Tuesday, May 31, 2005
The Washington Post today confirmed that W. Mark Felt, former #2 man at the FBI during the Nixon years, was indeed "Deep Throat" -- the legendary secret informer who helped Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein break the Watergate case wide open and which caused Richard M. Nixon to resign.
What was Watergate?
Oy. Well........
Richard M. Nixon was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from California in 1946, winning office for his tough anti-Communist views and no-holds-barred campaigning.
In 1948, Nixon led a House subcommittee investigation into whether Alger Hiss, a liberal intellectual and bureaucrat, was a Communist spy. Whittaker Chambers, a senior editor from Time magazine, exposed Hiss in dramatic, televised testimony. Hiss was sent to prison, Chambers went home to write his memoirs and become a famous conservative icon, and Nixon was on his way to the U.S. Senate.
In 1950, Nixon was elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating Sen. Helen Gahagan Douglas (D), a former actress. Douglas was a moderate and a gentle, kind person. Nixon viciously attacked her during the course of the campaign, accusing her of having Communist sympathies. Nixon buried Douglas at the polls in November.
In 1952, Republican presidential nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower named Nixon his vice-presidential running mate. In August 1952, Democrats claimed that Nixon had received $18,000 from a "slush fund" that had functioned as a source of income for the candidate. To counter these charges, Nixon made a dramatic speech to the nation on September 23, 1952. Nixon listed his family assets, and outright denied the Democratic charges except in one case. Nixon admitted to a single gift -- a cocker spaniel dog named Checkers, which he gave to his two young daughters. The "Checkers speech" was a success and saved Nixon's political career.
In 1960, Nixon ran for the presidency against John F. Kennedy. Nixon lost by only 118,574 votes. The election was probably much closer; widespread Democratic vote fraud in Illinois probably cost Nixon the election.
In 1962, Nixon ran for governor of California and was soundly defeated by Pat Brown (father of Jerry Brown). Afterward, a bitter Nixon told reporters, "You won't have Richard Nixon to kick around any more."
In 1968, Nixon ran for president again, declaring himself "tanned, rested and ready." Nixon won the presidency in a squeaker (by 510,314 votes) over Vice President and former senator Hubert M. Humphrey. Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.) nearly upset President Lyndon B. Johnson in February's New Hampshire primary (49-42 percent). The near-miss led Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) -- who had previously denied any interest in the presidency and was in fact a rather conservative Democrat (contrary to his legacy today) -- to enter the race in March. Johnson, faced with an almost certain loss to McCarthy in April's Wisconsin primary, stunned the nation by announcing his retirement. With Johnson out of the race, voters turned to Kennedy as the more moderate candidate. Kennedy appeared to have locked up the Democratic nomination with a victory on June 4, 1968, in the California primary, but was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan, a Jordanian immigrant, in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
The Democratic National Convention -- held August 26-29, 1968, in Chicago – was an orgy of violence. More than 6,000 National Guardsmen and 5,000 Chicago police attacked about 3,000 anti-war demonstrators in Lincoln Park, brutally clubbing and gassing protestors in full view of television cameras. Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn.) denounced the "Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago" from the dais. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley (D), seated on the convention dais mere feet from Ribicoff, loudly called the senator a "motherfucker" in front of a national television audience. Due to Kennedy's death, delegates were free to pick any candidate. They picked Humphrey.
Meeting in a Miami convention surrounded by a mile of parking lot (a site picked to keep protestors away), the Republicans nominated Nixon as their candidate. Nixon claimed to have a "secret plan" to get America out of Vietnam. He was lying. But the ruse worked.
Richard Nixon won the November election by 812, 412 votes (43.2-42.0 perdcent). Alabama governor George Wallace, a notorious racist, ran on the American Independent ticket. Wallace cut heavily into Humphrey's Democratic support in the South. Wallace garnered more than 9.9 million votes, or 13.5 percent.
Richard M. Nixon was sworn in as the 39th president of the United States on January 20, 1969. His chief of staff is H.R. Haldeman, a former advertising executive with the J. Walter Thompson agency in California. Haldeman brought with him fellow ad-man Dwight Chapin, and appointed him special assistant to the president.
On January 20, 1969, the Nixon campaign illegally hid $1.4 million in leftover funds from the 1968 presidential campaign for use as a "slush-fund" in the 1972 re-election campaign. The funds were to be used as a way of evading a new election law -- due to take effect in 1971-- which would force candidates to reveal the sources of their donations. At the same time, the Nixon team set up "The Committee to Re-Elect the President." The unfortunate acronym was spelled and pronounced "CREEP."
On May 19, 1969, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover met with Dr. Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security advisor. Kissinger approved illegal phone taps on his staff in order to find out who was leaking information to the press about Nixon's illegal, secret B-52 bombing campaign in Cambodia. The logs recording the taps were not kept in the legally-required records, but in a separate file so the taps could be kept away from the courts.
In May, 1970, John Ehrlichman, chief domestic policy advisor to President Nixon, hired John Caulfield and Anthony Ulasewicz, former New York City policemen, to begin collecting intelligence on potential Democratic candidates for president. Caulfield worked directly for John Dean, counsel to President Nixon. Ulasewicz reported to Caulfield. As part of his duties, Ulasewicz illegally impersonated police detectives and reporters in his investigation of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), after Kennedy's car accident at Chappaquiddick bridge (where a young woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned).
The same month, Tom Huston, an ultra-right-wing college student who had been chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, met twice with tax investigators at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to persuade them to illegally audit tax-exempt left-wing groups to challenge their tax-exempt status. Huston, who was merely a drone on Nixon's speechwriting staff, got nowhere. But Nixon and others were impressed with his aggressiveness.
On June 5, 1970, Richard Nixon ordered Tom Huston to lead a working group of intelligence agency heads (CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, FBI, etc.) to investigate left-wing anti-war groups. Huston told the group that they should use illegal bugging, burglary and agent-provocateurs to destabilize the anti-war movement. The career bureaucrats were appalled, and demanded Nixon's approval before they went forward with these plans.
On July 14, 1970, Nixon approved the "Huston plan" and ordered it to go into effect on August 1, 1972.
On July 18, 1970, Huston wrote a memo to H.R. Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, advocating that the White House hire a team of burglars to break into the Brookings Institution (a liberal think-tank) and steal any official documents they found there. To cover their tracks, Huston advocated burning down Brookings in order to cover up the burglary.
On July 28, 1970, J. Edgar Hoover went to John Mitchell, U.S. Attorney General, to demand that Nixon withdraw approval for the "Huston plan." Alarmed by Hoover's description of the "Huson plan," Mitchell went to Nixon (one of his best friends), who withdrew his approval for the "Huston plan." By late January, 1971, Huston would leave the White House for unrelated reasons.
In November, 1970, Nixon hired Charles Colson, a Republican political operative from Massachusetts who had worked for Sen. Leverett Saltonstall (R-Mass.), as special White House counsel. Colson reported directly to the president, although in practice he had to go through chief of staff Haldeman.
In February, 1971, Nixon ordered that an automatic taping system be installed in the Oval Office.
In the spring of 1971, White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman installed Jeb Stuart Magruder to be director of CREEP. Haldman had initially recruited Magruder away from the cosmetics industry to be White House communications director in 1969. But now Haldeman wanted his own man in charge of CREEP, and Magruder was that man.
On May 5, 1971, Nixon and Haldeman conspired to have the Teamsters union send thugs into crowds of students (then protesting the war in Vietnam and threatening to block all bridges leading into D.C.), attacking them and beating them brutally. The plan was never carried out, because Haldeman believed the Teamsters would rat out Nixon if the plan were exposed.
In early June, 1971, special counsel Chuck Colson hired E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA agent, as a security consultant. Hunt reported directly to Colson.
Around the same time, Dwight Chapin contacted a former college classmate, Donald Segretti. Segretti had become an attorney, served in the Army and was now at loose ends. Chapin asked Segretti to help the Nixon re-election team destabilize the political system in the United States through the use of "dirty tricks." This would ensure Nixon's re-election. Segretti agreed, and said he would recruit other his friends to help.
The same month, cop-turned-White House-spy Jack Caulfield proposed "Operation Sandwedge." "Operation Sandwedge" would set up a phony security firm to provide fake security services to Republican corporate donors, who in turn would "pay for services" (e.g., make donations). This money would be used to fund illegal espionage and dirty tricks against the Democrats in the 1972 presidential campaign. Among Caulfield's proposals: penetrate Democratic headquarters with a mole; burglarize Democratic offices and steal or photograph documents; conduct illegal surveillance of Democratic meetings; and undertake a disinformation campaign to undermine the political process.
On June 13, 1971, the New York Times began publishing the "Pentagon Papers." Commissioned in 1967, the 47-volume, top-secret study by a defense contractor (the RAND Corp.) covered America's involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to May 1968. Only 15 copies of the study were made. The Pentagon Papers were leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, a RAND Corp. and Defense Dept. analyst who had become disenchanted with the war in Vietnam. Ellsberg gave the Pentagon Papers to New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan.
On June 14, Attorney General John Mitchell ordered the New York Times to cease publication of the Pentagon Papers. The Times refused.
On June 15, the Justice Dept. obtained an injunction from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York forcing the Times to cease publication of the Pentagon Papers.
On June 18, the Washington Post also began publishing the Pentagon Papers. The government attempted to win a court order against the Post, but the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia refused to grant the government's injunction.
On June 19, 1972, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York overturned the district court's injunction against the New York Times. The same day, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia refused to overturn the district court's ruling and grant an injunction against the Washington Post.
On June 24, 1971, the New York Times asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its appeal.
On June 30, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in "New York Times v. United States" (403 U.S. 713) -- in the most important of all free-speech cases ever handed down -- that the injunction against the New York Times constituted "prior restraint of the press" and was an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.
In response to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, an outraged Nixon set up an "enemies list" of people who opposed Nixon and who Nixon felt were "out to get him." Initially limited to only 20 or so names, it expanded over the summer to more than 100 people and organizations.
On July 1, 1971, Gordon Strachan, chief aide to White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, received permission from Haldeman to set up "Operation Sandwedge."
On July 2, 1971, Nixon told H.R. Haldeman to establish a "plumbers" unit to plug "leaks" in the administration. Haldeman's chief aide, Egil "Bud" Krogh, headed the "Plumbers." Krogh was a lawyer who served as Nixon's advisor for national-capital affairs, then as drug czar, then as an aide to John Ehrlichman. The other Plumbers included E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy and David Young.
G. Gordon Liddy, an attorney, was formerly the chief aide to domestic policy advisor John Ehrlichman. Liddy resigned in December 1971 and became chief counsel for CREEP, then chief finance counsel to CREEP (supposedly advising the organization on the new campaign finance law). But Liddy's real job was "security" -- making sure CREEP was not bugged, and collecting intelligence on the Democrats.
David Young was appointments secretary to Dr. Henry Kissinger at the National Security Council and later was loaned out as an aide to John Ehrlichman.
The Plumbers reported to Ehrlichman. On several occasions, the Plumbers received assistance from Robert Mardian, Assistant Attorney General for Internal Security at the Justice Department. Mardian illegally used his office to obtain wiretaps and evidence about news leaks that the Plumbers could use against Nixon's political foes. By July 20, the Plumbers had a phone installed in Room 16 of the White House in the name of Kathleen Chenow, Young's secretary. The phone was installed with Ehrlichman's approval; calls to the phone went directly to the AT&T swithing facility in downtown D.C., and did not go through the White House switchboard. The phone was used by Hunt to contact the Watergate burglars and others doing illegal work for the White House.
On August 5, 1971, Bud Krogh and David Young proposed burglarizing the offices of California psychiatrist Lewis Fielding to find files on Daniel Ellsberg, the analyst who had leaked the "Pentagon Papers." Ellsberg had become severely depressed after his stint as a civilian analyst in Vietnam, and Fielding was his psychiatrist. Ehrlichman approved the plan a week later.
On August 15, 1971, Colson aide E. Howard Hunt traveled to Miami to meet an old CIA friend, Bernard Barker. There, he recruited Barker and several other anti-Castro Cubans to work for the Plumbers.
In mid-August, 1971, Nixon appointments secretary Dwight Chapin formally hired Donald Segretti to subvert and destroy the American political process by undermining the candidacies of Nixon's Republican challengers and Democratic opponents.
On September 9, 1971, the Plumbers burglarized Fielding's office, looking for evidence that would discredit or ruin Ellsberg. They found nothing.
On September 18, 1971, Haldeman ordered that more money be budgeted for "Operation Sandwedge." Attorney General Mitchell, illegally acting as head of CREEP even though he would not resign as attorney general for another nine months, transferred $50,000 to ex-cop Caulfield for use in "Operation Sandwedge." The money went through Herb Kalmbach, Nixon's personal attorney and CREEP's deputy finance chairman.
On September 28, 1971, Colson aide E. Howard Hunt attempted to forge State Department cables that would link President John F. Kennedy to the 1963 assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. The hope was that the forged cables would discredit the Democrats, especially Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). Hunt leaked the forged cables to "Life" magazine, but the magazine was unable to verify their authenticity before the magazine ceased publication (which occurred three months later).
On December 6, 1971, G. Gordon Liddy resigned as Erhlichman's aide and was hired by CREEP as its general counsel. But Liddy's real duties were to begin the illegal tapping of corporate donors for "security" and to funnel these funds to "Operation Sandwedge."
On January 1, 1972, ex-cop and Ehrlichman staffer Caulfield hired James McCord, a former CIA officer, to work for "Operation Sandwedge." McCord would officially be CREEP's security coordinator under Liddy.
Some time in early 1972, Maurice Stans, Nixon's former Commerce Secretary and now finance chairman of CREEP, set up a money-laundering operation with a Mexican attorney named Manuel Ogarrio Daguerre. Stans encouraged conservative Democrats, corporations (which were barred by law from donating to political campaigns), businessmen or labor leaders having regulatory problems, special-interest groups and underground sources (such as the mafia, mob-dominated labor unions, casinos and others) to donate to the Nixon campaign before the new campaign finance law went into effect on April 7, 1972. The money would be laundered through Ogarrio's bank account in Mexico (where the bank records were beyond the reach of American subpoenas), and then Ogarrio would then write checks to the Nixon campaign.
On Jan. 27, 1972, G. Gordon Liddy met with Attorney General John Mitchell. Liddy proposed a $1 million operation called "Operation Gemstone." Burglary-and-bugging operations against Democratic headquarters and the campaign officers of Democratic presidential contenders; kidnapping of anti-war leaders, drugging them and holding them in Mexico; bugging the bedrooms of Democratic leaders; hiring prostitutes to sleep with Democratic candidates for president and then exposing the affairs on television; hiring a chase plan to bug the Democratic presidential campaign plane; hiring Cuban terrorists to sabotage the Democratic National Convention hotel and hall; hiring drug users, hippies and pedophiles to stage mass demonstrations in "support" of the Democrats; funding radical Democratic candidates for president in order to force the party to repudiate its liberal wing -- all this and more was part of "Gemstone." Appalled at the plan's cost (but not the plan's illegal activities), Mitchell ordered Liddy to come up with something different.
Some time after the Jan. 27 meeting, G. Gordon Liddy proposed murdering syndicated political columnist Jack Anderson. His proposal was rejected by Mitchell, who claimed the sanction was "too severe" for the "crimes" Anderson had committed.
On February 4, 1972, "Operation Gemstone" was scaled back to $500,000. The bugging operations were rtained. John Dean, counsel to Nixon, obtained approval for "Operation Gemstone" from White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman.
March 30, 1972, "Operation Gemstone" was scaled back to $250,000 at a meeting between John Mitchell, Nixon special counsel Chuck Colson, CREEP director Jeb Magruder and Mitchell's chief advisor, Fred LaRue. Colson argued that the chief target of the bugging plan should be Lawrence O'Brien, the Democrat's top strategist. Thus, the decision was made to bug the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters.
On April 7, 1972, Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon's personal attorney, resigned as deputy finance chairman for CREEP. Kalmbach resigned because he was too "dirty" to keep working under the new federal campaign finance law, which went into effect that day.
On April 11, 1972, Nixon's Midwest finance chairman, Kenneth H. Dahlberg, received from a Republican donor a cashier's check for $25,000. He turned it over to CREEP. It was never deposited in CREEP's accounts, but put into a "slush-fund" of cash and cashier's checks that was kept in a safe in the office of CREEP finance chairman Maurice Stans.
On May 2, 1972, J. Edgar Hoover died of a heart attack in his sleep. His deputy, L. Patrick Gray, was made acting director of the FBI. The #3 man, W. Mark Felt, was elevated to be Gray's deputy.
On May 28, 1972, as part of "Operation Gemstone," G. Gordon Liddy and three others installed bugging equipment at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate hotel and office complex in Washington, D.C. But the equipment failed to function properly, and a second operation was planned.
On June 17, 1972, five burglars -- Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, James W. McCord and Frank Sturgis -- were arrested at 2:30 a.m. during a break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate hotel and office complex in Washington, D.C. The next morning, McCord admitted before the arraigning judge that he was a former CIA agent (but he did not disclose his current job as security director for CREEP). Bernard Barker was also a former CIA agent who had retired and opened a real estate agency in Miami. Gonzalez and Martinez were anti-Castro Cubans living in Miami. Gonzalez was a locksmith; Martinez worked for Barker's real estate agency. Sturgis was also a former CIA agent who had engaged in anti-Castro operations. The same day, E. Howard Hunt removed $10,000 from the Plumber's safe in the White House in order to pay lawyers for the five men. Later in the day, White House counsel John Dean was given possession of Hunt's own safe at the White House. In the safe, Dean discovered two notebooks which contained the names, phone numbers and addresses of a number of people involved in the Watergate break-in. Dean illegally destroyed the notebooks.
On June 18, 1972, the Associated Press reported that James W. McCord was the security director for CREEP. The name of E. Howard Hunt was also in the notebook of both Eugenio Martinez and James W. McCord. Hunt was a consultant who worked for Charles W. Colson, chief counsel to President Nixon. Colson was considered the White House "hatchet man" – the one who did dirty tricks and "fixed" things. The same day, E. Howard Hunt went into hiding.
On June 19, 1972, former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, now chairman of CREEP, denied any link to the burglary operation. The odd thing is, no one had asked Mitchell for a statement. This peaked the interest of political reporters at the "Washington Post" and "New York Times." The same day, President Nixon ordered the CIA to "hinder" the FBI's investigation of the Watergate burglary, telling CIA director Richard Helms that the burglary involved "national security." Mass destruction and shredding of campaign documents occurred at CREEP headquarters as campaign officials sought to destroy any record of involvement with the Watergate burglary. The shredding was conducted by Robert Odle, former staff assistant for communications in the Nixon White House and now director of personnel at CREEP. Robert C. Mardian, a former Assistant Attorney General for Internal Security and now CREEP's political coordinator, began telling CREEP staff to "hold the ship together" and not volunteer any information to the FBI. Assisting Mardian was Fred LaRue, formerly John Mitchell's chief aide at the Justice Dept. and now Mitchell's chief aide at CREEP. Mardian and LaRue also oversaw CREEP's lawyers, including attorney Kenneth Parkinson.
On June 22, 1972, Mitchell fired Liddy. According to a Washington Post story in August, Mitchell (by now in retirement) said he fired Liddy because Liddy refused to answer FBI agents' questions about Watergate.
On June 24, 1972, John Dean turned E. Howard Hunt's safe -- minus the destroyed notebooks -- over to the FBI.
On June 28, 1972, Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray was called to a meeting with White House domestic policy advisor John Ehrlichman and White House counsel John Dean. Ehrlichman gave Gray two sets of documents taken from E. Howard Hunt's safe in the White House. One set of documents contained Hunt's faked State Department cables implicating President Kennedy in the murder of Ngo Dinh Diem. The other set of documents contained evidence of an embarrassing nature to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). Ehrlichman told Gray that Dean had taken the files from Hunt's safe, and that Gray should make sure the documents "never see the light of day." Gray kept the files at his home until Christmas Day, 1972. Then he burned them -- destroying evidence and obstructing justice.
On July 1, 1972, John Mitchell resigned as chairman of CREEP, ostensibly because his wife wanted him to. He was replaced by Clark MacGregor, a former Republican representative from Minnesota who had retired and then signed on to be Nixon's chief aide for congressional relations.
Early July, 1972: Hugh Sloan, a former scheduling aide in the Nixon White House who had become CREEP's treasurer, resigned his position "for personal reasons." Sloan had been pressured by his wife to leave after he revealed to her that CREEP higher-ups had created a secret, illegal slush fund for use in political dirty-tricks campaigns. He was replaced by Paul E. Barrick. Shortly after Sloan's resignation, the slush-fund was moved from finance chairman Maurice Stans' office to Fred LaRue's office in the CREEP director's suite. Stans approved the transfer of the fund as well as an $80,000 hush-money payment to the Watergate burglars. The same day, another $350,000 in CREEP funds was transferred from an Alexandria, Va., safe-deposit box and given to the burglars to keep them quiet.
