Silent Coup, by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin

I was reading about Silent Coup in other books that I was reading for My Year (or More) of Nixon, and its thesis intrigued me.  I already owned the book, since I had picked it up at a local Goodwill store some time ago.  So I figured that I might as well read it!

I probably should read John Dean’s books in addition to Silent Coup, since Dean sued the authors of Silent Coup for libel.    But I probably won’t read Dean’s books for My Year (or More) of Nixon.  Maybe I’ll read them some other time in the future.  January will be over before you know it.  February is coming up, and I have a couple of books to read and blog about for Black History Month (which is in February).  My Year (or More) of Nixon has to come to an end sometime, and January 31, 2014 is an appropriate date to draw it to a close.  Plus, as much as I have grown accustomed to reading books by and about Nixon—-after all, I’ve been doing so for over a year—-I would like to move on to something else.  Some books I will have to save for another time—-such as John Dean’s works.

So what did I think about Silent Coup?  It was all right, I guess.  I don’t know enough to critique its theses.  Moreover, because the book was rather heavy and detailed, it would take me a long time to evaluate each and every paragraph for accuracy, and I don’t want to devote years of my life to unpacking Silent Coup.  I was looking through some other books about Nixon that I have read, and more than one of them criticizes Silent Coup for making leaps in logic.  Maybe it does, but, to me, as a reader, it did come across as fairly well-documented.  It relied on interviews and documents.  It noted contradictions in people’s testimonies, and between what people said and what the record showed (i.e., someone saying there was such-and-such a meeting, when actually there was not such-and-such a meeting on record).  Maybe there were times when the authors of Silent Coup went a bit beyond the evidence to make certain people look more sinister than they actually were.  Still, they ask good questions.

The main villains of the book are Alexander Haig and John Dean.  Haig, according to Colodny and Gettlin, was sabotaging Nixon’s Administration as White House Chief of Staff.  In the story that Silent Coup lays out, Haig was behind leaks, and he himself was the mysterious Deep Throat who was leaking information to reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.  Colodny and Gettlin even argue that Haig and Woodward had a prior relationship, that Woodward as a Navy man briefed Haig.  Colodny and Gettlin do not buy into Woodward’s portrayal of himself as a political outsider, for they maintain that he was long a part of the establishment.  Why were there forces seeking to sabotage Nixon’s Administration, according to Colodny and Gettlin?  Because there were elements of the military who did not like Nixon’s policies of rapprochement with the Soviet Union and Red China, as well as arms control.

Colodny and Gettlin assert that The Final Days, by Woodward and Bernstein, is essentially Haig’s side of the story—-the propaganda that Haig is behind.  I don’t know.  Granted, Haig wasn’t portrayed too badly in The Final Days: he was loyal to Nixon, yet not blindly loyal.  But The Final Days did include some bad things that Haig did, such as talking badly about Kissinger to Nixon, and about Nixon to Kissinger.  The Final Days also quotes someone who was warning Gerald Ford about Haig, essentially saying that Haig was out for himself.  I don’t think that The Final Days is a complete whitewash of Haig.  But perhaps detractors would argue that The Final Days would have to include some bad details about Haig to look like a credible piece of journalism rather than a whitewash.

On Dean, I have read in other books that Silent Coup‘s thesis is that Dean ordered the Watergate break-in to conceal information there that his girlfriend was associated with a call-girl ring.  That’s certainly a major part of the break-in, according to Silent Coup.  The thing is, though, Dean in Silent Coup does not come across as particularly chivalrous, but rather as ambitious and selfish.  According to Colodny and Gettlin, Dean wanted to work on intelligence to advance himself within the White House ranks; he would look at people’s desks and take credit for their ideas; he broke up with his girlfriend, then decided to marry her because then she couldn’t testify against him.  Silent Coup‘s notorious and controversial thesis was actually the most puzzling and nebulous to me, in light of its portrayal of Dean.

