In investigating the various arguments, evidence and analyses, the three distinct points of view will be dealt with separately, and a conclusion arrived at on the basis of the stronger and more tenable arguments.
Frost/Nixon Interviews (Nixon’s Point Of View):
On May 4 1977 after remaining three years away from the public eye the recently resigned President Richard Nixon decided to finally appear back into the spotlight by allowing Sir David Frost to interview him. This was but the beginning of what would soon become the famous Frost/Nixon relationship. Both Nixon and frost had planned to use this show as a resurrection for their respective careers; it worked for one but failed the other. Nixon ended up admitting to an involvement in a cover up with Charles Colson, which however wasn’t shown in the final television production. All the information below is from or based on what the ex President told Sir David Frost on a publicly televised, television show.
When the Watergate scandal broke out in the summer of 1972 the Watergate break in was called a third rate burglary by the white house, little was known that this “third rate burglary” would throw the entire United States of America into the biggest political upheaval she had ever experienced. After the two years of the crisis on the 9th of August on the verge of impeachment proceedings, President Richard Nixon resigned in the most dramatic fall in American politics. Even though the president’s involvement was not proven his key supporters like Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy were involved. The entire Break-In was planned by John Mitchell- the head of the re election committee and his assistant. HR “Bob” Haldeman the then chief of staff was also involved in the planning but was in Florida with the President when the burglary transpired. On their return on the 19th of June they met repeatedly to discuss the events that occurred in their absence. Out of these there are two very important meetings. The first was on the 20th of June that included a discussion on Watergate; there is no sound recording of this meeting and is commonly known as the Eighteen and a Half minute gap.
During the investigation, officials of the White House informed Judge Sirica that two-subpoenaed conversation weren’t recorded. And also in tape 342, the third subpoenaed tape had an eighteen and a half minute gap in the conversation between HR “Bob” Haldeman and Nixon, which it was supposed to contain. Historians such as Stanley Kutler, Fred Emery, James Preston believe that the eighteen and a half minute gap in tape 342 contained evidence that would corroborate Nixon’s involvement in the case. There is a conspiracy theory that believes Richard Nixon erased the tape himself, but the whole story gets further complicated when in November 1973 Rose Mary Woods testified that on October 1 1973 while replaying tape 342 she by mistake answered a call for the duration of five minutes and re recorded over that segment therefore accounting for 5 minutes of the eighteen and a half minute and leaving the rest unaccounted. The second meeting was on 23rd June, this meeting is important because Haldeman told Nixon, “The FBI is moving into problem areas in their Watergate probe Haldeman suggested and Nixon agreed that the CIA should be instructed to tell the FBI not to proceed in its Watergate probe.” Nixon claimed to have no recollection of the meeting, but does remember telling Haldeman to check what the “other side” was doing about the issue; he wanted to make sure the other side wasn’t going to blow the whole incident into a full fledged political scandal. Sir David Frost pointed out, Nixon was supposed to have had no knowledge of the details of the scandal during his meeting on the 20th of June but suddenly on the same evening he was seen talking to Charles Colson about the same issue in excruciating detail. This as argued by Stanley Kutler shows that the President had knowledge of the break in and was involved in the scandal.
Throughout the entire interview Nixon repeatedly spoke about cover up, he said that “if cover up is used in the sense of covering up illegal/ criminal activities then it’s illegal”, he also kept repeating the fact that he did not believe they were covering up “any criminal activity”. “I didn't think of it as a cover-up, I didn't intend to cover-up. Let me say if i intended the cover up, believe me, I would have done it.”
Motive is an important aspect when looking into an investigation, if the motive were asked then Nixon would say that his motive was to prevent a political scandal, so that innocent people’s lives weren’t endangered. “If cover up is used in covering a motive which is not criminal it’s something else and I didn’t believe we were covering up any criminal activity.” He used a form of cover-up to politically contain the scandal. Time and time again he showed his confidence in his administration believing that they weren’t involved. At points he seemed to be over confident of his aides and their innocence in such a political scandal. What Fred Emery states in his books (either footnote or name here) is that irrespective of his motives the President was involved in an act to obstruct justice, his motives might have been saintly but when he was informed of such an incident he should have called the FBI himself and implicated those involved.
Nixon’s involvement in the cover up of the Watergate scandal was highly disputed up until March the 21st. There is no doubt that on the 21st of march John Dean(The White House Counsel) accosted him and laid down key elements of the “cover-up”, these key elements included a history of the break in and also criminal liabilities of top presidential aides like Haldeman and Alecman and also Dean himself. Nixon was told that 100’s of thousands of dollars had been paid to keep the Watergate burglars silent through the January trials, but he refuses knowledge of hush money being paid. 2 days before the trials, Hunt demanded 120,000 for continued silence. A total of 1 million US Dollars were paid as blackmail money. According to the Ex-President after the resignation of Haldeman and Alecman he worked to get the truth out but his critics think otherwise and believe that he continued his involvement in the cover up.“If the President does it, that means it’s not illegal” Richard Nixon spoke these insolent words during the interviews, Historians - critics like Fred Emery, Stanley Kutler, James Preston and others - have widely criticized him for his choice of words. The Ex-President argued that in the area of criminal activity the President is immune; that he can use the government resources for personal benefit. James Preston, the chief researcher for David Frost revealed in his book that according to the President he could bend government agencies for his political purposes, to such an extent that he could risk National Security. To add to the conviction of historians regarding Nixon’s complicity, when Frost questioned him about his statement he said that when these actions were exposed, as President he could call them mistakes.
