People who weren’t around during the Watergate days may look with dismay on former Nixon administration officials refighting Watergate with such bitterness but that’s because you had to be around then to realize how it permeated the then-primative news cycle — and life in the United States — in the early 70s.
People can usually remember exactly where they were when they heard the news about JFK’s assassination (had just finished my speech in an unsuccessful bid for a student council post at Amity Jr. High in Woodbridge, Ct), when the space shuttle exploded (sitting in the newsroom of the San Diego Union working on a local story), or they learned of 911 (in my condo here in San Diego where one of the kids who lived here had what he later said was an uncontrollably, strong strong urge to be there in front of the television that uncharacteristically early in the morning because he felt something big was going to happen).
Watergate, Richard Nixon’s resignation speech, Deep Throat — all are intimately intertwined with a key period in my life: when I went from being a college grad to a graduate student to a freelance journalist based in New Delhi, India.
When the Watergate break-in occurred on June 17, 1972 was just starting my orientation as a grad student at Medill’s School of Journalism in Evanston. It was a small story then, but it grew. In the fall one of my teachers was writer John Bartlow Martin, Adlai Stevenson’s definitive biographer. Martin would fly back to Washington each week to work on the Democratic campaign of Senator George McGovern. Martin didn’t talk politics at all in class and when he talked in private to students he wouldn’t dwell on it. Actually, to get him to open up on it was like pulling teeth. But the guy was a legendary writer and a class act. He had nothing to prove to anyone.
Indeed, the students’ joke was that Martin had his lecture notes taped to his shoes, since he’d often stand and look down as he lectured. I was a conservative to moderate Democrat (NOT a McGovern fan) in those days and one day asked him about the Nixon administration in private.
And that day he answered. He seemed truly frustrated and fearful. He said he wondered if it would ever come out what was going on with the Nixon administration. He said people were convinced the White House was directly involved in the Watergate break in. This was NOT when the story was a huge deal yet. Then the quiet spoken writer softly said something that was chilling: “We’ve heard there have been people going through Larry O’Brien’s (DNC chair) tax returns. This is a scary bunch. I’ve never seen anything like it. They’re thugs.”
Fast forward to New Delhi, India, after graduation. I started writing for the Chicago Daily News as its New Delhi stringer, and also wrote for a slew of other newspapers, sending in features and op-ed pieces which I self-syndicated all over the world. On Oct. 20, 1973 while watching TV at an Indian family’s house I learned that Richard Nixon ordered the dismissal of special prosecutor Archibald Cox and forced the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus.
Nixon had trouble getting someone to do this since to many this suggested a constitutional crisis — bluntly, a President firing people whose investigations could cost him his political butt.
So he finally got Solicitor General Robert Bork to follow his orders and do it.
This was was HUGE NEWS on my news-junkie lifelines, BBC radio, the International Herald Tribune…but also on newspapers all over the world. It was as if the United States had just experienced a coup.
Why? As much as Ben Stein, Chuck Colson, Pat Buchanan and other former Nixon officials and associates try to skip over it, as much as the most extreme GOP partisans now try to avoid it, Watergate was seen by then not only in the United States but throughout the world as a threat to American democracy. It didn’t matter if the newspaper came from London, Moscow, Rome, Winnipeg, Mexico City, Madrid, or Calcutta.
The President was NOT supposed to be ABOVE the law in America’s system and neither were the people in his administration. Why? Because in the United States and around the world it was a “given” that American law had enduring mechanisms to make sure that didn’t happen — mechanisms that couldn’t be suspended just because a certain person or party was in power. And here was Nixon firing people for reasons explained with nice spin but for which everyone knew boiled down to just this:
They were getting too damned close to the truth.
I and many other Americans in New Delhi (especially diplomats) were extremely upset. I wired all of my elected representatives (this was pre-blog, pre-email days) to let them know of my protest, concern, and insistence that they do whatever they had to do to ensure that there would be a full investigation of the entire affair, no matter where the chips fell. I was so upset and worried and went to visit George Vergehese, then- editor of the Hindustan Times, where I had interned earlier as part of a senior ar independent study project.
I went on and on, expressing my concern, my fears, and my anger (and I was a conservative Democrat).
Vergehese just looked at me and said softly: “America is a strong country. Let’s just see how this plays out.”
Watergate dominated the headlines in those days. It was pre-cable, pre-CNN and it was all over the newscasts. Next came White House aide John Dean’s testimony to Congress. Most Democrats and independents wanted Nixon out. Many Republicans were beginning to suggest Nixon had to be give better answers but weren’t using the “r” word yet. Many Republicans still stuck by Nixon, arguing there still was not confirmation of the charges against him, even with Dean’s testimony. The phrase was heard over and over “There is no smoking gun.”
Then came the revelation of the White House taping system. Nixon balking at turning over the tapes. His night time speeches releasing some transcripts. The 18 minute gap. By the time he had his “I am not a crook” affirmation his image was shot. Watergate was the gut-wrenching story that seemed to be doing to Richard Nixon’s achievements (such as the opening to China) what Vietnam had done to LBJ’s achievements (such as his arm-twisting to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act).
Then came the smoking gun tape.
The feeling by then was that you had an administration entrenched in power that felt it was totally above the law and felt it could do whatever it wanted since it controlled most of the levers of law — controlled THE PEOPLE who pulled the levers to set the law in motion.
But it didn’t control Congress.
And it didn’t control people like Senator Barry Goldwater and other patriotic REPUBLICANS (remember that when you listen to Colson and Buchanan) who marched into Nixon’s office and encouraged him to leave office before the case went to Congress and he’d be voted out.
Fast forward August 5, 1974. I was in the hospital for surgery for a pilonidal cyst on my buttocks. (This is the same aliment that Rush Limbaugh reportedly said kept him out of the military). I had gone into surgery, been in intensive care, then was wheeled back out to my hospital bedroom.
I was sleeping when the nurse began to shake me.
“Come on…Come on…Wake up! You can’t miss this!! You’ve got to see it. Look at the TV, Nixon is resigning!”
Groggy-eyed, with the nurse beside me, I watched the speech.
Nixon finished his speech.
Then the nurse turned to me and said:
“See? Two assholes gone in one day…”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.