The Pete Quiñones Show - The Complete Nixon and Watergate Series - w/ Thomas777

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

3 Hours and 35 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.Here, in one file, are the 3 episodes Thomas777 did with Pete covering the Watergate scandal.Episode 1: Nixon and Watergate - Pt 1 of 3 w/ Thomas777Episode 2: Nixon and Watergate - Pt 2 of 3 w/ Thomas777Episode 3: Nixon and Watergate - The Break-in and Aftermath - Pt 3 of 3 w/ Thomas777Thomas' SubstackThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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Going to take another little break from the World War I series with Thomas 777. And we concentrate a little bit on a something from my lifetime that, you know, this might be one of the first political things I remember my parents talking about. Yeah, I mean, I was real little, but I think this may have been it. But Watergate, Richard Nixon, 1973. So what's up? The issue with Watergate, there's a historical aspect to it, like a profoundly historical aspect, as well as a political one. And it's particularly timely today on grounds of what's underway with Mr. Trump and what has been underway with him. that agree to which Trump really is the error to Mr. Nixon can't be overstated.

People misunderstand me when I say that. I'm not saying that Trump has anything approaching the intellect that Nixon, or that his significance in historical capacities is analogous, but he truly is the heir to the silent majority coalition, what remains of it. And the manner in which the deep state works, I don't think anybody denies anymore that the deep state is an actual feature of government. That's basically a kind of shorthand, polemical or colloquial way of talking about, I mean, you know, Burnham's managerial state. It shouldn't be controversial to people that it exists, okay?

But institutions at scale, particularly institutions and government, they behave in predictable ways, okay? and the forces of raiding against Mr. Trump, as it were, are basically identical, all right? And the reasons for his disqualification from public office, you know, and his removal from office and now is subsequent disqualification by extra legal and extra constitutional means, you know, it owes to the same phenomenon, if not the same set of circumstances and conditions, obviously. However, in Nixon's case, you know, we're dealing with the origins of what the hostility to Nixon was, and that's more complicated than what may superficially appear. You know, what put Nixon on the map as a national political figure independent of his association with Eisenhower was the fact that he demanded. landed Eldor Hiss be prosecuted, okay? Eldor Hiss has probably kind of fallen out of, you know, living memory. I mean, probably this happened like almost a generation ago now, okay, but Eldr Hist was undoubtedly a Soviet asset that they can't be denied, even though to this day.

There was a book as recently as 2000 that claimed that this was some sort of elaborate slander of. of his, you know, owing to some hostility to the East Coast establishment such that, you know, it existed mid-century, and it was profoundly powerful then still. That's another thing that can't be overstated

and what we're going to get into about Nixon. The degree to which the low eye of American power, political power and financial power, that agreed to which that was concentrated on the East Coast, they can't be overstated. As recently as the 70s and 80s, you'd

what remained of the old ruling cast you know kind of looked with disdain you know at the Midwest and and the West Coast is not really in the game politically and as you know um not packing the not having the pedigree to challenge for public office okay um add to that the fact that somebody like Nixon was totally at odds with with their values at least in terms of the coalition that he came to lead you know when you have a you have um the situation has developed with watergate but in the case of hiss himself um you know like i said he uh his um he was um he was truly like american gentry he was one of five children um both parents came from these sort of formal these truly aristocratic baltimore families

who could trace their roots to the mid-18th century. Interestingly, his name was an anglicization of Hess. His sounded more anglophone. His paternal great-great-grandfather had emigrated from Germany, and I believe that was his only non-anglophone ancestor, which, of course, you know, in those circles, like, was a, was cosomatically problematic um has said something of a tragic upbringing um his father uh the family never had any money you know they lived in genteel poverty as it were you know like a lot of

people of that kind of cast and station did um by the by the early 20th century despite the fact that they retained kind of like their social register type you know credibility um and political clout Um, his father, Charles, his. Um, he tried a number of different business ventures, you know, some of which fared better than others. Um, he did fairly well as the, uh, as the head of a dry goods importing firm. Um, becoming, becoming a top executive and, and, um, and majority shareholder. Um, this came to an end in, around 1907

um has lost most of the family's fortune that he'd so kind of diligently accrued and he committed suicide by cutting his throat with a razor of all means i mean really

really kind of awful stuff um his uh wife was now a widow you know with these five children and she subsequently had to rely on you know her family's money and basically hand out from people to survive and uh elder hiss who was only two years old at this time

presumably has made it had a big impact on his life you know being this guy who had this kind of outsized um heritage but who lived up but who grew up you know in a fatherless household and relative poverty um fast forward um to uh his his adult life um um the uh at Harvard Law School um he was a prology of Felix Frankfurter you know which became his kind of

ingress into the the New Deal regime early on um Frankfurt had written a a book on the Sacco and Van Zetti case Sacco and Van Zeti were were communist adjacent

anarchists who were convicted at terrorism and executed um in the New York Electric chair they were kind of the this was kind of the Rosenberg case before the Rosenberg case and Frankfurter he wrote the entire treaties claiming that um these men were convicted unjustly for no particular factual reason just kind of because and uh and uh and his was kind of the was kind of this like boyish prince who frankfurter came to really like okay um his subsequently

served as a clerk to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr so he was kind of covering all his bases okay you know with the tribe as well as with his own people you know um ended up in this hot shot boston law firm and later uh later in new york firm um then known as cotton frank frank right and gordon i don't keep up with east coast silk stocking law firms i have no idea what it is today but it does still exist in some legacy capacity um his was a he was a radical new dealer became a government attorney um served briefly the justice department he got a plumb position with the night committee which uh despite the presence of people like his was doing god's work um you know they they investigated war

profiteering um cost overruns and you know the pocketing of these overruns by people in the armance industry and in the financial sector who had you know funded these these massive outways to fight world war one um and a lot of the for clarity the night committee was not nor was not himself some some some some some kind of radical um a lot of these people were you know like those who later became america first types you know but um this was uh the way the way radicals uh left radicals obviously i mean the way they fell on the issue of world war one is interesting you know they basically towed the soviet line that you know this was an imperialist war that was you know, came about only to the intrigues of capitalists and war

profiteers. And in the case of the Great War, as we've been covering somewhat, and we'll get more into that, that actually wasn't totaled too far off. You know, I mean, like we've talked about, the degree to which high finance quite literally had Wilson by the short hairs, and essentially demanded, demanded he not allow a default on these massive unsecured lines of credit that had been extended the British crown. Did he read it which that was an essential proximate cause of American intervention? It really can't be overstated. But he had as it may during the same period, he defy this same period, he defy.

He defended a lot of labor organizers and adjacent institutions against challenges of their legitimacy, either of political nature, or of a criminal one. He became very insinuated into the agricultural adjustment administration, which was for whatever reason, strongly connected to a lot. of radical elements um more than a few of whom were uh were communist um i believe that owed of the outsized power of agribusiness in america then is now as well as the fact that kind of the bane um the bane of marxas leninists you know be them vanguardists or people who favored a broadfront strategy with the conspicuous absence of of of of agriculturally situated, you know, people and institutions within their ranks. But he, most notably, his kind of shining moment with the Nye committee was when DuPont chemical,

or DuPont Industrial, I think it was known at the time, he got the opportunity in 1934 to 35 as an investigator and is a official title was legal assistant to the night committee but uh he was able to badger these do these big shot dupac executives and officials on cross-examination and um bernard barouk uh chairman of the war industry's board under wilson and a key in a key personage in the administration's waging of the war itself um he really he really dragged him over the raked him over the coals as it were and and just dragged him, you know, before the Republic audience. He was rewarded, he and his younger brother, Donald, they were rewarded with a posting under Cordell Hall in the State Department.

This was the direct assistant to assistant secretary of state, Francis Sire, who was Wilson's son-in-law, incidentally, and as well as special assistant to the director of the office for Far Eastern Affairs. During the war years, 39 to 44 specifically, Hiss was an assistant to Stanley Hornbeck, who again was insinuated into the Oaths of Far East and Affairs as a special advisor to Cordell Hall himself. So Hiss was a man who was very well situated to impact policy at a very high level. You know, he wasn't some nobody. he wasn't some he wasn't some

he wasn't some he wasn't some you know a legacy a wasp whose family knowing how he got a fortune so he's rewarded with kind of plum jobs that he could

like afford gross reason things I mean he he had real power okay um those who would contest that my rebuttal is that um as the war came to an end

not only did his attend a the U.S. State Department delegation at Yalta, you know, where quite literally the Soviet Union was afforded, you know, half of the political map of Europe. But he was named director of the Office of Special Political Affairs in 1944. This office was specifically and purposefully organized to plan for post-war international organizations, first among the United Nations. Okay, his himself was instrumental in the drafting of the United Nations charter and the negotiations that went into that. Okay. I don't think I need to, I don't think I need to continue to list his accomplishments and resume.

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To convey that, you know, he was somebody who... who had real cloud um long story short um when it came to light um based on a little testimony that um you know hits had been a soviet asset for many years you know and this was um this was that arguably the zenith of what came to be known as the mccarthy era the fact that nixon was his primary antagonist you know McCarthy I believe was a well-intentioned individual and people forget to what brought down McCarthy was Roy Cone's you know to be delicate about it his persuasion and his exploitation of his office to get special treatment for David Schein who if he was not actively involved in a homosexual affair with him Shine was quite obviously the the object of of cones affection that's what brought down McCarthy it wasn't that McCarthy was going after innocent people or it confabulated some some imaginary narrative of communists under the bed or whatever the current claim is of court history but regardless even um before all of that McCarthy

McCarthy had a reputation as something of a yokel you know he was from wisconsin whose representatives and senators didn't get a lot of respect. He was a notorious alcoholic. It was a lot easier to dismiss somebody like McCarthy than it was somebody like Nixon, who even his enemies admitted was an obvious, you know, savant and, you know, a consummately serious individual. And Nixon had studied the FBI record to the point, practically, of memorization, you know, his

what he presented against Hiss was airtight. And the establishment from whence Hiss emerged, never forgave Nixon. You know, I know in the Oliver Stone film and things, which in some ways is a very good film, the biopic of Nixon. Nixon's kind of presented,

you know, at the throughout the film and particularly at the height of Watergate and his fall from grace, as this man kind of, you know, tormented by fantasms and seeing these sort of establishment antagonists, you know, in the shadows who may or may not have even really existed. That's a completely mischaracterization. The East Coast establishment hated Nixon. You know, the New Dealers hated Nixon. They hated them in a way that not even people who suffer from Trump arrangement syndrome hate Trump.

You know, like they, this cannot be overstated. okay um so if you want to understand we're going to get into the career of nixon and and in the circumstances of water in a minute but this cannot be overstated okay and the degree to which in part the watergate scandal was revenge for alger hiss that must be considered otherwise everything subsequent is missing a key component of the evidentiary record and and the causal nexus of Okay. Now, I believe also what's key to understanding the attack, not just on Nixon, but executive power generally after World War II. The only historian, mainstream historian I know who addresses this specifically, is Paul Johnson, who I've mixed feelings about.

He's written some very good, he's done some very good work. He also tends to resort to kind of shrill neo-connish kind of canards. particularly in discussing, you know, U.S. foreign policy and things like that. And he's got a tremendous blind spot about why the fortunes the American right precipitously and totally deteriorated after Nuremberg. But that aside, he brings up the point of what exactly brought down Johnson, you know, Lyndon Baines Johnson. Now, Johnson at one time had a very strong mandate. The Vietnam War until Tet, and we'll get into that in a moment too, was fairly popular. Johnson's, Johnson pursuing zealously the Civil Rights Crusade and doing so in a way that on other.

and other policy initiatives would have been viewed probably as overreach, but because, you know, the East Coast power center of the country, as well as, you know, radicals all in sundry who identified with those values, you know, they viewed it as, you know, a necessary evil, you know, for the chief executive, you know, to kind of like bypass legislative solutions and even, you know, even the machinery of the judiciary in order to kind of force outcomes that's why Johnson was doing what he was doing in that regard you know Johnson kind of

at the soul of a pig okay he was not a good man but you know the degree to which he was basically touting to an establishment that he knew had nothing but disdain for him has got to be considered and you know Johnson Johnson was kind of the consummate there's probably never been a man who was more skilled at backroom dealing and the achievement of consensus on key policy initiative is across the partisan divide in Congress.

Like, it's really remarkable. But Johnson was also a redneck southerner. Okay. And he said in no uncertain terms, like literally, he's quote as saying, I don't believe that the nation would unite definitively behind any. Southerner. And when he asked why, he said, well, the Metropolitan Press would never permit it. Okay. What he was euphemizing when said Metropolitan Press, take from that way you will.

I think people know the history of this country as well as some aspects of the present dilemma should be able to see through that pretty clearly. it increasingly became a narrative in the national media that what Johnson was doing in Vietnam specifically was dangerous now mind you in living memory there was the Roosevelt administration where Roosevelt had literally incarcerated Germans, Italians, and Japanese in concentration camps

he'd shut down national media absorbing all coverage reporting on the war into the penumbar and authority of the Office of War information. He had people arrested without formal charges for criticizing the war effort under auspices of national security exigencies. Like the idea that LBJ was somehow acting against precedent in time of war was preposterous. and obviously too you know Kennedy and and Johnson's

predecessor had been Eisenhower you know not only was Eisenhower not only was Eisenhower the equivalent of a five star of which there's only been three he very much ran the Oval Office like a five-star General Wood you know so this kind of sudden

this kind of sudden declaration that an imperial executive was afoot that that and that's un-American. It was a, it didn't make a lot of sense upon a superficial analysis. But there was a basic revolt against authority that had been brewing. And a lot of that had to do with, again, despite the fact that Johnson was very much touting to a minority elite opinion with the Civil Rights Act.

and all of 64 and all the kind of incidental and adjacent efforts towards force integration and social engineering it didn't matter and the president being the country's only nationally elected representative and being a prime symbol of government and

you know kind of the great power that's expressly coded into article two as the kind of new political culture post-1933, you know, ostified. The deep state was no longer willing to abide. An executive who acted like a chief executive. Obviously, this became more pronounced. We'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear.

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Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. When Johnson, when Johnson resigned under pressure, but, you know, there was something of the, there was something of the same treatment in Nixon and Johnson, ironically, I mean, even, again, you know, the elder hiss question was an essential cause, if not the sole proxie. cause of, you know, the hostility to Nixon by the national press in the deep state. But again, it was Nixon's status as outsider.

You know, in 1962, Nixon ran for governor of California. And Nixon was a Californian. And I believe that this is why he had a very Pacific-centric view of strategic matters. And I highly recommend that not just his memoirs, but the books he wrote on grand strategy in the epoch, after he left office. It indicates a very strong understanding of the key strategic implications of not just military force deployments, particularly of a strategic nuclear category in the Far East. But he had an understanding of the outsized power in global economic terms that the Orient would have.

And this kind of thing was totally alien. to the East Coast establishment, among other things. They looked at Nixon as like upstart, oaky trash, punching above his weight. These East Coast reporters during the campaign for the 19662 governorship, they out now just poked fun at Nixon. They made fun of his clothes.

