Linkmeister

Watergate revisited

Like a lot of people, I lived through Watergate. I was 21 when the burglary took place (June 17, 1972), just finishing up Navy basic training in San Diego. At the time, boot camp was 9 weeks of isolation: no television, no radio, no newspapers. The only knowledge the 45-50 people in my company got of the outside world was a single newspaper vending machine on the sidewalk outside the mess hall. Seeing the headline of the San Diego paper through the machine's window was how I learned of the assassination attempt on George Wallace on May 15, 1972. We were shut off from the outside world.

After "graduating" from boot camp I went on to attend 14 weeks of training school, also in San Diego. The Watergate break-in probably didn't make the San Diego paper at all that summer; if it did I didn't know it. In November Nixon was re-elected and I headed off for Japan and two years of active duty. All through 1973 things were happening: Liddy and McCord were convicted, Haldeman and Ehrlichman resigned, and the Senate hearings began. Unfortunately, my only English news sources were the Stars and Stripes newspaper and the Armed Forces Radio Television Service. Neither of those was censored by the military, as far as I know, but neither spent a lot of time or newsprint covering all that was going on.

In August, 1974, Nixon resigned. I had three months left on my tour of active duty. When I got out in November, I went back to school for a semester and then left to take a job on Kwajalein. While on Kwaj I had a lot of time on my hands and a bit of money to spend. I spent some of it on books about Watergate, since I hadn't really understood it completely while I was in the Navy. I feel like I know a fair bit about it, which is why I'm so amused by the bleatings of the Nixon loyalists now. Here's Liddy talking about the newly-revealed Deep Throat: he "violated the ethics of the law enforcement profession," he said to CNN. Gordon Liddy talking about ethics? He's the guy who planned the burglary! Then there's Pat Buchanan: "And so his motivation, I think, is not good. His deeds are dishonorable, if not criminal. And I don‘t know what he thought he was doing for his country." Well, Pat, lemme tell you. He thought Richard Nixon was obstructing justice, which is a crime. And who was he going to go to? Here's an exchange I heard on The News Hour:

BEN BRADLEE: So I'm not absolutely sure, but my feeling is that Mark Felt thought that something was rotten and a crime was being committed and he wanted to do something about it. He couldn't very well go to his boss, who was L. Patrick Gray at that time.

JIM LEHRER: Who was then the new head of the FBI --

BEN BRADLEE: The acting head of the FBI.

JIM LEHRER: Acting head of the FBI.

BEN BRADLEE: He was throwing documents off the bridge in the Potomac River. He couldn't very well go to the attorney general, who was en route to jail.

And in addition, the hearings didn't start till May of 1973, which was also the month that a special prosecutor named Archibald Cox was named to investigate. So who was Felt supposed to go see?

He did a good and important thing, and he had no real choice but to go to the press. So attaboy, W. Mark Felt.

Posted by Linkmeister at June 4, 2005 09:56 PM