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Speaker 1: Want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingana Show. Gonna

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take another little break from the World Wars from the

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World War One series with Tom's seven seven seven, and

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we concentrate a little bit on a something from my

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lifetime that, I mean, you know, this might be one

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of the first political things I remember my parents talking about. Yeah,

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I mean I was real little, but I think this

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may have been it. But Watergate Richard Nixon nineteen seventy three.

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So what's up.

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Speaker 2: The issue with Watergate? It's there's a historical aspect to it,

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like a profoundly historical aspect, as well as a political one.

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And it's particularly timely today on grounds of what's underway

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with mister Trump and what has been underway with them,

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and the degree was Trump really is the error to

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mister Nixon can't be overstated. People misunderstand when I say that,

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I'm not saying that Trump is has anything approaching the

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intellect and Nixon, or that his significance and historical capacities

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is analogous. But what he he really, he truly is

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the heir to the Silent Majority coalition, what remains of it,

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and the manner in which the deep State works I

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don't think anybody denies any more that the deep state

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is an actual feature of government. That's basically a kind

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of shorthand polemical or colloquial way of talking about I mean,

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you know, Burnham's managerial state. It shouldn't be controversial with

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people that it exists, okay, But institutions at scale, particularly

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institutions of government, they behave in predictable ways, okay. And

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the forces are rating as mister Trump as it were,

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basically identical, all right. And the reasons for his disqualification

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from public office, you know, and is his removal from office,

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and now with subsequent dis qualification by by extra legal

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and extra constitutional means, you know, it owes to the

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same phenomena, if not the same set of circumstances and conditions. Obviously, However,

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in Nixon's case, you know, we're dealing with the origins

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of of what the hostility to Nixon was, and that's

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more complicated than what may superficially appear. You know, what

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put Nixon on the map as a national political figure,

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independent of his association with Eisenhower was was the fact

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that he demanded elder Hiss be prosecuted. Okay, Elder Hiss

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has probably kind of fallen out out of you know,

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living memory. I mean probably this happened like almost a

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generation agoing now, Okay, but Elder hist was undoubtedly a

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Soviet asset that they can't be denied, even though to

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this day there was a book as recently as two

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thousand that claimed that this was some sort of elaborate

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slander of his, you know, owing to owing to some

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hostility that you know, the East Coast establishments such that

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you know, it existed mid century, you know, and it

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was profoundly powerful. And still that's another thing that can't

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be overstated. And what we're going to get into about Nixon.

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The degree to which the local of American power, political power,

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and financial power, the degree to which that was concentrated

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on the East Coast, they can't be overstated. As recently

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as the seventies and eighties, you the kind of the

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kind of what remained of the old ruling cast, you know,

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kind of looked looked with disdain, you know at the

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Midwest and the West Coast is is not really in

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the game politically, and as you know, not packing not

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having the pedigree to challenge for public office. Okay, and

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to that the fact that somebody like Nixon was was

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totally at odds with with their values, at least in

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terms of the coalition that that he came to lead.

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You know, when you have a you have this situation

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has developed with Watergate. But in the case of Hiss himself,

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you know, like I said, he uh his he was uh,

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he was he was truly like American gentry. He was

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one of five children. Both parents came from these sort

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of form of these truly aristocratic Baltimore families who could

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trace their roots to the mid eighteenth century. His is

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interestingly his his uh. The name was an angler, it

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was it was an anglicization of Hess. His sounded more anglophone.

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His paternal great great grandfather had emigrated from Germany. And

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I believe that was his only like non non anglophone ancestor, which,

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of course, you know, when those circles like was uh

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was cosmetically problematic. Has said something of a tragic upbringing.

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His father, the family never had any money, you know,

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they lived in genteel poverty, as it were, you know,

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like a lot of people of that kind of cast

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and station did. By the by the early twentieth century,

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despite the fact that they were retained kind of like

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their social registered type, you know, credibility and political clout.

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His father, Charles his he tried a number of different

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business ventures, you know, some which fared better than others.

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He did fairly well as a UH as the head

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of a dry goods importing firm, becoming becoming a top

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executive and and majority shareholder. This came to an end

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and around nineteen oh seven has lost most of the

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family's fortune that he's so kind of diligently accrued, and

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he committed suicide by cutting his throat with a razor

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of all means, I mean, really really kind of awful stuff.

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His UH wife was now a widow, you know, with

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these five children, and she subsequently had to rely on

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you know, her family's money and basically hand out from

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people to survive. And UH Alger Hisss, who was only

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two years old at this time, presumably has made it

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had a big impact on his life, you know, being

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this guy who had this kind of outsized heritage. But

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he lived up. But he grew up you know, in

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a fag of his household, in relative poverty. Fast forward

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to UH his adult life. The UH ended up at

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Harvard Law School. It was a projy of Felix Frankfurter,

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you know, which became a kind of ingress into the

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the New Deal regime. Early on, Frankfurter had written a

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book on the Sacho and Vanzetti case. Soacho and Vanzetti,

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we're communist a Jason anarchists who were who were convicted

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of terrorism and executed in the New York Electric Share.

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They were kind of the this was kind of the

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Rosenberg case before the Rosenberg case. And Frankfurter he wrote

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an entire treaties claiming that these men were convicted unjustly

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for no particular factual reason, just kind of because and

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uh and uh, and his was kind of the what

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was kind of this like goyish prince who Frankfurt or

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king to really like. Okay, his subsequently stirred as a

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clerk to Alverer Wendelholms Junior. So he was kind of

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covering all his bases, okay, you know, with the tribe

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as well as with his own people. You know, ended

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up in this hot shot Boston law firm and later

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uh later in New York firm then known as Cotton.

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Frank Franklin, Wright and Gordon. I don't keep up with

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the East Coast silk stocking law firms. I have no

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idea what it is today, but it does still exist

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in some legacy capacity. His was a he was a

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radical new dealer, became a government attorney, served briefly the

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Justice Department, and he got a plumb position with the

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Night Committee, which, despite the presence of people like his,

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was doing God's work. You know. They investigated war profiteering

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cost overruns and you know, the pocketing of these overruns

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by people in the arments industry and in the financial

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sector who had you know, funded these these massive out

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ways to fight World War One. And a lot of

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the for clarity, the Ny Committee was not Nora was

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Ny himself. Some some some some kind of radical. A

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lot of these people were, you know, like those who

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later became America First types, you know, but this was, uh,

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the way the way radicals left radicals obviously, I mean,

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the way they fell on the usual of World War

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One is interesting. You know, they basically towed the Soviet

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line that you know, this was an imperialist war that

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was you know, came about only to the intrigues of

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capitalists and war profiteers, and in the case of the

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Great War, as we've been covering somewhat and we'll get

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more into that, that that actually wasn't totaled too far off,

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you know. I mean, like we've talked about the uh

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the degree to which high finance quite literally had Wilson

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by the short hairs and essentially demanded the demand did

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he not allow, you know, a default on these massive

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unsecured lines of credit that had been extended to the

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British crown. The degree to which that was an essential

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approximate cause of American intervention, they really can't be overstated.

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But either as it may, during the same period his uh,

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he he defended a lot of labor organizers and adjacent

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institutions against challenges of their legitimacy, either of political nature

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or of a or or or a criminal one. He uh,

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it became very insinuated into the Agricultural Adjustment administration, which

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uh was for whatever reason, strongly connected to a lot

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of radical elements, more than a few of whom were uh,

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we're communists. I believe that oh to the outsized power

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of agribusiness in America than is now as well as

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the fact that kind of the bane, the bane of

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Marxist Leninists, you know, be them vanguardists or people who

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favored a broad front strategy with the conspicuous absence of

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of of agriculturally situated you know, people and institutions within

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their ranks. But he uh, most notably his kind of

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shining moment with the Night Committee was uh when DuPont

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Chemical or Dupon Industrial I think it was known at

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the time. He got the opportunity in nineteen thirty four

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to thirty five as an investigator and his official title

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was legal assistant to the Night Committee. But he was

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able to badger these do these big shot dupat executives

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and officials on cross examination and Bernard Baruk, a chairman

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of the War Industry's board under Wilson and a key

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and a key personage in the administration is waging of

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the war itself. He really he really dragged him over

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the raked him over the coals, as it were, and

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and just dragged him, you know, before the republic audience.

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He was rewarded and his younger brother Donald, they were

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rewarded with a posting under Cordell Hull in the State Department.

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His was the direct assistant to Assistant Secretary of State

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Francis Sire, who was Wilson's son in law incidentally and

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uh as well as special assistant to the Director of

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the Office for Far Eastern Affairs during the war years

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thirty nine to forty four. Specifically, his was an assistant

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to Stanley Hornbeck, who again was insinuated into the Far

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Eastern Affairs as a special advisor to Crodel Hall himself.

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So his was a man who was very well situated

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to impact policy at a very high level. You know,

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he wasn't some nobody. He wasn't some. He wasn't some. Uh,

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he wasn't he wasn't some. He wasn't some you know,

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uh legacy up whose family no longer going a fortune.

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So we were more of the kind of plum jobs

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that he could like afford gross reason things. I mean,

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he he had real power. Okay, those who would contest

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that light rebuttal is that as the war came to

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an end, but not only not only did his attend

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to the US State Department delegation at Yalta, you know

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where quite literally the Soviet Union was was was afforded,

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you know, half of the political map of Europe. But he, uh,

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he was. He was named director of the Office of

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Special Political Affairs in ninety forty four. This with in

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this office was specifically and purposefully organized to plan for

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post war international organizations, first among the United Nations. Okay,

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his his himself was instrumental in the drafting of the

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United Nations Charter and the negotiations that went into that. Okay,

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I don't think I need to I don't think I

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need to continue to list his accomplishments and resume to

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convey that, you know, he was somebody who had real cloud.

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Long story short, when it came to light based on

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a whole testimony that you know, hits had been a

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Soviet asset for many years, you know, and this was

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this was that arguably the zena of what came to

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be known as the McCarthy era. The fact that Nixon

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was his primary antagonist. You know. McCarthy, I believe, was

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a well intentioned individual, and people forget too. What brought

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down McCarthy was Roy Cones, uh, you know, to be

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delicate about it, his uh persuasion and his exploitation of

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his office to get special treatment for David Shine who

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if he was not actively involved in a homosexual affair

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with him, Shine was quite obviously the object of Cone's affection.

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That's what brought down McCarthy. It wasn't that McCarthy was

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going after innocent people, or it confabulated some some imaginary

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narrative of communist under the bed, or whatever the current

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claim is of court history. But regardless, even before all

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of that, McCarthy, McCarthy had a reputation as something of

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a yokel you know, he was from Wisconsin, whose representatives

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and senators didn't get a lot of respect. He was

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a notorious alcoholic. It was a lot easier to dismiss

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somebody like McCarthy than it was somebody like Nixon, okay,

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who even his enemies admitted was an obvious, you know,

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savant and you know, a consummately serious individual. And Nixon

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had studied the FBI record to the point practically of memorization.

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You know, his what he presented against his was air tight.

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And the establishment from whence his emerged never forgave Nixon,

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you know, I know, in the Oliver Stone film and things,

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which in some ways it is a very good film,

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the biopic of Nixon, Nixon kind of presented, you know,

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at the throughout the film and particularly at the height

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of Watergate and his fall from grace, as this man

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kind of you know, tormented by phantasms and seeing these

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sort of establishment antagonists, you know, in the shadows, who

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may or may not have even really existed. That's a

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complete mischaracterization. The East Coast establishment hated Nixon, you know,

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the New Dealers hated Nixon. They they hated him. They

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hated him in a way that not even people who

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00:17:57,039 --> 00:18:00,160
suffered from trunk arrangement syndrome hate Trump, you know, like

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they This cannot be overstated. Okay, So if you want

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to understand, we're gonna we're gonna get into the career

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Nixon and and and the circumstances of water Eat in

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a minute. But this cannot be overstated, Okay, in the

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degree to which, in part the Watergate scandal was revenged

249
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for Elger Hiss, that must be considered. Otherwise everything subsequent

250
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is missing a key component of the evidentiary record and

251
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the causal nexus. Okay. Now, I believe also what's key

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to understanding the attack not just on Nixon, but executive

253
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power generally after World War Two the only historian mainstream

254
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his story, and I know who addresses this specifically is

255
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Paul Johnson, who I have mixed feelings about. He's written

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some very good He's done some very good work. He

257
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also tends to resort to kind of shrill, neo countage

258
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kind of canards, particularly discussing, you know, US foreign policy

259
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and things like that. And he's got a tremendous blind

260
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spot about why the fortune is the American right precipitously

261
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and totally deteriorated after Nurmer. But that had aside, he

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brings up the point of what exactly brought down Johnson,

263
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you know, Lyndon Daines Johnson. Now Johnson at one time

264
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had a very strong mandate. The Vietnam War until tet

265
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and we'll get into that. In the moment, too, was

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fairly popular Johnson's, uh, Johnson pursuing zealously, you know, the

267
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civil rights crusade and doing so in a way that

268
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on other on other policy initiatives would have been viewed

269
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probably as overreach. But because you know, the the East

270
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coast power center of the country as well as you

271
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know radicals all on Sundry who identified with those values,

272
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you know, they viewed it as you know, unnecessary evil,

273
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you know, for the chief executive, you know, to kind

274
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of like bypass legislative solutions and even you know this,

275
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and even even the machinery of the judiciary in order

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to kind of force outcomes. That's why Johnson was doing

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what he was doing in that regard. You know, Johnson

278
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kind of the soul of a pick. Okay, he was

279
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not a good man, but you know, the degree to

280
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which he was basically cow telling to an establishment that

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he knew had nothing but disdain for him, it's got

282
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to be considered. And you know Johnson, Johnson was kind

283
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of the consummate. Uh, They've probably never been a man

284
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who was more skilled at backroom dealing. And the achievement

285
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of consensus on a key policy initiative is across the partisan

286
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divide in Congress, like it's really remarkable. But Johnson was

287
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also a redneck Southerner, okay, and he said he said,

288
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and know on certain terms like literally he's quoted saying,

289
00:21:32,359 --> 00:21:34,920
I don't not believe that the nation would unite definitively

290
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behind any Southerner. And when asked why, he said, well,

291
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the metropolitan press would never permit it. Okay, what he's

292
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UPHI what he was euphemizing when he said, Metropolitan press,

293
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take from that what you will. I think people know

294
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the history of this country as well as some aspects

295
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of the present dilemma, should be able to see through

296
00:21:59,079 --> 00:22:10,640
that pretty clearly. It increasingly became a narrative in the

297
00:22:10,759 --> 00:22:17,319
national media that what Johnson was doing in Vietnam specifically

298
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was dangerous. Now, mind you, in living memory, there was

299
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the Roosevelt administration where Roosevelt had literally incarcerated Germans, Italians

300
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and Japanese and concentration camps. He'd shut down national media,

301
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absorbing all coverage and reporting on the war into the

302
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number and authority of the Office of War Information. He

303
00:22:45,680 --> 00:22:51,279
had people arrested without formal charges for criticizing the war effort,

304
00:22:51,400 --> 00:22:55,799
under auspices of national security exigencies like the idea that

305
00:22:57,759 --> 00:23:01,079
the idea that LBJ was somehow acting against precedent in

306
00:23:01,160 --> 00:23:07,160
time of war was preposterous and obviously two you know,

307
00:23:07,319 --> 00:23:13,680
uh Kennedy and and Johnson's predecessor of Eisenhower. You know,

308
00:23:13,720 --> 00:23:17,160
not only was Eisenhower, not only was Eisenhower the equivalent

309
00:23:17,160 --> 00:23:19,480
of a five star of which there's you know, only

310
00:23:19,519 --> 00:23:23,480
been three. He very much ran the oval office like

311
00:23:23,480 --> 00:23:26,359
a five star general, would you know. So this kind

312
00:23:26,400 --> 00:23:30,440
of sudden, this kind of sudden declaration that an imperial

313
00:23:30,480 --> 00:23:37,000
executive was afoot. That's and that's on American It was

314
00:23:37,039 --> 00:23:39,599
a it didn't make a lot of sense upon a

315
00:23:39,640 --> 00:23:49,039
superficial analysis, but there was a basic revolt against authority

316
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that had been brewing, and a lot of that had

317
00:23:54,880 --> 00:23:57,519
to do with Again, despite the fact that Johnson was

318
00:23:57,599 --> 00:24:03,480
very much cow towing to a minority, elite opinion with

319
00:24:03,559 --> 00:24:06,519
the Civil Rights Act and the and and all of

320
00:24:06,599 --> 00:24:09,839
sixty four and all the kind of incidental and adjacent

321
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:18,599
efforts towards forced integration and you know, social engineering, it

322
00:24:18,960 --> 00:24:22,200
didn't matter. And the president being the country's only nationally

323
00:24:22,200 --> 00:24:29,039
elected representative and being a prime symbol of government, and

324
00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:32,960
you know, kind of the great power that's expressly coded

325
00:24:33,640 --> 00:24:40,160
into Article two as the kind of new political culture

326
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post nineteen thirty three, you know, ossified.

327
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Speaker 1: It.

328
00:24:46,799 --> 00:24:52,400
Speaker 2: Uh, the deep state was no longer willing to abide

329
00:24:54,680 --> 00:25:02,720
an executive who acted like a chief executive. This uh

330
00:25:03,160 --> 00:25:14,119
became more pronounced when Johnson. When Johnson resigned under under pressure.

331
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:20,119
But you know, there was something of the Uh, there's

332
00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:22,799
something of the same treatment in Nixon and Johnson. Ironically,

333
00:25:23,039 --> 00:25:25,960
I mean even again, you know, the the Elger his

334
00:25:27,519 --> 00:25:32,319
question was an essential cause, if not the sole approximate

335
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:35,079
cause of, you know, the hostility in Nixon by the

336
00:25:35,119 --> 00:25:38,119
national press and the deep state. But again it was

337
00:25:38,279 --> 00:25:42,200
Nixon status's outsider, you know. Ninety sixty two Nixon ran

338
00:25:42,319 --> 00:25:48,640
for governor of California, and Nixon was a Californian. And uh,

339
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:51,319
I believe that this is why he had a very

340
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:55,920
pacific centric, if view of Jewish strategic matters. And I

341
00:25:55,960 --> 00:25:58,839
highly recommend that not just as memoirs, but the books

342
00:25:58,839 --> 00:26:02,519
he wrote on Grand strategy in the epoch after he

343
00:26:03,599 --> 00:26:08,960
left office. It indicates a very strong understanding of the

344
00:26:09,519 --> 00:26:14,400
key strategic implications of not just military force deployments, particularly

345
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:21,240
of a strategic nuclear category in the Far East, but

346
00:26:21,519 --> 00:26:26,799
he had an understanding of the outside power in global

347
00:26:26,799 --> 00:26:30,720
economic terms that the orient would have. And this kind

348
00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:33,480
of thing was totally alien to the East Coast establishment.

349
00:26:33,519 --> 00:26:36,720
Among other things, they looked at Nixon as like upstart,

350
00:26:36,759 --> 00:26:43,839
okie trash, punching above his weight. These East Coast reporters

351
00:26:43,880 --> 00:26:48,039
during the campaign for the nineteen sixty two governorship. They

352
00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:50,839
out now just poked fun at Nixon. They made fun

353
00:26:50,920 --> 00:26:53,160
of his clothes, They made fun of the way he talked,

354
00:26:54,519 --> 00:26:58,279
you know, they made fun of his alleged awkwardness, you know,

355
00:26:58,319 --> 00:27:02,920
and kind of lack of in our arsenal manners. That's

356
00:27:02,960 --> 00:27:12,039
the famous, the famous sound bite where Nixon says to

357
00:27:12,079 --> 00:27:15,599
the press afterwards, just think how much you're going to

358
00:27:15,599 --> 00:27:17,799
be missing you want to Nixon to kick around any more, gentlemen,

359
00:27:17,839 --> 00:27:21,400
because this is my last press conference. That was his

360
00:27:21,480 --> 00:27:24,079
concession announcement in sixty two.

361
00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:28,079
Speaker 1: Well, did how much should this carry over from the

362
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:29,920
nineteen sixty campaign?

363
00:27:33,079 --> 00:27:39,079
Speaker 2: That was part of it? Definitely, But I mean he

364
00:27:39,079 --> 00:27:43,200
he his concession there. I mean, Nixon actually looked like

365
00:27:43,200 --> 00:27:46,519
a gentleman in nineteen sixty in a lot of ways,

366
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:52,519
especially especially he never gave up till the end. But

367
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:55,160
there was a lot of dirty pool in that election,

368
00:27:55,319 --> 00:27:58,680
and probably in absolute terms, like in real numbers terms,

369
00:27:58,680 --> 00:28:02,799
it was probably too close to all the kind of

370
00:28:02,839 --> 00:28:05,720
full the kind of full front of assault on Nixon

371
00:28:06,119 --> 00:28:11,799
by the East Coast press amidst uh that kind of

372
00:28:11,880 --> 00:28:16,240
presentation that you know, the national audience had been afforded,

373
00:28:16,799 --> 00:28:21,279
would have would have been somewhat unseemly. I make the

374
00:28:21,279 --> 00:28:23,640
point about sixty two because in a lot of ways,

375
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:36,000
like the perverbial mask dropped what prompted Nixon's comeback. It know,

376
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:40,279
as we've talked about, you know, the catastrophic defeat of

377
00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:45,640
very Goldwater. You know, Goldwater himself was a bizarre placeholder,

378
00:28:46,759 --> 00:28:51,240
but it wasn't just going to a lack of personages

379
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:56,559
who could interface effectively with kind of the the era

380
00:28:56,640 --> 00:28:59,039
of new media, you know, is that like we've talked

381
00:28:59,039 --> 00:29:06,079
about Kennedy's literal eulogy to Taft and profiles and courage,

382
00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:09,240
you know, post Nuremberg, and there was no more American right.

383
00:29:10,039 --> 00:29:12,839
It was it was it was for all practical purposes,

384
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:18,839
illegal in policy terms and and ethical and optical terms.

385
00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:21,839
It was just unthinkable, you know, to have an America

386
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:25,359
First party. So what was the Republican Party. Well, you know,

387
00:29:25,599 --> 00:29:28,480
they got behind Ike because like who could you know,

388
00:29:28,519 --> 00:29:33,160
who could who could disdain Ike? You know, I'm speaking

389
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:38,160
within the bounded rationale, the perception of the time, obviously,

390
00:29:40,039 --> 00:29:42,839
so they picked Goldwater. You know, again, here's this gadfly,

391
00:29:43,279 --> 00:29:47,400
here's this gadfly proto libertarian who goes around you know,

392
00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:53,720
basically like reciting manifestos about why we need to abolish

393
00:29:53,759 --> 00:29:55,640
the I R S. You know, he was. It's a

394
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:59,519
bizarre choice, you know, but again it owed to the

395
00:29:59,599 --> 00:30:04,240
fact that there was now there was now an official

396
00:30:04,279 --> 00:30:08,680
opposition that was precluded from even acting as oh as

397
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:19,039
an official opposition in formal terms. Of course, despite the

398
00:30:19,279 --> 00:30:27,519
hostility to despite the hostility that Johnson, You've got to

399
00:30:27,559 --> 00:30:34,359
understand that the uh, the left, radical establishment and the

400
00:30:34,359 --> 00:30:37,920
deep state, their idea was that by forcing Johnson to

401
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:44,920
step down, that the heir apparent would be Bobby Kennedy. Okay,

402
00:30:46,480 --> 00:30:51,839
the camelot myth was still alive, and well Kennedy, believe

403
00:30:51,880 --> 00:30:55,759
it or not, he had there was actionally some crossover

404
00:30:55,799 --> 00:30:58,599
appeal with Wallace voters, and not just ethnic Irish guys.

405
00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:03,200
Because the hoy ploy don't they don't really think deeply

406
00:31:03,440 --> 00:31:06,000
in policy terms. It didn't matter that like Kennedy was

407
00:31:06,039 --> 00:31:09,480
basically this like radical you know, they he was viewed

408
00:31:09,480 --> 00:31:13,240
as kind of like this he was he was. He

409
00:31:13,279 --> 00:31:15,680
was viewed as kind of like as pugnacious, you know,

410
00:31:15,759 --> 00:31:18,319
like young, like white ethnic type guy who was like

411
00:31:18,359 --> 00:31:20,160
a man of the people. Like however, was guided that

412
00:31:20,200 --> 00:31:24,359
might have been. But the point is he was their

413
00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:30,839
ace in the hole, you know, and he was bizarrely murdered,

414
00:31:30,920 --> 00:31:35,160
you know, by Sir Hans, Sirhan, and that threw everything

415
00:31:35,160 --> 00:31:41,160
into chaos. That made lbj's vice president, Hubert Humphrey the uh,

416
00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:52,319
the front runner. And uh, he was an experienced campaigner,

417
00:31:53,400 --> 00:31:56,799
and he might have uh, you know, he experienced like

418
00:31:56,880 --> 00:32:01,960
literally all day. If LBJ had given him, you know,

419
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:04,440
the loyal support that you know, some what are you

420
00:32:04,519 --> 00:32:08,759
had the right to expect. And in particular, had you know,

421
00:32:08,880 --> 00:32:11,720
kind of greased the skids for him to advocate withdrawal

422
00:32:11,799 --> 00:32:16,440
from Vietnam, he would have probably had a good chance.

423
00:32:16,519 --> 00:32:22,039
But Johnson was understandably better by now. And Johnson's Johnson's

424
00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:25,240
Johnson's nose, And if you listen, you can find it

425
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:29,119
on youtubef you listen to Johnson's discussions with Senator Everett

426
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:32,920
Dirkson from this time. It's really revealing. Johnson's basically like,

427
00:32:32,960 --> 00:32:35,200
fuck you, I'm gonna burn it down. You know, I'm

428
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:37,839
gonna burn I'm gonna burn the proverbial house down. I

429
00:32:37,839 --> 00:32:39,640
don't care if the Republicans take over. I'd like to

430
00:32:39,640 --> 00:32:41,160
see him take over after what you did to me,

431
00:32:41,559 --> 00:32:43,799
like see you later, you know, fuck you very much.

432
00:32:46,839 --> 00:32:50,119
Speaker 1: In addition, and you can see you can see him

433
00:32:50,160 --> 00:32:51,480
saying it just like that.

434
00:32:51,839 --> 00:32:57,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, one hundred percent. And uh in

435
00:32:57,519 --> 00:33:02,759
addition at sixty eight, obviously, you know, was was Wallace's run,

436
00:33:05,279 --> 00:33:13,000
and uh, as a result, you know, uh, Nixon won

437
00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:21,319
fairly comfortably. It was, uh, Nixon got Nixon got close

438
00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:28,799
to thirty He got thirty one nixt Nixon pulled thirty

439
00:33:28,839 --> 00:33:31,599
one million, seven hundred, ten thousand and seventy votes, the

440
00:33:31,680 --> 00:33:34,799
Humphreys thirty million, eight hundred ninety thousand and fifty five.

441
00:33:36,720 --> 00:33:41,000
Wallace posted, uh, just under nine million, five hundred thousand.

442
00:33:41,359 --> 00:33:45,440
So an electoral in the electoral votes was three h

443
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:51,680
two Nickson one end. He went home free forty six Wallas.

444
00:33:51,720 --> 00:33:56,359
The uh the so, I mean it doesn't sound like

445
00:33:56,400 --> 00:34:00,119
a huge margin, Okay, but in in actual terms, like

446
00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:02,440
Nixon's victory was, I mean, it was, it was, it was.

447
00:34:02,720 --> 00:34:07,720
It was a definite, It was a definitive statement. Okay. However,

448
00:34:09,280 --> 00:34:13,400
Wallace's spoiler campaign it meant that Nixon was a minority victor.

449
00:34:13,599 --> 00:34:17,320
In absolute terms that came out to forty three point

450
00:34:17,400 --> 00:34:20,159
four percent of the popular vote, which was the lowest

451
00:34:20,159 --> 00:34:24,960
percentage of an elected president since Wilson won the ninety

452
00:34:24,960 --> 00:34:29,119
twelve election. People forget Woodrow. Wilson ran in a four

453
00:34:29,159 --> 00:34:33,639
man race. He ran against incumbent President Willimar Taft, He

454
00:34:33,719 --> 00:34:36,679
ran against Teddy Roosevelt who was on the Progressive or

455
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:41,519
Bullamouse Party, and he ran against Eugene depths like the

456
00:34:41,559 --> 00:34:46,800
Socialist Party. Okay, it was also there was a low

457
00:34:46,840 --> 00:34:50,039
poll count to only sixty one percent of registered voters

458
00:34:50,079 --> 00:34:56,119
turned out. So the refrain, the refrain of media became

459
00:34:56,239 --> 00:34:59,079
oh Nixon, Nixon. Only Nixon only got twenty seven percent

460
00:34:59,079 --> 00:35:01,000
of all voters. You know what kind of it mandates

461
00:35:01,039 --> 00:35:03,960
that he's not legitimate. And they bandied this over and

462
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:06,239
over and over and over again. You know, Nixon is

463
00:35:06,239 --> 00:35:08,880
not a legitimate president. Nixon, Nixon. He didn't carry a

464
00:35:08,880 --> 00:35:11,559
single big city, you know, like Nix. Nixon's are racist,

465
00:35:11,639 --> 00:35:14,599
you know, like Nixon. These Wallace voters, you know, they

466
00:35:15,119 --> 00:35:17,320
only did what they did to like, you know, elect Nixon.

467
00:35:17,360 --> 00:35:18,760
And you know, we know what they are. You know,

468
00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:22,480
they're they're those Southern people. And we just went on

469
00:35:22,519 --> 00:35:24,559
and on and on and on and on, you know,

470
00:35:24,679 --> 00:35:28,000
like it was like I said, it was it did

471
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:32,239
think about the think about the campaign against Trump. You know,

472
00:35:32,280 --> 00:35:35,280
this was like this was like the one point zero version, okay,

473
00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:39,239
just this constant effort to undermine the legitimacy of Nixon's

474
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:42,519
presidency at every turn. And I said, to the applications

475
00:35:42,519 --> 00:35:45,039
of this, you know, Nixon takes the oath of office

476
00:35:45,039 --> 00:35:50,760
in nineteen sixty nine. In nineteen sixty eight, over eleven

477
00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:57,519
thousand Americans were KIA and tens of thousands wounded. You know,

478
00:35:58,119 --> 00:36:02,719
the Soviet Union was had not yet achieved parody, but

479
00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:07,079
uh it it had. It had it had a nuclear

480
00:36:07,199 --> 00:36:13,280
arsenal that could absolutely devastate Europe, the United States and

481
00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:16,880
the general war. Okay, and the technological gap was was

482
00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:23,920
rapidly closing as revery of deeper parodies. You know, relations

483
00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:28,280
between pet King and Mosquea were deteriorating, but the Communist

484
00:36:28,280 --> 00:36:32,679
block and not get fractured. I mean, uh, aiming to

485
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:37,400
undermine a wartime president in this regard as unthinkable and

486
00:36:37,559 --> 00:36:39,639
just I mean to take it back from it to Johnson.

487
00:36:40,119 --> 00:36:43,679
When you think about Kronka going at TV and saying

488
00:36:43,719 --> 00:36:47,880
the Vietnam War was lost, you know, and and attacking

489
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:50,960
the unwillingness the John's administration to open the decision making

490
00:36:51,039 --> 00:36:54,719
process to public scrutiny and time of war like imagine

491
00:36:54,719 --> 00:36:58,880
if imagine if in World War Two, imagine after Casserine Pass,

492
00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:02,000
you know, when when the American Expeditionary Force met the

493
00:37:02,079 --> 00:37:06,280
Wehrmacht in North Africa, like they were humiliatingly wiped out.