On July 7, 1972, E. Howard Hunt turned himself in to the FBI. Walter O. Bittman, Hunt's attorney, received $25,000 in cash in a brown paper envelope in order to take the case. Bittman never said who gave him the cash, but indicated it had come from CREEP.
On August 1, 1972, the Washington Post reported that a $25,000 cashier's check made out to the Nixon re-election campaign had been found in the bank account of Watergate burglar Bernard Barker by the Miami district attorney. Barker's account also held four other cashier's checks totaling $89,000, all four drawn on a Mexico City bank. The Miami district attorney, who was running for re-election and looking for a scandal to boost his chances, had been investigating whether Florida law had been broken by Cuban nationals assisting the Watergate burglars. The Miami investigators subpoenaed Barker's bank accounts as part of their investigation and discovered the checks. The $25,000 check was made out to Kenneth H. Dahlberg, the Midwest finance chairman for the Nixon re-election bid. Dahlberg said he had turned the check over to either John Mitchell or Maurice Stans at CREEP.
On August 16, 1972, CREEP chairman Clark MacGregor held a press conference in which he claimed G. Gordon Liddy mis-used a $100,000 cash fund (designated for security at the GOP convention) to fund the Watergate burglary.
On August 22, 1972, the Washington Post reported that the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the Congress and the agency charged with maintaining reports about campaign finances under the new federal campaign finance law, found that CREEP had mis-used at least $500,000 in campaign funds. The same day, Judge Charles Richey, who was presiding over the DNC's $1 million lawsuit against CREEP, shocked court observers by sealing all the pretrial testimony in the case until the suit had been decided. Judge Richey phoned Carl Bernstein later that night to adamantly deny that he had been approached by anyone from CREEP. Bernstein was dumbstruck; he had never met Judge Richey.
On August 26, 1972, the Washington Post reported that the GAO had uncovered an additional $350,000 in illegal cash funds maintained by CREEP. The Post also reported on the Mexican money-laundering scheme set up by CREEP finance chairman Stans, and that more than $750,000 in additional money (raised exclusively in the Southwest) had also been laundered through Mexico.
On August 29, 1972, President Richard Nixon held his first press conference of the year. Nixon admitted that there had been "technical violations" of the new campaign finance law, but asserted (without any evidence) that the Democrats had also violated the law. Nixon also claimed that White House counsel John Dean had conducted an investigation into the Watergate matter (Nixon called this "the Dean report") and found that no one from the White House was involved. In fact, Dean had not discussed Watergate at all with the President and had made no report. Dean had conducted an investigation, but it had been designed to provide Nixon with the facts regarding the role Nixon's aides had played in the break-in. In other words, the "Dean report" was designed to be the foundation for the cover-up, not an attempt to expose it.
On August 30, 1972, the Washington Post reported that Watergate burglar Bernard Barker had told friends that "someone" was paying his legal bills. It was the first public acknowledgement that illegal cash payments were being made to the Watergate burglars.
Early September, 1972: The FBI purposefully limited its investigation of the Watergate break-in by refusing to ask witnesses and others obvious questions about motive, obvious questions of fact, asking vague questions that could be easily evaded and not following up on leads. Around the same time, CREEP chairman Clark MacGregor called Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee to complain about visits Woodward and Bernstein made to CREEP employees. MacGregor claimed the reporters were "harassing" CREEP employees.
On September 15, 1972, a federal grand jury handed down indictments against the five Watergate burglars and against E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. The indictments were narrow, accusing the men of eight counts each of conspiracy, wiretapping and burglary. There was nothing in the indictments of Hunt and Liddy about bribery payments from CREEP. That afternoon, President Nixon met with White House counsel John Dean and chief of staff H.R. Haldeman. Nixon told Dean that he approved of the way Dean had "prevented" the indictments from going any higher up the chain of command than Liddy.
On September 18, 1972, the Washington Post reported that CREEP deputy campaign director Jeb Magruder, Herbert L. "Bart" Porter (former White House advance man and now director of scheduling at CREEP) and G. Gordon Liddy had all received illegal hush-money payments of at least $50,000 in connection with the Watergate break-in.
On September 20, 1972, the Washington Post reported that John Mitchell had personally chosen his top aide, Fred LaRue, and CREEP political director Robert Mardian to undertake the destruction CREEP records immediately following the arrest of the burglars, cleansing CREEP files long before the FBI began its investigation. The Post reported that CREEP personnel director Robert Odle had also been involved. Vanished records included wiretap memos, papers indicating which individuals had received slush-fund payments and ledger books containing the names of illegal campaign donors. The Post's article claimed that Mardian, LaRue and Odle had counseled campaign workers to not talk about certain aspects of the bugging and money opeatioins, and had suggested specific responses to FBI investigators' questions. Finally, the Post reported that many campaign workers had been promoted after hiding evidence; others had been interrogated and reprimanded after meeting with reporters.
On September 29, 1972, the Washington Post reported that, while serving as Attorney General, John Mitchell had secretly controlled the illegal CREEP fund used to finance dirty-tricks operations against the Democrats. Mitchell's control of the political party's fund was in direct violation of federal law. When read the opening paragraphs of the story, Mitchell warned that "Katie Graham is going to get her tit caught in a wringer" -- one of the most notorious political comments of all time.
On October 5, 1972, the Los Angeles Times ran a lengthy interview with Alfred C. Baldwin III, a lawyer and former FBI agent who had been involved with the bugging of the DNC and the second burglary attempt. Baldwin admitted it was he who had served as lookout both times in the Howard Johnson hotel across the street from the Watergate.
On October 10, 1972, the Washington Post reported that the FBI had established that the Watergate break-in stemmed from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of the Nixon re-election effort. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign funds had been expended to pay for the campaign aimed at subverting the American electoral process. Damaging letters had been forged; false and manufactured items had been given to the press; campaign schedules had been tampered with and thrown into disarray; confidential campaign files had been stolen; provocateurs had been planted inside campaigns; false campaign literature had been distributed; events had been cancelled without authorization; outrageous calls to voters were made on behalf of campaigns; campaign officials had been impersonated; fake appointments were set up and then "skipped" to anger supportive constituent groups.
The article also reported that Ken Clawson, a former Washington Post reporter and new director of communications for the Nixon White House, had written the notorious "Canuck letter." The letter was allegedly from a man from Florida who claimed that the campaign of Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-Maine) had called French-Americans living in New Hampshire by the derogatory term "Canucks." The letter had been published by the Manchester Union-Leader, an ultra-conservative newspaper, on Feb. 24, 1971 -- two days before Muskie was due to campaign in New Hampshire. On Feb. 25, the Union-Leader published accusations that Muskie's wife swore, smoked and was an alcoholic. In a near-blizzard on Feb. 26, Muskie held an impromptu outdoor press conference in which he angrily denied both the Canuck Letter and the accusations against his wife. Then Muskie broke down in tears. The press conference doomed the Muskie campaign.
On October 11, 1972, the Washington Post reported on 10 documented cases of sabotage against the McGovern campaign, examples which seriously undermined the democratic process. The same day, E. Howard Hunt filed a motion asking for return of personal items left at the White House. Contained in Hunt's motion was a request for the two notebooks. This was the first the FBI had heard about any notebooks (which Dean had already destroyed).
On October 12, 1972, the Washington Post reported on additional attempts to sabotage the Muskie campaign in early 1971. The illegal sabotage efforts included: use of Muskie Senate stationary to mail damaging and false information about Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to Democratic members of Congress; sending unordered liquor, flowers, pizzas, cakes and entertainers to a Muskie fund-raiser; allegations of sexual misconduct against Sen. Hubert Humphrey and Sen. Henry Jackson on fake Muskie campaign letterhead; inflammatory, racist calls in the dead of night to voters in New Hampshire; and theft of polling data.
On October 15, 1972, the Washington Post reported that White House appointments secretary Dwight Chapin had been Donald Segretti's contact in the Nixon campaign. And although the Justice Department knew about the connection between the White House and the dirty-tricks conspiracy, it had not followed up on the leads after new Attorney General Richard Kleindeinst had ordere the FBI not to. The article also said that Segretti had been paid a $20,000-a-year salary ($91,700 a year in 2005 dollars), and that his contact was a lawyer who was a highly-placed friend of the president.
On October 16, 1972, Time magazine reported that Dwight Chapin had actually hired Segretti, not just been his contact. Also implicated in Segretti's employment was Gordon Strachan, H.R. Haldeman's aide. Strachan, too, was a college friend of Segretti's. Time reported that the lawyer who paid Segretti was none other than Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon's personal lawyer and former CREEP deputy finance chairman.
On October 17, 1972, the Washington Post reported that Kalmbach had personally controlled the illegal campaign slush-fund that had been used to pay for the dirty-tricks conspiracy.
On October 18, 1972, the New York Times reported that it had obtained telephone records showing that Donald Segretti had called Dwight Chapin at the White House as well as at Chapin's home in Bethesda, Maryland. Segretti had also called E. Howard Hunt's office in the White House and Hunt's home at least 21 different times.
On October 24, 1972, the Washington Post reported that H.R. Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, had been named in secret grand-jury testimony as one of the persons who controlled CREEP's dirty-tricks slush-fund. The Post story was wrong: Haldeman did control the fund, but he was never named in grand-jury testimony. Nixon was able to deny the Post's story outright, damaging the Post's reputation and forcing Post editor Ben Bradlee to rein in his reporters -- hindering their investigation.
On October 26, 1972, the New York Times reported that the size of the CREEP slush-fund was far larger than anyone knew, more than $900,000.
On October 29, 1972, Time magazine reported that Dwight Chapin had admitted to FBI agents that he had hired Donald Segretti to disrupt the Democratic campaign, and that Segretti's pay had been set by Herbert Kalmbach. Kalmbach, for his part, admitted to having had a hand in paying Segretti more than $35,000.
On October 30, 1972, the Washington Post corrected its Oct. 24 story, but stuck by its claim that Haldeman had controlled the fund.
On November 11, 1972, Richard M. Nixon was reelected in one of the largest landslides in American political history, taking 61 percent of the vote against Sen. George McGovern (D-S.D.).
On December 8, 1972, the Washington Post reported that H.R. Haldeman had operated the secret CREEP fund through his subordinates: CREEP deputy campaign director Jeb Magruder, CREEP finance counsel G. Gordon Liddy, CREEP scheduling secretary Bart Porter and Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon's personal lawyer and CREEP deputy finance chairman. For their role in helping cover up the burglary, all four had received large payments from the illegal slush-fund. The same day, Dorothy Hunt -- wife of E. Howard Hunt -- died when her United Airlines plane crashed in a Chicago suburb. Dorothy Hunt's purse contained $10,585 cash. (Although no one ever established where the money came from, it is assumed it was part of a payment from CREEP to Hunt and his family.) Shortly thereafter, John Ehrlichman met with John Dean and told him that President Nixon had approved clemency for H.R. Haldeman.
On December 19, 2972, Judge John J. Sirica, who was overseeing the trail of the five Watergate burglars, jailed the Los Angeles Times' Washington bureau chief for refusing to hand over tapes and transcripts of Alfred C. Baldwin's interview with the Times from Oct. 5, 1972. After several hours in jail, the bureau chief was released by an appellate court pending further review.
On December 22, 1972, Alfred Baldwin voluntarily released his copy of the interview tapes to Judge Sirica.
On December 23, 1972, the Washington Post reported that Watergate burglar James McCord had paid for bugging equipment with $3,500 in $100 bills, and had actually left his CREEP calling card behind.
On January 8, 1973, Judge John J. Sirica began presiding over the trial of the five Watergate burglars. E. Howard Hunt changed his plea to guilty the same day.
On January 11, 1973, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) asked Sen. Sam Ervin (D-N.C.) to head a Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to investigate the Watergate affair.
On January 14, 1973, the New York Times reported that Barker, Gonzalez, Martinez and Sturgis were being paid hush-money to keep quiet. The Times also reported that Sturgis had been told that John Mitchell had not only known of the burglary but had approved and encouraged it.
On January 15, four of the Watergate burglars -- Barker, Gonzalez, Martinez and Sturgis -- pled guilty. The same day, Time magazine reported that Barker, Gonzalez, Martinez and Sturgis were being paid $1,000 a month to keep quiet. Columnist Jack Anderson, meanwhile, reported that the hush-money payments had been funneled through E. Howard Hunt, who delivered part of the cash to Bernard Barker for disbursement while making other disbursements himself. The Washington Post reported the same story, including a report that Hunt had pressured the four to plead guilty in order to keep the cover-up going. During the sentencing hearing, Martinez -- who had been on a $100-a-month CIA retainer until the day after the Watergate break-in -- claimed he had never been on the CIA's payroll. All four said they had not been pressured, had not received pay-off money, had not been promised pardons, had burgled the DNC because they felt the DNC was involved in a Cuban communist conspiracy and had no idea where the $114,000 in Barker's bank account had come from.
On January 30, 1973, CREEP finance counsel G. Gordon Liddy and CREEP director of security James W. McCord were convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping.
On February 2, 1973, Nixon fired Richard Helms, director of the CIA, for refusing to continue to cover up the Watergate scandal.
On February 7, 1973, the U.S Senate voted 77-0 to create the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. Senator Sam Ervin cultivated a folksy image as a country lawyer, but his intelligent and crafty supervision of the committee later became crucial as Republicans sought to avoid an impeachment trial. The committee's chief counsel was Sam Dash, former chief of the Appeals Division of the U.S. District Attorney's Office in Philadelphia. The ranking minority member on the committee was Sen. Howard Baker (R-Tenn.). Dash reassured concerned Republicans that the panel would probe wrongdoing by members of both political parties -- helping to ensure the committee's freedom of action. But Dash played a much larger role than simply helping to allay GOP concerns about the committee's fairness. When Judge John J. Sirica advised Frank McCord to cooperate fully with the Senate inquiry, Dash managed to get McCord to confirm rumors that Nixon aides John Dean and Jeb Stuart Magruder knew about the cover-up before it took place. Dash also got McCord to promise to name others involved in the cover-up. Knowing that McCord was reluctant to be involved and might back out of these agreements, Dash reported McCord's allegations to the media. The resulting furor so angered McCord that he requested the opportunity to address members of the committee in secret session. Essentially, Dash forced McCord to "go public" with his testimony rather than keep it between Dash and himself. In that closed-door session, McCord testified that G. Gordon Liddy had told him that Attorney General John Mitchell had approved the burglary plans. McCord also revealed the involvement of Dean, Magruder and special counsel Charles Colson in the cover-up. Within minutes, details of McCord's disclosures reached the media. That evening, in an address to the Washington Press Club, Sen. Baker confirmed what the committee had learned about Dean and Magruder. McCord's testimony began the unraveling of the White House cover-up. During the Watergate hearings, Dash continued to orchestrate a torrent of leaks to the media and he played a key role in the process which eventually forced Nixon to resign.
On February 14, 1973, the Washington Post reported that E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy had illegally received information from illegal national-security wiretaps and that the transcripts had been routed to them in violation of federal law by former NSC staffer (now Ehrlichman aide) David Young.
On February 26, 1973, Time magazine reported that the Nixon White House had illegally bugged the phones and offices of more than a half-dozen reporters and more than 25 White House staffers and government aides -- all in attempt to stop leaks to the news media and learn more about anti-Nixon political opponents. The wiretaps had been approved by Attorney General John Mitchell and carried out by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his successor, Acting Director L. Patrick Gray. The same day, CREEP served subpoenas on the Washington Post, Washington Star, New York Times and Time magazine, seeking all notes, tapes and story drafts regarding Watergate. The Post moved its files and put them in the possession of publisher Katherine Graham to keep them out of the hands of CREEP.
In late February, 1973, the Washington Post reported that CREEP had established a "Kiddie Corps" of collegians willing to act as spies and provocateurs for the Nixon re-election campaign. One such operative had been Theodore Brill, a 20-year-old George Washington University student who had infiltrated a group of Quakers who had been maintaining a 24-hour/7-day-a-week vigil in front of the White House. Brill had been hired by George Gorton, a 25-year-old college grad who was CREEP's national college director. At one point, Brill was paid $150 a week (almost $690 a week in 2005 dollars) to infiltrate the Quakers and make regular reports on their personal lives and plans. He later assisted in a plan to set the Quakers up on drug charges. When Washington, D.C., police raided the Quaker pup-tent in front of the White House, they found nothing. Brill later admitted to the Post that his job had been terminated two days after the Watergate break-in; Gorton told him that "people at the White House were upset" over the dirty-tricks. Gorton later admitted that he had 25 such provocateurs all over the country, operating in 38 states. Gorton reported directly to Ken Reitz, director of CREEP's Youth Vote Division. Brill's salary never appeared on CREEP's books, which led to another GAO audit and additional revelations about the "Kiddie Corps."
On February 28, 1973, hearings began on the nomination of L. Patrick Gray to be director of the FBI. Gray asserted that the Watergate investigation had been "massive." Then, before an astonished Senate Judiciary Committee, Gray admitted that he had turned over all of the FBI's files on Watergate to John Dean -- leaving the impression that the FBI had acted as Dean's valet. Essentially, Gray stupidly admitted that he had given all the prosecution's files to the very men being investigated. Gray's admission doomed his nomination and threw the Nixon camp into a tizzy.
On March 2, 1973, President Nixon claimed executive privilege over everything counsel John Dean had written and said, and over everything in the missing Hunt notebooks. ("Executive privilege" is the claim that preliminary documents and other materials generated during the decision-making process are confidential and should not be released to the public or others. Only final work-products are public documents.)
On March 3, 1973, the Washington Post reported that John Dean had destroyed the missing notebooks after finding them in President Nixon's personal financial files. (The Post's story was mistaken; Dean had destroyed them after finding them in Hunt's safe.)
On March 6, 1973, acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray released documents regarding his Watergate investigation to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Included in the documents was a document titled "Interview with Herbert W. Kalmbach." In the document, Kalmbach admitted to having hired Donald Segretti at the recommendation of Dwight Chapin, paid Segretti thousands of dollars for dirty-tricks designed to undermine the democratic process, that these payments came out of the CREEP slush-fund, and that Chapin knew of and had approved the payments. The document undermined 10 months' worth of White House denials about Chapin, Segretti, the slush-fund and Kalmbach.
On March 19, 1973, McCord sent a letter to Judge Sirica in which he claimed that the four other Watergate burglars had pled guilty under duress. He said all five committed perjury, and that others were involved in the Watergate break-in. McCord claimed that the burglars lied at the urging of John Dean and John Mitchell. McCord's allegations of a cover-up and obstruction of justice by the highest law enforcement officials in the land blew Watergate wide open.
On March 21, 1973, CREEP's subpoenas of the Post's files were thrown out of court as irrelevant. The same day, John Dean met with President Nixon and told him what Nixon already secretly knew: That the Watergate burglary and obstruction of justice reached as high as John Mitchell, Charles Colson, John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman. Dean made his famous statement that "there is a cancer eating away at the presidency." Dean gave Nixon a list of conspirators, which included most of the top White House staff. Nixon told Dean he would take Dean's evidence under advisement and "seek justice." Instead, Nixon told Mitchell, Colson, Ehrlichman and Haldeman what evidence Dean had uncovered. Nixon and the others then plotted for ways to blame Watergate solely on Dean. But they were unable to come up with a watertight plan.
On March 22, 1973, L. Patrick Gray testified at his nomination hearing that John Dean had "probably" lied to FBI investigators about Hunt's position, relationship and duties in the White House.
On March 23, 1973, McCord's letter to Judge Sirica was published by the Associated Press. The same day, Sam Dash, chief counsel for the Watergate committee, held a press conference in which he announced that McCord had said that Jeb Magruder and John Dean had advance knowledge of the Watergate bugging and were involved in its planning. The White House immediately denied Dean's involved, but did not deny Magruder's. By cutting Magruder adrift, the White House not only admitted that the conspiracy and illegal acts went higher than previously admitted but the White House also made an enemy of Jeb Stuart Magruder -- who promptly began spilling his guts in exchange for immunity and a lightened sentence.
On March 29, 1973, James McCord testified behind closed-doors before the Senate Watergate committee. McCord said that G. Gordon Liddy had told him that the burglary plans and budget had been approved by John Mitchell while Mitchell was still Attorney General, and that Charles Colson knew about Watergate in advance. Although McCord's testimony was hearsay (e.g., second-hand from the eyewitness, Liddy), it was widely reported as fact.
On April 6, 1973, John Dean began secretly cooperating with the FBI and Congressional investigators.
On April 9, 1973, the New York Times reported that CREEP security director James McCord had testified that cash payoffs to the Watergate burglars had come directly from CREEP. McCord, the Times said, had also testified that CREEP lawyer Kenneth Parkinson and Dorothy Hunt (the late wife of E. Howard Hunt) were conduits for the cash.
