"It's as Bad as Watergate." [View all]

[mahatmakanejeeves]

That's because it WAS Watergate. It started 41 years ago last night. Happy anniversary, I guess.

CHRONICLING WATERGATE

June 18, 2013 in City
CHRONICLING WATERGATE

Man’s massive collection of news clippings now available to public
By Kip Hill The Spokesman-Review

Forty-one years ago this week, a story in the New York Times caught the eye of Drake University student J. Paul Blake: A break-in had occurred at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C., and investigators and journalists alike suspected the burglars had ties to the Richard Nixon administration.
....

Monday marked the 41st anniversary of the Watergate break-in, and now the public can flip through Blake’s collection and relive the first draft of a scandal that felled a president and launched the careers of at least two fledgling journalists.
....

In the clippings, reporters and witnesses to history grapple with the unfolding drama and how to portray Nixon. Cartoonists pull no punches, depicting “Tricky Dick” wrapped in tangles of audio tape. But Franklin B. Smith of the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press blamed the press for going too far in toppling the exalted position of the American presidency, condemning “news leaks, speculations and analyses” as “masquerades that are demonstrably lethal.”

Blake shares their uncertainty after all these years. He praised Nixon for his work opening up China to Western influence, but his moral failings did him in, Blake said. ... “In the long run, I almost feel sorry for the guy,” Blake said. “He did some other great things, but his whole legacy is just ruined by Watergate.”

Watergate Scandal