Stone’s Dream

Stone’s Dream

Roger Stone was twenty-one when he was called in front of the Watergate prosecutors in 1973. He had been a “dirty trickster” in the Richard Nixon re-election campaign for the past two years. Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President (ironically known as CREEP) had a secretly funded wing, led by lawyer Donald Segretti, to sabotage opposition campaigns.

Nasty letters, cancelled rallies, misdirected motorcades: dirty tricks to disrupt and distract. And sometimes, more serious attacks: the “Canuck Letter” written by the Nixon team took out the strongest Democrat, Maine Senator Ed Muskie. Nixon ended up running against a far weaker Senator George McGovern from South Dakota. It was one of the largest electoral landslides.

Stone, the youngest to testify in Watergate, to this day believes that the Nixon campaign didn’t do anything wrong. He has lived his life by the model of those Nixon tricksters, on the fringe of New York Republican politics, priding himself in his scams and false dealings. He became a protégé of Roy Cohn, the infamous lawyer from the McCarthy hearings of the 1950’s.

Stone has Richard Nixon’s face tattooed on his back. He’ll take his shirt off and show you. His dream is to re-write history.

Cohn introduced Stone to another client, Donald Trump.

Stone has been the informal political advisor to Trump for the past two decades. He claims that the Presidential run was his idea, and was an early member of the Trump campaign. He left the campaign early as well, but continued to work for Trump “from the outside.” In Roger Stone’s case, that’s probably on or over the edge of legality. Stone clearly was in contact with Julian Assange of Wikileaks about the leaked Democratic emails during the summer and fall of 2016.

The Watergate break-ins, the proximate cause of the Watergate scandal, took place in June of 1972. It was a petty bugging operation of the Democratic National Headquarters, and while the break-in itself was “small time,” it led to two major issues that brought down the Nixon Presidency. The first was the illegal use of campaign money, millions of dollars in cash in a closet, to fund the illegal operations. Those operations weren’t just campaign related, as Nixon also used his “Plumbers” to break into the offices of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist trying to find incriminating information on him (Ellsberg was the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers recently highlighted in the film “The Post”.)

The second issue became the case against the President himself. He directly participated in a major effort to obstruct justice by covering up the campaign and White House staff’s involvement in illegal activities. He tried to use the FBI and CIA to block investigations, he bribed people, and did everything he could to discredit the forces against him.

And, if Roger Stone is in part orchestrating the Trump response to Russiagate, he is following the Nixon playbook. Watergate failed to reach the level of court or Congressional investigation until the summer of 1973. Until then, the “crisis” was sustained by the press, notably Woodward and Bernstein of the Washington Post, but, then as now, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were involved, as well as other papers. CBS news, and particularly Daniel Schorr, were also part of continuing the story.

Nixon did his best to attack and discredit the press, using both his press secretary Ron Ziegler, and other administration officials. Vice President Spiro Agnew described the press this way:

“A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.”

Stone has Trump on the same game plan, but this time with a powerful tool to bypass the media. Twitter has allowed Trump to speak unfiltered to the masses. The reporters aren’t “effete snobs,” they are now just all “fake news.” It’s actually been an effective strategy, especially with Fox News following the President’s lead. Ultimately though, like Watergate, the investigation has moved to the professionals. In Watergate it was Archibald Cox and his team, today it’s Robert Mueller.

Nixon fired Archibald Cox in the famous Saturday Night Massacre of October 1973. Stone believes that Nixon should have followed up the firing with a bonfire, burning the incriminating audio tapes on the White House lawn in order to “preserve executive privilege” over the information. Instead Congress appointed a new prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, who continued the Court process to force the release of those tapes. When, in July of 1974 Nixon was forced to turn them over (Nixon v United States, US Supreme Court) the evidence clearly showed Nixon’s guilt and he was doomed.

Stone won’t let Trump make the same mistake. When the “hammer drops” on Mueller, Stone will make sure the investigation doesn’t continue. That means (or meant) Andrew McCabe out at FBI, and Chris Wray on notice that the Russia investigation is a career ender. It means Devin Nunes’ efforts to discredit any evidence showing Trump conspiracy with the Russians will actually have an impact; as cover for the “good” Republicans to use when they refuse to appoint another Special Counsel. Stone’s goal: no Leon Jaworski and no Supreme Court this time.

Stone is quietly communicating with the “Trump stalwarts” in the Congress, most notably Congressman Matt Goetz from Florida. As Trump loses more and more of his inner advisors, Stone remains at the other end of the phone late at night, helping the President maintain office.

Stone’s dream: this time they’ll get it right, and show the world how “hard ball” is played. This time, Nixon (whoops – Trump) won’t be forced from office. This time, and for all time, the men who dedicated themselves to Nixon/Trump will prevail.