I was looking at David Greenberg’s Nixon’s Shadow, and he says that Nixon in Silent Coup appears “hapless” and “guileless” (page 225).  That’s why he’s so puzzled that Roger Morris supported the book (Morris actually wrote the Foreword to Silent Coup): How could Morris portray Nixon as so manipulative and shady in Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician, only to endorse a book that presented Nixon as a victim of Watergate?  But I didn’t think that Nixon came across as “hapless” and “guileless” in Silent Coup.  Granted, Silent Coup does portray him as a victim of Haig and Dean, but it does not depict Nixon as thoroughly innocent, but rather as one who was involved in a cover-up.

This book would probably be a good read for people who are interested in Watergate.  But I also found it to be rather interesting when it came to the human element—-how the characters were depicted: how one could be an insider yet portray himself as an outsider; how people try to rise in the ranks and impress others; and how one may be on the social margins of the elite and yet be able to seduce women by appealing to his contacts (there was one character like that in the book).

The Final Days 7

On page 223 of The Final Days, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein say the following about President Richard Nixon's negotiations with the Soviets to slow down the arms race:

"The President had often confided to Kissinger his most telling reason for slowing down the nuclear-arms race.  He feared that the United States would lose it.  Continued military competition was too expensive.  The country might not be able to sustain the costs of a prolonged cold war.  America, the President felt, was too likely to buckle under the pressure.  Besides the economic weakness of the country, Nixon perceived a weakness of will.  Too many of the same political critics who were pushing him to the wall on Watergate would not support a tough posture toward the Russians, he said."

In this post, I'll just assume that Nixon felt this way, even though I don't know for sure if that was the case.
It sounds as if Nixon saw detente as second-best, as if he would have preferred for the United States to have the guts to be tough with the Soviets and to win the nuclear arms race.  Not only did Nixon admire guts, but, reading some of his foreign policy books, Nixon looked back with apparent pleasure at the days when the United States had nuclear superiority and could appeal to that to get the Soviets to back off from some of the adventures that they were pursuing.  Nixon considered that to be keeping the peace!

But I think that there was another side to Nixon.  Nixon in his memoirs, especially the first volume, depicts himself as someone who wants peace.  He wanted peace when his father and his brothers fought.  He saw some of the horrors of war.  And he admired pacifists, even if he did not go so far as to be a pacifist himself.  I have my doubts that this side of Nixon saw detente merely as second-best.

Moreover, Nixon argues that he as President spent more money on domestic concerns than on military defense.  Maybe Nixon here is simply presenting himself as progressive, against liberal critics, and his point is that he has done more to further liberal concerns than liberals themselves have.  Or perhaps a part of Nixon had a sense that the arms race was costing the United States money, money that could be used to help people.

I admire guts, but I also don't think that peace and negotiation should be considered second-best.  I think that the best option is what Nixon said detente was: negotiation, but not negotiation that allows others to walk all over you.  Detente is tough negotiation, according to Nixon.

I would like to mention one more thing.  On page 222, Woodward and Bernstein say: "The Soviet press had largely ignored Watergate.  When the matter was referred to, it was portrayed as a plot to destroy d[e]tente."  That actually overlaps with the argument of the book, Silent Coup: that there were military people in Nixon's Administration who did not like being shut out of the decisionmaking process, and who did not care for detente, and they contributed to President Richard Nixon's downfall.

Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life 11

Lately, my readings of Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life have focused on Watergate.  I have two items.

1.  Aitken seems to be open to the argument of Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin in Silent Coup that White House Counsel John Dean ordered the Watergate break-in to uncover information about a call-girl ring.  Aitken said that he thought that the thesis was pretty far-fetched, until he talked with Gordon Liddy about it.  Liddy would come to accept Silent Coup's thesis.  When I first read that in another book, I was puzzled.  Was not Liddy a major participant in the Watergate scandal?  Wouldn't he know at the outset that the Watergate break-in was ordered by Dean and was intended to uncover information about a call-girl ring, if that were indeed the truth?  How could Liddy come to accept a new theory about Watergate, as if he were some dispassionate observer, rather than an actual participant?

