Over the last few weeks, seasoned White House observers perhaps have found excuse to dredge up memories of forty-odd years ago.
On June 18, 1972, the Washington Post newspaper ran a front page story of a burglary at the Democratic National Committee’s office on the sixth floor of the Watergate Office Building, in the Watergate complex in Washington, DC. During his nightly rounds a security guard discovered padlocks on several doors from the underground parking leading to the offices were tampered with and alerted the police, who subsequently arrested five men while they were attempting to photograph documents and place bugging devices. The White House dismissed the story as a “third rate burglary.”
Most of the US media paid little attention to the incident with the exception of two reporters from the Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who continued to pursue it, publishing front page stories which exposed links with President Richard Nixon’s campaign organisation, the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CRP). Although there was mounting evidence, they were unable to link the burglars to the CRP, until their October 10, 1972, story in which they revealed details that the break-in was financed by the CRP, on the instructions of Nixon’s closest aides and was part of a plan to sabotage the president’s political opponents.
On Tuesday, November 7, 1972, President Richard Nixon was re-elected in a landslide victory, defeating George McGovern by 520 to 17 electoral votes. It was generally felt that the story would die a natural death, but Woodward and Bernstein, along with other media houses continued to pursue the investigation. In February, 1973 the US Senate voted 77-0 to establish the Senate Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, known since as the Senate Watergate Committee, based upon the mounting evidence. Time magazine’s cover of April 30, 1973, proclaimed ‘Watergate breaks wide open.’ On the same day Nixon announced the resignations of HR Haldeman, the White House Chief of Staff and John Ehrlichman, his Domestic Affairs advisor, and the firing of his personal counsel, John Dean III. The dominoes were beginning to fall.
The hearings began on May 17, 1973 and 85% of American households watched some part of the 319 hours of broadcast of the political crisis. John Dean III, a third generation lawyer, took his father’s advice, “When you are backed into a corner, tell the truth,” during his testimony before the committee on the 25-29 June. He was the first administration official to accuse Nixon of knowledge of the Watergate scandal and involvement in the subsequent cover-up, which Nixon, of course, vehemently denied. He suspected that the president had been taping conversations and hinted as such to the prosecutors.
On July 13, 1973, Alexander Butterfield, Deputy Assistant to the President from 1969 to 1973, transformed the hearings when he confirmed in a background interview the existence of a taping system, detailing its installation and how it operated, saying, “everything was taped…as long as the President was in attendance.” His public testimony on Monday, July 16 effectively “triggered a constitutional crisis,” noted the historian William Doyle. The taping system was removed within hours, but it was too late; the reel to reel tapes were subpoenaed, and later confirmed Nixon’s knowledge of Watergate.
In the face of almost certain impeachment, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, and was pardoned soon after by his replacement Gerald Ford. The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting, and the reporters would go on to write two bestsellers, All the President’s Men and The Final Days. The former was made into a successful film, with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman portraying Woodward and Bernstein, respectively. John Dean III cooperated with investigators, and got a reduced sentence. He has authored several books including, Blind Ambition and Broken Government: How the Republicans destroyed The Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches.
Fast-forward to the present day: US intelligence suspects that the Democratic National Committee was the target of Russian hacking as far back as May 2016, and the stolen emails were leaked in July on the eve of the Democratic National Convention. Mr Trump’s campaign publicly refused to accept the findings of the US intelligence services, and Russia unsurprisingly, has denied the allegation. Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort resigned around the same time as the DNC scandal, after an FBI investigation, following accusations about his contacts with the Ukrainians and Russians.
Russia, it is felt in some quarters, wanted Trump to win the election, because he would take a more accommodating line than Hillary Clinton judging from when she had been Secretary of State under Barack Obama.
There have since been allegations, totally unproven, and which have been strongly denied by both President Trump and President Vladimir Putin, that the Russians have compromising information on Trump dating from a brief time he spent in Russia.
The Obama administration expelled 35 Russians diplomats and announced new sanctions against Russia in December 2016, following the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security report which linked Russia to the hacking. Russia denied the allegations. When Putin failed to retaliate in kind, as is the norm in such circumstances, Mr Trump tweeted, “I always knew he was smart.”
Jeff Sessions, President Trump’s newly appointed Attorney General has come under pressure recently for now admitting to meeting the Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during the campaign, a fact he failed to mention at his senate hearings, prior to his confirmation. This is the same Mr Kislyak whom President Trump’s first national security advisor Michael Flynn initially denied having phone contact with. Flynn resigned last month, while Trump denied having any knowledge of Flynn’s contact with the Russians.
Last weekend the US President resorted to his standard defence, attack when backed into a corner. He tweeted that his predecessor had tapped his phones. Former president Obama denied the allegation.
This weekend President Trump will probably head off to his Mar-a-Lago resort to hit a few golf balls, his new ‘favourite’ newspaper, the New York Times will release some new allegation, and he will tweet that the reports are fake news issued by the enemy of the American people, the media.
As things stand, the Intelligence Committees of both Houses of Congress were set to investigate Russian actions during the US election campaign. Exactly where that will lead, and whether indeed it will have shades of Watergate at any level at all, remains to be seen.