When the topic of impeachment came up during the interview, Nixon spoke in his defense averring that technically he did not commit a crime or a culpable offense. When he was asked what happened with the tapes, his reply was “I did not destroy the tapes because I did not believe there was a reason to destroy it, if I had destroyed them then it would later on have been seen as an open confession.”
The method in which he made the above claims shows that Nixon was smart in not answering most questions with references to the scandal. Psychologists who have analyzed the interviews believe that his unease while answering many questions pertaining to his knowledge of and involvement in the scandal, shows that there is a possibility that he had something to hide. Many people who watched this interview would believe that Nixon was a bad President for the country. However, John Herbers, a reporter for the New York Times, believes that Nixon was a man who more than anything, was propelled by his hatred and fears, and this led him to abuse his power and resort to cover up and lies.
The Neutral Viewpoint On Watergate:
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward two reporters from the washington post were specifically assigned for the duration of the investigation.Their specific goal was to arrive at the truth. It was due to their detailed and spot on research that they have become as famous as the scandal itself. They have been highly criticized throughout their entire career but they have never had a bias. Their methodology was ideal because their research was based on facts, their news reporting implicated many officials in the Nixon administration like Hugh Sloan , his book keeper, Bob Haldeman and so on.
The night the burglary was reported Bob Woodward was put on the story immediately by the editor seeing a potential front page story. Carl Bernstein joined the story a little while later when he tried to help Woodward “polish” his work. Throughout their investigation Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had a lot of difficulty compiling their story and were criticized for their vague or even “false sources”, every time they spoke to someone who had knowledge about the various issues which came up during the period July 1972 to August 1974.
From Woodward’s notes we learn that the police sources declared that the men came from Miami and wore surgical gloves and carried thousands of dollars in sequential hundred dollar bills. This burglary seemed too good to be a “third rate burglary”, which the White House had called the Break-in at the time. Initially they did face a lot of pressure because Woodward’s only source “Deep Throat“, who later turned out to be a high FBI official involved in the investigation, could not be cited. Woodward had a very intricate method to contact Deep Throat, so that no one could have followed him. Such was the danger the reporters undertook to get a true and unbiased story for them to tell the people of the United States of America about.
Many people like Hugh Sloan and a bookkeeper were scared to even talk to the reporters because the Presidential administrators who were involved had managed to reach them before the reporters could, and had managed to threaten them. A few weeks into the reporting of the burglary the two reporters managed to tie Ex CIA officer E. Howard Hunt and former FBI agent Gordon Liddy to both the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP) and also the burglary. Both of these men guided the five burglars by walkie-talkies from a room in a hotel opposite to the Watergate Complex. The investigators did manage to tie Howard Hunt and James McCord to the being on the payroll of the CREEP but nowhere in their books was Hunt mentioned or listed as an actual member, they found out that he was working for Colson in the White House and was investigating Ted Kennedy.
Nixon being the president of the United States Of America could have controlled the media and its reporting but he didn’t, this can be inferred from the fact that both the new York times and also the Washington Post were reporting whatever they found out through their own research of the loose ends which were being left around by the CREEP.
This viewpoint on Nixon hasn't been challenged by anybody except the Nixon administration itself. Reason being that Bernstein and Woodward’s reporting was completely based on the field work they did. They used reliable sources from high ranked officials like Marc Felt(Deep Throat), who weren't cited due to their positions in the administration. Their research and reporting is still used to this day due to its accuracy as a basis to analyze the scandal. During their investigation, they realized that most of the break-in and cover-up was planned by the committee to re elect the President. The President might have been informed of details of the break-in, beyond that he did not know every detail. This as Stanley Kutler mentioned was because Nixon emboldened his men to know everything that was there to be known irrespective of the methods used to attain this information.
The media reporters, not only from The Post but all the other newspapers, continued their search for the truth. They followed definite patterns like the trail of money that the CREEP had accumulated. Using these patterns they managed to tie the loose ends left by the members. In the end while the entire scandal was blown out of proportion, they did conclude that Nixon could not be blamed entirely for the scandal, which led to his pardon by Gerald Ford(The 38th President Of America).
Anti-Nixon Point Of View:
Stanley Kutler and Fred Emery are two leading historians on the anti Nixon viewpoint. They believe that the Watergate scandal was not the only time that the Nixon administration resorted to cover up, deceit and perjury.