They made fun of the way he talked. You know, they made fun of his alleged awkwardness, you know, and kind of lack of interpersonal manners. That's the famous stum. the famous soundbite where Nixon says to the

press afterwards just think how much you're going to be missing you want to Nixon to kick around any more gentlemen because this is my last press conference that was his concession announcement in 62

well did how much did this carry over from the 1960 campaign that was part of it definitely but i mean he he um his concession there i mean Nixon actually looked like a gentleman in 1960 in a lot of ways especially especially um he never gave up till the end but there was a lot of dirty pool in that election and probably in absolute terms like in real in real numbers terms it was probably too

close to call the kind of full the kind of full frontal assault on nixon by the east coast press amidst that kind of presentation that, you know, the national audience had been afforded would have been somewhat unseemly. I make the point about 62 because in a lot of ways, like the proverbial mask dropped. What prompted Nixon's comeback, as we've talked about, you know, the catastrophic defeat of buried Goldwater you know Goldwater himself was a bizarre placeholder but it wasn't just owing to a lack of of personages who could interface effectively

with kind of the era of new media you know is that like we've talked about Kennedy's literal eulogy to Taft and profiles and courage you know post Nuremberg but there was no more American right it was it was it was it was for practical purposes illegal in policy terms and in ethical and optical terms it was just unthinkable you know to have an america first party so what was the republican party well you know they got behind ike because like who could you know who could um who could disdain ike you know um i'm speaking within the founded rationale the perception of the time obviously So they picked Goldwater. You know, again, who's this gadfly,

he's this gadfly proto-libertarian who goes around, you know, basically like reciting manifesto is about why we need to abolish the IRS. You know, he was just a bizarre choice, you know. But again, it owed the fact that there was now, there was now an official opposition that was precluded from even acting as, oh as an official opposition in formal terms um now of course despite the hostility to um despite the hostility to johnson you've got to understand that the uh the the left radical establishment in the deep state their idea was that by forcing johnson to step down that um the heir apparent

would be Bobby Kennedy. Okay, the Camelot myth was still alive and well. Kennedy, believe it or not, there was actually some crossover appeal with Wallace voters and not just ethnic Irish guys, because the Hoy-Ploid don't, they don't really think deeply in policy terms. It didn't matter that, like, Kennedy was basically this, like, radical.

You know, he was viewed as kind of like this, he was viewed as kind of like as pugnacious you know a young like white ethnic type guy who was like a man of the people like however misguided that might have been but the point is um he was their ace in the hole you know and um

he was bizarrely murdered you know by Sirhan Sirhan and um that threw everything into chaos that made LBJ's vice president Hebert Humphrey the frontrunner and

he was an experienced campaigner and he might have you know he experienced like literally all day if LBJ had given him you know the loyal support that somewhat argue had the right to expect and in particular

had you know kind of grease the skids for him to advocate withdrawal from Vietnam he would have probably had a good chance, but Johnson was understandably better by now in Johnson's, Johnson's, Johnson's notion, and if you listen, you can find it on YouTube, if you listen to Johnson's

discussions with Senator Everett Dirkson from this time, it's really revealing. Johnson's basically like, fuck you, I'm going to burn it down. You know, I'm going to burn the proverbial house down. I don't care if the Republicans take over. I'd like to see him take over after what you did to me. Like, see you later. you know, fuck you very much.

In addition, and you can see him saying it just like that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, 100%. And in addition, in 68, obviously, you know, was Wallace's run. And as a result, you know,

in one fairly comfortably. It was a Nixon got close to 30 he got 31 Nixon pulled 31 710,470 votes the Humphreys 30 million 898,055

well as poached just under 9,500,000 so an electoral in the electoral votes was 302 Nixon, 191 home free 46 Wallace. The, the, so I mean, that doesn't sound like a huge margin, okay?

But in actual terms, like Nixon's victory was, I mean, it was a definite, it was a definitive statement. Okay. However, Wallace's spoiler campaign, it meant that Nixon was a minority victor in absolute terms. that came out to 43.4% of the popular vote, which was the lowest percentage of an elected president since Wilson won the 1912 election.

People forget Woodrow Wilson ran in a four-man race. He ran against incumbent president Williamard Taft. He ran against Teddy Roosevelt, who was on the Progressive or Bull Moose Party, and he ran against Eugene Debs, like the Socialist Party. okay um it was also there was a low poll count too only 61% of registered voters turned out so the refrain the refrain of media became oh Nixon Nixon only got 27% of all voters you know what kind of a mandate's that he's not legitimate and they

band you this over and over and over and over again you know Nixon's not a legitimate president Nixon Nixon he didn't carry a single big city you know like Nixon's a racist you know like Nixon, these Wallace voters, you know, they only did what they did to like, you know, elect Nixon. And, you know, we know what they are. You know, they're those southern people. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive by design. They move you. Even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range for Mentor, Leon, and Terramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Cooper. and discover our latest offers.

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The Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. This went on and on and on and on and on. You know, like it was, like I said, it was, um, you could think about the, think about the campaign against Trump.

You know, this was like, this was like the 1.0 version. Okay, just this constant. effort to undermine the legitimacy of Nixon's presidency at a return. I think I said to the implications of this, you know, Nixon takes the oath of office in 1969. In 1968, over 11,000 Americans were KIA in tens of thousands wounded. You know, the Soviet Union was, had not yet achieved parity, but it had, it had, it had, It had a nuclear arsenal that could absolutely devastate Europe and the United States in a general war.

Okay, and the technological gap was rapidly closing as regards to deeper parodies. You know, relations between Peking and Moscow were deteriorating, but the communist bloc and not get fractured. I mean, aiming to undermine a wartime president in this regard is unthinkable. And just, I mean, to take it back from it to Johnson, when you think about Kronka going on TV and saying the Vietnam War was lost, you know, and attacking the unwillingness of the Johnson administration to open the decision-making process to public scrutiny and time of war. Like, imagine if in World War II, imagine after Cassarine Pass, you know, when the American Expeditionary Force met the Vermeacht in North Africa, like, they were humiliatingly wiped out. Like, imagine after that happened, Walter Winchell went on the radio and said, the war is lost. Mr. Roosevelt is a liar.

You know, like, I mean, can you imagine that? Like, she would have been immediately arrested. That never would have been tolerated. You know, this, um, this, this is truly insane that this was allowed to happen. And, you know, people, even people not ideologically inclined, particularly, simply looked at it as, oh, well, that, that's just politics as usual. You know, it's, um, it's, it's incredible. It's the most, it was kind of the second revolution, in my opinion, after the 1933 New Deal Revolution.

But it was amiss this context that Nixon quite literally told his staff, the press is the enemy. He was quoted saying that to Pollardman, I believe. The news is concerned, nobody in the press is a friend, they're all enemies. the you know the men as Paul Johnson relayed

the men and the movement that broke Lyndon Johnson's authority and broke his back in political terms in 68 they turned

their gun sights proverbically on Nixon and on top of that they had even more powerful allies because they had people with long memories who were quite literally the friends of Alger hits, you know. It

also became something of a to understand too the degree to which this was like a sea change and kind of the course of American thought. It was an issue of first impression for the American media

or for any other you know kind of deep state actor or adjacent power base to want to diminish the presidency. Like to that point, really the only opposition to a strong chief executive, particularly at war,

had come from Congress and specifically the Senate. You know, like FDR, who, whatever one thinks of him, and we certainly have nothing nice to say to him about him in these quarters. He was highly quotable.

He said the only way to do anything in the American government is to bypass the Senate. And like people troubled when he said that, but he was being a deadly serious. You know, Wendell Willeke, you know, who was his one-time opponent, apparently apparently said

to Roosevelt like subsequent that he, he's like, look, okay, I understand, I quote, devoted my life to saving America from the Senate. Under FDR, obviously, but even Truman, the press, academia, probably kind of the entire commentary, especially in

foreign policy matters. They were firmly behind the president. The viewed Congress as being full of opportunists, his kind of parasitic careerists, you know, like men who were constantly looking to obscure the reality of policy

in favor of cheap polemic, you know, to basically just, you know, kind of like guarantee their own permanent incumbency. you know, the the, um, even the new republic. Um, this was in

1953, which was, you know, when Truman was approaching kind of, isn't a dear of approval in the court of public opinion. You know, because the Korean War was an incredibly unpopular war, especially the drag down among other things. The new

republic, uh, was quoted saying oh, the current gravitation of power. into the hands of Congress at the expense of the executive is a phenomenon so fatuous as to be incredible if the facts were not so adamant that's the new republic you know which in the 50s was um dividing its time between screaming that everybody in america's racist and and talking about how great the soviet union is you know this wasn't this wasn't the wall street journal and it wasn't a

bunch of john birchers and it wasn't a bunch of you know like dissident america firsters who you know had uh had hoped to see um Robert Taft become the president. This was, this was like literally a bunch of reds like saying this. Eisenhower repeatedly invoked executive privilege on all kinds of matters to deny information about government activities, the House and American Activities Committee. And he was universally applauded by media. um there was a there was a universal consensus that there was no right to know what went on in the inner councils of foreign policy and uh the machinery of war and peace you know it was

like fast-out for people to think they had a right to know about that um you know owing to the national security implications and the fact that this is just not something that is up for debate you know you can't you can't reduce war and peace questions particularly owing to the complexity of the Cold War as it were you know to to catch phrases or you know bumper stig or polemic as it were you know like it was absurd to suggest that there should be any transparency on matters of national security and the decision to wage war I mean this was a this was um this was you know a decade this was 15 to this was 10 to 50 to 10 to 15 years before Johnson's unceremonious de facto removal from office and obviously, you know, the subsequent and more fervent treatment in Nixon.

So just for context, you know, like we're not talking about like decades here. It was really, you know, Kennedy's dictum also. part of this was him I think trying to show a strong face contra cruciv but Kennedy literally stated in 1960 is the president alone

and must make the major decisions on our foreign policy and that was what was demanded you know not just not just by the electorate but also you know the media establishment and the national security establishment

you know, particularly when executive decisionism in that capacity included the decision to kill 10 to millions of people in, you know, a general nuclear war. So this, it wasn't, nobody really talked this way about Article 2 or about the presidency itself until the Gulf of Tonkin. and I know that people have bad feelings about they go off the Tonkin and I'm not saying they shouldn't but for context and I don't go too far fuel in this topic because it's highly tangential

to the main subject there's always obfuscation when you're talking about the decision to go to war and how it's presented to the public I mean even under the best of conditions

as it were But post Nuremberg, when it quite literally was declared that war as an instrument in national policy is illegal, there's this kind of tortured logic that was engaged in in executive policy circles about what constituted it caused us belly. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive. By design. They move you. Even before you drive. The new Cooper.

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Okay. The Golbattenan resolution has to be understood. within that context. All right. Even that said, that was not the right way to proceed. And there was a collective security arrangement that was dedicated to the defense of South Vietnam. But such that it was, the decision was made to procure the war mandate

within the parameters of this narrative. but that was a starting point for criticism of what became known, not just punitively and kind of colloquial terms of on the op-ed pages, became the loom conceptually in people's minds as this real and dangerous phenomena, the imperial executive. It was the go of a target resolution and discussion around it. that really represents the kind of sea change in how executive authority was viewed, such that any one moment can be identified as the point at which things have changed.

Now, what Nixon did to protect his nascent administration, his senior White House advisors were Bob Halterman and John Ehrlichman, both of whom are villainized to various degrees. Even my people should know better. Holland and Ehrlichman and Henry Kissinger were kind of the key to the Nixon administration and advisory capacities. Kissinger's role in this regard is interesting, not just because he and Nixon were one, in my opinion, on how they,

waged the Cold War and their vision for resolving it quite literally ending it it could not have come about that that pattern of

conceptual variables could not have come about without the participation of both men it's an instance of kind of a shared strategic vision the nuances of which were so myriad. It's rare that there could be a true meeting of the minds in their regard, but that someone explains the bond between Kissinger and Nixon. It wasn't a bond of friendship. But beyond that, Kissinger developed an outsized influence in the Nixon White House. I don't even mean that punitively.

But I mean, the reason why in the Evil Watergate, Kissinger sort of joined Holloman and Ehrlichman as in the, and kind of the true inner circle, like, that's why. Now, whatever you can say about Hollerman and Erickman, these guys were incredibly competent people, and they were rabidly devoted to Nixon. That is true. Backing that up, if you want to think about this in football terms, that's like the secondary of the Nixon White House,

Nixon's speechwriters and, you know, sort of media element, was William Sapphire, Pap Buchanan, Ray Price, and David Gurgan. and Lee Huberner. This was arguably the best, like, media speechwriter team ever assembled until, until Reagan. Okay, so, I mean, this was a crack administration team. That only had Nixon Nixon and Kissinger develop the first true kind of clear geopolitical strategy for America.

So it's Eisenhower left office. but one would think that this is kind of the ultimate PR machine, you know, like what could go wrong? You know, um, Nixon also, I mean, if you listen to the Nixon tapes, as well as, you know, read Kissinger's memoirs, both which I highly recommend to people. Nixon had a clear view. Ready for huge savings? Well, mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is good. Back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Lidl items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value.

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Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. But in Vietnam War, he viewed it as a short-term problem. He didn't really view it as a quagmire. The things that truly mattered was solidifying in NATO,

solidifying specifically the Atlantisist alliance with the UK, which at that time appeared to be in potential jeopardy. And specifically breaking Beijing away from Moscow and fracturing you know kind of the key

the key alliance structure the communist block this idea of Vietnam the unwinnable war that's revisionism of a punitive sort Creighton Abrams who was a brilliant

combat commander you know had replaced Westmoreland the U.S. Army had very much abandoned what had, you know, the kind of strategic Hamlet orientation in favor of annihilating the people's army of Vietnam to fairly great effect. Effective deployment of massive firepower to neutralize the advantages the enemy had. widening of the war to deprive the enemy of key tactical havens.

The basically unrestricted bombing in North Vietnam to prevent effective utilization of their own combined arms brought to bear, which is most exemplified by linebacker two, stopping the Easter offensive in its tracks. But, you know, Nixon, Nixon, the idea of Nixon is this president kind of in the same scenario as LBJ, you know, pouring over the map of Kaysan,

the scale model of Kaysan, having no idea how to proceed in the war, you know, being kind of, being kind of entrapped and and it duped at every opportunity you know by by the enemy that was not the case at all even before

a single shot was fired between the people's Republic of China and the Soviet Union Nixon was adamant that friendly relations with China could be brought about by intelligent diplomacy that China could be decoupled from Russia and at the end, the Soviet Communist Party could be fatally undermined without a general war. And indeed, all this came to bear. And in terms of the raw successes of Nixon's administration,

I follow some of the thing that I think are inarguable. Again, while imposing unsustainable or what would have been unsustainable attrition on the North Vietnamese, makes it scaled down the U.S. military presence from its peak when he took office at just under 5,000 to 50,000 men to 24,000, spending declined from 25 billion a year under Johnson. When Johnson left office to less than 3 billion, a lot of this had to do with more intelligent allocation of resources in Southeast Asia, like in the battle theater, directly military as well. as infrastructural and ancillary. Flexible use of firepower and deployment being used in Cambodia in 70, Laos in 71, and again, too, the relentless strategic bombing in North Vietnam in 1972, all of which kept the leadership cadre in Hano off balance, especially after the death of Ho Chi Min.

