Lately, I have written and focused on the history of Watergate because I find it helpful in understanding American politics and power today. After living through Watergate, President Donald Trump has the benefit of having watched how the establishment’s legal-political-money-media lynch mob operates — a perspective that has allowed him to navigate through its attacks in ways Nixon simply couldn’t.
READ MORE from Newt Gingrich: Washington Is Waging a War: First Nixon, Now Trump
But Watergate is only one data point in mapping out how the establishment tries to destroy its enemies.
One of the most amazing things about Watergate is that Nixon’s predecessors, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, had done far more illegal things. The allegations Nixon was charged with pale in comparison. Many of the people who worked to destroy Nixon had been directly involved in breaking the law in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. In retrospect, it is stunning how hypocritical Nixon’s enemies were.
The story is, of course, still relevant today. The Washington establishment has continued to attack Trump with the same extraordinary hypocrisy. It paid to have Trump framed for made-up crimes (the Steele Dossier was paid for by the Clinton campaign and handed over to the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee) and then used the instruments of government to surround him with falsehoods to drive him out of public life (the phony dossier was used as a basis for getting FISA warrants to spy on and later investigate Trump and his associates, etc.).
These efforts are amazing and teach us much about the corruption and illegality of Washington’s establishment structure — but the pattern started much earlier.
When conservatives talk about the weaponization of the FBI and the Justice Department, they should include the astonishing story of our government’s long vendetta against our lifetime’s most consequential civil rights activist.
The FBI began watching Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. after the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 as part of its domestic counterintelligence program, known as COINTELPRO. Most of the nation saw King’s August 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech as brilliant and visionary. The FBI, under President Kennedy, had a different response. FBI Special Agent William Sullivan led the domestic intelligence division at the time. Two days after King’s famous speech, Sullivan wrote in an FBI memo: “We must mark [King] now…as the most dangerous Negro of the future of this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and National security.”
Robert F. Kennedy, who served as his brother’s attorney general, authorized wiretaps on King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. John Doar, who would later lead the House Judiciary Committee effort on Watergate was involved with the Kennedy Justice Department’s efforts to identify and spy on some 18,000 African Americans whom intelligence officials considered potentially subversive.
The FBI didn’t just monitor and wiretap King; as he grew more powerful and influential, the bureau’s efforts grew more desperate. When he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the FBI put together a suicide kit and sent him an anonymous letter along with tapes they had made of him in various hotel rooms. They threatened to destroy King’s reputation unless he killed himself. When he ignored the letter, senior FBI officials tried to get the media to expose King’s personal life.
Even after King was killed, the FBI continued to try to smear him. Many Americans have been frightened by recent FBI efforts to label Catholics and concerned parents as potential terrorist groups — unfortunately, it really isn’t anything new. In an earlier era, more than two dozen FBI offices were told to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of the black nationalists.”
The scale of the FBI’s history of violating the constitutional rights of Americans was captured in the final report of the U.S. Senate’s 1976 Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, which reviewed COINTELPRO and found:
[T]he domestic activities of the intelligence community at times violated specific statutory prohibitions and infringed the constitutional rights of American citizens. The legal questions involved in intelligence programs were often not considered. On other occasions, they were intentionally disregarded in the belief that because the programs served the ‘national security’ the law did not apply.
While this assessment was written nearly five decades prior, it could have been applied to the FBI’s role in smearing candidate and later President Trump — and the continued FBI bias against conservatives and in favor of the Left.
As an aside, in my research about government misdeeds related to Watergate, I was reminded of a jarring story about Kennedy before he became president.
Jimmy Breslin wrote about it in his 1975 book How the Good Guys Finally Won:
During the 1960 Presidential campaign, [U.S. Rep. Tip] O’Neill was an advance man in Missouri for John F. Kennedy and in the course of his duties he came upon August Busch, who offered to round up thirty people for a $1000-a-head breakfast meeting if Kennedy would show up. O’Neill called Kennedy, who quickly asked the comical question about the proposed meeting. “What time should I be there?” The breakfast was arranged at an airport motel and Kennedy arrived, stepped into the room, received the money nod from O’Neill, and then said to the guests, “If you’ll excuse Congressman O’Neill and me for a moment.” The two of them went out and jammed into what O’Neill remembers as the world’s smallest men’s room. “Now I have twelve thousand in cash and seventeen thousand in checks, what do you want me to do with it?” O’Neill said. “Give the checks to Kenny O’Donnell. I’ll take the cash.” O’Neill handed Kennedy the cash and watched it disappear into the inside jacket pocket. “Geez, this business is no different if you’re running for ward leader or President of the United States,” O’Neill said to Kennedy. Kennedy said nothing and the two of them went back to the breakfast.
