Interesting Watergate factoid. WOW!

[trof]

I was in my 30s and followed Watergate closely.
I never heard about this:

"August 5, 1974 - Secretary of Defense requires all military commanders to refuse orders from White House unless also signed by him. Secretary Schlesinger issues first-ever order, indicating lack of trust in Nixon's decision-making."

Nixon resigned 3 days later.
http://www.polytechnic.org/faculty/gfeldmeth/chart.Nixon.html

[Cooley Hurd]

1. I'll bet Gates has similar orders about Bush & Cheney...

...directly from Poppy & Baker themselves.

[Solly Mack]

6. I wouldn't bet against you

[soothsayer]

9. I heard the generals already refused to nuke Iran several times.

Cheney really wants to.

[roamer65]

32. I think you're right.

Gates is definitely from Poppy and Baker's crowd and will do their bidding. Poppy has a distinct term he used to use for the neocons.

"The crazies in the basement."

[Hepburn]

2. I never heard this either.

During Watergate, I was mid-late 20s and teaching HS....and followed Watergate like crazy. And, YIKES, I never knew this either. Tells me the distrust against RMN was deep....very deep. IMO, Nixon was mentally ill and had been that way for years and with the pressure on him at the end of his term, I think he went off the edge and those around him knew this. I did hear that he walked the halls of the WH at night and muttered to himself ... or talked to pictures or something ... but that his own cabinet thought him to be unwrapped to the point the OP indicates??? Never knew this.

[trof]

8. I was just barely becoming 'politically aware'.

I was married with a baby daughter and I'd never registered to vote.
I figured it was time to start being a grownup.

Nixon - McGovern was the first time I voted, and I voted for McGovern solely because of Watergate.

As you probably remember, the repugs were able to downplay the break-in as 'a third rate burglary' until after the election.

I wish I hadn't misplaced the crystal ball I must've had back then, because I thought Watergate was a BIG deal from the get-go.

All my friends blew it off.
"Aw, just politics as usual."
"The Democrats do the same thing."

Although it took two years, it was nice to have my feeling eventually vindicated.

[unpossibles]

10. those crazy conspiracy theories!

For me it was Iran-Contra that woke me up.

Then again, I was a baby during Watergate.

[Hepburn]

16. I have NO clue why....

...but I became politically aware in grade school. I worked for JFK in the 1960 election ~~ much to the embarrassment of my conservative Pubbie parents. I was 12 years old at the time...and something had totally caught my attention about politics before that. Not sure what, tho. I became an FDR fan...to the point that I begged my parents for a Scottie dog...and got one for my 12th birthday. That was my first Scottie and I am still the proud owner of that good Dem dog that BushCo tried to corrupt. (Although on good authority from my current Scottish Terrier, I have it Barney is a reg'd Dem and Miss Beasley is a liberal.)

Watergate caught my attention BIG TIME. I could NOT stop watching. Luckily I could watch the hearings ~~ I was teaching HS school and had the summer off (no year-around school back then) and was GLUED to the televised hearings.

My first presidential election was the 1972 election. Back then, age of majority was 21 years and, thus, I was not old enough to vote before that since I was only 20 years old in 1968. I, too, proudly cast my first vote in a presidential election for George McGovern. Since I was a Californian, I knew what a rotten POS Richard Nixon was. Watergate, IMO, just brought his standard operating procedures out into the national light.

[never cry wolf]

28. Fall of 1972, Freshman year at NIU, PolySci 101

I was not very political at the time but PolySci was a required course and it was taught by Prof. Martin Diamond, maybe Northern Illinois' start prof. He had been on the cover of Time and was widely regarded as an expert in the field. (In recent research I have discovered he was a student of Strauss, was a Trotskyite neocon and contemporary of Irving Kristol and gang. Of course at the time it would have meant nothing to me.)

However I digress. Since this course was so large, he taught via video feed to numerous rooms led by TA's. However, once a month or so each class would meet with him in a conference room. At one of these informal meetings someone asked him about what the ramifications of the Watergate break in would be. He said it would go all the way top the top and bring down Nixon.

As you correctly stated, at that time in 1972 is was still just a 3rd rate burglary so everyone in the room was shocked. Prof. Diamond had the crystal ball. (Or more likely, deep inside sources.)

Just want to throw in that I turned 18 that year and am proud to state my first ever vote was for McGovern as well.

[0007]

13. Nixon was crazy. But junior is a bat shit loony. Makes one

kinda miss Nixon, 'eh?

[Alexander]

3. Yes, they were afraid Nixon wouldn't go quietly.

It's apparent how batshit crazy Nixon was. They were so afraid they had to cut him off from the military.

[H2O Man]

4. Yep.

I have read about that. Nixon was not stable at the time.

[Bravo Zulu]

11. comparing nixon to bu$h

they seem about the same,when you watch them they seem animated and programmed like robots!

[Kingshakabobo]

15. IIRC, he was drinking like a fish at the time. n/t

[MNDemNY]

21. Like * he was drinking heavy.

[MannyGoldstein]

5. I Recall That It Was A Secret Order

Not known to the public until later.

[H2O Man]

31. Right.

Certainly not the type of thing that would be made public at the time.