It turns out that Liddy accepted Silent Coup's thesis because that made sense to him in retrospect.  Liddy acknowledges that, while he was participating in Watergate, he did not know everything that was going on.  On page 471, Aitken quotes Liddy as saying:

"Without doubt the man who commanded and conceived the Watergate operation was John Dean.  Nixon and [Attorney General John] Mitchell had nothing whatever to do with it.  I didn't realize that at the time.  Like most other people I was fooled by Dean's facile lies.  'Oh you don't understand Mitchell's ways', he told me when I was assuming from everything Mitchell said to me that he wanted Gemstone aborted...[H]e didn't tell anyone except Howard Hunt that what he was really after was the call-girl address book and a bug on the phones that were used to book the call girls.  He duped Magruder on that one and he duped me.  I remember Magruder saying to me, 'what we want is what they've got right here', pointing at the middle drawer of his own desk.  Now he didn't mean Larry O'Brien's desk.  When the Cubans went in they didn't go near O'Brien's office in the DNC.  Hunt gave them their orders and on the second break-in they went straight to the office and the desk of a secretary called Maxie Wells.  Our look-out post from the hotel over the road was angled to that office not to O'Brien's...I thought I was involved in an operation that was politically important to the President.  I now know it was an operation that was personally important to John Dean.  Period."

On the secretary, Maxie Wells, Aitken states: "According to Silent Coup, the FBI was able to establish that Wells's desk was the burglars' target, because when the burglars were being arrested, one had tried to conceal a key that fitted Wells's desk.  For some mysterious reason, this fact was ignored throughout the investigation of the break-in."

Liddy's claim that the Watergate burglars "didn't go near O'Brien's office in the DNC" stood out to me, for it recalled to my mind Joan Hoff's claim in Nixon Reconsidered that "the Watergate burglars did not initially bug, nor were they subsequently caught in, O’Brien’s office" (page 305).  That puzzles me because I have read in more than one biography of Nixon that the burglars indeed did break into Lawrence O'Brien's office.  Who's right on this?

2.  I'd like to turn my attention now to the topic of Deep Throat, the alleged inside source that was feeding Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein information about Watergate.  Mark Felt claimed to be Deep Throat, and Woodward confirmed Felt's claim.  When Jonathan Aitken wrote Nixon: A Life, however, the identity of Deep Throat was still unknown.  Aitken notes that Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein that material had been deliberately erased from the tapes, and this was before knowledge of the missing 18 and 1/2 minutes was widespread.  For Aitken, that should narrow down the candidates for Deep Throat, for not many people were aware of the missing 18 and 1/2 minutes.  Those who were aware included Nixon, Rose Mary Woods, Al Haig, Fred Buzhardt, Steve Bull, and Major General John C. Bennett (deputy to Haig).  Aitken excludes Nixon and Woods from being Deep Throat because he doubts that they would leak stories about themselves.  Aitken also believes that Deep Throat was probably the person who deliberately erased the 18 and 1/2 minutes, since "none of the remaining four should have had knowledge, at the time of the Deep Throat-Woodward conversation, that the gap had been caused by deliberate erasures" (page 512).

How can what Aitken says be reconciled with Mark Felt being Deep Throat?  Incidentally, it's on account of these sorts of issues (among other things) that Ann Coulter doubts that Mark Felt even was Deep Throat, notwithstanding what Felt and Woodward said.  In this column, she states: " The fictional Deep Throat knew things Felt could not possibly have known, such as the 18 1/2-minute gap on one of the White House tapes. Only six people knew about the gap when Woodward reported it. All of them worked at the White House. Felt not only didn't work at the White House, but when the story broke, he also didn't even work at the FBI anymore."

This article puzzles over how Felt could have known about the missing 18 and 1/2 minutes and raises a possible solution: "How did Mark Felt know about the deliberate erasures on the tape when Rose Mary Woods herself did not discover the added soft-buzz erasures until November 6, 1973? Did the theorized White House lawyer somehow tip off Felt after making the soft-buzz erasures?"  In this scenario, Deep Throat was not the one who made the erasures, but a White House lawyer who allegedly made some of the erasures may have tipped Felt off about them.

