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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDid Nixon really order the Watergate break-in?
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/nixon-40th-anniversary-order-the-watergate-breakDid Richard Nixon, who resigned 40 years ago today, order the burglary of the Democratic National Committees offices in June 1972?
Amid the tapestry of scandal surrounding Watergate, we still dont know who dreamed up the tawdry crime at its center. The evidence that forced Nixon to resign the famous smoking gun conversation (transcript, audio) proved hed tried to prevent the FBI from investigating the matter by lying about it. Hed also approved giving hush money to Watergate conspirators. Thats obstruction of justice. But how high White House involvement went in planning the break-in was never established. Watergate is a juicy, sprawling story with the richness of a great novel or a great TV serial like The Sopranos. But as with The Sopranos, you have to supply your own final resolution to the story.
(snip)
Who ordered it? There is no evidence, Dean writes, in all the Nixon-Watergate-related conversations that anyone in the White House had advance knowledge that Liddy was going into the Watergate. By evidence Dean must mean definitive evidence, because he quotes Haldeman saying that setting up the espionage team for Nixons re-election had been the idea of campaign chief and former attorney general John Mitchell. Mitchell, Haldeman told Nixon several months later, was pushing for (s)ecret papers, and financial data that OBrien had, that he was going to get. That, too, is straight out of Deans book.
(snip)
But the most important believer in the Hughes motive is Jeb Stuart Magruder. Magruder, who died this past May, was Mitchells deputy at Nixons re-election campaign. Magruder didnt merely speculate that the Hughes transactions were the reason for the break-in; he affirmatively stated it. His source, assuming he was speaking truthfully, was impeccable. In a 2003 interview Magruder said for the first time that hed heard Nixon tell Mitchell, John, we we need to get the information on Larry OBrien, and the only way we can do that is through Liddys plan. And you need to do that. Previously, Magruder had never identified anyone higher than Mitchell to have known about the break-in in advance. Now he was saying that Nixon ordered it.
(snip)
A final consideration is this. Put yourself in the shoes of Mitchell and Magruder. Would you give Liddy a green light on burgling the DNC if you didnt know for sure that your ultimate boss wanted it done? On the Watergate tapes, Nixon never admits knowing how the break-in came about, and he questions its wisdom. But he never expresses the slightest shock that anybody in his employ would commit such a crime.
(end snip)
My answer - yes, IMHO.
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Did Nixon really order the Watergate break-in? (Original Post)
deminks
Aug 2014
OP
Recommended.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(108,136 posts)2. Don't know
What is known is that Nixon was active in the cover-up which is why he resigned.
The_Commonist
(2,518 posts)3. I doubt it.
I'm sure he said something to Mitchell, et al, about "getting some dirt on that bastard" (McGovern), and Mitchell probably passed that on to Magruder, and then the cowboys took it from there. They wanted to please the "ultimate boss" and then the boss didn't want to cross Hunt and the rest of the assassination crowd. So again, I doubt that Nixon ordered it, but I have no doubt that he gleefully covered it up. That was his nature.
Brother Buzz
(36,456 posts)4. Nixon din't know of the burglary of Dr. Lewis Fielding's office either....
or so I've read.
But I have it on good authority, he did not authorize the burglary of Ellsberg's Mill Valley, California home. That's a fact.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)5. Are there bears in the woods?
He absolutely did.
WillowTree
(5,325 posts)6. Richard Nixon was many unpleasant things, but stupid wasn't one of them.