Remember that this story of Kennedy illegally taking campaign cash for his personal use is in a pro-O’Neill book written by someone eager to have Nixon impeached. They are regarded as “the good guys” in the story. It apparently never occurred to Breslin that perhaps the pattern of money in politics was a lot more complicated and problematic than the Nixon-centric morality tale suggested. Democrats who steal from campaign donors are “the good guys.” Republicans are the enemy.
Regardless, the pattern Kennedy set was continued by his predecessor.
The most startling example of the Nixon set-up may be the story of Howard Hunt. Hunt was a key member of the Watergate scandal and a former CIA operative who worked for the Nixon team. As it turned out, breaking into the Democratic Headquarters at Watergate was the second time Hunt had spied on a presidential campaign.
Steve Usdin described Hunt’s first expedition for Politico: “Over a six-week period in the late summer of 1964, Hunt deployed … staff to undertake a new type of project: infiltrating the presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater on behalf of President Lyndon Johnson.”
Usdin went on to assert:
Whether the impetus came from the White House or Langley, it is clear that Hunt arranged the infiltration of the Goldwater campaign headquarters. “My subordinates volunteered inside, collected advance copies of position papers and other material, and handed them over to CIA personnel,” Hunt wrote. Hunt’s assets included a secretary on Goldwater’s campaign staff who provided advance copies of speeches and press releases. A female CIA employee who worked from the Continental Press offices would pick up the material and deliver it to Cooper.
LBJ wasn’t squeamish about using the inside information, and he did so in a blunt fashion that must have made CIA officers cringe. Goldwater campaign staff noticed that the Johnson campaign had the unnerving habit of responding to points in their candidate’s speeches before he had delivered them. Johnson didn’t seem to care that his actions made clear to Goldwater that he was being spied on….
Hunt retired from the CIA in 1970 and was hired by the White House in 1972 to lead a unit known as the Plumbers that was dedicated to plugging leaks within the Nixon administration, playing dirty tricks on Nixon’s opponents and obtaining political intelligence. Years later, Hunt justified his actions by comparing them to the CIA’s spying on Goldwater. His logic was that if it was OK to use surreptitious methods to obtain political intelligence on behalf of one president, it was acceptable to do the same for another president. “Since I’d done it once before for the CIA, why wouldn’t I do it again [inside Watergate in June 1972] for the White House?” Hunt explained to the New York Times in late December 1974.
Imagine how the Watergate investigation would have developed if the country had known that the Watergate break-in was simply the follow-up to a six-week campaign of spying on Goldwater — led by the same man but this time on President Lyndon Johnson’s behalf.
It gets even stranger when you learn the leading Republican on the Watergate Committee interviewed Hunt — and knew about the Johnson espionage effort against Goldwater — but didn’t bring it up. As Usdin wrote:
On December 18, 1973, on a closely guarded excursion from a federal penitentiary in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, Hunt met with Senator Howard Baker, Jr. and the staff of a Senate committee that was investigating CIA abuses of power.
Hunt told Baker that he’d been disturbed by the order to spy on the Goldwater campaign. This wasn’t because he had any hesitation about conducting what was obviously an illegal violation of the CIA’s charter, which imposes strict limits on the agency’s domestic operations. Rather, it was because Hunt was one of the few Goldwater supporters in the agency. “However, as distasteful as I thought it was, I performed the duty, accepting White House orders without question,” he recalled. A year later, news of Hunt’s testimony leaked to the New York Times.
Initially, it is hard to comprehend why Sen. Baker did not bring Hunt to testify about Johnson’s six-week espionage campaign. It would have changed the entire tone of the Nixon-focused investigation and would have made clear that Watergate was similar to Johnson’s earlier activity — although on a much smaller scale and much less intrusively. There is no evidence Nixon was directing an illegal spying operation on the McGovern campaign. Nixon himself faced scrutiny for the cover-up — not the espionage.
It turns out the investigation’s refusal to look at past presidential lawbreaking was deliberate. The fix was in. Nothing before Nixon could be examined.