On April 10, 1973, the Watergate prosecutors told Assistant Attorney General Henry Peterson that they were on the verge of indicting several of Nixon's closest present and former aides. The prosecutors insisted that Nixon be told of the coming indictments, and that Nixon order his staff to cooperate fully with the prosecutors. Peterson went to Nixon later that day and told him what the prosecutors had requested. That night, Peterson told the prosecutors that Nixon said he would fire his aides and issue a cooperation order immediately. But Nixon had said neither thing.
On April 14, 1973, Jeb Magruder approached the Watergate prosecutors and told them that John Mitchell and John Dean had both approved the bugging plans and payoff scheme, and that G. Gordon Liddy had been at the same meetings.
On April 17, 1973, President Nixon announced that he, personally, was taking over the Watergate investigation from the Justice Department and FBI. Nixon also announced he was going to permit his top aides to testify before the Senate Watergate committee. However, Nixon said, he would fire anyone who was indicted for any Watergate-related crimes.
On April 19, 1973, the Washington Post reported that John Mitchell and John Dean had been fingered by Magruder as two of the men who had approved the Watergate break-in. The same day, the New York Times reported that Attorney General Richard Kleindeinst had recused himself from any further dealings with the Watergate investigation or prosecution due to the involvement of "close associates" in the cover-up. Later that day, John Dean told President Nixon that he had no intention of being the "fall-guy" for Watergate and that he would tell the Congress everything he knew if Nixon tried to pin the entire thing on him.
On April 20, 1973, the Washington Post and other papers reported that John Dean had issued a press release announcing that he would not become the scapegoat for Watergate. The same day, John Mitchell testified before the Watergate grand jury that he had refused to approve wiretapping plans on three separate occasions. Mitchell later repeated his contention in public that afternoon. The same day, Charles Colson met with Watergate prosecutors and turned over documentary evidence that John Dean had been involved in the cover-up. It was Colson's attempt to discredit Dean.
On April 21, 1973, the Washington Post reported that H.R. Haldeman had personally approved the establishment of the slush-fund, the dirty-tricks campaign, the burglary and bugging operation, and the Watergate cover-up. The Post also said that Dean had refused to go along with plans for the bugging, but that Haldeman had gone ahead anyway. Dean's Aug. 29, 1972, report to the President had been a sham, the Post said; it was designed to provide cover for Nixon's closest aides rather than be a full investigation into Watergate. Dean, the Post said, was now seeking a deal with prosecutors so that he could tell them all he knew without going to jail. The same day, the New York Times reported that John Mitchell had told friends that he had listened to proposals to bug the DNC on three separate occasions, and had rejected them each time. The Times also reported that Mitchell had seen Dean, too, reject such plans.
On April 22, 1983, the Washington Post reported that John Mitchell told the Watergate grand jury that he had approved payments to the Watergate burglars, but that he had approved the payments only for their legal bills and not as hush-money. Mitchell also testified that Jeb Magruder had obtained approval for the burglary and bugging plan from Charles Colson at the White House after Mitchell had refused it the third time.
On April 27, 1973, the New York Daily News and the Washington Post reported that acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray had personally destroyed documents taken from E. Howard Hunt's White House safe. One set of documents contained fictitious State Department cables designed to implicate President Kennedy in the murder of Ngo Dinh Diem. The second set of documents contained information of an embarrassing nature to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). The stories implicated the nation's second-highest law enforcement officer in the destruction evidence -- a federal crime. Gray resigned as acting FBI director. EPA administrator William D. Ruckleshaus was appointed acting director of the FBI.
On April 28, 1973, the Associated Press reported that E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy had supervised the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist in 1971. The AP had learned about the Fielding break-in from Watergate prosecutors, who had confirmed John Dean's account of that burglary operation.
On April 29, 1973, columnist Jack Anderson reported that Gordon Strachan, H.R. Haldeman's chief aide, had told the Watergate grand jury that Haldeman had ordered him to turn over $350,000 in CREEP donations to Fred LaRue. The same day, the Washington Post reported that the $350,000 was hush-money for the Watergate burglars. The New York Times reported the same thing, but also revealed that Haldeman had illegally received wiretap transcripts and had personally approved the hiring of Donald Segretti.
On April 30, 1973, President Nixon spoke to the nation on television and announced the resignation of chief of staff H.R. Haldeman and domestic policy advisor John Ehrlichman. Nixon said that Attorney General Richard Kleindienst had also resigned and was being replaced by the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Elliot Richardson. In a press release issued that same night, Nixon also announced that he had fired John Dean for leading a cover-up of the Watergate affair and for managing the burglary, dirty-tricks campaign and secret funds project. Meanwhile, Watergate prosecutors -- astonished that Nixon had waited 20 days before announcing the resignation of Haldeman and Ehrlichman and furious that Nixon had never ordered his staff to cooperate with the Watergate prosecutors -- finally became convinced that Nixon himself was involved in the cover-up.
On May 1, 1973, White House press secretary Ron Ziegler apologized to the Washington Post for claiming that the Post had gotten its coverage wrong.
On May 7, 1973, Newsweek reported that John Dean was prepared to tell the Watergate prosecutors that President Nixon knew of the Watergate cover-up. Dean, the magazine said, had met with the President and Haldeman in September 1972. At that time, the President voiced approval for the way Dean had managed to contain the indictments to lower-level employees. In December, Dean said, he had met with Ehrlichman and Ehrlichman had told him that Nixon had approved clemency for Haldeman. These two incidents, Dean said, convinced him that Nixon knew far more about Watergate than he claimed and that Nixon himself was involved in approving the cover-up.
On May 8, 1973, the Washington Post reported that the White House had approved illegal wiretaps on the telephones of two New York Times reporters, Neil Sheehan and Hedrick Smith.
On May 10, 1973, acting FBI director William D. Ruckelshaus admitted to Judge Matthew Byrne that the FBI had overlooked evidence that it had illegally tapped the phones of Morton Halperin, one of Henry Kissinger's top aides. Judge Byrne was overseeing Daniel Ellsberg's trial for the theft of government property and violation of national security. Ruckelshaus also admitted that the FBI had overheard Ellsberg talking about the Pentagon Papers with Halperin. Ruckelshaus never admitted that the FBI had illegally tapped the phones of the New York Times.
On May 11, 1973, Judge Byrne ruled that "government misconduct" had irreparably harmed the prosecution's case. He dismissed all charges against Ellsberg.
On May 14, 1973, acting FBI director William D. Ruckelshaus admitted that the government had failed to disclose more than 17 illegal wiretaps between 1969 and 1971. The logs for the wiretaps had been found in the White House safe of John Ehrlichman.
On May 15, 1973, the New York Times reported that National Security Advisor/Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had personally authorized some of the illegal wiretaps and had passed the authorizations to the FBI via his deputy, Gen. Alexander M. Haig.
On May 17, 1973, the Washington Post reported that the Secret Service had been illegally ordered to investigate the personal life of a Democratic presidential contender, that Sen. Thomas F. Eagleton's (D-Mo.) mental health records had been given to John Ehrlichman before they had been leaked to the press, and that H.R. Haldeman had personally ordered the FBI to investigate CBS reporter Daniel Schorr. The same day, Sen. Sam Ervin's Watergate Committee began nationally televised public hearings.
On May 18, 1973, Attorney General-designate Elliot Richardson announced the appointment of former Solicitor General Archibald Cox, 61, as the Justice Department's special prosecutor for Watergate. Cox was sworn in on May 25.
On May 25, 1973, the Washington Post reported that Watergate prosecutors had concluded that they would be justified in indicting President Nixon for his role in the cover-up. However, they also concluded that the Constitution precludes indicting a sitting president, and that impeachment was the only way to go after Nixon. The same day, the Senate approved the nomination of Elliot Richardson as Attorney General.
On May 30, 1973, the Washington Post reported that the newspaper's offices and telephones had been bugged by the CIA. The dirty-tricks operations, the Post said, involved every branch of the U.S. intelligence community. Former CIA director Richard Helms and current CIA deputy director Gen. Vernon Walters could both testify to Nixon's orders to engage in illegal operations. The Post also reported that Sen. Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) had begun secretly reporting John Dean's closed-door testimony to the White House. Nixon, the Post also said, had personally threatened Dean with jail on April 19 if Dean talked about Watergate. The Post also reported that E. Howard Hunt had already been offered clemency. When Hunt was indicted for his part in Watergate, the Post reported, he and the burglars demanded $1 million in hush-money. Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean, Mardian and Mitchell all had to chip in funds to pay the burglars. John Dean, the Post said, ended up being the go-between for Haldeman-Ehrlichman on one side, and Mitchell-LaRue on the other. Dean's documentary evidence about this went much further than anyone imagined, the Post said.
On June 3, 1973, the Washington Post reported that John Dean told Watergate investigators that he discussed the cover-up with President Nixon at least 35 times.
On June 9, 1973, the Washington Post reported that Charles Colson had considered firebombing the Brookings Institution as a way of covering up a planned burglary at the think-tank. Colson had assumed that Morton Halperin had taken classified documents with him when he left Kissinger's staff to join Brookings. Colson proposed burglarizing Brookings and firebombing the building to cover their tracks. When a low-level operative told John Dean about Colson's rash plan, Dean raced across the country to see John Ehrlichman in California. Only Ehrlichman had enough clout to stop the project, which was well-advanced by the time Dean learned about it.
On June 13, 1973, the FBI's Watergate investigators found a memo addressed to John Ehrlichman describing in detail the plans to burglarize the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist.
On June 21, 1973, the Washington Post reported that Charles Colson had ordered the break-in of Arthur Bremer's apartment. At 4:00 p.m. on May 15, 1972, right-wing nut-job Arthur Bremer had shot Alabama Gov. George Wallace (D) at a shopping center in Maryland, permanently paralyzing the governor (who was running for president again). According to the Post's article, Colson had immediately called E. Howard Hunt and ordered him to fly to Milwaukee, where Bremer had lived. Hunt planted left-wing literature in Bremer's apartment linking Bremer to the McGovern campaign. That evening, the FBI permitted reporters to enter Bremer's apartment for more than 90 minutes. Many reporters removed belongings and papers from Bremer's home before the FBI re-sealed the apartment. The FBI never offered an explanation for why it permitted Bremer's belongings to be looted. But many newspapers subsequently reported that Bremer had ties to left-wing political movements when he did not. It was the ultimate dirty-trick against McGovern.
On June 25, 1973, testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee, John Dean claimed that Nixon was involved in the cover-up of the Watergate burglary within days of the June 1972 break-in. In a seven-hour opening statement, Dean detailed a program of political espionage activities conducted by the White House designed to undercut and destroy the American political process and rig elections in favor of Richard Nixon.
On July 7, 1973, President Nixon told the Senate Watergate Committee that he would not testify and, claiming executive privilege, would not grant access to Presidential documents.
On July 9, 1973, President Nixon nominated acting FBI director William D. Ruckelshaus to be deputy director of the Department of Justice under Attorney General Elliot Richardson. Nixon nominated Kansas City police chief and former FBI agent Clarence Kelley to be director of the FBI.
On July 13, 1973, Alexander Butterfield, a former presidential appointments secretary, casually told Senate Watergate Committee investigators about the Oval Office taping system. Butterfield said that, since 1971, Nixon had recorded all conversations and telephone calls in the Oval Office. Only Nixon, Haldeman, Larry Higby (Haldeman's logistics assistant), Alexander Haig, Butterfield and the Secret Service knew about the taping system.
On July 16, 1973, Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox subpoenaed nine Oval Office tapes. Cox competed for the tapes with Congress, which also wanted them. But if the tapes were received by Congress, under the law the tapes could not be used as evidence in a criminal or civil prosecution of Nixon or anyone else implicated in the Watergate cover-up. Cox knew he had to obtain the tapes first. The same day, Butterfield reluctantly admitted the existence of the Oval Office taping system on national TV.
On July 18, 1973, Nixon ordered the White House taping system disconnected.
On July 23, 1973, the Senate Watergate Committee and Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox demanded that Nixon hand over the White House tapes and a host of other documents.
On July 25, 1973, Nixon refused to surrender any documents or tapes to Cox.
On July 26, 1973, the Senate Watergate Committee subpoenaed the White House tapes.
On August 9, 1973, the Senate Watergate Committee found President Nixon in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with the committee's subpoena.
On August 15, 1973, Nixon delivered an address to the nation on Watergate in which he claimed "executive privilege" over the tapes and argued that he should not have to hand them over. Archibald Cox and the Senate Watergate Committee took their case to the Supreme Court in order to get the Court to order Nixon to surrender the tapes.
On August 29, 1973, as part of his ongoing investigation into pressure on the four Watergate burglars to plead guilty, Judge John J. Sirica ordered Nixon to hand over the nine tapes for Sirica to review in private.
On October 10, 1973, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned after pleading no-contest to a charge of income tax evasion, bribery and conspiracy. He was sentenced to three years of unsupervised probation and a $10,000 fine.
On October 12, 1973, Nixon nominated Rep. Gerald R. Ford (R-Mich.), minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, to be Vice President. The same day, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld Judge Sirica's ruling that Nixon should surrender the Oval Office tapes.
On October 19, 1973, Nixon agreed to the so-called "Stennis compromise" to the Senate Watergate Committee. Nixon proposed that Sen. John Stennis (D-Miss.) be permitted to listen to the tapes and prepare summaries for Special Prosecutor Cox. Stennis, a well-known Nixon supporter, would not be the most impartial judge of the tapes.
On October 20, 1973, Cox rejected the "Stennis compromise." What followed was a series of events that became known as the "Saturday Night Massacre." At 8:00 p.m., President Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refused and resigned, effective immediately. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus refused. Nixon fired Ruckelshaus. Robert Bork, the Solicitor General (the Dept. of Justice official who represents the government before the Supreme Court), then became acting Attorney General. Although Bork, too, wished to resign rather than fire Cox, he was persuaded by friends to avoid a constitutional crisis and fire Cox. Bork explained his reasons to Cox, who agreed that Bork must carry out the president's orders in order to avoid a collapse of constitutional government. Bork fired Cox.
FBI agents immediately sealed Cox's office. Cox held a press conference outside his office, and famously declared: "Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people to decide."
On October 23, 1973, following the uproar over the "Saturday Night massacre," Nixon agreed to comply with the Cox subpoena. He released some of the tapes, but none of the crucial ones.
On November 1, 1973, Leon Jaworski, 68, former president of the American Bar Association, was named the new Watergate Special Prosecutor.
On November 17, 1973, President Nixon declared during a press conference, "I am not a crook."
On November 20, 1973, the Washington Post reported that there were at least three gaps on the White House tapes released by Nixon, and that it appears erasures may have been intentionally made.
On November 21, 1973, Nixon's lawyers admitted to Judge Sirica that there was a gap of 18-and-one-half minutes on the tape of the conversation between Nixon and Haldeman on June 20, 1972. Electronics experts reported that the gap was the result of at least 5 separate erasures. Nixon's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, denied deliberately erasing the tape.
On December 6, 1973, the House of Representatives confirmed Gerald R. Ford as Vice President of the United States. The Senate had previously confirmed him on Nov. 27.
On December 7, 1973, Gen. Alexander Haig, Nixon's new chief of staff, claimed that "some sinister force" caused the 18.5 minute erasure on the critical White House tape.
On December 28, 1973, the Washington Post reported that "Operation Candor," Nixon's public-relations ploy to defend himself, had been shut down. The Post also reported that Nixon's lawyers had secretly and illegally been supplying Haldeman and Ehrlichman's lawyers with confidential documents and other evidence that the White House was also submitting to the special prosecutor's office.
By February 1, 1974, Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski had obtained guilty pleas from Jeb Magruder, Bart Porter, Donald Segretti, Herbert Kalmbach, Fred LaRue, Egil "Bud" Krogh and John Dean. Eight major corporations had pled guilty to making illegal campaign donations to CREEP. Jaworski had also indicted Dwight Chapin for perjury, and was prosecuting Maurice Stans and John Mitchell on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury.
On February 6, 1974, the House of Representatives passed a resolution authorizing the House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether grounds existed for the impeachment of President Nixon.
On March 1, 1974, a grand jury named President Nixon an unindicted co-conspirator in its indictment against seven former Nixon presidential aides -- Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson, Mitchell, Strachan, Mardian and Parkinson.
On April 16, 1974, Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski issued a subpoena for an additional 64 White House tapes.
On April 30, 1974, Nixon refused to hand over the tapes, but did agree to provide more edited transcripts to the Judiciary Committee. Nixon appeared that night on national television and announced his decision to release the edited transcripts.
On May 1, 1974, the American public was shocked and outraged at the general tone of the conversations and the foul language used by President Nixon and others in the edited transcripts. The expression "expletive deleted" was coined by the New York Times and entered the American vocabulary.
On May 9, 1974, impeachment hearings began before the House Judiciary Committee.
On July 24, 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous 8-0 vote (Justice William O. Rehnquist abstaining) upheld the Watergate Special Prosecutor's subpoena, and ordered Nixon to make the White House tapes available for the trial of the seven Nixon aides. In the case, "United States v. Nixon," the Court claimed that "not even the president is above the law" and rejected the claim of "executive privilege" as a defense in a criminal proceeding.
On July 27, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee adopted the first article of impeachment by a vote of 27-11, with 7 Republicans voting with the Democrats. The article charged Nixon with obstruction of justice in the investigation of the Watergate break-in.
On July 29, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee adopted the second article of impeachment. The second article charged Nixon with misuse of power and violation of his oath of office.
On July 30, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee adopted the third article of impeachment. The third article charged Nixon with failure to comply with the House subpoenas.
On August 5, 1974, Nixon released transcripts of three conversations he had with former chief of staff H.R. Haldeman six days after the Watergate break-in. The transcript of the June 23 tape became known as "the smoking gun" because it revealed that Nixon ordered the FBI to abandon its investigation of the Watergate break-in -- proving that Nixon had obstructed justice. Another three tapes proved that Nixon ordered a cover-up of the Watergate burglary the same day. The tapes also showed that Nixon knew of the involvement of White House officials and CREEP. The 11 Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee who voted against the first article of impeachment announced they will change their votes to "yea." It became clear that Nixon would be impeached and convicted in the Senate.
On August 7, 1974, Sen. Hugh Scott (R-Kan. and minority leader in the U.S. Senate), Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) and Rep. John Rhodes (R-Ariz. and minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives) met with Nixon and told him that he had no chance of avoiding impeachment by the House and removal from office by the Senate.
On August 8, 1974, in a televised address to the nation at 9:00 p.m., President Richard Nixon, telling the world that "I am not a quitter," announced that he would resign the presidency at noon on August 9, 1974.
On August 9, 1974, Nixon delivered an emotional farewell address to the White House staff at 10:00 a.m. Nixon departed the White House by helicopter at 11:28 a.m. In keeping with a law passed by Congress in 1792, the president's letter of resignation was addressed to the Secretary of State (Henry Kissinger). The letter became effective when Kissinger initialed it at 11:35 a.m. Vice President Gerald R. Ford became president when he was sworn in by Chief Justice Warren Burger in a private ceremony at the White House at 12:05 p.m. After the ceremony, Ford delivered the first speech of his presidency in which he declared, "My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over." Nixon watched the nationally televised swearing-in from Air Force One as he flew to California. He was over West Virginia at the time Ford became president. The call-sign of his plane changed from "Air Force One" to "SAM 26000" (the plane's tail number) at the moment Ford completed the presidential oath.
What was Watergate?
Oy. Well........
Richard M. Nixon was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from California in 1946, winning office for his tough anti-Communist views and no-holds-barred campaigning.
In 1948, Nixon led a House subcommittee investigation into whether Alger Hiss, a liberal intellectual and bureaucrat, was a Communist spy. Whittaker Chambers, a senior editor from Time magazine, exposed Hiss in dramatic, televised testimony. Hiss was sent to prison, Chambers went home to write his memoirs and become a famous conservative icon, and Nixon was on his way to the U.S. Senate.
In 1950, Nixon was elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating Sen. Helen Gahagan Douglas (D), a former actress. Douglas was a moderate and a gentle, kind person. Nixon viciously attacked her during the course of the campaign, accusing her of having Communist sympathies. Nixon buried Douglas at the polls in November.
In 1952, Republican presidential nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower named Nixon his vice-presidential running mate. In August 1952, Democrats claimed that Nixon had received $18,000 from a "slush fund" that had functioned as a source of income for the candidate. To counter these charges, Nixon made a dramatic speech to the nation on September 23, 1952. Nixon listed his family assets, and outright denied the Democratic charges except in one case. Nixon admitted to a single gift -- a cocker spaniel dog named Checkers, which he gave to his two young daughters. The "Checkers speech" was a success and saved Nixon's political career.