494
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:09,000
Like imagine after that happened, Walter Winchel went in the

495
00:37:09,079 --> 00:37:12,079
radio and said, the war is lost. Mister Roosevelt is

496
00:37:12,079 --> 00:37:14,679
a liar, you know, like I mean you imagine that,

497
00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:17,320
like you would have been immediately arrested, that never would

498
00:37:17,320 --> 00:37:20,920
have been tolerated. You know, this, this, this is truly

499
00:37:20,960 --> 00:37:24,800
insane that this was allowed to happen. And you know, people,

500
00:37:25,440 --> 00:37:31,599
even people not ideologically inclined particularly, simply looked at it as, oh, well,

501
00:37:31,639 --> 00:37:35,119
that that's just politics as usual. You know, it's it's

502
00:37:35,199 --> 00:37:37,840
it's incredible, it's the most it was kind of the

503
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:41,239
second Revolution in my opinion, after the nineteen thirty three

504
00:37:43,519 --> 00:37:49,880
New Deal Revolution. But because I missed this context that

505
00:37:50,119 --> 00:37:53,559
Nixon quite literally told his staff the press is the enemy.

506
00:37:54,280 --> 00:37:57,599
He was quota is saying that to Hallered him and

507
00:37:57,760 --> 00:38:01,159
I believe the news is concerned nobody in the press

508
00:38:01,199 --> 00:38:07,800
of a friend. They're all enemies the uh, you know

509
00:38:07,840 --> 00:38:13,400
that the men, as Paul Johnson relayed, the men and

510
00:38:13,480 --> 00:38:16,960
the movement that broke Linton Johnson's authority and broke his

511
00:38:17,079 --> 00:38:21,800
back in political terms in sixty eight, they turned their

512
00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:26,760
gun sights proverbically on Nixon. And on top of that,

513
00:38:26,920 --> 00:38:29,719
they had even more powerful allies because they had people

514
00:38:29,760 --> 00:38:31,880
with long memories. So we're quite literally the friends of

515
00:38:31,920 --> 00:38:33,800
alger Hits. You know.

516
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:35,760
Speaker 1: It.

517
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:41,719
Speaker 2: Uh, they'll say it became it became something of a

518
00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:45,559
understand too that agree to which this was like a

519
00:38:45,599 --> 00:38:52,400
sea change and kind of the course of American thought.

520
00:38:52,679 --> 00:38:56,800
It was an issue of first impression for the American

521
00:38:56,880 --> 00:39:00,599
media or for any other you know, kind of deep

522
00:39:00,639 --> 00:39:04,480
state actor or adjacent power based don't want to diminish

523
00:39:04,559 --> 00:39:10,559
the presidency. Like to that point, really the only opposition

524
00:39:10,639 --> 00:39:13,679
to a strong chief executive, particularly at war, had come

525
00:39:13,679 --> 00:39:17,239
from Congress and specifically the Senate, you know, like FDR

526
00:39:19,239 --> 00:39:22,000
who whateveryone thinks of him, and we certainly have nothing

527
00:39:22,039 --> 00:39:23,880
likes to say to him in these quarter about him

528
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:27,639
in these quarters, he was highly quotable he said, the

529
00:39:27,639 --> 00:39:29,239
only way to do anything in American government is to

530
00:39:29,239 --> 00:39:31,719
bypass the Senate. And like people truckled when he said that,

531
00:39:31,760 --> 00:39:35,800
but he was being a dealy serious, you know. Uh

532
00:39:36,280 --> 00:39:40,320
Wendell Willicky, you know, who was his one time opponent,

533
00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:47,679
apparently apparently said apparently said to Roosevelt like subsequent that

534
00:39:47,760 --> 00:39:50,719
he He's like, look, okay, I understand, I quote devoted

535
00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:56,199
my life to saving America from the Senate under FDR. Obviously,

536
00:39:56,320 --> 00:40:03,800
but even Truman, the press, academia, the entire commentariat, especially

537
00:40:03,800 --> 00:40:09,679
in foreign policy matters, they were firmly behind the presidents.

538
00:40:11,039 --> 00:40:14,280
The view of Congress as being full of opportunists. He's

539
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:17,639
kind of parasitic career is you know, like men who

540
00:40:19,039 --> 00:40:22,199
were possicly looking to obscure the reality of policy and

541
00:40:22,280 --> 00:40:26,360
favorite cheap polemic, you know, and uh to basically just

542
00:40:26,400 --> 00:40:28,840
you know, kind of like guarantee their own permanent incumbency,

543
00:40:31,199 --> 00:40:38,159
you know, the uh, the even the New Republic. This

544
00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:40,920
was in nineteen fifty three, which was you know, when

545
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:47,320
Truman was approaching kind of isn't the dear of of

546
00:40:47,119 --> 00:40:49,960
of approval in the court of public opinion, you know,

547
00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:52,760
because the Korean War was an incredibly unpopular war, especially

548
00:40:52,760 --> 00:40:56,360
the dragon. One of the things the New Republic, uh

549
00:40:56,760 --> 00:41:01,599
was quoted saying, Oh, the gravitation and power into the

550
00:41:01,679 --> 00:41:04,280
ends of Congress at the expense of the executive is

551
00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:07,199
a phenomenon so fatuous as to be incredible if the

552
00:41:07,239 --> 00:41:11,039
facts were not so patent. That's the New Republic, you know,

553
00:41:11,199 --> 00:41:16,000
which in the fifties was dividing its time between screaming

554
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:18,480
that everybody in America is racist and and talking about

555
00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:21,039
how great the Soviet Union is. You know what this wasn't.

556
00:41:21,360 --> 00:41:23,199
This wasn't the Wall Street Journal, and it wasn't a

557
00:41:23,199 --> 00:41:25,679
bunch of John Bircher's and it wasn't a bunch of

558
00:41:25,880 --> 00:41:29,440
you know, like dissident America firsters who you know, had

559
00:41:29,519 --> 00:41:33,159
uh had hoped to see Robert Taff become the president.

560
00:41:33,239 --> 00:41:35,320
This was this is like literally a bunch of reds

561
00:41:35,320 --> 00:41:49,639
like saying this. Eisenhower repeatedly invoked executive privilege and on

562
00:41:49,920 --> 00:41:55,679
all kinds of matters to deny information about government activities

563
00:41:56,400 --> 00:42:00,119
to the House and American Activities Committee, and uh, he

564
00:42:00,159 --> 00:42:04,960
was universally applauded by media. There was a there was

565
00:42:04,960 --> 00:42:09,000
a universal consensus that there was no right to know

566
00:42:09,079 --> 00:42:14,599
what went on in the inner councils of foreign policy

567
00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:17,719
and uh, the machinery of war and peace. You know,

568
00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:19,679
it was to take fast hole for people to think

569
00:42:19,719 --> 00:42:23,119
they had a right to know about that, you know,

570
00:42:23,199 --> 00:42:26,360
owing to the national security implications and the fact that

571
00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:28,800
this is not something that is up for debate. You know,

572
00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:32,719
you can't you can't reduce war and peace questions, particularly

573
00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:37,760
owing to the complexity of the Cold War as it were,

574
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:42,280
you know, to to catch phrases or you know, bump

575
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:44,239
or stereo polemic as it were. You know, like it

576
00:42:44,280 --> 00:42:47,559
was absurd to suggest that there's auld be any transparency

577
00:42:48,119 --> 00:42:52,039
on matters of national security and the decision to wage war.

578
00:42:53,920 --> 00:42:58,760
And I mean this was uh, this was this was

579
00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:02,519
you know, a decade. This was fifteen to This attended

580
00:43:02,920 --> 00:43:13,960
fifteen years before Johnson's unceremonious, de facto removal from office

581
00:43:14,039 --> 00:43:18,679
and obviously you know, the subsequent and more fervent treatment Nixon.

582
00:43:18,960 --> 00:43:20,880
So just for context, you know, like we're not talking

583
00:43:20,920 --> 00:43:29,519
about like decades here. It was really you know, Kennedy's dictum.

584
00:43:29,599 --> 00:43:32,719
Also part of this was him i think, trying to

585
00:43:32,760 --> 00:43:39,039
show a strong face contra Cruise chief. But h Kennedy

586
00:43:39,920 --> 00:43:43,280
literally stated in ninety sixty is the president alone and

587
00:43:43,360 --> 00:43:46,119
must make the major decisions on our foreign policy. And

588
00:43:49,079 --> 00:43:52,199
that was what was demanded, you know, not just not

589
00:43:52,360 --> 00:43:57,719
just by the the electorate, but also you know, the

590
00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:02,519
media establishment in and then angel security establishment. You know,

591
00:44:02,599 --> 00:44:10,760
particularly when executive decision ismm in that capacity included the

592
00:44:10,840 --> 00:44:14,280
decision to kill ten to millions of people and you know,

593
00:44:14,320 --> 00:44:15,800
a general nuclear war.

594
00:44:18,039 --> 00:44:18,440
Speaker 1: So this.

595
00:44:20,360 --> 00:44:26,639
Speaker 2: It wasn't nobody really talked this way about Article two

596
00:44:27,400 --> 00:44:30,920
or about the presidency itself until the Golf of Tonkin.

597
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:33,199
And I know that people have bad feelings about the

598
00:44:33,239 --> 00:44:37,920
Golf of Tonkin, and I'm not saying they shouldn't, but

599
00:44:38,039 --> 00:44:41,280
for context, and I want to go too far fuel

600
00:44:41,320 --> 00:44:46,119
in this topic because it's highly tangential to the mean subject.

601
00:44:48,679 --> 00:44:54,519
There's always abfuscation when you're talking about the decision to

602
00:44:54,519 --> 00:44:58,760
go to war and how it's presented to the public.

603
00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:02,480
I mean, even the best of conditions as it were,

604
00:45:03,760 --> 00:45:09,519
but post Nuremberg, when it quite literally was declared that

605
00:45:10,079 --> 00:45:15,800
war as an answrument a national policy is illegal. There's

606
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:19,480
this kind of tortured logic that was engaged in in

607
00:45:19,599 --> 00:45:23,880
executive policy circles. About what constituted to cause us belly

608
00:45:25,079 --> 00:45:28,519
and this kind of commitment to euphemizing the fact that

609
00:45:28,639 --> 00:45:33,039
war was underway at all. Everything was a police action

610
00:45:33,519 --> 00:45:38,519
or an intervention necessary to offset a communist violationist sovereignty.

611
00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:41,480
It became this kind of like literal like lawyer ball

612
00:45:41,840 --> 00:45:45,880
by which everybody in the executive chain of command tried

613
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:50,199
to find a way to not admit that war was underway. Okay,

614
00:45:51,920 --> 00:45:56,320
the Gulba Taguan resolution has to be understood within that context,

615
00:45:56,960 --> 00:46:01,800
all right. Even that said, that was not the right

616
00:46:01,840 --> 00:46:05,480
way to proceed, and there was a collective security arrangement

617
00:46:06,440 --> 00:46:12,639
that was dedicated to the defense of South Vietnam. But

618
00:46:12,760 --> 00:46:19,159
such that it was, the decision was made to procure

619
00:46:19,199 --> 00:46:23,800
the war mandate within the parameters of this narrative. Okay,

620
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:30,480
But that was a starting point for criticism of what

621
00:46:30,679 --> 00:46:37,719
became known not just punitively and kind of colloquial terms

622
00:46:37,719 --> 00:46:43,360
of on the op ed pages, became too loom conceptually

623
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:49,199
in people's minds as this real and dangerous phenomena the

624
00:46:49,280 --> 00:46:53,719
Imperial executive. It was the Gulvatagan resolution and discussion around

625
00:46:53,719 --> 00:46:58,320
it that really represents the kind of see change in

626
00:46:58,639 --> 00:47:03,000
how executive authority. He was viewed okay, such that any

627
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:06,239
one moment can be identified as the point at which

628
00:47:06,440 --> 00:47:23,599
things have changed. Now. What Nixon did to protect is

629
00:47:23,639 --> 00:47:31,360
an ascent administration. His senior White House advisors were Bob

630
00:47:31,440 --> 00:47:36,239
Haldeman and John Erlckman, both of whom are villainized to

631
00:47:36,320 --> 00:47:44,760
various degrees. Even my people should know better. Hallman, Erlckman

632
00:47:45,199 --> 00:47:49,079
and Henry Kissinger were kind of the key to the

633
00:47:49,159 --> 00:47:54,440
Knicks administration and advisory capacities. Kissinger's role in this regard

634
00:47:54,480 --> 00:47:59,679
is interesting, not just because he and Nixon were one

635
00:48:00,119 --> 00:48:05,159
my opinion on how they waged the Cold War and

636
00:48:05,599 --> 00:48:12,920
their vision for resolving it, quite literally ending it, it

637
00:48:12,920 --> 00:48:17,800
could not have come about that that that that pattern

638
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:23,599
of conceptual variables could not have come about without the

639
00:48:23,599 --> 00:48:26,559
participation of both men. It's a It's an instance of

640
00:48:26,639 --> 00:48:30,159
kind of a shared strategic vision, the nuances of which

641
00:48:32,280 --> 00:48:34,559
were so myriad. It's rare that there could be a

642
00:48:34,559 --> 00:48:36,960
true meeting of that minds in their regard, but that

643
00:48:37,079 --> 00:48:40,960
someone explains the bond between Kissinger and Nixon. It wasn't

644
00:48:40,960 --> 00:48:45,639
a bond of friendship, but beyond that, Kissinger developed an

645
00:48:45,639 --> 00:48:50,480
outsized influence in the Nixon White House. I don't even

646
00:48:50,559 --> 00:48:53,920
mean that punitively, but I mean the reason why the

647
00:48:53,920 --> 00:49:00,679
evil Watergate Kissinger sort of joined Hollmen and Erlicman as

648
00:49:01,440 --> 00:49:03,719
in kind of the true inner circle, Like that's why

649
00:49:06,679 --> 00:49:08,360
whatever you can say to Hollerman and erlic Man, these

650
00:49:08,360 --> 00:49:12,239
guys were incredibly competent people and they were rapidly devoted

651
00:49:12,239 --> 00:49:18,159
to Nixon. That is true. Backing that up, if you

652
00:49:18,199 --> 00:49:20,239
want to think about this in football terms as like

653
00:49:20,280 --> 00:49:24,800
this the secondary of the Nixon White House Knixon speech

654
00:49:24,800 --> 00:49:29,679
writers and you know, sort of media element. It was

655
00:49:29,719 --> 00:49:34,679
William Sapphire, Pat Buchanan, Ray Price, and David Gergen and

656
00:49:34,760 --> 00:49:39,519
Lee Hubner. This was arguably the best like media speech

657
00:49:39,559 --> 00:49:44,960
writer team ever assembled until until Reagan. Okay, so I

658
00:49:44,960 --> 00:49:50,840
mean this this was a crack administration team that only

659
00:49:50,840 --> 00:49:53,800
had Nixon. Nixon and Kissinger developed the first true kind

660
00:49:53,800 --> 00:49:59,800
of clear geo strategic geopolitical strategy for America. So size

661
00:49:59,880 --> 00:50:04,480
how or left office. But one would think that this

662
00:50:04,559 --> 00:50:06,599
is kind of the ultimate pr machine, you know, like

663
00:50:06,639 --> 00:50:13,719
what could go wrong? You know Nixon? Also, I mean

664
00:50:13,719 --> 00:50:16,000
if you listened to the Nickson tapes as well as

665
00:50:16,199 --> 00:50:20,800
you know, read Kissinger's memoirs, both which I highly recommend

666
00:50:20,800 --> 00:50:30,280
to people. Nixon had a clearer view of the Vietnam War.

667
00:50:31,719 --> 00:50:34,079
He viewed it as a short term problem. He didn't

668
00:50:34,119 --> 00:50:39,840
really view it as a quagmire. The things that truly

669
00:50:39,960 --> 00:50:48,559
mattered was solidifying in NATO, solidifying specifically, you know, the

670
00:50:48,599 --> 00:50:52,199
Atlantis syst alliance with the UK, which at that time

671
00:50:52,280 --> 00:50:59,800
appeared to be in potential jeopardy, and specifically breaking pay

672
00:50:59,840 --> 00:51:03,840
case away from Moscow and fracturing, you know, kind of

673
00:51:03,880 --> 00:51:11,519
the key the key alliance structure of the Communist block,

674
00:51:13,679 --> 00:51:19,000
This idea of Vietnam the unwinnable war, that's revisionism of

675
00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:26,000
a punitive sort. Creighton Abrams, who was a brilliant combat commander,

676
00:51:26,480 --> 00:51:36,119
you know, had replaced Westmorland. The US Army had very

677
00:51:36,159 --> 00:51:41,559
much abandoned what had, you know, the kind of strategic

678
00:51:41,599 --> 00:51:49,000
hamlet orientation in favor of annihilating the People's Army of

679
00:51:49,079 --> 00:51:57,960
Vietnam to fairly great effect. Effective deployment of massive firepower

680
00:51:59,079 --> 00:52:08,440
to neutralize the andes the enemy, had the widening of

681
00:52:08,480 --> 00:52:13,960
the war to deprive the enemy of key tactical havens

682
00:52:16,199 --> 00:52:26,800
that basically unrestricted bombing in North Vietnam two prevent you know,

683
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:33,119
effective utilization of of their own combined arms brought to bear,

684
00:52:34,760 --> 00:52:39,360
which is most exemplified by Linebacker two stopping in the

685
00:52:39,400 --> 00:52:48,280
Eastern offensive in its tracks. But you know, Nixon, Nixon,

686
00:52:48,519 --> 00:52:51,280
the idea of Nixon as this president kind of in

687
00:52:51,119 --> 00:52:56,719
the in thesane, the scenario is LBJ, you know, pouring

688
00:52:56,719 --> 00:52:59,159
over the map a Caisson, the scale model of Caisson,

689
00:53:00,119 --> 00:53:03,360
having no idea how to proceed in the war, you know,

690
00:53:03,480 --> 00:53:09,719
being kind of being kind of entrapped and and it

691
00:53:09,840 --> 00:53:17,199
duped at every opportunity, you know, by the enemy. That

692
00:53:17,199 --> 00:53:26,559
that was not the case at all. Even before a

693
00:53:26,639 --> 00:53:30,639
single shot was fired between the People's Republic of China

694
00:53:30,679 --> 00:53:36,719
and the Soviet Union, Nixon was adamant that friendly relations

695
00:53:36,719 --> 00:53:39,880
with China could be brought about by intelligent diplomacy, that

696
00:53:40,000 --> 00:53:42,320
China could be decoupled from Russia, and at the end,

697
00:53:44,559 --> 00:53:48,880
the Soviet Communist Party could be fatally undermined without a

698
00:53:48,920 --> 00:53:56,480
general war. And indeed all this came to bear, and

699
00:53:56,559 --> 00:53:58,800
in terms of the raw, in terms of the raw

700
00:53:58,960 --> 00:54:04,159
successes Nixon's administration, I folloso the things that I think

701
00:54:04,159 --> 00:54:18,880
are inarguable again well, imposing unsustainable or what would have

702
00:54:18,880 --> 00:54:23,599
been unsustainable attrition on the North Vietnamese mix. It scaled

703
00:54:24,519 --> 00:54:28,360
down the US military presence from its peak when he

704
00:54:28,400 --> 00:54:31,800
took office at just enter fire to fifty thousand men.

705
00:54:31,960 --> 00:54:37,719
The twenty four thousand spending decline from twenty five billion

706
00:54:37,760 --> 00:54:42,400
a year under Johnson when Johnson left office to less

707
00:54:42,400 --> 00:54:45,000
than three billion. A lot of this had to do

708
00:54:45,039 --> 00:54:50,079
with more intelligent allocation of resources in Southeast Asia, like

709
00:54:50,119 --> 00:54:54,199
in the Battle theater, directly military as well as infrastructural

710
00:54:54,199 --> 00:55:02,840
and ancillary. Flexible use of firepower and deployment being used

711
00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:06,719
in Cambodia in seventy lows in seventy one, and again

712
00:55:06,800 --> 00:55:14,400
too the relentless strategic bombing in North Vietnam in nineteen

713
00:55:14,400 --> 00:55:25,760
seventy two, which all of which kept kept the leadership

714
00:55:26,280 --> 00:55:30,599
Cadre and Hanoi off balance, especially as the death of

715
00:55:30,639 --> 00:55:37,599
Ho Chi Minh people forget too. Nixon zealously pursued peace

716
00:55:37,639 --> 00:55:43,880
negotiations with Hanoi. He didn't have a great deal of

717
00:55:43,880 --> 00:55:51,800
optimism that a conventional peace treaty could be achieved, you

718
00:55:51,800 --> 00:55:56,639
know where by the status quo would be unconditionally reinstated.

719
00:55:58,159 --> 00:56:02,400
But within the context of what became the sound of

720
00:56:02,440 --> 00:56:09,320
Soviets split. He realized that, you know, even before, even

721
00:56:09,320 --> 00:56:12,079
before the state visited China, even before it became apparent

722
00:56:12,320 --> 00:56:16,320
the degree to which the respective political cultures were no

723
00:56:16,360 --> 00:56:19,880
longer aligned in any meaningful way, you know, any any

724
00:56:19,960 --> 00:56:22,920
kind of guarantee from China that it would hedge against.

725
00:56:23,039 --> 00:56:26,239
You know, the Soviets client in North Vietnam was a

726
00:56:26,320 --> 00:56:36,480
victory in this regard, and it was National Security Memorandum fourteen,

727
00:56:39,519 --> 00:56:48,159
which was issued in UH on a February fourth, nineteen

728
00:56:48,239 --> 00:57:00,119
sixty nine. The UH outlined uh Nixon's view that was

729
00:57:00,159 --> 00:57:06,159
imperative to the Court China. This was backed up the

730
00:57:06,199 --> 00:57:12,960
following September, after the Son of Soviet Border War that

731
00:57:13,079 --> 00:57:24,639
brought the irrespective countries back from the brink. Nixon secretly

732
00:57:25,199 --> 00:57:30,320
communicated to A Breshnev that an event of a general

733
00:57:30,440 --> 00:57:35,840
war between the Soviet Union and China where the Soviet

734
00:57:35,920 --> 00:57:39,239
Union struck first, the United States intervened on behalf of

735
00:57:39,239 --> 00:57:43,599
the People's Republic at China. Kissinger said that this was

736
00:57:43,639 --> 00:57:45,719
the most ballsy move and I think it's in the

737
00:57:45,760 --> 00:57:53,400
most darren step but of the Knickson presidency, which it was.

738
00:57:53,559 --> 00:57:56,440
And even though Kissinger didn't say this. I guarantee you

739
00:57:56,480 --> 00:58:01,039
that Kissinger himself, you know, like leaked this, uh, the

740
00:58:01,159 --> 00:58:05,719
secret communicate to the Chinese. And I'm sure, I'm absolutely

741
00:58:05,719 --> 00:58:08,360
positive that that's one of the things that finessed the

742
00:58:08,360 --> 00:58:11,199
opening of negotiations when Nicks and a Kissenger went to visit.

743
00:58:15,000 --> 00:58:24,320
You know, it's uh. Nix had made the point at

744
00:58:24,320 --> 00:58:27,599
that time a quarter of the world's people lived in

745
00:58:27,599 --> 00:58:35,760
communists China, and whether or not they had the ability

746
00:58:35,840 --> 00:58:40,960
and the gumption and the ambition theyve bec was superpower

747
00:58:40,960 --> 00:58:44,119
in their own right, it didn't matter because if they

748
00:58:44,199 --> 00:58:50,079
could be turned against the Warsaw Pact, it would mean

749
00:58:50,079 --> 00:58:55,960
that there was an overwhelming world consensus against an enemy

750
00:58:56,000 --> 00:58:59,559
in Moscow which had purported to you know, essentially be

751
00:58:59,679 --> 00:59:01,480
the lead year of the Global South as we think

752
00:59:01,519 --> 00:59:04,880
of it today. You know, so from the top down,

753
00:59:06,039 --> 00:59:12,239
this was brilliant power of politics, sight unseen since Bismarck

754
00:59:12,480 --> 00:59:24,079
in my opinion, but was ultimately put the paper on

755
00:59:25,960 --> 00:59:33,320
as regards the peace agreement in Vietnam, and again this

756
00:59:33,400 --> 00:59:37,239
is uh, this is basically forgotten history today going to

757
00:59:37,280 --> 00:59:39,599
the fact that it was on cere want to see

758
00:59:39,639 --> 00:59:45,360
abandoned quite literally to Shane Nixon, which is which is unconstonable.

759
00:59:47,159 --> 00:59:55,280
January twenty second, nineteen seventy three, Rogers, Secretary of State

760
00:59:55,360 --> 01:00:06,239
Rodgers and uh laid uptae his UH Vietnamese counterpart. It

761
01:00:06,320 --> 01:00:13,199
made it possible for America to fully disengage from Vietnam.

762
01:00:13,320 --> 01:00:18,719
It demanded that North Vietnam recognized the sovereign together the

763
01:00:18,719 --> 01:00:24,039
Republic of Vietnam, and an event when he direct attacked

764
01:00:26,039 --> 01:00:35,920
America would America would pursue a massive retaliation to substantially

765
01:00:36,000 --> 01:00:40,440
that threat. The agreement reserve the right to maintain carrier

766
01:00:40,480 --> 01:00:45,360
battle groups and Vietnamese will territorial waters, and call upon

767
01:00:45,920 --> 01:00:50,480
the aircraft station in Taiwan and Thailand towards that purpose.

768
01:00:53,480 --> 01:00:57,760
Presumably it's only include included conventional forces, but I believe

769
01:00:57,760 --> 01:01:02,840
it was left deliberately ambiguous. To say this was a

770
01:01:02,840 --> 01:01:10,599
formidable feat of extrication from an active conflict while maintaining

771
01:01:11,719 --> 01:01:18,719
credible threat potential would be a gross understatement. So this

772
01:01:18,960 --> 01:01:23,440
was you know, this is I. I click these things.

773
01:01:23,519 --> 01:01:26,599
I take these things off, not because I'm some kind

774
01:01:26,639 --> 01:01:31,679
of Nixon a hagiographer, but it's important to set the

775
01:01:31,679 --> 01:01:36,159
record straight. You know that this idea that the Nicks

776
01:01:36,159 --> 01:01:39,000
administration was some failed administration or Nixon with this kind

777
01:01:39,039 --> 01:01:43,199
of like weird paranoid eye just sort of presiding over

778
01:01:43,960 --> 01:01:50,119
this Vietnam quagmire. You know, nobody else can point to

779
01:01:50,159 --> 01:01:58,119
a policy resume that's successful other than other than Reagan,

780
01:01:59,440 --> 01:02:05,840
in my opinion, and in my opinion writing and capitalized

781
01:02:05,840 --> 01:02:12,400
more on circumstance than you know, he was the key

782
01:02:13,719 --> 01:02:19,360
variable in any of the outcomes from which his administration

783
01:02:19,440 --> 01:02:24,199
is so benefited. In fact, I'd argue that I'd argue

784
01:02:24,199 --> 01:02:28,800
that the collapse of the Warsaw Pact the nineteen eighty

785
01:02:28,880 --> 01:02:32,760
nine know directly to the accounishments of Nixon and Kissinger

786
01:02:32,800 --> 01:02:41,159
that are under discussion here. So what was Watergate and

787
01:02:41,199 --> 01:02:44,800
why did it happen? I mean, like we just discussed

788
01:02:46,880 --> 01:02:50,440
all of the uh, all the kind of all the

789
01:02:50,480 --> 01:02:54,079
kind of key factors were in place to attack the

790
01:02:54,159 --> 01:03:01,480
Nixon presidency. You know what caused them to?

791
01:03:02,159 --> 01:03:04,199
Speaker 1: Can you talk about can you talk about the nineteen

792
01:03:04,239 --> 01:03:09,559
seventy two election, because it was yeah, okay, sorry, no.

793
01:03:09,599 --> 01:03:13,199
Speaker 2: It's all right. You know, like we talked about a

794
01:03:13,199 --> 01:03:25,440
minute ago before, before of the Tangent, there was this

795
01:03:25,559 --> 01:03:30,000
idea that there was this claim, you know, that the

796
01:03:30,079 --> 01:03:33,079
Nixon presidency wasn't really legitimate. You know, it was a

797
01:03:33,119 --> 01:03:43,000
three way race, record low voter turnout. You know, the

798
01:03:43,079 --> 01:03:47,639
claim was by Nixon's enemies and the establishment. This was

799
01:03:47,679 --> 01:03:55,679
sort of an accident of fate. But really what really

800
01:03:55,719 --> 01:03:57,199
truly tipped the balance.

801
01:03:59,639 --> 01:03:59,840
Speaker 3: Was a.

802
01:04:01,559 --> 01:04:08,559
Speaker 2: Was a couple of things, these disasters of the early

803
01:04:08,599 --> 01:04:15,239
nineteen seventies. Despite the fact that the Draft was not

804
01:04:15,400 --> 01:04:17,920
long for this earth, and Nixon made that clear. Plus

805
01:04:17,960 --> 01:04:21,639
anybody who kind of understood warrant piece questions could see

806
01:04:21,639 --> 01:04:29,400
that the Draft was temporarily expanded and its net, so

807
01:04:29,519 --> 01:04:33,480
to speak, was widened, owing to the invasion of Cambodia,

808
01:04:35,239 --> 01:04:40,119
which was sold by a hostle media as the violation of,

809
01:04:40,199 --> 01:04:43,320
you know, the sovereignty of Cambodia, and Nixon widening the war,

810
01:04:43,440 --> 01:04:48,360
presumably for imperialist reasons. Cambodia was a haven for the

811
01:04:48,440 --> 01:04:58,360
National Liberation Front and a key operational base for the enemy.

812
01:04:58,519 --> 01:05:05,800
To not assault it prior to them entering negotiations for

813
01:05:06,079 --> 01:05:11,599
extrication from the conflict would have been grossly negligent, but

814
01:05:12,199 --> 01:05:16,960
the way it was presented it led directly to this

815
01:05:17,360 --> 01:05:21,280
mass wave of campus protests which then culminated in disasters

816
01:05:21,360 --> 01:05:23,960
like you know, they be killing of students at Kent

817
01:05:24,039 --> 01:05:27,719
State and things like this that kind of breathed like

818
01:05:27,800 --> 01:05:35,199
new life into the the ulification of Nixon. Now, what

819
01:05:35,239 --> 01:05:40,079
this also did was it led the Democrats. There's there

820
01:05:40,119 --> 01:05:41,719
was there was a there was more than a small

821
01:05:41,960 --> 01:05:44,840
component delusion. Hear could that reminds me? That's not unlike

822
01:05:44,880 --> 01:05:47,559
the way that the New York Times insisted like Hillary

823
01:05:47,559 --> 01:05:52,760
Clinton was a good candidate. The Democrats became convinced that

824
01:05:53,719 --> 01:05:56,159
there's gonna be this youth uprising that would bring down

825
01:05:56,239 --> 01:05:59,119
Nixon at the polls. You know, like youth culture never

826
01:05:59,159 --> 01:06:05,679
impacts president outcomes that way, electoral outcomes. The media insisted

827
01:06:05,719 --> 01:06:08,360
that like Nixon was in deep trouble going into the

828
01:06:08,440 --> 01:06:12,800
ninety seventy two election, they nominated George McGovern, who truly

829
01:06:12,880 --> 01:06:17,719
was a radical. He was Students for a Democratic Society

830
01:06:17,760 --> 01:06:21,159
types love McGovern. His platform was literally an immediate and

831
01:06:21,280 --> 01:06:25,599
total withdrawal from Vietnam and just like an abandonment of

832
01:06:25,599 --> 01:06:30,599
of it as a as an contested theater. A uh,

833
01:06:32,199 --> 01:06:35,440
A dramatic increase in the welfare state, you know, a

834
01:06:35,519 --> 01:06:40,440
dramatic increase and enforced integration and social engineering in this regard.

835
01:06:45,639 --> 01:06:49,079
When Nixon's staff, you know, air Linkman and Company told

836
01:06:49,199 --> 01:06:56,199
Nixon that McGovern was going to be the nominee, Nixon said, like,

837
01:06:56,280 --> 01:06:58,199
we've got this in the bag then, like this is

838
01:06:58,239 --> 01:07:05,440
a joke, right, But in the the ideological bent of

839
01:07:05,599 --> 01:07:08,079
I mean, the Washington Post, New York Times, you know, Time,

840
01:07:08,159 --> 01:07:13,599
news Week, the big three TV networks, they literally they

841
01:07:13,599 --> 01:07:16,159
literally insisting that Geordan McGovern's gonna run away with this

842
01:07:16,239 --> 01:07:18,960
election because he's gonna he's gonna get amnesty for the draft,

843
01:07:19,000 --> 01:07:22,360
you know, and you know he's gonna he's gonna he's

844
01:07:22,400 --> 01:07:24,559
gonna stand up for you know, like women's aborting rights,

845
01:07:24,559 --> 01:07:28,800
and the whole country is behind him. And what happened.