Julie Nixon Eisenhower's Pat Nixon: The Untold Story 8

On page 442 of Pat Nixon: The Untold Story, Julie Nixon Eisenhower talks about the books that her mother, Pat Nixon, liked to read after Richard Nixon's departure from the Presidency:

"Her favorite books were the historical novels by the prolific writer Taylor Caldwell, who crammed her stories with rich details on the eras she wrote about, be they Biblical times, ancient Greece, or nineteenth-century America.  What my mother found intriguing was that Taylor Caldwell believed in international plots, and to this day my mother's perception of Watergate is that it was partly an international scheme, or, at the very least, that double agents were involved.  Like many others, she had questioned from the beginning the suspicious circumstances surrounding the apprehension of the burglars.  Was it a setup?  Was the CIA involved?  How deeply was Howard Hunt or his organization involved?"

I like this passage because it offers insights into Pat Nixon's views on Watergate.  Julie goes on to say that Pat and Richard "avoided reading any of the books on the Nixon years, favorable, or unfavorable", which is not an absolute statement, since Julie later tells the story of how Pat had a stroke after reading parts of The Final Days, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.  But I wonder what Pat thought of the controversial book Silent Coup, which (from what I have heard) has a somewhat conspiratorial tone when talking about Watergate, and which a number of Nixon defenders, and even Nixon himself, liked.  (I don't know if Nixon actually read it, but he told Monica Crowley that he wished its thesis got more attention than it did.)

It's also interesting what Julie says about author Taylor Caldwell.  Caldwell was linked with the John Bircher wing of conservatism (see here), the wing that gave Richard Nixon and even Tricia and Julie problems when Nixon was running for Governor of California in 1962.  It's ironic, in my opinion, that Pat Nixon enjoyed Taylor Caldwell's books.  That Caldwell talked about "international plots" in her book does not surprise me, since the John Birch Society believed in conspiracies----among international bankers, communists, socialists, leftists, etc.----to create a one world government.  I don't know for sure how Caldwell portrayed the "international plots", since I have not read any of her books.  (My Mom has one of them, however, and I have Caldwell's A Pillar of Iron, which is about Cicero.)  But the wikipedia article about her states that "Many of Caldwell's books centered on the idea that a small cabal of rich, powerful men secretly control the world."

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 26

I have three items for my blog post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.

1.  On page 822, we read: "[White House counsel John] Dean had set up his own investigation unit and had caused the investigation of the call-girl ring associated with the 'Happy Hooker' Xaviera Hollander, but this achieved nothing useful, since there were as many Republicans as Democrats in it, an unsurprising revelation."

The reason that this stood out to me is that Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin argue in their controversial book, Silent Coup, that John Dean's investigation of the call-girl ring was the motive behind the break-in at the Watergate hotel, as Dean allegedly was seeking information about the prostitution ring and was trying to cover things up, since his wife was supposedly connected with someone in the ring.  Dean would sue Colodny and Gettlin for libel.  It's interesting to me that Black essentially acknowledges that Dean was investigating the prostitution ring.  Black doesn't seem to buy into the idea that this was the motive behind the Watergate break-in, however, for Black appears to accept the prominent narrative that the Watergate break-in was aiming to collect information about Democratic National Committee chairman Lawrence O'Brien.  For Black, Dean was investigating the call-girl ring, but it was with the intent of finding dirt on Democrats.  According to Black, the problem, in terms of Dean's goal, was that Republicans were using the ring's services, too!