In 1960, Nixon ran for the presidency against John F. Kennedy. Nixon lost by only 118,574 votes. The election was probably much closer; widespread Democratic vote fraud in Illinois probably cost Nixon the election.
In 1962, Nixon ran for governor of California and was soundly defeated by Pat Brown (father of Jerry Brown). Afterward, a bitter Nixon told reporters, "You won't have Richard Nixon to kick around any more."
In 1968, Nixon ran for president again, declaring himself "tanned, rested and ready." Nixon won the presidency in a squeaker (by 510,314 votes) over Vice President and former senator Hubert M. Humphrey. Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.) nearly upset President Lyndon B. Johnson in February's New Hampshire primary (49-42 percent). The near-miss led Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) -- who had previously denied any interest in the presidency and was in fact a rather conservative Democrat (contrary to his legacy today) -- to enter the race in March. Johnson, faced with an almost certain loss to McCarthy in April's Wisconsin primary, stunned the nation by announcing his retirement. With Johnson out of the race, voters turned to Kennedy as the more moderate candidate. Kennedy appeared to have locked up the Democratic nomination with a victory on June 4, 1968, in the California primary, but was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan, a Jordanian immigrant, in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
The Democratic National Convention -- held August 26-29, 1968, in Chicago – was an orgy of violence. More than 6,000 National Guardsmen and 5,000 Chicago police attacked about 3,000 anti-war demonstrators in Lincoln Park, brutally clubbing and gassing protestors in full view of television cameras. Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn.) denounced the "Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago" from the dais. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley (D), seated on the convention dais mere feet from Ribicoff, loudly called the senator a "motherfucker" in front of a national television audience. Due to Kennedy's death, delegates were free to pick any candidate. They picked Humphrey.
Meeting in a Miami convention surrounded by a mile of parking lot (a site picked to keep protestors away), the Republicans nominated Nixon as their candidate. Nixon claimed to have a "secret plan" to get America out of Vietnam. He was lying. But the ruse worked.
Richard Nixon won the November election by 812, 412 votes (43.2-42.0 perdcent). Alabama governor George Wallace, a notorious racist, ran on the American Independent ticket. Wallace cut heavily into Humphrey's Democratic support in the South. Wallace garnered more than 9.9 million votes, or 13.5 percent.
Richard M. Nixon was sworn in as the 39th president of the United States on January 20, 1969. His chief of staff is H.R. Haldeman, a former advertising executive with the J. Walter Thompson agency in California. Haldeman brought with him fellow ad-man Dwight Chapin, and appointed him special assistant to the president.
On January 20, 1969, the Nixon campaign illegally hid $1.4 million in leftover funds from the 1968 presidential campaign for use as a "slush-fund" in the 1972 re-election campaign. The funds were to be used as a way of evading a new election law -- due to take effect in 1971-- which would force candidates to reveal the sources of their donations. At the same time, the Nixon team set up "The Committee to Re-Elect the President." The unfortunate acronym was spelled and pronounced "CREEP."
On May 19, 1969, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover met with Dr. Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security advisor. Kissinger approved illegal phone taps on his staff in order to find out who was leaking information to the press about Nixon's illegal, secret B-52 bombing campaign in Cambodia. The logs recording the taps were not kept in the legally-required records, but in a separate file so the taps could be kept away from the courts.
In May, 1970, John Ehrlichman, chief domestic policy advisor to President Nixon, hired John Caulfield and Anthony Ulasewicz, former New York City policemen, to begin collecting intelligence on potential Democratic candidates for president. Caulfield worked directly for John Dean, counsel to President Nixon. Ulasewicz reported to Caulfield. As part of his duties, Ulasewicz illegally impersonated police detectives and reporters in his investigation of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), after Kennedy's car accident at Chappaquiddick bridge (where a young woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned).
The same month, Tom Huston, an ultra-right-wing college student who had been chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, met twice with tax investigators at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to persuade them to illegally audit tax-exempt left-wing groups to challenge their tax-exempt status. Huston, who was merely a drone on Nixon's speechwriting staff, got nowhere. But Nixon and others were impressed with his aggressiveness.
On June 5, 1970, Richard Nixon ordered Tom Huston to lead a working group of intelligence agency heads (CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, FBI, etc.) to investigate left-wing anti-war groups. Huston told the group that they should use illegal bugging, burglary and agent-provocateurs to destabilize the anti-war movement. The career bureaucrats were appalled, and demanded Nixon's approval before they went forward with these plans.
On July 14, 1970, Nixon approved the "Huston plan" and ordered it to go into effect on August 1, 1972.
On July 18, 1970, Huston wrote a memo to H.R. Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, advocating that the White House hire a team of burglars to break into the Brookings Institution (a liberal think-tank) and steal any official documents they found there. To cover their tracks, Huston advocated burning down Brookings in order to cover up the burglary.
On July 28, 1970, J. Edgar Hoover went to John Mitchell, U.S. Attorney General, to demand that Nixon withdraw approval for the "Huston plan." Alarmed by Hoover's description of the "Huson plan," Mitchell went to Nixon (one of his best friends), who withdrew his approval for the "Huston plan." By late January, 1971, Huston would leave the White House for unrelated reasons.
In November, 1970, Nixon hired Charles Colson, a Republican political operative from Massachusetts who had worked for Sen. Leverett Saltonstall (R-Mass.), as special White House counsel. Colson reported directly to the president, although in practice he had to go through chief of staff Haldeman.
In February, 1971, Nixon ordered that an automatic taping system be installed in the Oval Office.
In the spring of 1971, White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman installed Jeb Stuart Magruder to be director of CREEP. Haldman had initially recruited Magruder away from the cosmetics industry to be White House communications director in 1969. But now Haldeman wanted his own man in charge of CREEP, and Magruder was that man.
On May 5, 1971, Nixon and Haldeman conspired to have the Teamsters union send thugs into crowds of students (then protesting the war in Vietnam and threatening to block all bridges leading into D.C.), attacking them and beating them brutally. The plan was never carried out, because Haldeman believed the Teamsters would rat out Nixon if the plan were exposed.
In early June, 1971, special counsel Chuck Colson hired E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA agent, as a security consultant. Hunt reported directly to Colson.
Around the same time, Dwight Chapin contacted a former college classmate, Donald Segretti. Segretti had become an attorney, served in the Army and was now at loose ends. Chapin asked Segretti to help the Nixon re-election team destabilize the political system in the United States through the use of "dirty tricks." This would ensure Nixon's re-election. Segretti agreed, and said he would recruit other his friends to help.
The same month, cop-turned-White House-spy Jack Caulfield proposed "Operation Sandwedge." "Operation Sandwedge" would set up a phony security firm to provide fake security services to Republican corporate donors, who in turn would "pay for services" (e.g., make donations). This money would be used to fund illegal espionage and dirty tricks against the Democrats in the 1972 presidential campaign. Among Caulfield's proposals: penetrate Democratic headquarters with a mole; burglarize Democratic offices and steal or photograph documents; conduct illegal surveillance of Democratic meetings; and undertake a disinformation campaign to undermine the political process.
On June 13, 1971, the New York Times began publishing the "Pentagon Papers." Commissioned in 1967, the 47-volume, top-secret study by a defense contractor (the RAND Corp.) covered America's involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to May 1968. Only 15 copies of the study were made. The Pentagon Papers were leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, a RAND Corp. and Defense Dept. analyst who had become disenchanted with the war in Vietnam. Ellsberg gave the Pentagon Papers to New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan.
On June 14, Attorney General John Mitchell ordered the New York Times to cease publication of the Pentagon Papers. The Times refused.
On June 15, the Justice Dept. obtained an injunction from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York forcing the Times to cease publication of the Pentagon Papers.
On June 18, the Washington Post also began publishing the Pentagon Papers. The government attempted to win a court order against the Post, but the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia refused to grant the government's injunction.
On June 19, 1972, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York overturned the district court's injunction against the New York Times. The same day, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia refused to overturn the district court's ruling and grant an injunction against the Washington Post.
On June 24, 1971, the New York Times asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its appeal.
On June 30, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in "New York Times v. United States" (403 U.S. 713) -- in the most important of all free-speech cases ever handed down -- that the injunction against the New York Times constituted "prior restraint of the press" and was an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.
In response to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, an outraged Nixon set up an "enemies list" of people who opposed Nixon and who Nixon felt were "out to get him." Initially limited to only 20 or so names, it expanded over the summer to more than 100 people and organizations.
On July 1, 1971, Gordon Strachan, chief aide to White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, received permission from Haldeman to set up "Operation Sandwedge."
On July 2, 1971, Nixon told H.R. Haldeman to establish a "plumbers" unit to plug "leaks" in the administration. Haldeman's chief aide, Egil "Bud" Krogh, headed the "Plumbers." Krogh was a lawyer who served as Nixon's advisor for national-capital affairs, then as drug czar, then as an aide to John Ehrlichman. The other Plumbers included E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy and David Young.
G. Gordon Liddy, an attorney, was formerly the chief aide to domestic policy advisor John Ehrlichman. Liddy resigned in December 1971 and became chief counsel for CREEP, then chief finance counsel to CREEP (supposedly advising the organization on the new campaign finance law). But Liddy's real job was "security" -- making sure CREEP was not bugged, and collecting intelligence on the Democrats.
David Young was appointments secretary to Dr. Henry Kissinger at the National Security Council and later was loaned out as an aide to John Ehrlichman.
The Plumbers reported to Ehrlichman. On several occasions, the Plumbers received assistance from Robert Mardian, Assistant Attorney General for Internal Security at the Justice Department. Mardian illegally used his office to obtain wiretaps and evidence about news leaks that the Plumbers could use against Nixon's political foes. By July 20, the Plumbers had a phone installed in Room 16 of the White House in the name of Kathleen Chenow, Young's secretary. The phone was installed with Ehrlichman's approval; calls to the phone went directly to the AT&T swithing facility in downtown D.C., and did not go through the White House switchboard. The phone was used by Hunt to contact the Watergate burglars and others doing illegal work for the White House.
On August 5, 1971, Bud Krogh and David Young proposed burglarizing the offices of California psychiatrist Lewis Fielding to find files on Daniel Ellsberg, the analyst who had leaked the "Pentagon Papers." Ellsberg had become severely depressed after his stint as a civilian analyst in Vietnam, and Fielding was his psychiatrist. Ehrlichman approved the plan a week later.
On August 15, 1971, Colson aide E. Howard Hunt traveled to Miami to meet an old CIA friend, Bernard Barker. There, he recruited Barker and several other anti-Castro Cubans to work for the Plumbers.
In mid-August, 1971, Nixon appointments secretary Dwight Chapin formally hired Donald Segretti to subvert and destroy the American political process by undermining the candidacies of Nixon's Republican challengers and Democratic opponents.
On September 9, 1971, the Plumbers burglarized Fielding's office, looking for evidence that would discredit or ruin Ellsberg. They found nothing.
On September 18, 1971, Haldeman ordered that more money be budgeted for "Operation Sandwedge." Attorney General Mitchell, illegally acting as head of CREEP even though he would not resign as attorney general for another nine months, transferred $50,000 to ex-cop Caulfield for use in "Operation Sandwedge." The money went through Herb Kalmbach, Nixon's personal attorney and CREEP's deputy finance chairman.
On September 28, 1971, Colson aide E. Howard Hunt attempted to forge State Department cables that would link President John F. Kennedy to the 1963 assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. The hope was that the forged cables would discredit the Democrats, especially Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). Hunt leaked the forged cables to "Life" magazine, but the magazine was unable to verify their authenticity before the magazine ceased publication (which occurred three months later).
On December 6, 1971, G. Gordon Liddy resigned as Erhlichman's aide and was hired by CREEP as its general counsel. But Liddy's real duties were to begin the illegal tapping of corporate donors for "security" and to funnel these funds to "Operation Sandwedge."
On January 1, 1972, ex-cop and Ehrlichman staffer Caulfield hired James McCord, a former CIA officer, to work for "Operation Sandwedge." McCord would officially be CREEP's security coordinator under Liddy.
Some time in early 1972, Maurice Stans, Nixon's former Commerce Secretary and now finance chairman of CREEP, set up a money-laundering operation with a Mexican attorney named Manuel Ogarrio Daguerre. Stans encouraged conservative Democrats, corporations (which were barred by law from donating to political campaigns), businessmen or labor leaders having regulatory problems, special-interest groups and underground sources (such as the mafia, mob-dominated labor unions, casinos and others) to donate to the Nixon campaign before the new campaign finance law went into effect on April 7, 1972. The money would be laundered through Ogarrio's bank account in Mexico (where the bank records were beyond the reach of American subpoenas), and then Ogarrio would then write checks to the Nixon campaign.
On Jan. 27, 1972, G. Gordon Liddy met with Attorney General John Mitchell. Liddy proposed a $1 million operation called "Operation Gemstone." Burglary-and-bugging operations against Democratic headquarters and the campaign officers of Democratic presidential contenders; kidnapping of anti-war leaders, drugging them and holding them in Mexico; bugging the bedrooms of Democratic leaders; hiring prostitutes to sleep with Democratic candidates for president and then exposing the affairs on television; hiring a chase plan to bug the Democratic presidential campaign plane; hiring Cuban terrorists to sabotage the Democratic National Convention hotel and hall; hiring drug users, hippies and pedophiles to stage mass demonstrations in "support" of the Democrats; funding radical Democratic candidates for president in order to force the party to repudiate its liberal wing -- all this and more was part of "Gemstone." Appalled at the plan's cost (but not the plan's illegal activities), Mitchell ordered Liddy to come up with something different.
Some time after the Jan. 27 meeting, G. Gordon Liddy proposed murdering syndicated political columnist Jack Anderson. His proposal was rejected by Mitchell, who claimed the sanction was "too severe" for the "crimes" Anderson had committed.
On February 4, 1972, "Operation Gemstone" was scaled back to $500,000. The bugging operations were rtained. John Dean, counsel to Nixon, obtained approval for "Operation Gemstone" from White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman.
March 30, 1972, "Operation Gemstone" was scaled back to $250,000 at a meeting between John Mitchell, Nixon special counsel Chuck Colson, CREEP director Jeb Magruder and Mitchell's chief advisor, Fred LaRue. Colson argued that the chief target of the bugging plan should be Lawrence O'Brien, the Democrat's top strategist. Thus, the decision was made to bug the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters.
On April 7, 1972, Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon's personal attorney, resigned as deputy finance chairman for CREEP. Kalmbach resigned because he was too "dirty" to keep working under the new federal campaign finance law, which went into effect that day.
On April 11, 1972, Nixon's Midwest finance chairman, Kenneth H. Dahlberg, received from a Republican donor a cashier's check for $25,000. He turned it over to CREEP. It was never deposited in CREEP's accounts, but put into a "slush-fund" of cash and cashier's checks that was kept in a safe in the office of CREEP finance chairman Maurice Stans.
On May 2, 1972, J. Edgar Hoover died of a heart attack in his sleep. His deputy, L. Patrick Gray, was made acting director of the FBI. The #3 man, W. Mark Felt, was elevated to be Gray's deputy.
On May 28, 1972, as part of "Operation Gemstone," G. Gordon Liddy and three others installed bugging equipment at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate hotel and office complex in Washington, D.C. But the equipment failed to function properly, and a second operation was planned.
On June 17, 1972, five burglars -- Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, James W. McCord and Frank Sturgis -- were arrested at 2:30 a.m. during a break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate hotel and office complex in Washington, D.C. The next morning, McCord admitted before the arraigning judge that he was a former CIA agent (but he did not disclose his current job as security director for CREEP). Bernard Barker was also a former CIA agent who had retired and opened a real estate agency in Miami. Gonzalez and Martinez were anti-Castro Cubans living in Miami. Gonzalez was a locksmith; Martinez worked for Barker's real estate agency. Sturgis was also a former CIA agent who had engaged in anti-Castro operations. The same day, E. Howard Hunt removed $10,000 from the Plumber's safe in the White House in order to pay lawyers for the five men. Later in the day, White House counsel John Dean was given possession of Hunt's own safe at the White House. In the safe, Dean discovered two notebooks which contained the names, phone numbers and addresses of a number of people involved in the Watergate break-in. Dean illegally destroyed the notebooks.
On June 18, 1972, the Associated Press reported that James W. McCord was the security director for CREEP. The name of E. Howard Hunt was also in the notebook of both Eugenio Martinez and James W. McCord. Hunt was a consultant who worked for Charles W. Colson, chief counsel to President Nixon. Colson was considered the White House "hatchet man" – the one who did dirty tricks and "fixed" things. The same day, E. Howard Hunt went into hiding.
On June 19, 1972, former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, now chairman of CREEP, denied any link to the burglary operation. The odd thing is, no one had asked Mitchell for a statement. This peaked the interest of political reporters at the "Washington Post" and "New York Times." The same day, President Nixon ordered the CIA to "hinder" the FBI's investigation of the Watergate burglary, telling CIA director Richard Helms that the burglary involved "national security." Mass destruction and shredding of campaign documents occurred at CREEP headquarters as campaign officials sought to destroy any record of involvement with the Watergate burglary. The shredding was conducted by Robert Odle, former staff assistant for communications in the Nixon White House and now director of personnel at CREEP. Robert C. Mardian, a former Assistant Attorney General for Internal Security and now CREEP's political coordinator, began telling CREEP staff to "hold the ship together" and not volunteer any information to the FBI. Assisting Mardian was Fred LaRue, formerly John Mitchell's chief aide at the Justice Dept. and now Mitchell's chief aide at CREEP. Mardian and LaRue also oversaw CREEP's lawyers, including attorney Kenneth Parkinson.
On June 22, 1972, Mitchell fired Liddy. According to a Washington Post story in August, Mitchell (by now in retirement) said he fired Liddy because Liddy refused to answer FBI agents' questions about Watergate.
On June 24, 1972, John Dean turned E. Howard Hunt's safe -- minus the destroyed notebooks -- over to the FBI.
On June 28, 1972, Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray was called to a meeting with White House domestic policy advisor John Ehrlichman and White House counsel John Dean. Ehrlichman gave Gray two sets of documents taken from E. Howard Hunt's safe in the White House. One set of documents contained Hunt's faked State Department cables implicating President Kennedy in the murder of Ngo Dinh Diem. The other set of documents contained evidence of an embarrassing nature to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). Ehrlichman told Gray that Dean had taken the files from Hunt's safe, and that Gray should make sure the documents "never see the light of day." Gray kept the files at his home until Christmas Day, 1972. Then he burned them -- destroying evidence and obstructing justice.
On July 1, 1972, John Mitchell resigned as chairman of CREEP, ostensibly because his wife wanted him to. He was replaced by Clark MacGregor, a former Republican representative from Minnesota who had retired and then signed on to be Nixon's chief aide for congressional relations.
Early July, 1972: Hugh Sloan, a former scheduling aide in the Nixon White House who had become CREEP's treasurer, resigned his position "for personal reasons." Sloan had been pressured by his wife to leave after he revealed to her that CREEP higher-ups had created a secret, illegal slush fund for use in political dirty-tricks campaigns. He was replaced by Paul E. Barrick. Shortly after Sloan's resignation, the slush-fund was moved from finance chairman Maurice Stans' office to Fred LaRue's office in the CREEP director's suite. Stans approved the transfer of the fund as well as an $80,000 hush-money payment to the Watergate burglars. The same day, another $350,000 in CREEP funds was transferred from an Alexandria, Va., safe-deposit box and given to the burglars to keep them quiet.
On July 7, 1972, E. Howard Hunt turned himself in to the FBI. Walter O. Bittman, Hunt's attorney, received $25,000 in cash in a brown paper envelope in order to take the case. Bittman never said who gave him the cash, but indicated it had come from CREEP.
On August 1, 1972, the Washington Post reported that a $25,000 cashier's check made out to the Nixon re-election campaign had been found in the bank account of Watergate burglar Bernard Barker by the Miami district attorney. Barker's account also held four other cashier's checks totaling $89,000, all four drawn on a Mexico City bank. The Miami district attorney, who was running for re-election and looking for a scandal to boost his chances, had been investigating whether Florida law had been broken by Cuban nationals assisting the Watergate burglars. The Miami investigators subpoenaed Barker's bank accounts as part of their investigation and discovered the checks. The $25,000 check was made out to Kenneth H. Dahlberg, the Midwest finance chairman for the Nixon re-election bid. Dahlberg said he had turned the check over to either John Mitchell or Maurice Stans at CREEP.
On August 16, 1972, CREEP chairman Clark MacGregor held a press conference in which he claimed G. Gordon Liddy mis-used a $100,000 cash fund (designated for security at the GOP convention) to fund the Watergate burglary.