846
01:07:31,760 --> 01:07:36,719
Nixon literally swept the entire country, like like he swept

847
01:07:36,719 --> 01:07:43,280
the entire country. McGovern carried Massachusetts and the Issuer of Columbia.

848
01:07:43,800 --> 01:07:45,599
I mean to say, like he went down in flames,

849
01:07:45,679 --> 01:07:50,199
like doesn't even It was absurd. And that's something I

850
01:07:50,199 --> 01:07:52,719
pointed out to be able too, especially because lately a

851
01:07:52,760 --> 01:07:57,840
lot of my contents centered around Vietnam. I have to

852
01:07:57,880 --> 01:08:00,800
correct people a lot who claim, like, oh, when American

853
01:08:00,840 --> 01:08:03,400
soldiers can make from Vietnam. Everybody spit on them and

854
01:08:03,440 --> 01:08:07,519
said you beb killer. That didn't happen. It just didn't.

855
01:08:10,079 --> 01:08:15,000
Like Carter. When Lieutenant Kelly was a brought up on charges,

856
01:08:16,199 --> 01:08:20,119
you know, lay preacher, you know, liberal Jimmy Carter, he

857
01:08:20,279 --> 01:08:24,239
demanded people stand with Kelly and said, you know, drive

858
01:08:24,279 --> 01:08:26,279
with your headlights on during the day to show that

859
01:08:26,399 --> 01:08:29,960
Georgia supports Lieutenant Kelly by this idea that like the

860
01:08:30,039 --> 01:08:33,000
country hated Vietnam vets or like loved Ho Chi Minh,

861
01:08:33,199 --> 01:08:38,920
or that that's garbage. You know, there was a minority

862
01:08:38,960 --> 01:08:43,159
of a vanguard minority who were prone to those kinds

863
01:08:43,199 --> 01:08:49,319
of annects, but everybody hated them, you know. And these

864
01:08:49,359 --> 01:08:54,439
outfits like SDS and these I'm getting old but ahead

865
01:08:54,439 --> 01:08:57,520
of myself, but you know, as the seventies got underway,

866
01:08:59,199 --> 01:09:02,199
like these radical outfits and these terror organizations that popped up,

867
01:09:02,279 --> 01:09:06,159
including like the SLA and the people who uh you know,

868
01:09:06,239 --> 01:09:09,880
the Clanners and and Harold Cogny's National Socialists shout it

869
01:09:09,960 --> 01:09:20,399
out with and in Jonesborough. These organizations were funded by

870
01:09:20,800 --> 01:09:24,119
big NGOs, if not by the Warsaw Pact. Like there's

871
01:09:24,159 --> 01:09:30,079
not people weren't like spontaneously, you know, weren't spontaneously you know,

872
01:09:30,479 --> 01:09:33,119
taking up the cause of the Soviet Union or of

873
01:09:33,239 --> 01:09:37,279
you know, Maoism or whatever like. That's not that's not

874
01:09:37,399 --> 01:09:39,640
at all accurate depiction of the state of the country.

875
01:09:40,359 --> 01:09:46,880
And seventy two proved that. But much like twenty sixteen,

876
01:09:48,239 --> 01:09:50,079
the deep state in the media, staleis meant like when

877
01:09:50,119 --> 01:09:53,279
utterly berserk and like decided like this can never be

878
01:09:53,359 --> 01:09:56,279
allowed to happen again. I can't remember who it was.

879
01:09:56,359 --> 01:09:59,520
It might have been, It might have been the it

880
01:09:59,640 --> 01:10:02,359
was some big media mogul. It wasn't the guy at

881
01:10:02,399 --> 01:10:04,359
the Washington Post like o count and you I can't

882
01:10:04,600 --> 01:10:08,399
but he literally said after the election, apparently in seventy two,

883
01:10:08,439 --> 01:10:11,199
this can never be allowed to happen again, you know.

884
01:10:14,840 --> 01:10:18,640
Speaker 1: Now the.

885
01:10:22,399 --> 01:10:25,600
Speaker 2: And it could it couldn't be said either because you know,

886
01:10:25,840 --> 01:10:28,920
not just because the not just because the landslide win,

887
01:10:29,119 --> 01:10:32,520
but you know, because voter turnout was a lot more

888
01:10:32,640 --> 01:10:37,199
like precedented in terms of you know, for for a

889
01:10:37,399 --> 01:10:40,159
you know, for the post war era, like nobody could

890
01:10:40,199 --> 01:10:43,199
allege that like you know, Nixon, Nixon has no real mandate.

891
01:10:43,319 --> 01:10:46,159
You know this, this guy couldn't he didn't carry any

892
01:10:46,159 --> 01:10:48,720
of the cities. This is also when the myths started

893
01:10:48,960 --> 01:10:52,199
this like bizarre kind of symbol and claim that like

894
01:10:52,840 --> 01:10:55,119
the popular vote is the real votes, and like the

895
01:10:55,159 --> 01:10:58,760
electoral collogism conspiracy to hide the real votes. Like that

896
01:10:58,880 --> 01:11:03,680
kind of nonsense became in seventy two, and obviously that

897
01:11:03,720 --> 01:11:15,479
carries onto this day. But this, uh, this, I'm gonna

898
01:11:15,479 --> 01:11:17,520
stop here in a minute because what I'm gonna get

899
01:11:17,520 --> 01:11:19,640
into next has to do with the White House plumbers,

900
01:11:19,640 --> 01:11:21,760
and I don't want to just have to stop talking

901
01:11:21,760 --> 01:11:27,439
about the mid stream robili speaking. Otherwise it's gonna kind

902
01:11:27,439 --> 01:11:31,359
of interrupt the flow discussion. But uh, next episode will

903
01:11:32,039 --> 01:11:34,720
we'll deal specifically with like the Watergate break in and

904
01:11:36,119 --> 01:11:42,119
and everything everything everything adjacent and like the actual you know,

905
01:11:42,199 --> 01:11:48,439
the kind of move towards impeachment of President Nix and

906
01:11:48,479 --> 01:11:53,079
then also the indictment of the the intended indictment of

907
01:11:53,119 --> 01:11:56,720
Spiro Agne. But this background was important Otherwise what we

908
01:11:56,920 --> 01:12:01,800
Otherwise when we deal with the nitty ready, uh of

909
01:12:01,920 --> 01:12:04,760
what ensued, it wouldn't really have a context. And forgive

910
01:12:04,840 --> 01:12:07,880
my horse voice, I'm I'm still kind of getting over

911
01:12:08,560 --> 01:12:09,560
you know, the ship I go through.

912
01:12:11,399 --> 01:12:15,039
Speaker 1: Yeah, no problem at all. Two plugs and we'll end

913
01:12:15,119 --> 01:12:16,439
it and come back for part two.

914
01:12:17,319 --> 01:12:20,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great, Pete. You can find me on substack

915
01:12:21,159 --> 01:12:23,960
at real Thomas seven seven seven dot substack dot com.

916
01:12:25,359 --> 01:12:29,560
I'm still editing the season two premiere of My phasor

917
01:12:30,039 --> 01:12:34,199
my favorite podcast, but it's coming. I promise you can

918
01:12:34,279 --> 01:12:38,239
find me on x real capital R E A L

919
01:12:38,680 --> 01:12:42,680
underscore number seven h O M A S seven seven seven.

920
01:12:43,680 --> 01:12:45,680
And you can always find me at my website. It's

921
01:12:45,760 --> 01:12:49,600
Thomas seven seven seven dot com number seven h O

922
01:12:49,800 --> 01:12:53,640
M A S seven seven seven. That's uh, that's all I.

923
01:12:53,720 --> 01:12:57,520
Speaker 1: Got, all right until part two. Thank you, Thomas, Thank

924
01:12:57,520 --> 01:13:01,560
you man. I want to welcome everyone back to the

925
01:13:01,600 --> 01:13:04,800
Pekanana Show Part two. How are you doing today?

926
01:13:05,399 --> 01:13:08,439
Speaker 2: I remem very well, thank you. There's a lot here,

927
01:13:10,640 --> 01:13:15,319
But what I chose, what I chose to emphasize is

928
01:13:15,359 --> 01:13:17,960
what I think that you know, our key variables that

929
01:13:18,039 --> 01:13:23,319
are most neglected by mainstream accounts. Like I said, the

930
01:13:23,399 --> 01:13:28,399
book Silent Coup is an exhaustive book about the Watergate

931
01:13:28,479 --> 01:13:30,119
break in. But I think, but that's the whole and

932
01:13:30,239 --> 01:13:35,159
I mean, and I basically agree with the thesis presented.

933
01:13:37,279 --> 01:13:41,520
That's the book that famously suggested that John Dean White

934
01:13:41,560 --> 01:13:46,720
House counsel, among other things, his his his mistress was

935
01:13:46,920 --> 01:13:51,680
uh this formerly like this this uh kind of high

936
01:13:51,760 --> 01:13:55,920
end call girl who would become a madam, and documents

937
01:13:55,960 --> 01:13:59,520
to that effect, you know, her client lists and things

938
01:14:00,039 --> 01:14:03,840
were supposedly was the object that the White House plumbers

939
01:14:03,880 --> 01:14:07,359
were supposed to procure from the Watergate Hotel. That may

940
01:14:07,439 --> 01:14:11,159
in fact be true. There's also a claim presented that

941
01:14:12,000 --> 01:14:19,640
representatives of Howard Hughes were we're trying to incentive like

942
01:14:19,720 --> 01:14:23,600
putting out feelers about a payout relating to getting their

943
01:14:23,680 --> 01:14:31,000
way with respects to these burgening like emissions restrictions on

944
01:14:31,079 --> 01:14:36,199
aircraft and other things I did did The evidentiary record

945
01:14:36,319 --> 01:14:40,039
on that claim is scant. But there's also a claim

946
01:14:40,119 --> 01:14:44,159
that the White House plumbers were either looking for evidence

947
01:14:44,560 --> 01:14:49,600
of you know, the solicitations of of brides that effect,

948
01:14:49,760 --> 01:14:51,479
or that there was actual like bag money in the

949
01:14:51,520 --> 01:14:55,119
Watergo Hotel and they were looking to steal it. Frankly,

950
01:14:55,840 --> 01:14:58,479
I find that easier to believe than the latter. Easier

951
01:14:58,520 --> 01:15:01,600
to believe in some of these suggestions because G. Gordon

952
01:15:01,680 --> 01:15:04,039
Liddy was not a dummy. He was a pretty experience,

953
01:15:05,760 --> 01:15:09,439
you know, a heistman, albeit you know, like he wasn't

954
01:15:09,479 --> 01:15:10,880
like a street dude. He was a guy who was

955
01:15:10,880 --> 01:15:14,960
insinuated into kind of the and into and into the

956
01:15:15,079 --> 01:15:18,520
kind of gray ops as it were. But you know,

957
01:15:19,399 --> 01:15:23,079
first of all, it was like a weird thing to do. Secondly,

958
01:15:23,960 --> 01:15:26,560
because nobody really seemed in I mean, if anybody knew

959
01:15:27,239 --> 01:15:30,479
in in an if anyone in an executive role truly

960
01:15:30,560 --> 01:15:32,279
knew like what the whole story was, he would have

961
01:15:32,359 --> 01:15:35,439
just come clean with it. I can. I can easily

962
01:15:35,479 --> 01:15:38,880
see Liddy saying like, hey, there's you know, there's one

963
01:15:38,960 --> 01:15:41,439
hundred thousand dollars, which in those days was real money,

964
01:15:41,920 --> 01:15:44,560
like in the water yet hotel, you know, and nobody

965
01:15:44,600 --> 01:15:47,000
can report it stolen, like I think Christmas is gonna

966
01:15:47,039 --> 01:15:50,000
come early this year. I mean, frankly, if I were him,

967
01:15:50,039 --> 01:15:55,479
I do it, you know that? Uh? Or I mean

968
01:15:55,520 --> 01:15:57,760
we may never know. But my point is, I guess

969
01:15:58,560 --> 01:16:01,720
it's very very peculiar that nobody, including Lyddy himself, ever

970
01:16:01,920 --> 01:16:07,199
really acknowledged what they were doing, you know, And uh,

971
01:16:07,800 --> 01:16:10,199
the whole thing seems like kind of a comedy of errors,

972
01:16:10,239 --> 01:16:12,600
you know, like it and I mean it's kind of

973
01:16:12,640 --> 01:16:15,359
like that's kind of the point is that this was

974
01:16:15,640 --> 01:16:18,199
I call it, I called Watergate the Seinfeld scandal because

975
01:16:18,199 --> 01:16:21,039
it's the scandal about nothing, and not only it's about nothing,

976
01:16:21,199 --> 01:16:24,800
but especially when you consider sort of the precedent relating

977
01:16:24,880 --> 01:16:31,520
to executive malfeasance, as it were, the idea that you know,

978
01:16:31,680 --> 01:16:34,359
these kinds of white house hatchetmen and breaking into a

979
01:16:34,439 --> 01:16:39,920
hotel which sometimes acts as a like a honey pot

980
01:16:40,079 --> 01:16:45,880
for you know, setting up liaisons between you know, DNC

981
01:16:46,039 --> 01:16:48,520
contributors and hookers. The idea that this is something like

982
01:16:48,880 --> 01:16:51,600
this is like some moral affront to like all things decent,

983
01:16:51,680 --> 01:16:53,640
and this is just like so horrible it almost can't

984
01:16:53,680 --> 01:16:55,680
be spoken of. Like there's something just kind of like

985
01:16:55,760 --> 01:16:59,800
preposterous about that. You know, I'm at the very worst

986
01:16:59,840 --> 01:17:02,880
is an instance of breaking and entering. I mean okay,

987
01:17:03,199 --> 01:17:07,159
like that there's that shocking to the conscience, you know,

988
01:17:07,279 --> 01:17:10,119
I mean America lost its innocence the day it was

989
01:17:10,159 --> 01:17:12,840
discovered that these kind of weird guys broke into a hotel.

990
01:17:13,239 --> 01:17:17,840
I mean like like like where it it doesn't pass

991
01:17:17,960 --> 01:17:21,159
the straight face test, and people will allege that there's

992
01:17:21,199 --> 01:17:24,159
like something I'm missing or something that Nicks and apologies

993
01:17:24,199 --> 01:17:28,079
are just missing because there's some broader like principle at play.

994
01:17:28,600 --> 01:17:31,279
You know, like it's really, really really weird if you're

995
01:17:31,279 --> 01:17:34,640
gonna if you're gonna confabulate, you know, like some kind

996
01:17:34,680 --> 01:17:40,920
of like feigned moral outrage, you know, but be it

997
01:17:40,960 --> 01:17:43,760
as it may. Like. Well, and also I'll include this

998
01:17:43,920 --> 01:17:47,840
now I was gonna I wasn't gonna speak of it

999
01:17:47,960 --> 01:17:52,079
until kind of the end of the episode. But I

1000
01:17:52,199 --> 01:17:56,039
want people to contemplate. I want people to conteplate with

1001
01:17:56,119 --> 01:18:02,119
the precedent is for impeachment of a sitting president. Now

1002
01:18:02,199 --> 01:18:04,880
this isn't what about ism, Okay, When we're talking about

1003
01:18:04,880 --> 01:18:08,319
the criminal law, and impeachment is a matter of criminal law,

1004
01:18:08,920 --> 01:18:16,880
albeit a narrowly tailored process and an unusual circumstance, it

1005
01:18:16,920 --> 01:18:22,640
gives rise to it. You know, what constitutes an actionable

1006
01:18:22,760 --> 01:18:28,840
wrong is contingent upon the facts, Okay, And it's continued

1007
01:18:28,880 --> 01:18:31,520
to it's contingent upon how the trier of law and

1008
01:18:31,600 --> 01:18:35,600
the trier of fact has interpreted the circumstances giving rise

1009
01:18:35,760 --> 01:18:40,199
to the alleged wrong. Okay, If it's just something that's

1010
01:18:40,640 --> 01:18:43,359
if it's just a process that's capriciously and randomly and

1011
01:18:43,479 --> 01:18:50,079
arbitrarily invoked owing to political expediency, Like we're not really

1012
01:18:50,159 --> 01:18:53,039
talking about criminal justice, you know, we're just talking about

1013
01:18:53,520 --> 01:18:57,720
what we're talking about politics, like masquerading as as a

1014
01:18:58,319 --> 01:19:05,560
you know, due process of criminal law. Uh So, not

1015
01:19:05,840 --> 01:19:13,680
even uh not even a decade after Watergate, it came

1016
01:19:13,720 --> 01:19:18,560
to light that Reagan's National Security Cabinet to get around

1017
01:19:18,600 --> 01:19:23,119
the Bowland Amendment, which had specifically prohibited aid to the

1018
01:19:23,199 --> 01:19:31,079
Concience in Nicaragua or any other actor whose aim was

1019
01:19:31,119 --> 01:19:36,800
to overthrow the Santinista government, Reagan's National Security Cabinet had

1020
01:19:36,840 --> 01:19:40,039
taken it upon itself to sell arms to Iran and

1021
01:19:40,159 --> 01:19:44,800
his BLAH, which was listed as a terrorist organization, and

1022
01:19:44,960 --> 01:19:51,319
to take those funds and you know, provide the Contras

1023
01:19:51,479 --> 01:19:57,479
with with arms of their own, and you know, money

1024
01:19:57,520 --> 01:19:59,840
for infrastructural needs so that they could continue to proces

1025
01:20:00,079 --> 01:20:05,239
cute there war and direct violation of the Bold Amendment.

1026
01:20:05,960 --> 01:20:11,000
That's incredibly illegal. I mean, my sympathy actually has always

1027
01:20:11,000 --> 01:20:14,039
been with Oliver North, Like I met the guy years back,

1028
01:20:14,119 --> 01:20:18,399
and I probably would have done the same thing in

1029
01:20:18,520 --> 01:20:22,960
his shoes, honestly, especially because he had come to believe

1030
01:20:23,039 --> 01:20:26,439
he had a personal debt of honor to these people

1031
01:20:26,600 --> 01:20:30,640
in Nicaragua. You know, he made certain guarantees to them.

1032
01:20:30,760 --> 01:20:34,520
This was before so Calm existed, and these kinds of

1033
01:20:35,640 --> 01:20:42,960
ongoing special operations were kind of ad hoc just for clarity,

1034
01:20:43,439 --> 01:20:45,920
you know what, Like like North wasn't putting on airs

1035
01:20:45,920 --> 01:20:48,920
when he said he felt personally responsible. But however, anyone

1036
01:20:49,000 --> 01:20:53,119
feels about this, that's incredibly illegal. There was never any

1037
01:20:53,159 --> 01:20:57,359
talk of impeaching Reagan, and I mean selling selling weapons

1038
01:20:57,399 --> 01:21:01,439
to his ballah to then illegally pay the Contras in

1039
01:21:01,880 --> 01:21:13,439
direct violation of a you know, an explicitly prohibited you know,

1040
01:21:15,159 --> 01:21:18,880
foreign policy initiative. I mean, that's kind of that that

1041
01:21:19,000 --> 01:21:21,479
that that's kind of a textbook example of what the

1042
01:21:21,560 --> 01:21:29,279
impeachment power exists for. Okay, but nobody seriously bandied impeaching Reagan.

1043
01:21:31,359 --> 01:21:36,039
You know, subsequent people forget because I guess there's not

1044
01:21:36,720 --> 01:21:40,800
really historical events anymore in the twentieth century sense, which

1045
01:21:40,840 --> 01:21:45,760
is a subject for another podcast episode. But such that

1046
01:21:45,840 --> 01:21:51,720
there is discussion of the Iraq War, it's presented as

1047
01:21:51,800 --> 01:21:55,800
Bush forty three eating a buffoon, or you know, Tony

1048
01:21:55,880 --> 01:21:59,840
Blair lining to the lying to the people of the UK,

1049
01:22:01,079 --> 01:22:05,359
or you know, the kind of tactical disaster that ensued,

1050
01:22:05,760 --> 01:22:10,000
you know, within months of Bush declaring mission accomplished. What

1051
01:22:10,079 --> 01:22:13,479
people forget is that Bush literally suborn perjury through Colin

1052
01:22:13,560 --> 01:22:20,560
Powell before the Senate. You know, that's incredibly illegal, and

1053
01:22:21,800 --> 01:22:23,359
this time of the fact, there's a felony in its

1054
01:22:23,399 --> 01:22:29,640
own terms, and it's kind of unconscionably you know, is

1055
01:22:29,760 --> 01:22:32,039
wrong just on it in terms of you know, the

1056
01:22:32,079 --> 01:22:34,920
implicators of public trust. You know, tens of thousands of

1057
01:22:34,960 --> 01:22:38,439
people died because of this perjury, and like there was

1058
01:22:38,560 --> 01:22:41,840
nary I mean who who suggested Bush should be impeached

1059
01:22:42,439 --> 01:22:44,760
other than you know, like like people like Bill Maher

1060
01:22:44,800 --> 01:22:48,439
would like, you know, drop like stupid, one off kind

1061
01:22:48,479 --> 01:22:51,159
of statements that effect. But there's never any serious discussion

1062
01:22:51,199 --> 01:22:54,199
of that. So like suborning perjury to procure a warman

1063
01:22:54,319 --> 01:22:58,079
date where in tens of thousands of people die, that's permissible.

1064
01:22:58,119 --> 01:23:02,000
That's a permissible executive act. But guys breaking into a hotel,

1065
01:23:02,800 --> 01:23:05,359
you know, it cannot there's something that cannot be allowed

1066
01:23:05,399 --> 01:23:08,159
to stand. I mean, if there's something wrong with this picture,

1067
01:23:08,279 --> 01:23:12,960
like however you feel about Nixon, you know, and you

1068
01:23:13,079 --> 01:23:16,520
can't people can't cope by saying that's what about is them.

1069
01:23:16,560 --> 01:23:18,640
We're talking about criminal law. There's no what about ism

1070
01:23:18,680 --> 01:23:23,079
in criminal law. There's precedent that controls, and there's everything

1071
01:23:23,159 --> 01:23:26,520
else that's that's not controlling, you know. So I mean,

1072
01:23:26,560 --> 01:23:29,920
I don't I don't think that I don't think that

1073
01:23:30,000 --> 01:23:34,199
the Watergate fetishes and they really are fetishist. And I'm

1074
01:23:34,239 --> 01:23:37,159
not just being silly. I don't really think they have

1075
01:23:37,279 --> 01:23:42,439
like a limb to stand on anymore. So I think

1076
01:23:42,520 --> 01:23:45,520
increasingly in the historical record it's kind of it's gonna

1077
01:23:45,600 --> 01:23:50,560
kind of evaporate. But it hasn't happened yet, you know.

1078
01:23:50,760 --> 01:23:54,479
And it's not just uh, it's not just because of

1079
01:23:54,920 --> 01:23:57,159
it's not just because of boomers, you know. And there

1080
01:23:57,800 --> 01:23:59,960
I mean, everybody likes to burn boomers and proverbial life.

1081
01:24:00,600 --> 01:24:03,920
And I mean, I'm the first to point out that

1082
01:24:04,479 --> 01:24:10,199
some of these ridiculous sort of civic mythologies, you know,

1083
01:24:10,319 --> 01:24:16,119
originate from that coterie. But the like like the Watergate

1084
01:24:16,279 --> 01:24:20,800
fantasy goes beyond boomerism. There's something really deep seated about

1085
01:24:20,840 --> 01:24:25,439
it and like literally delusional about it, you know, in

1086
01:24:25,560 --> 01:24:28,159
the and it only makes sense if you consider the

1087
01:24:28,199 --> 01:24:32,520
person of Nixon, not even Nixon's subjective traits and the

1088
01:24:32,600 --> 01:24:36,079
man himself, but he represents the same thing that Trump

1089
01:24:36,159 --> 01:24:37,079
does to these people.

1090
01:24:38,279 --> 01:24:40,199
Speaker 1: So I was and I was going to say, there

1091
01:24:40,239 --> 01:24:42,199
was an article on the Wall Street in the Wall

1092
01:24:42,239 --> 01:24:45,039
Street Journal, I think it was today, is yesterday or today?

1093
01:24:45,039 --> 01:24:50,039
I can't remember that mentions Trump and talks about how

1094
01:24:50,560 --> 01:24:53,079
he said that there were good people on both sides.

1095
01:24:53,800 --> 01:24:57,640
I mean they're still yeah, although and you will still

1096
01:24:57,760 --> 01:25:01,439
have people defending Russia Gate that he you know, that

1097
01:25:01,520 --> 01:25:05,279
he was he colluded with the Russians, And I mean, it's.

1098
01:25:05,520 --> 01:25:07,720
Speaker 2: That's one of the more bizarre even even considering like

1099
01:25:07,800 --> 01:25:11,960
what is first of all, like the term collusion, it's

1100
01:25:12,000 --> 01:25:14,520
not even a colloquialism. It doesn't mean anything, like as

1101
01:25:14,520 --> 01:25:18,760
a matter of law, is is the State Department colluding

1102
01:25:18,920 --> 01:25:23,239
with the House of Sod? Like is Lindsey Graham colluding

1103
01:25:23,319 --> 01:25:27,720
with Israel? Like what does that even mean? Like Donald

1104
01:25:27,760 --> 01:25:32,439
Trump likes Vladimir Putin, so Russian trolls, you know, said

1105
01:25:32,600 --> 01:25:36,000
mean things about Hillary Clinton through memes and that ruined

1106
01:25:36,079 --> 01:25:40,359
the election. That that's that's so fucking stupid. I don't

1107
01:25:40,359 --> 01:25:43,680
even know like where to It's like beyond it's beyond

1108
01:25:43,720 --> 01:25:46,239
the conceptual reality of like a saying it old person,

1109
01:25:47,479 --> 01:25:51,159
you know, like I and again, like quote unquote, collusion

1110
01:25:52,319 --> 01:25:56,720
isn't it has no meaning as a matter of law

1111
01:25:56,960 --> 01:26:01,680
or in the context of you know, power political affairs.

1112
01:26:03,479 --> 01:26:11,279
There's there's conspiracy. I mean, if you can claim that,

1113
01:26:11,880 --> 01:26:14,800
I guess you could claim that Donald Trump he took

1114
01:26:14,880 --> 01:26:18,119
sensitive data or relating to like the NATO operation in

1115
01:26:18,359 --> 01:26:23,880
Ukraine and Fedda to FSB. I mean, I he could

1116
01:26:24,039 --> 01:26:25,880
if he's the president, He's within his rights to do that.

1117
01:26:27,680 --> 01:26:30,760
That's not against the law. But I mean, I suppose

1118
01:26:30,760 --> 01:26:34,039
he could say that, you know, they could constitute some

1119
01:26:34,159 --> 01:26:37,520
sort of conspiracy between you know, the Kremlin and the

1120
01:26:37,560 --> 01:26:40,760
White House. But like, what the fuck is collusion? Like

1121
01:26:40,880 --> 01:26:45,079
it doesn't that doesn't mean it literally means nothing, you know,

1122
01:26:45,119 --> 01:26:48,279
and even if it even taking it on its own terms,

1123
01:26:48,319 --> 01:26:50,560
it's like I don't think I don't think. I don't

1124
01:26:50,600 --> 01:26:56,680
think Trump has developed ideas on power politics anyway. But uh,

1125
01:26:58,000 --> 01:26:59,920
you know the fact that he doesn't have some drain

1126
01:27:00,520 --> 01:27:03,439
hatred of Russia and maybe let's say, let's even say

1127
01:27:03,560 --> 01:27:05,960
like he was an admirer of Vladimir Putin, was like

1128
01:27:06,399 --> 01:27:10,840
that and I mean that that's that's not that that's

1129
01:27:10,880 --> 01:27:14,479
not somehow against the law, nor is it particularly strange.

1130
01:27:15,359 --> 01:27:17,359
I mean, I went in church all used to pretty

1131
01:27:17,399 --> 01:27:23,319
regularly praise Mussolini, you know, was he colluding with Mussolini?

1132
01:27:23,520 --> 01:27:26,479
Like what is what? What does this mean? I realized

1133
01:27:26,520 --> 01:27:31,880
him being obtuse myself. But it doesn't. But right the point,

1134
01:27:31,880 --> 01:27:33,119
it was not even it's not even like there was

1135
01:27:33,119 --> 01:27:36,840
a confatulated scandal relating to Russia and Donalds from because

1136
01:27:36,880 --> 01:27:39,000
it like literally meant nothing. It was just like these

1137
01:27:39,079 --> 01:27:44,920
weird sound bites kind of kind of spat out by

1138
01:27:45,159 --> 01:27:48,920
people who don't have a meaningful understanding of the subjects,

1139
01:27:49,840 --> 01:27:52,199
you know, and it's parameters like or you're you're colluding

1140
01:27:52,279 --> 01:27:56,239
with a bad guy, Like it's that's that's illiterate, Like

1141
01:27:56,720 --> 01:27:59,159
on its face, it's a literate it's it's it's not

1142
01:28:00,760 --> 01:28:03,920
it's not. Nobody competent in the English language would say that.

1143
01:28:05,600 --> 01:28:10,560
But moving on, because like I said, I if very

1144
01:28:10,640 --> 01:28:14,079
many for jumping around. I I I thought it was

1145
01:28:14,119 --> 01:28:20,560
better placed to raise the issue of precedent now rather

1146
01:28:20,600 --> 01:28:22,600
than kind of on the tail end when we'll probably

1147
01:28:22,680 --> 01:28:26,279
have you know, moved on to other things. Something I

1148
01:28:26,399 --> 01:28:32,000
touched on a bit last time, and I think Warrant's

1149
01:28:32,399 --> 01:28:39,119
a bit of a deeper discussion. This wasn't the approximate

1150
01:28:39,239 --> 01:28:45,000
cause by any means, of the hostility that developed towards

1151
01:28:45,159 --> 01:28:51,880
mister Nixon, but it was an essential cause within the

1152
01:28:52,239 --> 01:29:00,520
broader nexus of you know, deep state opinion. I ironically,

1153
01:29:01,119 --> 01:29:05,600
I believe that despite the fact that these deep state

1154
01:29:05,720 --> 01:29:14,399
types owed their personal prosperity and clout to the dramatic

1155
01:29:14,479 --> 01:29:20,640
expansion of state power and you know, the concominant you know,

1156
01:29:20,760 --> 01:29:27,279
like physical expansion of the state apparatus itself, there remains

1157
01:29:27,359 --> 01:29:30,640
is kind of basic hostility and suspicion of an empowered

1158
01:29:30,720 --> 01:29:34,880
executive office. You know, not just in ethical terms and

1159
01:29:35,119 --> 01:29:39,079
not just in war and peace terms, as the country

1160
01:29:39,199 --> 01:29:44,119
kind of fractured in elite corridors relating to the situation

1161
01:29:44,239 --> 01:29:46,800
of the Soviet Union and everything else. Okay, after the

1162
01:29:48,199 --> 01:29:53,800
that doest settled into the Second World War, you know,

1163
01:29:54,199 --> 01:29:57,479
the presidency and becoming a true power onto itself structurally,

1164
01:30:00,680 --> 01:30:06,560
that seemed to impact people it in a deeply psychological capacity,

1165
01:30:07,199 --> 01:30:10,960
even people who presumably were very familiar with kind of

1166
01:30:10,960 --> 01:30:16,159
the structural parameters of government. As a matter of law, which,

1167
01:30:16,319 --> 01:30:19,000
according to the letter of Article two, quite literally vest

1168
01:30:19,079 --> 01:30:21,439
you know, tremendous power in the executive. It's one things

1169
01:30:21,479 --> 01:30:23,920
to understand as a matter of law that this power

1170
01:30:24,000 --> 01:30:28,439
exists as a potentiality. It's another thing to kind of

1171
01:30:28,479 --> 01:30:33,520
be surrounded by it physically and to witness its tremendous reach,

1172
01:30:34,600 --> 01:30:38,640
and to contemplate one of his own fortunes if that

1173
01:30:38,760 --> 01:30:44,640
great power was uh, what was was turned on you? Okay.

