Nixon Was a Crook and a Traitor

[Octafish]

'Twas more than Watergate. Crime reporter Don Fulsom called him The Mob's President.

That's not the worst of Richard Milhous' corruptions, however. Tricky Dick was a Traitor.



Goes way back, in fact, to the time when Prescott Bush, Sr. was a Senator.

And that goes a long way toward explaining how we got to the present day,
a time when the New Deal has been replaced by Welfare for the Wealthy.

PS: Thanks to DU and DUer Segami for the heads-up on Greenwald's essay:

The PARDON That RUINED American Law

Sorry to write that I missed the OP, when it was open.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. I suspect that Nixon was amoral.

I think sociopathic people come in many types and styles. Some turn into killers. Some do other things. They can be found anywhere. I just purchased The Sociopath Next Door and plan to read it. It presents precisely that argument.

[Octafish]

2. Mrs. Nixon endured abuse.

Book: Nixon Took Drugs, Beat Wife

Filed at 6:18 p.m. EDT
By The Associated Press

EXCERPT...

"The Arrogance of Power" by Anthony Summers will be published Monday. It chiefly concerns the aspects of Nixon's life "that he and his supporters have preferred to conceal," writes Summers, a BBC journalist and author of biographies of J. Edgar Hoover and Marilyn Monroe.

SNIP...

Summers wrote that the relationship of Nixon and his wife was one of "prolonged marital difficulty, of physical abuse, of threatened divorce." But that view was contested by John Taylor, Nixon's chief aide in his retirement years, now director of the Richard M. Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, Calif.

Summers' claims that Nixon abused his wife came from secondary sources. Among others, he cited journalist Seymour Hersh, who said he learned of three instances of Nixon wife beatings but did not identify his sources; retired Washington lawyer John Sears, who was a campaign consultant to Nixon; and the late Bill Van Petten, a Los Angeles area reporter, who years later told a friend, not identified by Summers, that just before or after his 1962 loss to former California Gov. Pat Brown Nixon beat Mrs. Nixon "so badly she could not go out the next day."

Summers said Sears told him that he had been told "that Nixon had hit her (Pat Nixon) in 1962 and that she had threatened to leave him over it. ... I'm not talking about a smack. He blackened her eye." Sears said he had been told of the beating by two lawyers, both now dead, Walter Taylor and Pat Hillings.

The guy suffered a lot as a young man -- losing brothers to illness. That doesn't give him the right to hurt others. A person who willingly hurts others is evil.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

3. In short, he was a horse's ass. He refused to control his anger and violence nt

[hifiguy]

10. I could swear I read a book by Summers about Nixon

years ago. The Prescott Bush/Tricky Dick connections were explained in detail. Is this the same book from back when or a new one?

[Octafish]

15. I believe it is. The article is from 2000...

...Summers and Robbyn Swan are great. From a NYT selection from "Arrogance of Power":

The Arrogance of Power
The Secret World of Richard Nixon

By ANTHONY SUMMERS with ROBBYN SWAN
Viking Penguin

EXCERPT...

A month or two into this punishing schedule Nixon began to be plagued with persistent back and neck pain. The first doctors he consulted were no help, and he found himself perusing a book on psychosomatic illness pressed on him by the outgoing senator from California, Sheridan Downey. The book was The Will to Live, by Dr. Arnold Hutschnecker, an easy-to-read best-seller written for people "in the grips of acute conflict." It emphasized "the interaction of the human psyche and bodily reactions."

Hutschnecker was described by one academic as "a sort of Pavlovian and Freudian synthesizer." He himself professed that he "treated my patients as if they are my children." Famous clients over the years reportedly included the actresses Elizabeth Taylor, Celeste Holm, and Rita Hayworth and the novelist Erich Maria Remarque. An Austrian emigré who graduated in Berlin soon after World War I, he had been working in New York City since 1936.

