Nixon's long-secret Watergate testimony coming out

[Octafish]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Richard Nixon's grand jury testimony about the Watergate scandal that destroyed his presidency is finally coming to light.

Four months after a judge ordered the June 1975 records unsealed, the government's Nixon Presidential Library was making them available online and at the California facility Thursday. Historians dared hope that the testimony would form Nixon's most truthful and thorough account of the circumstances that led to his extraordinary resignation 10 months earlier under threat of impeachment.

"This is Nixon unplugged," said historian Stanley Kutler, a principal figure in the lawsuit that pried open the records. Still, he said, "I have no illusions. Richard Nixon knew how to dodge questions with the best of them. I am sure that he danced, skipped, around a number of things."

SNIP...

The recordings include his dictated recollections of an odd episode late one night in May 1970 when Nixon impulsively had the Secret Service take him to the Lincoln Memorial so he could meet anti-war protesters there. He lingered with the astonished crowd and, according to accounts of that time, asked the protesters to "keep it peaceful. Have a good time in Washington, and don't go away bitter."



Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NIXONS_WATERGATE_TESTIMONY?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-11-10-03-15-28

---

The guy had a "meteoric" career, mostly in the service of crooks, greedheads, warmongers and traitors. His government "service" helped bring America and the world into the gutter we find ourselves in today. May these records help the nation move away from the example of his party's putrid leadership.

[malthaussen]

1. Great, 400 pages of

... "I have no recollection," and "hey, have you met my pup Checkers?"

-- Mal

[Octafish]

4. Perhaps Nixon will shed light on the 18-1/2 minute gap conversation.

The fellow had been talking about the CIA and "the Bay of Pigs Thing."

[HowHasItComeToThis]

2. HEY KIDDIES... REMEMBER THE CHECKERS SPEECH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4UEv_jjPL0

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Should be put online here:

http://www.archives.gov/research/investigations/watergate/nixon-grand-jury/

[struggle4progress]

7. Here's a page w/links to a number of the investigation files, including RMN's testimony

[Octafish]

9. Nixon hesitant to testify because it could bring up secret conversations about assassination!

By the bald Moon of Elvis!

From the PDF pp. 10-11 of Nixon's testimony

Now in making this appearance, however, I should
12 . point out that I am taking into consideration a very profound
13 belief, that I have expressed publicly on many occasions, in
14 the vital necessity for the confidentiality of presidential
15 communications. It seems to me today that when \oJe pick up
16 the papers, and particularly in recent weeks, and read of
17 former presidents, President Kennedy, for example, President
18 Johnson, even President Eisenhower, being accused of approving
1!1 or participating in discussions in which there was a pproval
20 of assassination of other people is very much not in the
21 national interest, and probably it is, of course, not true.
22 Nevertheless it makes the point very strongly that I am going
23 to make right now, and that is that in the Office of the
24
25
HOOVER REPORTING CO. INC.
320 Massachusetts Avenu~, N.E.
Washington, D.C. 20002
(2021546-Qi66
Presidency of the United States, the nation ·.which is, not by
choice, but by the destiny of history, the most powerful in

1
the free world and the only guarantee of peace and freedom
2 in the world, it is necessary for the president to have no-
3
holds-barred conversations with his advisers . It is necessar
4 for his advisers to believe that they can give him their un-
5 varnished opinions without regard and without fear of the
6 possibility that those opinions are going to be spread in the
7 public print. It is necessary for them to feel, in other
8 words, that they are talking to the President and that they
9 are not going to the press and that is the reason why con-
10 fidentiality, which I know, not perhaps you gentlemen, but
11 some of the members of your staff, and certainly some of the
12 . members of the House and Senate, and most of the members of
13 the press think is not important. That is why it is importan
M and, in my opinion, absolutely vital. That is the reason why
15 I have resisted in the courts, unsuccessfully up to this
Hi point, attempts to impinge upon the privileged status of such
17 conversations.

CONTINUED...

Hypocritical GOP S.O.P. is to blame the Democrats for what they themselves do. In the case of killing Castro -- it was Eisenhower and Nixon's CIA that met with the Mafia -- not Kennedy's. After Kennedy was murdered, they did all they could to link Cuba and the USSR to Oswald.

At work trying to do five things at once....Aargh!

[NBachers]

5. Octafish, I couldn't have put it better. No rehabilitation for Nixon.

He's still my lifetime political nemesis- the template for today's out-of-control fascist repukes. Although I sometimes find myself elevating him above today's psychotic clown jackals, he's still the direct bloodline of today's problems.

[Solly Mack]

6. K&R

[al bupp]

8. There were some legislative ironies to his presidency, though,sir

It was under his administration that the EPA was created, the Clean Water Act supported and passed (over his veto, it should be noted, due to a funding dispute) and OSHA established. Imagine a Republican pushing such initiatives these days.

[No Elephants]

20. Did Nixon really push through those initiatives or did a Democratic Congress enact them

and he was too politically savvy to veto?

That was before Democrats lost all the Southern states.

I don't know. I'm just asking.

[hue]

10. Nixon's long-secret grand jury testimony released

Source: Chicago Tribune

The National Archives and the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum have unsealed long-secret transcripts and other materials from President Nixon’s grand jury testimony.

The Archives on Thursday released 26 files from the Watergate Special Prosecution Force’s collection of documents, including transcripts and “associated materials” from the June 1975 grand jury testimony.