1174
01:30:49,119 --> 01:30:52,039
The first reference to the imperial the quote imperial presidency

1175
01:30:52,399 --> 01:31:00,239
emerged right around the end of Wilson's administration, even even

1176
01:31:00,279 --> 01:31:04,439
among media people who are otherwise sympathetic to the kind

1177
01:31:04,479 --> 01:31:08,319
of progressive enterprise, at least the strike represented by Wilson.

1178
01:31:10,239 --> 01:31:14,520
The uh. The fact that executive power had been growing steadily,

1179
01:31:16,960 --> 01:31:23,439
with a dramatic spike obviously during Roosevelt's tenure, but even

1180
01:31:23,520 --> 01:31:26,159
before and after that, you know, slowly but steadily, you know,

1181
01:31:26,199 --> 01:31:31,399
there'd been this structural increase, and you know, the real

1182
01:31:31,479 --> 01:31:38,319
power of the executive and media began to view itself

1183
01:31:38,399 --> 01:31:43,520
increasingly as you know, not just the fourth estate, you know,

1184
01:31:43,600 --> 01:31:47,159
as this kind of as it's kind of beacon proverbially

1185
01:31:47,319 --> 01:31:51,520
that you know, whose role it was to ethically, you know,

1186
01:31:51,640 --> 01:31:55,920
lead the Holy poloy away from you know, the false

1187
01:31:56,000 --> 01:32:04,000
promises and and bad faith of official dumb But also

1188
01:32:06,399 --> 01:32:09,600
they viewed themselves as literally like a hedge against an

1189
01:32:09,680 --> 01:32:15,079
active presidency that had increasingly taken on you know, what

1190
01:32:15,319 --> 01:32:18,640
had theretofore been, you know, the role of an increasingly

1191
01:32:18,720 --> 01:32:25,319
comatose and kind of and kind of inert senate, you know,

1192
01:32:25,399 --> 01:32:30,600
and the fact that again the peculiarities of Nuremberg and

1193
01:32:31,520 --> 01:32:36,560
the strange fictions therein. We talked about that and how

1194
01:32:36,640 --> 01:32:43,319
that came to constitute you know, the manner and means

1195
01:32:44,560 --> 01:32:47,199
in which American president's pictured a war mandate. You know,

1196
01:32:47,239 --> 01:32:48,880
we talked about this in the context of the Gulf

1197
01:32:48,920 --> 01:32:52,439
of Tonkin, but it also it changed the way that

1198
01:32:52,640 --> 01:32:57,680
wars were waged in terms of civilian command and control, okay,

1199
01:32:57,800 --> 01:33:01,800
and basic capacities. You know. Not only did not only

1200
01:33:01,840 --> 01:33:06,479
did the Senate kind of scale back its own micromanagement

1201
01:33:06,640 --> 01:33:10,560
of such affairs, in part, of course, obviously because these

1202
01:33:10,640 --> 01:33:13,319
careers type I wanted to protect their own reputation and

1203
01:33:13,439 --> 01:33:19,399
voting record, but also increasingly it became the domain of experts.

1204
01:33:19,600 --> 01:33:24,199
Like everything else. You know, you'd have a president you

1205
01:33:24,319 --> 01:33:28,399
had this, you know, emboldened and dramatically and large and

1206
01:33:28,479 --> 01:33:34,239
relative terms of national security staff. They were interpreting and

1207
01:33:34,359 --> 01:33:38,119
processing reams upon reams of data, trying to interpret it

1208
01:33:38,159 --> 01:33:42,800
in real time in order to render battlefield decisions, you know,

1209
01:33:42,920 --> 01:33:45,920
in a hot theater of war in Southeast Asia, well

1210
01:33:45,960 --> 01:33:51,199
at the same time managing political perceptions you know, around

1211
01:33:51,279 --> 01:33:55,840
those decisions by both friendlies and hostiles. On top of that,

1212
01:33:56,159 --> 01:34:00,840
there was the ongoing strategic menace of the Cold War.

1213
01:34:02,079 --> 01:34:06,680
You know, this wasn't even even in the kind of

1214
01:34:06,720 --> 01:34:11,760
best of all possible worlds with a balance of power

1215
01:34:12,840 --> 01:34:16,640
structurally between the three branches of government kind of existed

1216
01:34:16,680 --> 01:34:22,000
in look a perfect and complementary stasis. It just it's

1217
01:34:22,279 --> 01:34:30,159
inconceivable to conceptualize some sort of equal division of responsibility

1218
01:34:32,039 --> 01:34:34,920
over war and peace questions, you know, between the executive

1219
01:34:35,000 --> 01:34:41,479
and the legislature. And people found this alarming, I believe,

1220
01:34:41,960 --> 01:34:46,720
particularly people who frankly, do not really understand the nuances

1221
01:34:46,760 --> 01:34:51,319
of war and peace, either you know, in practical terms

1222
01:34:52,600 --> 01:34:58,199
at scale, or in you know, conceptual and philosophical terms.

1223
01:35:00,880 --> 01:35:05,920
Most men can't and don't. Frankly, I've made that point

1224
01:35:05,960 --> 01:35:10,680
a lot, and I'm sure, those of a less than

1225
01:35:10,760 --> 01:35:14,560
charitable view of me and my work product would say, well,

1226
01:35:15,399 --> 01:35:18,680
I'm just trying to insinuate some kind of mystique into

1227
01:35:21,119 --> 01:35:27,079
my own skill set. That's not true at all. But

1228
01:35:27,680 --> 01:35:40,039
moving on, I mean, just for Roosevelt's White House was

1229
01:35:40,079 --> 01:35:42,119
the first White House where every man had had had

1230
01:35:42,119 --> 01:35:45,039
a number of executives administrative assistants. I mean, it's like,

1231
01:35:45,119 --> 01:35:48,479
think about that, okay, I mean, like it was the

1232
01:35:48,560 --> 01:35:58,119
Truman White House. Yeah, was represented something of a scaling

1233
01:35:58,279 --> 01:36:03,439
back this tendency. But by the time but by the

1234
01:36:03,520 --> 01:36:06,840
time Eisenhower took the oath of office, like like the

1235
01:36:06,960 --> 01:36:11,000
managerial state was in structural terms, was here to stay.

1236
01:36:11,680 --> 01:36:14,720
And nowhere was that felt more than you know in

1237
01:36:14,800 --> 01:36:21,880
the Oval office and everything that orbited it, the uh

1238
01:36:23,760 --> 01:36:38,960
lbj's uh White House personnel staff, you know, ancillary people,

1239
01:36:39,079 --> 01:36:41,039
you know, like custodians, you know, everybody, feel like the

1240
01:36:41,119 --> 01:36:47,760
top down it was forty times bigger than the size

1241
01:36:47,760 --> 01:36:52,600
of the entire like White House Personnel Directorate and uh

1242
01:36:53,359 --> 01:36:59,960
in the Hoover administration. So I considered that it uh

1243
01:37:00,079 --> 01:37:06,039
uh the cost had exceeded by nineteen seventy two a

1244
01:37:06,199 --> 01:37:08,960
billion dollars. It was. It was, it was, it was.

1245
01:37:09,199 --> 01:37:11,039
It was effective to exceed a billion dollars by the

1246
01:37:11,119 --> 01:37:14,319
end of the decade as of nineteen seventy two. And

1247
01:37:14,680 --> 01:37:16,960
that was that was huge money in those days. It

1248
01:37:17,079 --> 01:37:20,159
was like almost inconceivable money. Okay, like it's not it's

1249
01:37:20,159 --> 01:37:25,760
not even suggested considering you know, what was on the

1250
01:37:25,840 --> 01:37:29,760
table needs to be the Cold War, America's defense commitments,

1251
01:37:30,279 --> 01:37:34,560
collective security commitments for better or worse. You know, these

1252
01:37:34,640 --> 01:37:38,359
infrastructural projects that were still ongoing, you know, like the

1253
01:37:38,439 --> 01:37:41,720
highway system. That's not that's not to say that this

1254
01:37:41,920 --> 01:37:46,079
was just you know, an example of like public spending

1255
01:37:46,279 --> 01:37:50,760
gone crazy and and pigs just you know, gorging themselves

1256
01:37:50,800 --> 01:37:56,640
at the verbial trough. But that was a staggering number,

1257
01:37:57,560 --> 01:38:06,760
you know, to anybody in those days. The Kenned he

1258
01:38:06,880 --> 01:38:09,760
tried to finesse this a bit, you know, by one

1259
01:38:09,800 --> 01:38:14,119
of the reasons why, like the Camelot myth, like corny

1260
01:38:15,159 --> 01:38:18,800
as that kind of whole miss manufacturing mystique, that kind

1261
01:38:18,800 --> 01:38:22,600
of like Time magazine and Life magazine mystique was that

1262
01:38:22,720 --> 01:38:27,159
was very much cultivated by the Kennedy administration. Okay, in

1263
01:38:27,279 --> 01:38:30,359
lieu of transparency, you give people a fairy tale literally,

1264
01:38:31,159 --> 01:38:36,199
all right, all of that came to crashing down when

1265
01:38:36,279 --> 01:38:39,880
Kennedy was murdered. You know, LBJ played things very close

1266
01:38:39,920 --> 01:38:44,479
to the chest. His concession to media was allowing them

1267
01:38:44,520 --> 01:38:49,439
to embed in in the field in Vietnam, you know,

1268
01:38:49,560 --> 01:38:52,680
with the common infantry as well as you know, it's

1269
01:38:52,840 --> 01:38:56,560
allowing newsmen to attack himself to the staff of of

1270
01:38:56,720 --> 01:39:00,560
a battalion level commands and higher, which proved to be

1271
01:39:00,600 --> 01:39:07,359
a terrible mistake. But the idea that suddenly there's been

1272
01:39:07,399 --> 01:39:11,520
an information blackout from the imperial executive. This is how

1273
01:39:11,560 --> 01:39:17,159
that kind of canard gained traction, you know. And obviously

1274
01:39:17,239 --> 01:39:21,760
it played into it played into their despite the fact

1275
01:39:21,760 --> 01:39:23,760
that these are a bunch of like newsmen, you know,

1276
01:39:23,960 --> 01:39:28,640
and like bitch made police worshipers, you know, and and

1277
01:39:28,840 --> 01:39:33,000
and and UH and middling apparatics, they fancy themselves as

1278
01:39:33,039 --> 01:39:38,199
like anti authoritarian you know, and this all these tendencies,

1279
01:39:38,199 --> 01:39:42,920
all these kinds of future shock tendencies, you know, fed

1280
01:39:42,960 --> 01:39:45,560
their kind of delusions in that regard, you know, their

1281
01:39:45,640 --> 01:39:49,159
delusions about themselves and their own roles and significance as

1282
01:39:49,199 --> 01:39:53,359
well as about you know the nature of UH. You know,

1283
01:39:53,479 --> 01:39:56,319
the UH the imperial executive, which again was kind of

1284
01:39:57,199 --> 01:40:02,920
a boogeyman that, although only extending our own minds, you know, loomed, uh,

1285
01:40:03,560 --> 01:40:12,479
like the angel of death over these people's horizon. And frankly,

1286
01:40:14,520 --> 01:40:17,720
I mean really from really from the turn of the

1287
01:40:17,760 --> 01:40:23,920
century onward, it's uh. You know, the White House as

1288
01:40:23,920 --> 01:40:25,720
a power center. It was engaged in all kinds of

1289
01:40:25,760 --> 01:40:29,560
activities which which didn't bear a public scrutiny. And the

1290
01:40:29,680 --> 01:40:33,319
Cold War kind of sealed the fate of you know

1291
01:40:33,399 --> 01:40:35,560
that you got the kind of open executive. You know,

1292
01:40:35,600 --> 01:40:40,520
you couldn't allow you couldn't allow free flow of information

1293
01:40:41,800 --> 01:40:50,800
out of the White House when you know, when if

1294
01:40:50,840 --> 01:40:58,840
the enemy were to come upon you know what happened

1295
01:40:58,920 --> 01:41:03,039
upon you know, the right data, the strategic balance could

1296
01:41:03,039 --> 01:41:08,520
be totally altered in terms of you know, in terms

1297
01:41:08,560 --> 01:41:19,520
of discerning like the the will capability and and and

1298
01:41:19,640 --> 01:41:26,439
political and political gumption to you know, to wage war

1299
01:41:26,680 --> 01:41:28,680
like this. I mean this goloes out saying, but it

1300
01:41:29,720 --> 01:41:38,239
the really the uh, the Cold War was won and

1301
01:41:38,439 --> 01:41:42,359
lost by data and the ability to correctly interpret data.

1302
01:41:44,039 --> 01:41:45,720
I mean you can say that about like any modern war.

1303
01:41:45,880 --> 01:41:49,279
But when you consider that, you know, the world that's

1304
01:41:49,319 --> 01:41:52,319
settled into this kind of strategic paradigm where by the

1305
01:41:52,920 --> 01:41:56,960
triggering of the primary conflict diad could lead to general

1306
01:41:57,079 --> 01:42:04,800
nuclear war. But even in times of peace, you know,

1307
01:42:05,720 --> 01:42:08,840
like a state, but some sort of state between like

1308
01:42:09,000 --> 01:42:11,880
war and peace was always a foot, so that like,

1309
01:42:12,359 --> 01:42:16,000
you know, genuine peace as it had existed prior to

1310
01:42:16,960 --> 01:42:19,880
you know, nineteen forty one in this country could not

1311
01:42:20,039 --> 01:42:23,600
be said to exist. Like the idea that executive decisions

1312
01:42:23,760 --> 01:42:26,279
you know, should be subjected to public scrutiny or availed

1313
01:42:26,279 --> 01:42:29,560
to some sort of like plebiscite, like actual or metaphorical,

1314
01:42:29,600 --> 01:42:35,840
I mean, is laughable. But the uh, and just to

1315
01:42:36,159 --> 01:42:40,279
the way that this was managed again for context contra Nixon.

1316
01:42:40,680 --> 01:42:45,600
You know when when when people assert that, you know,

1317
01:42:45,720 --> 01:42:48,520
the assembly of something like of a of a team

1318
01:42:48,600 --> 01:42:54,239
like the White House plumbers itself constitutes overreach. You know,

1319
01:42:54,439 --> 01:42:58,039
FDR created his own special intelligence unit, was responsible only

1320
01:42:58,079 --> 01:43:02,039
to him. They had a staff of eleven men. It

1321
01:43:02,159 --> 01:43:05,399
was financed by this what was called the Special Emergency

1322
01:43:05,479 --> 01:43:09,960
Fund of the State Department. He poached the members of

1323
01:43:10,079 --> 01:43:14,800
it from Hoover's FBI, which at that point it's it's

1324
01:43:14,880 --> 01:43:17,000
it's mandate, it's kind of like come into its own,

1325
01:43:17,640 --> 01:43:20,399
you know, like FBI men are now carrying guns. You know,

1326
01:43:20,439 --> 01:43:23,039
they had like real arrest power, you know, they were

1327
01:43:23,079 --> 01:43:25,399
real cops by that point, as well as in the

1328
01:43:25,439 --> 01:43:28,640
I R. S. And uh, you know, there was also

1329
01:43:28,720 --> 01:43:30,960
some there was a coterie from the Department of Justice,

1330
01:43:31,039 --> 01:43:35,520
you know, like lawyers. They kind of finessed everything and

1331
01:43:36,319 --> 01:43:41,159
you know, to make sure that the verbial is we

1332
01:43:41,279 --> 01:43:44,239
died and teas were crossed. But rosel openly, he openly

1333
01:43:44,359 --> 01:43:46,880
used this this intelligence unit to get dirt in his

1334
01:43:47,000 --> 01:43:51,479
enemies and harass them, especially the press and especially businessmen

1335
01:43:51,800 --> 01:43:55,760
you know, like Robert McCormick who were his enemies. You know,

1336
01:43:55,840 --> 01:44:00,640
he tapped their phones. He'd have them followed, you know,

1337
01:44:00,800 --> 01:44:06,359
like uh he'd he uh, he'd have he'd have been

1338
01:44:06,399 --> 01:44:10,319
indicted on for tax evasion, you know, based on trumped

1339
01:44:10,399 --> 01:44:14,239
up allegations and you know, things that constitute like simple

1340
01:44:14,239 --> 01:44:19,279
accounting errors. You know. He he made persistent efforts to

1341
01:44:19,359 --> 01:44:23,720
get The New York Times indicted for tax fraud, which failed.

1342
01:44:23,800 --> 01:44:25,520
But I mean they were tied up in litigation and

1343
01:44:25,680 --> 01:44:31,000
being you know, served with civil and criminal subpoenas you know,

1344
01:44:31,119 --> 01:44:33,000
for years on end. I mean that's you know, and

1345
01:44:33,079 --> 01:44:36,399
this was all this, this was all very above board.

1346
01:44:36,960 --> 01:44:42,920
You know. He uh he used his intel Roosevelt special

1347
01:44:42,960 --> 01:44:46,279
intelligence unit. It bugged the room, the hotel rooms of

1348
01:44:46,359 --> 01:44:49,359
his cabinet. It even bugged Missus Roosevelt's the hotel room.

1349
01:44:49,640 --> 01:44:51,560
Not because he was like spying and Missus Roosevelt, but

1350
01:44:51,600 --> 01:44:53,680
because people when they talked to her obviously thought that

1351
01:44:53,720 --> 01:44:56,159
they were speaking or in confidence, and he also wanted

1352
01:44:56,199 --> 01:44:58,560
to hear it like the other wives were saying, you know,

1353
01:44:58,800 --> 01:45:08,560
the this kind of personal espionage against uh, you know

1354
01:45:08,600 --> 01:45:13,560
again against ones, you know, fellows as well as adverse series.

1355
01:45:15,000 --> 01:45:16,560
I mean, nothing like that was in our way in

1356
01:45:16,560 --> 01:45:19,039
the Knicks administration whatever. You and I've got no louses

1357
01:45:19,039 --> 01:45:21,479
about Nixon, but I mean that's like, that's one step

1358
01:45:21,520 --> 01:45:24,960
beyond you know, dirty tricks and in the business of

1359
01:45:25,000 --> 01:45:27,319
modern politics, you know I say modern. I mean, you know,

1360
01:45:27,359 --> 01:45:29,960
from the twentieth century onward. I mean, have you has

1361
01:45:30,000 --> 01:45:32,920
anyone ever read a book about the gross overreach of FDR.

1362
01:45:33,119 --> 01:45:36,399
I mean not like not not like Fleming's book. I

1363
01:45:36,479 --> 01:45:38,720
mean in terms of you know, his special intelligence unit,

1364
01:45:39,840 --> 01:45:41,840
you know, likening them to the White House plumbers or

1365
01:45:42,279 --> 01:45:44,920
I mean No, it doesn't exist. People don't even think

1366
01:45:44,960 --> 01:45:51,720
in those terms. You know. Again, it's the uh Truman

1367
01:45:52,079 --> 01:45:59,600
like like was basically it was basically ran like a

1368
01:45:59,680 --> 01:46:05,520
clean White house. That's not just a myth. They basically

1369
01:46:05,600 --> 01:46:10,760
avoided these kinds of like domestic clandestine dealings. But it,

1370
01:46:11,039 --> 01:46:15,880
uh frankly like Eisenhower was a foregone conclusion. He was

1371
01:46:15,920 --> 01:46:20,039
gonna have two terms. And Eisenhower also he basically there's

1372
01:46:20,119 --> 01:46:28,720
never been there. There's never there's never been after the

1373
01:46:28,800 --> 01:46:30,960
war between the States, like a president who had the

1374
01:46:31,000 --> 01:46:33,399
kind of mandate that Eisenhower did. Like it's kind of

1375
01:46:33,439 --> 01:46:37,600
like across the aisle, just an agreement, you know, and

1376
01:46:37,720 --> 01:46:40,439
then that odorate much to the emergent kind of global

1377
01:46:40,520 --> 01:46:43,680
system and everything else. But my point is that like

1378
01:46:43,760 --> 01:46:46,680
Eisenhower is an odd case. You know, you can't extrapolate

1379
01:46:46,800 --> 01:46:48,479
much from what he did or did not do in

1380
01:46:48,520 --> 01:46:52,920
this regard generally about you know, the exigency's faced by

1381
01:46:52,960 --> 01:46:58,560
a modern executive, you know. And of course Kennedy himself

1382
01:47:01,079 --> 01:47:05,560
was uh, the all time king of dirty tricks and intrigues.

1383
01:47:07,479 --> 01:47:12,239
I'm not I'm not a Kennedy basher, despite what people say.

1384
01:47:12,279 --> 01:47:18,720
A lot I've actually made no secret of it that

1385
01:47:19,760 --> 01:47:21,760
I think he had tremendous balls, and the way he

1386
01:47:22,399 --> 01:47:25,000
managed the sixty two crisis, standing up not with the

1387
01:47:25,079 --> 01:47:29,399
cruise chift, but also the Curtis Leamay, and you know,

1388
01:47:29,520 --> 01:47:33,920
his own war cabinet when he was just a wet

1389
01:47:33,960 --> 01:47:38,920
behind the ears, you know, rich Man's son in the

1390
01:47:38,960 --> 01:47:41,800
eyes of most people. He was a real man. He

1391
01:47:41,920 --> 01:47:47,840
wasn't a plunk. But JFK stated no on certain terms

1392
01:47:49,680 --> 01:47:53,119
that uh, one of the chiefer grants was not having

1393
01:47:53,199 --> 01:47:58,119
made his brother RFK had a CIA, you know, to

1394
01:47:58,199 --> 01:48:03,279
bring it under family control too, because his notion, uh,

1395
01:48:04,760 --> 01:48:10,399
like Roosevelts, was to know everything. You know, the he'd

1396
01:48:10,479 --> 01:48:15,560
uh he'd been privy very much to the reading which

1397
01:48:15,560 --> 01:48:20,920
she was privy to the assassination of uh of a

1398
01:48:21,159 --> 01:48:26,239
DM is it's questionable obviously, like DM it'd been is

1399
01:48:26,279 --> 01:48:30,800
like one time. Ally, subsequent historians like to claim that

1400
01:48:30,880 --> 01:48:33,680
like Kennedy knew nothing about this, and there's a CIA,

1401
01:48:34,000 --> 01:48:36,880
you know, being atack things like this rogue element. And

1402
01:48:36,920 --> 01:48:38,680
then of course these fools also like to you know,

1403
01:48:38,720 --> 01:48:40,279
they got this whole they got this whole fantasy that

1404
01:48:40,359 --> 01:48:44,000
the CIA killed Kennedy. But I'm not even that touched

1405
01:48:44,000 --> 01:48:47,319
to that because it's fucking retarded. But the but in

1406
01:48:47,399 --> 01:48:50,680
the case of DM, the point is, like Kennedy knew

1407
01:48:50,680 --> 01:48:53,039
it was gonna happen. He was very much insinuated into it.

1408
01:48:53,640 --> 01:48:56,319
Whether he formally objected to it, you know, but then

1409
01:48:56,600 --> 01:48:58,960
you know, went ahead and ordered it or allowed it

1410
01:48:59,119 --> 01:49:04,359
rather by actor omission as a necessary evil, or whether

1411
01:49:04,359 --> 01:49:06,640
he was one hundred percent behind it doesn't matter. This

1412
01:49:06,800 --> 01:49:09,319
idea that like Kennedy was like running this clean administration

1413
01:49:09,479 --> 01:49:13,159
and had no idea that you know, elements within the

1414
01:49:13,199 --> 01:49:19,239
executive branch were killing people. That's nonsense. He had uh

1415
01:49:22,640 --> 01:49:24,479
where where his brother was at It was the Department

1416
01:49:24,520 --> 01:49:32,119
of Justice. Obviously in sixty two. These US steel executives

1417
01:49:32,119 --> 01:49:38,239
who are parenially perennially threatening strikes and opposing administration policies

1418
01:49:38,359 --> 01:49:41,399
related to the terrorf regime, like uh, head of them

1419
01:49:41,399 --> 01:49:46,760
have harassed with subpoenas and pre dawn and search warrants.

1420
01:49:47,239 --> 01:49:51,039
There were dog agents, n FBI man you know, rated

1421
01:49:51,079 --> 01:49:53,399
their houses, you know, just like family men, you know,

1422
01:49:53,479 --> 01:49:55,720
like in pre dawn hours, you know, just to just

1423
01:49:55,800 --> 01:50:01,199
to terrorize them, you know. In the Kennedy brothers, you know,

1424
01:50:01,359 --> 01:50:09,880
long before Martin Luther King totally ran a foul of

1425
01:50:10,159 --> 01:50:16,439
uh you know Jager whoever in LBJ. You know, half

1426
01:50:16,479 --> 01:50:22,840
a decade later, Jeff get RFK didn't trust him a bit.

1427
01:50:24,920 --> 01:50:27,319
You know, they had him put under surveillance, you know,

1428
01:50:27,439 --> 01:50:30,399
they was it was the Kennedy brothers who you know

1429
01:50:30,560 --> 01:50:35,680
first uh became aware of his uh a King's problems

1430
01:50:35,720 --> 01:50:39,359
with females and his like sex addiction. They were the

1431
01:50:39,439 --> 01:50:42,000
ones who you know, first documented this by having these

1432
01:50:42,800 --> 01:50:45,600
liaisons with prostitutes and other women that he was compulsed

1433
01:50:45,640 --> 01:50:48,079
of waving sex with, you know, like recorded and documented.

1434
01:50:48,640 --> 01:50:51,720
You know, I mean it's this wasn't this wasn't Jay,

1435
01:50:52,000 --> 01:50:54,239
This wasn't like mean racist Jadrew whoever? Are doing it

1436
01:50:54,319 --> 01:50:58,680
for the fun of it, you know, that's they uh

1437
01:51:00,079 --> 01:51:03,239
nass and right wing media, you know, like birth society

1438
01:51:03,359 --> 01:51:09,079
types and these kind of nascent uh people like Connie

1439
01:51:09,119 --> 01:51:14,560
McGinley who put out in the tabloid common sense, you know,

1440
01:51:14,680 --> 01:51:19,439
and guys like uh you know, these are the guys

1441
01:51:19,520 --> 01:51:21,600
like Tommy Metzker were associating with back when it was

1442
01:51:21,640 --> 01:51:26,119
like a klansman. They were trying to uh you know,

1443
01:51:26,279 --> 01:51:31,479
like as uh as media became more more ubiquitous, and

1444
01:51:32,119 --> 01:51:36,279
some of the censorship regime on radio loosened. You know,

1445
01:51:36,319 --> 01:51:42,560
they were trying to insinuate themselves into into the discursive

1446
01:51:42,640 --> 01:51:45,560
media again like father Coughlin had, you know, the Kennedy

1447
01:51:45,600 --> 01:51:48,239
shut that down again, like using the weaponized I R

1448
01:51:48,399 --> 01:52:04,520
S and other things. When uh, subsequently, Yeah, the first

1449
01:52:04,600 --> 01:52:12,039
big U the first big scandal that LBJ found himself

1450
01:52:12,079 --> 01:52:21,119
embroiled in not long after was uh, the Bobby Baker scandal.

1451
01:52:21,560 --> 01:52:30,560
Baker was uh, he was political advisor to LBJ having

1452
01:52:30,600 --> 01:52:33,439
started this is the Senate secretary of the majority leader.

1453
01:52:34,680 --> 01:52:40,760
Like what Baker's job was, and Uh, Lbj's fingerprints were

1454
01:52:40,800 --> 01:52:45,439
all over this. He was implicated in arranging liaison as

1455
01:52:45,479 --> 01:52:50,760
with prostitutes between soft money donors as well as UH,

1456
01:52:51,439 --> 01:52:53,680
as well as as well as congressmen and the House

1457
01:52:53,720 --> 01:52:57,439
representatives whose votes he needed on government contracts and other things.

1458
01:53:00,239 --> 01:53:02,880
And like when this broke, lbj's enemy is gonna certainly

1459
01:53:02,960 --> 01:53:10,640
like a bunch of vultures. LBJ uh asked Baker, what

1460
01:53:10,760 --> 01:53:13,680
kind of dirt you know we had on anybody in

1461
01:53:13,760 --> 01:53:17,600
I R S. Baker came up with it. LBJ told them, like,

1462
01:53:17,720 --> 01:53:19,720
you know, you're gonna indict these people or after me

1463
01:53:19,960 --> 01:53:23,000
or guess what you know, like you know, your wife,

1464
01:53:23,079 --> 01:53:26,720
your family, the National press, you know, everybody at i RS,

1465
01:53:26,960 --> 01:53:28,880
like everybody in Capitol Hill. You know they're gonna they're

1466
01:53:28,880 --> 01:53:30,800
gonna find out about this, you know, like little deliance

1467
01:53:30,840 --> 01:53:34,000
you had with you know, with this prostitute. And we've

1468
01:53:34,079 --> 01:53:37,399
got the receipts to prove it. I mean, like people

1469
01:53:37,479 --> 01:53:40,359
knew about this stuff, Okay, I mean it's it's this

1470
01:53:40,520 --> 01:53:44,920
idea that you know, I mean, what did anybody was it?

1471
01:53:45,520 --> 01:53:47,920
We're people gonna impeach the Kennedy's for spying on Martin

1472
01:53:48,000 --> 01:53:52,039
Luther King where people gonna impeach LBJ, you know for basically, uh,

1473
01:53:53,079 --> 01:53:55,399
for basically keeping Bobby Baker rounds a pimp in order

1474
01:53:55,439 --> 01:53:59,439
to get dirt on his enemies. Like no, no, because

1475
01:53:59,439 --> 01:54:02,800
that that's k But four guys breaking into a hotel

1476
01:54:03,039 --> 01:54:06,760
is is the equivalent of like, you know, murdering a

1477
01:54:06,880 --> 01:54:10,279
child or something apparently, like according to the American like

1478
01:54:10,520 --> 01:54:17,399
moral code of Capitol Hill, and frankly too until the

1479
01:54:17,920 --> 01:54:22,239
until the Nixon era, like the LBJ Nixon era, I

1480
01:54:22,359 --> 01:54:27,000
kind of consider him in the same vein for reasons

1481
01:54:27,039 --> 01:54:29,439
I think are clear by now, not because the two

1482
01:54:29,439 --> 01:54:32,680
men amen thing in common, but I believe we got to.