2.  On page 825, we read: "The tapes of these June 23 conversations were released on August 5, 1974, and became known as the 'smoking gun,' but they were not as damaging as they seemed when presented two years after the fact as a sort of last straw.  [FBI director L. Patrick] Gray had expressed a concern, denied by [CIA director Richard] Helms, about a CIA covert operation.  Helms told [Nixon aides] Haldeman and Ehrlichman that he would cooperate if given written instructions and an adequate explanation, by which he clearly meant that there would have to be an adequate reason to ask the FBI to desist.  No such instructions were given; no such request [Deputy Director for Central Intelligence Vernon] Walters spoke again to Gray.  The FBI did not desist, and didn't principally have carriage of the matter anyway.  It appeared two years later, and was represented by the press, as an attempt to obstruct justice, and it would have been if it had been pushed, but it wasn't pushed."

The topic here is the charge that President Richard Nixon obstructed justice by encouraging the CIA to restrict the FBI's investigation into Watergate.  Nixon's claim was that he was doing this because some of the people involved in the Watergate break-in were connected with the CIA, and Nixon didn't want the investigation into Watergate to blow the lid on any covert operations.  Black contends that, because Nixon didn't press the matter with the CIA, he wasn't really attempting to obstruct justice.

The low-key manner in which Black describes this topic contrasts with what I was recently reading in Don Fulsom's Nixon's Darkest Secrets.  Fulsom notes that Nixon wanted CIA director Helms to know that Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt could start blabbing on about the Bay of Pigs, if Helms did not limit the FBI's investigation into Watergate.  Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman said in The Ends of Power (written with Joseph DiMona), and Fulsom agrees, that "Bay of Pigs" meant the Kennedy assassination.  Fulsom says that the connection between the Bay of Pigs and the Kennedy assassination was probably that "the cast of characters employed in the 1960 plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and kill Fidel Castro and the cast of characters employed in the plan to assassinate Kennedy in 1963 were the same" (page 130).

Fulsom refers to the testimony of Haldeman and John Ehrlichman (in their books) that Helms really erupted when they brought up the Bay of Pigs, to the surprise of Haldeman and Ehrlichman!  Haldeman quotes Helms as saying: "The Bay of Pigs has nothing to do with this! I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs."  Fulsom later refers to Haldeman's statement in The Ends of Power that Haldeman told the President that Helms "got the picture" and said he'd "be very happy to be helpful" (Haldeman's words).  But Fulsom narrates that Helms then "had second thoughts and was refusing to cooperate with Nixon's gambit" (pages 135-136).  Fulsom then dryly relates: "For that insubordination, he was eventually banished to be the ambassador to Iran."  Fulsom depicts Nixon as more heavy-handed in his treatment of the CIA than Black does.

3.  On pages 826-827, Black states: "For the reelection committee to pay the legal costs and living expenses of part-time and full-time employees is quite in order.  It has been assumed that this was 'hush money,' payments made in exchange for silence about CREEP or White House involvement.  In all the voluminous material, it is not clear that was even the implicit intended nature of the payments, at least at the outset.  As time went by, what amounted to blackmail was attempted by some of the defendants, and some was paid.  But it is not clear that submitting to blackmail constitutes obstructing justice.  It was, however, both shaming and demeaning to the presidency."

This seems to correspond with Black's overall take on Watergate, at least in what I have read so far: that Nixon did foolish things, things that were beneath the Presidency, and yet he arguably did not do anything that would deserve impeachment.

Nixon Reconsidered 7

I have two items for my blog post today about Joan Hoff's Nixon Reconsidered.

1.  My first item will concern whether the United States should intervene in other countries.  Hoff has a section in her book, "THIRD WORLD MISTAKES", in which she is quite critical of how President Richard Nixon approached the Third World.  Overall, she seems to be arguing, he saw it through the prism of the Cold War.  Hoff discusses the Nixon Administration's treatment of Chile, which was headed by the Marxist President Salvador Allende, who would be overthrown in a coup.  While Hoff does not believe that there is evidence that the CIA or Nixon Administration "played any direct role in the assassination of President Salvador Allende," she does acknowledge that they "did everything possible to destabilize his government" (page 249), by funding Allende's political opponents, for example.  One who was opposed to such features of President Nixon's foreign policy was Secretary of State William Rogers, who would later say that the U.S. giving contributions to foreign elections is a bad idea.  One reason, according to Rogers, was that the U.S. doesn't get its "money's worth" in doing so.  Second, Rogers said, it is embarrassing to the countries and undermines their trust in the U.S.  And third, it contradicts the U.S.'s rhetoric about non-intervention and allowing "countries to determine their own future" (Rogers' words on page 251).  Some have characterized Rogers as not particularly bright, but I do believe that his critique of the Nixon Administration's policy in Chile is quite insightful.  I can still see Nixon's perspective----that the Soviets were backing the leftists in Chile, that the U.S. did not want a major Communist power in South America, and that thus the U.S. had to support Allende's opponents.  Still, in my opinion, Rogers does well to highlight downfalls to U.S. intervention in other countries' political systems. 