While I was researching how Watergate unfolded — and how one of the most popularly elected presidents in modern history could be forced out of office — I was aided by one of the most dedicated historians of that period. Geoff Shepard pointed out that there was a special provision in the Senate actions establishing the Watergate Committee that limited its scope to Nixon. (RELATED from Geoff Shepard: Yesterday and Today: Judicial Bias in Washington, DC)
Sen. Ed Gurney had moved that the committee be allowed to look at past presidential law-breaking, not just Nixon. Sen. Sam Ervin, who authored the resolution and would chair the committee, rejected the idea, saying:
It also has been suggested by others that the year “1972” be stricken out and that the Select Committee be authorized to conduct an inquiry into whether there have been any illegal or improper or unethical practices conducted in any other presidential election since George Washington was chosen for that office in 1789. I disagree with those who entertain this view, because I think the committee, if established by the Senate, will have a hard enough task to perform in connection with things that it is specifically authorized to do by the resolution.
Gurney’s proposal was defeated on a party-line vote and a select committee with a Democratic majority focused on looking at the alleged crimes of only one person — the man who had won an election with 60.7 percent of the American people supporting him.
If the Nixon administration’s activities had been considered in the context of the illegal activities of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the entire Watergate episode would have appeared to be one more instance of political activity in a pattern that had clear precedence in the recent past. Nixon’s reputation would have been bruised for trying to cover up the break-in, but it’s unlikely that he would have been impeached.
This would have had a profound impact on American history. The 1974 elections would not have been nearly as bad for Republicans. Likely, Congress would not have cut off aid to the South Vietnamese government — and it may have survived. It would have been a different world.
The pattern of corruption, illegality, and bias used against Nixon in Watergate only grew. As a final historic example, review what happened during the nomination process for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Under the establishment’s system, Thomas was expected to timidly tolerate the smears and allegations of sexual misconduct against him — and accept the destruction of his nomination, reputation, and career. In one of the most dramatic moments in the rise of the new anti-establishment conservatism, Thomas instead pulled the mask of reasonableness away from his enemies.
On Oct. 11, 1991, Thomas confronted the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was chaired by then-Sen. Joe Biden:
This is a case in which this sleaze, this dirt was searched for by staffers of members of this committee, was then leaked to the media, and this committee and this body validated it and displayed it in prime time over our entire Nation.
How would any member on this committee or any person in this room or any person in this country would like sleaze said about him or her in this fashion or this dirt dredged up and this gossip and these lies displayed in this manner? How would any person like it?…
This is a circus. It is a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, as far as I am concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity-blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that, unless you kow-tow to an old order, this is what will happen to you, you will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.
In many ways, Thomas was one of the first men to successfully overcome the establishment’s attacks — I suspect he has served as an example for Trump.
The corruption and bias continue today. Johnson’s spying on Goldwater was just part of a long pattern that has recently included Russiagate, spying on Trump, and the signatures of 51 former intelligence leaders on a letter that falsely suggested that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.
Today, the FBI is even more arrogant and willing to break the law. The legal system has moved even further to the left and is more aggressive. The media is more liberal, reliant on leaks from the deep state, and willing to lie to the American public on the establishment’s behalf. The Obama administration’s overreaches, Hillary Clinton’s disregard for the law, and Biden’s corruption are all continuations of the pattern.
The reality of this commitment to illegality was confirmed in a recent survey by Scott Rasmussen. He studied a group he calls the elite 1 percent (people with graduate degrees, household incomes of $150,000 or more, and who live in densely populated urban areas). Among other questions, he asked people if they would cheat to win an election. Only 7 percent of the American people said they would cheat. However, among the elite 1 percent who are “politically obsessed,” 69 percent said they would cheat to win an election. Rasmussen said it was the most frightening number he had seen in 35 years of polling. (READ MORE: Obama’s Awful Elite Unveiled by Rasmussen)
Tragically, Nixon went along with the pretense that Washington’s power structure would oversee a fair process and seek an acceptable outcome. Instead, Nixon learned a hard lesson.
More than five decades later, President Donald Trump has learned that lesson too, and has decided to confront the establishment attack squad head-on with enormous courage and stamina.
This is the 15th installment in a series by Speaker Gingrich on American despotism. Listen to The American Spectator’s exclusive interview with the Speaker here. Find the first in the series here, the second here, the third here, the fourth here, the fifth here, the sixth here, the seventh here, the eighth here, the ninth here, the 10th here, the 11th here, the 12th here, the 13th here, and the 14th here. For more commentary, visit Gingrich360.com and subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.
