecutors, and Congress.
Tim Weiner's amazing new book One Man Against the World: The Tragedy
of Richard Nixon brilliantly uses the secret tapes and traces the rapid downfall of Nixon. Weiner's book will undoubtedly be seen as the ultimate source on
that president’s reign of illegality ~ as well as a sordid prelude to our
present national security state.
Excerpts ( With my EMPHASIS POINTS )
" Richard Nixon saw himself as a great
statesman, a giant for the ages, a general who could command the globe, a
master of war, not merely the leader of the free world but “the world leader.” Yet he was addicted to the gutter
politics that ruined him. He was ~ as an English earl once said of the warlord
Oliver Cromwell ~ “a great, bad man.” By experience deeply suspicious, by
instinct incurably deceptive, he was branded by an indelible epithet: Tricky
Dick. No less a man than Martin Luther King Jr. saw a glimpse of the
monster beneath the veneer the first time they met, when King was the rising
leader of the civil rights movement. “Nixon has a genius for convincing one
that he is sincere,” King wrote in 1958. “If Richard Nixon is not sincere, he
is the most dangerous man in America.”
May 11th, 1973 became judgment day at the
White House. First Haig read the memcons (tapes). They were devastating. One
passage said: “It was the President’s wish that Walters call on Acting FBI
Director Gray and... suggest that the investigation not be pushed further.”
AND THEN THE WHEELS CAME LOOSE ~
"That same morning, page-one stories
described the White House wiretaps Nixon and Kissinger had placed on
presidential aides and prominent reporters starting in 1969. Kissinger, who was
expecting to be appointed secretary of state, brazenly denied that he had
chosen the wiretap targets among his NSC staff and national security reporters;
he implied he was only following orders. Nixon shouted: “Henry ordered the whole goddamn thing... He read
every one of those taps... he reveled in it, he groveled it, he wallowed in it.”
How they were going to
stonewall the Huston Surveillance Plan was another question. Nixon had endorsed every kind of government spying on
Americans ~ opening their mail, bugging their phones, breaking into their homes
and offices ~ until J. Edgar Hoover himself killed the program. John Dean
had placed a copy of the incendiary plan in a safe-deposit box and given the
key to Judge Sirica. He intended to turn the copy over to the Senate Watergate
Committee.
AND THEN THEY CAME OFF ~
"Nixon’s
constant refrain had been contempt for court rulings on wiretapping, break-ins,
any aspect of “the national security thing.” Nixon insisted: “I’m going
to defend the bugging. I’m going to defend the Plumbers [and] fight right
through to the finish on the son of a bitch.” But when he thought about people
actually reading the patently illegal Huston Plan, he changed his tune. “The
bad thing is that the president approved burglaries,” Nixon said on May 17th;
he could be perceived as “a repressive fascist.”
AND THEY INDEED
DESTROYED THEMSELVES
The tension at the
White House was unbearable. With the Watergate hearings days away, Nixon
screamed at his underlings as he schemed to save his presidency. Ziegler
cautioned him to stay calm: “If we allow ourselves to be consumed by this ~
" We’ll destroy ourselves,” the president said.
A
must read for any student of history and how absolute power can absolutely
corrupt.
“I was not lying. I said things that later on seemed to be
untrue.” ~ Richard M. Nixon
Allen
L Roland, PhD
http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/nixon-was-frightened-felon-victim-of.html
Heart
centered spiritual consultant and advisor Allen L Roland can
be contacted at allen@allenroland.com Allen is also a lecturer and writer who shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website
allenroland.com. He is also featured
columnist on Veterans Today and guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK
on www.conscioustalk.net
