Tag Archive for: Richard Nixon

OK, So Did the CIA Engineer Watergate to Get Rid of Nixon?

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Tucker Carlson made some explosive assertions Friday, suggesting that the CIA and the FBI brought down Richard Nixon because he was on to their efforts to undermine the American system as the Founding Fathers had intended it to run and knew that the CIA was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Carlson’s segment quickly became wildly controversial, but is it true? We may never know for sure — and that in itself demonstrates yet again the need to demand and enforce complete transparency and accountability from these agencies that all too easily can go rogue.

Carlson said: “Richard Nixon was re-elected in 1972 by the largest margin of the popular vote ever recorded before or since. Nixon got 17 million more votes than his opponent. Less than two years later, he was gone. He was forced to resign and in his place, an obedient servant of the federal agencies called Gerald Ford took over the White House.” Carlson went on to explain that Nixon believed that “elements in the federal bureaucracy were working to undermine the American system of government and had been doing that for a long time. He often said that.” He suggested that CIA and FBI operatives orchestrated both the Watergate break-in and the two-year-long firestorm that brought Nixon down.

According to Carlson, “on June 23, 1972, Nixon met with the then–CIA director, Richard Helms, at the White House. During the conversation, which thankfully was tape-recorded, Nixon suggested he knew ‘who shot John,’ meaning President John F. Kennedy. Nixon further implied that the CIA was directly involved in Kennedy’s assassination, which we now know it was. Helms’s telling response? Total silence, but for Nixon, it didn’t matter because it was already over. Four days before, on June 19, the Washington Post had published the first of many stories about a break-in at the Watergate office building.” This doesn’t add up to the CIA deciding to take out Nixon, since the break-in and the Post story both happened before the president’s conversation with Helms, unless Nixon had enunciated this before the break-in.

And he had. Tucker Carlson actually got the date wrong. The Nixon/Helms conversation didn’t take place on June 23, 1972, but on Oct. 8, 1971 (it’s further mislabeled on this audio file as taking place on Oct. 10, 1971, but the Nixon tape logs set the meeting on the 8th). Nixon said to Helms: “Uh, Who shot John [JFK]? Uh, is Eisenhower to blame? Is Johnson to blame? Is Kennedy to blame? Is Nixon to blame? Etcetera etcetera etcetera. [This] may become, may become, not by me, but may become a very, very, uh, vigorous issue. If it does, uh, I need to know what is necessary to protect our inquiries, the intelligence gathering and the Dirty Tricks Department. And I will protect it. Hey listen, I’ve done more than my share of lying to protect it. I will do it and I believe it’s totally right to do it.”

This is not all that clear or straightforward a statement, but it does give the impression, since Nixon was talking to the head of the CIA, that the “Dirty Tricks Department” was involved in the killing of Kennedy and might need protection if the full truth about the assassination came out. President Kennedy’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., affirmed in December, in response to an earlier Tucker Carlson broadcast, that “the CIA’s murder of my uncle was a successful coup d’état from which our democracy has never recovered.” Yet in the fifty years since Nixon’s conversation with Helms, the Kennedy assassination, while spawning a cottage industry of alternative explanations to the Warren Commission report, has never really become a “very, very vigorous issue,” at least to the extent that the CIA’s role, if any, has been revealed.

Could it ever be? If the CIA really was involved in killing Kennedy and forcing Nixon to resign (which would apparently require Helms to have brushed aside Nixon’s declarations that he would protect the “Dirty Tricks Department” and to have focused solely on Nixon’s revelation that he knew about that department at all) will the American people ever know that for sure?

On Dec. 22, 1963, exactly one month after the Kennedy assassination, former President Harry Truman wrote in the Washington Post that “for some time I have been disturbed by the way [the] CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.” He added, “We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.”

Yet it has never been corrected. The CIA and FBI are almost completely unaccountable to anyone and, it is increasingly obvious, deeply corrupt and politicized. Does anyone have the courage, or the ability, to face down these rogue agencies?

