Robert Parry: Does Woodward Know Watergate?

[marmar]

from Consortium News:


Does Woodward Know Watergate?
May 20, 2013

Exclusive: Republicans are hyping the flap over Benghazi talking points by calling it “worse than Watergate,” a false narrative that Bob Woodward has helped along by ignoring new evidence connecting Richard Nixon’s sabotage of Vietnam War peace talks in 1968 to his political spying in 1971-72, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry


The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward has popped up on TV recently affirming a key Republican talking point, likening the “scandal” over the Obama administration’s Benghazi talking points to Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, which Woodward helped make famous.

But, as he joins in hyping the GOP’s Benghazi scandal-mongering, Woodward doesn’t appear to know that new documentary evidence has transformed our understanding of Watergate and especially its tie-in to the Vietnam War – and how those documents make comparisons between Watergate and Benghazi both ludicrous and obscene.

During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on May 17, Woodward compared the administration’s development of talking points for TV appearances by UN Ambassador Susan Rice in 2012 to Nixon’s mendacious editing of his Oval Office tapes to conceal the role of his reelection campaign in the break-in at the Democrats’ Watergate headquarters in 1972.

“You were talking earlier about kind of dismissing the Benghazi issue as one that’s just political and the president recently said it’s a sideshow,” Woodward said. “But if you read through all these e-mails, you see that everyone in the government is saying, ‘Oh, let’s not tell the public that terrorists were involved, people connected to al-Qaeda. Let’s not tell the public that there were warnings.’” .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/05/20/does-woodward-know-watergate/

[graham4anything]

1. Watergate was to hide sabatoge Nixon did to prevent the end of Vietnam in 68 for political advantage

from the above article-most important part-(and Woodward has reason to keep covering this up)-


Nixon was terrified that a missing file might surface revealing FBI wiretaps of his 1968 campaign’s sabotage of President Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam peace talks, a politically motivated case of obstruction that Johnson privately called “treason.”

In other words, the ultimate secret of Watergate – one that apparently still remains a mystery to Woodward – was that Nixon was terrified that the American people might learn that he had extended the Vietnam War for an additional four years to get an edge in a political campaign.

As a result of LBJ’s failed peace initiative, some 20,000 more U.S. soldiers died along with an estimated one million Vietnamese and countless more dead in Cambodia. The war also tore apart America’s political and social fabric

Recognition of the fuller Watergate scandal also would shatter a favorite saying of Official Washington, “the cover-up is worse than the crime.” That surely wouldn’t be true if the Watergate scandal were understood to encompass Nixon’s treacherous scheme to block Johnson’s Vietnam peace deal

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. Parry is once again excellent!

He is one of America's best journalists.