1483
01:54:32,880 --> 01:54:35,920
I believe it was established. Like why I consider it

1484
01:54:36,199 --> 01:54:42,079
in those terms, the media was pretty selective and the way,

1485
01:54:42,720 --> 01:54:45,439
the degree which in the way it publicized presidential wrongdoing,

1486
01:54:46,520 --> 01:54:49,279
and for no other reason then, because it was understood that,

1487
01:54:50,439 --> 01:54:54,039
you know, kind of the lynchpin of American national security

1488
01:54:55,520 --> 01:55:00,279
amidst the Cold War was the presidency, okay, and even

1489
01:55:00,359 --> 01:55:04,960
before that, during the Roosevelt and Wilson administrations and the

1490
01:55:05,039 --> 01:55:10,439
Hoover and Hardy administrations, it was understood that contained with

1491
01:55:10,520 --> 01:55:12,800
an Article two, it's not just a great it's not

1492
01:55:12,920 --> 01:55:15,800
just an express delegation of great power in warr in

1493
01:55:15,840 --> 01:55:20,920
peace terms. It's not just a way of structuring the

1494
01:55:21,079 --> 01:55:25,239
government so as to confer upon the only nationally elected representative,

1495
01:55:26,239 --> 01:55:31,039
you know, a kind of authority above and beyond that

1496
01:55:31,199 --> 01:55:35,399
enjoyed by the judiciary or by the Senate. But there's

1497
01:55:35,399 --> 01:55:39,399
an understanding that the president is a prime symbol, okay,

1498
01:55:39,720 --> 01:55:43,800
And in America, you know, it's like, okay, like white

1499
01:55:43,840 --> 01:55:47,039
Christians shouldn't be shouldn't be worshiping you know, you know,

1500
01:55:47,079 --> 01:55:51,319
a high office or something, or treating elected official dum

1501
01:55:51,479 --> 01:55:54,239
like their kings. But at the same time, you know,

1502
01:55:54,359 --> 01:55:57,960
there's there's got to be a certain respect afforded to

1503
01:55:58,000 --> 01:56:00,600
the office the chief executive like other was the officer

1504
01:56:00,600 --> 01:56:02,840
is in fulfilling its function, and which is why you

1505
01:56:02,880 --> 01:56:05,880
gotta be very careful about what what kind of man

1506
01:56:06,119 --> 01:56:10,159
you know you installed in the office. Okay, So there

1507
01:56:10,239 --> 01:56:14,760
was a basic understanding that attacking the presidency in a

1508
01:56:14,840 --> 01:56:17,239
in a kind of a in a truly dedicated on

1509
01:56:17,359 --> 01:56:21,039
going capacity would very much is throwing a baby out

1510
01:56:21,079 --> 01:56:29,800
with the bath order. Okay. I mean the fact that

1511
01:56:31,159 --> 01:56:38,479
I mean Kennedy. When Kennedy was president, he he shared

1512
01:56:38,520 --> 01:56:41,239
a mistress with Sam g and Conna like Kennedy probably

1513
01:56:41,399 --> 01:56:45,239
was a sex addict. Kennedy was drug dependent. He wasn't

1514
01:56:45,279 --> 01:56:47,159
doing drugs the party. I mean it was he was

1515
01:56:47,199 --> 01:56:51,039
in terrible health. And you know he he had a

1516
01:56:51,159 --> 01:56:56,840
doctor not unlike doctor Morrell was the hitler who uh

1517
01:56:58,039 --> 01:57:00,720
basically like made sure that Kennedy had like whatever drugs

1518
01:57:00,760 --> 01:57:02,760
in the system had to be there from the function

1519
01:57:02,880 --> 01:57:05,199
and get through the day. You know. I mean, if

1520
01:57:05,239 --> 01:57:10,399
somebody at the National media wanted to ruin Kennedy, they

1521
01:57:10,439 --> 01:57:12,079
could have done it in an instant, which is what

1522
01:57:12,319 --> 01:57:14,279
was another reason. It's totally retarded, and we will claim

1523
01:57:14,319 --> 01:57:16,359
that that Kennedy was whacked. Like you want to get

1524
01:57:16,439 --> 01:57:19,199
rid of Kennedy, like follow him around on a Friday night,

1525
01:57:19,720 --> 01:57:22,159
bribe one of his secret services detail, you know, and

1526
01:57:22,279 --> 01:57:24,159
like take you take take a photo of him getting

1527
01:57:24,159 --> 01:57:26,600
shot up with eight different drugs by his doctor, or

1528
01:57:26,680 --> 01:57:29,079
you know, like having a threesome with like two black hookers.

1529
01:57:29,399 --> 01:57:33,800
You know, no more, mister Kennedy. But you know, the

1530
01:57:34,039 --> 01:57:41,560
uh it's striking, and I've i've I've literally spent hours

1531
01:57:44,439 --> 01:57:50,000
perusing like the main large market newspapers of the day,

1532
01:57:51,600 --> 01:57:53,880
you know, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal,

1533
01:57:54,680 --> 01:58:01,720
the Chicago Tribune, you know, the La Times. It's striking.

1534
01:58:02,359 --> 01:58:07,479
How even during even in miss presidential scandals again like

1535
01:58:07,560 --> 01:58:13,159
going back, you know to Wilson, there's like neary a

1536
01:58:13,319 --> 01:58:16,479
peep you know about the kind of bad character of

1537
01:58:16,520 --> 01:58:23,079
the president or any like ad hominem really at all.

1538
01:58:24,680 --> 01:58:31,199
And then come Nixon. This day after day after day,

1539
01:58:31,840 --> 01:58:38,199
it uh, this this like just continual invective you know

1540
01:58:38,319 --> 01:58:41,960
against Nixon, you know, just just just non stop. That

1541
01:58:42,119 --> 01:58:44,720
was like the lead story like every day and every

1542
01:58:44,800 --> 01:58:50,119
paper you know, it's like I said, it was, it

1543
01:58:50,239 --> 01:58:54,319
was it was the it was Trump one point zero.

1544
01:58:55,479 --> 01:59:01,000
It's fascinating. I guess that's part of aging, is being

1545
01:59:01,000 --> 01:59:06,239
able to witness the cyclical patterns of the sociological phenomenon.

1546
01:59:06,399 --> 01:59:10,399
Psychosocial phenomenon at scale kind of emerged a high relief,

1547
01:59:10,520 --> 01:59:14,119
but it's not usually this clear.

1548
01:59:15,000 --> 01:59:20,520
Speaker 1: You know, is this the beginning of where everybody, every leader,

1549
01:59:20,720 --> 01:59:25,119
now everything is going to be judged on morality, Where

1550
01:59:25,359 --> 01:59:31,640
the where the greatest, the greatest criticism that's going to

1551
01:59:31,680 --> 01:59:34,560
be leveled against somebody is that they're a bad person.

1552
01:59:35,880 --> 01:59:38,399
Speaker 2: I think that's part of it. Yeah, but a certain

1553
01:59:38,479 --> 01:59:41,439
kind of bad person, you know, like that that's all point.

1554
01:59:41,680 --> 01:59:46,840
Like you know, there was there there was men in

1555
01:59:47,000 --> 01:59:51,279
high office who are prone devices that everybody knew about,

1556
01:59:52,640 --> 01:59:54,319
and even when it was reported on, it was kind

1557
01:59:54,359 --> 01:59:57,239
of soft balled and people didn't react the way they

1558
01:59:57,600 --> 02:00:01,760
people didn't react way they did to you know, uh,

1559
02:00:02,640 --> 02:00:06,680
this constant invective against Nixon or Trump. So yeah, that's

1560
02:00:06,760 --> 02:00:12,479
part of it. But it's the president being this kind

1561
02:00:12,520 --> 02:00:19,640
of stand in for a boogeyman imperial executive who's some

1562
02:00:19,800 --> 02:00:23,560
kind of you know, paternal figure gone wrong. That was

1563
02:00:23,640 --> 02:00:25,640
very much. That's what I do agree with Paul Johnson

1564
02:00:25,720 --> 02:00:31,239
on people developed this this this kind of just like

1565
02:00:31,439 --> 02:00:36,479
disdain for authority, like quah authority, not like real rebels

1566
02:00:36,560 --> 02:00:40,000
or something, but I mean like actual authority, like where

1567
02:00:40,000 --> 02:00:42,560
it should be vested in something like the presidency. Like

1568
02:00:42,680 --> 02:00:45,439
this became like scary and bad, you know. But like

1569
02:00:45,520 --> 02:00:48,000
these same people though, like howtow to the police or

1570
02:00:48,119 --> 02:00:51,560
howtow to a COVID mandate like immediately, but this idea

1571
02:00:51,680 --> 02:00:56,960
that like, let me just say thing like why the

1572
02:00:57,479 --> 02:01:00,520
media has this like hysterical fixation with declaring that laborer

1573
02:01:00,600 --> 02:01:04,600
Putin is like an evil evil man like Labry Putin's

1574
02:01:06,039 --> 02:01:10,159
he's a he's a moderate liberal who basically acts like

1575
02:01:10,520 --> 02:01:14,560
any Russian executive would with more restraint, you know, like

1576
02:01:14,720 --> 02:01:18,439
because he but but he's he's like an evil man

1577
02:01:18,640 --> 02:01:24,239
because in Russia there's you know, Russia doesn't just like

1578
02:01:24,399 --> 02:01:27,159
rotate actors and pretend like you know, the executive is

1579
02:01:28,920 --> 02:01:32,960
these kinds of uh, you know, there's not this rotation

1580
02:01:33,119 --> 02:01:36,079
of of like frontmen you know, like behind like a

1581
02:01:36,159 --> 02:01:38,720
real executive like in America, like like Putin actually is

1582
02:01:38,760 --> 02:01:41,439
the president something. But there's this idea that like that's

1583
02:01:41,560 --> 02:01:45,039
scary year, that constitutes some kind of like authoritarian overreach

1584
02:01:45,159 --> 02:01:48,039
or some kind of threat to people's preferred way of living.

1585
02:01:49,000 --> 02:01:50,319
I think it's I think it owes a lot to

1586
02:01:50,399 --> 02:01:52,560
symbolic psychology, which a lot of things do in this

1587
02:01:52,640 --> 02:01:55,560
country and just and probably elsewhere too, when I don't

1588
02:01:55,600 --> 02:01:57,199
live in other countries, so I can't speak to that

1589
02:01:57,520 --> 02:02:02,119
and with as much certainty. But yeah, it's the interplay

1590
02:02:02,119 --> 02:02:07,279
of symbolic psychology of you know, the kind of the

1591
02:02:07,439 --> 02:02:09,960
kind of collapse of authority by future shock and kind

1592
02:02:09,960 --> 02:02:13,039
of the weakening of social bonds to facilitate authority. You know.

1593
02:02:13,119 --> 02:02:18,159
The capitalis the capitalization on those fears and the kind

1594
02:02:18,199 --> 02:02:22,079
of perverting of the form of those fears such that

1595
02:02:22,319 --> 02:02:25,359
you know, it appeals the you know, the kind of

1596
02:02:25,439 --> 02:02:27,840
hoy peloy who are increasingly kind of like sleevish and

1597
02:02:28,439 --> 02:02:32,880
and resentful. It's almost it's.

1598
02:02:33,720 --> 02:02:36,720
Speaker 1: It's weird because it seems like people nowadays really only

1599
02:02:36,840 --> 02:02:45,479
want to really only listen or respect the president when

1600
02:02:45,520 --> 02:02:46,560
there's a state of exception.

1601
02:02:48,960 --> 02:02:50,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, yeah, I think that's part of it.

1602
02:02:52,000 --> 02:02:57,159
It's but yeah, like I said, it's something i'd have

1603
02:02:57,319 --> 02:03:00,520
to I have to. I have to think about it

1604
02:03:00,640 --> 02:03:04,520
and like organize my thoughts to convey a really concise

1605
02:03:05,479 --> 02:03:07,840
view of like what the source of it is. I've

1606
02:03:07,840 --> 02:03:12,600
thought about it before, and you can. It's kind of

1607
02:03:12,640 --> 02:03:15,119
like the last It's sort of it's sort of like

1608
02:03:15,199 --> 02:03:20,920
the last instinctive or intrinsic structure of authority that falls.

1609
02:03:20,960 --> 02:03:27,000
That's one of the reasons why, like Hobbes, Hobbs ontology,

1610
02:03:27,119 --> 02:03:30,880
Hobbs sociological and political ontology is absurd in terms of

1611
02:03:30,960 --> 02:03:35,920
how humans actually live, But what remains intact is Leviathan,

1612
02:03:36,520 --> 02:03:44,039
you know, because the patriarchal authority of the executive over

1613
02:03:44,119 --> 02:03:49,079
his domain is absolute and unimpeachable. I'm not making a pun,

1614
02:03:49,159 --> 02:03:51,359
I mean quite literally. You know. Why is that the

1615
02:03:51,439 --> 02:03:57,600
last psychological structure to come under attack or at least

1616
02:03:57,640 --> 02:04:02,399
to be effectively deteriorated by design? Well, I mean that's why.

1617
02:04:03,039 --> 02:04:06,199
But this also brings up there's also reasons questions about,

1618
02:04:06,960 --> 02:04:10,560
you know, the secularization of concepts of God, you know,

1619
02:04:10,680 --> 02:04:15,199
and how executive action in a modern state takes on

1620
02:04:15,239 --> 02:04:20,800
the trappings of like literally miraculous events, suggestive divide intervention,

1621
02:04:21,680 --> 02:04:27,239
not like literally, but in the symbolic mind and for

1622
02:04:27,319 --> 02:04:32,960
all practical purposes. Symbolic psychological occurrences are are real occurrences.

1623
02:04:33,199 --> 02:04:37,239
But again that's kind of outside the scope. I'm raml

1624
02:04:37,239 --> 02:04:41,000
like you're not. But it's a when you can come

1625
02:04:41,039 --> 02:04:46,920
back to that question when I'm more like folks like

1626
02:04:47,000 --> 02:04:51,239
one of the less like discreetly focused on the subject

1627
02:04:51,319 --> 02:05:00,640
at hand, the uh, but also lowered to your point,

1628
02:05:00,760 --> 02:05:03,359
and I mean to what we've been talking about the

1629
02:05:03,520 --> 02:05:09,279
entire of the hour. Not only it became someone impossible

1630
02:05:09,520 --> 02:05:13,880
for policy were to be reduced to discourse and polemic

1631
02:05:14,000 --> 02:05:21,000
and catch phrases anymore, you know. Prisoner Lash made that

1632
02:05:21,039 --> 02:05:22,960
point a lot too like about the Vietnam War. One

1633
02:05:23,000 --> 02:05:25,640
of the reasons so little is understood about it, aside

1634
02:05:25,680 --> 02:05:30,359
from the bad faith in trendic to the people who

1635
02:05:30,399 --> 02:05:33,760
are trying to sabotauze the war effort. You can't explain

1636
02:05:33,840 --> 02:05:36,600
something like the Vietnam conflict in five sentences, and you

1637
02:05:36,680 --> 02:05:38,640
can't reduce it to being a good war or a

1638
02:05:38,720 --> 02:05:41,199
bad war, or like we should just do more to win. There.

1639
02:05:42,439 --> 02:05:46,720
There's a complexity here. There's nuances, and it's not saying

1640
02:05:46,760 --> 02:05:50,359
they can really be debated at policy level other than

1641
02:05:50,439 --> 02:05:54,720
between men who truly understood, you know, all the variables

1642
02:05:55,000 --> 02:05:59,119
and the strategic implications beyond the battle theater of those variables,

1643
02:06:00,000 --> 02:06:04,920
as well as the historical implications of victory defeat in

1644
02:06:05,039 --> 02:06:11,399
that theater. You know. So as a journalism could no

1645
02:06:11,479 --> 02:06:15,479
longer really kind of capture the essence of policy decisions

1646
02:06:15,960 --> 02:06:18,680
and what went into those decisions, and it became less

1647
02:06:18,680 --> 02:06:21,359
and less capable to kind of structure the world according

1648
02:06:21,399 --> 02:06:27,560
to these sort of polemical devices. It just it just

1649
02:06:27,600 --> 02:06:30,000
simply lowered the standards of the US journalism. You know,

1650
02:06:30,479 --> 02:06:33,239
everything just slowly but surely became a tabloid. You know,

1651
02:06:33,359 --> 02:06:38,439
even those brands and outlets that there tofore had been

1652
02:06:38,520 --> 02:06:41,800
fairly serious and particularly anti Nixon. Well, the way to

1653
02:06:41,840 --> 02:06:45,600
stay alive now is is tabloid and we hate Nixon,

1654
02:06:46,279 --> 02:06:50,119
or you know, splashing across the front page that you know, uh,

1655
02:06:50,800 --> 02:06:54,239
you know, some some like some some snap sort of

1656
02:06:54,560 --> 02:06:57,079
hollderman looking like he's snarling about to strike a reporter,

1657
02:06:57,520 --> 02:07:01,079
you know, saying like you know, with some lurid you know, headline.

1658
02:07:02,119 --> 02:07:04,600
You know, that's what that's what sells papers. And if

1659
02:07:04,640 --> 02:07:06,479
you decide to take that, if you if if one

1660
02:07:06,560 --> 02:07:08,119
had decided to take the high road, or they just

1661
02:07:08,119 --> 02:07:11,600
like wouldn't be in the game, you know, they don't ceremoniously.

1662
02:07:13,279 --> 02:07:16,039
They's one of my ceremonials ceased to exist, you know.

1663
02:07:17,800 --> 02:07:20,600
And even even stuff that was like nominally, even like Midwood,

1664
02:07:20,600 --> 02:07:23,039
stuff that was like nominally kind of like the intellectual alternative.

1665
02:07:23,840 --> 02:07:25,560
Look at like look at like old firing line with

1666
02:07:25,560 --> 02:07:27,920
William Buckley. I mean it's note of the fact. I

1667
02:07:27,960 --> 02:07:30,560
mean he was he was an up two's prick. But

1668
02:07:31,600 --> 02:07:34,560
you know, even that, it's like it's like, okay, so

1669
02:07:34,680 --> 02:07:37,079
gas Buckley he talks about they'll give like a five

1670
02:07:37,119 --> 02:07:39,520
minute summation of something instead of a three sentence summation.

1671
02:07:40,079 --> 02:07:41,960
But it's still you know, the same kind of dumb

1672
02:07:42,039 --> 02:07:46,239
down slogan earring, you know, just like a little bit

1673
02:07:46,319 --> 02:07:48,960
more uh just like a little bit more like meat

1674
02:07:49,000 --> 02:07:53,079
to it, at least in terms of stylistic convention, but

1675
02:07:53,239 --> 02:07:57,760
no more like intellectual nuance, you know it the uh,

1676
02:07:58,760 --> 02:08:02,720
this idea of you know, the newsreader as you know

1677
02:08:02,800 --> 02:08:05,319
kind of like the arbiter of policy, you know, like

1678
02:08:05,439 --> 02:08:10,079
owing to you know, his participation, you know, as the

1679
02:08:10,199 --> 02:08:14,800
target audience of this this cursive process whereby you know,

1680
02:08:14,880 --> 02:08:18,880
we arrive at the truth. You know, like this like

1681
02:08:18,920 --> 02:08:21,640
American discursive space is like, you know, it's like some

1682
02:08:21,800 --> 02:08:25,119
giant like lyceum, like maintained by Plato or something like.

1683
02:08:25,159 --> 02:08:27,800
It's I mean that that's that's fucking ridiculous. But it

1684
02:08:27,840 --> 02:08:30,880
became even more ridiculous in the twentieth century. You know,

1685
02:08:31,039 --> 02:08:36,760
the and this and this is why this, this is why,

1686
02:08:36,840 --> 02:08:41,720
this other the other things that set the foundation for

1687
02:08:41,840 --> 02:08:45,279
the Nixon coup, you know, like uh, you know, like

1688
02:08:45,359 --> 02:08:47,399
they were like the leading of the Pentagon papers and

1689
02:08:47,560 --> 02:08:53,159
like the demand that you know that the demand that uh,

1690
02:08:53,319 --> 02:09:00,960
the executive opened up proverbial books relating to Vietnam and

1691
02:09:02,720 --> 02:09:08,279
battlefield outcomes and special operations, as well as you know,

1692
02:09:08,439 --> 02:09:12,680
asymmetrical warfare techniques, you know, some of which may or

1693
02:09:12,720 --> 02:09:14,720
may not have been you know, legal according to the

1694
02:09:14,800 --> 02:09:19,640
prevailing paradig I'm the idea that, you know, it was imperative,

1695
02:09:19,880 --> 02:09:23,159
it was morally imperative for these things to be availed

1696
02:09:23,199 --> 02:09:27,680
the journalistic scrutiny or or to uh, you know, brought

1697
02:09:28,119 --> 02:09:32,279
into the purview of the public mind. I mean, that's preposterous.

1698
02:09:32,479 --> 02:09:38,239
Like the I mean, in in pretty much every NATO

1699
02:09:38,479 --> 02:09:41,560
state at that time. I mean exclude like the Buonis

1700
02:09:41,640 --> 02:09:45,039
Republic because they was not was not not a normal

1701
02:09:45,119 --> 02:09:48,640
country and the hostile occupation. But I mean in the

1702
02:09:48,760 --> 02:09:56,239
UK there's there's the Official Secrets Act, you know, which

1703
02:09:56,760 --> 02:10:03,399
obviously like as as as lettered in their system, wouldn't

1704
02:10:03,399 --> 02:10:07,640
pass First Amendment muster, But I mean national security exigencies,

1705
02:10:08,159 --> 02:10:10,439
you know, like are an exception to the First Amendment,

1706
02:10:10,640 --> 02:10:13,520
you know. I mean there's ways to if one were

1707
02:10:13,680 --> 02:10:17,119
to be inclined, if what had been inclined to draft

1708
02:10:17,760 --> 02:10:22,319
a body of law to kind of formally insulate state secrets,

1709
02:10:23,399 --> 02:10:25,560
you know, from the prying eyes of media and from

1710
02:10:25,600 --> 02:10:32,039
the cynical maneuverings of of of parisans. I mean, it

1711
02:10:32,079 --> 02:10:34,760
could have been done. I mean this idea that it

1712
02:10:34,920 --> 02:10:41,560
was just not only not only like more morally wrong,

1713
02:10:41,800 --> 02:10:44,880
but you know, somehow like ali into the American political

1714
02:10:44,960 --> 02:10:49,479
culture to allow for official limb to keep it secrets

1715
02:10:49,640 --> 02:10:57,720
is a posterous The UH and the appearance of the

1716
02:10:57,760 --> 02:11:05,399
appearance of secret material, genuinely eyes only material in newspapers

1717
02:11:06,039 --> 02:11:16,119
like national papers. It shot up spectacularly during Nixon's first

1718
02:11:16,199 --> 02:11:22,640
months in office. The first six months of UH nineteen

1719
02:11:22,680 --> 02:11:31,920
sixty nine, there was a there's there's twenty. There's twenty

1720
02:11:32,000 --> 02:11:41,119
major leaks of documents of from class at INFO circular

1721
02:11:41,439 --> 02:11:47,359
classified memos circulated by the National Security Council, to documents

1722
02:11:47,399 --> 02:11:49,640
transmitted to and from c i A to the White House,

1723
02:11:51,520 --> 02:11:55,640
to Army intelligence files, you know, relating to the conditions

1724
02:11:56,039 --> 02:11:59,960
relating to then XTA had conditions on the ground in Vietnam, uh,

1725
02:12:00,199 --> 02:12:04,600
I mean serious violations and national security. Later that year,

1726
02:12:06,239 --> 02:12:08,840
CIA was so concerned and this is pregates hearings a

1727
02:12:08,880 --> 02:12:13,760
CIA actually still had some cloud. At the end of

1728
02:12:13,880 --> 02:12:17,399
nineteen sixty nine, CIA trained into a White House a

1729
02:12:17,520 --> 02:12:21,399
list of forty five newspaper articles which were regarded as

1730
02:12:22,119 --> 02:12:25,359
serious violations and national security which would have real effect

1731
02:12:25,520 --> 02:12:32,439
on you know, the state of the strategic paradigm potentially

1732
02:12:32,880 --> 02:12:35,800
you know VISA V nuclear secrets, as well as the

1733
02:12:36,399 --> 02:12:42,359
battlefield situation in Southeast Asia, which obviously was still raging,

1734
02:12:44,199 --> 02:12:47,640
and of course the kind of the dear of this.

1735
02:12:48,800 --> 02:12:54,319
It was June thirteenth, seventy one, was when the Pentagon

1736
02:12:54,359 --> 02:12:57,359
what's called the Pentagon Papers dropped in the New York Times.

1737
02:12:58,479 --> 02:13:02,800
It was a seven thousand words survey of America's involvement

1738
02:13:03,319 --> 02:13:09,640
in Southeast Asia, specifically Vietnam, but also Cambodia. Allows from

1739
02:13:09,680 --> 02:13:12,760
the end of World War Two ninety forty six, which

1740
02:13:12,840 --> 02:13:15,359
was when you know, the Vietnam War kicked off, until

1741
02:13:15,479 --> 02:13:20,239
ninety sixty eight. The study had been commissioned by Macnamera,

1742
02:13:21,239 --> 02:13:23,920
you know then when he was you know, Defense secretary

1743
02:13:24,000 --> 02:13:30,119
under Kennedy and Johnson UH and the Joint chiefs of Staff.

1744
02:13:31,279 --> 02:13:35,399
These were top secret documents, okay. It related not just

1745
02:13:35,560 --> 02:13:43,119
to you know, America's overall uh, strategic ambitions in the Orient,

1746
02:13:43,840 --> 02:13:48,359
which had become gonna the key theater as a you know,

1747
02:13:48,399 --> 02:13:51,560
a strategic nuclear terms as we talked about, as well

1748
02:13:51,600 --> 02:13:58,640
as in you know, conventional terms. It uh, it dealt

1749
02:13:58,640 --> 02:14:02,760
with the American can forces at the operational level and

1750
02:14:02,920 --> 02:14:04,960
like what you know kind of like the what like

1751
02:14:05,279 --> 02:14:09,439
emerging battle doctrine was It dealt with like under what

1752
02:14:09,600 --> 02:14:13,760
conditions America would consider deploying nuclear weapons to a secondary theater.

1753
02:14:15,439 --> 02:14:18,880
I mean, this was catastrophic, okay. The author of the

1754
02:14:19,000 --> 02:14:22,520
leak was Daniel Ellsberg. He was a four year old

1755
02:14:22,640 --> 02:14:26,560
Rand Corporation employee who'd been a researcher on the study,

1756
02:14:27,359 --> 02:14:31,600
and he's stolen all these documents, and when the administration

1757
02:14:32,199 --> 02:14:38,039
and the FBI discovered the source, they were convinced the

1758
02:14:38,039 --> 02:14:40,600
guy was a double agent because they're like, if there's

1759
02:14:40,600 --> 02:14:45,960
analyzed by KGB experts, not only could jeopardize basically an

1760
02:14:46,119 --> 02:14:56,600
entire range of CIA operational codes, practice and operations, but

1761
02:14:56,720 --> 02:15:01,800
it also it also l bear basically you know, like

1762
02:15:02,439 --> 02:15:07,439
how America derives its own intelligence, you know, from Warsaw

1763
02:15:07,560 --> 02:15:13,079
packed elements, you know, the method that uses to try

1764
02:15:13,159 --> 02:15:15,920
and turn these people, you know, and that information on

1765
02:15:16,039 --> 02:15:18,720
like American surveillance devices, which at that point, you know,

1766
02:15:18,960 --> 02:15:24,359
was was not readily available data, you know, I mean

1767
02:15:24,439 --> 02:15:27,479
this was so the reasoning of the reasoning of the

1768
02:15:27,600 --> 02:15:32,119
Pentagon and other people in the Nicks administration was that

1769
02:15:33,199 --> 02:15:35,600
if this guy's not KGB and trying to cover his

1770
02:15:35,680 --> 02:15:38,760
ass by going public, so doesn't up show up dead,

1771
02:15:39,199 --> 02:15:41,359
It's like what's his angle? Like why is he doing this?

1772
02:15:42,279 --> 02:15:45,039
You know, like the fact that this guy would basically

1773
02:15:45,079 --> 02:15:49,359
be so fucking deranged he's gonna like essentially like burn

1774
02:15:49,479 --> 02:15:53,319
down the American national security establishment to stick it to

1775
02:15:53,479 --> 02:15:57,600
Nixon because Nixon's a bad guy. That's literally insane, you know,

1776
02:15:57,800 --> 02:16:00,560
Like that's but that that's but that's how the people think,

1777
02:16:01,600 --> 02:16:08,319
you know, it's the uh. Nixon was so disturbed by it.

1778
02:16:11,600 --> 02:16:16,560
He uh. On the one hand, you know, he said,

1779
02:16:18,920 --> 02:16:21,680
you know, he said, if we overreact to this. This

1780
02:16:21,840 --> 02:16:24,960
was speaking to his uh, his national security Cabinet, and

1781
02:16:25,000 --> 02:16:28,000
then privately, Kissinger, you said, if we overreact to this,

1782
02:16:29,239 --> 02:16:31,960
we're just that, you know, we will look like weaklings

1783
02:16:31,960 --> 02:16:36,479
because it's kind of constantly reacting to what our enemies do.

1784
02:16:39,280 --> 02:16:41,079
You know, So should we should we? Should we? Not?

1785
02:16:41,280 --> 02:16:41,639
Speaker 1: Should we?

1786
02:16:42,040 --> 02:16:45,159
Speaker 2: You know, ignore it in the court of public opinion

1787
02:16:45,200 --> 02:16:49,040
and not a sho an official statement and deal with

1788
02:16:49,280 --> 02:16:56,920
you know, eliminating these people. Later, Kissinger uh said, no,

1789
02:16:58,120 --> 02:17:02,280
the fact that some if he's like, the problem is

1790
02:17:02,319 --> 02:17:04,920
the fact that some idiot can publish that, like you know,

1791
02:17:05,120 --> 02:17:07,840
the the diplomatic and military seeks with this country on

1792
02:17:07,959 --> 02:17:10,840
his own. Like the fact that this and this can

1793
02:17:10,920 --> 02:17:13,280
destroy our ability to get up foreign policy, like the

1794
02:17:13,360 --> 02:17:15,799
fact that's being done in the first place, Like the

1795
02:17:15,920 --> 02:17:20,520
damage is done, you know, and there you see, like

1796
02:17:20,840 --> 02:17:25,479
Kissinger kind of the Machiavelian emerging contra Nixon the politician,

1797
02:17:25,680 --> 02:17:30,159
which I kind of interesting. And it's also too, I mean,

1798
02:17:30,239 --> 02:17:34,319
if if other powers feel you cannot control leaks and

1799
02:17:34,360 --> 02:17:36,840
the flow of information. They're not going to negotiate with

1800
02:17:36,920 --> 02:17:39,639
you in a serious capacity. You know, North Vietnam is

1801
02:17:39,680 --> 02:17:42,000
not gonna talk to you seriously. The Russians and the

1802
02:17:42,079 --> 02:17:45,000
Chinese tourists aren't going to talk to you because you know,

1803
02:17:45,120 --> 02:17:47,280
they they've got to be certain that you know what

1804
02:17:47,399 --> 02:17:51,040
they tell you, like doesn't travel to the to the other.

1805
02:17:55,000 --> 02:17:59,319
If you cannot control the flow of information within your

1806
02:17:59,360 --> 02:18:05,440
sovereign domain, you cannot be said to be sovereign. So

1807
02:18:05,639 --> 02:18:12,600
Nixon's solution to this was an anti leak unit who's

1808
02:18:12,760 --> 02:18:15,879
mandate specifically was to make sure nothing like the Pentagon

1809
02:18:15,959 --> 02:18:21,959
papers could ever happen again. The unit was formed by

1810
02:18:22,200 --> 02:18:29,319
h who got air Litman's assistants Ego Bud Crow and

1811
02:18:29,440 --> 02:18:34,959
Kissing Germ's administrative assistant David Young. They recruited G. Gordon Lyddy,

1812
02:18:37,959 --> 02:18:40,280
who'd been an FBI man, and he was a military

1813
02:18:40,280 --> 02:18:45,840
event and he was working at the in the Department

1814
02:18:45,840 --> 02:18:48,719
of Justice as a in kind of a murky capacity,

1815
02:18:49,639 --> 02:18:53,079
technically as an investigator, but probably in some like national

1816
02:18:53,200 --> 02:18:57,600
security policy like I would I would imagine counter espionage,

1817
02:18:59,000 --> 02:19:00,840
which at that time was a big part of the

1818
02:19:01,000 --> 02:19:07,280
FBI is like mission mandate. They were called the Plumbers

1819
02:19:07,280 --> 02:19:13,479
because apparently David Young's grandmother, upon hearing that he was

1820
02:19:14,040 --> 02:19:17,719
running a unit to stop leaks, she wrote him a

1821
02:19:17,799 --> 02:19:21,399
letter saying that you know, well, you know, your grandfather

1822
02:19:21,520 --> 02:19:23,920
be proud that you're returning to the family business because

1823
02:19:23,920 --> 02:19:25,879
he'd been a plumber in New York City, Which is

1824
02:19:26,000 --> 02:19:34,600
kind of funny. But the uh also the plumbers did.

