Roger Stone
It all goes back to Watergate: those days that echo in the memory of Roger Stone, Donald Trump’s friend. Somewhere, deep down inside, Roger Stone wants to prove that Nixon was right and everyone else was wrong. Nixon is Stone’s hero; the tattoo of Nixon’s face on his back proves the point.
Congress began its investigation into the Watergate crisis and the White House in February of 1973. That was seven months after the actual break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex. The President himself wasn’t the “target” of the investigation. In the beginning, no one knew how far the scandal went into the White House.
The Committee held closed investigative depositions at the beginning. It was only after three and a half months that they began public hearings. Those went on for another almost four more months.
In the middle of those public hearings, the President’s two closest aides, Bob Halderman and John Ehrlichman resigned. So did the Attorney General. Nixon appointed a new Attorney General, Eliot Richardson, who immediately appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Watergate.
Alexander Butterfield
The Senate hearings were on TV throughout the summer of 1973. It became a daily ritual for me (I was sixteen) that summer, watching intently as the networks rotated gavel-to-gavel coverage. July 16th, 1973 was just another day, another White House guy that no one knew about testifying. But what Alexander Butterfield said changed the entire investigation. He revealed in public testimony that the White House had a taping system. The President recorded all conversations in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room, and his private office.
Howard Baker was a Republican Senator from Tennessee. Baker naturally supported the President, but he kept an open mind in the hearings. His question, “what did the President know, and when did he know it,” became the purpose for the entire investigation. And, after Butterfield, the way to find out the answer to that question was obvious: let’s hear the tapes.
Special Counsel Archibald Cox subpoenaed the White House for the tapes, but they refused to release them. He persisted in Court, and was fired by Nixon in the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre”. Outrage over the firing (it included Richardson and the Deputy Attorney General as well) led to the appointment of another Special Prosecutor, who continued the relentless efforts to get the tapes.
The legal battles went on all winter. The Senate Committee concluded their investigation, and the House Judiciary Committee took up impeachment proceedings against the President’s obstruction based on the “Saturday Night Massacre”. The White House claimed “executive privilege” over the tapes, arguing that no President could do his job if every conversation he had could become public. The Special Prosecutor argued that “privilege” couldn’t shield the President’s possible criminal actions.
Nixon’s Voice
In April of 1974 that the White House tried to defuse the case by releasing “transcripts” of the tapes, edited, supposedly, to protect “national security”. The transcripts left open the question about the role of the President in the scandal, but they did add a new term to the American political lexicon, “expletive deleted”. If nothing else, we found out the Richard Nixon was a “potty mouth” in almost all of his private conversations.
The “redacted” transcripts weren’t enough, particularly one important conversation that had an eighteen minute “gap”. The Special Prosecutor continued to pursue the actual tapes in Court. It wasn’t until July of 1974 in the United States v Nixon that the Supreme Court ruled (8-0) that the tapes had to be released to the Special Prosecutor. When the full versions of the tapes were heard, the Judiciary Committee found that the President knew and helped orchestrate the Watergate cover-up from the very beginning. Nixon finally resigned in the face of sure impeachment and removal from office.
Edited Transcripts
In historic “echoes” of Watergate, Donald Trump released a “redacted” transcript of his conversation with Ukrainian President Zelensky. Even with redactions, the summary shows the President pressured Zelensky to investigate both Joe Biden, and the alt-right conspiracy theory called “CrowdStrike.” While the White House summary does not clearly show a deal, US aid money for Ukrainian investigations: the testimony of many of those involved demonstrates that there was a “quid pro quo.”
This week, in “closed” testimony, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who listened in to the President’s original phone conversation, noted that the “redactions” were hiding damning statements by the President. In addition to all of the other evidence the Intelligence Committee has heard, it’s clear that the full transcript of this conversation, and potentially transcripts of the President’s discussions with President Xi of China, would reveal more.
Burn the Tapes
Roger Stone believes that Nixon should have had a bonfire on the White House lawn, and burned all of the tapes. His view is, while there would have been outrage, the fire would have destroyed the “smoking gun” that led to Nixon’s removal. He might be right; Nixon could have claimed he was defending “executive privilege”. With the tapes gone, Stone thinks, there would be little the Courts could do.
The full transcripts of Trump’s phone calls are on a high security server in the White House. White House legal counsel and National Security staff saved them there, instead of a less secure site, to fully protect their content from going public. Perhaps they’ll consider burning that server in the Rose Garden. They can invite the “Freedom Caucus” over to roast marshmallows.
The Judiciary Committee in 1974 waited for the tapes to be released. The full import of Nixon’s own words were what led to his impeachment. It was those actual words that convinced the Senate, and the American people, that he should be removed. Today’s House of Representatives doesn’t feel like there’s much time left to resolve impeachment. But it’s still the words of this President that will prove to be his own undoing, edited or not.