On August 22, 1972, the Washington Post reported that the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the Congress and the agency charged with maintaining reports about campaign finances under the new federal campaign finance law, found that CREEP had mis-used at least $500,000 in campaign funds. The same day, Judge Charles Richey, who was presiding over the DNC's $1 million lawsuit against CREEP, shocked court observers by sealing all the pretrial testimony in the case until the suit had been decided. Judge Richey phoned Carl Bernstein later that night to adamantly deny that he had been approached by anyone from CREEP. Bernstein was dumbstruck; he had never met Judge Richey.
On August 26, 1972, the Washington Post reported that the GAO had uncovered an additional $350,000 in illegal cash funds maintained by CREEP. The Post also reported on the Mexican money-laundering scheme set up by CREEP finance chairman Stans, and that more than $750,000 in additional money (raised exclusively in the Southwest) had also been laundered through Mexico.
On August 29, 1972, President Richard Nixon held his first press conference of the year. Nixon admitted that there had been "technical violations" of the new campaign finance law, but asserted (without any evidence) that the Democrats had also violated the law. Nixon also claimed that White House counsel John Dean had conducted an investigation into the Watergate matter (Nixon called this "the Dean report") and found that no one from the White House was involved. In fact, Dean had not discussed Watergate at all with the President and had made no report. Dean had conducted an investigation, but it had been designed to provide Nixon with the facts regarding the role Nixon's aides had played in the break-in. In other words, the "Dean report" was designed to be the foundation for the cover-up, not an attempt to expose it.
On August 30, 1972, the Washington Post reported that Watergate burglar Bernard Barker had told friends that "someone" was paying his legal bills. It was the first public acknowledgement that illegal cash payments were being made to the Watergate burglars.
Early September, 1972: The FBI purposefully limited its investigation of the Watergate break-in by refusing to ask witnesses and others obvious questions about motive, obvious questions of fact, asking vague questions that could be easily evaded and not following up on leads. Around the same time, CREEP chairman Clark MacGregor called Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee to complain about visits Woodward and Bernstein made to CREEP employees. MacGregor claimed the reporters were "harassing" CREEP employees.
On September 15, 1972, a federal grand jury handed down indictments against the five Watergate burglars and against E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. The indictments were narrow, accusing the men of eight counts each of conspiracy, wiretapping and burglary. There was nothing in the indictments of Hunt and Liddy about bribery payments from CREEP. That afternoon, President Nixon met with White House counsel John Dean and chief of staff H.R. Haldeman. Nixon told Dean that he approved of the way Dean had "prevented" the indictments from going any higher up the chain of command than Liddy.
On September 18, 1972, the Washington Post reported that CREEP deputy campaign director Jeb Magruder, Herbert L. "Bart" Porter (former White House advance man and now director of scheduling at CREEP) and G. Gordon Liddy had all received illegal hush-money payments of at least $50,000 in connection with the Watergate break-in.
On September 20, 1972, the Washington Post reported that John Mitchell had personally chosen his top aide, Fred LaRue, and CREEP political director Robert Mardian to undertake the destruction CREEP records immediately following the arrest of the burglars, cleansing CREEP files long before the FBI began its investigation. The Post reported that CREEP personnel director Robert Odle had also been involved. Vanished records included wiretap memos, papers indicating which individuals had received slush-fund payments and ledger books containing the names of illegal campaign donors. The Post's article claimed that Mardian, LaRue and Odle had counseled campaign workers to not talk about certain aspects of the bugging and money opeatioins, and had suggested specific responses to FBI investigators' questions. Finally, the Post reported that many campaign workers had been promoted after hiding evidence; others had been interrogated and reprimanded after meeting with reporters.
On September 29, 1972, the Washington Post reported that, while serving as Attorney General, John Mitchell had secretly controlled the illegal CREEP fund used to finance dirty-tricks operations against the Democrats. Mitchell's control of the political party's fund was in direct violation of federal law. When read the opening paragraphs of the story, Mitchell warned that "Katie Graham is going to get her tit caught in a wringer" -- one of the most notorious political comments of all time.
On October 5, 1972, the Los Angeles Times ran a lengthy interview with Alfred C. Baldwin III, a lawyer and former FBI agent who had been involved with the bugging of the DNC and the second burglary attempt. Baldwin admitted it was he who had served as lookout both times in the Howard Johnson hotel across the street from the Watergate.
On October 10, 1972, the Washington Post reported that the FBI had established that the Watergate break-in stemmed from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of the Nixon re-election effort. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign funds had been expended to pay for the campaign aimed at subverting the American electoral process. Damaging letters had been forged; false and manufactured items had been given to the press; campaign schedules had been tampered with and thrown into disarray; confidential campaign files had been stolen; provocateurs had been planted inside campaigns; false campaign literature had been distributed; events had been cancelled without authorization; outrageous calls to voters were made on behalf of campaigns; campaign officials had been impersonated; fake appointments were set up and then "skipped" to anger supportive constituent groups.
The article also reported that Ken Clawson, a former Washington Post reporter and new director of communications for the Nixon White House, had written the notorious "Canuck letter." The letter was allegedly from a man from Florida who claimed that the campaign of Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-Maine) had called French-Americans living in New Hampshire by the derogatory term "Canucks." The letter had been published by the Manchester Union-Leader, an ultra-conservative newspaper, on Feb. 24, 1971 -- two days before Muskie was due to campaign in New Hampshire. On Feb. 25, the Union-Leader published accusations that Muskie's wife swore, smoked and was an alcoholic. In a near-blizzard on Feb. 26, Muskie held an impromptu outdoor press conference in which he angrily denied both the Canuck Letter and the accusations against his wife. Then Muskie broke down in tears. The press conference doomed the Muskie campaign.
On October 11, 1972, the Washington Post reported on 10 documented cases of sabotage against the McGovern campaign, examples which seriously undermined the democratic process. The same day, E. Howard Hunt filed a motion asking for return of personal items left at the White House. Contained in Hunt's motion was a request for the two notebooks. This was the first the FBI had heard about any notebooks (which Dean had already destroyed).
On October 12, 1972, the Washington Post reported on additional attempts to sabotage the Muskie campaign in early 1971. The illegal sabotage efforts included: use of Muskie Senate stationary to mail damaging and false information about Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to Democratic members of Congress; sending unordered liquor, flowers, pizzas, cakes and entertainers to a Muskie fund-raiser; allegations of sexual misconduct against Sen. Hubert Humphrey and Sen. Henry Jackson on fake Muskie campaign letterhead; inflammatory, racist calls in the dead of night to voters in New Hampshire; and theft of polling data.
On October 15, 1972, the Washington Post reported that White House appointments secretary Dwight Chapin had been Donald Segretti's contact in the Nixon campaign. And although the Justice Department knew about the connection between the White House and the dirty-tricks conspiracy, it had not followed up on the leads after new Attorney General Richard Kleindeinst had ordere the FBI not to. The article also said that Segretti had been paid a $20,000-a-year salary ($91,700 a year in 2005 dollars), and that his contact was a lawyer who was a highly-placed friend of the president.
On October 16, 1972, Time magazine reported that Dwight Chapin had actually hired Segretti, not just been his contact. Also implicated in Segretti's employment was Gordon Strachan, H.R. Haldeman's aide. Strachan, too, was a college friend of Segretti's. Time reported that the lawyer who paid Segretti was none other than Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon's personal lawyer and former CREEP deputy finance chairman.
On October 17, 1972, the Washington Post reported that Kalmbach had personally controlled the illegal campaign slush-fund that had been used to pay for the dirty-tricks conspiracy.
On October 18, 1972, the New York Times reported that it had obtained telephone records showing that Donald Segretti had called Dwight Chapin at the White House as well as at Chapin's home in Bethesda, Maryland. Segretti had also called E. Howard Hunt's office in the White House and Hunt's home at least 21 different times.
On October 24, 1972, the Washington Post reported that H.R. Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, had been named in secret grand-jury testimony as one of the persons who controlled CREEP's dirty-tricks slush-fund. The Post story was wrong: Haldeman did control the fund, but he was never named in grand-jury testimony. Nixon was able to deny the Post's story outright, damaging the Post's reputation and forcing Post editor Ben Bradlee to rein in his reporters -- hindering their investigation.
On October 26, 1972, the New York Times reported that the size of the CREEP slush-fund was far larger than anyone knew, more than $900,000.
On October 29, 1972, Time magazine reported that Dwight Chapin had admitted to FBI agents that he had hired Donald Segretti to disrupt the Democratic campaign, and that Segretti's pay had been set by Herbert Kalmbach. Kalmbach, for his part, admitted to having had a hand in paying Segretti more than $35,000.
On October 30, 1972, the Washington Post corrected its Oct. 24 story, but stuck by its claim that Haldeman had controlled the fund.
On November 11, 1972, Richard M. Nixon was reelected in one of the largest landslides in American political history, taking 61 percent of the vote against Sen. George McGovern (D-S.D.).
On December 8, 1972, the Washington Post reported that H.R. Haldeman had operated the secret CREEP fund through his subordinates: CREEP deputy campaign director Jeb Magruder, CREEP finance counsel G. Gordon Liddy, CREEP scheduling secretary Bart Porter and Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon's personal lawyer and CREEP deputy finance chairman. For their role in helping cover up the burglary, all four had received large payments from the illegal slush-fund. The same day, Dorothy Hunt -- wife of E. Howard Hunt -- died when her United Airlines plane crashed in a Chicago suburb. Dorothy Hunt's purse contained $10,585 cash. (Although no one ever established where the money came from, it is assumed it was part of a payment from CREEP to Hunt and his family.) Shortly thereafter, John Ehrlichman met with John Dean and told him that President Nixon had approved clemency for H.R. Haldeman.
On December 19, 2972, Judge John J. Sirica, who was overseeing the trail of the five Watergate burglars, jailed the Los Angeles Times' Washington bureau chief for refusing to hand over tapes and transcripts of Alfred C. Baldwin's interview with the Times from Oct. 5, 1972. After several hours in jail, the bureau chief was released by an appellate court pending further review.
On December 22, 1972, Alfred Baldwin voluntarily released his copy of the interview tapes to Judge Sirica.
On December 23, 1972, the Washington Post reported that Watergate burglar James McCord had paid for bugging equipment with $3,500 in $100 bills, and had actually left his CREEP calling card behind.
On January 8, 1973, Judge John J. Sirica began presiding over the trial of the five Watergate burglars. E. Howard Hunt changed his plea to guilty the same day.
On January 11, 1973, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) asked Sen. Sam Ervin (D-N.C.) to head a Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to investigate the Watergate affair.
On January 14, 1973, the New York Times reported that Barker, Gonzalez, Martinez and Sturgis were being paid hush-money to keep quiet. The Times also reported that Sturgis had been told that John Mitchell had not only known of the burglary but had approved and encouraged it.
On January 15, four of the Watergate burglars -- Barker, Gonzalez, Martinez and Sturgis -- pled guilty. The same day, Time magazine reported that Barker, Gonzalez, Martinez and Sturgis were being paid $1,000 a month to keep quiet. Columnist Jack Anderson, meanwhile, reported that the hush-money payments had been funneled through E. Howard Hunt, who delivered part of the cash to Bernard Barker for disbursement while making other disbursements himself. The Washington Post reported the same story, including a report that Hunt had pressured the four to plead guilty in order to keep the cover-up going. During the sentencing hearing, Martinez -- who had been on a $100-a-month CIA retainer until the day after the Watergate break-in -- claimed he had never been on the CIA's payroll. All four said they had not been pressured, had not received pay-off money, had not been promised pardons, had burgled the DNC because they felt the DNC was involved in a Cuban communist conspiracy and had no idea where the $114,000 in Barker's bank account had come from.
On January 30, 1973, CREEP finance counsel G. Gordon Liddy and CREEP director of security James W. McCord were convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping.
On February 2, 1973, Nixon fired Richard Helms, director of the CIA, for refusing to continue to cover up the Watergate scandal.
On February 7, 1973, the U.S Senate voted 77-0 to create the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. Senator Sam Ervin cultivated a folksy image as a country lawyer, but his intelligent and crafty supervision of the committee later became crucial as Republicans sought to avoid an impeachment trial. The committee's chief counsel was Sam Dash, former chief of the Appeals Division of the U.S. District Attorney's Office in Philadelphia. The ranking minority member on the committee was Sen. Howard Baker (R-Tenn.). Dash reassured concerned Republicans that the panel would probe wrongdoing by members of both political parties -- helping to ensure the committee's freedom of action. But Dash played a much larger role than simply helping to allay GOP concerns about the committee's fairness. When Judge John J. Sirica advised Frank McCord to cooperate fully with the Senate inquiry, Dash managed to get McCord to confirm rumors that Nixon aides John Dean and Jeb Stuart Magruder knew about the cover-up before it took place. Dash also got McCord to promise to name others involved in the cover-up. Knowing that McCord was reluctant to be involved and might back out of these agreements, Dash reported McCord's allegations to the media. The resulting furor so angered McCord that he requested the opportunity to address members of the committee in secret session. Essentially, Dash forced McCord to "go public" with his testimony rather than keep it between Dash and himself. In that closed-door session, McCord testified that G. Gordon Liddy had told him that Attorney General John Mitchell had approved the burglary plans. McCord also revealed the involvement of Dean, Magruder and special counsel Charles Colson in the cover-up. Within minutes, details of McCord's disclosures reached the media. That evening, in an address to the Washington Press Club, Sen. Baker confirmed what the committee had learned about Dean and Magruder. McCord's testimony began the unraveling of the White House cover-up. During the Watergate hearings, Dash continued to orchestrate a torrent of leaks to the media and he played a key role in the process which eventually forced Nixon to resign.
On February 14, 1973, the Washington Post reported that E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy had illegally received information from illegal national-security wiretaps and that the transcripts had been routed to them in violation of federal law by former NSC staffer (now Ehrlichman aide) David Young.
On February 26, 1973, Time magazine reported that the Nixon White House had illegally bugged the phones and offices of more than a half-dozen reporters and more than 25 White House staffers and government aides -- all in attempt to stop leaks to the news media and learn more about anti-Nixon political opponents. The wiretaps had been approved by Attorney General John Mitchell and carried out by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his successor, Acting Director L. Patrick Gray. The same day, CREEP served subpoenas on the Washington Post, Washington Star, New York Times and Time magazine, seeking all notes, tapes and story drafts regarding Watergate. The Post moved its files and put them in the possession of publisher Katherine Graham to keep them out of the hands of CREEP.
In late February, 1973, the Washington Post reported that CREEP had established a "Kiddie Corps" of collegians willing to act as spies and provocateurs for the Nixon re-election campaign. One such operative had been Theodore Brill, a 20-year-old George Washington University student who had infiltrated a group of Quakers who had been maintaining a 24-hour/7-day-a-week vigil in front of the White House. Brill had been hired by George Gorton, a 25-year-old college grad who was CREEP's national college director. At one point, Brill was paid $150 a week (almost $690 a week in 2005 dollars) to infiltrate the Quakers and make regular reports on their personal lives and plans. He later assisted in a plan to set the Quakers up on drug charges. When Washington, D.C., police raided the Quaker pup-tent in front of the White House, they found nothing. Brill later admitted to the Post that his job had been terminated two days after the Watergate break-in; Gorton told him that "people at the White House were upset" over the dirty-tricks. Gorton later admitted that he had 25 such provocateurs all over the country, operating in 38 states. Gorton reported directly to Ken Reitz, director of CREEP's Youth Vote Division. Brill's salary never appeared on CREEP's books, which led to another GAO audit and additional revelations about the "Kiddie Corps."
On February 28, 1973, hearings began on the nomination of L. Patrick Gray to be director of the FBI. Gray asserted that the Watergate investigation had been "massive." Then, before an astonished Senate Judiciary Committee, Gray admitted that he had turned over all of the FBI's files on Watergate to John Dean -- leaving the impression that the FBI had acted as Dean's valet. Essentially, Gray stupidly admitted that he had given all the prosecution's files to the very men being investigated. Gray's admission doomed his nomination and threw the Nixon camp into a tizzy.
On March 2, 1973, President Nixon claimed executive privilege over everything counsel John Dean had written and said, and over everything in the missing Hunt notebooks. ("Executive privilege" is the claim that preliminary documents and other materials generated during the decision-making process are confidential and should not be released to the public or others. Only final work-products are public documents.)
On March 3, 1973, the Washington Post reported that John Dean had destroyed the missing notebooks after finding them in President Nixon's personal financial files. (The Post's story was mistaken; Dean had destroyed them after finding them in Hunt's safe.)
On March 6, 1973, acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray released documents regarding his Watergate investigation to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Included in the documents was a document titled "Interview with Herbert W. Kalmbach." In the document, Kalmbach admitted to having hired Donald Segretti at the recommendation of Dwight Chapin, paid Segretti thousands of dollars for dirty-tricks designed to undermine the democratic process, that these payments came out of the CREEP slush-fund, and that Chapin knew of and had approved the payments. The document undermined 10 months' worth of White House denials about Chapin, Segretti, the slush-fund and Kalmbach.
On March 19, 1973, McCord sent a letter to Judge Sirica in which he claimed that the four other Watergate burglars had pled guilty under duress. He said all five committed perjury, and that others were involved in the Watergate break-in. McCord claimed that the burglars lied at the urging of John Dean and John Mitchell. McCord's allegations of a cover-up and obstruction of justice by the highest law enforcement officials in the land blew Watergate wide open.
On March 21, 1973, CREEP's subpoenas of the Post's files were thrown out of court as irrelevant. The same day, John Dean met with President Nixon and told him what Nixon already secretly knew: That the Watergate burglary and obstruction of justice reached as high as John Mitchell, Charles Colson, John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman. Dean made his famous statement that "there is a cancer eating away at the presidency." Dean gave Nixon a list of conspirators, which included most of the top White House staff. Nixon told Dean he would take Dean's evidence under advisement and "seek justice." Instead, Nixon told Mitchell, Colson, Ehrlichman and Haldeman what evidence Dean had uncovered. Nixon and the others then plotted for ways to blame Watergate solely on Dean. But they were unable to come up with a watertight plan.
On March 22, 1973, L. Patrick Gray testified at his nomination hearing that John Dean had "probably" lied to FBI investigators about Hunt's position, relationship and duties in the White House.
On March 23, 1973, McCord's letter to Judge Sirica was published by the Associated Press. The same day, Sam Dash, chief counsel for the Watergate committee, held a press conference in which he announced that McCord had said that Jeb Magruder and John Dean had advance knowledge of the Watergate bugging and were involved in its planning. The White House immediately denied Dean's involved, but did not deny Magruder's. By cutting Magruder adrift, the White House not only admitted that the conspiracy and illegal acts went higher than previously admitted but the White House also made an enemy of Jeb Stuart Magruder -- who promptly began spilling his guts in exchange for immunity and a lightened sentence.
On March 29, 1973, James McCord testified behind closed-doors before the Senate Watergate committee. McCord said that G. Gordon Liddy had told him that the burglary plans and budget had been approved by John Mitchell while Mitchell was still Attorney General, and that Charles Colson knew about Watergate in advance. Although McCord's testimony was hearsay (e.g., second-hand from the eyewitness, Liddy), it was widely reported as fact.
On April 6, 1973, John Dean began secretly cooperating with the FBI and Congressional investigators.
On April 9, 1973, the New York Times reported that CREEP security director James McCord had testified that cash payoffs to the Watergate burglars had come directly from CREEP. McCord, the Times said, had also testified that CREEP lawyer Kenneth Parkinson and Dorothy Hunt (the late wife of E. Howard Hunt) were conduits for the cash.
On April 10, 1973, the Watergate prosecutors told Assistant Attorney General Henry Peterson that they were on the verge of indicting several of Nixon's closest present and former aides. The prosecutors insisted that Nixon be told of the coming indictments, and that Nixon order his staff to cooperate fully with the prosecutors. Peterson went to Nixon later that day and told him what the prosecutors had requested. That night, Peterson told the prosecutors that Nixon said he would fire his aides and issue a cooperation order immediately. But Nixon had said neither thing.
On April 14, 1973, Jeb Magruder approached the Watergate prosecutors and told them that John Mitchell and John Dean had both approved the bugging plans and payoff scheme, and that G. Gordon Liddy had been at the same meetings.
On April 17, 1973, President Nixon announced that he, personally, was taking over the Watergate investigation from the Justice Department and FBI. Nixon also announced he was going to permit his top aides to testify before the Senate Watergate committee. However, Nixon said, he would fire anyone who was indicted for any Watergate-related crimes.
On April 19, 1973, the Washington Post reported that John Mitchell and John Dean had been fingered by Magruder as two of the men who had approved the Watergate break-in. The same day, the New York Times reported that Attorney General Richard Kleindeinst had recused himself from any further dealings with the Watergate investigation or prosecution due to the involvement of "close associates" in the cover-up. Later that day, John Dean told President Nixon that he had no intention of being the "fall-guy" for Watergate and that he would tell the Congress everything he knew if Nixon tried to pin the entire thing on him.