While he practiced internal medicine, he had early in his career been interested in the way mental and emotional disturbances affect health. By 1951, this topic had become the primary focus of his work. He dropped internal medicine completely by 1955, to specialize exclusively as a psychotherapist engaged in what he called "psychoanalytically oriented treatment of emotional problems."1

Dr. Hutschnecker had, in the words of one interviewer, "a touch of the missionary zeal of a Billy Graham, of the cheery optimism of a Norman Vincent Peale, of the psychic beliefs of a Jeane Dixon, and an accent a bit reminiscent of Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove." Nixon, as we have seen, publicly associated himself with both Graham and Peale, and, according to one close aide, credited the prophecies of Dixon, the popular astrologer.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/summers-power.html

There really is more to Nixon than a 5 o'clock shadow.

[hifiguy]

16. Ah. Time to re-read that one. I think I saw it yesterday

while filing books and records on pick-up-the-apartment day. Thanks, Octafish! :hi:

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. I was inflamed with rage when Ford pardoned him

I knew it was wrong then and would lead to excusing crimes for our leaders.

[Octafish]

7. Our long national nightmare isn't over by a long shot.

Here's a PDF (please scroll down a bit, past "Bush League CIA") on the subject from the old Covert Action Information Bulletin:

How Prescott Bush Recruited Nixon



Henchman and Scion of the Military Industrial Complex

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. my nighmare is that

I'm awake to what's going on


I wish I was still asleep and dreamless.

[Lint Head]

5. Not insinuating anything but Nixon was extremely unhappy when he was beaten by JFK.

Nixon was a vengeful person and he aggressively pursued the eventuality of running for President again. I think there was some collateral damage because of that aggression. The tapes prove Nixon was an Old Testament 'eye for an eye' type. Just saying. You can't become President or be seriously considered for President unless you are well connected. Bush, Bachmann, Palin, Perry, Cain and Romney are well healed politically connected people thought their intellectual capabilities may be lacking.

[Octafish]

9. Nixon was VP when CIA enlisted Mafia to kill Castro

Guess it pays to have someone who knows someone who might've once done a favor for somebody through violence.

How the CIA Enlisted the Chicago Mob to Put a Hit on Castro

Ever wonder about the sanity of America's leaders? Take a close look at perhaps the most bizarre plot in U.S. intelligence history

By Bryan Smith
Chicago Magazine
November 2007
(page 4 of 6)

EXCERPT...

By September 1960, the project was proceeding apace. Roselli would report directly to Maheu. The first step was a meeting in New York. There, at the Plaza Hotel, Maheu introduced Roselli to O'Connell. The agent wanted to cover up the participation of the CIA, so he pretended to be a man named Jim Olds who represented a group of wealthy industrialists eager to get rid of Castro so they could get back in business.

"We may know some people," Roselli said. Several weeks later, they all met at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. For years, the luxurious facility had served as the unofficial headquarters for Mafioso leaders seeking a base close to their gambling interests in Cuba. Now, it would be the staging area for the assassination plots.

At a meeting in one of the suites, Roselli introduced Maheu to two men: Sam Gold and a man Roselli referred to as Joe, who could serve as a courier to Cuba. By this time, Roselli was on to O'Connell. "I'm not kidding," Roselli told the agent one day. "I know who you work for. But I'm not going to ask you to confirm it."

Roselli may have figured out that he was dealing with the CIA, but neither Maheu nor O'Connell realized the rank of mobsters with whom they were dealing. That changed when Maheu picked up a copy of the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, which carried an article laying out the FBI's ten most wanted criminals. Leading the list was Sam Giancana, a.k.a. "Mooney," a.k.a. "Momo," a.k.a. "Sam the Cigar," a Chicago godfather who was one of the most feared dons in the country—and the man who called himself Sam Gold. "Joe" was also on the list. His real name, however, was Santos Trafficante—the outfit's Florida and Cuba chieftain.

Maheu alerted O'Connell. "My God, look what we're involved with," Maheu said. O'Connell told his superiors. Questioned later before the 1975 U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (later nicknamed the Church Committee after its chairman, Frank Church, the Democratic senator from Idaho), O'Connell was asked whether there had ever been any discussion about asking two men on the FBI's most wanted list to carry out a hit on a foreign leader.

"Not with me there wasn't," O'Connell answered.

"And obviously no one said stop—and you went ahead."

"Yes."

"Did it bother you at all?"

"No," O'Connell answered, "it didn't."

CONTINUED...

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2007/How-the-CIA-Enlisted-the-Chicago-Mob-to-Put-a-Hit-on-Castro/index.php?cparticle=4&siarticle=3

It really is a small world. And very, very bad.