People forget, too. Nixon zealously pursued peace negotiations with Hanoi. He didn't have a great deal of optimism that a conventional peace treaty could be achieved, you know, wherever the status quo would be unconditionally reinstated. but within the context of what became the sound of Soviet split he realized that even before the state visit to China and even before it became apparent the degree to which the respective political cultures

were no longer aligned any meaningful way any kind of guarantee from China that it would hedge against the Soviets client in North Vietnam was a victory in this regard. And it was National Security Memorandum 14, which was issued on February 4th, 19669. The outlined Nixon's view that it was imperative

to the court China. This was backed up the following September after the Senate Soviet border war had brought the respective countries back from the Brink Nixon secretly communicated to Brezhnev that an event of a general war between the Soviet Union and China where the Soviet Union struck first the United States to intervene on behalf of the People's Republic of China. Kisinger said that this was the most ballsy move. I think he said the most derrick

step of the Nixon presidency, which it was. And even though Kissinger didn't say this, I guarantee you that Kisinger himself, you know, like leaked this secret communicate to the Chinese. And I'm sure I'm absolutely positive that

that's one of the things that finessed the opening of negotiations when Nixon Kissinger went to visit. You know, it's, Nixon made the point. At that time, a quarter of the world's people lived in communist China. And whether or not they had

the ability and the gumption and the ambition, they'd become a superpower in their own right, it didn't matter. Because if they could be turned against, the Warsaw Pact, it would mean that there's an overwhelming world consensus against an enemy in Moscow, which had purported to, you know, essentially be the leader of the global South, as we think of it today. You know, so from the top down, this was brilliant power politics, sight unseen since Bismarck, in my opinion. what was ultimately put the paper on um as regards um the peace agreement in Vietnam and again this is

this is basically forgotten history today going to the fact that um it was on ceremoniously abandoned quite literally to shame Nixon which is which is unconscionable um January 22nd 1973 Um, Rogers, Secretary of State Rogers, and lay duck toe, his, uh, Vietnamese counterpart. Um, it made it possible for America to fully disengaged from Vietnam. Um, it demanded that North Vietnam, um, recognized the sovereignty of the Republic of Vietnam. and in event of any direct attack, America would pursue massive retaliation to substantiate that threat. The agreement reserve the right

to maintain carrier battle groups in Vietnamese territorial waters and call upon the aircraft stationed in Taiwan and Thailand towards that purpose. Presumably, it's only include, included conventional forces, but I believe it was left deliberately ambiguous. To say this was a formidable feat of extrication

from an enacted conflict while maintaining credible threat potential would be a gross understatement. So this was, you know, this is, I click these things, I tick these things off, not because I'm some kind of Nixon hagiographer, but it's important to set the record straight, you know, that

this idea that the Nixon administration has some failed administration, or Nixon was this kind of like weird, paranoid guy, just sort of presiding over this Vietnam quagmire. You know, nobody else can point to a policy resume that's successful

other than other than Reagan. in my opinion. And, in my opinion, Reagan capitalized more on circumstance than, you know, he was the key variable in any of the outcomes from which his administration is so benefited. In fact, I'd argue that, I'd argue that the collapse of Warsaw Pact in 1989 owed directly to the accomplishments of Nixon and Kissinger that are under discussion here. So what was Watergate and why did it happen? I mean, like we just discussed, all of the, all the kind of key factors were in place to attack the Nixon presidency.

You know, what caused them to... Can you talk about the 1972 election because it wasn't... Oh, no, too. Yeah, okay, sorry. No, it's all right. You know, like we talked about a minute ago, before the tangent, there was this idea that

there was this claim, you know, that the Nixon presidency wasn't really legitimate. You know, it was a three-way race, record low voter turnout. You know, The claim was by Nixon's enemies in the establishment. This was sort of an accident of fate, what really truly tipped the balance was a couple things. These disasters of the early 1970s,

despite the fact that the draft was not long for this earth, and Nixon made that clear. Plus, anybody who kind of understood Warren Peace questions could see that. The draft was temporarily expanded. And its net, so to speak, was widened, owing to the invasion of Cambodia, which was sold by a hostile media as the violation of, you know, the sovereignty of Cambodia and Nixon widening the war, presumably for imperialist reasons. Cambodia was a haven for the National Liberation Front.

and a key operational base for the enemy to not assault it prior to entering negotiations for extrication from the conflict would have been grossly negligent. But the way it was presented, it led directly to this mass wave of campus protests, which then culminated in disasters, like, you know, they'd be killing a student at Kent State and things like this, that kind of breathe like new life into the, um, into the vilification

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Liddle, more to value. What this also did was it led to Democrats. There was more than a small component delusion year. because that reminds me that's not unlike the way that the New York Times insisted like Hillary Clinton was a good candidate. The Democrats began convinced that there was going to be this youth uprising that would bring down Nixon at the polls. You know, like, youth culture never impacts presidential outcomes that way, electoral outcomes. The media insisted that like Nixon was in deep trouble going into the 972 election. They nominated George McGovern, who truly was a radical.

he was um students for democratic society types love McGovern his platform was literally an immediate and total withdrawal from Vietnam and just like an abandonment of um of it as a contested theater um

a uh a dramatic increase in the welfare state you know a dramatic increase in enforced integration and in social engineering in this regard um When Nixon's staff, you know, Ehrlichman and company told Nixon that, um,

McGuverman was going to be the nominee. Nixon said, like, we've got this in the bag then. Like, this is a joke, right? But, um, the ideological bent of, I mean, the Washington Post, New York Times, you know, Time Newsweek, the big three TV networks, um, that they literally insisting that George McGovern is going to, like, run away with this election. because he's going to give amnesty for the draft, you know,

and, you know, he's going to, he's going to, he's going to stand up for, you know, like, women's abortion rights, and the whole country is behind him. And what happened? Nixon literally swept the entire country. Like, like, he swept the entire country. McGovern carried Massachusetts in his issue to Colombia. I mean, to say, like, he went down in flames, like, doesn't even,

it was absurd. And that's something I point out to be able to, especially because lately a lot of my content centered around Vietnam. I have to correct people a lot who claim like, oh, when American soldiers come back from Vietnam, everybody spit on them and said, you baby killer. That didn't happen. It just didn't. Like Carter, when Lieutenant Kelly was brought up on charges, you know, lay preacher, you know, liberal Jimmy Carter, he demanded people stand with Callie. and said, you know, drive with your headlights on during the day to show that Georgia supports Lieutenant Kelly. Like this idea that like the country hated Vietnam vets or like loved Hocci men or that's garbage.

You know, there was a minority of a Vanguard minority who were prone to those kinds of annex, but everybody hated them. you know and um these outfits like sDS um and these um i'm getting a little bit ahead of myself but you know as the 70s got underway like these radical outfits and these terror organizations that popped up including like the sLA and the people who uh you know the clanners and and um Harold Communist National Socialists shot it out with him. And, um, uh, Jonesboro. These organizations were, were funded by big NGOs, if not by the Warsaw Pact. Like, there's not, people weren't like spontaneously, you know,

more spontaneously, you know, taking up the cause of, of the Soviet Union or of, you know, Maoism or whatever. Like, that's not, uh, that's not at all. accurate depiction of the state of the country and 72 proved that but much like 2016 the deep state the media establishment like went utterly berserk and like decided like this can never be allowed to happen again I can't remember who it was it might have been it might have been this the it was some big media mogul it wasn't the guy at the Washington Post like he'll come to me but he literally said after the election apparently in 72 this can never be allowed to happen again.

You know, the, and it couldn't be said either because, you know, not just because the, not just because the landslide win, but, you know, because voter turnout was a lot more like precedented in terms of. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive. By design.

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Come see for yourself. The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. You know, for the post-war era, like nobody could allege that, like, you know, Nixon has no real mandate. You know, this guy couldn't, he didn't carry any of the cities. This is also when the myth started,

this, like, bizarre kind of symbol and claim that, like, the popular vote is the real vote, and, like, the electoral college is some conspiracy to hide the real votes. Like, that kind of nonsense became bandied, like, in 72. And, obviously, that carries on to this day. But this, this, um,

I'm going to stop here in a minute because what I'm going to get into next has to do with the White House plumbers and I don't want to just have to stop talking about that midstream verbally speaking. Otherwise, it's going to kind of interrupt the flow discussion. But next episode we'll deal specifically with like the Watergate break-in and everything, everything adjacent. And like the actual, you know, the kind of move towards. impeachment of President Nixon and also the indictment of the intended indictment of Spiro Agnew but this background was important otherwise what we otherwise when we deal with the nitty-ready of what ensued it wouldn't really have a context and forgive my horse voice I'm still kind of getting over you know the shit I go through no no problem at all two plugs and We'll end it and come back for part two. Yeah, that's great, Pete.

You can find me on Substack at RealThomas-777.substack.com. I'm still editing the season two premiere of Mind Faser, Mind Faser podcast, but is coming, I promise. You can find me on X, Real, capital, R-E-A-L-U-L-S-7-7-7. and you can always find me at my website. It's Thomas 777.com number seven, H-O-M-A-S-7777.

That's all I've got. All right. Until part two. Thank you, Thomas. Thank you, man. I want to welcome everyone back to the Piquaneda show. Part two. How are you doing today?

I'm not very well, thank you. There's a lot here. But what I chose to emphasize is what I think that are key variables that are most neglected by mainstream accounts. Like I said, the book Silent

Coup is an exhaustive book about the Watergate break in, but that's the whole and I basically agree with the thesis presented. That's the book that famously suggested that John Dean, White House Counsel,

among other things, his mistress was this formerly like this this kind of high-end call girl who would become a madam and

documents to that effect her client list and things were supposedly was the object that the White House plumbers were supposed to procure from the Watergate Hotel that may in fact be true there's also a claim presented that representatives of Howard Hughes

were we're trying to like putting out feelers about a payout relating to getting their way with respects to these burgeoning like emissions restrictions on aircraft

and other things. The evidentiary record on that claim is scant but there's also a claim that the White House plumbers were either looking for evidence of you know the solicitation of of bribes that effect or that there was actual like bag money in the watergate hotel and

they were looking to steal it frankly i find that easier to believe than the latter eater to believe in some of these suggestions because g g gordon litty was not a dummy he was a pretty experienced you know a heist man albeit you know like he wasn't like a street dude he was a guy who was insinuated into kind of the into the into the kind of gray ops as a were, but, you know, first of all, it was like a weird thing to do. Secondly, because nobody really seemed, I mean, if anybody knew in, in, in an, if anyone in an executive role truly knew, like, what the whole story was, he would have just come clean with it.

I can, I can easily see Liddy saying, like, hey, there's, you know, there's a hundred thousand dollars, which in those days was real money, like, in the Watergate Hotel, you know, and nobody can report it stolen. and like, I think Christmas is going to come early this year. I mean, frankly, if I were him, I'd do it. You know, that, or, I mean, we may never know, but my point is, I guess, it's very, very peculiar that nobody, including Liddy himself, ever really acknowledged what they were doing, you know, and the whole thing seems like kind of a comedy of errors,

you know, like it, and I mean, that's kind of like, that's kind of the point is that this was, I call Watergate the Seinfeld scandal because it's the scandal about nothing. And not only is about nothing, but especially when you consider sort of the precedent relating to executive malfeasance, as it were,

the idea that, you know, these kinds of White House hatchet men breaking into a hotel, which sometimes acts as a, like, a honeypot for, you know, setting up liaisons between, you know, DNC contributors and hookers.

The idea that this is some like, this is like some moral affront to like all things decent and this is just like so horrible it almost can't be spoken of. Like there's something just kind of like preposterous about that. You know, at the very worst, this is an instance of breaking and entering.

I mean, okay, like that. There's that shocking to the conscience. You know, I mean, America lost its innocence. The day it was discovered that these kind of weird guys broke into a hotel. I mean, like, it doesn't pass the straight face test, and people allege that there's like something I'm missing or something that Nixon Apollos is missing because there's some broader, like, principle at play. You know, like, it's really, really, really weird.

If you're going to confabulate, you know, like some kind of like feigned moral outrage, you know, but be as it may, like, well, and also I'll include this now. I was going to speak of it until kind of the end of the episode, but I want people to contemplate what the precedent is for impeachment of a sitting president. Okay. Now, this isn't what aboutism. Okay, when we're talking about the criminal law and impeachment is a matter of criminal law, albeit a narrowly tailored process and a, in a non-aughtism. unusual circumstance that gives rise to it you know what constitutes an actionable wrong is contingent upon the facts okay and it's continued it's contingent upon how the trier of law and the trier of fact has interpreted the circumstances giving rise to the alleged wrong okay if it's

just something that's or if it's just a process that's capriciously and randomly and arbitrarily invoked going to political expediency. Like, we're not really talking about criminal justice. You know, we're just talking about, we're talking about politics, like masquerading as, you know, due process of criminal law. So not even a decade after Watergate, it came to light that Reagan's National Security Cabinet

to get around the Boland Amendment, which had specifically prohibited aid to the conscience in Nicaragua or any other actor whose aim was to overthrow the San Antonioese government. Reagan's National Security Cabinet had taken it upon itself to sell arms to Iran and Hizbla, which was listed as a terrorist organization, and to take those funds and, you know, provide the contras with arms of their own and, you know, money for

infrastructural needs so that they could continue to prosecute their war and direct violation of the Bowling Amendment. That's incredibly illegal. I mean, my sympathy actually has always been with Oliver North. Like, I met the guy years back, and I probably would have been. have done the same thing in his shoes, honestly, especially because he had come to believe he had a personal debt of honor to these people in Nicaragua. You know, he made certain guarantees to them. This is before SOCOM existed, and these kinds of ongoing special operations were kind of ad hoc. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design, they move you, Even before you drive, the new Cooper plugin hybrid range.

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28th to 30th of November. Little more to value Just for clarity You know what like like North wasn't putting on errors when he said he felt personally responsible But however anyone feels about this that's incredibly illegal There was never any talk of impeaching Reagan And I mean selling weapons to his blah to then illegally pay the contras in direct violation of uh you know um

an explicitly prohibited you know foreign policy initiative. I mean that's kind of a textbook example of what the impeachment power exists for.

Okay, but nobody seriously bandied impeaching Reagan. Subsequent people forget because I guess there's not really historical events. anymore in the 20th century since, which is a subject for another podcast episode, but such that there is discussion of the Iraq War.

