Bush: Worse than Nixon

[n2doc]

Bush: Worse Than Nixon
The writer was on Richard Nixon's "enemies list," but Bush's power grab has him really worried.
By Morton H. Halperin, MORTON H. HALPERIN served in the administrations of presidents Johnson, Nixon and Clinton. He is a senior fellow of the Center for American Progress and the director of U.S. Advocacy for the Open Soci
July 16, 2006

THE BUSH administration's warrantless wiretapping program may have shocked and surprised many Americans when it was revealed in December, but to me, it provoked a case of deja vu. The Nixon administration bugged my home phone — without a warrant — beginning in 1973, when I was on the staff of the National Security Council, and kept the wiretap on for 21 months. Why? My boss, national security advisor Henry Kissinger, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover believed that I might have leaked some information to the New York Times. When I left the government a few months later and went to work on Edmund Muskie's presidential campaign (and began actively working to end the war in Vietnam), the FBI continued to listen in and made periodic reports on everything it heard to President Nixon and his closest associates in the White House.


Recent reports that the Bush administration is monitoring political opponents who belong to antiwar groups also sounded familiar to me. I was, after all, No. 8 on Nixon's "enemies list" — a curious compilation of 20 people about whom the White House was unhappy because they had disagreed in some way with the administration. The list, compiled by presidential aide Charles Colson, included union leaders, journalists, Democratic fundraisers and me, among others, and was part of a plan to "use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies," as presidential counsel John Dean explained it in a 1971 memo. I always suspected that I made the list because of my active opposition to the war, though no one ever said for sure (and I never understood what led Colson to write next to my name the provocative words, "a scandal would be helpful here").

As I watch the Bush administration these days, it's hard not to notice the clear similarities between then and now. Both the Nixon and Bush presidencies rely heavily on the use of national security as a pretext for the usurpation of unprecedented executive power. Now, just as in Nixon's day, a president mired in an increasingly unpopular war is taking extreme steps, including warrantless surveillance, that many people believe threaten American civil liberties and violate the Constitution. Both administrations shroud their actions in secrecy and attack the media for publishing what they learn about those activities.
(snip)

But even though Nixon's specific actions might have been more obviously illegal and more "corrupt" (in the sense that they were designed to advance his own career over his rivals), President Bush's claim of nearly limitless power — including the ability to engage in a range of activities that pose a fundamental threat to the constitutional order and to our civil liberties — overshadows all comparisons.

more (reg required):

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-halperin16jul16,0,999290.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

[Art_from_Ark]

1. Something seems to be wrong with the chronology

"Nixon administration bugged my home phone — without a warrant — beginning in 1973...",

then

"When I left the government a few months later and went to work on Edmund Muskie's presidential campaign (and began actively working to end the war in Vietnam)..."

So, the author left the government a few months after the wiretaps began? That would put it in mid- to late-1973, at the earliest. Yet, Edmund Muskie dropped out of the presidential primary in 1972, before the wiretapping supposedly started. And American fighting in the Vietnam War ended in January 1973.

What am I missing here? :shrug:

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. And J. Edgar Hoover died in May 1972

According to Wikipedia (I know, not reliable in itself, but obviously tyhe dates given i nthe article aren't either):

Kissinger soon lost faith in Halperin. A front page story in The New York Times on May 9, 1969, stated the United States had been bombing Cambodia, a neutral country. Kissinger immediately called Hoover to find out who might have leaked this information to the press. Hoover suggested Halperin and Kissinger agreed that was likely. That very day, the FBI began tapping Halperin's phones at Kissinger's direction. (Kissinger says nothing of this in his memoirs and mentions Halperin in passing about four times.) Halperin left the NSC in September 1969 after only nine months but the tapping continued until February 1971.
...
The tapping of Halperin's phone was not revealed until 1973, when it came out in Ellsberg's trial. He sued Nixon and won a symbolic $5 judgement in 1977 for the offense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton_Halperin

this page says it was 1969-71, too.

[NewJeffCT]

2. Another difference

The media has evolved into a bunch of lap dogs since the 70s. Back then, the media acted much more like the check on government power that they were supposed to be.

[ixion]

4. worst. president. ever.

really.