Nixon's Empire Strikes Back

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Fri, 10 Jun 2005 04:19:19 -0700

Nixon's Empire Strikes Back

 

 

 

Published on Thursday, June 9, 2005 by the Guardian/UK

Nixon's Empire Strikes Back

 

Bush's imperial project has succeeded by learning the chief lesson of

Watergate - muzzle the press

by Sidney Blumenthal

 

The unveiling of the identity of Deep Throat - Mark Felt, the former

deputy director of the FBI - seemed affirm the story of Watergate as the

triumph of the lone journalist supported from the shadows by a magically

appearing secret source. Shazam! The outlines of the fuller story we now

know, thanks not only to Felt's self unmasking but to disclosures the

Albany Times Union of upstate New York, unreported so far by any major

outlet. Felt was not working as " a disgruntled maverick ... but rather

as the leader of a clandestine group " of three other high-level agents

to control the story by collecting intelligence and leaking it. For more

than 30 years the secrecy around Deep Throat diverted attention to who

Deep Throat was rather than what Deep Throat was - a covert FBI

operation in which Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward was almost

certainly an unwitting asset.

 

When FBI director J Edgar Hoover died on May 2 1972, Felt, who believed

he should be his replacement, was passed over. The Watergate break-in

took place a month later. As President Nixon sought to coerce the CIA

and FBI to participate in his increasingly frantic efforts to obstruct

justice, Felt, who had access to raw intelligence files, organized a

band of his most trusted lieutenants and began strategic leaking. The

Felt op, in fact, was part of a widespread revolt of professionals

throughout the federal government against Nixon's threats to their

bureaucratic integrity.

 

Nixon's grand plan was to concentrate executive power in an imperial

presidency, politicize the bureaucracy and crush its independence, and

invoke national security to wage partisan warfare. He intended to

" reconstitute the Republican party " , staging a " purge " to foster " a new

majority " , as his aide William Safire wrote in his memoir. Nixon himself

declared in his own memoir that to achieve his ends the " institutions "

of government had to be " reformed, replaced or circumvented. In my

second term I was prepared to adopt whichever of these three methods -

or whichever combination of them - was necessary. "

 

But now George Bush is building a leviathan beyond Nixon's imagining.

The Bush presidency is the highest stage of Nixonism. The

commander-in-chief has declared himself by executive order above

international law, the CIA is being purged, the justice department

deploying its resources to break down the wall of separation between

church and state, the Environmental Protection Agency being ordered to

suppress scientific studies and the Pentagon subsuming intelligence and

diplomacy, leaving the US with blunt military force as its chief foreign

policy.

 

The three main architects of Bush's imperial presidency gained their

formative experience amid Nixon's downfall. Donald Rumsfeld, Nixon's

counselor, and his deputy, Dick Cheney, one after the other, served as

chief of staff to Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, both opposing

congressional efforts for more transparency in the executive.

 

With perfect Nixonian pitch, Cheney remarked in 1976: " Principle is OK

up to a certain point, but principle doesn't do any good if you lose. "

During the Iran-Contra scandal Cheney, a republican leader in the House

of Representatives, argued that the congressional report denouncing

" secrecy, deception and disdain for the law " was an encroachment on

executive authority.

 

The other architect, Karl Rove, Bush's senior political aide, began his

career as an agent of Nixon's dirty trickster Donald Segretti -

" ratfuckers " as Segretti called his boys. At the height of the Watergate

scandal, Rove operated through a phony front group to denounce the

lynch-mob atmosphere created in this city by the Washington Post and

other parts of the Nixon-hating media " .

 

Under Bush, the Republican Congress has abdicated its responsibilities

of executive oversight and investigation. When Republican senator John

Warner, chairman of the armed services committee, held hearings on

Bush's torture policy in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib revelations,

the White House set rabid House Republicans to attack him. There have

been no more such hearings. Meanwhile, Bush insists that the Senate

votes to confirm John Bolton as US ambassador to the UN while refusing

to release essential information requested by the Senate foreign

relations committee.

 

One of the chief lessons learned from Nixon's demise was the necessity

of muzzling the press. The Bush White House has neutralized the press

corps and even turned some reporters into its own assets. The

disinformation WMD in the rush to war in Iraq, funneled into the news

pages of the New York Times, is the most dramatic case in point. By

manipulation and intimidation, encouraging atmosphere of

self-censorship, the Bush White House has distanced the press from

dissenting professionals inside the government.

 

Mark Felt's sudden emergence from behind the curtain of history evoked

the glory days of the press corps and its modern creation myth. It was a

warm bath of nostalgia and cold comfort.

 

Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and

author of The Clinton Wars

 

© 2005 Guardian Newspapers, Ltd.

 

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