It's presented as Bush 43 being a buffoon or, you know, Tony Blair lying to the, lying to the people of the UK, or, you know, the kind of tactical disaster that ensued, you know, within months of Bush declaring mission accomplished. what people forget is that Bush literally suborn perjury through Colin Powell before the Senate. You know, that's incredibly illegal. And aside in the fact that it's a felony in its own terms, and it's kind of unconscionably, you know, is wrong in terms of, in terms of, you know, the obligated of Republic Trust. You know, tens of thousands of people died because of this perjury. and like there was nary I mean who suggested Bush should be impeached

other than you know like people like Bill Maher would like you know drop like stupid one off kind of statement as that effect but there's never any serious discussion of that. So like suborning perjury to procure a war mandate

wherein tens of thousands of people die that's permissible that's a permissible executive act but guys breaking into a hotel you know it cannot it's something that cannot be allowed to stand I mean there's there's something wrong with this picture like however you feel about nixon you know um and you can't

people can't cope by saying that's what aboutism we're talking about about there's no what aboutism in criminal law there's precedent um that controls and there's everything else that's that's not controlling you know so i mean i don't i don't think that i don't think that the watergate fetishists and they really are fetishist and i'm not just being silly i don't really think think they have like a limb to stand on anymore um so i think increasingly in the historical record it's kind of it's going to kind of evaporate but um it hasn't happened yet you know and um it's not just uh it's not just because of it's not just because of boomers you know and they're i mean everybody likes to burn boomers and peruvial effigy and i mean i'm the first to

point out that some of these ridiculous sort of civic mythologies, you know, originate from that coterie, but, um, the, like the Watergate fantasy goes beyond boomerism. There's something really deep-seated about it and like, like, literally delusional about it. Um, you know, and the, and it only makes sense if you consider the person of Nixon, not even Nixon's subjective traits and the man himself, but he, he represents the same thing that Trump does to these people. people. And I was going to say there was an article in the Wall Street in the Wall Street Journal. I think it was yesterday or today. I can't remember that mentions Trump and talks about how he said

that there were good people on both sides. I mean, they're still. Yeah. Although, and you will still have people defending Russia gate that he, you know, that he was, he colluded with the Russians. And I mean, it's. That's one of the more bizarre. Even considering, like, what is, first of all, like, the term collusion, it's not even a colloquialism. It doesn't mean anything. Like, as a matter of law, is the State Department colluding with the House of Saad? Like, is Lindsay Graham colluding with Israel? Like, what does that even mean?

Like, Donald Trump likes Vladimir Putin. So Russian trolls, you know, said mean things about Hillary Clinton through memes, and that ruined the election. that that's so fucking stupid. I don't even know where to... It's like beyond the conceptual reality of like a sane adult person. You know, like I...

And again, like, quote unquote collusion isn't... It has no meaning as a matter of law or in the context of you know, power political affairs. There's there's conspiracy

I mean, if you can claim that, I guess, you could claim that Donald Trump, he took sensitive data relating to, like, the NATO operation in Ukraine and fed that to FSB. I mean, I, if he's the president, he's within his rights to do that, that's not against the law. But, I mean, I suppose you could say that, you know, they could constitute some sort of conspiracy between, you know, the Kremlin and the, you know, the Kremlin and the law. White House, but like what the fuck is collusion? Like, it doesn't, that doesn't mean, that literally means nothing. You know, and even if it, even taking it on its own terms, it's like, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think,

but uh you know the fact that he doesn't have some deranged hatred of russia and maybe let's say let's even say like he was an admirer of ladmere putin looks like that and i mean that that's that's that's not that's not somehow against the law nor is it particularly strange i mean i went in church oh used to pretty regularly praise musilini you know um i was he colluding with musilini like what does this mean? I realize I'm being obtuse myself, but it doesn't, but we're at the point,

it's not even like there was a confabulated scandal relating to Russia and Donald Trump because it literally meant nothing. It was just like these weird sound bites kind of, kind of spat out by people who don't have a meaningful understanding of the subject,

you know, and it's parameters. Like, well, you're colluding with a bad guy. like it's that's illiterate like on its face it's illiterate it's it's it's not it's not nobody competent the english language would say that but moving on um because like i said i if you're going for jumping around i i i thought it was better placed to raise the issue of precedent now um rather than kind of on the tail end when we'll probably have, you know, moved on to other things. So I think I touched on a bit last time, and I think warrants a bit of a deeper discussion. This wasn't the proximate cause by any means of the hostility that developed towards Mr. Nixon,

but it was an essential cause within the broader nexus of, you know, deep state opinion. Ironically, I believe that despite the fact that these deep state types owed their personal prosperity and clout to the dramatic expansion of state power and, you know, the concomitant, you know, like physical expansion. the state apparatus itself, there remained this kind of basic hostility and suspicion of an empowered executive office, you know, not just in ethical terms and not just in war and peace terms, as the country kind of fractured in elite corridors relating to the situation of the Soviet Union and everything else, okay, after the dust settled into the Second World War. You know, the presidency see becoming a true power and to itself structurally that seemed to impact people in a deeply psychological capacity, even people who presumably were very familiar with kind of the structural

parameters of government as a matter of law, which according to the letter of Article 2, quite literally vest tremendous power in the executive. It's one thing to understand as a matter of law that this power exists as a potential. It's another thing to kind of be surrounded by it physically and to witness its tremendous reach and to kind of play one's own fortunes if that great power Was was turned on you. Okay? Ready for huge savings? Well mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value.

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from Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. The first reference to the quote imperial presidency emerged

right around the end of Wilson's administration, even among media people who were otherwise sympathetic to the kind of progressive enterprise, at least the strike represented by Wilson, the fact that executive power had been growing steadily with a dramatic spike, obviously, during Roosevelt's tenure, but even before and after that, you know, slowly but steadily, you know, there'd been this structural increase and, you know, the real power of the executive. And, um, media began to view itself increasingly as, you know, not just the fourth estate,

you know, as this kind of, as this kind of beacon proverbially that, you know, whose role it was to ethically, you know, lead the Hoy-Poloi away from, you know, the false promises and and bad faith of officialdom, but also they view themselves as literally like a hedge against an active presidency that had increasingly taken on, you know,

what had there to forebend, you know, the role of an increasingly comatose and kind of inert Senate. You know, and the fact that, again, the peculiarities of Nuremberg and the strange fictions therein,

we talked about that and how that came to constitute, you know, the manner and means in which American presidents pictured a war mandate. You know, we talked about this in the context of the Gulf of Tonkin.

But it also, it changed the way that wars were waged in terms of civilian command and control, okay, in basic capacities. You know, not only did not only did the Senate kind of scale back its own micromanagement of such affairs, in part, of course, obviously, because these careers types wanted to protect their own reputation and voting record. But also, increasingly, it became the domain of experts, like everything. else. You know, you'd have a president, you had this, you know, emboldened and dramatically enlarged in relative terms, national security staff. They were interpreting and processing reams upon reams of data, trying to interpret it in real time in order to render battlefield decisions, you know, in a hot theater of war in Southeast Asia, while at the same time managing political perceptions, you know, around those decisions by both friends.

and hostiles. On top of that, there was the ongoing strategic menace of the Cold War. You know, this wasn't even in the kind of best of all possible worlds where the balance of power structurally between the three branches of the government kind of existed in like a perfect and complementary stasis. It just, it's inconceivable to conceptualize. some sort of equal division of responsibility over war and peace questions, you know, between the executive and the legislature. And people found this alarming, I believe, particularly people who, frankly do not really understand the nuances of war and peace, either, you know, in practical terms at scale,

or in, you know, conceptual and philosophical terms. Most men can't and don't, frankly. I've made that point a lot, and I'm sure those are the less than charitable view of me and my world product would say, well, I'm just trying to insinuate some kind of mystique into my own skill set that's not true at all.

but moving on um i mean just for roosevelt's white house was the first white house where every man had had a number of executive administrative assistance i mean it's like think about that okay i mean like it was the truman white house was um represented something of uh scaling back of this tendency but by the time But by the time Eisenhower took the oath of office, like the managerial state was in structural terms, was here to stay. And nowhere was that felt more than, you know, in the Oval Office and everything that orbited it. The LBJ's White House, personnel, staff, you know, ancillary people, you know, like custodians, you know, everybody from like the top down,

it was 40 times bigger than the size of the entire, like, White House personnel directorate in the Hoover administration. So I consider that. It, uh, the cost, uh, had exceeded by 1972. a billion dollars. It was expected to exceed a billion dollars by the end of the decade as of 1972. And that was huge money in those days.

It was almost inconceivable money. Okay. Like it's not even suggested considering, you know, what was on the table vis-a-vis the Cold War, America's defense commitments, collective security commitments for better or worse, you know, these infrastructural projects that were still ongoing. you know like the highway system um that's not that's not to say that this was just you know um an example

of like public spending gone crazy and and pigs just you know gorging themselves at the verbal trough um but that was a staggering number you know to anybody in those days um the uh Kennedy tried to finesse this a bit, you know, by one of the reasons why, like, the Camelot myth, like, corny as that kind of whole manufactured mystique, that kind of like Time Magazine and Life magazine mystique was very much cultivated by the Kennedy administration, okay? In lieu of transparency, you give people a fairy tale, literally, all right? all of that came to crashing down when Kennedy was murdered. You know, LBJ played things very close to the chest. His concession to media was allowing them to embed in the field in Vietnam, you know, with the common infantry,

as well as, you know, allowing newsmen to attach themselves to the staff of, of battalion-level commands and hire, which proved to be a terrible mistake. but the idea that suddenly there'd been an information blackout from the imperial executive this is how that kind of canard gained traction you know and obviously it played into it played into their despite the fact that these are a bunch of like newsmen you know and like bitch-made police worshippers you know and um and and and uh and middling apparatchiks they fancy themselves as like anti-authoritarian you know um and this all these tendencies all these kinds of future shock um tendencies you know fed their kind of delusions in that regard you know

their delusions about themselves and their own roles as in significance as well as about you know the nature of uh you know the the imperial executive which again was kind of a a boogeyman that although only extant in their own minds you know, loomed like the angel of death over these people's social horizon. And frankly, I mean, really from the turn of the century onward, it's, you know, the White House is a power center who was engaged in all kinds of activities, which didn't bear public scrutiny. and the Cold War kind of sealed the fate of, you know, the kind of open executive.

You know, you couldn't allow, you couldn't allow free flow of information out of the White House. When, you know, when, if the enemy were to come upon, you know, what happened upon, you know, the right data, the strategic balance could be totally altered in terms of, of you know in terms of discerning like the the will capability and um and um and political um um and political gumption to you know to wage war like this is i mean this goes not saying but it the um really the uh the cold war was won and lost by data and the ability to correctly interpret data. I mean, you can say that about like any modern war, but when you consider that, you know, the world that's settled into this kind of strategic paradigm, whereby the triggering of the

primary conflict, Diyad could lead to general nuclear war. But even in times of peace, you know, like a state, but some sort of state between like war and peace was always afoot. So that like, you know genuine peace as it had existed prior to you know 1941 in this country could not be said to exist like the idea that executive decisions you know should be subjected to public scrutiny or availed to some sort of like plebiscite like actual or metaphorical i mean is laughable but um the uh and just to the way that this was managed again for context contra nixon you know when when when when people assert that you know the assembly of something like of a of a team like the white house plumbers itself constitutes overreach you know fDR created his own special intelligence unit that was responsible only to him um they had a staff of 11 men it was financed by this what was called the special emergency fund of the state department um he poached the members of it from uh who was FBI, which at that point,

it's mandated, it's kind of like come into its own. You know, like, FBI men were now carrying guns. You know, they had, like, real arrest power. You know, they were real cops by that point. As well, it's from the IRS. And, you know, there was also some, there was a code

or even the Department of Justice, you know, like lawyers. They kind of finesse everything and, you know, to make sure that the verbal eyes were dotted and T's were crossed. But he was also open. he openly used this this intelligence unit to get dirt on his enemies and harassed them, especially the press and especially businessman, you know, like Robert McCormick, who were his enemies. You know, he tapped their phones.

He'd have them followed, you know, like he'd, he'd have them indicted for tax evasion, you know, based on trumped-up allegations and, you know, things that constitute. like simple accounting errors. You know, he, um, he made persistent efforts to get the New York Times indicted for tax fraud, which failed, but, I mean, they were tied up in litigation and being, you know, served with, um, civil and criminal subpoenas, you know, for years on end.

I mean, that's, you know, and this was all, this was all very above board, you know. He, uh, he used his intel, he, he tells us, but Roosevelt Special Intelligence Unit, it bugged the hotel rooms of his cabinet. It even bugged Mrs. Roosevelt's hotel room. Not because he was like spying in Mrs. Roosevelt, but because people when they talked to her obviously thought that they were speaking

or in confidence. And he also wanted to hear what like the other wives were saying. You know, this kind of personal espionage against one's, you know, against one's, you know, fellows as well as adversaries. I mean, nothing like that was in our way in the Nixon administration. And I've got no illusion about Nixon.

But I mean, that's one step beyond dirty tricks and the business of modern politics. You know, I'd say modern. I mean, you know, from the 20th century onward. I mean, has anyone ever read a book about the gross overreach of FDR? I mean, not like Fleming's book. I mean, in terms of, you know, his special intelligence unit,

you know, likening them to the White House plumbers. I mean, no. It doesn't exist. People don't even think in those terms. You know, again, it's the... Discover five-star luxury at Trump Dunebeg. Unwind in our luxurious spa. Savor sumptuous farm-fresh dining. Relax in our exquisite accommodations.

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or in person. So together we can create a more reliable sustainable electricity supply for your community find out more at airgrid dot i.e ford slash northwest Truman like Ike was basically was basically ran like a clean white house that's not just a myth um they basically avoided these kinds of like domestic clandestine dealings but um it uh frankly like Eisenhower was a for on conclusion he was going to have two terms and Eisenhower also he basically there's never been there there's never there's never there's never been after um

the war between the states like a president who had the kind of mandate that Eisenhower did like this kind of like across the aisle just like agreement um you know that owed very much of the emergent kind of global system and and everything else but my point is that like Eisenhower was an odd case. You know, you can't extrapolate much from what he did or did not do in this regard, generally, about, you know, the exigencies faced by a modern executive. You know, and of course, Kennedy himself was the all-time king of dirty tricks and intrigues. I'm not a Kennedy basher, despite what people say a lot.

I've actually made no secret of it that I think he had tremendous balls in the way he managed the 62 crisis, standing up not just a cruise shift, but also to Curtis LeMay and his own war cabinet when he was just a wet behind the ears, you know, rich man's son in the eyes of most people. He was a real man. He wasn't a punk. But J.F.C.F. stated no uncertain terms that one of his chief regrets was not having made his brother RFK had a CIA to bring it under family control too because his notion like Roosevelt's was to know everything you know the um he'd uh he'd been privy very much the degree to was privy to the assassination of a of a DM is is questionable obviously like DM had been as like one-time ally

subsequent historians like to claim that like Kennedy knew nothing about this and there's a CIA you know being at back thing as like this rogue element and then of course these fools also like to you know they got this whole they got this whole fantasy that the CIA killed Kennedy but be I'm not even going to touch to that

because it's fucking retarded but the um but in the case of DM The point is, like, Kennedy knew what was going to happen. He was very much insinuated into it, whether he formally objected to it, you know, but then, you know, went ahead and ordered it or allowed it, rather, by act or omission. As a necessary evil or whether he was 100% behind it, it doesn't matter. This idea that, like, Kennedy was, like, running this clean administration and had no idea that, you know, elements within the executive branch were killing people. That's nonsense.

he had uh where his brother was at was the department of justice obviously um in 62 um these u s steel executives who are perennially perennially threatening strikes and opposing administration policies related to the terror regime like uh he'd have been harassed with subpoenas um and pre-dwell and search warrants. There were a DOJ agents, NFBI men, you know, raided their houses. You know, there's like family men, you know, like in pre-dawn hours, you know, just to just to terrorize them. You know, and the Kennedy brothers, you know, long before

Martin Luther King totally ran a foul of, you know, Javier Hoover and LBJ, you know, half a decade later. JFK and RFK and RFK didn't trust. him a bit, you know, they had it put under surveillance. You know, they was, it was the Kennedy brothers who, you know, first became aware of his, a king's problems with females and his, like, sex addiction. They were the ones who, you know, first documented this by having these liaisons with prostitutes and other women that he was compulsively waving sex with, you know,

like recorded and documented. You know, I mean, it's, um, this wasn't, this wasn't, this wasn't this wasn't like mean racist jadeger or whoever were doing it for the fun of it you know it's um they uh nascent right wing media you know like birth society types and um

these kind of nascent uh people like Connie McGinley um who put out in the tablet common sense you know and um guys like uh

you know these are the guys like Tommy Metzger were associating with back when like a clansman they were trying to uh you know like um as uh as media became more and more ubiquitous and um some of the censorship uh regime on radio loosened um you know they were trying to insinuate themselves into into um discursive media again like father cochlin had you know the kennedy shut that down again like using the weaponized irs um and other things Um, when, uh, subsequently, um, the first big, uh, the first big scandal that, um, LBJ found himself embroiled in, not long after, was, uh, the Bobby Baker scandal.

