Editorial: Trump's Red cloud demands an independent probe
From the Detroit Free Press (wow!) http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/editorials/2017/03/04/trump-special-prosecutor/98664490/
On June 23, 1972, just six days after a team of burglars was arrested while breaking into the Democratic National Committee's headquarters in Washington's Watergate hotel and office complex, White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman went to the Oval Office to give President Richard Nixon some bad news.
"Now on the investigation, you know, the Democratic break-in thing, we're back to the problem area, because the FBI is not under control, because (Acting FBI Director L. Patrick) Gray doesn't exactly know how to control them," Haldeman began, in a conversation preserved by the recording system Nixon had secretly installed.
Haldeman went on to explain that the FBI already had traced new hundred-dollar bills carried by one of the Watergate burglars to the bank that issued them, and worried that the money trail could lead the bureau "in some directions we don't want it to go."
Nearly half a century later, it is impossible to predict where an FBI investigation into contacts between senior officials in Donald Trump's presidential campaign and a Russian government that plotted to disrupt the 2016 presidential election will go.
But what happened after Haldeman's June 23 conversation with Nixon makes it clear that Congress must take immediate steps to protect the independence of that investigation, and to open its own, bipartisan inquiry into the new administration's links to the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin. . .
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