The Dark Continuum of Watergate
from Consortium News:
The Dark Continuum of Watergate
June 12, 2012
Special Report: The 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in has brought reflections on the scandals larger meaning, but Official Washington still misses the connection to perhaps Richard Nixons dirtiest trick, the torpedoing of Vietnam peace talks that could have ended the war four years earlier, Rober Parry reports.
By Robert Parry
The origins of the Watergate scandal trace back to President Richard Nixons frantic pursuit of a secret file containing evidence that his 1968 election campaign team sabotaged Lyndon Johnsons peace negotiations on the Vietnam War, a search that led Nixon to create his infamous plumbers unit and to order a pre-Watergate break-in at the Brookings Institution.
Indeed, the first transcript in Stanley I. Kutlers Abuse of Power, a book of Nixons recorded White House conversations relating to Watergate, is of an Oval Office conversation on June 17, 1971, in which Nixon orders his subordinates to break into Brookings because he believes the 1968 file might be in a safe at the centrist Washington think tank.
Unknown to Nixon, however, President Lyndon Johnson had ordered his national security adviser, Walt Rostow, to take the file out of the White House before Nixon was sworn in on Jan. 20, 1969. Rostow labeled it The X Envelope and kept it until after Johnsons death in 1973 when Rostow turned it over to the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, with instructions to keep it secret for decades.
Yet, this connection between Nixons 1968 gambit and the Watergate scandal four years later has been largely overlooked by journalists and scholars. They mostly have downplayed evidence of the Nixon campaigns derailing of the 1968 peace negotiations while glorifying the medias role in uncovering Nixons cover-up of his re-election campaigns spying on Democrats in 1972. ..................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/06/12/the-dark-continuum-of-watergate/
turtlerescue1
(1,013 posts)Back then there were these "gaps" that made the entire thing more confusing. It was spun like it was a good-natured jab to the ribs that maybe became too obvious between the two Parties.
One of the good things about living this long is to finally have details about what seemed
to be lacking in explanation.
Now, its just viewed as dirt, and to be somehow non compis mentus if an interest is shown.
Like we knew about the death camps of Hitler, but then the savagery of "experiments' came to light, no one was interested.
The problem with history is if we don't learn from it we will be repeating it.
Sad isn't it, how our species can come up with new sick, inhumane ways to treat each other?
Like the Sandusky thing, with Nixon what you saw isn't the same as what you got.
THIS should be included in EVERY Social Studies class, from grammar school to high school and Poli Sci in colleges. Wanna bet it gets buried? The Oil Companies are flooding the media with how important 'education' is to them, is there also included a policy as to what criteria is going to be required in order for them to do what should be done quietly and without publicity?