On April 20, 1973, the Washington Post and other papers reported that John Dean had issued a press release announcing that he would not become the scapegoat for Watergate. The same day, John Mitchell testified before the Watergate grand jury that he had refused to approve wiretapping plans on three separate occasions. Mitchell later repeated his contention in public that afternoon. The same day, Charles Colson met with Watergate prosecutors and turned over documentary evidence that John Dean had been involved in the cover-up. It was Colson's attempt to discredit Dean.
On April 21, 1973, the Washington Post reported that H.R. Haldeman had personally approved the establishment of the slush-fund, the dirty-tricks campaign, the burglary and bugging operation, and the Watergate cover-up. The Post also said that Dean had refused to go along with plans for the bugging, but that Haldeman had gone ahead anyway. Dean's Aug. 29, 1972, report to the President had been a sham, the Post said; it was designed to provide cover for Nixon's closest aides rather than be a full investigation into Watergate. Dean, the Post said, was now seeking a deal with prosecutors so that he could tell them all he knew without going to jail. The same day, the New York Times reported that John Mitchell had told friends that he had listened to proposals to bug the DNC on three separate occasions, and had rejected them each time. The Times also reported that Mitchell had seen Dean, too, reject such plans.
On April 22, 1983, the Washington Post reported that John Mitchell told the Watergate grand jury that he had approved payments to the Watergate burglars, but that he had approved the payments only for their legal bills and not as hush-money. Mitchell also testified that Jeb Magruder had obtained approval for the burglary and bugging plan from Charles Colson at the White House after Mitchell had refused it the third time.
On April 27, 1973, the New York Daily News and the Washington Post reported that acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray had personally destroyed documents taken from E. Howard Hunt's White House safe. One set of documents contained fictitious State Department cables designed to implicate President Kennedy in the murder of Ngo Dinh Diem. The second set of documents contained information of an embarrassing nature to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). The stories implicated the nation's second-highest law enforcement officer in the destruction evidence -- a federal crime. Gray resigned as acting FBI director. EPA administrator William D. Ruckleshaus was appointed acting director of the FBI.
On April 28, 1973, the Associated Press reported that E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy had supervised the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist in 1971. The AP had learned about the Fielding break-in from Watergate prosecutors, who had confirmed John Dean's account of that burglary operation.
On April 29, 1973, columnist Jack Anderson reported that Gordon Strachan, H.R. Haldeman's chief aide, had told the Watergate grand jury that Haldeman had ordered him to turn over $350,000 in CREEP donations to Fred LaRue. The same day, the Washington Post reported that the $350,000 was hush-money for the Watergate burglars. The New York Times reported the same thing, but also revealed that Haldeman had illegally received wiretap transcripts and had personally approved the hiring of Donald Segretti.
On April 30, 1973, President Nixon spoke to the nation on television and announced the resignation of chief of staff H.R. Haldeman and domestic policy advisor John Ehrlichman. Nixon said that Attorney General Richard Kleindienst had also resigned and was being replaced by the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Elliot Richardson. In a press release issued that same night, Nixon also announced that he had fired John Dean for leading a cover-up of the Watergate affair and for managing the burglary, dirty-tricks campaign and secret funds project. Meanwhile, Watergate prosecutors -- astonished that Nixon had waited 20 days before announcing the resignation of Haldeman and Ehrlichman and furious that Nixon had never ordered his staff to cooperate with the Watergate prosecutors -- finally became convinced that Nixon himself was involved in the cover-up.
On May 1, 1973, White House press secretary Ron Ziegler apologized to the Washington Post for claiming that the Post had gotten its coverage wrong.
On May 7, 1973, Newsweek reported that John Dean was prepared to tell the Watergate prosecutors that President Nixon knew of the Watergate cover-up. Dean, the magazine said, had met with the President and Haldeman in September 1972. At that time, the President voiced approval for the way Dean had managed to contain the indictments to lower-level employees. In December, Dean said, he had met with Ehrlichman and Ehrlichman had told him that Nixon had approved clemency for Haldeman. These two incidents, Dean said, convinced him that Nixon knew far more about Watergate than he claimed and that Nixon himself was involved in approving the cover-up.
On May 8, 1973, the Washington Post reported that the White House had approved illegal wiretaps on the telephones of two New York Times reporters, Neil Sheehan and Hedrick Smith.
On May 10, 1973, acting FBI director William D. Ruckelshaus admitted to Judge Matthew Byrne that the FBI had overlooked evidence that it had illegally tapped the phones of Morton Halperin, one of Henry Kissinger's top aides. Judge Byrne was overseeing Daniel Ellsberg's trial for the theft of government property and violation of national security. Ruckelshaus also admitted that the FBI had overheard Ellsberg talking about the Pentagon Papers with Halperin. Ruckelshaus never admitted that the FBI had illegally tapped the phones of the New York Times.
On May 11, 1973, Judge Byrne ruled that "government misconduct" had irreparably harmed the prosecution's case. He dismissed all charges against Ellsberg.
On May 14, 1973, acting FBI director William D. Ruckelshaus admitted that the government had failed to disclose more than 17 illegal wiretaps between 1969 and 1971. The logs for the wiretaps had been found in the White House safe of John Ehrlichman.
On May 15, 1973, the New York Times reported that National Security Advisor/Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had personally authorized some of the illegal wiretaps and had passed the authorizations to the FBI via his deputy, Gen. Alexander M. Haig.
On May 17, 1973, the Washington Post reported that the Secret Service had been illegally ordered to investigate the personal life of a Democratic presidential contender, that Sen. Thomas F. Eagleton's (D-Mo.) mental health records had been given to John Ehrlichman before they had been leaked to the press, and that H.R. Haldeman had personally ordered the FBI to investigate CBS reporter Daniel Schorr. The same day, Sen. Sam Ervin's Watergate Committee began nationally televised public hearings.
On May 18, 1973, Attorney General-designate Elliot Richardson announced the appointment of former Solicitor General Archibald Cox, 61, as the Justice Department's special prosecutor for Watergate. Cox was sworn in on May 25.
On May 25, 1973, the Washington Post reported that Watergate prosecutors had concluded that they would be justified in indicting President Nixon for his role in the cover-up. However, they also concluded that the Constitution precludes indicting a sitting president, and that impeachment was the only way to go after Nixon. The same day, the Senate approved the nomination of Elliot Richardson as Attorney General.
On May 30, 1973, the Washington Post reported that the newspaper's offices and telephones had been bugged by the CIA. The dirty-tricks operations, the Post said, involved every branch of the U.S. intelligence community. Former CIA director Richard Helms and current CIA deputy director Gen. Vernon Walters could both testify to Nixon's orders to engage in illegal operations. The Post also reported that Sen. Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) had begun secretly reporting John Dean's closed-door testimony to the White House. Nixon, the Post also said, had personally threatened Dean with jail on April 19 if Dean talked about Watergate. The Post also reported that E. Howard Hunt had already been offered clemency. When Hunt was indicted for his part in Watergate, the Post reported, he and the burglars demanded $1 million in hush-money. Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean, Mardian and Mitchell all had to chip in funds to pay the burglars. John Dean, the Post said, ended up being the go-between for Haldeman-Ehrlichman on one side, and Mitchell-LaRue on the other. Dean's documentary evidence about this went much further than anyone imagined, the Post said.
On June 3, 1973, the Washington Post reported that John Dean told Watergate investigators that he discussed the cover-up with President Nixon at least 35 times.
On June 9, 1973, the Washington Post reported that Charles Colson had considered firebombing the Brookings Institution as a way of covering up a planned burglary at the think-tank. Colson had assumed that Morton Halperin had taken classified documents with him when he left Kissinger's staff to join Brookings. Colson proposed burglarizing Brookings and firebombing the building to cover their tracks. When a low-level operative told John Dean about Colson's rash plan, Dean raced across the country to see John Ehrlichman in California. Only Ehrlichman had enough clout to stop the project, which was well-advanced by the time Dean learned about it.
On June 13, 1973, the FBI's Watergate investigators found a memo addressed to John Ehrlichman describing in detail the plans to burglarize the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist.
On June 21, 1973, the Washington Post reported that Charles Colson had ordered the break-in of Arthur Bremer's apartment. At 4:00 p.m. on May 15, 1972, right-wing nut-job Arthur Bremer had shot Alabama Gov. George Wallace (D) at a shopping center in Maryland, permanently paralyzing the governor (who was running for president again). According to the Post's article, Colson had immediately called E. Howard Hunt and ordered him to fly to Milwaukee, where Bremer had lived. Hunt planted left-wing literature in Bremer's apartment linking Bremer to the McGovern campaign. That evening, the FBI permitted reporters to enter Bremer's apartment for more than 90 minutes. Many reporters removed belongings and papers from Bremer's home before the FBI re-sealed the apartment. The FBI never offered an explanation for why it permitted Bremer's belongings to be looted. But many newspapers subsequently reported that Bremer had ties to left-wing political movements when he did not. It was the ultimate dirty-trick against McGovern.
On June 25, 1973, testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee, John Dean claimed that Nixon was involved in the cover-up of the Watergate burglary within days of the June 1972 break-in. In a seven-hour opening statement, Dean detailed a program of political espionage activities conducted by the White House designed to undercut and destroy the American political process and rig elections in favor of Richard Nixon.
On July 7, 1973, President Nixon told the Senate Watergate Committee that he would not testify and, claiming executive privilege, would not grant access to Presidential documents.
On July 9, 1973, President Nixon nominated acting FBI director William D. Ruckelshaus to be deputy director of the Department of Justice under Attorney General Elliot Richardson. Nixon nominated Kansas City police chief and former FBI agent Clarence Kelley to be director of the FBI.
On July 13, 1973, Alexander Butterfield, a former presidential appointments secretary, casually told Senate Watergate Committee investigators about the Oval Office taping system. Butterfield said that, since 1971, Nixon had recorded all conversations and telephone calls in the Oval Office. Only Nixon, Haldeman, Larry Higby (Haldeman's logistics assistant), Alexander Haig, Butterfield and the Secret Service knew about the taping system.
On July 16, 1973, Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox subpoenaed nine Oval Office tapes. Cox competed for the tapes with Congress, which also wanted them. But if the tapes were received by Congress, under the law the tapes could not be used as evidence in a criminal or civil prosecution of Nixon or anyone else implicated in the Watergate cover-up. Cox knew he had to obtain the tapes first. The same day, Butterfield reluctantly admitted the existence of the Oval Office taping system on national TV.
On July 18, 1973, Nixon ordered the White House taping system disconnected.
On July 23, 1973, the Senate Watergate Committee and Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox demanded that Nixon hand over the White House tapes and a host of other documents.
On July 25, 1973, Nixon refused to surrender any documents or tapes to Cox.
On July 26, 1973, the Senate Watergate Committee subpoenaed the White House tapes.
On August 9, 1973, the Senate Watergate Committee found President Nixon in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with the committee's subpoena.
On August 15, 1973, Nixon delivered an address to the nation on Watergate in which he claimed "executive privilege" over the tapes and argued that he should not have to hand them over. Archibald Cox and the Senate Watergate Committee took their case to the Supreme Court in order to get the Court to order Nixon to surrender the tapes.
On August 29, 1973, as part of his ongoing investigation into pressure on the four Watergate burglars to plead guilty, Judge John J. Sirica ordered Nixon to hand over the nine tapes for Sirica to review in private.
On October 10, 1973, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned after pleading no-contest to a charge of income tax evasion, bribery and conspiracy. He was sentenced to three years of unsupervised probation and a $10,000 fine.
On October 12, 1973, Nixon nominated Rep. Gerald R. Ford (R-Mich.), minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, to be Vice President. The same day, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld Judge Sirica's ruling that Nixon should surrender the Oval Office tapes.
On October 19, 1973, Nixon agreed to the so-called "Stennis compromise" to the Senate Watergate Committee. Nixon proposed that Sen. John Stennis (D-Miss.) be permitted to listen to the tapes and prepare summaries for Special Prosecutor Cox. Stennis, a well-known Nixon supporter, would not be the most impartial judge of the tapes.
On October 20, 1973, Cox rejected the "Stennis compromise." What followed was a series of events that became known as the "Saturday Night Massacre." At 8:00 p.m., President Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refused and resigned, effective immediately. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus refused. Nixon fired Ruckelshaus. Robert Bork, the Solicitor General (the Dept. of Justice official who represents the government before the Supreme Court), then became acting Attorney General. Although Bork, too, wished to resign rather than fire Cox, he was persuaded by friends to avoid a constitutional crisis and fire Cox. Bork explained his reasons to Cox, who agreed that Bork must carry out the president's orders in order to avoid a collapse of constitutional government. Bork fired Cox.
FBI agents immediately sealed Cox's office. Cox held a press conference outside his office, and famously declared: "Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people to decide."
On October 23, 1973, following the uproar over the "Saturday Night massacre," Nixon agreed to comply with the Cox subpoena. He released some of the tapes, but none of the crucial ones.
On November 1, 1973, Leon Jaworski, 68, former president of the American Bar Association, was named the new Watergate Special Prosecutor.
On November 17, 1973, President Nixon declared during a press conference, "I am not a crook."
On November 20, 1973, the Washington Post reported that there were at least three gaps on the White House tapes released by Nixon, and that it appears erasures may have been intentionally made.
On November 21, 1973, Nixon's lawyers admitted to Judge Sirica that there was a gap of 18-and-one-half minutes on the tape of the conversation between Nixon and Haldeman on June 20, 1972. Electronics experts reported that the gap was the result of at least 5 separate erasures. Nixon's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, denied deliberately erasing the tape.
On December 6, 1973, the House of Representatives confirmed Gerald R. Ford as Vice President of the United States. The Senate had previously confirmed him on Nov. 27.
On December 7, 1973, Gen. Alexander Haig, Nixon's new chief of staff, claimed that "some sinister force" caused the 18.5 minute erasure on the critical White House tape.
On December 28, 1973, the Washington Post reported that "Operation Candor," Nixon's public-relations ploy to defend himself, had been shut down. The Post also reported that Nixon's lawyers had secretly and illegally been supplying Haldeman and Ehrlichman's lawyers with confidential documents and other evidence that the White House was also submitting to the special prosecutor's office.
By February 1, 1974, Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski had obtained guilty pleas from Jeb Magruder, Bart Porter, Donald Segretti, Herbert Kalmbach, Fred LaRue, Egil "Bud" Krogh and John Dean. Eight major corporations had pled guilty to making illegal campaign donations to CREEP. Jaworski had also indicted Dwight Chapin for perjury, and was prosecuting Maurice Stans and John Mitchell on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury.
On February 6, 1974, the House of Representatives passed a resolution authorizing the House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether grounds existed for the impeachment of President Nixon.
On March 1, 1974, a grand jury named President Nixon an unindicted co-conspirator in its indictment against seven former Nixon presidential aides -- Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson, Mitchell, Strachan, Mardian and Parkinson.
On April 16, 1974, Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski issued a subpoena for an additional 64 White House tapes.
On April 30, 1974, Nixon refused to hand over the tapes, but did agree to provide more edited transcripts to the Judiciary Committee. Nixon appeared that night on national television and announced his decision to release the edited transcripts.
On May 1, 1974, the American public was shocked and outraged at the general tone of the conversations and the foul language used by President Nixon and others in the edited transcripts. The expression "expletive deleted" was coined by the New York Times and entered the American vocabulary.
On May 9, 1974, impeachment hearings began before the House Judiciary Committee.
On July 24, 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous 8-0 vote (Justice William O. Rehnquist abstaining) upheld the Watergate Special Prosecutor's subpoena, and ordered Nixon to make the White House tapes available for the trial of the seven Nixon aides. In the case, "United States v. Nixon," the Court claimed that "not even the president is above the law" and rejected the claim of "executive privilege" as a defense in a criminal proceeding.
On July 27, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee adopted the first article of impeachment by a vote of 27-11, with 7 Republicans voting with the Democrats. The article charged Nixon with obstruction of justice in the investigation of the Watergate break-in.
On July 29, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee adopted the second article of impeachment. The second article charged Nixon with misuse of power and violation of his oath of office.
On July 30, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee adopted the third article of impeachment. The third article charged Nixon with failure to comply with the House subpoenas.
On August 5, 1974, Nixon released transcripts of three conversations he had with former chief of staff H.R. Haldeman six days after the Watergate break-in. The transcript of the June 23 tape became known as "the smoking gun" because it revealed that Nixon ordered the FBI to abandon its investigation of the Watergate break-in -- proving that Nixon had obstructed justice. Another three tapes proved that Nixon ordered a cover-up of the Watergate burglary the same day. The tapes also showed that Nixon knew of the involvement of White House officials and CREEP. The 11 Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee who voted against the first article of impeachment announced they will change their votes to "yea." It became clear that Nixon would be impeached and convicted in the Senate.
On August 7, 1974, Sen. Hugh Scott (R-Kan. and minority leader in the U.S. Senate), Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) and Rep. John Rhodes (R-Ariz. and minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives) met with Nixon and told him that he had no chance of avoiding impeachment by the House and removal from office by the Senate.
On August 8, 1974, in a televised address to the nation at 9:00 p.m., President Richard Nixon, telling the world that "I am not a quitter," announced that he would resign the presidency at noon on August 9, 1974.
On August 9, 1974, Nixon delivered an emotional farewell address to the White House staff at 10:00 a.m. Nixon departed the White House by helicopter at 11:28 a.m. In keeping with a law passed by Congress in 1792, the president's letter of resignation was addressed to the Secretary of State (Henry Kissinger). The letter became effective when Kissinger initialed it at 11:35 a.m. Vice President Gerald R. Ford became president when he was sworn in by Chief Justice Warren Burger in a private ceremony at the White House at 12:05 p.m. After the ceremony, Ford delivered the first speech of his presidency in which he declared, "My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over." Nixon watched the nationally televised swearing-in from Air Force One as he flew to California. He was over West Virginia at the time Ford became president. The call-sign of his plane changed from "Air Force One" to "SAM 26000" (the plane's tail number) at the moment Ford completed the presidential oath.
Monday, May 30, 2005
A new rebel radio station is appearing in Akron, Ohio. Called "Radio Free Ohio", it's luring listeners by denouncing the "corporate-controlled music playlists" of stations owned by companies like mega-corporation Clear Channel.
And who owns Radio Free Ohio?
Clear Channel.
I love this country. Such lies.
And who owns Radio Free Ohio?
Clear Channel.
I love this country. Such lies.
Just over a year ago, football player-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman died in Afghanistan.
The American media and various war-mongers rushed to laud the former Arizona Cardinal. They trumpeted his "sacrifice" (although he'd already made more money in his lifetime than most Americans will see in four lifetimes, and his wife and kids were set for life with full pensions from the NFL and military, unlike other working people). As militarists wrapped themselves thrice-over in the flag, the American people were told that Tillman died "a warrior's death" charging up a hill like Teddy Roosevelt, urging on his fellow Rangers to "follow me!" His funeral was a nationally televised political extravaganza with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) among those delivering eulogies worthy of Abraham Lincoln over Tillman's open grave. President George W. Bush addressed Cardinals fans on the Jumbotron at Sun Devil Stadium, his voice trembling with emotion.
Perhaps that emotiona was laughter. A giggle at the way Bush duped the American people.
Newly released records show that Pat Tillman did not die at the hands of the Taliban while charging up a hill, but was shot by his own troops in an instance of what his own men call "fratricide."
Tillman's men realized they had gunned him down "within moments." Then, in an effort to cover up the killing, Tillman's own troops burned his uniform and body armor in an attempt to cover up the way he died. Additional physical evidence was destroyed on instructions from superiors.
Over the next 10 days, top-ranking Army officials, including theater commander Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, hid the truth of Tillman's death. The Army kept the soldiers on the ground quiet and told Tillman's family and the public that he was killed by enemy fire while storming a hill, barking orders to his fellow Rangers. Although the Army had the facts about Tillman's death in its hands almost immediately, the Army waited until weeks after the nationally televised memorial service before it told Tillman's divorced parents about "irregularities" surrounding their son's death. Even then, the Army lied to Tillman's parents about the basic facts of their son's death and asked them to keep quiet about the "friendly fire" that had killed their son.
Now the Tillmans are speaking out about the way President Bush and the U.S. military used the corpse of their dead son for political advantage.
"After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this,"
Patrick Tillman told the Washington Post. "They purposely interfered with the investigation, they covered it up. [T]hey realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out. They blew up their poster boy."
"This lie was to cover their image. I think there's a lot more yet that we don't even know, or they wouldn't still be covering their tails. If this is what happens when someone high profile dies, I can only imagine what happens with everyone else," says Mary Tillman.
"The military let him down. The administration let him down. It was a sign of disrespect. The fact that he was the ultimate team player and he watched his own men kill him is absolutely heartbreaking and tragic. The fact that they lied about it afterward is disgusting."