[LongTomH]

6. "Nixon was a crook and a traitor" So what else is news?

Hmmmmm?????:eyes:

[Octafish]

14. Oh, I dunno. Does the fact his political sponsor's kids & grandkids continue to haunt America count?

Like Neil Bush, here with Rev and a Mrs. Moon:



The children and grandchildren of Prescott Sheldon Bush, Sr. continue to hold positions of great political and economic power in America and around the world.

For short, I call them the Bush Family Evil Empire.



Here's a refresher course for the curious at heart: The people who tried to overthrow FDR in 1933 had kids.

Gosh. How many times have I heard that on television? Once? Never? Ever?

[AntiFascist]

29. This thread by starroute should tell you something about Bush family's friends....

Moon, General Singlaub, and the World Anti-Communist League

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2497387&mesg_id=2499315

[GreenTea]

8. Of course he was - one of the liars of all time-But then he was a republican as slimy as one can be

[Octafish]

17. Even the Joint Chiefs of Staff didn't trust him. Hence, the Moorer-Radford Affair...

Nixon busted an operative the JCS placed in his offices "borrowing" pretzeldental papers and such:

Nixon and the Chiefs

In the last days of 1971 President Richard Nixon and his closest aides met to discuss the astonishing discovery that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been spying on the White House. Transcripts of Nixon's secret tapes of these meetings, published here for the first time, offer a case study in Nixon's paranoid style of governing—and his surprisingly successful efforts to salvage advantage from misfortune

By James Rosen
The Atlantic
April 2002

At 6:09 on the evening of December 21, 1971, President Richard Nixon convened a tense and confidential meeting in the Oval Office with his three closest advisers—John N. Mitchell, his Attorney General; H. R. Haldeman, his chief of staff; and John D. Ehrlichman, his top domestic-policy aide. Notably absent was Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national-security adviser. The men had come together to discuss a crisis unique in American presidential history—"a federal offense of the highest order," as Nixon would put it in the meeting. Just days before, Yeoman Charles E. Radford, a young Navy stenographer who had been working with Kissinger and his staff, had confessed to a Department of Defense interrogator that for more than a year he had been passing thousands of top-secret Nixon-Kissinger documents to his superiors at the Pentagon. Radford had obtained the documents by systematically rifling through burn bags, interoffice envelopes, and even the briefcases of Kissinger and Kissinger's then-deputy, Brigadier General Alexander Haig. According to Radford, his supervisors—first Rear Admiral Rembrandt C. Robinson and then Rear Admiral Robert O. Welander—had routinely passed the ill-gotten documents to Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and sometimes to Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, the chief of naval operations. It was, in short, an unprecedented case of espionage that pitted the nation's top military commanders against their civilian commander in chief during wartime. Nixon and his advisers had gathered to consider how to react.

The Joint Chiefs' espionage effort was not born in a vacuum. Nixon's style of governance was highly secretive, and his presidency hung precariously on the constantly shifting lines of "back-channel" communication that he encouraged among Kissinger, Haig, the Joint Chiefs, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, and Secretary of State William Rogers. The military often felt cut out of crucial decision-making on matters of national security, foreign policy, and the conduct of the war in Vietnam. In his 1976 memoir, On Watch, Admiral Zumwalt lamented "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." Scarcely alone in his views, Zumwalt marveled "that rational men could think that running things like that could have any other result than 'leaks' and 'spying' and all-around paranoia." Indeed, he said, "they had created a system in which 'leaks' and 'spying' were everyday and essential elements."

The espionage case ultimately came to be known as the Moorer-Radford affair. Although the details of the story may be new to many readers, historians and journalists have written about Nixon's handling of the affair—most notably Seymour M. Hersh, in The Price of Power (1983), and Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, in Silent Coup (1991). Until now, however, chronicles of the White House's reaction have mostly been derived from the selective memories of some of those involved (including Radford, who has spoken to the press)—and have therefore proved either incomplete or less than fully reliable. But in October of 2000 the secret tapes that Nixon made of his initial conversations about the affair were declassified and released for public access, buried amid 420 hours of other Nixon recordings. Published here for the first time, excerpted transcripts of those conversations do much more than fill out the historical record. In fact, they offer an absorbing case study in the behavior and tactics of Richard Nixon under fire, trying to cope with a potential disaster of his own making. "Damn," he exclaimed to Haldeman on the day following that first meeting, as the details began to unfold. "You know, I created this whole situation, this—this lesion. It's just unbelievable. Unbelievable."