Baker was political advisor to LVJ having served as the Senate secretary to the majority leader like what Baker's job was and LBJ's fingerprints were all over this he was implicated in

arranging liaisons with prostitutes between soft money donors as well as as well as as as well as as well as congressman in the house representatives whose votes he needed on government contracts and other things um and like when this broke lbj's enemies started circling like a bunch of vultures um lbj uh as baker what kind of dirt you know he had on um anybody in irs baker came up with it lbj told them

like you know you're going to indict these people or after me or guess what you know like you know your wife your family the national press, you know, everybody at IRS, like everybody in Capitol Hill, you know, they're going to find out about this, you know, like what dalliance you had with, you know, with this prostitute, and we've got the receipts to prove it. I mean, like, people knew about this stuff, okay? I mean, it's this idea that, you know, I mean, did it, did anybody, was it, were people going to impeach the Kennedys for spying on Martin Luther King? Were people going to impeach LBJ, you know, for basically, for basically keeping Bobby Baker,

rounds of pimp in order to get dirt on his enemies like no no because that that's okay but four guys breaking into a hotel is is the equivalent of like you know murdering a child or something apparently like according to the american like moral code of capital hill um and frankly to until the until the nixon era like the lbj Nixon era um i kind of consider them in the same vein for reasons, I think, are clear by now. Not because the two men have anything in common, but I believe we got it. I believe it was a stalwart, like, why I consider it in those terms. The media was pretty selective in the way, the degree to which in the way it

publicized presidential wrongdoing. If for no other reason, then because it was understood that, you know, kind of the linchpin of American national security amidst the Cold War was the presidency. Okay. And even before that, during the Roosevelt and Wilson administrations and the Hoover and Hardy administrations,

it was understood that contained within Article 2, it's not just an express delegation of great power in war and peace terms. It's not just a way of structuring the government so as to confer upon the only national elected representative, you know, a kind of authority above and beyond that enjoyed by the

judiciary or by the Senate. But there's an understanding that the president is a prime symbol, okay, and in America, you know, it's like, okay, like white Christians shouldn't be, worshipping, you know, high office or something, or treating elected officialdom like they're kings, but at the same time, you know, there's, there's got to be a certain respect afforded to the office of the chief executive, like otherwise the office isn't fulfilling its function, and which is why you've got to be very careful about what kind of man, you know, you install in their office. Employers, did you know, you can now reward you and your staff, with up to 1,500 euro and gift cards annually, completely tax-free, and even better. You can spread it over

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Okay. So there was a basic understanding that attacking the presidency in a kind of a truly dedicated and ongoing capacity would very much be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Okay. I mean, the fact that, I mean, Kennedy, when Kennedy was president, he shared a mistress with Sam Gene Kana. Like Kennedy probably was a sex addict. Kennedy was drug dependent. He wasn't doing drugs to party. I mean, he was in terrible health. And, you know, he had a doctor, not unlike Dr. Morel was the Hitler, who basically, like, made sure that Kennedy had, like, whatever drugs in the system had to be there from the function and get through the day. You know, I mean, if somebody, the national media wanted to ruin Kennedy,

They could have done it in an instant, which is another reason it's totally retarded. We will claim that Kennedy was whacked. Like, you want to get rid of Kennedy, like, follow him around on a Friday night, bribe out of his secret service detail, you know, and like take a photo of him getting shot up with eight different drugs by his doctor, or, you know, like having a threesome with, like, two black hookers. You know, no more Mr. Kennedy. But, you know, the, it's striking, and I've, I've literally spent hours. perusing like the main

large market newspapers of the day you know the New York Post the Wall Street Journal the Chicago Tribune you know the LA Times it's striking how even during even amidst presidential scandals again like going back you know to Wilson there's like nary

a peep you know about the kind of bad character of the president um or any like ad homonym really at all and then um come nixon um just day after day after day it uh this it's like just continual invective you know against nixon you know just it just non-stop that was like the lead story like every day and every paper you know it's um Like I said, it was, it was the, it was, it was, it was, it was Trump 1.0. It's fascinating. I guess that's part of aging, um, is being able to witness the cyclical patterns of sociological phenomenon, psychosocial phenomenon at scale, kind of be emerged into high relief.

But it's not usually this clear, you know. Is, is this the beginning? of where everybody every leader now everything is going to be judged on morality where the greatest

the greatest criticism that's going to be leveled against somebody is that they're a bad person I think that's part of it yeah but a certain kind of bad person you know like that that's all point like you know there was

um there was men in high office who were prone to vices that everybody knew about and even when it was reported on it was kind of softballed and people didn't react the way they people didn't react the way they did to um you know uh this constant invective against nixon or trump so yeah that's part of it but it's um the president being this kind of stand in for a boogeyman imperial executive who's some kind of you know paternal figure gone wrong that owes very much to that's what i do agree with paul johnson on people develop this um this this kind of just like disdain for authority like qua authority

not like real rebels or something but i mean like actual authority like where it should be vested in something like a presidency like this became like scary and bad you know but like these same people, they'll like, kowtow to the police or kowtow to a COVID mandate, like, immediately. But this idea that, like, let me just say anything like why, um, media has this, like, hysterical fixation with declaring that Vladimir Putin is like an evil, evil man. Like, Vladimir Putin's, um, he's a, he's a moderate liberal who basically acts like any Russian executive would with more restraint. you know like because he

but he's like an evil man because in Russia there's you know Russia doesn't just like rotate actors and pretend like you know the executive is um these kinds of

uh you know there's not this like rotation of like frontmen you know like behind like a real executive like in America like Putin actually is the president something but there's this idea that like that's scarier that constitutes some kind of like authoritarian overreach

or some kind of threat to people's preferred way of living. I think it owes a lot to symbolic psychology, which a lot of things do in this country. And probably elsewhere, too. I don't live in other countries, so I can't speak to that and with as much certainty. But, yeah, it's the interplay of symbolic psychology

of, you know, the kind of collapse of authority by future shock and kind of the weakening of social bonds to facilitate authority. you know, the capitalization on those fears and the kind of perverting of the form of those fears such that, you know, it appeals to, you know, a kind of hoi-piloi or increasingly kind of like slavish and resentful.

It's all those things. It's weird. It's weird because it seems like people nowadays really only want to really only listen or respect the president when there's a state of exception. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think that's part of it. But yeah, like I said, it's something, I'd have to, I'd have to think about it and, like, organize my thoughts to convey a really concise view of, like, what the source of it is.

I've thought about it before. and you can it's kind of like the last it's sort of like the last instinctive or intrinsic structure of authority that falls that's one of the reasons why like Hobbs hob's ontology hobbs sociological and political ontology is absurd in terms of how humans actually live but what remains intact is Leviathan, you know, because the patriarchal authority of the executive over his domain is absolute and unimpeachable. I'm not making a pun, I mean, quite literally. You know, why is that the last psychological structure to come under attack, or at least to be effectively deteriorated by design? well, I mean, that's why. But this also raises questions about, you know,

the secularization of concepts of God, you know, and how executive action in a modern state takes on the trappings of, like, literally miraculous events, suggestive divide intervention. Not like literally, but in the symbolic mind. And for all practical purposes, as symbolic psychological occurrences are real occurrences. But again, that's kind of outside the scope.

I mean, I'm rambling. You're not. But we can back to that question when I'm more like when I'm less like discreetly focused on the subject of hand. But it also lowered, to your point. And I mean, too, what we've been talking about to the entire of the hour, not only, it became somewhat impossible for policy to be reduced to discourse and polemic and catchphrases anymore. You know, Chris Relache made that point a lot, too, like about the Vietnam War. One of the reasons so little is understood about it, aside from the bad faith, intrinsic to the people who were trying to sabotage the war effort. You can't explain something like the Vietnam conflict in five sentences,

and you can't reduce it to being a good war or a bad war, or like we should just do more to win there. There's a complexity here, and there's nuances, and it's not something that can really be debated at policy level other than between men who truly understood, you know, all the variables, and the strategic implications beyond the battle theater of those variables, as well as the historical implications of victory defeat in that theater. You know, so as journalism could no longer really kind of capture the essence of policy decisions

and what went into those decisions, and as it became less and less capable to kind of structure the world according to these sort of polemical... Employers, did you know you can now reward you and your staff with up to 1500 euro and gift cards annually completely tax-free. And even better, you can spread it over five different occasions. Now's the perfect time to try Options Card. Options Card is Ireland's brand new multi-choice employee gift card

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slowly but surely became a tabloid you know even those brands and outlets that there to four had been fairly serious not particularly anti-Nixon well the way to stay alive now is is just tabloid and we hate Nixon or you know

splashing across the front page that you know you know some some like some some some some some some snaps at a harolderman looking like he's snarling about to strike a reporter you know saying like you know with some lurid you know headline um you know that's what's that's what sells papers and if you decide to take the if you if if one had decided to take the high road they just like wouldn't be in the game you know they don't ceremoniously um they just would have unceremoniously cease to exist you know um and even you know even

that was like nominal, even like midwood stuff, it was like nominally kind of like the intellectual alternative. Look like like old firing line with William of Buckley. I mean not aside the fact, I mean, he was a, he was an obtuse prick. But um, you know, even that it's like, it's like, okay, so because Buckley he talks about, they'll give like a five minutes summation of something instead of a three sentence summation. But it's still, you know, the same kind of dumb down, um, sloganeering. You know, just like a little bit more, uh, just like a little bit more like meet to it at least in terms of stylistic convention but no more like intellectual nuance you know it the uh this idea of you know the news reader as you know kind of like the arbiter of policy

you know like owing to you know his participation you know as the target audience of this this cursive process whereby you know we arrive at the truth you know like um this like american this curse of space is like you know it's like some giant like lecium like maintained by plato or something like it's i mean that that's that's fucking ridiculous but it became even more ridiculous in the 20th century you know the um and this um and this is why this is why this other the other things that set the foundation for the nixon coup you know like uh you know like the leaking of the pentagon papers and like the demand that, you know, the demand that the executive opened the proverbial books relating to Vietnam and battlefield outcomes and special operations, as well as, you know,

asymmetrical warfare techniques, you know, some of which may or may not have been, you know, legal according to the prevailing paradigm. The idea that, you know, it was imperative, it was morally imperative for these things to be availed, the journalistic scrutiny, or to brought into the purview of the public

mind, I mean, that's preposterous. Like the, I mean, in pretty much every NATO state at that time, I mean, I excluded like the Bundes Republic because that was not a, was not a normal

country and their hostile occupation. But I mean, in the UK, there's the official Secrets Act, you know, which obviously, like, as, as, as, as, as, as, as, as, as,

in their system, wouldn't pass First Amendment muster. But, I mean, national security exigencies, you know, like, are an exception to the First Amendment. You know, I mean, there's ways to, if one were to be inclined, if one had been inclined to draft

a body of law, to kind of formally insulate state secrets, you know, from the prying eyes of media and from the cynical maneuverings of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, so I mean, this idea that it was, um, just not only, not only like more, morally wrong, but, you know, somehow like alien to the American political culture, to allow for official them to keep its secrets is a

osteris. The appearance of the appearance of secret material genuinely eyes only material in newspapers like national papers it shot up

spectacularly during Nixon's first months in office the first six months of 1969. Employers, did you know, you can now reward you and your staff with up to 1500 euro and gift cards annually, completely tax-free. And even better, you can spread it over five different occasions. Now's the perfect time to try Options Card. Options Card is Ireland's brand-new multi-choice employee gift card

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Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash northwest. There was a, there's 20, there's 20 major leaks of documents, of, from classified info, classified memo was circulated by the National Security Council. to documents transmitted to and from CIA to the White House, to Army intelligence files relating to the conditions, related to then extant conditions on the ground in Vietnam. I mean, serious violations of national security. Later that year, CIA was so concerned,

and this was pre-Gates hearing. The CIA actually still had some clout. At the end of it's 969, CIA trammed into the White House a list of 45 newspaper articles which were regarded as serious violations in national security

which would have real effect on the state of the strategic paradigm potentially vis-a-vis nuclear secrets as well as the battlefield situation in Southeast Asia which obviously was still raging

and of course Of course, the kind of nedeer of this, it was June 13th, 71, was when the Pentagon, what was called the Pentagon Papers dropped in the New York Times. It was a 7,000-word survey of America's involvement in Southeast Asia, specifically Vietnam, but also Cambodia, Laos, from the end of World War II, 1946, which was when you know the Vietnam War kicked off until 1968. The study had been commissioned

by McNamara, then when he was Defense Secretary under Kennedy and Johnson and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These were top secret documents. It related not just to America's overall

strategic ambitions in the Orient which had become, going to the key theater as a, you know, in strategic nuclear terms, as we talked about, as well as in, you know, conventional terms. It dealt with the American conventional forces at the operational level and, like, what, you know, kind of like what, like, emerging battle doctrine was. It dealt with, like, under what conditions America would consider deploying nuclear weapons to a second, theater. I mean, this was catastrophic. Okay, the author of the leak was

Daniel Ellsberg. He was a 40-year-old Rand Corporation employee who'd been a researcher on the study, and he'd stolen all these documents. And when the administration and the FBI discovered the source, they were convinced the guy was a double agent because they're like, if those were analyzed by KGB

experts, not only could have jeopardized basically an entire range of CIA operational codes, practice, and operations, but it also laid bare basically, you know, like how America derives its own intelligence, you know, from Warsaw Pact elements, you know, the method that uses to try and turn these people, you know, it had information on like American surveillance devices, which at that point, you know, was, was not readily available, um, data.

You know, um, I mean, this was, so the reasoning of the, the reasoning of, um, the Pentagon, um, and other people in the next administration was that, if this guy's not KGB and trying to cover his ass by going public, so he doesn't end up, you know, show up dead. It's like, what, what's his angle? Like, why is he doing this? You know, like the fact that this guy would basically,

be so fucking deranged. He's going to, like, essentially, like, burn down the American national security establishment to stick it to Nixon, because Nixon's a bad guy. That's literally insane. You know, like, that's, um, but that's how these people think. You know, it's, um, the, uh, Nixon was so disturbed by it. He, uh, on the one hand, you know, he said, You know, he said if we overreact to this, this was speaking to his national security cabinet and then privately to Kissinger.