Hoff herself appears to pursue a rather isolationist route at the end of her chapter on the Vietnam War (even though I seriously doubt that she and Rogers were complete isolationists).  She essentially says that the U.S. government and military officials should apologize for the Vietnam War.  She blames the South Vietnamese, "not the dove-inspired constraints on the U.S. military", for losing the war (page 242).  While Hoff defends Nixon against a number of charges that she considers to be unfounded and unfair, she still apparently retains the opposition to the Vietnam War that she had when she was a New Leftist.

Hoff sometimes seems to praise Richard Nixon's foreign policy, as when she says that detente may deserve some credit for the end of the Cold War.  But, overall, she does not have too many kind words for Nixon's foreign policy.  As I said in my post yesterday, she is critical of the "linkage" element of detente, in which Nixon and Henry Kissinger would link together different issues in dealing with the Soviets, offering concessions in some areas if the Soviets would do what the U.S. wanted in other areas.  Her chapter about the Vietnam War is entitled "VIETNAM: WITHOUT PEACE OR HONOR".  She's against how Nixon approached the Third World.  What exactly does she favor in President Richard Nixon's foreign policy?  She says that his rapprochement with Red China was an accomplishment, but here, her applause strikes me as rather tepid.  One goal behind the rapprochement was to give the U.S. leverage in its relationship with the Soviet Union, and my impression is that Hoff does not believe that it did that.  Hoff's praises of Nixon's domestic policies are quite pronounced, by contrast.  She does note flaws in some of them, such as Nixon allowing the dollar to float, and Nixon believing that the Equal Pay Act could actually bring about equal pay for men and women in the workplace.  But she also believes that Nixon accomplished a significant amount of good in such areas as civil rights, the environment, and the U.S. Government's treatment of Native Americans, and that his proposal to reform welfare was quite groundbreaking.  I don't find that same level of respect in Hoff's book for Nixon's foreign policies.

2.  In my post here, I refer to Stephen Ambrose's claim that Nixon's desire for information about Democratic National Committee chairman Larry O'Brien could have contributed to the atmosphere that led to the break-in at the DNC's headquarters at the Watergate hotel.  Ambrose is not the only one who posits this, for many believe that the burglars were looking for information about O'Brien.  But Hoff does not buy this explanation for the break-in, and her reason is that "the Watergate burglars did not initially bug, nor were they subsequently caught in, O'Brien's office" (page 305).  Hoff goes into other motivations for the break-in that have been proposed, but she appears to be open to the controversial argument in the book, Silent Coup, by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, that the break-in was an attempt to find information about a prostitution ring that was servicing Democratic and Republican politicians.  I'm not sure if, or to what extent, she buys into the aspect of Silent Coup's argument for which John Dean sued its authors for libel: the argument that John Dean was somehow involved in ordering the break-in and trying to cover things up, since (according to the authors) Dean's wife was connected with someone who was prominent in the prostitution ring.  Hoff does, however, say on page 311 that Silent Coup "has surpassed other books about the origins of Watergate" and also "attempts to resolve factual contradictions in the testimony of all the participants about the break-ins and cover-up" (page 311).

