Watergate Reconsidered

  

Watergate Reconsidered

Peter Schultz

 

                  From Jim Hougan’s contemplation of the Watergate scandal, he concluded that “The case was to be treated as a moral fable: an open-and-shut case of political espionage carried out by the bad guys in the White House against the good guys in the Democratic party.” [206] Or, in a slightly different version, Watergate was considered a case of political espionage that threatened the democratic processes of the U.S., with the bad guys seeking to undermine democracy by undermining the integrity of the upcoming 1972 elections.

 

                  Now, in treating Watergate as a moral fable, other possibilities involving political espionage disappeared. These other possibilities, e.g., that “the break in had been sabotaged,” were treated as “almost subversive.” [205-206] Treating the possibility of sabotage as subversive meant questions as to the saboteurs and their agenda were not raised. Accepting that political espionage is dangerous because it is used to undermine the integrity of democratic processes like elections, it is dangerous not to consider it in all of its forms, not just in its partisan form. Suppose, e.g., that the military were to engage in political espionage, leading toward fears of a “Seven Days in May” scenario. Or suppose that the CIA were to engage in political espionage, not for partisan purposes but in order to control American politics and point it in the direction of “regime changes” in other nations or in the direction of other covert actions, e.g., assassinations.

 

                  So, by treating Watergate as a partisan moral fable, and one in which the allegedly good guys won, the moral fable obscured what was actually going on. And that what was going on was not good guys versus bad guys but a power struggle or power struggles among competing institutions such as the executive, the presidency, the legislative, the judiciary, the mainstream media, “intelligence” agencies, and the military. The partisan moral fable tells us nothing about these struggles or about their resolutions. And that means we are blind to the significance of the Watergate scandal and its resolution for our political order. That Nixon was forced to resign tells us nothing about the scandal’s effect on the presidency and on presidential politics in relation to other powerful governmental institutions like the CIA or the military.

 

                  And it seems fairly clear that the military emerged from the scandal fortified, while the presidency was weakened. General Alexander Haig assumed significant, perhaps even dominant power in the White House, so much so that a plausible case was made about Haig’s Coup. And although the CIA’s fingerprints and personnel were all over the burglaries, and although Dick Helms was tried and convicted of perjury, those fingerprints and the personnel involved pretty much disappeared from the conventional, commonly accepted accounts of Watergate. This despite the fact that James McCord, a CIA operative, perhaps retired, played a huge role in making it possible for Judge Sirica to expose the connections between the burglaries and the White House. Moreover, people with CIA connections were involved in installing and then revealing the taping system Nixon had installed in the White House. Even when, post-scandal, the CIA was investigated and “the family jewels” revealed, the CIA was not considered a subversive agency, while Nixon, et. al., were. The CIA was flawed but not subversive, whereas Nixon, et. al., were flawed and subversive.

 

                  Making the scandal “a morality play … [n]ecesarily … entailed a simple story with the President at its center. Close scrutiny of the burglars (and of the burglaries themselves) was … avoided because such scrutiny raised questions about their loyalty to President Nixon.” Also avoided was any concern with the power conflicts among different governmental institutions, such as the military, the “intelligence community,” the judiciary, and the mainstream media, promoting political agendas at odds with the President’s agendas. And, so, Watergate became a simple and simplistic moral fable and remains so today.