Q: These days, when you find yourself thinking about Richard Nixon,
what comes to mind?
A: Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet
satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to
prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in
human life. (And his aide Henry Kissinger was not the last American
official to win an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.)
He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the
crimes he committed against me-which forced his resignation facing
impeachment-are now legal.
That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst's office (for
material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using
the CIA against an American citizen in the US, and authorizing a White
House hit squad to "incapacitate me totally" (on the steps of the
Capitol on May 3, 1971). All the above were to prevent me from exposing
guilty secrets of his own administration that went beyond the Pentagon
Papers. But under George W. Bush and Barack Obama,with the PATRIOT
Act, the FISA Amendment Act, and (for the hit squad) President Obama's
executive orders. they have all become legal.
There is no further need for present or future presidents to commit
obstructions of justice (like Nixon's bribes to potential witnesses) to
conceal such acts. Under the new laws, Nixon would have stayed in
office, and the Vietnam War would have continued at least several more
years.
Likewise, where Nixon was the first president in history to use the
54-year-old Espionage Act to indict an American (me) for unauthorized
disclosures to the American people (it had previously been used, as
intended, exclusively against spies), he would be impressed to see that
President Obama has now brought five such indictments against leaks,
almost twice as many as all previous presidents put together (three).
He could only admire Obama's boldness in using the same Espionage Act
provisions used against me-almost surely unconstitutional used against
disclosures to the American press and public in my day, less surely
under the current Supreme Court-to indict Thomas Drake, a classic
whistleblower who exposed illegality and waste in the NSA.
Drake's trial begins on June 13, the 40th anniversary of the
publication of the Pentagon Papers. If Nixon were alive, he might well
choose to attend.
<end excerpt>
Fortunately the Drake case fell apart before then -- the only chink of light in this dismal accounting.
Michael