The tapes show that Nixon was stunned by Radford's revelations. He pounded his desk in anger. He spoke gravely about prosecuting Admiral Moorer, along with others involved. He voiced deep suspicion about the role played by Haig, who had personally selected Radford to accompany him and Kissinger on the foreign trips during which Radford had done his greatest damage. Nixon pronounced Kissinger, his national-security adviser, a threat to security. And yet within days he had developed a strategy for handling the affair that not only averted a major public crisis—which is where most Presidents would have been content to stop—but also skillfully salvaged advantage from misfortune and furthered his personal and political agendas.

CONTINUED...

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/04/nixon-and-the-chiefs/2473/

Absolutely fine jowels. Just right.

[Solly Mack]

12. K&R

[Octafish]

25. Spiro Agnew called the news media "an effete corps of impudent snobs.''

After his government service, Mr. Nolo Contendere got a real nice gig developing businesses in Saudi Arabia.

"I have one utility," he said, "and that's the ability to penetrate to the top people."

And, so, if Agnew's a crook and Nixon's a crook, what's that make Bush and the Bushes?

[Solly Mack]

26. Scum is scum. (and they are/were all scum)

[Bigmack]

13. Shiiiiit.... I look back on Nixon as ...

the "good old days".

Look at what is happening these days...

Look who is running the Repubs today....

I'll take a crook any day. Nixon had a brain... a crooked one...but nonetheless...

If you'd told me in the 70's and 80's I'd ever say anything remotely positive about Nixon, I would not have believed you. It shows how far we have fallen.

[11 Bravo]

18. ... who would be kicked out of today's Republican party for being "too liberal".

Strange times.

[Motown_Johnny]

19. and he was still the best Republican President in over 40 years

scary

[kenny blankenship]

20. But he had a dark side, too.

[Trailrider1951]

21. I am convinced that the key to Nixon's election in 1968

was Lyndon Johnson's decision a couple of months before Robert Kennedy's assassination, to not "seek or accept" the Democratic nomination. Why did he do this? Popular hearsay speculated that all the rancor about the Viet Nam war just got to him. But, just 4 short years before, Johnson won the presidency by a landslide. I am convinced that, even with the war and the protests, he would have WON the election over Nixon. Now, in retrospect, his decision seems real fishy. Octafish, do you have any insight you can offer into this question? And, again, thank you so much for your research and insight. Your posts are some of the reasons I support this board with my money.

[Octafish]

31. Without resorting to nukes or invading the North, the war in Viet Nam was unwinnable.

In 1968, war and peace in Viet Nam was the primary issue. The war was the reason for the domestic unrest and the same national divisions that "still are with us." Khe Sahn and the Tet Offensive showed even the staunchest hawks the truth.

President Johnson was in a lose-lose-lose situation. He couldn't win the war as it was being fought. He couldn't withdraw, having led the escalation (remember, his casus belli was the non-attacks on our destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin). He couldn't escalate the war, as it would bring in Red Chinese ground troops or a nuclear retaliation from the USSR. So, the war continued -- literally, business as usual.

Politically, the Democrats were divided as much as today. Pro-peace and anti-war; pro-civil rights and segregationist representing two main schisms. When LBJ barely won the New Hampshire primary, barely beating Sen. Eugene McCarthy ("the peace candidate") he saw the big picture. When RFK declared his candidacy a few days later, he knew the way the campaign would play out -- and LBJ would likely lose.

IMO, in the November election, Johnson (or RFK) probably would've beaten Nixon like a drum -- Nixon only got abot 500,000 more of the popular vote than Humphrey. Wallace got an enormous share of the South, with about 10,000,000 votes and winning five states. Still, the electoral landslide might've gone the Democrat's way with a sitting president running.

The thing is: LBJ saw he wouldn't be able to continue to lead the country where it needed to go -- out of Vietnam and a fresh start domestically. History had tied his hands.