He said if we overreact to this, we're just, that, you know, we look like weaklings because just kind of constantly reacting to what our enemies do. You know, so should we, should we not, should we, you know, ignore it in the court of public opinion and not issue any official statement? and deal with, you know, eliminating these people later. Kissinger said no, because the fact that some... He's like, the problem is the fact that some idiot can publish that, like, you know, the diplomatic and military seeks for this country on his own. Like, the fact that this can destroy our ability to get up foreign policy. Like, the fact that it's being done in the first place, like, the damage is done.

done. You know, and there you see, like, Kissinger, kind of the Machiavellian emerging contra Nixon, the politician, which I've been kind of interesting. And it's also, too, I mean, if other powers feel you cannot control leaks and the flow of information, they're not going to negotiate with you in a serious capacity. You know, North Vietnam's not going to talk to you seriously. The Russians and the Chinese sure shit aren't going to talk to you because, you know, they've got to be certain. You know, they've got to be certain that, you know, what they tell you, like, doesn't travel to the, to the other. If you cannot control the flow of information within your sovereign domain, you cannot be said to be sovereign. So Nixon's solution to this was an anti-leak unit, whose mandate specifically

was to make sure nothing like the Pentagon Papers could ever happen again. The unit was formed by one of Erlickman's assistants, Ego Bud Crow, and Kessinger's administrative assistant, David Young. They recruited G. Gordon Liddy who'd been an FBI man and he was a military vet. And he was working in the Department of Justice

in kind of a murky capacity. Technically, as an investigator, but probably in some national security policy. Like, I would imagine encounter espionage um which at that time was a big part of the fbi's like mission mandate um they were called the plumbers because apparently david young's grandmother um upon hearing that he was running a unit to stop leaks she wrote him a letter saying that

you know well you know your grandfather would be proud that you return to the family business because he'd been a plumber in New York City, which is kind of funny. But the, uh, also what the plumbers did, I was entirely justifiable for any

reasonable perspective in light of the severity of the Ellsberg case. Their first kind of breach with legality, they've got, they got, um,

they got, to go ahead from Erlickman himself to covertly in his words obtain the files to obtain Ellsberg's medical files from his psychiatrist office and the White House plumbers broke into the psychiatrist office after hours and they in fact procured those files that break in of Ellsberg's psychiatrist office that was that was the moment at which the next administration Albeit totally unknown to Nixon himself, it did overstep the bounds of legality. But nobody talked about it subsequently, obviously because it could be rationalized as, you know, an infraction that was unfortunate, but the necessity of which was dictated by basic national security exigencies. And it also raised the incontical question as, like, why is Elberg?

like feeding secrets, you know, feeding state secrets to the media, and potentially putting tens of millions of millions of lives in jeopardy for the sole purpose of bringing down Nixon. You know, obviously the subsequent break-ins may, in late May and 1972, and then again on June 17th, 19702, these were the Watergate break-ins. There was two break-ins at the Watergate Hotel by the White House plumbers,

the second of which was when they were caught. I'm going for. I've got about another hour I want to go. If you want me to do that, I need a break, or we can reconvene in a day or two. Sorry, I was muted. Why don't we reconvene in a day or two? No, no, that's great, sure.

I know you have a lot more to go. Yeah, I didn't mean to dray us out too long, but I want to deal with Archibald Cox as well in that, but I promise we'll wrap it up in the third episode. No problem. All right. So let's end it right there. Give your plugs and.

Yeah, I hope you on the subs were happy. I hope I wasn't rambling too much. It's a dense topic. Yeah. You can find me at X at Real Capital REO underscore number seven. HMAS 7777. Find me on Substack, RealTonement at

777.substack.com. That's what the podcast is too. Find me on my website, number seven, HMAS777.com. Some people answered the call. I'm assembling a team of video and audio editors

who have offered to help me and rake. That's going to dramatically expedite our ability to get content out there. And like I said, I think so I'm being misunderstood what I shouted out on Twitter. When I said I got to scale back, like my pod appearances, I'm going to keep doing these with Pete as long as he wants, as long as he's willing to host me. But other commitments outside of my own pod, I'm going to have to scale those back dramatically.

Otherwise, I'm not going to have any time in the day to work on these manuscripts and this other stuff. I will come back to making myself basically available. But in the next few days, I'm going to have to dramatically. maddy we cut back on on abiding invitations to appear. I'm sorry about that. But I will always be on here as long as Pete wants to host me. And I will always be active on my own shit. But I'm going to need a couple months to just focus on getting ahead on this stuff.

That's all I got. All right, man. Until the next time until part three. Talk to you. Thanks. Yeah. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignano show. I think Thomas is ready to finish.

finish up this three-parter on Nixon and Watergate today. How you doing, Thomas? I'm doing well. There's a lot to this topic. I mean, that's why I wanted to go an extra episode. I think people get bogged down to minutia. They don't see the forest through the trees. That's easy to do because there's so much smoking mirrors and, you know,

just no form of deliberate ledgered main by interested parties. But also people focus on the wrong things. You know, like I said, the book Silent Coup is exhaustive and it's a good resource. But I think it focuses too much on, you know, speculating about the intrigues that she led to the Watergate break-in. And as I'm going to get into today, the second Watergate break-in whereby the plumbers were actually arrested that increasingly faded into the kind of faded into the proverbial ether. even as the narrative was reaching its zenith in terms of, you know, the coalition that it assembled to bring down the Nixon White House, you know, even when they were kind of like at the peak of their power and were very, it was, it was, you know, a full-round inclusion that they would,

they would get an impeachment quorum if, in fact, it came down to such a vote. And that's important to consider. The degree to which, you know, whatever the plumbers were doing was really pretextual. What I believe people are saying, and this is entirely, this is very, very dishonest. I'm not saying this is somehow more legitimate than the kind of laughable sort of pretext of what is being alleged is indicative of, you know, intolerable corruption and overreach on the next in the White House. the belowboard or extrajudicial wiretapping of certain individuals as well as um as well as uh what was said this black friday game stream and go full speed with one gig sky broadband

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Find out more at airgrid.i.4.4. Northwest. On the infamous Nixon tapes, that seems to be able to really through Special Counsel, Archibald Cox, into this kind of vicious moral crucible. which makes a little bit more sense than the Watergate break-in pretext but in comparative terms and again this isn't what aboutism when we're talking about criminal law and the impeachment power and process is a matter of criminal law albeit a very discreetly narrowly tailored one and a very unusual one, but we can only rely on precedent, you know, to determine what's an appropriate way

to proceed under diverse facts and circumstances. And essentially, nobody cared when other administrations did exactly the same things that the Nixon administration was doing. And considering the exigencies presented, you know, it can never be, it should never be forgotten that Nixon was a wartime president. in a very real sense. And that had existential implications during the Cold War. You know, I mean, Bush 43 was also a wartime president, but the, not to sound overwrought, but the kind of fate of the world system as it existed was not in the balance.

You know, Iraq's not a client state of a superpower that could kill 80 million Americans within hours an event of a general war. So whatever Nixon did as regards extrajudicial measures undertaken against people who were believed based upon some reasonable

suspicion to be compromising the ability of the United States to, specifically the office of the president, you know, to carry on, not just diplomacy, but carry on and prosecute an active war. while protecting state secrets in the midst of a wider strategic paradigm that's got to be considered. And what's appropriate and what constitutes a clear and present danger then cannot be analogized to or analogized to facts and circumstances.

such factors not present. I think we spoke, I think we ended last time around the, even one second to call my notes here, so I'm not having to, so I'm not having to do Google Food to get, next to check my dates and things. Yeah, I think we ended in discussing, we started to talk about the White House tapes. Before we get to that, though, one of the reasons why Liddy became sort of the face of Watergate, it's not just because, you know, he was an eccentric character, and he was kind of made for, you know,

conspiratorial narratives in media, like the man of Lydia. I mean, after the White House plumbers were arrested, a particularly ambitious judge named John Sirica, colloquially and ominously known as Maximum Jemps. on because he was very much like a Rockefeller laws or a judge who was known for his absolutely draconian sentences. He was threatening to slap the White House plumbers with life sentences, like with parole. But just the same if they refuse to turn state's evidence. That's quite literally insane, you know, to say, well, you're going to lock people up for the amount to, you know, 20 years to life for, for a petty burglary,

you know, regardless of the implications vis-a-vis a sitting presidential administration. I mean, things like, things like this, that doesn't just smack a malicious prosecution, but, I mean, that's an obvious matter of judicial overreach, you know, and it goes to show you kind of at every level. This was, this scandal,

if we can call it a scandal and not, you know, a coup which is kind of more probably what it was at every stage you know every every every every actor of regime official done was proceeding abnormally you know um it uh lydia uh clammed up um essentially stated he wasn't afraid to go to prison um threatened him by making it clear that he'd see to it that Liddy was sent to a maximum security prison, you know, presumably that housed violent offenders. And this was, you know, the Attica era when, when racial warfare was underway in American penitentiaries. I mean, this is very, this is, this is really quite grotesque, okay? It, um, you know, um, I mean, as it were, uh, Liddy was able to plead out. But, um you know for people purportedly you know for these woodward and burnstein types supposedly were so singularly concerned with the integrity of processes and things i mean they i i would think that that would have given them pause but apparently it didn't um

you know so does the watergate when the you know the water against the watergate scandal broke you know obviously with with the arrest of the plumbers but it wasn't you know again it kind of pretty rapidly mutated into something totally unrelated um the uh the democrats had majority congressional control so this was kind of their perfect opportunity to assault you know the imperial presidency which had become their boogeyman as they've been talking about the last two episodes um and what they singularly focused on first was you know the white house tapes you know the claim then is now oh Nixon was this paranoiac

he was taping everything in the White House there'd been a White House taping system in place since FDR when Nixon took the old of office there was a taping system installed that Johnson had installed um

Nixon had that one removed the one that replaced it was one that a hollerman selected that was voice activated so um that was which is something of a double-edged sword because obviously it guarantees that, you know, if, if the third man in the room forgets to, you know, hit the record button in those days, you know, with that, with the state of technology, you know, the minute somebody speaks audibly, the mechanism would kick on, you know, some people have claimed like, oh, this is what, this was the single greatest disservice, you know, however it could have, albeit unintentionation. done. I don't accept that. The issue with the tapes wasn't that

the whole point of taping over all this conversation is that they're not doctored. It's that when it's claimed that, you know, oh, Mr. Nixon said this, or he ordered this, there's literally both sides, the whole sides of the conversation. You know, it can't, it can't be said

to be, you know, half of a conversation, you know, only to selective editing, you know, in situ. But of course, these, the transcriptions of these tapes, the court and the congressional investigators insisted that these be handed over without exception. And I mean, obviously, this is literally what executive privilege is tailored for is to prevent such things from seeing the light of day. you know not um not because we're going to protect you know a sitting executive not because we're going to indemnify him from wrongdoing but again it was understood by everybody literally everybody you know until this watergate moment that there's going to be state secrets bandied about pretty

much constantly in the oval office you know we're not we're not going to just kind of throw open the doors of, you know, the machinery of policy in a time of war and, you know, destroy the ability to practice, you know, meaningful diplomacy and, um, and wartime negotiation, you know, just so that, you know, Woodward and Bernstein can get the scoop or just so that, you know, there can be some kind of fourth estate veto over what they perceive to be, you know, bad conduct in the prosecution of the Vietnam War or whatever. So, I mean, that was bad faith in of itself.

The driving force against Nixon, particularly in this regard to the tapes, in the Senate at least, was Sam Irvin, who ironically, you know, we talked about the Bobby Baker scandal, you know, like sex scandal, involving LVJ like Irvin had been the man who successfully

you know kind of intervened like save LBG's ass you know many years back by that point he'd kind of retained his role as a political fixer you know but obviously he didn't have any particular history with Nixon

personally you know this was obviously very much a careerist effort and um you know um since he'd been um the secretary to the majority leader back in um back in the days of the baker scandal he'd ultimately resigned during investigation in in 19663 into this you know into the into his business and political activities but he'd

very much bounced back from that and uh i think of this as a way of him kind of trying to ingratiate himself to the new masters as it were but um the investigation into Baker was unceremoniously dropped after the assassination of Kennedy when kind of everything got thrown into him chaos, you know, and not to be, make a crude pun, but I mean, Irvin kind of dodged a bullet as Mr. Kennedy did not dodge a bullet. But simultaneously, as I think we touched on, you know, Vice President Spiro Agnew, he was very suddenly accused of accepting kickbacks, you know, for government contracts, particularly by, you know, construction firms that, you know, were alleged to have organized crime ties. You know, a governor of Maryland, he got slapped with this indictment. containing over 40 counts, you know, um, alleging everything from, you know, tax, tax fraud and tax evasion, you're accepting of bribes, you know, criminal conspiracy and solicitation to commit fraud.

You know, but again, it's like, why, why is this suddenly coming out now, you know, um, but I mean, Agnew had, Agnew had no choice, but to resign on October 9, 973, the Justice Department offering him, um, if he was willing to resign off offering him a plea a no contest, you know, on one count of tax evasion, which also, I mean, is very transparent, too. You know, it's, um, we'll make, we'll make this 40-count indictment go away as long as you quit, you know. Um, enter Alexander Hague, and he becomes key. Hague's a really compelling figure, and I think he was a stronger military mind than he's credited. He was, uh, commander of a naval forces um during kind of kind of during kind of the key detente era and as detain came to an end i mean he famously is remembered for um you know um his uh putting his foot in mouth after reagan was shot um i'm in control here i no matter what haig said he was going to be used as a pinata by you know by the enemies of mr nixon and um you know those with long memories

But Hague at this point became the White House Chief of Staff, Halterman having resigned, owing to the fact that he had been singularly targeted by the Watergate Witch Hunters. Hague was a pretty, I mean, in addition to being a strong general officer type of that era, He was a combat veteran of Korea. He had good Machiavillian instincts for Washington, and he was in favor of Agnew stepping down without a fuss for the sake of optics, but privately his big concern was that both Nixon and Agnew would be indicted, leaving succession to the constitutional next in line.

who was speaker of the house, Carl Albert at that time, who was known to be a barely functioning alcoholic. He was presently under psychiatric care. To a military man like Hague, everything else aside, the idea of they're basically being a headless executive at that juncture, you know, mind you. This Black Friday game stream and go full speed with one gig Sky Broadband. and watch unmissable shows like all her fault on Sky. These nice people killing you, John. And Ballad of a Small Player starring Colin Farrell on Netflix. I've made some mistakes. Right, who hasn't?

Get one gig Sky broadband, essential TV and Netflix, all for just 44 euro a month for 12 months. Our lowest ever price. Availability subject location, new customers only, 12 month minimum terms, standard pricing thereafter. TV and broadband sold separately. Terms apply for more infoosies sky.a slash speeds. Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the North Wales. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November.

