Luke Acts

No one can be absolutely sure why burglars broke into Democratic headquarters in the Watergate in June 1972. A young scholar in Texas is trying to obtain court records that he hopes will solve the mystery for good.

Hat tip to Len Colodny

The Nebulous Baker Boys

Russ Baker is a conspiracy-minded writer whose 2008 book about the Bush family stepped outside the bounds of believability and indeed propriety by hinting that George H.W. Bush had a role in President Kennedy's assassination.

But Baker also poses questions about the military and intelligence communities' actions during the Nixon administration that deserve more attention that they've gotten from mainstream scholars. This piece of the Watergate puzzle doesn't have to be the whole picture, but it deserves to be part of it.

Yet anyone who writes about it at all, such as Baker, Len Colodny, and James Rosen (who's still waiting for a New York Times review of his painstakingly researched study of John Mitchell, John Dean, and Watergate), runs the risk of being called a noncanonical outlier. Former Sen. Gary Hart reprimanded the late Peter Rodman, a respected Kissinger aide, for even raising the issue of detentenik Nixon's hawkish institutional foes.

So in the vein of a beggar not being too choosy, here's an excerpt from a Russ Baker blog entry about the cozy relationship between Watergate reporter Bob Woodward (shown here) and the military establishment:

Bob, top secret Naval officer, gets sent to work in the Nixon White House while still on military duty. Then, with no journalistic credentials to speak of, and with a boost from White House staffers, he lands a job at the Washington Post. Not long thereafter he starts to take down Richard Nixon. Meanwhile, Woodward’s military bosses are running a spy ring inside the White House that is monitoring Nixon and Kissinger’s secret negotiations with America’s enemies (China, Soviet Union, etc), stealing documents and funneling them back to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

That’s not the iconic Woodward of legend, of course — so it takes a while for this notion to settle in the mind. But there’s more — and it’s even more troubling. Did you know there was really no Deep Throat, that the Mark Felt story was conjured up as yet another layer of cover in what became a daisy chain of disinformation? Did you know that Richard Nixon was loathed and feared by the military brass, that they and their allies were desperate to get Nixon out and halt his rapprochement with the Communists? That a bunch of operatives with direct or indirect CIA/military connections, from E. Howard Hunt to Alexander Butterfield to John Dean — wormed their way into key White House posts, and started up the Keystone Kops operations that would be laid at Nixon’s office door?

Hat tip to Len Colodny

The View From Neo-Connecticut

From his home town of Salisbury, Connecticut, the local angle on Forty Years War co-author Tom Shachtman, who, with Len Colodny, aims to rewrite the history of Watergate, the last years of the Cold War, and the neocons' march to war in Iraq.

Richard Nixon And Dede Scozzafava

Was Richard Nixon done in by his own people? From the History Book Club's precis of The Forty Years War by Len Colodny and Tom Schachtman:

The first section of The Forty Years War traces the rise of the “neocons” during the fateful presidency of Richard Nixon. Though the conventional narrative has Nixon being overthrown by his traditional enemies on the left, Colodny and Shachtman reveal how much Nixon’s historic fall owed to conservative resentment of the foreign policy of Nixon and Henry Kissinger, particularly Nixon’s overtures to the USSR and China. They reveal how administration insiders—including White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig—used their positions of responsibility to bring Nixon’s foreign policy to a halt. And they show how Nixon’s alienation of the emerging neoconservatives in Washington ultimately left him politically isolated and unable to survive the storms of Watergate.

Not Bedfellows At All?

Nixon and Kissinger vs. Haig, Rumsfeld, and Cheney? Very interesting indeed. Len Colodny sent me this "Library Journal" review by Stephen K. Shaw of his new book, The Forty Years War: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons, From Nixon To Obama:

Colodny (coauthor, Silent Coup) and [Tom] Shachtman (Airlift to America), two experienced investigative reporters, offer a rigorous and critical examination of the neoconservative movement and the bureaucratic, ideological battles over American foreign policy from 1969 to 2009.

During this period, there was infighting, primarily in Republican administrations, between pragmatists, e.g., Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and ideologues, e.g., Alexander Haig, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney, for the privilege of conducting foreign policy and establishing American supremacy in world affairs.

Central to this account of the origins and evolution of crusading conservatives and ideologically driven theorists, such as the mysterious, influential Pentagon operative Fritz Kraemer, is a focus on the domestic and international prospects and perils of a foreign, military-driven policy that has sought to re-create the world in America's image. The authors essentially direct our attention to John Quincy Adams's advice that his country should not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

VERDICT: Anyone who has read Jane Mayer's The Dark Side or Jack Goldsmith's The Terror Presidency would be well served by this captivating chronicle. Highly recommended, especially for students of U.S. foreign policy and/or presidential politics in the post-World War II era.

Nixon: Stuck In The Middle Again

Some Nixonites argue that when RN was handing out swords, the anti-Vietnam liberals twisted them with the most relish. Now comes Silent Coup co-author Len Colodny with his and a new collaborator's latest book, The Forty Years War: The Rise And Fall of the Neocons, From Nixon to Obama, which argues that it was the nascent neoconservatives (often domestic and social liberals, just to make it more confusing) who helped maneuver Nixon out of office because of his course-changing policies toward the Soviet Union and China. Len sent me an early notice, from Kirkus Reviews:

In this readable history, the authors tell many intriguing tales, including the neocon incubator that was Scoop Jackson’s senate office; the military spying on Nixon’s National Security Council; Haig’s maneuverings during Nixon’s final days; the rise of Cheney and Rumsfeld under Ford and their denouement under Bush II; the neocons' shameless readopting of Reagan after his accords with Gorbachev proved successful; the controversial decision to leave Saddam Hussein in power after the Gulf War; and the continuing and curious role of reporter Bob Woodward in the neocon story. A well-reported, fast-paced history lesson on the eternal conflict between ideologues and policymakers and the hubris that always accompanies success.

Watergate And Foreign Policy

Len Colodny, author of the revisionist Watergate book Silent Coup, has another coming out in the fall. Here's a preview from the HarperCollins catalog. The contention of the shrewdly titled The Forty Years War: Don't follow the money. Follow the neocons:

In this groundbreaking book, renowned investigative writers Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman chronicle the surprising evolution of the neoconservative movement—from its birth as a rogue insurgency in The Nixon White House through its ascent to full and controversial control of America’s foreign policy in the Bush years. The Forty Years War documents the neocons’ undermining of the Nixon White House, their success at halting détente during the Ford and Carter years, their uneasy alliance with Ronald Reagan, and their determination to eventually take the U.S. all the way to Baghdad.