Mary Tillman says the government used her dead son for weeks after his death, perpetuating an untrue story to capitalize on his altruism -- just as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was erupting publicly. She said she was particularly offended when President Bush offered a taped memorial message to Tillman at a Cardinals football game shortly before the presidential election last fall. She again felt as though her son was being used, something he never would have wanted.
And the Tillmans want to see some court-martials over the lies and cover-up.
"Maybe lying's not a big deal anymore," Patrick Tillman said. "Pat's dead, and this isn't going to bring him back. But these guys should have been held up to scrutiny, right up the chain of command, and no one has."
Patrick Tillman says the results of the Army's investigation into his son's death were changed by superiors after the investigating officer refused to alter them. He says the Army "deliberately falsified baseline facts -- e.g., distance, light conditions, details perceived before and while firing, and the identification of 'friendlies.' "
The Army says it made "mistakes" in the investigation, and that it continues to assign a squad of investigators to the Tillman case in order to answer phone calls from the Tillmans and to meet with them personally whenever they request it.
Patrick Tillman doesn't believe a word of it. "[T]hose 'mistakes' were deliberate, calculated, ordered (repeatedly) and disgraceful -- conduct well beneath the standard to which every soldier in the field is held."
Not to worry. Smilin' George Bush is going to fly onto another aircraft carrier to make it all better. Really. All better.
The American media and various war-mongers rushed to laud the former Arizona Cardinal. They trumpeted his "sacrifice" (although he'd already made more money in his lifetime than most Americans will see in four lifetimes, and his wife and kids were set for life with full pensions from the NFL and military, unlike other working people). As militarists wrapped themselves thrice-over in the flag, the American people were told that Tillman died "a warrior's death" charging up a hill like Teddy Roosevelt, urging on his fellow Rangers to "follow me!" His funeral was a nationally televised political extravaganza with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) among those delivering eulogies worthy of Abraham Lincoln over Tillman's open grave. President George W. Bush addressed Cardinals fans on the Jumbotron at Sun Devil Stadium, his voice trembling with emotion.
Perhaps that emotiona was laughter. A giggle at the way Bush duped the American people.
Newly released records show that Pat Tillman did not die at the hands of the Taliban while charging up a hill, but was shot by his own troops in an instance of what his own men call "fratricide."
Tillman's men realized they had gunned him down "within moments." Then, in an effort to cover up the killing, Tillman's own troops burned his uniform and body armor in an attempt to cover up the way he died. Additional physical evidence was destroyed on instructions from superiors.
Over the next 10 days, top-ranking Army officials, including theater commander Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, hid the truth of Tillman's death. The Army kept the soldiers on the ground quiet and told Tillman's family and the public that he was killed by enemy fire while storming a hill, barking orders to his fellow Rangers. Although the Army had the facts about Tillman's death in its hands almost immediately, the Army waited until weeks after the nationally televised memorial service before it told Tillman's divorced parents about "irregularities" surrounding their son's death. Even then, the Army lied to Tillman's parents about the basic facts of their son's death and asked them to keep quiet about the "friendly fire" that had killed their son.
Now the Tillmans are speaking out about the way President Bush and the U.S. military used the corpse of their dead son for political advantage.
"After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this,"
Patrick Tillman told the Washington Post. "They purposely interfered with the investigation, they covered it up. [T]hey realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out. They blew up their poster boy."
"This lie was to cover their image. I think there's a lot more yet that we don't even know, or they wouldn't still be covering their tails. If this is what happens when someone high profile dies, I can only imagine what happens with everyone else," says Mary Tillman.
"The military let him down. The administration let him down. It was a sign of disrespect. The fact that he was the ultimate team player and he watched his own men kill him is absolutely heartbreaking and tragic. The fact that they lied about it afterward is disgusting."
Mary Tillman says the government used her dead son for weeks after his death, perpetuating an untrue story to capitalize on his altruism -- just as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was erupting publicly. She said she was particularly offended when President Bush offered a taped memorial message to Tillman at a Cardinals football game shortly before the presidential election last fall. She again felt as though her son was being used, something he never would have wanted.
And the Tillmans want to see some court-martials over the lies and cover-up.
"Maybe lying's not a big deal anymore," Patrick Tillman said. "Pat's dead, and this isn't going to bring him back. But these guys should have been held up to scrutiny, right up the chain of command, and no one has."
Patrick Tillman says the results of the Army's investigation into his son's death were changed by superiors after the investigating officer refused to alter them. He says the Army "deliberately falsified baseline facts -- e.g., distance, light conditions, details perceived before and while firing, and the identification of 'friendlies.' "
The Army says it made "mistakes" in the investigation, and that it continues to assign a squad of investigators to the Tillman case in order to answer phone calls from the Tillmans and to meet with them personally whenever they request it.
Patrick Tillman doesn't believe a word of it. "[T]hose 'mistakes' were deliberate, calculated, ordered (repeatedly) and disgraceful -- conduct well beneath the standard to which every soldier in the field is held."
Not to worry. Smilin' George Bush is going to fly onto another aircraft carrier to make it all better. Really. All better.
The Washington Post's Web site is such a disaster area.
Aside from the fact that you can't find anything on the front page after their redesign, the site sucks in other ways. Just two that come to mind:
1) The site takes a million years to load, even on a T3 line. Forget using dial-up.
2) The search page is utter junk. It loads by relevance, not date. And then, when the search brings up a couple hundred articles, try re-sorting by date. You get "no results."
Gotta love those incompetents at the Post! They make my own employer's I.T. department look like geniuses in contrast.
Aside from the fact that you can't find anything on the front page after their redesign, the site sucks in other ways. Just two that come to mind:
1) The site takes a million years to load, even on a T3 line. Forget using dial-up.
2) The search page is utter junk. It loads by relevance, not date. And then, when the search brings up a couple hundred articles, try re-sorting by date. You get "no results."
Gotta love those incompetents at the Post! They make my own employer's I.T. department look like geniuses in contrast.
Sunday, May 29, 2005
My friend Ben said something interesting the other day.
I've met a few who've run from their beauty. They ignore it, or pretend it's not important. They tell you how little physical things matter, and try to tell you how "my best friend is fat and ugly." (Like "all my friends are black, or Jewish..." Uh huh.) But when they don't get their way, they pull their beauty back out of the closet, and use it to their maximum advantage again.
In the end, the handsome ones know it, like it and use it. The vast majority are pricks about it. They feel put upon because so many men like them. They feel like everyone only treats them like "a piece of meat." They feel as if no one wants to get to know "them" -- the guy inside.
But it shouldn't be surprising, however, to know that this is all a case of "poor little rich boy." The moment they aren't the center of attention, they go all out to flirt in order to get the spotlight back. They work their beauty -- to win favors, to win preferential treatment, to win forgiveness, to win lower criteria of performance, to win sex, to win attention -- just as if they were a piece of meat and nothing else. When someone unattractive tries to get to know them, they can run away fast enough. (So much for "getting to know the guy inside." Only on their terms, it seems.)
There are exceptions, I admit. In my entire life, I've met three. Out of I-don't-know-how-many thousands.
The funny thing is, most of these outstandingly beautiful men have shitty self-esteem. But it doesn't seem to matter. Other men flock to them like flies on a dead horse. And that shitty self-esteem never seems to really heal. The adulation of others never even begins to salve the wound.
Perhaps I am being cynical and pessimistic. But such is my experience. I am trying hard to be honest about my experiences, and not be overly negative in my remembrances. But there it is.
Here's something I've learned about dealing with beautiful men: In most cases, they were not raised to really understand what it means to be the best-looking person in any room. They figured out their own method of dealing with it on their own. Some hide from it, some become pricks. Others try to pretend it doesn't exist. But they all know it's there.The truth is, every beautiful man I've known has become a prick. Yeah, some do try to hide it, or run from it. But they all ended up pricks about it. The ones who tried to do the bad-hair thing, the body odor thing, the "I'm not pretty" thing -- it was a sham. Underneath it all, he still knew that he was stunningly handsome. And he was a prick about it.
I've met a few who've run from their beauty. They ignore it, or pretend it's not important. They tell you how little physical things matter, and try to tell you how "my best friend is fat and ugly." (Like "all my friends are black, or Jewish..." Uh huh.) But when they don't get their way, they pull their beauty back out of the closet, and use it to their maximum advantage again.
In the end, the handsome ones know it, like it and use it. The vast majority are pricks about it. They feel put upon because so many men like them. They feel like everyone only treats them like "a piece of meat." They feel as if no one wants to get to know "them" -- the guy inside.
But it shouldn't be surprising, however, to know that this is all a case of "poor little rich boy." The moment they aren't the center of attention, they go all out to flirt in order to get the spotlight back. They work their beauty -- to win favors, to win preferential treatment, to win forgiveness, to win lower criteria of performance, to win sex, to win attention -- just as if they were a piece of meat and nothing else. When someone unattractive tries to get to know them, they can run away fast enough. (So much for "getting to know the guy inside." Only on their terms, it seems.)
There are exceptions, I admit. In my entire life, I've met three. Out of I-don't-know-how-many thousands.
The funny thing is, most of these outstandingly beautiful men have shitty self-esteem. But it doesn't seem to matter. Other men flock to them like flies on a dead horse. And that shitty self-esteem never seems to really heal. The adulation of others never even begins to salve the wound.
Perhaps I am being cynical and pessimistic. But such is my experience. I am trying hard to be honest about my experiences, and not be overly negative in my remembrances. But there it is.
Anyone know anything about a book called "Bold and Beautiful: Two Decades"?
It was printed by Samwha Printing, a South Korean firm, in 2003. The author is listed simply as "E.M.A."
The book is exzactly 100 sepia-tined photographs of Hispanic/Latino men. Most of them are extremely well-hung. Most of the photographs are in a style similar to that of 1950s erotica: costumed (construction worker, Indian, angel, cowboy, athlete, etc.), facing front, smiling, props (guns, hatchets, feathers, football pads, skull, blanket, etc.).
Who is E.M.A.? An address in the book would lead one to think it is one Edward McA. (yes, I know the full name) , who lives (or lived) at that address in Los Angeles. But there's no way of being sure. Who knows, maybe the guy is a closeted person or married to a woman or something.
A list of ackowledgements in the rear of the book leads nowhere.
I'm very interested in the book, and think the models are downright mouthwatering.
You know, I'm a big afficionado of nude male photography. I scour bookstores, online retailers (like TLA Releasing and Pro-Fun Media and Bruno Gmunder Verlag and Janssen Publishers and Taschen Books and more) and auction sites to discover what's out there. I keep long, long lists of the books I come across -- sorting them by which ones I've seen and which I've not, which ones are worth purchasing and which ones aren't, which ones are in release and which ones are forthcoming.
I'd never, ever heard of this book. I was in Lambda Rising yesterday (after having been stood up for lunch by a friend), and just came across the book. They had five copies lying out on the front bookstand alongside the naked crap by Steven Underhill and non-naked crap like Jonathan Anderson and Edwin Low's "Athletes and Warriors." (The death-worshipping misogyny and militarism of this book does not escape me, nor should it escape others.)
There it was. No plastic cover to protect them. Just the books. $34.95. Very expensive for a little 7.25" wide by 9.25" high 100-page book.
But completely worth it.
It was printed by Samwha Printing, a South Korean firm, in 2003. The author is listed simply as "E.M.A."
The book is exzactly 100 sepia-tined photographs of Hispanic/Latino men. Most of them are extremely well-hung. Most of the photographs are in a style similar to that of 1950s erotica: costumed (construction worker, Indian, angel, cowboy, athlete, etc.), facing front, smiling, props (guns, hatchets, feathers, football pads, skull, blanket, etc.).
Who is E.M.A.? An address in the book would lead one to think it is one Edward McA. (yes, I know the full name) , who lives (or lived) at that address in Los Angeles. But there's no way of being sure. Who knows, maybe the guy is a closeted person or married to a woman or something.
A list of ackowledgements in the rear of the book leads nowhere.
I'm very interested in the book, and think the models are downright mouthwatering.
You know, I'm a big afficionado of nude male photography. I scour bookstores, online retailers (like TLA Releasing and Pro-Fun Media and Bruno Gmunder Verlag and Janssen Publishers and Taschen Books and more) and auction sites to discover what's out there. I keep long, long lists of the books I come across -- sorting them by which ones I've seen and which I've not, which ones are worth purchasing and which ones aren't, which ones are in release and which ones are forthcoming.
I'd never, ever heard of this book. I was in Lambda Rising yesterday (after having been stood up for lunch by a friend), and just came across the book. They had five copies lying out on the front bookstand alongside the naked crap by Steven Underhill and non-naked crap like Jonathan Anderson and Edwin Low's "Athletes and Warriors." (The death-worshipping misogyny and militarism of this book does not escape me, nor should it escape others.)
There it was. No plastic cover to protect them. Just the books. $34.95. Very expensive for a little 7.25" wide by 9.25" high 100-page book.
But completely worth it.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Every now and then, I'll go onto IMDB and see where some of my favorite actors in films are. What are they doing now? Are they still acting? Have they left acting for other projects? Are they successful or not?
(Fair warning: Spoilers below for the movie "L.I.E.")
For example: Noah Hathaway, the kid who played Boxey on the original "Battlestar Galactica," went on to a career as a successful child actor. (He was only seven when he did "Galactica.") The half-Mohican Indian actor quit the acting biz when he was 15. From various accounts, his was a troubled life as a teen. He was an a bad car accident when he was 18, and had to curtail his physical activities. Although extremely handsome (and, let's just come out and say it -- well-hung; look at any picture taken of him in shorts, and it looks like he's smuggling cantaloupe in his pants), he was very fucked up. He bartended in some gay clubs in Los Angeles for a while, got a lot of tattoos, got into kickboxing, got into motorcycle racing, lived in New York City for a while. He's lost in a lot of ways, it's said.
For another example: Jimmy Tavares is the astoundingly good looking, extremely talented figure-skater who was the star of "My Life on Ice." With an incredible body (and dick -- he did two nude scenes in the film), this actor hasn't done a single film since his 2002 debut. He's done no interviews, no films, no television, nothing.
For another example: Tobias Mehler is a handsome young actor who I first noticed when he guest-starred on "Millennium" in the episode, "Luminary." He played Alex Glaser, the wealthy young man who disappears in the Alaskan wilderness in an attempt to find his place in the world. Later on, he did a number of appearances on "Stargate SG-1," as well as solid performances in films like "Disturbing Behavior," "Sagamore," "Wishmaster 3" and "Carrie" (the 2002 remake). He also has picked up a number of starring roles on television, including the series "Taken," "Young Blades" and "Robson Arms." (You can see him shirtless -- and what furry pecs he has! -- in the made-for-TV movie "Monster!", which sometimes airs on the Sci Fi Channel.)
So...
I recently decided to use my overtime check to get some films on DVD that I had really wanted to own for some time. One of the films I purchased was "L.I.E." (aka "Long Island Expressway"). It's a simply outstanding film from 2001 about Howie Blitzer (Paul Franklin Dano), a 15-year-old kid on Long Island. Howie's mom died a year ago, and his father is wallowing in his grief by fucking woman after woman after woman and ignoring Howie. Howie's friends are all psychopaths, suburban teens driven insane by the disassociation and loneliness of American life. There's handsome Gary (Billy Kay), a poor, almost-homosexual alterna-boy with piercings who is in love with his own body (and who harbors a deep secret Howie eventually learns). There's blond, handsome, muscular, well-hung Brian (Tony Donnelly), the leader of the pack who induces the boys to break into rich people's homes in the afternoons for fun. There's violent, retarded Kevin (James Costa), the skinny boy who is fucking his sister for fun.
The film deals Howie's descent into suburban psychosis and his growing homosexual attraction to Gary (who does everything to encourage it). When Gary and Howie burglarize an Big John Harrigan's (Brian Cox) house, Harrigan realizes who must have done it. He quickly contacts Gary. The audience learns that Harrigan, an ex-Marine and spy, is also a pedophile. He has a 20-something lover, Scotty (Walter Masterson), who once was a teenage trick. Gary is his latest young love. But Gary is increasingly losing his moral footing, and is tricking constantly with older men. Gary confesses that Howie stole things from Harrigan's home. Harrigan tracks down Howie. He tries to get Howie to sleep with him, but various interruptions stymie him every time. Soon, however, Howie runs into deep trouble: His father begins to physically abuse him. Gary leaves town. He's beaten by Kevin. And then Howie's father is jailed for using substandard wiring in a housing project that later burned to the ground and killed several people. Harrigan is torn by his lust for handsome young Howie and his desire to be a father-figure to him in ways that Howie's own dad never could be.
Rex Reed called "L.I.E." the best film of 2001. And it is. The film, directed by Michael Cuesta and co-written by Michael Cuesta, Gerald Cuesta and Stephen Ryder, has a haunting soundtrack by Pierre Foldes and is a spectacular film.
So what happened to the cast?
Paul Franklin Dano was already 17 when he made "L.I.E.", although he looks barely 15 in the film. He's worked steadily ever since, making films and made-for-TV movies. His last project, probably his most high-profile, was as the love interest of Daniel Day-Lewis' daughter in the indie film "The Ballad of Jack and Rose" (directed by Day-Lewis' wife, Rebecca Miller). Paul Dano is now 21 and is the lead singer for the Connecticut bad, Cherry Revision.
Billy Kay began his movie career with no lines. He was the baby in "Three Men and a Baby," the smash hit 1987 film starring Ted Danson, Steve Guttenberg and Tom Selleck. He was 15 when he was cast on the soap "The Guiding Light" as Shayne Lewis #6. He co-starred in "The Newcomers" in 2000 alongside Paul Dano. It shows in the intense physical and emotional relationship the two build in "L.I.E." The 5'7" actor (yum!) has worked in several films since "L.I.E.," including "Halloween: Resurrection" and "The Battle of Shaker Heights." He's also had a number of TV guest appearances on "Law & Order: SVU," "NYPD Blue" and "Charmed." He's now 21.
Tony Donnelly, the well-hung blond thief in "L.I.E." hasn't worked since. His connection to Billy Kay is that he played Shayne Lewis #5 on "The Guiding Light" for a year before Kay took over. He was the boy who'd been shot by a gun in "The Sixth Sense" in 1999, and then did "L.I.E." He did a "Law & Order" guest shot in 2003, and that's it. Too bad. He had some real acting chops. (My favorite scene? When the boys are being investigated for a break-in, his character gets a raging erection. He shows it off to the other boys. He's turned on by danger, and cannot control his sexual response to it. When his cop father comes in to take him home, he has to bend forward to hide his gigantic boner.)
James Costa, the incestuous, violent boy with the Yogi Berra habit of mangling the English language ("It's clit, you idiot, not clint!") hasn't worked since "L.I.E." He made his debut in the film "Mimic" in 1997, played a youthful thug in the Leslie Neilson comedy "Jane Austen's Mafia!", and then had a bit part in "Joe the King." He had a minor guest shot on "Third Watch" in 2000. "L.I.E." was his last film role. (The scene where he is fucking his sister and looks lustily out the window at Gary was cut from the movie, but has been restored on the DVD version -- as has the shot of his hunky, toned body.)
Director/writer Michael Cuesta went on to direct most of the first season episodes of "Six Feet Under." He's just finished a film, "Twelve and Holding," and is working with Gerald Cuesta on a new film, "The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint." Gerald Cuesta and Stephen Ryder have not worked since (except for Cuesta's new collaboration with Michael). Troubled, broken-hearted former teen trick Scotty, played by Walter Masterson, has not worked since "L.I.E." Bruce Altman, who played Howie's hunky, hairy, sex-obsessed, fire-code-violating father, is a highly successful working actor who has done dozens of films and TV shows.
Sir Brian Cox, who played the pedophile ex-Marine, has been an actor for more than 30 years in the U.K. and U.S. A member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he was knighted in 2002. His more recent films include "The Bourne Identity," "The Ring," "X2," "Troy," "The Bourne Supremacy" and "Super Troopers." He shares a remarkable set of acting coincidences and roles with Sir Anthony Hopkins and Joan Allen. And in several of his movies, he plays a government official in which another actor has amnesia but later discovers they are a secret government assassin.
I really wish all four young actors in this film would work again. They were superb.
And if you haven't seen "L.I.E.," do so. You'll notice strong emotional similarities between it and "Six Feet Under." No wonder "SFU" changed so drastically, and for the worse, once Cuesta left the show.
(Fair warning: Spoilers below for the movie "L.I.E.")
For example: Noah Hathaway, the kid who played Boxey on the original "Battlestar Galactica," went on to a career as a successful child actor. (He was only seven when he did "Galactica.") The half-Mohican Indian actor quit the acting biz when he was 15. From various accounts, his was a troubled life as a teen. He was an a bad car accident when he was 18, and had to curtail his physical activities. Although extremely handsome (and, let's just come out and say it -- well-hung; look at any picture taken of him in shorts, and it looks like he's smuggling cantaloupe in his pants), he was very fucked up. He bartended in some gay clubs in Los Angeles for a while, got a lot of tattoos, got into kickboxing, got into motorcycle racing, lived in New York City for a while. He's lost in a lot of ways, it's said.
