The CIA broke into the Watergate Hotel. The Watergate Hotel is owned by the Vatican. Jordan Maxwell
At the Pentagon papers trial in California today it was revealed that the people who had burglarised the Watergate also burglarised the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. National television news report
On August 9th 1974 Richard Milhous Nixon became the first president in the history of the United States to resign from office. The American Experience: The Presidents: Nixon I: The Quest, PBS 1990
He was a tireless campaigner ... He rose to power as a crusader against communism. ibid.
It was his poker winnings that helped finance Nixon’s first political campaign. ibid.
Other candidates employed scare tactics that year but few were more blatant than Richard Nixon’s ... Nixon defeated Mrs Douglas by almost 700,000 votes. ibid.
After only a year and a half in the Senate, Nixon was a leading candidate for the vice-presidential nomination. ibid.
Suddenly Nixon faced a scandal of his own – The New York Post reported that wealthy supporters had set up a secret fund for Nixon’s personal use. ibid.
This prime-time broadcast would come to be known as the Checkered Speech. ibid.
Nixon stayed on the ticket that was swept into office in November. ibid.
Nixon was less aggressive in 1956 than in earlier campaigns. ibid.
The first debate was costly to Nixon. ibid.
Kennedy won by only 100,000 votes, and charges of Democratic fraud were widespread. ibid.
Less than six months after his humiliation defeat in California, Nixon appeared on the Jack Paar show. The American Experience: The Presidents: Nixon II: The Triumph
Nixon saw his way back to power. ibid.
CBS News Tabulation First Ballot: Nixon 650; Rockefeller 277; Reagan 182; Others 182 – Needed to Win 667. ibid.
Looming over the administration was the war on Vietnam. American troops had been fighting for four years on behalf of South Vietnam against the Soviet-backed communist forces of the north. ibid.
Nixon and Kissinger turned their attention to global strategy. ibid.
As Nixon spoke, American troops moved into Cambodia. His critics were outraged. The president who had promised to end the war seemed to be widening it. ibid.
American campuses exploded. ibid.
Angry protesters returned to Washington ... That night, protesters circled the White House with chains and candles. ibid.
Nixon ordered the most drastic escalation of the war since 1968. Massive sustained bombing of Hanoi. ibid.
Nixon had done what none of his predecessors had been able to do: he had negotiated a treaty in which the two superpowers agree to slow an arms race that had been accelerating for more than a century. ibid.
Richard Nixon campaigned as the President ... Nixon overwhelmed his Democratic rival Senator George McGovern. The American Experience: The Presidents: Nixon III: The Fall
Nixon brooded over the issue that had haunted his first term and now threatened his second – the War in Vietnam. ibid.
Nixon ordered the most intensive bombing of the entire war ... The Christmas Bombing. The raids went on for twelve days. ibid.
Now Dean’s revelations suggested that the Watergate break-in was not an isolated event. ibid.
Nixon’s vice-president, Spiro Agnew, was under investigation for bribery, tax evasion and extortion. ibid.
Well we in the Nixon camp really didn’t know that much about David Frost. Other than he was a British talk-show host. With something of a playboy reputation. He’d had a talk-show here in the US. That had won some awards but hadn’t syndicated well and had been dropped by the network. He ended up taking it down to Australia. Which is where I believe he was when the President resigned. Frost/Nixon 2008 starring Michael Sheen & Frank Langella & Kevin Bacon & Oliver Platt & Sam Rockwell & & Rebecca Hall & Patty McCormack & Toby Jones & Andy Milder & Rance Howard et al, director Ron Howard, Jack Brennan, former chief of staff
I remember his face. Staring out the window. Down below, the liberal Americans cheered. Gloated. Hippies, draft-dodgers, dilettantes, same people that spit on me when I got back from Vietnam. They had gotten rid of Richard Nixon. Their boogie man. ibid. Jack Brennan
You’re probably aware of my history of perspiration. They say that moisture on my upper lip cost me the presidency. ibid. Nixon to Frost
Q) Why didn’t you burn the tapes?
A) Well, Mr Frost, I’m surprised by your question. Since we have an agreement, a contractual agreement I believe, I would cover Watergate in our last taping session ... The taping system in the White House was set up by my predecessor, President Johnson. Partly to avoid the necessity of having a secretary in every meeting. And partly to ensure there was a record kept of every verbal agreement no matter how off the cuff or casual. ibid.
Q) And Cambodia? An invasion which everybody advised you against. All the CIA, Pentagon intelligence, suggested it would fail. So why did you do it? ibid.
We are gonna make those motherfuckers choke! Am I right? ... And no-one for company but those voices ringing in our head. You can probably tell I’ve had a drink ... Good night, Mr Frost. ibid. Nixon on dog-n-bone
What they were doing, what we were all doing, was not criminal. ibid.
I’m saying that when the president does it that means it’s not illegal. ibid.
I brought myself down. I gave them a sword and they stuck it in and they twisted it with relish. ibid.
I let them down. I let down my friends. I let down the country. And worst of all I let down our system of government … I let the American people down. And I’m going to have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life. ibid.
You were a worthy opponent. ibid.
It was the evening of October 1st 1969 when I first smuggled several hundred pages of top secret documents out of my safe at the Rand Corporation. This study contained 47 volumes, 7,000 pages. My plan was to Xerox the study and reveal the secret history of the Vietnam War to the American people. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, 2009
Wouldn’t you go to prison to end this war? ibid.
I received orders from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to gather examples of atrocities perpetrated by the Viet-Cong. ibid.
That was in fact the most shameful episode I could think of: that I really did at a critical moment help McNamara persuade the president by information I gave him – that he should start a systematic campaign of bombing. ibid.
I was beginning to realise we couldn’t beat this enemy in their own backyard. ibid.
The Tet Offensive was a devastating blow to American morale. ibid.
I met with reporter Neil Sheehan of The New York Times and leaked information about a secret CIA report on enemy troop strength. The story made the front page. It was the first time I had gone outside official channels to affect the conduct of the war. ibid.
I said [to Kissinger] as far as I can see there is no way to win. ibid.
We opposed elections while pretending to support democracy. ibid.
I could now see that Johnson was continuing the pattern of presidential lying ... We were the wrong side. ibid.
The hundreds of thousands we were killing was unjustified homicide. ibid.
I’m not going to be part of this system of lying any more. ibid.
I began Xeroxing the McNamara study in the fall of 1969. ibid.
Conspiracy and eight other charges were added to Ellsberg’s charges and he now faced 115 years in prison. ibid.
The courage we need is not the courage, the fortitude, to be obedient in the service of an unjust war, to help conceal lies, to do our job by a boss who has usurped power and is acting as an outlaw government, it is the courage at last to face honestly the truth and reality of what we are doing in the world, and act responsibly to change it. Daniel Ellsberg
For twenty years this nation has been at war in Indochina. Tens of thousands of Americans have been killed, half a million have been wounded, a million Asians have died, and millions more have been maimed or have become refugees in their own land. Meanwhile, the greatest representative democracy the world has even seen, the nation of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, has had its nose rubbed in the swamp by petty war lords, jealous generals, black marketeers, and grand-scale dope pushers.
And the war still goes on. People are still dying, arms and legs are being severed, metal is crashing through human bodies, as a direct result of policy decisions conceived in secret and still kept from the American people. Mike Gravel, The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam