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January
7, 2001
Wael Masri
They
Are Taking
Our Rights Away
Philip
Farruggio
Better
Medicine
January
6, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Students
Put the Heat on Foreign Sweatshops
Tariq
Ali
Battleground
Kashmir
January
5, 2002
Mark Schneider
Kifah:
The Movie Star
Israel Killed
Edward
Said
Is
Israel More Secure Now?
January
4, 2002
CG Estabrook
Anti-War
= Anti-Globalization
Jordan
Green
What's
Changed in New York
January
3, 2002
Walt Brasch
Exit
Cheney, Enter Ridge
Mokhiber
and Weissman
The
10 Worst Corporations
of 2001
Robert
Hunter Wade
America's
Empire Rules an Unbalanced World
Shahid
Alam
Is
There an Islamic Problem?
January
2, 2002
Ross Regnart
Patriot
Act Redefines the Mob as "Terrorist Associates"
John Chuckman
The
Republicans' Secret Plan X
David
Vest
Turn,
Turn, Turn
January
1, 2002
Kathy
Kelly
Iraq's
New Year
December
31, 2001
John Absood
An
Alternative to War in Iraq
Ramzi
Kysia
Iraq
Goes Radioactive
December
28, 2001
John Chuckman
Observing
George Bush
Suren
Pillay
Civilian
Bodies
Aaron
Lehmer
Inviting
Future Terrorism
December
27, 2001
Patrick
McNamara
Palestinian
Children Bear Brunt of Mideast Violence
Nelson
Valdés
A
Possible Scenario on the Location of bin Laden
Jensen
and Mahajan
Remember
the Afghan Dead
Philip
Farruggio
A
New Year's Resolution
Ramzi
Kysia
The
People of the Valley
December 26, 2001
John Chuckman
In
Praise of the Unspeakable
Sam Bahour
2002:
Year of the Twos
December 25, 2001
Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's
Human Rights Record
December 24, 2001
Sam Bahour
It
Happened One Morning
Yair Khilou
Why I Resisted
Being Drafted into the Israeli Army
Michael
Chisari
War
as Diversionary Tactic
Cockburn/St. Clair
Enron
and the Green Seal
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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bin Laden and Bush
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Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
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A Pocket Guide to
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January
7, 2002
The Nixon Story You Never Heard
By Joan Hoff
Over three decades ago on December 21, 1971, Richard
Nixon approved the first major cover-up of his administration.
He did so reluctantly at the behest of his closest political
advisers, Attorney General John Mitchell, Domestic Counselor
John Ehrlichman, and Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman. The public
remains ignorant of this seminal event in Nixon's first term
and journalists and historians have largely ignored it. The question
is why? A recently released Nixon tape transcribed from an enhanced
CD produced by the Nixon Era Center provides the clearest answer
to this thirty-year-old Nixon secret.
On that December day Nixon agreed to
cover-up a criminally insubordinate spying operation conducted
by the Joint Chiefs of Staff inside the National Security Council
because of the military's strong, visceral dislike of Nixon's
foreign policy. In particular, the JCS thought Nixon gone "soft
on communism" by reaching out to the Chinese and Russians,
and they resented Vietnamization as a way to end the war.
As early as 1976 Admiral Elmo Zumwalt
publicly made these military suspicions and resentment abundantly
clear in his book, On Watch: A Memoir. "I had first become
concerned many months before the June 1972 burglary," Zumwalt
wrote, "[about] the deliberate, systematic and, unfortunately,
extremely successful efforts of the President, Henry Kissinger,
and a few subordinate members of their inner circle to conceal,
sometimes by simple silence, more often by articulate deceit,
their real policies about the most critical matters of national
security." In a word, Zumwalt, like many within the American
military elite, thought that Nixon's foreign policies bordered
on the traitorous because they "were inimical to the security
of the United States."
This atmosphere of extreme distrust led
Admiral Thomas Moorer, head of the JCS, to first authorize Rear
Admiral Rembrandt C. Robinson and later Rear Admiral Robert O.
Welander, both liaisons between the Joint Chiefs and the White
House's National Security Council, to start spying on the NSC.
For thirteen months, from late 1970 to late 1971, Navy Yeoman
Charles E. Radford, an aide to both Robinson and Welander, systematically
stole and copied NSC documents from burn bags containing carbon
copies, briefcases, and desks of Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig,
and their staff. He then turned them over to his superiors.
The White House became suspicious when
Jack Anderson published a column on December 14 entitled, "U.S.
Tilts to Pakistan." Such information logically could only
have come from meetings of the Washington Special Action Group,
December 3 and 4, which discussed the fact that Pakistan was
being used as a conduit for the top secret negotiations the Nixon
administration was carrying on with China--negotiations that
would culminate in rapprochement with that Communist nation the
spring of the next year. Clearly someone had leaked the minutes
of the WSAG meeting to Anderson and the suspicion fell on the
military.
The White House immediately ordered an
investigation of this leak and Pentagon Chief Investigator W.
Donald Stewart subsequently uncovered the JCS spy operation when
Yeoman Radford "broke down and cried" during a polygraph
test, indicating that he spied with the "implied approval
of his supervisor" Admiral Welander. Stewart believed that
it was a "hanging offence" for the military to spy
on the president and Ehrlichman's assistant, Egil ("Bud")
Krogh thought that it was the beginning of a military coup because
of the interference it represented "into the deliberations
of duly-elected and appointed civilians to carry out foreign
policy." Radford's confession not only led to such dire
evaluations, but also to the December 21 conversation among the
president, Ehrlich man, Haldeman, and John Mitchell.
The most striking aspect of this tape
is the passive role played by Nixon--the so-called original imperial
president. First, he is out-talked by the others throughout this
fifty-two-minute conversation. Toward the end of tape, the president
can be heard saying to his advisers in a loud voice that the
JCS spy activity was "wrong! Understand? I'm just saying
that's wrong. Do you agree?" A little later he called it
a "federal offense of the highest order." Up to this
point, however, John Mitchell told the president that "the
important thing is to paper this thing over" because "this
Welander thing . . . Is going to get right into the middle of
Joint Chiefs of Staff."
In other words, Nixon would have to take
on the entire military command if he exposed the spy ring. Moreover,
this expose would take place in an election year and when the
president had scheduled trips to both China and the Soviet Union
to confirm improved relations with these countries--which the
military opposed. Taking on the military establishment with such
important political and diplomatic events on the horizon could
have proven disastrous for the president's most important objectives
and revealed other back-channel diplomatic activities of the
administration. Later in his memoirs the president said that
the media would have completely distorted the incident and exposure
would have done "damage to the military at time when it
was already under heavy attack."
In contrast, at the time all three men
agreed with Nixon about the seriousness of the crime committed
by the JCS. Mitchell even compared it to "coming in [to
the president's office] and robbing your desk." However,
they advised him to do no more than to inform Moorer that the
White House knew about the JCS spy ring, to interview Welander
(who was later transferred to sea duty), and to transfer Radford.
Moorer subsequently denied obtaining any information from purloined
documents, fallaciously claiming that Nixon kept him fully informed
about all his foreign policy initiatives. If this had been true
there would have been no need for Moorer to set up a spy ring.
Welander, for his part according to this tape, had initially
refused to answer questions about the spying he was supervising
on the questionable grounds that he had a "personal and
confidential relationship" with both Kissinger and Haig.
Nixon became incensed when he heard this.
"Just knock it out of the ballpark, stop that relationship,"
he told his aides on December 21. Subsequently in his first interview
Welander admitted his role in the naval surveillance operation,
and implicated then Brigadier General Alexander Haig, Kissinger's
aide and liaison between the Pentagon and the White House, in
this criminal operation. Haig ultimately prevailed upon his old
friend and colleague Fred Buzhardt, general counsel to the Defense
Department, to re-interview Admiral Welander and eliminate the
compromising references to him. Still the existence of this first
Welander interview continued to haunt Haig because he knew if
the president found out there would be no more military promotions
for him, let alone a future in politics and so he was determined
to see that his role in this affair remained under raps.
Haig has succeeded in covering up his
involvement down to the present day. For example, he told an
interviewer in 1996 that the whole JCS spy ring was nothing more
than the normal kind of internal espionage that goes on all the
time among executive branch departments. Nonetheless, after he
became Nixon's chief of staff, he went to great lengths to ensure
that the various congressional investigations never concentrated
on the Moorer/Radford affair, thus preventing exposure of his
involvement in spying on the NSC while Kissinger's aide. When
caught in the tug-of-war between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
the White House, Haig's loyalties to the very end remained with
the military.
This December 21 tape also indicates
that Nixon did not trust either Kissinger or Haig. At one point
he stated that "Henry is not a good security risk"
and that he was convinced that "Haig must have known about
this operation . . . It seems unlikely he wouldn't have known."
Yet after Watergate forced the resignations of Haldeman and Ehrlichman,
Nixon appointed Haig his chief of staff! Had the president chosen
to ignore the advisce of his closest aides in December 1971 and
follow his own instincts about exposing the JCS, Haig's culpability
would have become evident and his career under Nixon would have
ended and quite possibly prevented him from serving in both the
Ford and Reagan administrations.
By covering up JCS spy ring (but letting
the military know they knew about it) Nixon and his aides apparently
deluded themselves into thinking they would have greater leverage
with a hostile defense establishment. However, the JCS also knew
that Nixon and Kissinger had been by-passing both Secretaries
of State (William Rogers) and Defense (Melvin Laird) in making
their foreign policy decisions and could have retaliated with
the charge that civilian leaders had been deliberately ignored
in the administration's back-channel processes.
This successful cover-up of the Moorer-Radford
affair set the stage for more minor cover-ups ultimately culminating
in the mother of them all--Watergate. As a result it should be
considered the first and most important of the Nixon cover-ups.
Had it not take place perhaps Nixon would have survived his second
term in office.
Joan Hoff is
Distinguished Research Professor of History at Montana State
University and author of Nixon
Reconsidered (Basic Books)] She can be reached at: Joanhoff1@aol.com. Visit
the website of the NIXON ERA
CENTER .
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