1825
02:19:35,959 --> 02:19:44,559
I was entirely justifiable, if any reasonable perspective, in light

1826
02:19:44,639 --> 02:19:50,239
of the severity of the Elsberg case. Their first kind

1827
02:19:50,280 --> 02:19:55,600
of breach with legality, They've got they got they got

1828
02:19:55,680 --> 02:20:02,200
to go ahead from Erlockman himself too covertly, in his words,

1829
02:20:02,239 --> 02:20:05,959
obtained the files to obtain Elsberg's medical files from his

1830
02:20:06,040 --> 02:20:11,559
psychiatrist's office, and the White House plumbers broke into the

1831
02:20:11,600 --> 02:20:16,479
psychiatrist's office after hours, and they in fact procured those files.

1832
02:20:18,959 --> 02:20:24,520
That break in of Elsberg's psychiatrist's office. That was the moment.

1833
02:20:24,520 --> 02:20:29,280
It was the Nick administration, albeit totally unknown to Nixon himself,

1834
02:20:29,360 --> 02:20:36,079
It did over overstep the bounds of legality, but nobody

1835
02:20:36,200 --> 02:20:43,840
talked about it subsequently, obviously because it could be rationalized

1836
02:20:43,879 --> 02:20:50,079
as you know, an infraction that was unfortunate, but the

1837
02:20:50,159 --> 02:20:54,520
necessity of which was dictated by basic national security exigencies.

1838
02:20:55,399 --> 02:20:57,719
And it also raised the incomgtable questions like why is

1839
02:20:57,760 --> 02:21:02,719
Elberg like feeding secrets, you know, feeding state series to

1840
02:21:02,760 --> 02:21:08,159
the media and potentially putting tens of millions in Maria's

1841
02:21:08,239 --> 02:21:12,000
lives in jeopardy the sole purpose of bringing down Nixon,

1842
02:21:13,280 --> 02:21:26,680
you know. Obviously the subsequent break in May, in late

1843
02:21:26,760 --> 02:21:30,840
May nineteen seventy two, and then again on June seventeenth,

1844
02:21:30,879 --> 02:21:34,680
I mean seventy two. These are the Water eight break ins.

1845
02:21:34,719 --> 02:21:36,520
There was two break ins at the Water eight Hotel

1846
02:21:37,479 --> 02:21:41,360
by the White House plumbers, the second of which was

1847
02:21:41,440 --> 02:21:54,200
when they were caught. All we've been going for let's

1848
02:21:54,399 --> 02:21:58,360
I've got about another hour. I want to go. If

1849
02:21:58,399 --> 02:22:00,559
you want me to do that, I eat a break

1850
02:22:00,719 --> 02:22:02,799
or we can reconvene in a day or two.

1851
02:22:09,520 --> 02:22:12,159
Speaker 1: Sorry I was muted. Why don't we reconvene in a

1852
02:22:12,239 --> 02:22:12,680
day or two?

1853
02:22:13,239 --> 02:22:13,280
Speaker 2: No?

1854
02:22:13,319 --> 02:22:15,600
Speaker 1: No, I know you have a lot more, a lot

1855
02:22:15,680 --> 02:22:15,959
more to go.

1856
02:22:16,280 --> 02:22:18,200
Speaker 2: So yeah, I didn't mean to dra us out too long,

1857
02:22:18,280 --> 02:22:20,600
but I want to deal with Archibald Cox as well

1858
02:22:20,680 --> 02:22:22,280
in that. But I promise we'll wrap it up in

1859
02:22:22,319 --> 02:22:23,159
the third episode.

1860
02:22:24,520 --> 02:22:28,559
Speaker 1: All right, so just let's end it right there. Give

1861
02:22:28,600 --> 02:22:29,479
your plugs and.

1862
02:22:30,079 --> 02:22:32,159
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope you on the subs were happy. I

1863
02:22:32,200 --> 02:22:35,000
hope I wasn't rambling too much. It's a it's a

1864
02:22:35,040 --> 02:22:35,719
dense topic.

1865
02:22:36,200 --> 02:22:36,399
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1866
02:22:37,719 --> 02:22:41,600
Speaker 2: You can find me at x at Real Capital r

1867
02:22:41,639 --> 02:22:44,959
e A O Underscore number seven h M A S

1868
02:22:45,000 --> 02:22:49,879
seven seven seven. Find me a substick Real Thomas seven

1869
02:22:49,920 --> 02:22:52,520
seven seven at subseck dot com. That's what the podcast

1870
02:22:52,680 --> 02:22:56,799
is too. Find me my website number seven h M

1871
02:22:56,879 --> 02:23:00,159
A S seven seven seven dot com. I'm a some

1872
02:23:00,600 --> 02:23:03,479
people answered the call. I'm assembling a team of video

1873
02:23:03,520 --> 02:23:07,680
and audio editors who have offered to help me and Rake.

1874
02:23:08,879 --> 02:23:13,559
That's gonna dramatically expedite our ability to get content out there.

1875
02:23:14,399 --> 02:23:17,440
And like I said, I think something miss understood when

1876
02:23:17,440 --> 02:23:19,520
I shouted out on Twitter when I said I gotta

1877
02:23:19,520 --> 02:23:23,079
scale back. Like my pod appearances, I'm gonna keep doing

1878
02:23:23,200 --> 02:23:26,040
these with Pete as long as he wants, as long

1879
02:23:26,040 --> 02:23:29,639
as Wing to host me, but other commitments outside of

1880
02:23:29,639 --> 02:23:32,239
my own pod, I'm gonna have to scale those back dramatically.

1881
02:23:32,639 --> 02:23:34,360
Otherwise I'm not gonna have any time in the day

1882
02:23:34,440 --> 02:23:36,840
to work on these manuscripts and this other stuff. I

1883
02:23:36,959 --> 02:23:40,479
will come back to making myself basically available. But in

1884
02:23:40,559 --> 02:23:43,959
the next few days, I it's I'm gonna have to

1885
02:23:44,040 --> 02:23:48,680
dramatically cut back on abiding invitations to appear, and I'm

1886
02:23:48,719 --> 02:23:51,159
sorry about that. But I will always be on here

1887
02:23:51,360 --> 02:23:54,239
as long as Pete wants to host me, and I

1888
02:23:54,280 --> 02:23:56,559
will always be active on my own shit. But I'm

1889
02:23:56,559 --> 02:23:59,079
gonna need a couple of months to just focus on

1890
02:23:59,479 --> 02:24:00,680
getting a hit on this stuff.

1891
02:24:01,360 --> 02:24:03,959
Speaker 1: That's all I got, all right, man, till the next time,

1892
02:24:04,079 --> 02:24:08,120
till part three, talk to you. Thanks. Yeah, I want

1893
02:24:08,120 --> 02:24:11,559
to welcome everyone back to the Pecanana Show. I think

1894
02:24:11,879 --> 02:24:15,959
Thomas is ready to uh finish up this three parter

1895
02:24:16,479 --> 02:24:19,920
on Nixon and Watergate today. How you doing, Thomas, I'm doing.

1896
02:24:19,959 --> 02:24:24,879
Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot. There's a lot to this topic.

1897
02:24:25,319 --> 02:24:27,479
I mean, that's why I wanted to go an extra episode.

1898
02:24:28,319 --> 02:24:30,360
I think people get bogged down to minutia. They don't

1899
02:24:30,360 --> 02:24:33,559
see the forest through the trees. That's easy to do

1900
02:24:33,840 --> 02:24:35,920
because there's so much smoke and mirrors and you know,

1901
02:24:36,159 --> 02:24:39,280
just no morm of deliberate ledgard main by interested parties.

1902
02:24:40,159 --> 02:24:42,159
But also people focus on the wrong things, you know,

1903
02:24:42,239 --> 02:24:45,360
Like I said, the book Silent Coo is exhausted and

1904
02:24:45,399 --> 02:24:49,319
it's a good resource, but I think it focuses too

1905
02:24:49,440 --> 02:24:53,280
much on, you know, speculating about the intrigues actually led

1906
02:24:53,280 --> 02:24:56,799
to the Watergate break in, and as I'm going to

1907
02:24:56,840 --> 02:25:01,200
get into, because I'm going to get into today, the

1908
02:25:01,319 --> 02:25:04,920
second Watergate break in, whereby the plumbers were actually arrested,

1909
02:25:05,440 --> 02:25:08,799
that increasingly faded into the kind of faded into the

1910
02:25:08,840 --> 02:25:16,159
peribrial ether even as the narrative was reaching its zenith

1911
02:25:17,120 --> 02:25:22,399
in terms of, you know, the coalition that had assembled

1912
02:25:23,360 --> 02:25:25,399
to bring down the Nickson White House, you know, even

1913
02:25:25,799 --> 02:25:27,040
when they were kind of like at the peak of

1914
02:25:27,040 --> 02:25:31,000
their power, and we're very it was it was you know,

1915
02:25:31,079 --> 02:25:34,639
a fore round inclusion that they would they would get

1916
02:25:35,680 --> 02:25:38,600
an impeachment quorum if in fact it came down to

1917
02:25:38,719 --> 02:25:42,319
such a vote. And that's important to consider the degree

1918
02:25:42,360 --> 02:25:45,280
to which, you know, whatever the plumbers were doing was

1919
02:25:45,319 --> 02:25:50,799
really protextual what I believe people are saying, and this

1920
02:25:50,920 --> 02:25:53,440
is entirely this is very very dishonest. I'm not saying

1921
02:25:53,440 --> 02:25:57,719
this is somehow more legitimate than the kind of laughable

1922
02:25:58,559 --> 02:26:02,000
sort of pretext of what is being alleged is indicative

1923
02:26:02,079 --> 02:26:05,040
of you know, intolerable corruption and overreach on the necks

1924
02:26:05,079 --> 02:26:12,520
and White House, the below board, or extra judicial wire

1925
02:26:12,600 --> 02:26:22,520
tapping of certain individuals, as well as as well as

1926
02:26:24,000 --> 02:26:30,000
what was said on the infamous Nixon tapes that seems

1927
02:26:30,040 --> 02:26:35,600
to be abould really through Special Counsel Archibald Cox, into

1928
02:26:35,639 --> 02:26:40,280
this kind of vicious moral crusade, which makes a little

1929
02:26:40,319 --> 02:26:47,319
bit more sense than the Watergate break in pretext, but

1930
02:26:47,440 --> 02:26:50,360
in comparative terms. And again, this isn't what about ism

1931
02:26:50,520 --> 02:26:56,079
when we're talking about criminal law and the impeachment power

1932
02:26:56,200 --> 02:26:59,040
and process is a matter of criminal law, albeit a

1933
02:26:59,200 --> 02:27:03,680
very discreetly narrowly tailored one and a very unusual one.

1934
02:27:04,079 --> 02:27:06,600
But we can only rely on precedent, you know, to

1935
02:27:06,719 --> 02:27:11,440
determine what's an appropriate way to proceed under diverse facts

1936
02:27:11,520 --> 02:27:18,559
and circumstances. And essentially nobody cared when other administrations did

1937
02:27:18,639 --> 02:27:22,719
exactly the same things that the Knickson administration was doing

1938
02:27:23,760 --> 02:27:27,879
and considering the exigencies presented, you know, it can never

1939
02:27:27,959 --> 02:27:31,159
be it should never be forgotten that Nixon was a

1940
02:27:31,200 --> 02:27:36,680
wartime president in a very real sense and that had

1941
02:27:37,040 --> 02:27:41,639
had that had existential implications during the Cold War, you know,

1942
02:27:41,840 --> 02:27:44,639
I mean Bush forty three was also a wartime president.

1943
02:27:44,799 --> 02:27:50,520
But the not to sound overwrought, but the kind of

1944
02:27:50,639 --> 02:27:54,079
fate of the world system as it existed was not

1945
02:27:54,280 --> 02:27:57,719
in the balance, you know, I react not a client

1946
02:27:57,799 --> 02:28:01,760
state of a superpower that could kill eighty million Americans

1947
02:28:02,440 --> 02:28:07,319
within hours an event of a general war. So whatever

1948
02:28:07,479 --> 02:28:16,319
Nixon did as regards extra judicial measures undertaken against people

1949
02:28:17,799 --> 02:28:22,879
who are believed, based upon some reasonable suspicion, to be

1950
02:28:22,959 --> 02:28:26,920
compromising the ability United States to specifically off off to

1951
02:28:27,000 --> 02:28:30,200
the president, you know, to carry on not just diplomacy,

1952
02:28:30,360 --> 02:28:36,440
but carry on and prosecute an active war while protecting

1953
02:28:36,520 --> 02:28:41,040
state secrets in the midst of a wider strategic paradigm

1954
02:28:45,040 --> 02:28:49,680
that that that's got to be considered and what's what's

1955
02:28:49,760 --> 02:28:53,920
appropriate and what constant is a clear and present danger

1956
02:28:54,040 --> 02:29:02,639
then cannot be analogised or analogized to facts and circumstances.

1957
02:29:04,319 --> 02:29:12,959
Were such such factors not present. I think we spoke,

1958
02:29:13,120 --> 02:29:16,159
and I think we ended last time around the even

1959
02:29:16,200 --> 02:29:18,360
one's second to call my notes hears, I'm not having

1960
02:29:18,360 --> 02:29:23,239
to do them, so I'm not having to do Google

1961
02:29:23,360 --> 02:29:33,440
food to get them next to check my dates and things. Yeah,

1962
02:29:33,440 --> 02:29:38,159
I think we I think we ended in discussing we

1963
02:29:38,239 --> 02:29:44,399
started to talk about the White House tapes before we

1964
02:29:44,440 --> 02:29:50,440
get to that. Though, one of the reasons why Liddy

1965
02:29:50,559 --> 02:29:52,719
became sort of the face of Watergate is not just

1966
02:29:52,799 --> 02:29:57,120
because you know, he was an eccentric character and he

1967
02:29:57,280 --> 02:30:01,639
was kind of made for you know, conspiraal narratives in media,

1968
02:30:01,799 --> 02:30:07,440
like the Man of Lydia. I mean, after the after

1969
02:30:07,479 --> 02:30:12,680
the White House plumbers were arrested, a particularly ambitious judge

1970
02:30:13,000 --> 02:30:16,879
named John si Rica Cloak People Cloak Willie, anonymously known

1971
02:30:16,920 --> 02:30:20,920
as Maximum John because he was very much like a

1972
02:30:21,000 --> 02:30:23,639
Rockefeller laws or a judge who was known for his

1973
02:30:23,680 --> 02:30:31,639
absolutely draconian sentences. He was threatening to slap the White

1974
02:30:31,680 --> 02:30:36,719
House plumbers with life sentences like with parole, but just

1975
02:30:36,799 --> 02:30:39,920
the same if if they refuse to turn state's evidence.

1976
02:30:40,440 --> 02:30:44,319
That's quite literally insane, you know, to say, well, you're gonna,

1977
02:30:44,319 --> 02:30:46,120
you're gonna, you're gonna lock people up for the mouse,

1978
02:30:46,239 --> 02:30:51,319
you know, twenty years to life from a petty burglary,

1979
02:30:52,000 --> 02:30:55,959
you know, regardless of the implications visa via a sitting

1980
02:30:55,959 --> 02:31:01,239
in presidential administration. I mean, things like things like this

1981
02:31:03,959 --> 02:31:07,319
that doesn't just smack a malicious prosecution, but I mean

1982
02:31:07,399 --> 02:31:10,680
that that's that's an obvious made of judicial overreach, you know,

1983
02:31:10,799 --> 02:31:12,600
and it goes to show you're kind of at every level,

1984
02:31:12,719 --> 02:31:14,959
this was this this this scandal that we can call

1985
02:31:15,000 --> 02:31:20,680
it a scandal and not you know, coup, which is

1986
02:31:20,879 --> 02:31:24,159
kind of more probably what it was. At every stage,

1987
02:31:25,159 --> 02:31:29,280
you know, every every every actor of regime official dumb

1988
02:31:29,399 --> 02:31:38,200
was proceeding abnormally, you know it, Uh Liddy uh clammed

1989
02:31:38,280 --> 02:31:41,959
up essentially stated he wasn't afraid to go to prison.

1990
02:31:45,840 --> 02:31:51,000
Three could further threaten him by making it clear that

1991
02:31:51,079 --> 02:31:52,799
he'd see to it that Liddy was sent to a

1992
02:31:52,879 --> 02:31:58,520
maximum security prison, you know, presumably that housed violent offenders.

1993
02:31:58,559 --> 02:32:01,959
And this was you know, the Attica era when when

1994
02:32:02,000 --> 02:32:05,319
when when racial warfare was underwayne American penitentiaries. I mean,

1995
02:32:05,319 --> 02:32:06,760
this is this is very this is this is really

1996
02:32:06,840 --> 02:32:13,959
quite grotesque. Okay, it's you know, I mean, as it were,

1997
02:32:14,159 --> 02:32:20,079
uh lady was able to plete out. But you know,

1998
02:32:20,159 --> 02:32:23,760
for people proportedly, you know, for these Woodward and Bernstein

1999
02:32:23,799 --> 02:32:27,680
types supposedly were so singularly concerned with the integrity of

2000
02:32:27,799 --> 02:32:31,520
processes and things. I mean they I I would think

2001
02:32:31,559 --> 02:32:34,440
that that would have given them pause. But apparently it didn't,

2002
02:32:38,280 --> 02:32:42,639
you know, So thus the water when you know, the

2003
02:32:42,680 --> 02:32:45,239
water gets the water get scandal broke, you know obviously

2004
02:32:45,360 --> 02:32:47,559
with with the arrest of the plumbers, but it wasn't

2005
02:32:48,639 --> 02:32:50,760
you know again, it kind of pretty rapidly mutated into

2006
02:32:50,840 --> 02:32:59,520
something totally unrelated. The uh the Democrats had majority congressional control,

2007
02:33:01,239 --> 02:33:03,600
so this was kind of their proved opportunity to assault,

2008
02:33:03,760 --> 02:33:07,120
you know, the imperial presidency, which had become their boogeyman,

2009
02:33:07,520 --> 02:33:11,200
as they've been talking about the last two episodes, and

2010
02:33:11,559 --> 02:33:14,159
what they singularly focused on first was you know, the

2011
02:33:14,239 --> 02:33:17,120
White House tapes. You know, the claim then is now

2012
02:33:17,280 --> 02:33:21,840
was oh Nixon was this paranoiac. He was taping everything

2013
02:33:21,920 --> 02:33:24,440
in the White House. There'd been a White House taping

2014
02:33:24,479 --> 02:33:27,959
system in place since FDR. When Nixon took the other

2015
02:33:27,959 --> 02:33:31,440
of office, there was a taping system installed that Johnson

2016
02:33:31,479 --> 02:33:37,040
had installed Nixon, and that one removed. The one that

2017
02:33:37,159 --> 02:33:40,600
replaced it was one that holler him and selected that

2018
02:33:40,799 --> 02:33:45,360
was voice activated. So that was which was something of

2019
02:33:45,399 --> 02:33:49,239
a double edged sword because obviously it guarantees that you know,

2020
02:33:49,440 --> 02:33:52,799
if if if the third man in the room forgets

2021
02:33:52,879 --> 02:33:56,639
to you know, hit the record button. In those days,

2022
02:33:56,760 --> 02:34:00,280
you know, with that with the same technology, know, the

2023
02:34:00,959 --> 02:34:05,719
the minute somebody speaks audibly, the mechanism would would kick on.

2024
02:34:06,600 --> 02:34:12,319
You know. Some people have claimed like, oh, this, this

2025
02:34:12,479 --> 02:34:14,799
is what this was the single greatest disservice you know,

2026
02:34:14,879 --> 02:34:17,600
Hallerman could have all be it unintentionally done? I don't

2027
02:34:17,639 --> 02:34:19,639
accept that. Like the issue with the tapes, wasn't that

2028
02:34:20,479 --> 02:34:22,840
the whole point of the whole point of taping Oval

2029
02:34:22,879 --> 02:34:26,280
office conversations is that they're not doctored. It's that when

2030
02:34:26,319 --> 02:34:29,239
it's claimed that you know, oh, mister Nixon said this,

2031
02:34:29,520 --> 02:34:32,920
he ordered this. There's literally both sides or all sides

2032
02:34:32,920 --> 02:34:36,280
of the conversation. You know, it can't it can't be

2033
02:34:36,399 --> 02:34:39,200
said to be you know, half of a conversation, you know,

2034
02:34:39,319 --> 02:34:43,920
owing to owing to selective editing, you know, in sitsu.

2035
02:34:47,000 --> 02:34:53,959
But of course, uh, these uh, the transcriptions of these tapes.

2036
02:34:56,239 --> 02:35:01,559
The court and the Congressional advent instigators insisted that these

2037
02:35:01,639 --> 02:35:07,440
be handed over without exception. And I mean obviously that's

2038
02:35:08,079 --> 02:35:11,040
you know, uh, this is this is literally what executive

2039
02:35:11,079 --> 02:35:14,399
privilege is tailored for, is to prevent such things from

2040
02:35:14,440 --> 02:35:18,600
seeing the light of day, you know, not not because

2041
02:35:18,639 --> 02:35:21,840
we're gonna protect you know, a sitting executive, not because

2042
02:35:21,840 --> 02:35:24,920
we're gonna indentify, indemnify I am from wrongdoing. But again

2043
02:35:26,120 --> 02:35:33,239
it was understood by everybody, literally everybody, you know, until

2044
02:35:33,920 --> 02:35:37,959
this Watergate moment, that there's going to be state secrets

2045
02:35:38,000 --> 02:35:41,799
bandied about pretty much constantly in the Oval Office. You know,

2046
02:35:41,840 --> 02:35:43,680
we're not We're not gonna just kind of throw open

2047
02:35:43,719 --> 02:35:49,559
the doors of you know, the machinery of policy in

2048
02:35:49,680 --> 02:35:52,799
a time of war and you know, destroy the ability

2049
02:35:52,879 --> 02:35:59,920
to practice you know, meaningful diplomacy and and wartime negotiation,

2050
02:36:00,079 --> 02:36:02,040
and you know, just so that you know, Woodward and

2051
02:36:02,120 --> 02:36:04,719
Bernstein can get the scoop, or just so that you know,

2052
02:36:04,760 --> 02:36:07,840
there can be some kind of forth estate veto over

2053
02:36:07,959 --> 02:36:11,879
what they perceived to be you know, bad conduct and

2054
02:36:11,920 --> 02:36:15,600
the prosecution of the Vietnam War or whatever, you know,

2055
02:36:15,760 --> 02:36:21,920
something that's that was bad faith of itself. The driving

2056
02:36:22,079 --> 02:36:26,520
force against Nixon, particularly in this regard of the tapes

2057
02:36:27,879 --> 02:36:32,639
in the Senate at least was Sam Urvin, who, ironically,

2058
02:36:33,079 --> 02:36:36,879
you know, we talked about that Bobby Baker scandal, you know,

2059
02:36:37,000 --> 02:36:41,200
like sex scandal involving LBJ. Like Irvin had been the

2060
02:36:41,280 --> 02:36:43,959
man who successfully you know, kind of intervened like save

2061
02:36:44,079 --> 02:36:49,559
Olbg's ass you know, many years back. By that point,

2062
02:36:50,120 --> 02:36:53,120
he'd kind of retained his role as a political fixer,

2063
02:36:53,440 --> 02:36:58,559
you know, but obviously he didn't have any particular history

2064
02:36:58,600 --> 02:37:01,719
with Nixon personally. You know, this is obviously very much

2065
02:37:01,799 --> 02:37:09,920
a careerist, uh effort. And you know, since he'd been

2066
02:37:11,360 --> 02:37:17,120
the secretary of the majority leader back in back in

2067
02:37:17,200 --> 02:37:20,719
the days the Baker scandal. He'd ultimately resigned during an

2068
02:37:20,760 --> 02:37:25,319
investigation in ninety sixty three into this, you know, into

2069
02:37:25,360 --> 02:37:28,680
the into his business and political activities. But he very

2070
02:37:28,760 --> 02:37:31,840
much bounced back from that, and uh, I think of

2071
02:37:31,920 --> 02:37:33,159
this as a way of him kind of trying to

2072
02:37:33,360 --> 02:37:35,680
ingradiate himself to the new masters, as it were. But

2073
02:37:38,319 --> 02:37:42,280
the uh, the investigation into Baker was in sremonus he

2074
02:37:42,399 --> 02:37:45,040
dropped there for the assassination of Kennedy when kind of

2075
02:37:45,040 --> 02:37:49,120
everything got thrown into him chaos, you know, and uh,

2076
02:37:50,079 --> 02:37:52,280
not not to be make a crude pun, but I

2077
02:37:52,319 --> 02:37:54,559
mean Urban kind of dodged a bullet as as much

2078
02:37:54,719 --> 02:38:02,200
Kennedy uh did not did not dodge a bullet simultaneously.

2079
02:38:03,040 --> 02:38:05,760
Because I think we touched on you know, Vice President

2080
02:38:05,799 --> 02:38:09,799
Spureau agnew he was very suddenly accused of accepting kickbacks,

2081
02:38:11,319 --> 02:38:18,319
you know, for for government contracts, particularly by you know,

2082
02:38:18,440 --> 02:38:21,239
construction firms that you know, we're alleged to have organized

2083
02:38:21,280 --> 02:38:26,520
crime ties, you know, all government Maryland. He got slapped

2084
02:38:26,559 --> 02:38:31,760
with this uh indictment containing over forty counts, you know,

2085
02:38:32,639 --> 02:38:37,440
and alleging everything from you know, tax tax fraud and

2086
02:38:37,520 --> 02:38:43,799
tax evasion. He's accepting the bribes, you know, criminal conspiracy

2087
02:38:43,879 --> 02:38:46,680
and solicitation to commit fraud. You know. But again it's

2088
02:38:46,719 --> 02:38:49,479
like why why is this suddenly coming out now? You know?

2089
02:38:51,680 --> 02:38:54,079
But I mean Agnew had Agnew had no choice but

2090
02:38:54,200 --> 02:38:58,559
to resign on October ninth, ninety seventy three, the Justice

2091
02:38:58,600 --> 02:39:04,280
Department offering him if he was willing to resign, off

2092
02:39:04,319 --> 02:39:07,559
offering him a play, uh no contest. You know, I'm

2093
02:39:08,200 --> 02:39:10,920
on one kind of tax evasion, which also I mean

2094
02:39:11,000 --> 02:39:14,440
is very transparent too. You know. It's well, we'll make

2095
02:39:14,479 --> 02:39:16,520
we'll make this forty kind indictment go away as long

2096
02:39:16,559 --> 02:39:22,079
as you quit, you know. Enter Alexander Haig and he

2097
02:39:22,200 --> 02:39:25,600
becomes key. Higg's a really compelling figure, and I think

2098
02:39:25,680 --> 02:39:30,440
he was a stronger military mind than he's credited. He

2099
02:39:30,680 --> 02:39:36,399
was a commander of a naval forces during kind of

2100
02:39:36,680 --> 02:39:38,440
kind of keep during kind of the key detent era

2101
02:39:38,520 --> 02:39:40,000
and as Dayton came to an end. I mean, he

2102
02:39:40,040 --> 02:39:47,799
famously is remembered for you know, his uh putting his

2103
02:39:47,840 --> 02:39:50,799
foot in his mouth after Reagan was shot. I'm in

2104
02:39:50,920 --> 02:39:54,000
control here. I No matter what Haig said, he was

2105
02:39:54,319 --> 02:39:58,319
gonna be used as a pinata by you know, by

2106
02:39:58,360 --> 02:40:01,600
the enemies of mister Nixon and you know, those with

2107
02:40:01,719 --> 02:40:07,799
long memories. But Haig, at this point became the White

2108
02:40:07,799 --> 02:40:13,399
House Chief of Staff, held him and having resigned, you know,

2109
02:40:13,479 --> 02:40:15,879
owing to the fact that he there was you know,

2110
02:40:15,959 --> 02:40:26,079
he'd been singularly targeted by the Watergate witch hunters. Haig

2111
02:40:26,280 --> 02:40:28,559
was a pretty I mean, indition to being a strong

2112
02:40:31,360 --> 02:40:36,040
general officer type of that era, he was a combat

2113
02:40:36,120 --> 02:40:41,360
veteran in of Korea. He had good Machiavillian instincts for Washington,

2114
02:40:41,680 --> 02:40:46,479
and he was in favor of Agnew stepping down without

2115
02:40:46,520 --> 02:40:50,360
a fuss for the sake of optics. But privately, his

2116
02:40:50,520 --> 02:40:57,639
big concern was uh that both Nickson and Agnew would

2117
02:40:57,680 --> 02:41:04,360
be indicted, leaving succession to the constitutional next in line,

2118
02:41:04,959 --> 02:41:08,319
who was figure at the House, Carl Albert at that time,

2119
02:41:08,600 --> 02:41:12,959
who is known to be like a barely functioning alcoholic.

2120
02:41:13,399 --> 02:41:16,479
He was presently under psychiatric here, you know, to a

2121
02:41:16,559 --> 02:41:19,959
military man like hey, everything else aside the idea of

2122
02:41:20,000 --> 02:41:24,959
there basically being like a headless executive at that juncture,

2123
02:41:25,159 --> 02:41:34,600
you know, mind you in the midst of the on

2124
02:41:34,719 --> 02:41:37,319
the costs, but in the midst of you know, the

2125
02:41:37,440 --> 02:41:42,639
nineteen seventy three war, the kind of you know, critical

2126
02:41:42,719 --> 02:41:49,680
critical developments in Southeast Asia after you know, the signing

2127
02:41:49,719 --> 02:41:52,959
of the peace agreement, which had to be managed correctly

2128
02:41:53,079 --> 02:41:55,360
as you know, to say the least, you know, as

2129
02:41:55,440 --> 02:42:00,840
Han NOI kind of tested the parameters of American willingness

2130
02:42:00,920 --> 02:42:04,479
to enforce it. You know, this sin was so be

2131
02:42:04,520 --> 02:42:06,959
it split was you know, the blood was still fresh

2132
02:42:07,239 --> 02:42:12,600
from that coverbial separation. This this could have been uh,

2133
02:42:14,799 --> 02:42:17,719
this this, this, this, this could have been an absolute disaster. Now,

2134
02:42:19,879 --> 02:42:27,959
enter Archibold Cox. One second. Let me sorry about this.

2135
02:42:42,840 --> 02:42:46,079
Speaker 1: I always lose my place and notes too. Okay, yeah, no, jit,

2136
02:42:47,959 --> 02:42:49,639
you want a little you want a little question that

2137
02:42:49,719 --> 02:42:50,200
might no.

2138
02:42:50,520 --> 02:42:54,319
Speaker 2: I'm good, okay, I got okay, Yeah, here.

2139
02:42:54,520 --> 02:43:08,360
Speaker 3: This second, I was gonna ask you a question about

2140
02:43:08,399 --> 02:43:10,440
hag Yeah, by all means, go ahead.

2141
02:43:11,959 --> 02:43:14,440
Speaker 1: This is off topic. But when he made that comment

2142
02:43:14,559 --> 02:43:18,840
after the UH after Reagan got shot. Do you think

2143
02:43:18,840 --> 02:43:21,079
the Russians thought a coup might be under underway?

2144
02:43:22,360 --> 02:43:31,120
Speaker 2: It's possible, but it uh yeah, but I think, yeah, definitely.

