July 5, 1978

Wire Tap Proposal Vindicates Nixon

Is it only coincidence that Richard Nixon left the seclusion of San Clemente to visit Hayden, Kentucky, a few days after Congress began considering a proposal by the Justice Department to legalize wire tapping?

The former president had been invited to Hayden to dedicate a community center named after him.  Responding to a warm welcome at the airport, Nixon poignantly recalled his accomplishments history can not deny him - a realistic foreign policy that ended the Vietnam War, the military draft and years of strained relations with the communist powers.

Not mentioned by hosts or visitor was Watergate - a piece of "jackassery" that triggered a constitutional hysteria and toppled Nixon in disgrace.

Nixon must have wanted badly to point out the irony of his ordeal while the Justice Department was seeking authority to do respectably what Nixon and his aides were prosecuted for as criminals.

It is appropriate that now, four years later, we should remind ourselves what Watergate was all about.

The principal misdeed was an attempt to bug the headquarters of the Democratic Party.  At the time no one could understand why the bother.  There is no such thing as a political secret, what with the "leaks" both willful and inadvertent.

During the ensuing trials there were hints that the CIA and - or FBI suspected Democratic leaders of leaking confidential foreign policy information to embarrass the Nixon administration.  Terrorist threats and actual bombings had the whole nation jumpy.  Daniel Ellsberg, a think-tank intellectual, boasted of stealing secret documents and giving them to the New York Times for publication.

The real motivation for the break in of the Democratic Party office and that of Ellsberg's psychiatrist is still unknown.  None that were suggested at the time soothed Americans outraged at disclosure their government used wiretapping and surveillance to cope with uncertain protest activities.

How things have changed in just a few short years!

President Kennedy is disclosed to have condoned assassination attempts of eight world leaders and to have succeeded twice.  Attorney General Bobby Kennedy regularly bugged American civil rights leaders.  A score or more Congressmen accepted large bribes from Korean lobbyists.

In retrospect, Nixon's shenanigans seem timid reactions to large national problems.  Terrorist incidents in the United States are at the lowest rate in the world - perhaps because of pre-Watergate investigations - but shootings, bombings, kidnappings and maiming are out of control in other nations.  Americans are anxious to keep out the type of political violence that plagues other countries.

To accomplish this, the Justice Department says it needs the right to tap telephones - with court warrant, of course.  To avoid the messy, clandestine processes of Watergate, the Jimmy Carter administration wants a legal blessing.

The telephone companies would be required to attach listening devices to designated lines right in the central office.  No more middle-of-the-night break-ins and listening vigils in rented rooms.

Should a more sophisticated listening device be desired - one that would eavesdrop on conversation within a room as well as over the telephone - the telephone companies would be required to create line static.  This would justify a "repair" visit, during which a wide open bug could be installed.

Orwell's 1984 Big Brother is a lot closer than we realize!

In these days of jet travel, mass communications and red-hot nationalism we need new techniques to deal with terrorists.  Civilized rules no longer apply.  Unfortunately no one has yet come up with alternatives to the laws scorned by political activists.

Nixon's aides saw the problem and dealt with it illegally as the only immediate solution.  Carter, likewise, has found no satisfactory alternative so seeks to decriminalize the emergency measures that destroyed his predecessor.

In reality, Watergate was the last hurrah of the liberals in this nation.

As a Congressman, Nixon had incurred the wrath of the eastern press by convicting Alger Hiss of treason.  Hiss was the highly placed State Department official who advocated accommodation to the Soviet Union and encouraged close cooperation with communists.  He got so carried away with the love-in he passed along secret defense plans to help them keep abreast of U.S. military developments.

At the time this was a popular stance with liberals who admired the authoritarian, big-government approach to our postwar problems.  They never forgave Nixon for toppling their playhouse.

The Watergate publicity created chaos from a trivial incident.  It brought down a hated enemy, but the effort exposed liberal prejudice.  It scared the "silent majority", and it has been backing away ever since.

The sign hung on the airport fence in Kentucky last week may not be so improbable as it seems:

"Nixon in 1980."

Author: Lindsey Williams