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. Some of Nixon's advisers considered the military to be his trump card. n/t

[LeftHander]

12. If the MIlitary really followed thier oath.....

They would stop following Bush orders too....

In a democracy....the branch that controls the Military controls the power. (really)

One of the strongest points of our Democracy is the oath that the Military has followed for 235 years. They have protected the constitution. But Bush has his own "private military" in the form of contractors thus the degradation of honor in the Military as professional mercs do the bidding of the President and corporations first with no oath to the constitution. The military leaders know a comfy post military job waits so they don;t care anymore about our constitution.

I challenge them to prove me wrong.

[OzarkDem]

26. But much of the military is private corporations now

Bush could still continue to wage war with mercenaries, Pelosi and Reid already gave thim the blank check to pay for it.

[leveymg]

14. I had heard about "the football" (nuclear launch codes) being taken away from Nixon, but not this.

I wasn't aware that the SoD had issued a written order, but I'm not terribly surprised that this has been kept quiet. I wonder what Feldmeth's source for this is?

Also, I have the feeling that Bush and Cheney have similarly been "removed in place". Here are a couple articles about that:

Daily Kos: How the US military would remove Bush-Cheney
How the US military would remove Bush-Cheney. by leveymg. Sun Feb 18, 2007 at 08:59:48 AM PDT. There's a term for when the military replaces its ...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/18/10343/6778
- 87k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages

Daily Kos: THERE ARE NO 6-STAR GENERALS: How Bush Lost His Command
I diaried that subject a couple weeks ago:. How the U.S. military would remove Bush-Cheney by leveymg
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/5/94653/16003
- 70k - Cached - Similar pages
< More results from www.dailykos.com >

Cross-ref: http://www.polytechnic.org/faculty/gfeldmeth/chart.Nixon.html

[leveymg]

25. Actually, the requirement for Sec Defense sign-off is now codified as part of US nuclear doctrine

See, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/18/10343/6778

There is enormous fear and misunderstanding among the public about the power a President has to summarily order military action, particularly the first-use of nuclear weapons. Under no circumstances short of actual hostilities or a confirmed threat of attack, could the military carry out launch orders committing the military to war on the sole authority of the President. George W. Bush can not just pick up the phone in the middle of the night and begin a nuclear strike. That order has to be countersigned by others within the chain of command. At minimum, it would require the consent of the Secretary of Defense. In addition, orders received from the President require consultation with the Joint Chiefs before the combat commander can put together a strike package. See, JP 3-12: Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations - Final Coordination (2), II-2, http://www.globalsecurity.org/...

The President's decision to authorize the release of nuclear weapons is based on the recommendations of the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, combatant commanders, and allies. This authority is exercised through a single chain of command that runs from the President to the Secretary of Defense directly to the combatant commanders. Nuclear weapon orders are transmitted from the President and Secretary of Defense via the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in accordance with established procedures.

The Pentagon carries out planning for all possible contingencies, particularly those that might involve the use of nuclear weapons. Ibid., II-3. The staff of Joint Chiefs and the combat commands attempt to prepare reponses to all possible threats or orders they may receive. Somewhere in a locked file in the D-Ring of the Pentagon, the JCS staff have developed contingency planning for how top military commanders would respond to manifestly illegal or irresponsible orders issued by a deranged President.

[Canuckistanian]

17. Amazing, I'd never heard of it either.

Makes you wonder if the defense establishment already has plans drawn up for a similar scenario.

[leveymg]

19. The Pentagon has plans for practically everything, even this.

The likelihood that a deranged President would issue an illegal launch order is somewhat higher than the U.S. invading Canada. But, we have a Canadian war plan.

[Canuckistanian]

22. And we have a plan for a counterattack

All exports of Ice Wine to America will cease (after an extensive Parliamentary emergency session).

[leveymg]

24. You can keep the ice beer, however.

Worst Molson I ever had. :( :9 :toast:

[TacticalPeek]

18. The top brass even canceled his order for an air strike at one point.

Nixon had impulsively and drunkenly ordered an air strike somewhere in the Med I believe, and the chairman of JSOC belayed it.

[leveymg]

20. The Joint Chiefs and Sec. Weinberger refused to bomb Iran in 1983.

following the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon.

See, Timothy Naftali, BLIND SPOT: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism (Basic Books, 2006) p. 134.

[EVDebs]

23. Domestic Operations, and the Huston Plan...martial law. 7 Days In May almost happened...

[EVDebs]

27. Watergate wasn't about a 'burglary', it was about Martial Law in the USA

That was the real 'back story' that the media has hidden from us. Also, the Domestic Operations aspect of abuse of the CIA...was really the other way around, the Chilean money coming into Nixon's coffers via a Mexican bank, was originally CIA sourced money from the anti-Allende ops. The footnotes in the book All The President's Men really didn't follow the money because if they did the domestic abuses that the CIA was involved in would be worse, when exposed, than the Operation CHAOS stuff --that eventually made it to the light of day-- was.

[barbtries]

29. this is news to me as well,

though it's been over 30 years now i guess, since i read both woodward/bernstein books about nixon's presidency. i seem to recall reading that nixon was reportedly wandering the halls of the white house having conversations with the portraits on the wall...

[WI_DEM]

30. Amazing. I think it was first printed in Woodward and Bernstein's "The Final Days" in 1976