Have your say online or in person. So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash Northwest. In the midst of the, um, on the car, but in the midst of, you know, the 1973 war, the kind of, you know, critical, critical developments in Southeast Asia, after, you know, the signing of the peace agreement, which had to be managed correctly, as, you know, to say the least, you know, as Hanoi kind of tested the parameters of American willingness to enforce it. you know um this sinusoid split was you know the blood was still fresh from that proverbial separation um this this this this could have been uh this this this this this this could have been an absolute disaster now enter uh archibald cox one second let me i'm sorry about this i always lose my place in notes too

yeah okay yeah no legit um you want a little you want a little you You want a little question that might... No, no, I'm good. Okay, I got... Okay, yeah, here. It's going to ask you a question about Hague. Yeah, by all means, go ahead. This is off topic, but when he made that comment after Reagan got shot,

do you think the Russians thought a coup might be underway? It's possible, but it... Yeah, but I think... Yeah, definitely. there was an aspect um you know we these the soviotologists in um in america were always kind of lamenting that uh that um it was a like a riddle wrapped in an enigma to the trying to discern you know like who the real power was behind the throne in uh the kremlin um a drop off uh thought that reagan was something of a cipher um anyway um and that's one of the reasons during the able archer era why um kind of the really

trauma writ of grameko usenov and a drop off became so paranoid as it were um so yeah i think that added to the danger of a Reagan Reagan being shot just just in its own terms like added to the danger of the of the situation um in my opinion i don't think i don't think what haig said signature to the Russians, any kind of critical perception, critical capacity that impacted their perception. As far as Hague's role in, you know, the final days of the Nixon administration, Hague very much came into the gun sites of Archibald Cox. Who was Archibald Cox?

before Nixon's appointment of Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, before the Senate would confirm him on May 25th, 973, Richardson had to agree at his confirmation hearing to appoint a Watergate special prosecutor. The special prosecutor role in of itself has absurd, like in any epoch, like it was absurd when Ken Starr

was assigned the role. I mean, Clinton was a total piece of shit, but that's beside the point. This idea of we're going to appoint what amounts to a law enforcement officer. He's simply going to like investigate.

He's going to begin an investigation from a man and from there discover some kind of wrongdoing. I mean, that's grossly offensive to due process. It intrinsically politicizes you know, the fact-finding mission. And it also, it basically, in the best of times,

in the best of circumstances, in the most stable circumstances, in terms of, you know, a true moral consensus in Washington, it basically caused by a sitting executive, the police himself, and the worst of times, in terms of across the aisle, trust, and goodwill,

you're basically guaranteeing a witch hunt. Okay. Richardson backed the appointment of Archibald Cox Under one-time special regulation He was allowed to, it was essentially allowed to appoint him Okay, now this whole arrangement was to say it was I mean, the Chertle legal scholar may call it novel I mean it was just moronic

You know, we're going to have the incoming AG Essentially appoint a special prosecutor His job is like dig up dirt on the chief executive of the administration. He's now going to serve. And Richardson's reasoning for selecting Cox, to say it was tortured, it doesn't even begin to describe it.

Cox had an idea that, Richard said an idea that Cox, there was so much natural hatred between Cox and the next administration that when Cox didn't come up with anything substantive in his investigation. It couldn't be said that there was, you know, any kind of, um, there was any kind of cooperation, you know, um, or collusion, which is a stupid, overused word now between um, Cox's office and the White House. Like, how anybody can convince

themselves of that is incredible. But Richardson actually believed this. This wasn't, he wasn't some, this wasn't some ledger meaning that he was invoking because he, you know, had some kind of secret enmity for his boss. Cox had been John F. Kennedy's labor advisor. Kennedy had appointed Solicitor General. He held that role for four years. He was an Arch Kennedy loyalist, and he was a radical leftist. You know, a son of a Manhattan lawyer, Harvard alumni.

Consumate judicial activist. He cited John Marshall was a model jurist, you know, and thus, I mean, Marshall's literally the father of judicial review and judicial activism. you know, Marbury versus Madison being, you know, the progenitor authority. Cox had graduated first of his class in Harvard. He got a top posting at the Solicitor General's office. When World War II broke out via, what's that? Do you say something?

No, I didn't say anything. Okay. Right, sorry. He'd, uh, as an associate solicitor, he had a certain outsized power. Um, the labor department in those days, mind you, I mean, this was, this was kind of the zenith, you know, like, like really the 20s to the 1970s, peaking in kind of, you know, like the, the, the 1930s to the early 50s, um, you know, uh, the, you know, real battles between organizing labor and management, you know, and the fact that I mean of national economics and the manufacturing

economy, you know, um, his, his role being to supervise enforcement at the district court level of federal labor statutes, you know, meant that he had a lot of clout, okay? And again, um, his, his radical, um, strikes brought him down unfailingly, you know, on the side of, uh, of big labor, um, and interpreting regulatory and arbitration regime, you know, most as charitably as he possibly could within their favor. In this role, he had a staff of eight lawyers, each which supervised the department's regional offices. He could, he had final authority on when an attorney could bring suit. Most of these litigation involved issues arising under the Fair Labor Standards Act, okay, which is kind of the bane of management and of capital in those days.

He also sat on the wage adjustment board periodically. This Black Friday game stream and go full speed with one gig Sky broadband and watch unmissable shows like all her fault on Sky. These nice people. killing each other. And Ballad of a Small Player starring Colin Farrell on Netflix. I've made some mistakes.

Right, who hasn't? Get one gig Sky Broadband, Essential TV and Netflix, all for just 44 euro a month for 12 months. Our lowest ever price. Availability subject location, new customers only, 12 month minimum terms,

standard pricing thereafter, TV and broadband sold separately. Terms apply for more infooshe sky.a slash speeds. Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area

and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person. So together, we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4.North-Northwest. With all the construction industry and attempts to maintain labor peace by mediating disputes and settling prevailing

you know um um you know disputes from over like you know wage rates and increases which was also statutorily controlled by the Davis Bacon Act um which was tailored to standardize

wages but obviously I mean that um that that was open to very very wide interpretation so I mean uh you Harvard man um himself I'm you know the rich sion of a legal family from Manhattan you know uh this kind of like

who had a hero worship at Kennedy you know it's like who it's like what the hell was richards in thinking like this is um it's like uh it's like hiring uh it's like hiring lucifer to guard the pearly gates when uh st peter goes to take a piss or something but um after the war uh Harvard Law School hired Cox as a professor. Cox had the stipulation that he would as long he didn't have to teach corporations or property. He very much used this as like, you know, an opportunity to grandstand on his, you know, socialist politics, obviously. He became a permanent faculty member in 1946, in 1947 school year. You know, and this was during the post-war boom and the GEOPLE.

I bill, so he, you know, he, the guys who went on who, um, become real players on the beltway, you know, like, cross, like passed through, like, you know, Professor Cox's class at Harvard, um, to a degree that's really kind of striking, you know, um, he sired, proverbially speaking, like, many, many intellectual offspring. Um, he became hugely influential in the labor field, the 19thies. You know, this was the era where the public intellectual was alive and well. That as a, you know, that role, I mean.

The, uh, he was instrumental in defining what became, you know, kind of the controlling body of industrial relations law, you know, for an entire generation. Um, you know, his, uh, there's no man comparable with who's got that that kind of influence, like in any field, but particularly not the legal field, you know, these days. It, you know, mind you this, he wasn't just like, you know, kind of like a celebrity legal commentator like Dershowitz or something.

You know, he was, he was a true, like, public intellectual. And, you know, in the way, in the way Thomas Schelling was, was on the side of like nuclear war planning. Kennedy, when he was a freshman senator in 1953, the senator of labor relations would be kind of his primary point of attack. You know, and he wanted to build his policy resume on that, you know, which was smart. And it also allowed him to kind of like play the center on civil rights and things.

He wrote to Cox, inviting him to testify with the Senate Subcommittee on Labor and Public Welfare. Cox reciprocated, his admiration and affection. You know, he was when a Kennedy's constituents, he was a fellow Harvard man, you know. And most importantly, I mean, this really kind of made his star like permanent. You know, he was already nationally recognized. He had an academic expert on labor law. and this kind of like, you know, radical liberal Democrat, the pre-position towards labor,

but now, you know, like this popular freshman senator that people are like bandying is going to be the president someday as, you know, hitching his wagon to his own, okay? Out of the fall of 1959, or in the fall of 1959, rather, there was an effort to beef up the Landrum Griffin Act, which is a bipartisan effort to kind of butcher us the Taft-Hartley Act by way of a sort of legislative injunction. And this was the first in a series of kind of chipping away of the hegemony that organized labor had won throughout the New Deal years.

Under the auspices of restlessly premised upon anti-corruption and anti-raiceteering concerns and a need to, you know, get organized crime out of, out of, um... Why does a peacock shimmer blue and green? Why are flamingos pink? How do creatures use color to attract, impress, and survive? Discover the answers at the Wild Collidoscope at Dublin Zoo's Wild Lights, Ireland's biggest and brightest winter experience with meaning. Did you know that every wildlights visit helps save wildlife?

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so together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community find out more at airgrid dot i.e forward slash northwest out of labor unions it um it allowed uh it allowed a senate subcommittee like very wide-based police power to essentially like force you know unions above a certain membership which was a very low bar you know like open their books essentially you know um and these kinds of like these endless kind of like mafia related hearings like a lot of them like like were premised upon, initially at least, upon the power convert by Landrum Griffin and said to Taft Hartley.

Just incidentally, this is important for context, I believe. Sorry if I'm boring everybody to death. According to, I don't use the topographer folks. Other people have claimed this too. It's believed that outside of his own family, Cox was the first man that Kennedy confided to that he was running for president. You know, he wrote, he approached Cox formally, despite them by that point, being quite friendly.

So you needed to, you needed to quote, tap intellectual talent in the Cambridge era. You know, basically build kind of like a dream team of like public intellectuals and academics. You know, and kind of go, go forward like all guns blazing

at full throttle, you know, on, you know, kind of like reforming the labor code, you know, to bring it back to, you know, what had happened under the new deal. But, augmented by this kind of like newfound

cultural prosperity, you know, that'll ease the burden on management, you know, very utopian, very much kind of the, very much the language of kind of like, you know, the utopian socialism of the day. And in turn,

like Cox, he prodded a lot of labor, both labor union types, and as well as a lot of academics who, again, had a lot of cloud and policy planning circles, like, towards the Kennedy camp. Okay, so, um,

to say that, to say that Cox was insinuated into the, into the kind of, into the Kennedy orbit, I mean, he, he absolutely was, like, more than, more than anybody, like, not a relation to the man could be, you know, um, in 1960, Cox was appointed Solicitor General. Solicitor General is something of an unusual role.

He's kind of like Corporation Council. would function in a municipality or at the state level. He basically acts as the government's lawyer before the Supreme Court. It was in those days immensely influential, not just knowing the fact that government had more clout then, but this was the war in court era where the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary in general was legislating from the bench and everything from fourth sixth and fourth amendment issues to these you know civil rights acts all and sundry and you know these these social engineering endeavors um it um basically it was uh cox is 10 year a solicitor general absolutely facilitated a lot of these things okay um so again like the idea that this man would behave in any way once appointed at

as special prosecutor other than to try and do everything he could to destroy nixon is is are really insane you know um but again it's um incredibly smart people and incredibly stupid people often like outsmart themselves by by twisting themselves into crazy um conceptual contortions and i can't tell if richardson was either like that stupid because he was so smart or because he was such a fool but um you It's one or the other because there's no other explanation. But that was, that was Cox's background. And in July of 1973, Cox immediately requested the White House tapes and then subpoenaed them. And not just the White House tapes, but all other, wiretaps and extrajudicial, like, non-court-ordered tapes that had been, you know, produced by, you know, anybody on the executive staff. Obviously, the next administration refused to produce these tapes, setting executive privilege, and they were right. And this dispute carried on until October.

It carried on through the, um, the, the 973 war. Cox seemed Some people I called Johnson claim Cox was grandstanding for a Democratic Congress you know

so he at every turn he kind of refused to abide not just the honor of the presidency but also refused to give grant the benefit

of the doubt to Nixon as chief executive I think I don't think that was it okay I mean he was absolutely doing those things he wasn't doing it

because of like simple you know simple show voting for a democratic majority like he he utterly hated nixon and was exactly the kind of person who viewed nixon in the silent majority as a as like the epitome of literal evil um on october 12 um um cox won an injunction does it cure the right of access to the tapes, the recordings of all Nixon's White House conversations. And Nixon responded by firing Cox. Now, this is held out by people as, oh, crazy Nixon trying to become a dictator.

Look, this man was literally appointed by Nixon's attorney general. Okay, and he's within, one of the absurdities of special counsel is he's within the executive chain of command. Like under Article 2, you can fire him. You know, I mean, and again, it's, you, it'd be like saying, like, let's say like a court order, let's say like you, um, let's say you were like an incorrigible, like, you know, like traffic violator, okay?

If you like a court, like ordered you to like hire, like a policeman or like a parent and type, to like follow you around and you know you should use citations for speeding well at the same time you pay him a salary and you're within your rights to fire him but like then if you fire him they'll charge you with a crime

I mean it's like something um it's like something out of not particularly creative um you know like Joseph Heller kind of satire or something um it was at this moment you know that um

like the fire in a is like breathlessly and incomprehensibly called the Saturday Night Massacre. Kind of all the hysteria usually associated with the kind of Nixon wish hunt. It just just like it's just like wanted like absolute like full throttle after this. But I want to I want to get back to the issue with, um, with, um, with Hague. Um, let me just one second. Okay, Hague was alarmed by Cox's immediate plans to widen the Watergate investigation for a few reasons. Haye kind of saw the writing on the wall, okay?

Hague realized that the Watergate, like, Watergate, in and of itself, didn't really make sense. Higg had been very deeply involved in, to what degree is not clear, but even very deeply involved in, like, can be known as the Houston plan. Okay. The Houston plan, um, was an ongoing effort to surveil people who are believed to be the source of information leaks, like the Pentagon Papers, you know, that involved disclosures of critical, um, information of, uh, you know, of, of, of a national security imperative.

Okay. Between 1960 and 1971, there'd been about 17 extrajudicial wiretaps of private persons. Who these private persons were, we'll get into in a moment. You'll see that this is someone mischaracterized. And Hague was, pressure was brought to bear on Hague did his clothes what he knew. This is when Cox began threatening to bring indictments, and those who had conducted and supervised. breaking the break in of Ellsberg's doctor psychiatrist office you know Dr. Fielding was the doctor Hague's rebuttal why does a peacock shimmer blue and green why are flamingos pink how do creatures use color to attract impress and survive discover the answers at the wild kaleidoscope at

dublin zoo's wild lights Ireland's biggest and brightest winter experience with meaning did you know that Every wild lights visit helps save wildlife. See the wonder while supporting the wild. Wildlights tickets are selling fast. Book your magical journey today at Dublin Zoo.I.E. Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area, and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans.

Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say online or in person, so together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash Northwest. Without admitting knowledge of any wrongdoing, was that any such disclosures that, you know, derived from such prosecutions by intent or accident would threaten national security engraved capacities because the White House plumbers were involved in a highly classified matters. Some which were related to these wiretaps, which we'll get into in a moment, some which were not. But Cox then responded by subpoenaing documents relating to the purchase of Nixon's home in San Clemente.