David Greenberg in Nixon's Shadow said that Hoff essentially provided scholarly cover for Silent Coup.  There are many who may feel that Silent Coup was a book with a crackpot theory that several Nixon apologists desperately tried to grab onto, perhaps to make Dean a scapegoat for Watergate.  I don't know enough about Watergate to comment.  But I do have to respect Hoff's humble tone in praising Silent Coup, as when she notes that the book attempts to resolve contradictions in testimonies.  There's not a whole lot of pretense in her liking the book for that reason.

Nixon's Shadow 7

I covered a lot of ground in my latest reading of David Greenberg's Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image.  I finished the chapter on the Washington Press Corps' image of Richard Nixon, the one about the image of Nixon that was held by Nixon loyalists, and the one on the image of Nixon promulgated in psycho-historical works.

I did find my latest reading to be engrossing, and there were at least two reasons for that.  First of all, Greenberg is a compelling storyteller.  In my latest reading, Greenberg told the tale of journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who investigated the Watergate scandal when many within the upper-level media were unwilling to do so.  Greenberg talked about Rabbi Baruch Korff, who had become a Nixon fan in 1972 due to Nixon's support for Soviet Jews, and who achieved minor celebrity status by launching an organization to defend President Nixon during the Watergate scandal.  Greenberg discussed the popularity and significance of works about Nixon.  Silent Coup's controversial thesis about Watergate was rejected by a number of observers, including certain historians, yet it was accepted by Nixon apologists and was given some scholarly cover by Joan Hoff.  Victor Lasky's It Didn't Start with Watergate, which was about how Nixon's misdeeds were no worse than those of previous Administrations, sold many copies, even though even Lasky acknowledged that the reason for its popularity was probably that it made Nixon supporters feel a little better after Watergate.  Woodward and Bernstein's The Final Days, as well as David Frost's interviews of Nixon, made many Americans feel sorry for the former President.  And Greenberg goes into the entertainment media's depiction of Nixon.  Alex Keaton on the 1980's sitcom Family Ties was an ardent Nixon supporter, yet Alex was a likeable character.  (I appreciated this discussion because Family Ties was what got me interested in politics.)  And the 1999 comedy Dick not only depicted Nixon as a buffoon, but also Woodward and Bernstein.  In my mind, evaluating and discussing the significance of relevant players and works is an element of good storytelling.

Second, my impression is that Greenberg strives to be fair to Nixon, as he accepts and rejects the arguments of pro- and anti- Nixon people, as well as acknowledges some legitimate point in the various images of Nixon, without necessarily accepting those images completely.  Greenberg acknowledges that some of what the media accused Nixon of doing was false, and he also  says that the allegation that Nixon beat his wife Pat lacks convincing evidence.  Yet, Greenberg does not buy Nixon's arguments in every case: Nixon often alleged that the Democrats had his plane bugged in 1968, for example, but Greenberg does not believe that there is evidence for that.  In the chapter on the psycho-historical depictions of Nixon, Greenberg essentially says that they may have a point, but that they went too far at times: they could get overly political, or they would try to find a deep sinister meaning in insignificant things that Nixon did (such as mashing his mashed potatoes).  Greenberg makes an attempt to be fair and balanced, to both Nixon and also those who have written about Nixon.

That doesn't mean that I agreed with Greenberg on everything.  For example, on page 213, Greenberg says regarding Frost's interviews of Nixon that "The Watergate segments also provided the shows' most lasting moments, including Nixon's rationalization, soon to enter Bartlett's, that 'When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.'"  The movie Frost/Nixon depicts that statement as dramatic and as occurring within the context of Nixon's discussion of Watergate (see here).  The thing is, Nixon was not talking about Watergate when he made that statement, but rather he was discussing the Huston plan for gathering intelligence on domestic radicals.  Nixon's point, as Stephen Ambrose says, was that certain things that ordinarily would be illegal, such as burglary, become legal when the President provides cover for them.  One can argue that what Nixon said was still bad, even within that context, as David Frost does here, or even that Nixon's statement was relevant to Watergate because it provides us with insight into his view on Presidential power.  But Nixon was not explicitly talking about Watergate when he made that statement, nor did he say it in a particularly dramatic fashion (see here).

