You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [91]
In July 1974, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to supply all relevant material, including documents and the portions of tapes still missing. When he refused, the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Nixon on the grounds of obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and refusal to obey a congressional subpoena. When Nixon finally released the missing material in August 1974, it proved that he had authorized the cover-up of illegal activities committed by CREEP as early as June 23, 1972.
Once that evidence was heard, the end could not be far away. And in fact the Watergate scandal ended officially on August 9, 1974, when Nixon became the first president to resign from office.
It would be wrong to assume, however, that his resignation was at any time a foregone conclusion. It is entirely possible, had CREEP committed these acts and not involved Nixon in the aftermath, that the illegalities would have indeed fallen under the heading of “politics as usual.” It should not be assumed that politics before this moment had been innocent of such maneuvers, and the phrase “plausible deniability” was created for just such instances. Two actions, however, took the scandal from dirty pool to nation-rocking scandal:
1. Nixon’s firm belief that people were out to “get him” both personally and politically, which created an environment in which CREEP seemed like a good idea.
2. The fact that Nixon not only made tapes of his conversations but held on to them even when their destruction would have left the federal investigation without a smoking gun to prove his involvement.
Had Nixon refused to sign off on the cover-up in 1972, or if he had been willing to destroy the tapes, he might have escaped the eventual results. However, he seemed convinced that he would, in the end, be vindicated and his enemies cast down. In light of that, once CREEP’s actions were set in motion, the decision to cover up those actions was perhaps inevitable. Ironically enough, it seems that the paranoia that defined him was also what sealed his fate.
You Taped It All?
Rarely is there a case where it is as clearly demonstrated as this one where ego interfered with good sense.
WATERGATE REDUX
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1974
Brian M. Thomsen
There is a sage old bit of legal advice: “Just answer the question directly and succinctly. No more, no less. Don’t give the prosecution any reason to say that you are not cooperating, nor tell them any information that they don’t already know.”
Unfortunately no one seemed to have shared these words of wisdom with former Nixon White House senior aide Alexander Butterfield, whose major task in the administration was to ensure that the president’s day ran smoothly.
The Senate select committee investigating the Watergate matter was looking to corroborate some of the testimony given by John Dean, who had mentioned that he might have been taped during some of his conversations with the president. This made perfect sense given the security consciousness of presidential staff members Haldeman and Ehrlichman, and the notion of recording conversations was easily ascribed to some of the cloak-and-dagger plots that were being alleged about the White House.
The matter of inquiry was simple — were the conversations taped?
The answer was equally simple — yes.
The inquisitors, however, never realized that there was more to the answer…and it was provided to them on a silver platter.
On July 16, 1973, before the Ervin Committee, Alexander Butterfield acknowledged that indeed there was a taping system in the Oval Office (ergo Dean could have been right and might have been taped).
The question was answered.
The allegation was corroborated.
But Butterfield didn’t stop there.
“Everything was taped,” he added with no prodding, “as long as the President was in attendance. There was not so much as a hint that something should not be taped.”
All the