You know, I mean, so this became, it became very clear that this was a witch hunt by this point. point, okay? When you're, when the scope of your investigation simply widens every time that you're stonewalled with a refusal by act or omission to cooperate with a threatened subpoena, but it's not even clear if that subpoena power is constitutionally permitted. I mean, you're not, you're not talking about an investigation into public corruption based on you know facts coming to light

that demanded you know you're not talking about you're not talking about due process as we think of it you know you really are talking about a wish hunt by this point and I don't I don't see how that

can be contested but the man of one second Jay Berzerts he was named a special White House Council for Watergate Matters to the president on May 10th.

And Alexander Hague apparently confided in him quite a bit, which kind of came with the role because, again, Hague became White House chief of staff following the resignation of Haldeman. He confided a buzzard that his role at the White House would be temporary, and so he retained his title at the Department of Defense, so essentially saying, like, I'm just a placeholder, and one of the reasons I'm here is because, you know, the way I interpreted the least, one of the reasons I'm here is because, you know, I obviously, you know, my top priority is

is guaranteeing, you know, security and the integrity of state secrets. The first task of, his first task of special counsel, Buzzards, was to investigate former House counsel John Dean. Dean was believed to possess classified documents. And this is where, you know, again, the, the kind of entire narrative to some people of Watergate, like revolves around John Dean. That's about outside the scope of what I want to tackle in this series. But what John Dean had direct knowledge of was the Houston plan. And I believe the big concern about Dean being pressured, if for no other reason, then only do his connections, the intelligence community, deans, I mean.

Buzzard was convinced that these documents related to what was called the Houston Plan. The Houston Plan was a proposed expansion of domestic surveillance. Okay. Was it illegal? As proposed, it was extrajudicial. But this is, this is you're going to kind of like the meat of Watergate, okay? Like what, and at the 11th hour, suddenly this became the rationalization. Like you see how the goalpost was always changing.

Between the Houston plant, what was the using plant first? The 43 page report and outline posing security operations, surveillance, espionage, wiretapping of domestic targets. it was proposed it was proposed in in 1966 it came to light going to Sam Irman's efforts like what exactly

like how he came to know its existence isn't clear again too this this may have been like a Dean League Dean may have just they may have told they may have just closed what he knew about it he may have just closed that he had documents

relating to it. And then his ace in the hole was saying, like, I absolutely will not, like, release those documents unless I, you know, afforded immunity, qualified or otherwise. Conventional wisdom is that Nixon rescinded the plan on July 28, 1970

after approving it only a few days before on July 23rd. This has led to this kind of hysterical refrain that for five days in 1970 the fundamental guarantees that Bill of Rights were suspended by the mandate given the CERIT-Huston

plan, like as if, like, habeas corpus and due process has never been suspended before. And then, you know, most recently during, you know, the Bush 43 era, you know, before that, during World War I, World War II, during Roosevelt's, you know, internment of,

you know, thousands of people based on subjective national characteristics, you know, his indictment the people under the Sedition Act. I mean, the list goes on and on and on and on. But the impetus for this report was the belief that a lot of left-wing radical NGOs were, in fact, being funded by Warsaw Pact. That was actually true. Okay.

The countercultural era movement in general, particularly like the anti-war movement, which seemed to emerge out of nowhere and was flush with money. was, you know, it was an enemy op, okay? J. Edgar Hoover initially backed the Houston plan also. Houston himself at Orr-Closey with William Sullivan, who was a, William C. Sullivan, who was one of Hoover's assistants, and drawing up the options listed in what eventually became, you know, the Houston plan. the plane called for you know domestic burglary electronic surveillance

surveilling of male of domestic radicals okay like in broad terms at one time it called for a suspension a habeas corpus in the case of you know people like the weathermen

who were known to be involved in terrorist activities and allow for their detainment you know without you know like formal arraignment um or indictment incident uh you know clear clear and present danger um which like i said i there is precedent for that for better or worse um Nixon ratified these proposals um and they were submitted uh to FBI Central Intelligence DIA and the National Security Agency So again, you have Hoover collaborating on this. You have White House Council

liaising with the FBI on this. You have the director of every one of the major intelligence organizations that constitute the national security apparatus being literally like availed to this document. Like the idea that this was like Nixon developing some secret spy force or something is laughable you know to say nothing of the fact that um he rescinded it five days later and it's just incredible in 1973 the world's on the brink of nuclear war at that time and about every

decade you know and it ends up there um the american streets being torn apart by race wars um this is incredibly brutal war in southeast asia that just come to close, you know, the third world's... There's terrorism on the streets and planes are being hijacked all over the place. Yeah, yeah, exactly. People who do not understand what the 70s is unless you've studied it or lived through it. Inflation pushes up building costs, so it's important to review your home insurance cover

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Dot i.e. forward slash under insurance. Brought to you by Insurance Ireland. Yeah, and then you got these, you got these dips shit, you got these dips shit Washington lawyers, you know, like getting like teary eyed and saying, you know, this is the day, this is the day democracy died.

You're not, I guess it didn't die when, like, habeas corpus was suspended and a bunch of people, like, suspected sympathizing with the South, were just, like, locked up without trial. You know, like, Mr. Lincoln's order. Like, I'm not saying that's like, Trans Lincoln. I'm saying, like, it's what happened, but it, um, the, uh, so, like, very, very suddenly, um, very, very, very, very, very suddenly the, uh, the Houston plan. Like, oh, now, now this is, now this is the reason for, you know, this, this, why Nixon must go.

you know um and who are these um out of the uh out of the intelligence in law enforcement establishment aforementioned only hoover objected to the plan um and and pressured the attorney um and pressured then attorney general uh john mitchell to to get nix's ear to rescind it like why Hoover thought it was a bad plan. There's a few reasons in my mind, but it wasn't because he was horrified of the thought that the Bill

of Rights might be corrupted, but you know, this is presented as a case of oh, you know, like regular people or like college teachers or whatever or just, you know, John and J-NQ public were being said to be terrorized by the government. Okay, here's a list of the people.

who are actually placed on surveillance incident to the provisions of the using plan they're actually implemented one Morton Halperin who's a national security council staffer and a consultant to Democratic President General Kennedy Edmund Muskie his phone was tabbed from May 69 to February 71 Daniel Davidson another NSC staff member who who Hoover ultimately had fired. Colonel Robert Rupertie Pursley, then Melvin Laird, a secretary of defense,

Adjutant, a whole lot of earlier administrations. In the wake of the Cambodian invasion, it was believed that he was the source of leaks to national media. This is a bird colonel, serving the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense.

Helmut Sondfeldt, uh a soviologist and national security council he served in the state department um haig provided his name to the fbi because it was believed that he might be a mole for we for east block intelligence um he was the london times the london sunday times correspondent liaison to washington he was friendly personally with henry kissinger Kissinger presented him to Hoover through a third party as a man who had strong connections with Allied Foreign Intelligence Services.

So presumably tapping his phone, he wasn't at the target, but whoever he might be speaking to, particularly those who might be on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Sears his assistant to White House counsel John Ehrlichman later became Reagan's campaign manager until he was a until he was unceremoniously fired and William Sapphire who'd been he was the New York Times writer columnist and that's anybody's most known for the people are aging older but he was a white house speech writer it wasn't clear um what's after i was on the list but again like he was you know very much very much a public figure um the two kind of outliers were marvin kale was a cbs and then nbcc reporter and william beecher

who was reported in the new york times and the boston globe but again too um you know the media was active especially the print media they were they were they were they were they were they they were engaged in actively publicizing eyes-only documents relating to the critical national security of the United States. So none of these people under war conditions, which were underway in 1973 or 1969 to 71, like it should have been like off limits or something. You know, the remaining, the remaining targets. Richard F. Peterson, State Department

Counselor, William H. Sullivan, Ambassador to Laos, Anthony Lake, an NSC specialist in Vietnam, who had very much a murky career. He was probably a spook, is what I'm getting at, under light diplomatic cover.

Winston Lord, China specialist and the NSC staff. And James McLean was a staff member with ties to Rockefeller kind of liberal Republicans like health education and welfare

Secretary Robert Finch he was close the former governor of Massachusetts Francis Sergeant McLean was briefly tapped for a matter of weeks at Halliband's request I mean who knows why but that's where that was it. That was the extent of private citizens

tapped by the precepts of the Houston plan. You know, and that was, and after, you know, after Nixon lost the fight to give up the tapes. Nixon has still been ahead in the polls until publication of the tape extracts. The tape extracts had printed, we're very much doctored. Many marks have exploited, deleted, you know, persuaded members that Nixon and his team are constantly swearing and habitually uttering obscenities, which sounds corny today, but this made like a difference. You know, it was, they were kind of cast in the light, most punitive. There was rumors constantly bandied that all these tapes have been doctored and censored by Nixon. and then his staff, you know, like the media was claiming this, so anything you read, it's way worse than what you're reading, you know.

But so as the polls started moving against Nixon, you know, the machinery of impeachment is brought into play in a true sense. The impeachment process, the way it works, is specified in Article 1, obviously. Article 1, Section 2 and 3, provides for the president to be impeached for offenses, discreet. in article 2 section 4 that's where treason bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors that's that phraseology comes from i mean in reality though it just me it's just apologians sitting in judgment one another you know um Andrew Johnson got impeached because he was like a southern patriot and a bunch of radicals and people wanted to you know and people wanted to like hang him an effig for the death of Mr. Lincoln like decided to impeach him you know um like like bitch made retards you know

one who have some kind of like superstitious hatred of Donald Trump, you know, they get off on impeaching him. I mean, that's, you know, that's, but the actual, like, process that follows. The House Judiciary Committee is, like, the court of, like, first review. Like, they're, like, the arraigning court, basically. Um, like, what amounts to, they, they send off what amounts to what amounts to a fighting of probable cause. And then it goes to the, and then it goes to the Senate, but the two-thirds majority is required for a conviction.

Like the actual article that comes before the House of the Committee is literally known as the formal organization of the article of impeachment. The Senate then tries the accused on these articles, you know, like any other, like any other trial, basically, you know. A two-thirds majority is required for conviction, in which time the convicted is removed from office and it's qualified to withholding any subsequent office under the Constitution in the future. Nixon's view early on was that it was like the House of rubber stamp, the article of impeachment, but that they'd never get their two-thirds majority in the Senate. the House Judiciary Committee

there was 21 Democrats and 17 Republicans 18 to the 21 Democrats were certain to vote for impeachment no matter what just because they hated them and they were absolute partisans so the committee was a stack deck as it developed all 21 Democrats and six of the Republicans six out of 17

voted for impeachment and recommended impeachment and voted to recommend an impeachment of the full house. There was no doubt. His reasoning was that he wanted to end his public career as a fighter. He actually wrote that down, and Nixon wasn't

a prolific diarist. He jotted that down on a pad of paper and public career as a fighter. And he thought, even if convicted, you know, there would be the opportunity to defend himself in public. And the odds

I've had two-thirds majority again were not particularly strong. Andrew Johnson survived by a single vote famously. By that time there'd been 12 instances of the House moving to impeach a public official and the Senate had only convicted on four

occasions. But Nixon in 1960 shown through subsequently. I mean he realized there'd been incalculable damage done to the executive end of the country by the witch hunt by the entire charade you know America was a nation just coming off of a

general war the future is very uncertain the Soviets that achieved nuclear parity in strategic terms and were winning on the battlefield the impeachment process itself I mean even if Nixon's successor was a real executive which basically was no chance of the impeachment process itself would behead the executive you know

at a time when NATO was quite fragile you know in the anti-communist block would such be literally headless you know Nixon's mind and it's clear if you don't have to look for and his statements on it and they're not self-serving.

Nixon's not playing martyr he's entirely right. Like had he not stepped down he would have been playing directly into the hands of the Soviet Union. And at a critical juncture, it may have given them what they needed to win.

Nixon decided, obviously, it would be the nationalism to resign rather than stand to be impeached. Nixon's hope had been that John Connolly, former governor of Texas, you know, who'd been, who got shot, you know, in the same day Kennedy was murdered, would be his successor and had, you know, had Nixon seen out his term, he was going to back Connolly in 76, but it's such that it was.

Ford Ford was a good guy, like morally. Like he had no vices and by all the challenge. He was like a decent man. But, you know, Ford was like a non-entity. And there's no, you know, there's no way, anybody truly affiliated with Nixon would have gotten, would have gotten the nod for the job after Nixon's, removal.

But that's basically Watergate, man. Like, you're giving me if that was scatter shot. There's like a lot there that I would. wanted to get in that we weren't able to before and um i hope it didn't seem to disjointed now what do you think um if nixon finishes his term out these two-term president full full two terms gets what done what he needs to be done um at least for you know a couple years there or at least for a decade how do you think the country's different the strategic landscape is different because um North Vietnam doesn't win the war.

There's a stalemate. You know, like the final offensive never happens. You know, because the Paris peace treaties afforded. Agreement is enforced. Also, there's the Cold War, the way it ends plays out differently. because Nixon remains very much in the driver's seat of policy. And there never would have been this situation where, you know, a decade goes by and there's no communication, you know, between the Soviet executive and the President of the United States. So, like, how that developed would have been interesting.

And I think a possibility of, like, real strategic nuclear disarmament before. the collapse the Soviet Union would have been realizable but it's it's hard to say otherwise um Nixon did get his like the the burger court was I mean Nixon was able to pack like the the federal judiciary um hey Renquist was his guy you know with them I meant Renquist um so I mean a lot of a lot of Nixon's legacy like was realized you know Nixon set up the EPA

and stuff. I remember anybody feels about that. It's been impactful, but it's hard to say. I'm oriented towards, you know, the Cold War side of it and things like that. But, um, you, you wouldn't have a gilded executive. Okay, that's the big, I think that's what you're looking for.

Okay, like, there wouldn't, um, you wouldn't have this bizarre situation or, like, the president's just kind of like this cipher. And you've got this, like, Soviet-like gerontocracy that's impossible to get rid of in the legislature and the judiciary. You know, and you,

and you have, like, basically, like, a headless executive. that just kind of exists you know and um it's kind of like um a magnet for you know sort of like pure aisle and manufacture controversies

and political theater and stuff so you have so the country functions more like it did you know like um you know from like Truman to Kennedy and Nixon himself all right well to plug so we'll get out of here

yeah sure I'm sound-proofing my home office here and I'm doing all kinds of sexy stuff like getting all kinds of like this like fucking outer space like ergonomic chair and stuff and I just got like this brand new gimbal

so I'm like sexing up my production gear so at long last I'm going to be able to get into like a proper workflow schema fresh stuff is coming I promise for right now you can find me on Substack.

That's where the podcast is. That's where our chat is. That's where some of my, me informed writing is. It's Real Thomas 777.7.com. Check out my website. It's number 7.HMAS 777.com. Check me out on X, Real,

capital R, capital E, capital A, capital L. Number seven, lowercase, HOMAS, me as 7777 that's where I met all that stuff is going to be as always in the uh show notes of every episode that Thomas is on thank you Thomas appreciate it thank you man