Ambrose's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery 1

I started Stephen Ambrose's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990.  This is the third volume of Ambrose's trilogy on Richard Nixon.

This volume will talk a lot about the Watergate scandal.  For my blog post today, I'll use as my starting-point something that Ambrose says on page 10:

"This is a play that does not edify or enlighten or uplift.  There is no moral lesson to be learned from a play in which many of the characters, much of the time, are rotters.  Yet there is a hero...That hero is the American system of justice, as embodied in the Constitution."

To be honest with you, the Watergate scandal does not particularly interest me.  I'm doing a Year (or More) of Nixon, in which I read and blog through books about Richard Nixon.  But I don't have a great desire to read about Watergate.  I have John Dean's book, Blind Ambition, but I don't particularly want to read it (at least not anytime soon).  I also have G. Gordon Liddy's autobiography Will, which probably won't be on my Year (or More) of Nixon reading list.  I could order books by the key players in the Nixon Administration for a fairly cheap price----by H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and the list goes on.  I could also order Judge Sirica's book about Watergate.  But I'm just not interested in the details of Watergate.

I do plan to read a couple of books about Watergate, though.  I was debating about reading Silent Coup, but I've decided to read it at some point in my Year (or More) of Nixon.  From what I've heard about it, the book's thesis is quite edgy, but it was praised by Roger Morris (who wrote a renowned book about Nixon), and John Mitchell (Nixon's friend and one of his Attorneys General) apparently thought that the book was on to something.  And, looking at Monica Crowley's Nixon in Winter, Nixon himself seemed to have taken Silent Coup seriously, on some level.  So I might as well read it!  It must be more than tabloid-type speculation!  I'm also planning to read The Final Days, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.  One reason is that I tried to read this book as a kid, and (while I enjoyed the book) I did not finish it.  I like to read books that I tried to read as a kid but did not get through.  That's what I did with Richard Nixon's Six Crises!  Second, Woodward and Bernstein have excellent prose.  I just have to read The Final Days!

In reading Nixon's memoirs, I did not like reading and blogging about Watergate.  Nixon had interesting insights in his discussion of the scandal: his struggle to find a coherent narrative of what actually happened, and how we may not recognize the significance of what we are doing while we are in a particular situation, as opposed to looking at it in a big-picture or retrospective sense.  But, overall, his discussion of the Watergate scandal bored me.

Why?  I think it's because there were no heroes in it, which is the point that Ambrose makes.  Even in Nixon's own account, he did not come off smelling like a rose.  And, although I didn't care for Nixon's complaining about the hypocrisy of those who were going after him, that sort of talk did convince me of one thing: I didn't consider Nixon's persecutors to be heroes, either!  Do I consider the American system of justice to be the hero?  Well, I've been inspired when I've heard that point on documentaries: that the American system was stable and went on, even though the President resigned.  There is something inspiring whenever the American system is based on law rather than the whims of the powerful.  But I don't need to read that point over and over again.

Watergate was a tragedy.  It was an unhappy ordeal.  It's depressing to read about.  I'd like to think highly of Nixon, since I identify with his introversion and think that he did some pretty remarkable things.  But he really dropped the ball with Watergate.

But there may be a silver lining in this third volume of Ambrose's book: that Nixon (on some level) recovered from the Watergate scandal.  I like what Ambrose says on page 10:

"Incredibly, unbelievably, he does come back.  Were this really a play, instead of real life, the story would end with his resignation.  But Nixon is Nixon.  There is no one else like him for refusing to quit, for plotting and executing comebacks, for winning redemption, for self-resurrection.  Within a decade and a half of his resignation, he had not only become America's elder statesman but was threatening to become America's beloved elder statesman."

Ambrose concludes his Forward with "I have loved writing this book."  That's one reason for me to read it, even if I'm not particularly interested in Watergate: Ambrose loves his subject matter, and that really shows in his writing.