For another example: Jimmy Tavares is the astoundingly good looking, extremely talented figure-skater who was the star of "My Life on Ice." With an incredible body (and dick -- he did two nude scenes in the film), this actor hasn't done a single film since his 2002 debut. He's done no interviews, no films, no television, nothing.
For another example: Tobias Mehler is a handsome young actor who I first noticed when he guest-starred on "Millennium" in the episode, "Luminary." He played Alex Glaser, the wealthy young man who disappears in the Alaskan wilderness in an attempt to find his place in the world. Later on, he did a number of appearances on "Stargate SG-1," as well as solid performances in films like "Disturbing Behavior," "Sagamore," "Wishmaster 3" and "Carrie" (the 2002 remake). He also has picked up a number of starring roles on television, including the series "Taken," "Young Blades" and "Robson Arms." (You can see him shirtless -- and what furry pecs he has! -- in the made-for-TV movie "Monster!", which sometimes airs on the Sci Fi Channel.)
So...
I recently decided to use my overtime check to get some films on DVD that I had really wanted to own for some time. One of the films I purchased was "L.I.E." (aka "Long Island Expressway"). It's a simply outstanding film from 2001 about Howie Blitzer (Paul Franklin Dano), a 15-year-old kid on Long Island. Howie's mom died a year ago, and his father is wallowing in his grief by fucking woman after woman after woman and ignoring Howie. Howie's friends are all psychopaths, suburban teens driven insane by the disassociation and loneliness of American life. There's handsome Gary (Billy Kay), a poor, almost-homosexual alterna-boy with piercings who is in love with his own body (and who harbors a deep secret Howie eventually learns). There's blond, handsome, muscular, well-hung Brian (Tony Donnelly), the leader of the pack who induces the boys to break into rich people's homes in the afternoons for fun. There's violent, retarded Kevin (James Costa), the skinny boy who is fucking his sister for fun.
The film deals Howie's descent into suburban psychosis and his growing homosexual attraction to Gary (who does everything to encourage it). When Gary and Howie burglarize an Big John Harrigan's (Brian Cox) house, Harrigan realizes who must have done it. He quickly contacts Gary. The audience learns that Harrigan, an ex-Marine and spy, is also a pedophile. He has a 20-something lover, Scotty (Walter Masterson), who once was a teenage trick. Gary is his latest young love. But Gary is increasingly losing his moral footing, and is tricking constantly with older men. Gary confesses that Howie stole things from Harrigan's home. Harrigan tracks down Howie. He tries to get Howie to sleep with him, but various interruptions stymie him every time. Soon, however, Howie runs into deep trouble: His father begins to physically abuse him. Gary leaves town. He's beaten by Kevin. And then Howie's father is jailed for using substandard wiring in a housing project that later burned to the ground and killed several people. Harrigan is torn by his lust for handsome young Howie and his desire to be a father-figure to him in ways that Howie's own dad never could be.
Rex Reed called "L.I.E." the best film of 2001. And it is. The film, directed by Michael Cuesta and co-written by Michael Cuesta, Gerald Cuesta and Stephen Ryder, has a haunting soundtrack by Pierre Foldes and is a spectacular film.
So what happened to the cast?
Paul Franklin Dano was already 17 when he made "L.I.E.", although he looks barely 15 in the film. He's worked steadily ever since, making films and made-for-TV movies. His last project, probably his most high-profile, was as the love interest of Daniel Day-Lewis' daughter in the indie film "The Ballad of Jack and Rose" (directed by Day-Lewis' wife, Rebecca Miller). Paul Dano is now 21 and is the lead singer for the Connecticut bad, Cherry Revision.
Billy Kay began his movie career with no lines. He was the baby in "Three Men and a Baby," the smash hit 1987 film starring Ted Danson, Steve Guttenberg and Tom Selleck. He was 15 when he was cast on the soap "The Guiding Light" as Shayne Lewis #6. He co-starred in "The Newcomers" in 2000 alongside Paul Dano. It shows in the intense physical and emotional relationship the two build in "L.I.E." The 5'7" actor (yum!) has worked in several films since "L.I.E.," including "Halloween: Resurrection" and "The Battle of Shaker Heights." He's also had a number of TV guest appearances on "Law & Order: SVU," "NYPD Blue" and "Charmed." He's now 21.
Tony Donnelly, the well-hung blond thief in "L.I.E." hasn't worked since. His connection to Billy Kay is that he played Shayne Lewis #5 on "The Guiding Light" for a year before Kay took over. He was the boy who'd been shot by a gun in "The Sixth Sense" in 1999, and then did "L.I.E." He did a "Law & Order" guest shot in 2003, and that's it. Too bad. He had some real acting chops. (My favorite scene? When the boys are being investigated for a break-in, his character gets a raging erection. He shows it off to the other boys. He's turned on by danger, and cannot control his sexual response to it. When his cop father comes in to take him home, he has to bend forward to hide his gigantic boner.)
James Costa, the incestuous, violent boy with the Yogi Berra habit of mangling the English language ("It's clit, you idiot, not clint!") hasn't worked since "L.I.E." He made his debut in the film "Mimic" in 1997, played a youthful thug in the Leslie Neilson comedy "Jane Austen's Mafia!", and then had a bit part in "Joe the King." He had a minor guest shot on "Third Watch" in 2000. "L.I.E." was his last film role. (The scene where he is fucking his sister and looks lustily out the window at Gary was cut from the movie, but has been restored on the DVD version -- as has the shot of his hunky, toned body.)
Director/writer Michael Cuesta went on to direct most of the first season episodes of "Six Feet Under." He's just finished a film, "Twelve and Holding," and is working with Gerald Cuesta on a new film, "The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint." Gerald Cuesta and Stephen Ryder have not worked since (except for Cuesta's new collaboration with Michael). Troubled, broken-hearted former teen trick Scotty, played by Walter Masterson, has not worked since "L.I.E." Bruce Altman, who played Howie's hunky, hairy, sex-obsessed, fire-code-violating father, is a highly successful working actor who has done dozens of films and TV shows.
Sir Brian Cox, who played the pedophile ex-Marine, has been an actor for more than 30 years in the U.K. and U.S. A member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he was knighted in 2002. His more recent films include "The Bourne Identity," "The Ring," "X2," "Troy," "The Bourne Supremacy" and "Super Troopers." He shares a remarkable set of acting coincidences and roles with Sir Anthony Hopkins and Joan Allen. And in several of his movies, he plays a government official in which another actor has amnesia but later discovers they are a secret government assassin.
I really wish all four young actors in this film would work again. They were superb.
And if you haven't seen "L.I.E.," do so. You'll notice strong emotional similarities between it and "Six Feet Under." No wonder "SFU" changed so drastically, and for the worse, once Cuesta left the show.
Labels: Battlestar Galactica
Could the petroleum joyride -- cheap, abundant oil that has sent the global economy whizzing along with the pedal to the metal and the AC blasting for the last 100 years -- be coming to an end?
Oil industry experts predict that this year, maybe next -- almost certainly by the end of the decade -- the world's oil production will begin to decline. Then it will all be downhill" The price of oil will increase drastically. Major oil-consuming countries will experience crippling inflation, unemployment and economic instability.
According to these experts, it will take a decade or more before conservation measures and new technologies (like improved solar or fuel cell technologies) could bridge the gap between supply and demand. Even then the situation will be touch and go.
Until then, Americans can expect another season of beach weekends and road trips to Graceland and quick two-block jaunts to the grocery store for fresh avocados. Gas prices are just about $2.50 a gallon. Accounting for inflation, that's about what Americans have paid for most of the 20th century; it only feels expensive because gas was unusually cheap between 1986 and 2003.
A lot of oil industry fans say that we just need to sink more wells and pump more oil. Higher prices and higher demand will trump eco-freaks who want to block access to Alaska and the California shore.
But Mother Nature trumps Adam Smith. Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway and other major producers are already pumping as fast as they can. The only way to increase production capacity is to discover more oil. Yet with a few exceptions, there just isn't much oil left out there to be discovered.
There will be warning signs before global oil production peaks.
Prices will rise dramatically and become increasingly volatile. With little or no excess production capacity, minor supply disruptions -- political instability in Venezuela, hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico or labor unrest in Nigeria, for example -- will send the oil markets into a tizzy. So will periodic admissions by oil companies and petroleum-rich nations that they have been overestimating their reserves. (Sound familiar?)
Oil producers like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Norway, Indonesia, Venezuela and Russia will grow flush with cash. And because the price of oil ultimately affects the cost of just about everything else in the economy, inflation will rear its ugly head.
Think I'm wrong?
Then take a lesson from this legendary episode in the history. Back in 1956, a geologist named M. King Hubbert predicted that U.S. oil production would peak in 1970.
His superiors at Shell Oil were aghast. They tried to persuade Hubbert not to speak publicly about his work. His peers, accustomed to decades of making impressive oil discoveries, were skeptical.
But Hubbert was right. U.S. oil production did peak in 1970, and it has declined steadily ever since. Even impressive discoveries such as Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, with 13 billion barrels in recoverable reserves, haven't been able to reverse that trend.
Hubbert started his analysis by gathering statistics on how much oil had been discovered and produced in the lower 48 states, both onshore and off, between 1901 and 1956 (Alaska was still unexplored territory for petroleum geologists 50 years ago). His data showed that the country's oil reserves had increased rapidly from 1901 until the 1930s, then more slowly after that.
When Hubbert graphed that pattern it looked very much like America's oil supply was about to peak. Soon, his statistics showed, America's petroleum reserves would reach an all-time maximum. And then they would begin to shrink as the oil companies extracted crude from the ground faster than geologists could find it.
That made sense. Hubbert knew some oil fields, especially the big ones, were easier to find than others. Those big finds would come first, and then the pace of discovery would decline as the remaining pool of oil resided in progressively smaller and more elusive deposits.
The production figures followed a similar pattern, but it looked like they would peak a few years later than reserves.
That made sense too. After all, oil can't be pumped out of the ground the instant it is discovered. Lease agreements have to be negotiated, wells drilled, pipelines built. The development process can take years.
When Hubbert extended the production curve into the future it looked like it would peak around 1970. Every year after that, America would pump less oil than it had the year before.
If that prognostication wasn't daring enough, Hubbert had yet another mathematical trick up his sleeve. Assuming that the reserves decline was going to be a mirror image of the rise, geologists would have found exactly half of the oil in the Lower 48 when the curve peaked. Doubling that number gave Hubbert the grand total of all recoverable oil under the continental United States: 170 billion barrels.
At first, critics objected to Hubbert's analysis, arguing that technological improvements in exploration and recovery would increase the amount of available oil.
They did -- but not enough to extend production beyond the limits Hubbert had projected. Even if you throw in the unexpected discovery of oil in Alaska, America's petroleum production history has proceeded almost exactly as Hubbert predicted it would.
A few years ago, geologists began applying Hubbert's methods to the entire world's oil production. Their analyses indicated that global oil production would peak some time during the first decade of the 21st century.
Scientists at M.I.T. think the peak will be in late 2005 or early 2006. Investment bankers put it at 2007 to 2009. California Tech physicists predict it will arrive before 2010.
The exact date doesn't really matter because it's already too late. In an analysis done for the U.S. Department of Energy in February 2005, economists concluded that it will take more than a decade for the U.S. economy to adapt to declining oil production.
For example, the median lifetime of an American automobile is 17 years. That means that even if the federal government immediately (as in today, May 28, 2005) mandated a drastic increase in fuel efficiency standards, the conservation benefits wouldn't been seen for almost two decades.
And although conservation would certainly be necessary in a crisis, it wouldn't be enough. To get the American economy past the stagflation and industrial crash decreasing oil supplies will bring means require developing alternate sources of energy -- and not the kind that politicians and environmentalists talk about when they promise hydrogen cars and solar power.
If oil supplies really do decline in the next few decades, America's energy survival will hinge on energy technologies developed in the 1900s. The Dept. of Energy report says that compensating for the coming oil bust will require a massive infrastructure conversion to coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels. Coal liquefaction (which creates synthetic oil by heating coal in the presence of hydrogen gas) will be essential to bridging the gap and keeping the "automobile economy" moving rather than crashing to a standstill.
Energy analysts say coal liquefaction can produce synthetic oil at a cost of $32 a barrel, well below the $50 range where oil has been trading for the past year or so. But before they invest billions of dollars in coal liquefaction, investors want to be sure that oil prices will remain high.
Investors are similarly wary about tar sands and heavy oil deposits in Canada and Venezuela. Though they are too gooey to be pumped from the ground like conventional oil, engineers have developed ways of liquefying the deposits with injections of hot water and other means. Already, about 8 percent of Canada's oil production comes from tar sands.
Unfortunately, it costs energy to recover energy from tar sands. Most Canadian operations use natural gas to heat water for oil recovery; and like oil, natural gas has gotten dramatically more expensive in the past few years.
And then there are the environmental problems. Coal liquefaction isn't any cleaner-burning that petroleum gasline, and doubling America's coal output will create massive environmental pressures in areas like Wyoming and Montana -- already some of the nation's most environmentally degraded areas. (Compared to the Staten Island, yeah, those places are nearly pristine and beautiful. But compared to what they once were, scientists say Wyoming and Montana are functioning are about a third of the environmental carrying capacity they had in the mid-1800s.) Extracting oil from tar sands will require extensive natural gas exploration -- and natural gas comes with oil, meaning there won't be any more natural gas than there will be oil. Additionally, tar sands oil production leads to massive waste products. Talk to any Candian environmentalist and ask if he or she approves of Canadian tar sands oil production, and you're likely to get a punch in the mouth.
Yes, the end is near. The end of oil is near. By the time I retire, oil will be something for only the extremely wealthy. Energy will be something held precious and dear. The era of the automobile, cheap plastic and manmade fabrics will be over.
It's comin' for ya. Get ready.
Oil industry experts predict that this year, maybe next -- almost certainly by the end of the decade -- the world's oil production will begin to decline. Then it will all be downhill" The price of oil will increase drastically. Major oil-consuming countries will experience crippling inflation, unemployment and economic instability.
According to these experts, it will take a decade or more before conservation measures and new technologies (like improved solar or fuel cell technologies) could bridge the gap between supply and demand. Even then the situation will be touch and go.
Until then, Americans can expect another season of beach weekends and road trips to Graceland and quick two-block jaunts to the grocery store for fresh avocados. Gas prices are just about $2.50 a gallon. Accounting for inflation, that's about what Americans have paid for most of the 20th century; it only feels expensive because gas was unusually cheap between 1986 and 2003.
A lot of oil industry fans say that we just need to sink more wells and pump more oil. Higher prices and higher demand will trump eco-freaks who want to block access to Alaska and the California shore.
But Mother Nature trumps Adam Smith. Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway and other major producers are already pumping as fast as they can. The only way to increase production capacity is to discover more oil. Yet with a few exceptions, there just isn't much oil left out there to be discovered.
There will be warning signs before global oil production peaks.
Prices will rise dramatically and become increasingly volatile. With little or no excess production capacity, minor supply disruptions -- political instability in Venezuela, hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico or labor unrest in Nigeria, for example -- will send the oil markets into a tizzy. So will periodic admissions by oil companies and petroleum-rich nations that they have been overestimating their reserves. (Sound familiar?)
Oil producers like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Norway, Indonesia, Venezuela and Russia will grow flush with cash. And because the price of oil ultimately affects the cost of just about everything else in the economy, inflation will rear its ugly head.
Think I'm wrong?
Then take a lesson from this legendary episode in the history. Back in 1956, a geologist named M. King Hubbert predicted that U.S. oil production would peak in 1970.
His superiors at Shell Oil were aghast. They tried to persuade Hubbert not to speak publicly about his work. His peers, accustomed to decades of making impressive oil discoveries, were skeptical.
But Hubbert was right. U.S. oil production did peak in 1970, and it has declined steadily ever since. Even impressive discoveries such as Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, with 13 billion barrels in recoverable reserves, haven't been able to reverse that trend.
Hubbert started his analysis by gathering statistics on how much oil had been discovered and produced in the lower 48 states, both onshore and off, between 1901 and 1956 (Alaska was still unexplored territory for petroleum geologists 50 years ago). His data showed that the country's oil reserves had increased rapidly from 1901 until the 1930s, then more slowly after that.
When Hubbert graphed that pattern it looked very much like America's oil supply was about to peak. Soon, his statistics showed, America's petroleum reserves would reach an all-time maximum. And then they would begin to shrink as the oil companies extracted crude from the ground faster than geologists could find it.
That made sense. Hubbert knew some oil fields, especially the big ones, were easier to find than others. Those big finds would come first, and then the pace of discovery would decline as the remaining pool of oil resided in progressively smaller and more elusive deposits.
The production figures followed a similar pattern, but it looked like they would peak a few years later than reserves.
That made sense too. After all, oil can't be pumped out of the ground the instant it is discovered. Lease agreements have to be negotiated, wells drilled, pipelines built. The development process can take years.
When Hubbert extended the production curve into the future it looked like it would peak around 1970. Every year after that, America would pump less oil than it had the year before.
If that prognostication wasn't daring enough, Hubbert had yet another mathematical trick up his sleeve. Assuming that the reserves decline was going to be a mirror image of the rise, geologists would have found exactly half of the oil in the Lower 48 when the curve peaked. Doubling that number gave Hubbert the grand total of all recoverable oil under the continental United States: 170 billion barrels.
At first, critics objected to Hubbert's analysis, arguing that technological improvements in exploration and recovery would increase the amount of available oil.
They did -- but not enough to extend production beyond the limits Hubbert had projected. Even if you throw in the unexpected discovery of oil in Alaska, America's petroleum production history has proceeded almost exactly as Hubbert predicted it would.
A few years ago, geologists began applying Hubbert's methods to the entire world's oil production. Their analyses indicated that global oil production would peak some time during the first decade of the 21st century.
Scientists at M.I.T. think the peak will be in late 2005 or early 2006. Investment bankers put it at 2007 to 2009. California Tech physicists predict it will arrive before 2010.
The exact date doesn't really matter because it's already too late. In an analysis done for the U.S. Department of Energy in February 2005, economists concluded that it will take more than a decade for the U.S. economy to adapt to declining oil production.
For example, the median lifetime of an American automobile is 17 years. That means that even if the federal government immediately (as in today, May 28, 2005) mandated a drastic increase in fuel efficiency standards, the conservation benefits wouldn't been seen for almost two decades.
And although conservation would certainly be necessary in a crisis, it wouldn't be enough. To get the American economy past the stagflation and industrial crash decreasing oil supplies will bring means require developing alternate sources of energy -- and not the kind that politicians and environmentalists talk about when they promise hydrogen cars and solar power.
If oil supplies really do decline in the next few decades, America's energy survival will hinge on energy technologies developed in the 1900s. The Dept. of Energy report says that compensating for the coming oil bust will require a massive infrastructure conversion to coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels. Coal liquefaction (which creates synthetic oil by heating coal in the presence of hydrogen gas) will be essential to bridging the gap and keeping the "automobile economy" moving rather than crashing to a standstill.
Energy analysts say coal liquefaction can produce synthetic oil at a cost of $32 a barrel, well below the $50 range where oil has been trading for the past year or so. But before they invest billions of dollars in coal liquefaction, investors want to be sure that oil prices will remain high.
Investors are similarly wary about tar sands and heavy oil deposits in Canada and Venezuela. Though they are too gooey to be pumped from the ground like conventional oil, engineers have developed ways of liquefying the deposits with injections of hot water and other means. Already, about 8 percent of Canada's oil production comes from tar sands.
Unfortunately, it costs energy to recover energy from tar sands. Most Canadian operations use natural gas to heat water for oil recovery; and like oil, natural gas has gotten dramatically more expensive in the past few years.
And then there are the environmental problems. Coal liquefaction isn't any cleaner-burning that petroleum gasline, and doubling America's coal output will create massive environmental pressures in areas like Wyoming and Montana -- already some of the nation's most environmentally degraded areas. (Compared to the Staten Island, yeah, those places are nearly pristine and beautiful. But compared to what they once were, scientists say Wyoming and Montana are functioning are about a third of the environmental carrying capacity they had in the mid-1800s.) Extracting oil from tar sands will require extensive natural gas exploration -- and natural gas comes with oil, meaning there won't be any more natural gas than there will be oil. Additionally, tar sands oil production leads to massive waste products. Talk to any Candian environmentalist and ask if he or she approves of Canadian tar sands oil production, and you're likely to get a punch in the mouth.
Yes, the end is near. The end of oil is near. By the time I retire, oil will be something for only the extremely wealthy. Energy will be something held precious and dear. The era of the automobile, cheap plastic and manmade fabrics will be over.
It's comin' for ya. Get ready.