PS: Thank you very much for the kind words, Trailrider1951. Despite what I write about LBJ and KBR and the Dallas Cowboys, I love Texas. Please know I have lots of family in Houston and New Braunfels.

[Wilms]

22. .

[Kingofalldems]

23. Today's republicans would call Nixon a communist

[Trailrider1951]

24. Kickedy Kick for History

and perhaps the knowledge of our recent decline...........

[AntiFascist]

27. K&R, thanks for this Octafish....

If we can understand the corrupting power that was behind Nixon, then we can begin to understand how to fix our government.

As Robert Parry points out, this power is still very much with us:

"The U.S. news media’s blasé reaction may be almost as revealing as the tapes themselves in that it reflects an institutionalized disinterest – even hostility – to sharing with the American people some ugly realities about their democracy when national security intersects with politics."

[lovemydog]

28. Nixon took paranoia to unprecedented levels

and it was part of his undoing. He didn't trust anyone and as a result, no one trusted him.

[Octafish]

33. With good reason.

The guy's enemies -- many from within the White House -- were out to get him.

EXCERPT from a Dave Emory interview with Russ Baker:

Prescott Bush appears to have launched Nixon’s polit­i­cal career with a visit to Los Ange­les. Prescott appears to have trav­eled to LA in order to recruit a GOP can­di­date to defeat Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jerry Voorhees, who was push­ing to reg­u­late Wall Street. (At the time, Brown Broth­ers, Harriman–Prescott’s employer–was heav­ily involved with the pur­chase of defense indus­tries in the L.A. area. Dresser Indus­tries, also close to the Harriman/Bush axis, was active in the petro­leum busi­ness in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. These rela­tion­ships were the foun­da­tion of Prescott’s polit­i­cal con­nec­tions to the pow­er­ful, reac­tionary Chan­dler fam­ily (pub­lish­ers of The Los Ange­les Times). The Chan­dlers, in turn, were deci­sive sup­port­ers of Nixon’s cam­paign to defeat Voorhees.)

This debt of Nixon’s to the Bush fam­ily may well explain why, despite his antipa­thy toward the East­ern Estab­lish­ment, Nixon appointed Poppy to posi­tions that bur­nished his pro­fes­sional resume for future con­sid­er­a­tion. Nixon named Poppy Ambas­sador to the United Nations and, later, chair­man of the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee. Bush would later play a fun­da­men­tal role in the removal of Richard Nixon from power, after he began to turn away from the inter­ests who had pro­moted him to the White House in the first place.

SNIP...

Baker points out that the avail­able evi­dence sug­gests that Nixon was set up in the Water­gate bur­glary, with the CIA vet­er­ans who com­prised the “Plumbers” unit delib­er­ately bungling the oper­a­tion that led to their arrest.

In Fam­ily of Secrets, Baker notes Poppy Bush’s pri­mary role in the “Town­house” affair, one of the back sto­ries to Water­gate. The Town­house oper­a­tion devel­oped a money trail link­ing Nixon’s White House to nefar­i­ous finan­cial doings that later helped to grease the skids for Nixon.

[Major Hogwash]

30. Post of the day!!! "Nixon's the one" was more than just a campaign slogan!

He was the "go to" man for the mafia in Congress.
And his performance at the Alger Hiss trial should have garnered him a supporting actor nomination at least when he held up 2 EMPTY canisters with no microfilm in them at all!! He manipulated the American people as a Senator, as a Vice President, and as a President.

This is a great thread.
And I think that if we had any ballz at all, we would force our so-called "transparent government" to disclose what they know now about when JFK was assassinated, what was on those 18 minutes of missing tape in Nixon's White House, and where George H.W. Bush was on the day JFK was assassinated.

Anyone, and I truly mean anyone, who votes for a Republican running for national office is voting for corruption on a major scale.
Simply look at what George W. Bush did in just 8 short years to ruin this country to see just how true that statement is!!

[Odin2005]

32. IMO the contradiction between his Quaker upbringing and his start in politics as a red-baiter...

...twisted his mind and turned him into a paranoid basket case.

[ensho]

34. true he was crook

when he was elected I told my republican father that he was a criminal. he got angry and told me I was crazy. when it was proven he was a crook - did my father apologize - of course not.