June 5, 2005

We Deserve Better Than Snitches and Gossips

Heck! The nation’s favorite guessing game for the past 30 years has been exploded.

“Deep Throat” has stepped forward to claim credit as the “hero” who leaked secret information forcing President Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation.

For the generation not born then, know that during the election of 1972 -- five members of the Committee to Reelect President Nixon broke into the locked Democratic National Committee office in the Watergate complex.

The media assumed the burglars were looking for campaign secrets. In fact, the self-named “plumbers” were looking for government documents possibly stolen to discredit President Nixon.

There was cause to be suspicious.

President Kennedy had sent the first troops into Vietnam, and President Johnson increased the induction of troops there.

Johnson was dissatisfied with the perceived lack of progress. He directed Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara to critique U.S. military preparedness since World War II. It was completed in Jan. 1969 just a few days before Nixon’s first inauguration.

The 47-volumes revealed “a considerable degree of miscalculation, bureaucratic arrogance and deception” -- and that the government had “continually resisted full disclosure of increasing military involvement in Southeast Asia.”

Daniel Ellsberg, a Rand Corporation analyst on loan to the Defense Department, obtained a photocopy. He tried to persuade several Congressmen to release it, but they refused to break the law.

Consequently Ellsberg gave the report to the New York Times in June 1971. The statements – dubbed the “Pentagon Papers” – led to anti-war protests.

Nixon tried to get an injunction to arrest Ellsberg and stop publication of the Pentagon Papers. However, the Supreme Court held that the press could publish freely. Charges against Ellsberg were dropped.

Nixon realized the Pentagon Papers – though damaging to previous administrations – also threatened his measured withdrawals from Vietnam.

Two weeks before Watergate, the plumbers broke into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist to search for incriminating files.

The President – on Oval Office recording tapes discovered later – appears to have authorized undercover efforts to discredit Ellsberg. However, on the same tapes he called the break-ins “jackassery.”

The first conservative president was brought down by liberal press accusations of “lying to the American people.” Certainly a grievous sin but not equal to “lying under oath” a la President Clinton.

Nixon resigned August 9, 1974, “to begin the process of healing which is so desperately needed in America.”

The moral to all this was described by H. R. Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff, on the tapes:

“To the ordinary guy, all this is gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: you can’t trust the government; you can’t believe what they say; and you can’t rely on their judgment. The implicit infallibility of presidents – which has been an accepted thing in America – is badly hurt by this. It shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the president can be wrong.”

Thus we come to W. Mark Felt. At age 91 he has stepped out of obscurity to declare, “I am the guy they call Deep Throat. I’ll arrange to write a book and collect all the money I can.”

How ironic. The key tip he gave Bob Woodward– in an underground garage 30 years ago – was: “Follow the money!”

Felt was No. 2 in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He admittedly was offended when upon J. Edgar Hoover’s death in 1970 President Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray, a Justice Department official, to FBI director.

Thus we have two, public officials with a beef -- so keenly felt that they “blew the whistle.”

That by Ellsberg was unreasonably directed toward Nixon who had not put the U.S. into Viet Nam and was trying to extricate us honorably.

Nonetheless, Ellsberg committed his crime openly and expected to suffer the consequences. He had the courage of conviction –though misguided.

Felt hid in dark places to whisper accusations to an ambitious reporter supported by a complicit editor. They were a cowardly snitch and common gossips.

Our country deserves better.

Lindsey Williams is a Sun columnist who can be contacted at linwms@lindseywilliams.org

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