According to Stanley Kutler, there were many “White House Horrors“ which led to the scandal. It all started when Daniel Ellsberg a “disillusioned” National Security intellectual leaked a 7000 page classified document known as the “Pentagon Papers” to the press, The reason the White House administration reacted so violently to the leak was that this study elucidated the fact that what the public knew about the Vietnam War was nothing compared to what was actually going on. On this note while doing damage control, President Nixon insisted that however much he wanted to start an “Era Of Negotiations”, this would not be possible without secrecy. The President was a person who, as many reporters/ historians have noted was driven by hatred. His hatred for the democrats began with his loss in the election to the Kennedy’s in 1960, due to the vote fraud in Texas and Illinois.
Information and Money were two indispensable political commodities, which were pinpointed by Nixon in 1968. Even before his inauguration as the President of the United States of America he had instructed Haldeman that in his first year he wanted a huge buildup of funds. He wanted these funds to take care of the party’s deficit. Nixon stashed away a humongous surplus of cash from his 1968 campaign, which was later on used for Watergate, and all the other transgressions linked to its initial cover up. Nixon’s men ran up huge amounts of money by method close to extortion from people who failed to contribute during the first election.
The first Break-in was carried out on the Memorial Day weekend while Nixon was in Moscow. After a long and frustrating weekend of repeated failed attempts to break into the DNC, the burglars managed to break in. On Sunday, While inside one member was caught but he was asked to leave the premises the rest continued their bugging and photographing of phones and documents. They left without detection and a few days later they were planning to re enter to probably adjust the bugs that they had planted. During the FBI’s investigation they found that two men were in fact employees of the Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect (CREP) and the other six were on the payroll of the committee, which means they were paid by the committee’s funds.
Using the above view point, it should be concluded that even the historians who believe that Nixon should be completely blamed for the scandal, believe that this wasn't the greatest atrocity committed by the Nixon administration, but the administration was sloppy in its covering up and gave the people who were against Nixon a chance to blow the entire scandal out of proportion.
Conclusion:
A Resignation, Not a Confession23. Many people believed that Nixon’s resignation was an indirect confession to his involvement in the scandal, but John Herbers a news reporter who wrote an article about Nixon’s life thinks otherwise. For Nixon politics was a game, a game in which he had to win no matter the cost. Then, for which politician is politics not a game? Gaining political accreditation was a game; once Nixon started he couldn't stop even when he reached the top. The Watergate Scandal was an example of this because he infused this “win under all circumstances” attitude into all the people in his administration.
Being the President he could have controlled the flow of information to the media, but he didn’t, this establishes that he had nothing to conceal. His motive for involvement was to protect his administration, which consisted of his close friends. The question thus arises how can the President put his personal life before his Nation?
As stated Nixon’s involvement cannot be entirely proved due to the inconsistencies in the evidence, but from evaluation and the analysis of all the sources it has been concluded that Nixon was involved in the Watergate scandal only after the second break-in. He can be held responsible and blamed for not having a holistic judgment of the issue and failing to bring those involved to justice, but the occurrence of the break-in, bugging and perjury is all to be blamed on the people in his committee to re elect and other officials. What did the president know and when? These are the questions commonly asked. If it could have been proven that Nixon was a victim of over-enthusiastic supporters, then Nixon’s presidency could have survived. When Nixon learned of the break-in is a very fundamental part of understanding the role he played in the subsequent cover-up. Till that point is determined one cannot make out the exact extent of his involvement.
On the basis of the close study of the evidence found so far, President Nixon’s biggest shortcoming as President was his dishonesty to the American public during the investigation of the burglary.
Bibliography:
Books:
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Emery, Fred. Watergate: The Corruption Of American Politics and the Fall Of Richard Nixon. New York: Simon & Schuster 1994.
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Kutler, Stanley I. Abuse Of Power: The New Nixon Tapes. New York: Simon & Schuster 1998.
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Frost, David & Zelnick Bob. Frost/Nixon: Behind The Scenes Of The Nixon Interviews.New York: Harper Collins 2007.
Movies:
Journals:
The Nixon Interviews, Part 1, May 4 1977
All The Presidents Men, Warner Brothers, 1976
Sir David Frost, the first interviewer of Nixon after his resignation.
The Nixon Interviews, Part 1, May 4 1977
The Nixon Interviews, Part 1, May 4 1977
The Nixon Interviews, Part 1, May 4 1977
The Nixon Interviews, Part 1, May 4 1977
The Nixon Interviews, Part 1, May 4 1977
The Nixon Interviews, Part 1, May 4 1977
Jr. Preston James, The Conviction Of Richard Nixon
The Nixon Interviews, Part 1, May 4 1977
Herbers John. The 37th President; In Three Decades, Nixon tastes Crisis and Defeat, Victory. Ruin and Revival. New York Times. April 24 1994
Bernstein Carl & Woodward Bob.All The Presidents Men,
The Nixon Interviews, Part 1, May 4 1977
All The Presidents Men. Warner Brothers 1976
Kutler, Stanley I. Abuse Of Power: The New Nixon Tapes. New York: Simon & Schuster 1998. Pg. 1
Kutler, Stanley I. Abuse Of Power: The New Nixon Tapes. New York: Simon & Schuster 1998. Pg 17
Emery, Fred. Watergate: The Corruption Of American Politics and the Fall Of Richard Nixon. New York: Simon & Schuster 1994. Pg. 6
by
sc_rahulgrah (student)
