The new Richard Nixon lie: John Dean on why he would have loved the Tea Party

[DonViejo]

On anniversary of Nixon's fall, John Dean talks Tea Party, taking out Gordon Liddy & Watergate conspiracy theories

DAVID DALEY

This week marks the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation, just steps ahead of likely removal from office for the Watergate coverup. In his new book, “The Nixon Defense,” John Dean — Nixon’s legal counsel during Watergate — has generated an amazing historic record. He transcribed all of the Oval Office tapes related to Watergate and allows them to stand as a guide to what the president knew and when he knew it.

Nixon does not come out looking good. While some of these tapes were transcribed earlier by historian Stanley Kutler, and others were transcribed by Watergate prosecutors, no one has published a complete record until now. And it’s clearer than ever, from these transcripts, that Nixon helped encourage and orchestrate the White House coverup as soon as the days after the burglars were arrested in June 1972 inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

Dean himself remains a fascinating figure. For going into the Oval Office in March 1973 and telling Nixon that the Watergate coverup has created a cancer growing on the presidency, he’ll always be considered by some to be one of the honest men inside a corrupt White House. To others, Dean is a turncoat, a traitor, an architect of the coverup who switched sides when it became legally necessary and politically expedient. There are even conspiracy theories that place him at the center of everything.

In a wide-ranging conversation last week at the Warwick Hotel in Manhattan, we talked about Nixon’s role in the coverup, what he might have done differently, and about what it takes to tell the president that there’s a cancer growing inside the presidency. We also worked through some of the alternate Watergate theories, most interestingly the one where Watergate burglars with CIA ties intentionally sabotaged the operation. And Dean said that while Nixon has gotten credit for a progressive domestic agenda, it was the priority of one aide, and he wasn’t interested in it.

more
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/08/john_dean_on_richard_nixon_hes_in_the_middle_of_this_its_for_him_blessed_by_him/

[Lithos]

1. Nixon would have loved the Tea Party

For the same reason he loved its predecessor - the John Birch Society.

L-

[iandhr]

10. They would be too busy calling him a communist for…

… creating the EPA

[tanyev]

2. Interesting. Marking to read later.

[longship]

3. John Dean is a good guy.

His book, Conservatives Without Conscience, is a revelation on the GOP rationale and methodology.

I met him during his book tour for the book. His talk was damned good.

I really like him.

[mikeysnot]

4. Great BOOK!

It really gets into the authoritarian mind and how the different levels react to events.

Nails Cheney and Bush.

[hifiguy]

5. That book is a classic bit of political analysis.

Can't recommend it highly enough.

[hifiguy]

6. As for WHY watergate happened,

Lamar Waldron has nailed that down as tight as can be.

Nixon thought Larry O'Brien had come into possession of a document prepared by the CIA that outlined in painstaking detail the CIA-Mafia plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, which report also reflected Nixon's surprisingly extensive Mob connections. The initiator of the anti-Fidel plots? Richard M. Nixon.

[CanSocDem]

8. Or...

...as another theory suggested, there was the Howard Hughes connection. HH apparently loaned some money to Donald Nixon, Richards' brother, and he wanted to know if the Democrats knew that and were going to use it against him.

"The Plumbers" likely convinced Nixon that they could give him anything he wanted. So he started his famous Enemies List thinking that he had this imperial authority to silence his critics.


.

[hifiguy]

9. The Hughes-Donald Nixon loan was old news.

It had surfaced in the late fifties. Was it crooked? It involved Richard Nixon, so I'd say the odds are overwhelmingly good it was. Hughes also provided a lot of contributions to Nixon, and, interestingly enough Robert Maheu, who later was Hughes' right hand man, was involved with the CIA and the Mob.

The Mob had paid RMN either $500,000 or $1 million to intervene on behalf of the Mob's good buddy Jimmy Hoffa, which never happened because JFK beat him in 1960 and RFK then went hog-wild on the Mafia.

What Nixon had to keep secret, and was obsessed with, was the documentation of his long, close relationships with Mob figures, who were deeply involved in the anti-Castro plots he brainstormed. Nixon repeatedly speaks of "the Bay of Pigs thing" on the tapes. That was code for what is described above. ixon knew he was a goner if the facts about his Mob connections and assassination plots ever came to light. Which they eventually did, though years later.

It is no accident that a surprising number of the same names turn up in relation to the Cuba plots, the assassination of JFK and Watergate. There are also interesting connections, though not as absolutely certain, to the murders of MLK and RFK.

[CanSocDem]

11. Whatever became of Bebe Rebozo?

He seemed to be deeply involved in RM's life 'away' from the WH.

Anyway, despite all of this and McGovern knowing about it (and weakly trying to sound the alarm), Americans re-elected Nixon.....or so the story goes.


.

[hifiguy]

12. According to Lamar Waldron's well documented book

on Watergate, he was a non-member associate of the Miami Mob at a pretty high level. He was a fixer, money launderer and generally shady character in addition to being a banker. Died in '98 according to Wikipedia.

[no_hypocrisy]

7. I'm not convinced.

Nixon created the EPA and OSHA.

The Tea Party would dismantle those programs.