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Five Presidents Who Need to Be Impeached Now

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Now that Congressional Democrats have set the precedent that presidents who are no longer in office can be impeached, in flagrant disregard of the Constitutional provision that one of the consequences of impeachment and conviction is “removal from Office,” impeachment has become not only a weapon of partisan politics and naked vengeance, but a way to correct historical wrongs. What’s more, Trump is being tried for inciting a violent riot by telling demonstrators “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” If that will fly, the “high crimes” don’t have to be all that high in the coming trials of former presidents, but there are plenty to go around anyway. Here are the top five presidents who, for the sake of justice and the children, must be impeached now:

  1. Barack Obama

Yes, there was the tan suit, but that would only be impeachable if Trump wore one like it. In his predecessor’s case, the “high crimes” for which he ought to be impeached are the highest of all: treason. Obama paid $1.7 billion to a regime that requires its citizens to chant “Death to America.” That regime used the money to finance jihad terrorists who want to see America’s destruction and are actively working against American interests. Treason is defined as giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Is there any reason in light of that, other than the Democrats’ hegemony in Washington, that Obama should not be charged with treason?

  1. Bill Clinton

Slick Willie can and should join Trump in the double impeachment jeopardy club for getting us into the current mess with China. After the People’s Republic stole many U.S. military secrets due to lax Clinton-era security controls, Clinton gave the Chinese even more, including advanced missile technology, allegedly in return for campaign contributions. The Washington Post noted in an editorial that “in the first three quarters of 1998 nine times as many [supercomputers] were exported [to China] as during the previous seven years.”

Yet this was three years after the Chinese spying operation had been discovered, and with no indication that China would not continue to be generally hostile to American interests. That’s a much “higher crime” than telling people to protest peacefully. It was Clinton who paved the way for Beijing Joe and his henchmen.

  1. Jimmy Carter

The senescent, sanctimonious Southerner deserves his impeachment trial for many reasons, but the Department of Education alone is enough. Along with the Department of Energy that Jimmeh also established, it was another manifestation of the assumption, by now taken for granted by nearly everyone, that if the nation faced a problem, the best way to solve it was to unleash a new army of federal bureaucrats.

Neither department has any significant accomplishments to justify their existence. The Department of Education has been a massive failure, and is ultimately responsible for the miseducation of our youth over the last forty years, such that leftist indoctrination substitutes for education nearly everywhere. The federal bureaucrats who oversee the Department of Education have created national standards and curricula that are frequently tendentious and politicized, with a pronounced leftist bias. In our own day, this has taken the form of an almost manic attention to race and diversity, at the expense of giving children a basic education.

  1. Richard Nixon

Yes, he’s dead, but what does that matter anymore? Yes, he forestalled his own impeachment by resigning, but that doesn’t matter anymore either, does it? Nixon is the most likely candidate to be America’s Pope Formosus, the ninth-century pontiff whose body was dug up by his vengeful successor so that he could be tried in what has come down to us with the honorable name of the Cadaver Synod. Today’s Congressional Democrats, who are more vengeful than any group in American history, can top that with their Cadaver Impeachment Trial of Richard Milhous Nixon.

  1. Joe Biden

It’s a bit novel and unorthodox, as Old Joe is still nominally in office, but unorthodoxy is the order of the day. Biden deserves to be impeached because for the Democrats, impeachment is now no more or less than a tactic to discredit and destroy their opponents, no matter what the facts of the case are. And it’s all happening while Old Joe, and/or his handlers, are in charge. That means that he bears the ultimate responsibility for this present travesty. For the high crime of allowing the Constitution and the republic to become a sick joke, House Republicans should stage a quick trial and do their own impeachment walk to the Senate to deliver the articles of impeachment. What’s that? They don’t have a majority? Who cares?

