Shocking New Evidence Reveals Depths of 'Treason' and 'Treachery' of Watergate and Iran-Contra

[Bill USA]

... a Good Read and a Must Read....from Robert Parry...

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/shocking-new-evidence-reveals-depths-treason-and-treachery-watergate-and-iran

A favorite saying of Official Washington is that “the cover-up is worse than the crime.” But that presupposes you accurately understand what the crime was. And, in the case of the two major U.S. government scandals of the last third of the Twentieth Century – Watergate and Iran-Contra – that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Indeed, newly disclosed documents have put old evidence into a sharply different light and suggest that history has substantially miswritten the two scandals by failing to understand that they actually were sequels to earlier scandals that were far worse. Watergate and Iran-Contra were, in part at least, extensions of the original crimes, which involved dirty dealings to secure the immense power of the presidency.

Shortly after Nixon took office in 1969, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover informed him of the existence of the file containing national security wiretaps documenting how Nixon’s emissaries had gone behind President Lyndon Johnson’s back to convince the South Vietnamese government to boycott the Paris Peace Talks, which were close to ending the Vietnam War in fall 1968.In the case of Watergate – the foiled Republican break-in at the Democratic National Committee in June 1972 and Richard Nixon’s botched cover-up leading to his resignation in August 1974 – the evidence is now clear that Nixon created the Watergate burglars out of his panic that the Democrats might possess a file on his sabotage of Vietnam peace talks in 1968.

The disruption of Johnson’s peace talks then enabled Nixon to hang on for a narrow victory over Democrat Hubert Humphrey. However, as the new President was taking steps in 1969 to extend the war another four-plus years, he sensed the threat from the wiretap file and ordered two of his top aides, chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, to locate it. But they couldn’t find the file.
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[Downwinder]

1. Someone told me these were conspiracy theory.

Everything I could see was fact.

[Bill USA]

3. the really bad stuff (I thought what we knew of Watergate was bad enough!) often doesn't come out

until about a generation or so later. I wonder what will come out, in time, about Selection 2000?

[zipplewrath]

4. Two leaps

The first is that the Watergate break in was due to looking for the file. It is very likely they had decided the file 1) didn't exist 2) was destroyed 3) was lost 4) was in the hands of someone who had no short term intention of using it, or they would have already. Don't get me wrong, the formation of the unit to find the file may have morphed into a general break in unit. Or they could have had a broad mission INCLUDING looking for the file. But the authors have no direct connection between the plumbers and the file. And, oh by the way, there are historical accounts that don't mention any of this and give alternative reasons that they unit was formed.

The second is about the Iranians. The sourcing is weak on much of it. Not alot of trusting sources on the Iranian side, and a whole lotta silence from those in the know on ours. Everything is second hand and deduction or implication. Again, mind you, there aren't alot of big leaps required here. The largest is merely that the Iranians would have agreed to work with Reagan at all, but one never knows.

[Bill USA]

10. I can remember conversations after WaterGate and Nixon's scurrying, that centered around the

question: "Why did Nixon do it? Why would he take such an enormous risk - just get some possible advantage in the election, by bugging the Democrats,?" Many were confused that he would have taken such a risk. The existence of such a document which Haldeman and Ehrlichmann were warned of by Hoover himself, would provide an answer to that question.

[zipplewrath]

11. Yes it would

And so begins the foundation of conspiracy theories. In the absence of information, propose plausible explanations.

[fascisthunter]

6. let me guess...

... somebody posting here?

[amuse bouche]

2. Marked

for later. Thanks

[fromwyoming]

5. I think there may be truth to both of these scandals

but I am going to need a lot more documentation before I buy them completely. Given the paranoid, scurrilous way the main characters (Hoover, Nixon, Kissinger) conducted themselves in public I would not be surprised that they did so in multiple degrees in private. But I want more evidence than is presented in this essay. I don't need a smoking gun; just corroboration.

[quakerboy]

7. Is it possible to retroactively

impeach a president? There really should be an asterisk next to his name in the history books or something

[Stuart G]

8. See interview with Robert Perry ..in Video and Multimedia Forum..posted by ErikJ

Incredible interview..Thom Hartmann...

Here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017105051

[rickyhall]

9. What would have been like if:

John had lived to 68, Bobby had replaced him & lived to 76,
Jimmy had replaced him & stayed till 84?