Earlier this year, a U.S. district judge ordered the unusual release of the grand jury testimony over the objection of the Obama administration, which argued against the release to protect people’s privacy.

Read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/la-pn-nixon-testimony-20111110,0,6827224.story

[defendandprotect]

11. "over the objection of the Obama adminsitrtion" -- !! YIKES!

[jerseyjack]

12. Obama is not our friend.

[grasswire]

13. more likely all those Bush oldovers they left behind

moles and fixers.

[No Elephants]

21. Whom Obama chose not to replace.

True, Cheney did make as many positions as he could civil service slots, which means replacing would have been more difficult.

However, Obama did not replace the many folk in political slots either.

I don't know what happened before Reagan, but I do know St. Ronnie, whom both Obama and Hillary included on their respective lists of ten best Presidents ever, cleaned house.

Poppy didn't have to, as he and they were already all Republicans.

Bubba cleaned house, and then Dummya did the same, albeit more gradually than his predecessors.

Only Obama left them all in place, at least for most of his first term.

[grasswire]

24. Linda Tripp was a mole from Poppy

And we know the damage she did. She was a GS employee, prolly.

[arcane1]

14. "to protect people’s privacy"???

Fuck that. Nixon was the president, fer crying out loud! He can have privacy in his bedroom and bathroom, but not in court!!! :grr:

[No Elephants]

22. Dead people have no legal right to privacy. Their estates cannot sue for that, or for defamation.

[JDPriestly]

15. This transcript is well worth the read:

http://documents.latimes.com/nixons-june-24-1975-testimony-part-2/

Interesting information about the conflict between India and Pakistan and about J.Edgar Hoover. Apparently he knew how to suck up to the presidents and make them think he was their best friend. Or did he fool anyone really? Did Nixon just hope that Hoover would think that Hoover had fooled him?

The India/Pakistan information explains a lot about our history. (Starts at page 269.)

Why in heaven's name, if communism is such an unworkable system, were our leaders so utterly paranoid about it?

And why didn't our presidents trust the democratic process just a bit more?

The abuse of power by a long list of presidents is unbelievable. Nixon was so worried about leaks. You know what my mother told me (and yours probably told you), don't do things you might be ashamed of later. That is good advice. Nobody can follow it perfectly, but it is the secret of a strong heart and mind. Don't do things that you might not want to own up to later, or at least try to do as few of them as possible.

What a mess this man made of his life.

A summary, or better, an explanation, of what this transcript confirms is here:

As early as 1976 Admiral Elmo Zumwalt publicly made these military suspicions and resentment abundantly clear in his book, On Watch: A Memoir. "I had first become concerned many months before the June 1972 burglary," Zumwalt wrote, " the deliberate, systematic and, unfortunately, extremely successful efforts of the President, Henry Kissinger, and a few subordinate members of their inner circle to conceal, sometimes by simple silence, more often by articulate deceit, their real policies about the most critical matters of national security." In a word, Zumwalt, like many within the American military elite, thought that Nixon's foreign policies bordered on the traitorous because they "were inimical to the security of the United States."

This atmosphere of extreme distrust led Admiral Thomas Moorer, head of the JCS, to first authorize Rear Admiral Rembrandt C. Robinson and later Rear Admiral Robert O. Welander, both liaisons between the Joint Chiefs and the White House's National Security Council, to start spying on the NSC. For thirteen months, from late 1970 to late 1971, Navy Yeoman Charles E. Radford, an aide to both Robinson and Welander, systematically stole and copied NSC documents from burn bags containing carbon copies, briefcases, and desks of Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, and their staff. He then turned them over to his superiors.

The White House became suspicious when Jack Anderson published a column on December 14 entitled, "U.S. Tilts to Pakistan." Such information logically could only have come from meetings of the Washington Special Action Group, December 3 and 4, which discussed the fact that Pakistan was being used as a conduit for the top secret negotiations the Nixon administration was carrying on with China - negotiations that would culminate in rapprochement with that Communist nation the spring of the next year. Clearly someone had leaked the minutes of the WSAG meeting to Anderson and the suspicion fell on the military.

http://prorev.com/2006/08/nixon-story-you-never-heard.html

[No Elephants]

23. Hoover pulled the strings of Joe McCarthy, feeding that POS names.

Rather than confront either of them, Eisenhower vastly expanded Executive Privilege, to protect himself and his advisors, leaving the rest of the Hoover/McCarthy targets twisting in the wind.

Nixon and Goldwater were among Joe McCarthy's last supporters. Goldwater never quit on Joe.

I never understand the nostalgia some Democrats have for Republicans like Eisenhower, Goldwater and Nixon.

IMO, the only thing that kept them in check, even a little, was the fact that Democrats pretty much owned Congress from the Roosevelt era until the DLC era.

[JDPriestly]

26. Agreed. Eisenhower and assassinations is an interesting theme.

[Hotler]

16. k&r n/t

[Stardust]

17. I'll take Obfuscate for $500. Alex. nt

[suffragette]

18. K&R

[No Elephants]

19. Let me guess. He did not take the Fifth and he did not incrminate himself.

IOW, he lied through his teeth.

[On the Road]

25. Nixon Wrote About the Midnight Trip to Talk with the Protesters

It's been out a long time. I am very interested in reading the rest of it.