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Elvis & Nixon: A Film about Elvis’s Quest to Become a Federal Agent by Lana Link

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The National Archives’ most requested photo features President Nixon standing beside one of the world’s most recognizable royals: the King of Rock n’ Roll. Is it genuine history, political commentary, a Photoshop spoof? Surreal but authentic, the black-and-white image shows President Nixon, wearing a full suit, shaking the hand of Elvis Presley, wearing … exactly what you’d expect.

If you’ve been to Graceland — or you watch Comedy Central’s Drunk History — you may know about the two figures’ bizarre encounter in 1970. Now, a lighthearted film titled Elvis & Nixon is exploring the story behind the meeting and the iconic photograph. The story centers around one unusual request: Elvis wants to become an undercover federal agent-at-large.

In the film, Presley (played by Michael Shannon) flies directly to the nation’s capital. Unannounced and without appointment, he drives to the White House’s North Gate at the crack of dawn. The secret service agents are stunned. Not only is Elvis standing in front of them at six in the morning, but he wants a meeting with Nixon (played by Kevin Spacey). Elvis has outlined everything in a six-page letter he wrote by hand on the plane.

As the letter makes its way through the White House, there’s understandable confusion among the staff. Is this a hoax? Do federal agents-at-large actually exist? If so, can Elvis become one?

Elvis snuck a gun into the Oval Office.

Elvis is able to meet President Nixon and state his case. The King of Rock n’ Roll explains that he wants the badge because he has deep concerns about America’s future. An army veteran himself, he worries about Vietnam War protests. He’s nervous about drug culture and lack of respect for the police. Elvis plans to use his celebrity to infiltrate communist youth groups and, with the help of a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, bust drug users.

At least, that’s what he tells Nixon in the film.

It’s difficult to tell what Elvis really thought. In one interview, Kevin Spacey remarked that Elvis “was far more conservative than a lot of people might have expected.” That’s especially true by today’s standards. Early in the film he tells an associate not to tell a grown man “how to spend his money.” Throughout the film, we hear Elvis’s anti-communist views in lines such as, “Elvis couldn’t exist in a communist America.”

Yet, Elvis and Me, Priscilla Presley’s memoir, describes a different motivation — one we might consider far more savvy about the nature of government power. Elvis had accumulated numerous law enforcement badges from local authorities over time, but those local badges paled in comparison to the “ultimate power” of a “narc badge.”

“With the federal narcotics badge,” she wrote, Elvis believed that he “could legally enter any country both wearing guns and carrying any drugs he wished.”

The viewer watches Elvis and Nixon connect on several issues. But as Elvis departs, he privately tells his friend that he had to insult the Beatles, “but they’ll never know.” What else did Elvis say in hopes he would secure the badge?

Elvis is portrayed as an intelligent and unpredictable renegade who is not afraid to break the rules and question authority. 

The film is so lighthearted and humorous, it is not only difficult to tell fact from fiction regarding both Elvis’s and Nixon’s perspectives; it’s hard to know what actually transpired in the Oval Office. At a Los Angeles screening, the film’s executive producer and personal friend of Elvis, Jerry Schilling, clarified that Elvis did not actually give Nixon a karate demonstration. But, he confirmed, itwas characteristic of Elvis’s personality, and Elvis had given karate demonstrations to other high-ranking officials, including the mayor of Memphis.

In any case, Elvis is portrayed as an intelligent and unpredictable renegade who is not afraid to break the rules and question authority. He travels without proper government identification. He sneaks a single firearm into the Oval Office — one the secret service missed after confiscating the many others on his person. And perhaps most rebelliously, he intentionally eats Nixon’s personal and off-limits stash of M&Ms. But in the end, Nixon still gives Elvis the badge, which you can see on display at Graceland today.

As Schilling describes the film, “It’s not ‘let’s make fun of Elvis and Nixon’; it’s ‘let’s have fun with Elvis and Nixon.’” This film isn’t perfect, but I certainly had fun watching it. Soon, you can, too, even if the film’s limited theatrical release hasn’t made it to your city. Elvis & Nixon is Amazon Studio’s first major film acquisition and should be available to stream on Amazon soon.

