Watergate Tapes: Thompson Was Nixon’s Mole

... and Nixon didn’t return the favor, calling Fred Thompson ”dumb as hell.” That shouldn’t stop Republicans, we’ve been saying that about George W. Bush for years.

Anyway, the Associated Press has given a listen to the Watergate tapes in the National Archives and is reporting that a then-30-year-old Fred Thompson served as Nixon’s mole in the Watergate hearings, not the dedicated patriot committed to uncovering the truth as has been believed. According to the transcripts, Thompson informed Nixon that the Senate committee looking into the Watergate break-ins knew of the famed secret tapes--the same tapes that would eventually lead to Nixon’s downfall. Thompson also agreed to work with Nixon to discredit star witness John Dean. Read, weep:

Publicly, Baker and Thompson presented themselves as dedicated to uncovering the truth. But Baker had secret meetings and conversations with Nixon and his top aides, while Thompson worked cooperatively with the White House and accepted coaching from Nixon's lawyer, J. Fred Buzhardt, the tapes and transcripts show.

"We've got a pretty good rapport with Fred Thompson," Buzhardt told Nixon in an Oval Office meeting on June 6, 1973. The meeting included a discussion of former White House counsel John Dean's upcoming testimony before the committee.

Dean, the committee's star witness, had agreed to tell what he knew about the break-in and cover-up if he was granted immunity against anything incriminating he might say.

Nixon expressed concern that Thompson was not "very smart."

"Not extremely so," Buzhardt agreed.

"But he's friendly," Nixon said.

"But he's friendly," Buzhardt agreed. "We are hoping, though, to work with Thompson and prepare him, if Dean does appear next week, to do a very thorough cross-examination."

Count me not shocked. Republicans have been trying to present Thompson as “his own man,” a person who is far different from the rubber-stamp loyalists who have dominated the party for the past 15 years. But I’ve known all along that Soft-n-Safe® is just SOS: Same Old Shit. Who else hires rubber stamp loyalists like Mary Matalin, Liz Cheney and George P. Bush to be his advisors? Come on, wake up and smell the Kool-Aid.

Anyway, in a sane world the tanscripts themselves would be damning. Of course, we live in an insane world at the moment, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re calling Soft-n-Safe® Mr. President in January 2009.

“Even Nixon Knew It Was Time To Resign”

For anyone who missed Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment last night, Salon.com has posted a transcript.

His words are incredibly powerful in print, perhaps more so than hearing them read on television. I urge everyone to read it and pass it on.

A couple of points struck me as especially pertinent. The first was the warped notion of “public service” to this current Administration:

We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president's partisanship. Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that we may achieve, not that we may lead the world, but merely that we may function.

But just as essential to the 17 words of John Wayne is an implicit trust, a sacred trust: that the president for whom so many did not vote can in turn suspend his political self long enough, and for matters imperative enough, to conduct himself solely for the benefit of the entire republic.

But there is no desire to “suspend the political self” in the Bush Administration; in fact, the entire Bush government has been pressed into creating a “permanent Republican majority.” After all, that’s what “Attorney-gate” is about, and to a lesser extent, that is the principle at the root of Plame-gate: the need for permanent war, constant threats of terror, so the American people can turn their fearful eyes to their protector, the GOP.

I am remembering ex-UN Ambassador John Bolton’s appearance on The Daily Show, of all places, in which he informed us that President Bush is only obliged to represent those who voted for him. This is wrong on so many levels: morally, Constitutionally, and practically. But this is clearly what the Bush Administration believes. That’s why the Vice President feels justified in telling a Senator from the opposition party to “go fuck yourself” on the Senate floor. It’s hyper-partisanship: a winner-take-all mentality, that is destroying this country and has brought us to the brink of collapse. It has created a majority of the voting public who feels disenfranchised from the political process. This simply will not end well; it never does.

Olbermann stated that in commuting Scooter Libby’s sentence, President Bush “ceased to be the president of the United States” and “became merely the president of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party.” I believe that moment came long before Monday. It came when the president put his signature on Cheney’s torture memo. It came with his recess appointment of extremists and the unqualified to key posts: Julie Myers at the Immigration & Customs Enforcement bureau at Homeland Security, John Bolton to the UN, Lester Crawford as FDA Commissioner, or the recess appointment of Swift Boat financier Sam Fox as Ambassador of Belgium--a “fuck you” to the Democrats if ever there was one.

Olbermann goes on:

It is nearly July Fourth, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a king who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them -- or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them -- we would force our independence and regain our sacred freedoms.

We of this time -- and our leaders in Congress, of both parties -- must now live up to those standards which echo through our history. Pressure, negotiate, impeach: get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our democracy, away from its helm.

Today is July Fourth. Bush and Cheney have steered this ship straight for an iceberg. And the American people are to blame. We are too easily distracted by the latest Lindsay Lohan escapade or Paris Hilton’s jail sentence to pay attention to the real crimes going on in our names. Why is this? Why do millions of people tune out the news of corruption and misadministration from Washington D.C., some even calling it biased or partisan by the “liberal media,” but the latest manufactured celebrity gossip is consumed and even trusted as gospel fact? Why have we not demanded more of our news media, our representatives in Congress, and our government?

Olbermann asks the president and vice president to “achieve a very low threshold” and “display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed on August 9th, 1974” by resigning, for the good of the republic.

But they won’t. They are too entrenched in the quicksand of power. And even if they were removed, they leave behind a new generation of civil servants, Regent and Liberty University graduates, partisans who have been brainwashed into the GOP “permanent Republican majority” mindset. I wonder if they will believe that the president is only required to serve those who voted for him (or her) when that president is a Democrat?

It’s that “us versus them, party over nation” ideology that has hijacked the government and spread like a cancer. And I don’t see it leaving with the exit of Bush and Cheney.