2145
02:43:31,280 --> 02:43:35,159
But the there was an aspect, you know, we these

2146
02:43:35,319 --> 02:43:40,360
these sovietologists in in America were always kind of lamenting that, uh,

2147
02:43:42,559 --> 02:43:47,000
that it was like a miss a riddle wrapped in

2148
02:43:47,040 --> 02:43:49,479
an enigma to the try and discern, you know, like

2149
02:43:49,559 --> 02:43:54,600
who the real power was behind the throne in the Kremlin,

2150
02:43:57,120 --> 02:44:00,719
and drop Off thought that Reagan was something of a

2151
02:44:00,799 --> 02:44:05,440
cipher anyway. And that's one of the reasons during the

2152
02:44:05,479 --> 02:44:10,479
Avil Archer era why I kind of the real intromvirate

2153
02:44:10,600 --> 02:44:14,360
of grim Eco Ustenoff and it dropped Off became so

2154
02:44:14,799 --> 02:44:18,920
paranoid as it were so Yeah, I think that added

2155
02:44:18,959 --> 02:44:23,000
to the danger of a Reagan Reagan being shot just

2156
02:44:23,239 --> 02:44:25,479
just on its own terms, like added to the danger

2157
02:44:25,559 --> 02:44:30,200
of the of the situation. In my opinion, I don't

2158
02:44:30,200 --> 02:44:31,920
think I don't think what Haig said signaled to the

2159
02:44:32,000 --> 02:44:40,719
Russians any any kind of critical any kind of critical perception,

2160
02:44:41,520 --> 02:44:50,920
critical capacity that impacted their perception. As far as Haig's

2161
02:44:51,000 --> 02:44:56,799
uh role in you know, the final days of the

2162
02:44:56,840 --> 02:45:07,319
Knicks administration, Hay very much came into the gun sights

2163
02:45:07,360 --> 02:45:15,479
of Archibald Cox, who is Archibald Cox before Nixon's appointment

2164
02:45:16,600 --> 02:45:23,399
of Attorney General Elliott Richardson before the Senate would confirm

2165
02:45:23,479 --> 02:45:31,319
him on May ninety seventy three, Richardson had to agree

2166
02:45:31,840 --> 02:45:35,200
at his confirmation hearing to a point of Watergate special prosecutor.

2167
02:45:38,440 --> 02:45:41,959
The special prosecutor role and of itself is absurd, like

2168
02:45:42,200 --> 02:45:45,559
in any epoch, like it was absurd when ken Starr

2169
02:45:46,520 --> 02:45:48,600
was assigned the role. I mean, Clinton was a total

2170
02:45:48,639 --> 02:45:53,000
piece of shit. But that's beside the point. This idea

2171
02:45:53,200 --> 02:45:57,040
of we're gonna we're gonna appoint what amounts to a

2172
02:45:57,120 --> 02:46:02,239
law enforcement officer. He's simply gonna like investigate. He's gonna

2173
02:46:02,239 --> 02:46:06,280
begin an investigation from a man and from there discover

2174
02:46:06,479 --> 02:46:11,399
some kind of wrongdoing. I mean that that's grossly offensive

2175
02:46:11,440 --> 02:46:21,760
to due process. It intrinsically politicizes, you know, the Fag

2176
02:46:21,840 --> 02:46:30,719
finding mission. And it also it basically in the best

2177
02:46:30,799 --> 02:46:34,760
of times and in the best of circumstances, in the

2178
02:46:34,840 --> 02:46:37,959
most stable circumstances, in terms of you know, a true

2179
02:46:38,000 --> 02:46:41,319
moral consistent in Washington, it basically calls by the sitting executive,

2180
02:46:41,360 --> 02:46:45,760
the police himself, and the worst at times in terms

2181
02:46:45,799 --> 02:46:51,079
of across the aisle trust and goodwill. You're you're basically

2182
02:46:51,120 --> 02:47:01,360
guaranteeing a witch hunt. Okay, Richardson h back to the

2183
02:47:01,520 --> 02:47:09,879
point of Archibald Cox. Under a one time special regulation

2184
02:47:10,239 --> 02:47:12,920
he was allowed to it was essentially allowed to appoint him. Okay,

2185
02:47:15,799 --> 02:47:18,520
Now this this, this, this, this whole arrangement was to

2186
02:47:18,600 --> 02:47:22,000
say it was I mean that Turtle legal scholar might

2187
02:47:22,040 --> 02:47:24,520
call it novel. I mean, it was just moronic. You know,

2188
02:47:24,559 --> 02:47:33,760
we're gonna have the incoming age essentially appoint a special prosecutor.

2189
02:47:33,840 --> 02:47:36,399
His job is like dig up dirt on the chief

2190
02:47:36,440 --> 02:47:41,159
executive of the administration. He's now going to serve. And

2191
02:47:41,719 --> 02:47:45,440
Richardson's reasoning for selecting Cox to say it was tortured,

2192
02:47:46,120 --> 02:47:53,760
it doesn't even begin to describe it. Cox had an

2193
02:47:53,840 --> 02:47:59,399
idea that richards and idea that Cox there was so

2194
02:47:59,479 --> 02:48:04,200
much natural hatred between Cox and the NIXT administration that

2195
02:48:04,840 --> 02:48:08,959
when Cox didn't come up with anything substantive in his investigation,

2196
02:48:09,639 --> 02:48:11,479
it couldn't be said that there was you know, any

2197
02:48:11,600 --> 02:48:15,879
kind of there was any kind of cooperation, you know,

2198
02:48:17,079 --> 02:48:19,840
or collusion, which is the stupid reviews word now between

2199
02:48:21,040 --> 02:48:24,319
Cox's office and in the White House. Like how anybody

2200
02:48:24,360 --> 02:48:28,959
could convince themselves of that is incredible. But Richardson actually

2201
02:48:29,000 --> 02:48:32,079
believed this. This wasn't He wasn't some This wasn't some

2202
02:48:32,200 --> 02:48:35,840
leedgered Maine that he was invoking because he, you know,

2203
02:48:35,879 --> 02:48:43,440
had some kind of secret enmity for his boss. Cox

2204
02:48:43,520 --> 02:48:48,239
had been John F. Kennedy's labor advisor. Kennedy had appointed

2205
02:48:48,239 --> 02:48:51,559
of Solicitor General and he held that role for four years.

2206
02:48:52,200 --> 02:48:54,120
He was an arch Kennedy loyalist, and he was a

2207
02:48:54,239 --> 02:48:58,280
radical leftist, you know, son of a Manhattan lawyer, Harvard alumni,

2208
02:48:59,559 --> 02:49:03,559
couse judical activist. He cited John Marshall as a model jurist,

2209
02:49:03,719 --> 02:49:06,360
you know, and thus I mean Marshall's literally the father

2210
02:49:06,479 --> 02:49:09,479
of judicial review and judicial activism, you know, Marbray versus

2211
02:49:09,600 --> 02:49:17,920
Madison being you know, the the progenitor authority. Cox had

2212
02:49:18,000 --> 02:49:22,799
graduated first of his class at Harvard. He got uh

2213
02:49:23,799 --> 02:49:27,200
a top posting at the Solicitor General's office when World

2214
02:49:27,200 --> 02:49:33,200
War two broke out? By it, what's that? Did you

2215
02:49:33,280 --> 02:49:37,040
say something? No?

2216
02:49:37,120 --> 02:49:38,200
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't say anything.

2217
02:49:42,159 --> 02:49:49,040
Speaker 2: He'd uh as an associate solicitor, he had a certain

2218
02:49:49,079 --> 02:49:53,440
outsized power the Labor Department in those days. Mind you,

2219
02:49:53,520 --> 02:49:55,440
I mean, this was this was kind of the zenith,

2220
02:49:55,959 --> 02:49:58,120
you know, like like really the twenties to the nineteen

2221
02:49:58,479 --> 02:50:01,280
seventies peaking in kind of you know, like the the

2222
02:50:01,920 --> 02:50:07,159
the nineteen thirties to the early fifties. You know, uh,

2223
02:50:08,319 --> 02:50:13,159
you know, real battles between organized labor and management, you know,

2224
02:50:13,280 --> 02:50:16,559
and the facts I mean of national economics in the

2225
02:50:16,600 --> 02:50:22,639
manufacturing economy. You know. His his role being the supervise

2226
02:50:22,760 --> 02:50:26,000
enforcement at the district court level of federal labor statutes,

2227
02:50:27,280 --> 02:50:29,520
you know, meant that he had a lot of clout, okay,

2228
02:50:29,879 --> 02:50:35,920
and again his his radical strikes brought him down unfailingly,

2229
02:50:36,200 --> 02:50:39,879
you know, on the side of a big labor and

2230
02:50:40,040 --> 02:50:46,680
interpreting regulatory in arbitration regime, you know, most as charitably

2231
02:50:46,719 --> 02:50:54,159
as as he possibly could within their favor. In this role,

2232
02:50:54,200 --> 02:50:59,360
he had a staff at eight lawyers each which supervised

2233
02:50:59,840 --> 02:51:05,399
apartment's regional offices. He could he had final authority and

2234
02:51:05,520 --> 02:51:09,159
when an attorney could bring suit. Most of these, most

2235
02:51:09,159 --> 02:51:13,440
of these, most of the litigation involved issues arising under

2236
02:51:13,440 --> 02:51:17,040
the Fair Labor Standards Act. Okay, which is kind of

2237
02:51:17,079 --> 02:51:20,159
the bane of of of of management, and of and

2238
02:51:20,399 --> 02:51:26,079
of capital in those days. He Uh. He also sat

2239
02:51:26,120 --> 02:51:29,399
on the wage Adjustment Board periodically with all the construction

2240
02:51:29,520 --> 02:51:34,639
industry and attempts to maintain labor peace by mediating disputes

2241
02:51:34,639 --> 02:51:41,120
and settling prevailing you know, you know, disputes from over

2242
02:51:41,239 --> 02:51:45,120
like you know, wage rates and increases, which was also

2243
02:51:45,159 --> 02:51:50,000
statutorily controlled by the Davis Bacon Act, which was tailored

2244
02:51:50,040 --> 02:51:54,959
to standardize wages. But obviously I mean that that that

2245
02:51:55,079 --> 02:51:59,159
was open to very very wide interpretation. So I mean, uh,

2246
02:51:59,799 --> 02:52:04,440
you Harvard Man himself, you know, the rich scion of

2247
02:52:04,520 --> 02:52:08,280
a of a legal family from Manhattan. You know, Uh,

2248
02:52:09,000 --> 02:52:11,520
this kind of like who had a hero worship and Kennedy,

2249
02:52:12,200 --> 02:52:14,559
you know, it's like who, It's like, what the hell

2250
02:52:14,680 --> 02:52:18,000
was richards in thinking like this is It's like, uh,

2251
02:52:19,600 --> 02:52:22,479
it's like hiring Uh, it's like hiring LUCIFERD guard the

2252
02:52:22,520 --> 02:52:26,000
Pearly gates when uh Saint Peter goes to take a

2253
02:52:26,040 --> 02:52:32,920
piss or something. But after the war, uh, Hovard Law

2254
02:52:32,959 --> 02:52:42,120
School hired Cox as a professor. Cox said the st

2255
02:52:42,399 --> 02:52:43,959
he used to the stipulation that he would as long

2256
02:52:43,959 --> 02:52:46,639
as they have to teach corporations or property. You very

2257
02:52:46,719 --> 02:52:48,639
much use this as like, you know, an opportunity to

2258
02:52:48,680 --> 02:52:54,040
grand stand on his you know, socialist politics. Obviously, he

2259
02:52:54,200 --> 02:52:58,399
became a permanent family member in nineteen forty six forty

2260
02:52:58,399 --> 02:53:02,120
seven school year, you know, and this was during the

2261
02:53:02,200 --> 02:53:04,319
post war boom and the g I Bill, So he

2262
02:53:05,200 --> 02:53:07,760
you know, he the guys who were guys who went

2263
02:53:07,840 --> 02:53:15,639
on to become real players on the Beltway, you know,

2264
02:53:15,760 --> 02:53:19,079
like like passed through like you know Professor Cox's class

2265
02:53:19,120 --> 02:53:23,959
at Harvard to a degree that's really kind of striking.

2266
02:53:25,239 --> 02:53:32,799
You know, he sired proverbially speaking, like many many intellectual offspring.

2267
02:53:35,360 --> 02:53:37,920
He became hugely influential in the labor field there an

2268
02:53:37,920 --> 02:53:41,559
even fifties. You know, this was the era where the

2269
02:53:41,639 --> 02:53:45,680
public intellectual was alive and well that as as you know,

2270
02:53:45,760 --> 02:53:50,879
that role, I mean the uh he was instrumental in

2271
02:53:50,959 --> 02:53:54,799
defining what became you know, kind of the controlling body

2272
02:53:55,000 --> 02:53:58,840
of industrial relations law. You know, for an entire generation.

2273
02:54:02,360 --> 02:54:08,319
You know, his UH is there's no man comparable with

2274
02:54:08,479 --> 02:54:12,200
who's got that that kind of influence, like in any field,

2275
02:54:12,239 --> 02:54:14,719
but particularly not the legal field. You know, these days

2276
02:54:16,719 --> 02:54:20,639
it's uh, you know, mind you this he wasn't just

2277
02:54:20,719 --> 02:54:22,559
like a you know, kind of like a celebrity legal

2278
02:54:22,639 --> 02:54:26,360
commentator like Dershowitz or something, you know, he was he

2279
02:54:26,520 --> 02:54:30,719
was a true like public intellectual and you know, in

2280
02:54:30,760 --> 02:54:34,000
the way, in the way Thomas Schelling was on the

2281
02:54:34,079 --> 02:54:39,959
side of like new nuclear war planning. Okay, Kennedy when

2282
02:54:39,959 --> 02:54:44,040
he was a freshman senator in ninety fifty three, decided

2283
02:54:44,040 --> 02:54:49,040
that labor relations would be kind of his primary point

2284
02:54:49,079 --> 02:54:52,559
of attack, you know, and he wanted to build his

2285
02:54:52,639 --> 02:54:57,639
policy resume on that, you know, which was which was smart,

2286
02:54:57,719 --> 02:54:59,639
and it also allowed him to kind of like play

2287
02:54:59,680 --> 02:55:04,280
the set on civil rights and things. He wrote to

2288
02:55:04,360 --> 02:55:08,559
Cox inviting him to testify with the Senate Subcommittee on

2289
02:55:08,680 --> 02:55:15,040
Labor and Public Welfare. Cox reciprocated his admiration and affection.

2290
02:55:17,000 --> 02:55:18,959
You know. He was he was gonna county his constituents.

2291
02:55:19,000 --> 02:55:25,200
He's a fellow Harvard man, you know. And most importantly,

2292
02:55:25,520 --> 02:55:28,879
I mean this, this really kind of made a star

2293
02:55:29,200 --> 02:55:32,200
like permanent. You know. He was he was already naturally

2294
02:55:32,239 --> 02:55:35,920
recognized academic expert on labor law, and this kind of

2295
02:55:36,000 --> 02:55:39,559
like you know, radical liberal democrat with a predecision towards

2296
02:55:39,639 --> 02:55:42,399
labor but now you know, like this popular freshman senator

2297
02:55:42,440 --> 02:55:44,799
that people are like bandying is going to be the

2298
02:55:44,840 --> 02:55:47,639
president someday, is you know, hitching his wag into his

2299
02:55:47,799 --> 02:55:53,079
own okay, out of the fall of nineteen fifty nine

2300
02:55:53,559 --> 02:55:54,879
or in the fall in nine fifty nine or rather,

2301
02:56:00,079 --> 02:56:04,520
there was an effort to beef up the Landrum Griffin Act,

2302
02:56:05,200 --> 02:56:07,200
which is a bipartis and effort to kind of butcherss

2303
02:56:07,239 --> 02:56:09,440
the taff Hartley Act, by way, have a sort of

2304
02:56:09,520 --> 02:56:13,360
legislative injunction. And this was the first in a series

2305
02:56:13,399 --> 02:56:17,520
of kind of shipping away of you know, the hegemony

2306
02:56:17,600 --> 02:56:22,159
that organized labor had had won throughout the New Deal years.

2307
02:56:25,239 --> 02:56:29,840
It under the under the osises of residentially premise upon

2308
02:56:29,879 --> 02:56:32,680
anti corruption and anti recodeering concerns, and it need to

2309
02:56:32,719 --> 02:56:37,159
you know, get organized crime out of out of out

2310
02:56:37,200 --> 02:56:43,079
of labor unions. It it allowed, uh, it allowed a

2311
02:56:43,120 --> 02:56:46,159
Senate subcommittee like very wide based police power to essentially

2312
02:56:46,239 --> 02:56:49,520
like force you know, unions above a certain membership, which

2313
02:56:49,719 --> 02:56:51,520
was a very low bar, you know, like open their

2314
02:56:51,559 --> 02:56:54,920
books essentially, you know. And these kinds of a lot

2315
02:56:55,079 --> 02:56:57,680
like these endless kind of like mafia related hearings, like

2316
02:56:57,719 --> 02:57:00,079
a lot of them like were premise upon initially at

2317
02:57:00,120 --> 02:57:03,520
least upon the power convert by Langem Griffin incidents at

2318
02:57:03,520 --> 02:57:07,319
taff Hartley. Just incidentally, this is important for context. I believe,

2319
02:57:07,559 --> 02:57:13,120
Sorry if I'm boring everybody to death. According to I

2320
02:57:13,159 --> 02:57:15,399
don't know, he's the topographal because other people have claimed

2321
02:57:15,440 --> 02:57:20,360
this too. It's believed that like outside of his own family,

2322
02:57:20,600 --> 02:57:23,120
Cox was the first man that Kennedy can fight it too,

2323
02:57:23,159 --> 02:57:26,879
that he's running for president, you know, he wrote he

2324
02:57:26,959 --> 02:57:30,360
approached Cox formally despite them by that point being quite friendly,

2325
02:57:31,520 --> 02:57:33,959
saying you needed to he would needed to quote tap

2326
02:57:34,040 --> 02:57:37,040
intellectual talent in the Cambridge era, you know, and basically

2327
02:57:37,040 --> 02:57:39,479
build kind of like a dream team of like public

2328
02:57:39,520 --> 02:57:43,920
intellectuals and academics, you know, and kind of go go

2329
02:57:44,760 --> 02:57:49,680
forward like all guns blazing at full frattle, you know,

2330
02:57:49,840 --> 02:57:53,479
on you know, kind of like we're forming the labor code,

2331
02:57:54,159 --> 02:57:57,280
you know, to bring it back to you know, what

2332
02:57:57,360 --> 02:57:59,920
had happened under the New Deal, but augmented by the

2333
02:58:00,159 --> 02:58:04,000
kind of like newfound postwar prosperity. You know, that that

2334
02:58:04,040 --> 02:58:07,760
will ease the burden on management. You know, very utopian,

2335
02:58:08,360 --> 02:58:11,559
very much kind of the very very much the language

2336
02:58:11,559 --> 02:58:13,479
of kind of like you know, the utopian socialism of

2337
02:58:13,520 --> 02:58:19,159
the day. And uh in turn, like Cox, he prodded

2338
02:58:19,200 --> 02:58:23,600
a lot of labor, both labor union types and as

2339
02:58:23,639 --> 02:58:26,680
well as a lot of academics who again had a

2340
02:58:26,719 --> 02:58:28,840
lot of cloud and policy playing circles like towards the

2341
02:58:28,879 --> 02:58:35,559
Kennedy camp. Okay, so to say that, to say that

2342
02:58:35,680 --> 02:58:37,959
Cox was insinuated into the into the kind of into

2343
02:58:37,959 --> 02:58:40,879
the kind of the Kennedy orbit, I mean he he

2344
02:58:40,959 --> 02:58:44,920
absolutely was like more than more than anybody, like not

2345
02:58:45,000 --> 02:58:50,760
a relation of the man could be, you know. In

2346
02:58:50,879 --> 02:58:57,120
nineteen sixty, Cox was appointed Solicitor General. Solicitor General is

2347
02:58:57,200 --> 02:58:59,360
something of an unusual role. He's kind of like corporation

2348
02:58:59,520 --> 02:59:07,040
council would function in a municipality or at the state level.

2349
02:59:08,440 --> 02:59:11,360
He basically acts as the government's lawyer before the Supreme Court.

2350
02:59:13,920 --> 02:59:18,399
It was in those days immensely influential, not just knowing

2351
02:59:18,479 --> 02:59:22,680
the fact that government had more clout than but this

2352
02:59:22,840 --> 02:59:24,799
was the War in Court era where the Supreme Court

2353
02:59:24,879 --> 02:59:27,079
and the Federal judiciary in general was like legislating from

2354
02:59:27,079 --> 02:59:31,639
the bench and everything from four six and fourthe Amendment

2355
02:59:31,680 --> 02:59:34,399
issues to these you know, civil rights acts all on

2356
02:59:34,520 --> 02:59:40,159
Sundry and you know, these these social engineering endeavors. It

2357
02:59:41,959 --> 02:59:46,360
basically it was uh Cox is ten year as Solicitor

2358
02:59:46,479 --> 02:59:53,120
General absolutely facilitated a lot of these things. Okay, So again,

2359
02:59:53,440 --> 02:59:57,040
like the idea that this man would behave in any

2360
02:59:57,120 --> 03:00:01,559
way once appointed as Special Pride Pecuter other than to

2361
03:00:01,639 --> 03:00:03,840
try and do everything he could to destroy Nixon is

2362
03:00:04,040 --> 03:00:11,239
a really insane you know. But again, it's incredibly smart

2363
03:00:11,280 --> 03:00:15,440
people and incredibly stupid people often like outsmart themselves by

2364
03:00:15,600 --> 03:00:22,479
by twisting themselves in a crazy conceptual contortions. And I

2365
03:00:22,559 --> 03:00:25,280
can't tell if Richardson was either like that stupid because

2366
03:00:25,280 --> 03:00:27,840
he was so smart or because he was such a fool,

2367
03:00:28,079 --> 03:00:32,840
But it's one or the other, because there's no there's

2368
03:00:32,879 --> 03:00:40,440
no other explanation. But that was that was Cox's background.

2369
03:00:40,559 --> 03:00:49,600
And in July of nineteen seventy three, Cox immediately requested

2370
03:00:49,639 --> 03:00:55,040
the White House tapes and then subpoenaed them, and not

2371
03:00:55,239 --> 03:00:59,760
just the White House tapes but all other wire taps

2372
03:01:00,319 --> 03:01:04,879
and extra judicial like non court ordered tapes that had

2373
03:01:04,920 --> 03:01:11,639
been you know, produced by you know, any anybody on

2374
03:01:11,719 --> 03:01:16,760
the executive staff. Obviously, the next administration refused to produce

2375
03:01:16,799 --> 03:01:19,000
these tapes and the executive privilege, and they were right.

2376
03:01:21,639 --> 03:01:25,000
And this dispute carried on until October and carried on

2377
03:01:25,120 --> 03:01:33,280
through the that the nineteen seventy three war. Cox seemed

2378
03:01:34,760 --> 03:01:36,680
some people like Paul Johnson and CLAYT. Cox was his

2379
03:01:36,799 --> 03:01:40,319
grandstanding for you know, a Democratic Congress, you know, so

2380
03:01:40,479 --> 03:01:42,840
he at every every turn, you know, he kind of

2381
03:01:42,879 --> 03:01:47,200
refused to abide not just that the honor of the presidency,

2382
03:01:48,120 --> 03:01:50,360
but also refused to give grant the benefit of the

2383
03:01:50,440 --> 03:01:55,520
doubt to Nixon the chief executive. I think I don't

2384
03:01:55,520 --> 03:01:57,399
I don't think that was it. Okay, I think I

2385
03:01:57,479 --> 03:01:59,600
mean he he was absolutely doing those things. He wasn't

2386
03:01:59,639 --> 03:02:03,159
doing it because of like simple you know, simple show

2387
03:02:03,200 --> 03:02:06,639
voting for a Democratic majority. Like he he utterly hated

2388
03:02:06,719 --> 03:02:11,319
Nixon and was exactly the kind of person who viewed

2389
03:02:11,360 --> 03:02:14,159
Nixon and the silent majority as UH as like the

2390
03:02:14,200 --> 03:02:20,399
epitome of of of of literal evil. On October twelfth,

2391
03:02:25,680 --> 03:02:31,559
Cox one uninjunction doesn't cure the right of access to

2392
03:02:31,639 --> 03:02:35,079
the tapes, UH, to the recordings of all Nixon's White

2393
03:02:35,079 --> 03:02:43,000
House conversations, and uh Nixon responded by firing Cox. Okay,

2394
03:02:44,040 --> 03:02:47,040
Now this is held out by people as oh that

2395
03:02:47,440 --> 03:02:50,639
you know, crazy Nixon trying to become a dictator. Look,

2396
03:02:50,920 --> 03:02:56,239
this man was literally appointed by Nixon's Attorney general. Okay,

2397
03:02:56,559 --> 03:03:00,920
and he's within one of the absurdities of Special Council

2398
03:03:01,399 --> 03:03:04,479
is he's within the executive chain of command. Like under

2399
03:03:04,520 --> 03:03:09,799
Article two, you can fire him, you know. I mean

2400
03:03:09,879 --> 03:03:15,799
and again it's you. Uh, it'd be like saying like

2401
03:03:16,600 --> 03:03:18,319
let's say like a court order. Let's say like you,

2402
03:03:19,719 --> 03:03:22,440
let's say you were like an incorrigible uh, like you know,

2403
03:03:22,799 --> 03:03:25,680
like traffic violator. Okay, if you like a court like

2404
03:03:25,840 --> 03:03:29,120
ordered you to like hire like a policeman or like

2405
03:03:29,159 --> 03:03:32,440
a parent in type to like follow you around and

2406
03:03:32,639 --> 03:03:35,319
you know you should do citations for speeding. Well, at

2407
03:03:35,319 --> 03:03:37,319
the same time, you pay him a salary, and you're

2408
03:03:37,319 --> 03:03:39,200
within your rights to fire him. Like then if you

2409
03:03:39,280 --> 03:03:41,719
fire him, they'll charge you with a crime. I mean.

2410
03:03:41,719 --> 03:03:47,239
It's it's like something it's it's like something that of

2411
03:03:47,239 --> 03:03:51,639
have not particularly creative, you know, like Joseph Heller kind

2412
03:03:51,680 --> 03:03:56,239
of sat attire or something. It was at this moment

2413
03:03:57,680 --> 03:04:01,559
you know that like like a firing cox is is

2414
03:04:01,639 --> 03:04:06,440
like breathlessly and and incomprehensively called the Saturday Night massacre.

2415
03:04:09,319 --> 03:04:12,799
Kind of all all this, all the hysteria usually associated

2416
03:04:13,079 --> 03:04:16,440
with the kind of Nixon which Hunt. It just just

2417
03:04:16,600 --> 03:04:18,639
it says they wanted to like absolute, like full frattle

2418
03:04:19,399 --> 03:04:23,200
after this. But I want to I want to get

2419
03:04:23,239 --> 03:04:35,440
back to the issue with with with Haig, he just

2420
03:04:35,520 --> 03:04:44,319
for one a second, Okay, he was alarmed by cox

2421
03:04:44,399 --> 03:04:47,879
As immediate plans to widen the Watergate investigation for a

2422
03:04:47,959 --> 03:04:51,079
few reasons. Hey kind of saw the writing on the wall. Okay,

2423
03:04:52,200 --> 03:04:57,440
Haig realized that the Watergate, like Watergate in of itself,

2424
03:04:57,520 --> 03:05:03,319
didn't really make sense. Haig had been very deeply involved

2425
03:05:03,520 --> 03:05:09,799
in to what degree is not clear, but even very

2426
03:05:09,840 --> 03:05:13,280
deeply involved in what came to be known as the

2427
03:05:13,680 --> 03:05:22,600
Houston Plan. Okay. The Houston Plan was an ongoing effort

2428
03:05:23,959 --> 03:05:26,760
to surveil people who are believed to be the source

2429
03:05:28,040 --> 03:05:33,000
of information weeks like the Pentagon papers. You know that

2430
03:05:34,159 --> 03:05:42,040
involved discloses a critical information of uh you know of

2431
03:05:42,200 --> 03:05:49,760
of of a national security imperative. Okay. Between ninety sixty

2432
03:05:50,000 --> 03:05:54,639
ninety seventy one, there'd been about seventeen extra judicial wire

2433
03:05:54,680 --> 03:05:58,079
taps of private persons who these private persons were will

2434
03:05:58,120 --> 03:06:00,799
get into in a moment, they'll see that there's some

2435
03:06:00,879 --> 03:06:12,840
of mischaracterized and Haig was, uh, pressure has brought to

2436
03:06:12,920 --> 03:06:19,719
bear on Haig did has closed what he knew. This

2437
03:06:19,879 --> 03:06:22,280
is when Coals began threatening to bring indictments again those

2438
03:06:22,399 --> 03:06:27,239
who had conducted and supervised the breaking the break in

2439
03:06:27,319 --> 03:06:31,159
of Elsburg's doctor psychiatrist's office, you know, doctor fielding with

2440
03:06:31,280 --> 03:06:43,079
the doctor. Haigg's rebuttal, without admitting knowledge of any wrongdoing,

2441
03:06:46,959 --> 03:06:53,600
was that any such disclosures that you know, derived from

2442
03:06:53,680 --> 03:06:59,319
such prosecutions by antenor accident would threaten national security and

2443
03:06:59,399 --> 03:07:03,760
grave capay cities because the White House plumbers were involved

2444
03:07:03,760 --> 03:07:08,520
in a highly classified matters, some which were related to

2445
03:07:08,639 --> 03:07:10,399
these wire taps, which we'll get into in a moment,

2446
03:07:10,520 --> 03:07:16,440
some of which were not. But Cox then responded by

2447
03:07:16,680 --> 03:07:20,600
uh subpoena documents relating to the purchase of Nixon's home

2448
03:07:20,680 --> 03:07:23,719
in San Clemente. You know, I mean, so this became,

2449
03:07:26,200 --> 03:07:28,120
it became, it became, it became very clear that this

2450
03:07:28,239 --> 03:07:36,639
was a witch hunt. By this point, Okay, when you're

2451
03:07:41,680 --> 03:07:46,680
when you're when when the scope of your investigation simply

2452
03:07:46,760 --> 03:07:50,360
widens every time that your stone walled with a refusal

2453
03:07:52,040 --> 03:07:55,799
biactual mission to cooperate with a threatened subpoena. It's not

2454
03:07:55,879 --> 03:08:00,200
even clear if that subpoena power it's constitutionally permis did

2455
03:08:01,360 --> 03:08:04,559
I mean you're not You're not talking about an investigation

2456
03:08:04,680 --> 03:08:10,319
in the public corruption based on you know, facts coming

2457
03:08:10,360 --> 03:08:13,639
to light that demanded, you know, and you're not talking

2458
03:08:13,639 --> 03:08:16,200
about you're not talking about due process as we think

2459
03:08:16,239 --> 03:08:17,799
of it. You know, you really are talking about a

2460
03:08:17,840 --> 03:08:22,639
wish hunt by this point, and I don't I don't

2461
03:08:22,680 --> 03:08:32,920
see how that can be contested. But a man of

2462
03:08:38,000 --> 03:08:47,920
in one second, Jade Burzards. He was named Special White

2463
03:08:47,920 --> 03:08:51,879
House Council for Watergate matters to the President on May tenth,

2464
03:08:53,200 --> 03:08:56,399
and Alexander Haig apparently confided in him quite a bit,

2465
03:09:00,000 --> 03:09:02,159
which kind of came with the role because again, Hig

2466
03:09:03,040 --> 03:09:07,520
became White House Chief of Staff following the resignation of Holliman.

2467
03:09:12,760 --> 03:09:15,399
He can fighted a buzzart that his role at the

2468
03:09:15,399 --> 03:09:17,399
White House to be temporary, and so he retained his

2469
03:09:17,479 --> 03:09:26,959
title at the Department of Defense, so essentially essentially saying like,

2470
03:09:27,000 --> 03:09:28,920
I'm just a placeholder, and one of the reasons I'm

2471
03:09:28,959 --> 03:09:33,879
here is because you know, the way I interpreted the

2472
03:09:34,000 --> 03:09:36,799
least one of the reasons I'm here is because you know,

2473
03:09:38,239 --> 03:09:43,399
I obviously you know my top priority is is guaranteeing

2474
03:09:45,120 --> 03:09:48,040
He's guaranteeing, you know, security, and it's in the integrity

2475
03:09:48,040 --> 03:10:00,239
of state seekers. The first task of UH, the first

2476
03:10:00,280 --> 03:10:03,920
ask a special council, Buzzart's, was to investigate fromer whaloes

2477
03:10:03,959 --> 03:10:10,760
Counsul John Dean. Dean was believed to possess classified documents.