Lana LinkLana Link

Lana Link is a FEE alumni board member and the VP of marketing for the Moving Picture Institute, which promotes freedom through film by creating original entertainment content and supporting filmmakers at all stages of their careers.

Hillary Clinton: An Unfit Woman

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What are the odds that the American people, after being plagued for eight years by the most incompetent president and the most lawless attorney general in American history, will want to take a chance on another Democrat in the White House? If past history is a reliable measure, the chances are not good, even though the Democratic Party remains populated by the same low-information voters who twice elected Barack Obama. But would the people really understand what they’re getting in a Hillary presidency? What do independent voters need to know about Hilary that would cause them to reject her?

On January 21, 2009, Hillary was confirmed by the US Senate and sworn in as Secretary of State. Then, on March 6, 2009, just forty-four days after being sworn in, Clinton demonstrated that she is just as clueless and incompetent in foreign affairs as Barack Obama and the rest of his administration. On her first trip to Russia as Secretary of State, she attempted to engage in a bit of gimmickry, which often serves as real substance in the Obama administration.

As she met for the first time with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Hillary turned on the charm. Laughing (cackling), she said, “In anticipation of this important meeting and our time here together, I wanted to present you (with) a little gift which represents what President Obama and Vice President Biden and I have been saying. We want to reset our relationship.”

Lavrov opened the box and held it up for all to see. The box contained a large red button with the English word “reset” and the Russian word “peregruzka” emblazoned on it. Lavrov was understandably puzzled. The word “per-e-GRUZ’-ka” means “overcharged” in Russian. The correct word for “reset” in Russian is “per-e-ZA’-gruz-ka,” So while a little “za” among friends may not seem important, it was just one more piece of evidence that Hillary Clinton is no more competent at surrounding herself with people who can accurately translate a single English word into Russian, than she was in her ability to find staffers who could respond appropriately to an ambassador’s plea for added security at a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya.

Hillary Rodham graduated from Wellesley College in 1969 and later moved on to Yale Law School. There, while enrolled in a civil liberties class taught by Professor Thomas I. Emerson, nicknamed “Tommie the Commie” by his students, Hillary met Bill Clinton, of Hope, Arkansas. They began dating in the spring of 1971 and were married four years later, in October 1975.

As part of their course work in Emerson’s civil liberties class, students were assigned to monitor the trial of Black Panther leader Bobby Seale, who was charged in connection with the torture and murder of a former Black Panther, Alex Rackley, who was suspected of being a police informant. Hillary was charged with the responsibility for scheduling her fellow students to monitor the trial, looking for what “Tommie the Commie” might view as a violation of Seale’s civil rights. It was a major stepping stone in the radicalization of Hillary Rodham.

The following year, as the House Judiciary Committee prepared articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, Hillary joined the staff of Jerry Zeifman, counsel to the Watergate Committee. She was recommended for the job by a former law professor, Burke Marshall, who represented Ted Kennedy when he was being investigated for his role in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a senate aide, at Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, on July 18, 1969.

However, Hillary and other Democratic staffers were apparently not interested in justice for Richard Nixon. According to recollections published by Zeifman… who came forward when Hillary was running for president in 2008… she and other Democratic staffers wanted Nixon to remain in office so that Ted Kennedy, or another Democrat, would have a far better chance of being elected in 1976. As they saw it, if Nixon remained in office as a disgraced president, he would be far more valuable to Democratic prospects than if he were successfully impeached. When the investigation was completed, Zeifman fired Hillary and refused to give her a letter of recommendation. When asked in 2008 why he had dismissed Hillary in 1974, he replied, “Because she was a liar. She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the Committee, and the rules of confidentiality.”

Zeifman explained, “In December 1974, as general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, I made a personal evaluation of Hillary Rodham, a member of the staff we had gathered for our impeachment inquiry on President Richard Nixon. I decided that I could not recommend her for any future position of public or private trust.” He regrets that he did not report her unethical behavior to the bar association for investigation and possible disbarment.

Then, in October 1978, after moving to Arkansas to marry Bill Clinton… who was elected governor the following month… Hillary decided to build a financial nest egg for their future. However, with just $1,000 to invest, and with no experience in futures trading, she relied on the advice of attorney James Blair, who served as outside counsel to Tyson Foods, Arkansas’ largest employer. Under the careful guidance of Blair and an associate, the First Lady of Arkansas invested in cattle futures, turning her $1,000 initial investment into $100,000 in just ten months.

One wonders, has the statute of limitations run out on Hillary’s futures trading fiasco? On September 4, 2014, former Republican governor Robert McDonnell, of Virginia, and his wife Maureen, were found guilty of trading political influence in exchange for plane flights, golf trips, and a $20,000 shopping spree, all financed by Virginia businessman Jonnie Williams. A federal jury in Richmond found McDonnell guilty on 11 counts of a 13-count indictment, while his wife was convicted on nine of 13 counts. The McDonnells, who are scheduled to be sentenced on January 6, 2015, each face as much as 30 years in prison.

But aren’t Bill and Hillary Clinton guilty of essentially the same crime? And would it not be appropriate for us to refer to her… not as the former First Lady of Arkansas, not as the former First Lady of the United States, not as a former senator from New York, and not as a former Secretary of State… but as an unindicted co-conspirator?

Most Americans know only the Hillary Clinton they see on television… the plastered smile, the pastel pants suits of every color in the rainbow, and her cackling laughter. But there is another side to Hillary that the American people will become acquainted with if she runs for president in 2016 and wins the Democrat nomination. What they will be most surprised at is the foulness of her language and the utter contempt she demonstrates for her subordinates… as numerous former Arkansas state troopers and members of her Secret Service detail have confirmed.

Now, as the House Select Committee on Benghazi has conducted its first public hearings into events surrounding the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others in the 2012 terror attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Raymond Maxwell, has come forward to tell what he knows of events that took place behind closed doors at the State Department as the Clinton-appointed Accountability Review Board (ARB) issued subpoenas for State Department documents. It appears to be the “smoking gun” that the House Oversight Committee has been seeking for nearly two years.

In the days leading up to the investigation by the ARB, co-chaired by former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, Maxwell arrived at the State Department on a Sunday afternoon, only to find one of his subordinates, along with a number of other State Department employees, sorting through boxes and stacks of documents in a basement operations center. Maxwell has told investigators that he had not been consulted about her weekend assignment and had not authorized it.

According to Maxwell, “She told me, ‘Ray, we are to go through these stacks and pull out anything that might put anybody in the (Near Eastern Affairs) front office or the seventh floor in a bad light,’ ” In State Department lingo, the “seventh floor” can mean only one thing: the offices of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her principal advisors. Maxwell asked, “But isn’t that unethical?” To which she responded, “Ray, those are our orders.”

Shortly thereafter, two high-ranking State Department officials, Cheryl Mills, then-Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton, and Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan, entered the room.

The documents that were being “scrubbed” were documents under subpoena by the ARB… a serious criminal act… while the presence of Mills and Sullivan appears to connect Hillary Clinton directly with a conspiracy to obstruct justice. So, just as Richard Nixon had his John Dean, Hillary Clinton has her Ray Maxwell. The difference is, no one died in the Watergate affair. When she next appears before the Benghazi Select Committee, under oath, Hillary will have a lot of explaining to do. It should make for very interesting TV viewing.

So this is the real Hillary Clinton, the woman that few Americans have ever been allowed to see. She is, as her former boss on the House Judiciary Committee staff described her, a woman unfit “for any future position of public or private trust.” Like virginity, integrity is lost in an instant. And, like virginity, integrity cannot be regained once it is lost. Hillary Clinton’s virginity, or lack thereof, is of no concern to anyone but herself, but every American has the right to know that she is totally lacking in integrity.