2478
03:10:11,719 --> 03:10:17,239
And this is where you know, again the the kind

2479
03:10:17,239 --> 03:10:22,159
of entire narrative to some people of Watergate like revolves

2480
03:10:22,159 --> 03:10:24,079
around John Dean. That's about outside the scope of what

2481
03:10:24,120 --> 03:10:30,920
I want to tackle in this series. But what John

2482
03:10:31,000 --> 03:10:35,719
Dean had direct knowledge of was the Houston Plan. And

2483
03:10:36,799 --> 03:10:44,280
I believe the big concern about Dean being pressured, if

2484
03:10:44,280 --> 03:10:46,680
for no other reason then only to his connections the

2485
03:10:46,760 --> 03:10:53,440
intelligence community. Deans, I mean, Buzzart was convinced that these

2486
03:10:53,520 --> 03:10:57,200
documents related to what was called the Houston Plan. The

2487
03:10:57,239 --> 03:11:02,360
Houston Plan was a proposed banged and a domestic surveillance. Okay,

2488
03:11:05,879 --> 03:11:11,239
was it illegal as proposed? It was extra judicial? But

2489
03:11:11,399 --> 03:11:13,120
this is this is gonna kind of like the meat

2490
03:11:13,280 --> 03:11:17,000
of Watergate, Okay, like what and at the eleventh hour,

2491
03:11:17,120 --> 03:11:20,200
suddenly this became the rationalization like you see other goal

2492
03:11:20,239 --> 03:11:28,159
post was always changing between the Houston plant. What was

2493
03:11:28,280 --> 03:11:30,559
even plant first was a forty three page report and

2494
03:11:30,680 --> 03:11:40,719
outline posing security operations, surveillance espionage while you're tapping of

2495
03:11:40,879 --> 03:11:48,719
domestic targets. It is proposed it it was, it was

2496
03:11:48,760 --> 03:11:57,680
proposed in in nineteen sixty nine. It came to light

2497
03:12:01,760 --> 03:12:07,920
owing to Sam Urban's efforts, like what exactly, but like

2498
03:12:08,000 --> 03:12:09,840
how we came to know if it's existence isn't clear

2499
03:12:11,680 --> 03:12:14,360
Again to this this may have been like a Dean

2500
03:12:14,479 --> 03:12:17,479
league them may have Dean may have told they may

2501
03:12:17,479 --> 03:12:19,200
have just closed what he knew about it. He may

2502
03:12:19,239 --> 03:12:21,399
have his closed that he had documents relating to it,

2503
03:12:21,920 --> 03:12:23,399
and then his ace in the hole was saying like

2504
03:12:23,479 --> 03:12:26,040
I absolutely will not like release those documents unless, say,

2505
03:12:26,120 --> 03:12:36,120
you know, before an immunity qualified or otherwise. Conventional wisdom

2506
03:12:36,319 --> 03:12:44,399
is that Nixon rescinded the plan on July twenty eight,

2507
03:12:44,520 --> 03:12:48,079
nineteen seventy, after approving it only a few days before

2508
03:12:48,120 --> 03:12:54,120
in July twenty third. This has led to this kind

2509
03:12:54,120 --> 03:12:58,559
of hysterical refrain that for five days in nineteen seventy,

2510
03:12:58,639 --> 03:13:01,920
the fundamental guarantees that Bill Roy were suspended by the

2511
03:13:02,000 --> 03:13:05,360
mandate given the secret Houston Plan. Beau if like hevieus

2512
03:13:05,399 --> 03:13:08,719
corpus and new process has never been suspended before. And

2513
03:13:08,799 --> 03:13:10,600
then you know, most recently during you know, the Bush

2514
03:13:10,639 --> 03:13:14,680
forty three era. You know, before that during World War one,

2515
03:13:14,760 --> 03:13:21,079
world War two, during Roosevelt's you know, internment of a

2516
03:13:21,840 --> 03:13:25,399
you know, thousands of people based on subjective subjective national characteristics,

2517
03:13:26,120 --> 03:13:29,000
you know, his indictment of people under the sedition active

2518
03:13:29,000 --> 03:13:30,280
and the list goes on, no no, no, no, no,

2519
03:13:30,319 --> 03:13:36,680
no no. But the impetus for this report was, uh,

2520
03:13:38,200 --> 03:13:42,079
the belief that a lot of left wing radical NGOs

2521
03:13:42,120 --> 03:13:44,879
were in fact being funded by Warsaw Pact. That was

2522
03:13:44,959 --> 03:13:52,040
actually true. Okay, countercultural era a movement in general. I

2523
03:13:52,120 --> 03:13:54,120
think it was like the anti war movement which seemed

2524
03:13:54,159 --> 03:13:56,399
to emerge out of nowhere and was flushed with money.

2525
03:13:57,840 --> 03:14:00,879
Was you know it was it was an enemy okay.

2526
03:14:05,079 --> 03:14:13,719
Jaegrew Hoover initially back the Houston Plan. Also Houston himself

2527
03:14:13,760 --> 03:14:18,639
at or closely with William Sullivan, who was uh, William C.

2528
03:14:18,760 --> 03:14:23,399
Sullivan who was one of humors assistant Hoover's assistants, and

2529
03:14:23,520 --> 03:14:26,159
drawing up the options listed what eventually became you know

2530
03:14:26,239 --> 03:14:32,840
the Houston Plan. The plan called for you know, domestic burglary,

2531
03:14:33,200 --> 03:14:38,719
electronic surveillance, surveilling of male of domestic radicals. Okay, like

2532
03:14:38,799 --> 03:14:44,959
in broad terms at one time, it's uh, it calls

2533
03:14:45,000 --> 03:14:48,559
for a suspension of habeas corpus in the case of

2534
03:14:49,280 --> 03:14:51,440
you know, people like the Weathermen who were known to

2535
03:14:51,479 --> 03:14:56,000
be involved in terrorist activities and allow their detainment you know,

2536
03:14:56,120 --> 03:15:02,399
without you know, like formal arraignment or indictment incidents. Uh,

2537
03:15:03,360 --> 03:15:06,959
you know, clear clear and present danger, which like I said,

2538
03:15:07,079 --> 03:15:11,079
I there is precedent for that, for better or worse.

2539
03:15:15,719 --> 03:15:23,040
Nixon RADI. Nixon ratified these proposals, and they were submitted

2540
03:15:23,200 --> 03:15:29,440
uh two FBI, Central Intelligence, d I A, and the

2541
03:15:29,520 --> 03:15:34,360
National Security Agency. So again this you have Hoover collaborating

2542
03:15:34,440 --> 03:15:41,120
on this, you have White House Council liaising with the

2543
03:15:41,280 --> 03:15:49,879
FBI on this. You have uh, the director of every

2544
03:15:50,000 --> 03:15:54,159
one of the major intelligence organizations that constitute the National

2545
03:15:54,200 --> 03:15:59,159
Security Apparatus being literally like availed to this document. Like

2546
03:15:59,239 --> 03:16:01,639
the idea that this was like Nixon developing some secret

2547
03:16:01,719 --> 03:16:04,719
spy for wars or something is laughable, you know, to

2548
03:16:04,760 --> 03:16:08,920
say nothing of the fact that he rescinded it five

2549
03:16:09,000 --> 03:16:15,000
days later, and there's this incredible in nineteen seventy three.

2550
03:16:17,040 --> 03:16:19,440
The world's on the prank and nuclear war at that

2551
03:16:19,600 --> 03:16:22,040
time and about every decade, you know, and it ends

2552
03:16:22,120 --> 03:16:27,000
up there the American streets being torn apart by race wars.

2553
03:16:28,799 --> 03:16:33,040
This is an incredibly brutal war in Southeast Asia that

2554
03:16:33,120 --> 03:16:37,520
has just come to close, you know, the third World terrorism.

2555
03:16:37,680 --> 03:16:41,120
Speaker 1: There's terrorism on the streets and planes are being hijacked

2556
03:16:41,159 --> 03:16:44,680
all over the place. Yeah, what the seventies is unless

2557
03:16:44,719 --> 03:16:47,079
you yeah, unless you've studied it or lived through it.

2558
03:16:47,920 --> 03:16:49,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then and then you got these you got

2559
03:16:49,760 --> 03:16:53,120
you got these dipshit, You got these dipshit Washington lawyers,

2560
03:16:53,719 --> 03:16:56,120
you know, like getting like teary eyed and saying, you know,

2561
03:16:56,239 --> 03:16:58,559
this is the day, this is the day democracy died.

2562
03:16:59,159 --> 03:17:01,680
You know, not I guess, I guess, I guess it

2563
03:17:01,719 --> 03:17:05,079
didn't die when like Habeas Corpus was suspended and a

2564
03:17:05,120 --> 03:17:07,559
bunch of people are suspected sympathizing with the South were

2565
03:17:07,600 --> 03:17:12,360
just like locked up without trial like mister Lincoln's order.

2566
03:17:12,840 --> 03:17:14,440
I'm not saying that like translink and I'm saying that

2567
03:17:14,520 --> 03:17:19,280
as what happened, but it the so like very very

2568
03:17:19,360 --> 03:17:25,079
suddenly the very very very very suddenly the Houston plan,

2569
03:17:25,559 --> 03:17:27,120
Like oh now, now this is now, this is the

2570
03:17:27,200 --> 03:17:29,159
reason for you know this, this why Nixon must go,

2571
03:17:29,799 --> 03:17:37,760
you know, and who are these out of the uh,

2572
03:17:39,200 --> 03:17:44,120
out of the intelligence and in law enforcement establishment aforementioned

2573
03:17:45,559 --> 03:17:50,440
Only Hoover objected to the plan and and pressured the

2574
03:17:50,520 --> 03:17:56,520
attorney and pressure then Attorney General John Mitchell to to

2575
03:17:56,799 --> 03:18:00,280
get Nixon's ear to rescind it. Like why Hoover thought

2576
03:18:00,280 --> 03:18:03,959
it was a bad plan. There's a few reasons in

2577
03:18:04,000 --> 03:18:08,200
my mind, but it wasn't because he was, you know,

2578
03:18:08,520 --> 03:18:11,079
horrified at the thought that the Bill rights might be corrupted.

2579
03:18:11,159 --> 03:18:15,719
But you know, this is presented as a case of oh,

2580
03:18:15,799 --> 03:18:20,120
you know, like regular people or like college teachers or whatever.

2581
03:18:22,079 --> 03:18:25,440
Just you know, John and JQ public were being set

2582
03:18:25,479 --> 03:18:28,959
up to be terrorised by the government. Okay, here's here's

2583
03:18:29,000 --> 03:18:31,360
a list of the people who were actually placed on

2584
03:18:31,440 --> 03:18:34,879
surveillance incident to the provisions of the he was in planning,

2585
03:18:34,920 --> 03:18:41,559
I can implemented one Martin Helper and who's a National

2586
03:18:41,600 --> 03:18:47,319
Security Council staffer and a consultant UH Democratic Presidental cannedy

2587
03:18:47,440 --> 03:18:51,719
Edmund Muskie. His phone was tapped from May sixty nine

2588
03:18:51,719 --> 03:18:56,000
to thirty seventy one. Daniel Davidson, another NSC staff member

2589
03:18:58,360 --> 03:19:03,520
who UH who Hoover ultimately had fired Colonel Robert Roberty

2590
03:19:03,600 --> 03:19:09,239
Persley then Melvin Lair, a Secretary of Defense adjutant a

2591
03:19:09,319 --> 03:19:14,120
whole lot of em earlier administrations in the wake of

2592
03:19:14,159 --> 03:19:16,959
the Cambodian invasion. It was believed that he was the

2593
03:19:17,040 --> 03:19:20,159
source of the leagues to national media. Okay, this is

2594
03:19:20,200 --> 03:19:23,079
a bird colonel, you know, serving the Secretary of State,

2595
03:19:23,159 --> 03:19:29,440
Secretary of Defense Helmet Sunenfeldt Uh, a sovietologist and National

2596
03:19:29,479 --> 03:19:34,000
Security council who served in the State Department. Haig wrote

2597
03:19:34,040 --> 03:19:35,799
his name to the FBI because it was believed that

2598
03:19:35,840 --> 03:19:38,559
he might be a mole for for East Bloc intelligence

2599
03:19:41,760 --> 03:19:46,120
named Henry Brandon. He was the London Times, the London

2600
03:19:46,200 --> 03:19:52,920
Sunday Times correspondent liaison to Washington. He was friendly personally

2601
03:19:52,959 --> 03:19:54,239
with Henry Kissinger.

2602
03:19:56,440 --> 03:19:56,879
Speaker 1: And UH.

2603
03:19:57,959 --> 03:20:04,120
Speaker 2: Kissinger presented him to Hoover through a third party as

2604
03:20:04,200 --> 03:20:07,799
a man who had strong connections with Ali Fornes intelligence services,

2605
03:20:08,399 --> 03:20:12,360
so presumably tamping his phone. You know, he wasn't at

2606
03:20:12,360 --> 03:20:14,399
the target, but you know whoever he might be speaking to,

2607
03:20:15,079 --> 03:20:21,559
particularly those you know, who might be a on both

2608
03:20:21,600 --> 03:20:26,319
sides of the Iron curtain. John Sears, his assistant to

2609
03:20:26,360 --> 03:20:30,719
White House counsel John Erlickman, later became Reagan's campaign manager

2610
03:20:32,000 --> 03:20:35,040
until he was until he was on cere whence he fired.

2611
03:20:37,079 --> 03:20:41,000
And WILLIAMS. Safire, who'd been a he was he was

2612
03:20:41,040 --> 03:20:44,319
the New York Times writer columnist, and that's what he's

2613
03:20:44,360 --> 03:20:48,399
most known for. The people our agent. He was a

2614
03:20:49,040 --> 03:20:58,360
White House speech writer at UH wasn't clear what Safire

2615
03:20:58,440 --> 03:21:00,360
was on the list, but again like he was, you know,

2616
03:21:00,520 --> 03:21:06,920
very much, very much a public figure. The two kind

2617
03:21:06,920 --> 03:21:10,840
of outliers where Marvin Kel was a CBS and an

2618
03:21:11,000 --> 03:21:14,520
NBC reporter, and William Beecher was a report of the

2619
03:21:14,600 --> 03:21:19,399
New York Times and the Boston Globe. But again too,

2620
03:21:20,840 --> 03:21:24,799
you know, the media was acted, especially the print media.

2621
03:21:26,719 --> 03:21:29,920
They were they were they were, they were engaged in

2622
03:21:30,079 --> 03:21:36,920
actively publicizing eyes only documents relating to the critical national

2623
03:21:37,040 --> 03:21:40,079
security of the United States. You know, So none of these,

2624
03:21:40,760 --> 03:21:44,719
none of these people under war conditions which were underway

2625
03:21:46,879 --> 03:21:49,159
in ninety seventy three or from ninety sixty nine to

2626
03:21:49,319 --> 03:21:51,000
you know, seventy one, like it should have been like

2627
03:21:51,120 --> 03:22:00,159
off limits or something, you know, the remaining UH, the

2628
03:22:00,280 --> 03:22:07,399
remaining targets. UH Richard F. Peterson States Bari councilor Williamate

2629
03:22:07,479 --> 03:22:12,000
Sullivan Ambassador of Laus Anthony Lake, an NSC specialist in

2630
03:22:12,159 --> 03:22:16,959
Vietnam who had very much a murky career. He was

2631
03:22:17,000 --> 03:22:20,079
probably a spook, is what I'm getting at. Under light

2632
03:22:20,120 --> 03:22:24,239
dolomatic cover Winston Lord, China specialist in the NSC staff.

2633
03:22:26,879 --> 03:22:31,680
And UH James H. James McLean was a staff member

2634
03:22:33,319 --> 03:22:39,440
with ties to UH Rockefeller, kind of liberal Republicans like Health,

2635
03:22:39,520 --> 03:22:46,120
Education and Welfare Secretary Robert Finch. He was close the

2636
03:22:46,200 --> 03:22:53,680
former gardner of Massachusetts, Francis Sergeant McLean was was briefly

2637
03:22:53,719 --> 03:22:55,959
tapped for ever of weeks at Halliman's of warquest. I mean,

2638
03:22:56,000 --> 03:23:00,680
who knows why, but that's where that that was it.

2639
03:23:01,000 --> 03:23:05,200
That was the extent of private citizens tapped by the

2640
03:23:05,520 --> 03:23:11,440
precepts of the Houston Plan, you know. And that was

2641
03:23:16,399 --> 03:23:26,000
and after, you know, after after Nixon lost the fight

2642
03:23:28,639 --> 03:23:33,440
to give up the tapes, Nixon has still been ahead

2643
03:23:33,479 --> 03:23:39,440
in the polls until publication of the tape extracts. The

2644
03:23:39,520 --> 03:23:43,040
tape extracts says printed we're very much doctored. Many marks

2645
03:23:43,040 --> 03:23:46,639
have exploited, deleted, you know, persuaded members that Nixon and

2646
03:23:46,719 --> 03:23:51,520
his team were constantly swearing, you know, and habitually uttering obscenities,

2647
03:23:51,559 --> 03:23:54,680
which sounds corny today, it's made like a difference, you know,

2648
03:23:54,719 --> 03:23:58,040
it was they were kind of cast in a light.

2649
03:24:00,079 --> 03:24:08,840
It's putative. Yeah, there's rumors constantly bandied that all these

2650
03:24:08,879 --> 03:24:11,200
tops have been these tapes have been doctored and censored

2651
03:24:11,879 --> 03:24:14,200
by Nixon and his staff, you know, like the media

2652
03:24:14,280 --> 03:24:16,360
was claiming this. So anything you read, it's way worse

2653
03:24:16,399 --> 03:24:21,719
than what you're reading, you know. But so as the

2654
03:24:21,799 --> 03:24:28,040
pollster and moving against Nixon, you know, the machinery impeachment

2655
03:24:28,239 --> 03:24:32,280
is brought into play in a true sense, the impeachment process,

2656
03:24:32,399 --> 03:24:35,479
the way it works, its specified an Article one. Obviously,

2657
03:24:38,600 --> 03:24:43,639
Article one, Section two and three provides for the president

2658
03:24:43,680 --> 03:24:46,440
of the impeach where offenses describe an Article two, section four.

2659
03:24:47,479 --> 03:24:50,600
That's where treeson bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

2660
03:24:50,639 --> 03:24:54,239
That's where that phraseology comes from. I mean, in reality though,

2661
03:24:54,280 --> 03:24:56,440
it just me it's it's just politicians sitting in judgment

2662
03:24:56,479 --> 03:25:00,920
and one another. You know. Andrew Johnson got impeached because

2663
03:25:00,920 --> 03:25:03,959
he was like a Southern patriot and a bunch of

2664
03:25:04,079 --> 03:25:06,920
radicals and people wanted to you know, and people wanted

2665
03:25:06,959 --> 03:25:08,479
to like hang him anf figy for the death of

2666
03:25:08,520 --> 03:25:12,920
mister Lincoln, like said to impeach him, you know, like

2667
03:25:13,040 --> 03:25:16,559
like bitch made retards, you know, want to uh who

2668
03:25:16,719 --> 03:25:21,559
uh who have some kind of like superstitious hatred of

2669
03:25:21,639 --> 03:25:24,440
Donald Trump? You know they they get off on impeaching him.

2670
03:25:26,840 --> 03:25:29,879
I mean that's you know, that's but but the actual

2671
03:25:30,000 --> 03:25:33,920
like process that follows the House Judgery Committee is like

2672
03:25:34,000 --> 03:25:36,040
the court of like first Review, Like they're like the

2673
03:25:36,479 --> 03:25:44,399
reigning court basically like what what amounts will they they

2674
03:25:44,440 --> 03:25:46,680
sent off on what amounts to a fighting of problem cause?

2675
03:25:50,520 --> 03:25:56,479
And uh then it goes to the and then it

2676
03:25:56,559 --> 03:25:59,159
goes to the Senate. But the two thirds majority is

2677
03:25:59,239 --> 03:26:05,959
required for a conviction. Like the actual article that comes

2678
03:26:05,959 --> 03:26:08,280
before the House. The Detrict Committee is is is literally

2679
03:26:08,360 --> 03:26:10,680
one of the foreign organization of the articles of impeachment.

2680
03:26:11,200 --> 03:26:13,760
The Senate then tries the accused of these articles you know,

2681
03:26:13,799 --> 03:26:17,000
like any other like like an like any other trial. Basically,

2682
03:26:17,920 --> 03:26:24,559
you know, a two days majority is required for conviction,

2683
03:26:24,680 --> 03:26:27,920
at which time the convicteds removed from office. It's qualified

2684
03:26:27,959 --> 03:26:31,920
to holding any subsequent office under the Constitution in the future.

2685
03:26:33,879 --> 03:26:38,719
Nick Son's view early on was that, uh, it was

2686
03:26:38,799 --> 03:26:41,079
like the House to repert stamp the article of impeachment,

2687
03:26:41,319 --> 03:26:43,760
but that they'd never get through two years majority in

2688
03:26:43,799 --> 03:26:52,239
the Senate, the House Judirie Committee there was twenty one

2689
03:26:52,280 --> 03:26:56,959
Democrats and seventeen Republicans. Eighteen to twenty one. Democrats were

2690
03:26:57,000 --> 03:26:59,319
certain to vote for impeachment no matter what, just because

2691
03:26:59,319 --> 03:27:02,000
they hated him and they were absolute partisans. So the

2692
03:27:02,040 --> 03:27:07,680
committee was a stacked deck as it developed. All twenty

2693
03:27:07,719 --> 03:27:10,200
one Democrats and six of the Republicans, six out of

2694
03:27:10,239 --> 03:27:19,120
seventeen voted for impeachment and recommended I and voted to

2695
03:27:19,159 --> 03:27:26,959
recommend Pee into the full House. There was no doubt

2696
03:27:30,559 --> 03:27:32,719
look mixed of the first His reasoning was that he

2697
03:27:32,799 --> 03:27:34,760
wanted to get in his public career as a fighter.

2698
03:27:35,120 --> 03:27:37,479
He actually wrote that down and Nixon wasn't a prol

2699
03:27:37,520 --> 03:27:39,680
big diars. He jotted that down on a pad of paper,

2700
03:27:40,440 --> 03:27:45,559
in public career as a fighter, and he thought, even

2701
03:27:45,639 --> 03:27:48,120
if convicted, you know, there would be the opportunity to

2702
03:27:48,200 --> 03:27:55,479
defend himself in public. And uh, the odds of it.

2703
03:27:55,559 --> 03:28:01,280
Two thres majority again were not particularly strong. Andrew Johnson

2704
03:28:01,280 --> 03:28:07,000
had survived by a single vote famously, and by that

2705
03:28:07,159 --> 03:28:10,879
time there had been twelve instances of the House moving

2706
03:28:10,920 --> 03:28:14,040
to impeach a public official, and the Senate had only

2707
03:28:14,079 --> 03:28:24,280
convicted on four occasions. But Nixon, Nixon in nineteen sixty

2708
03:28:24,399 --> 03:28:30,319
shown through subsequently. I mean, he realized there'd been incalculable

2709
03:28:30,440 --> 03:28:34,959
damage done to the executive end of the country by

2710
03:28:35,079 --> 03:28:41,600
the which hunt, by the entire charade. You know, America

2711
03:28:41,799 --> 03:28:46,760
was a nation just coming off of a general war.

2712
03:28:49,360 --> 03:28:53,639
The future is very uncertain. The Soviets that achieved nuclear

2713
03:28:53,719 --> 03:28:58,120
parody and strategic terms and were winning on the battlefield,

2714
03:29:01,239 --> 03:29:05,440
the impeachment process itself, I mean, even if Nixon's successor

2715
03:29:05,559 --> 03:29:07,840
was a real executive, which basically was no chance of

2716
03:29:09,280 --> 03:29:13,719
the impeachment process itself, would would be head the executive

2717
03:29:14,799 --> 03:29:18,079
you know, at a time when NATO was quite fragile,

2718
03:29:20,120 --> 03:29:23,120
you know, in the UH in the anti communist block,

2719
03:29:23,200 --> 03:29:27,360
would such be like literally headless, you know, in Nixon's mind.

2720
03:29:29,360 --> 03:29:30,559
And it's clear if you know what to look for

2721
03:29:30,680 --> 03:29:34,479
in his statements on it, and they're not self serving. Next,

2722
03:29:34,520 --> 03:29:37,559
I'm not playing martyrs. He's entirely right like, had he

2723
03:29:37,680 --> 03:29:43,719
not stepped down, he would have been playing directly into

2724
03:29:43,760 --> 03:29:49,639
the hands of the Soviet Union and at a critical

2725
03:29:49,719 --> 03:29:52,440
juncture it may have given them what they needed to

2726
03:29:52,559 --> 03:30:01,159
win next and decided, obviously in the national news, to resign,

2727
03:30:04,440 --> 03:30:09,680
other than stand to be impeached. Nixon's hope had been

2728
03:30:12,120 --> 03:30:15,639
that John Connolly for a governor of Texas, you know,

2729
03:30:15,680 --> 03:30:17,719
who'd been who got shot, you know, and the same

2730
03:30:17,840 --> 03:30:22,120
that Kennedy was murdered, would be a successor. And had

2731
03:30:23,159 --> 03:30:27,760
you know, had Nixon seen out his term, he was

2732
03:30:27,799 --> 03:30:33,520
gonna back Connolly in seventy six. But it's uh such

2733
03:30:33,600 --> 03:30:37,920
that it was Ford. Ford was a like a good guy,

2734
03:30:38,159 --> 03:30:40,040
like morally, like he had no vices, and by all

2735
03:30:40,079 --> 03:30:42,600
accounts he was like a decent man. But you know,

2736
03:30:42,719 --> 03:30:46,719
Ford was like a non entity. And there's no you know,

2737
03:30:46,840 --> 03:30:50,920
there's no way anybody truly affiliated with Nixon would have

2738
03:30:50,959 --> 03:30:56,200
gotten would have gotten a nod for the job after

2739
03:30:56,360 --> 03:31:02,399
Nixon's removal. But that's basically Watergate, man, Like you give

2740
03:31:02,440 --> 03:31:04,239
me the scatter shot. There's like a lot there that

2741
03:31:04,280 --> 03:31:05,799
I wanted to like get in that we weren't able

2742
03:31:05,840 --> 03:31:08,680
to before. And I hope it didn't seem to disjointed.

2743
03:31:10,159 --> 03:31:13,600
Speaker 1: Now, what do you think if Nickon finishes his term

2744
03:31:13,719 --> 03:31:17,520
out these two term president full full two terms, gets

2745
03:31:17,559 --> 03:31:21,040
what done what he needs to be done, at least

2746
03:31:21,200 --> 03:31:24,159
for you know, a couple of years there, or at

2747
03:31:24,239 --> 03:31:26,959
least for a decade. How do you think the country

2748
03:31:27,079 --> 03:31:27,479
is different?

2749
03:31:28,920 --> 03:31:33,559
Speaker 2: The strategic landscape is different because North Vietnam doesn't win

2750
03:31:33,600 --> 03:31:39,959
the war. There's a stalemate, you know, like the like

2751
03:31:40,040 --> 03:31:44,360
the like the like this the final offensive like never happens,

2752
03:31:44,920 --> 03:31:50,319
you know, because uh, the pairis piece, the treaties afforded,

2753
03:31:51,600 --> 03:32:03,000
agreement is is enforced. Also, there's, uh, there's the Cold War.

2754
03:32:03,440 --> 03:32:09,600
The way it ends plays out differently because Nixon remains

2755
03:32:09,680 --> 03:32:15,159
very much in the driver's seat of policy. And there

2756
03:32:15,200 --> 03:32:17,559
never would have been this situation where you know, a

2757
03:32:17,680 --> 03:32:21,760
decade goes by and there's no communication, you know, between

2758
03:32:22,559 --> 03:32:25,680
the Soviet executive and the president of United States. It's

2759
03:32:25,760 --> 03:32:32,280
like how that developed would have been interesting. And I

2760
03:32:32,360 --> 03:32:39,879
think a possibility of like real strategic nuclear disarmament before

2761
03:32:39,959 --> 03:32:45,280
the collapse of the Soviet Union would have been realizable.

2762
03:32:45,399 --> 03:32:49,719
But it's it's hard to say. Otherwise Nixon did get

2763
03:32:49,760 --> 03:32:52,520
is like the Burger Court was I mean, Nixon was

2764
03:32:52,559 --> 03:32:58,079
able to pack like the federal judiciary and you know,

2765
03:32:58,159 --> 03:33:01,719
Renquist was this guy. You know, it's I'm in rentalist.

2766
03:33:03,600 --> 03:33:06,000
So I mean a lot of a lot of Nixon's

2767
03:33:06,280 --> 03:33:09,719
legacy like was realized, you know, set up the EPA

2768
03:33:09,840 --> 03:33:11,600
and stuff. I ever what he feels about that. It's

2769
03:33:11,600 --> 03:33:14,120
been like impactful, but it's it's hard to say. I'm

2770
03:33:14,159 --> 03:33:16,040
oriented towards you know, the Cold War side of it

2771
03:33:16,319 --> 03:33:23,200
and things like that. But you wouldn't have a gilded executive, Okay,

2772
03:33:23,239 --> 03:33:25,280
that's the big I think that's what you're looking for. Okay,

2773
03:33:25,399 --> 03:33:29,840
Like there wouldn't you would do this bizarre situation like

2774
03:33:29,920 --> 03:33:32,639
the presidents is kind of like the cipher, and you've

2775
03:33:32,680 --> 03:33:36,079
got this like Soviet like gerontocracy that's impossibly get rid of,

2776
03:33:36,200 --> 03:33:39,200
and the legislature and the judiciary, you know, and you

2777
03:33:39,319 --> 03:33:41,360
and you have like basically like a headless executive that

2778
03:33:41,479 --> 03:33:45,120
just kind of exists, you know, and it's kind of

2779
03:33:45,200 --> 03:33:48,040
like a magnet for you know, sort of like pure

2780
03:33:48,079 --> 03:33:53,000
island manufactured controversies and political theater and stuff. So you

2781
03:33:53,120 --> 03:33:56,120
have so other country functions more like it did you know,

2782
03:33:56,319 --> 03:34:02,959
like you know, from like Trueman to Kennedy and Nixon himself.

2783
03:34:06,000 --> 03:34:09,280
Speaker 1: All right, well to plug and we'll get out of here.

2784
03:34:10,600 --> 03:34:16,799
Speaker 2: Yeah sure, I'm uh. I'm soundproving my like home office here,

2785
03:34:16,879 --> 03:34:18,840
and I'm doing all kinds of sexy stuff, like getting

2786
03:34:18,840 --> 03:34:20,440
all kinds of like I'm getting like this like fucking

2787
03:34:20,600 --> 03:34:26,559
like outer space like ergonomic chair and stuff. And I

2788
03:34:26,680 --> 03:34:29,440
just got like this brand new gimbal so I'm like

2789
03:34:29,559 --> 03:34:35,079
sexing up my production gear so long last I'm gonna

2790
03:34:35,079 --> 03:34:37,399
be able to get into like a proper like workflow schema.

2791
03:34:38,159 --> 03:34:42,520
Fresh stuff is coming, I promise for right now. You

2792
03:34:42,600 --> 03:34:45,520
can find me on substack. That's where the podcast is,

2793
03:34:45,879 --> 03:34:47,680
That's where our chat is. That's where some of my

2794
03:34:48,520 --> 03:34:52,399
medium form writing is. It's real Tom. It's seven seven

2795
03:34:52,479 --> 03:34:56,000
seven dot substay dot com. Check out my website. It's

2796
03:34:56,120 --> 03:34:59,120
number seven h m as seven seven seven dot com.

2797
03:35:00,079 --> 03:35:04,280
Check me out an X real capital R cavil e

2798
03:35:04,760 --> 03:35:11,719
capital A capital L, number seven lowercase h M E

2799
03:35:11,920 --> 03:35:16,040
S seven seven seven. That's where I'm at.

2800
03:35:17,120 --> 03:35:20,280
Speaker 1: All that stuff is going to be as always in

2801
03:35:20,479 --> 03:35:24,200
the UH show notes of every episode that Thomas is on,

2802
03:35:25,440 --> 03:35:26,639
Thank you Thomas, appreciate it.

2803
03:35:26,719 --> 03:35:27,159
Speaker 2: A human