I realize that “our” is spelled: O-U-R. Not O-U-T.
Just in case someone might think I’m a fanatic about spelling.

Jon:

Read the classic Roberta Wohlstetter book on Pearl Harbor.  An attack WAS expected, anticipated, and that’s no secret.  The WHERE was the surprise.  The attack was expected to be on either the Dutch East Asia holdings or on the Philippines, but Pearl Harbor, nearly 2000 miles away, was considered impregnable.  There WAS communications intercepted that the attack could be at Pearl, but far more indicated the more obvious targets.

In fact, Admiral Yamamota, who opposed attacking the US, actually said if they were going to attack the US, they needed to find a way to knock out the US Pacific fleet.

The crazy part of the story is that the attack on the Philippines was supposed to be simultaneous to the attack on Pearl Harbor, but was delayed 12 hours.  Still, when they arrived, they found that the planes at Clark were in nice, neat, shootable rows, not scrambled, and the ships in Subic Bay were not at general quarters.  Why would ANY base in the Pacific not be at GQ after the attack?  That’s the mystery.

From Inherit the Wind to Rontruth:

“I’ll bet you’re one of those who also believe FDR knew about engineered the attack on Pearl Harbor without alerting the local commanders to be on alert…..a canard proposed by an angry an jaded Charles Beard in his dotage, as his revenge on FDR.”

A few years back, I heard someone else say the same thing about FDR, that he deliberately allowed the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor (something similar to George Bush allowing the attackers to slam both jets into the World Trade Center) because World War II would be the key to lifting the country out of the Depression.  At the time, I agreed with this theory because there is no way that the President could not have known in advance an attack would occur.  Either both Presidents were dumb, or they had really terrible lines of communication.  That’s my take on the story.

“Come on people now. Smile on your brother. Everybody get together; try to love one another right now.” (The Youngbloods, 1964). Now, it’s out turn to smile on Inherit the Wind. He needs out help, right NOW ‘cause he thinks he’s “funny.” I mean, he really is “funny.”

He is “funny,” like David Ferrie was “funny” to. But, at least, according to his one-time New Orleans friend, Doctor Mary Sherman, Ferrie was at least honest about it. No BS. Inherit….is truly full of BS. Now, that is FUNNY. I think I just “inherited” some of Inherit’s “wind.”  The smell wasn’t “funny.” I’m still reeling from it.

RonTruth:
Lots of people think I’m funny. 

But you are a fanatic obsessed with a conspiracy theory that I challenge as pure BS.

Naturally, you won’t have any sense of humor about that and you won’t think I’m funny.

Your loss.

I’ll bet you’re one of those who also believe FDR knew about engineered the attack on Pearl Harbor without alerting the local commanders to be on alert…..a canard proposed by an angry an jaded Charles Beard in his dotage, as his revenge on FDR.

From Inherit The Wind:

“I don’t know if Oswald was in that window, firing, but someone was and that someone killed JFK firing that rifle.  No one else shot him but that shooter in that window, regardless of whether there were would be assassins or not on the grassy knoll, or whether the grassy knoll ghosts fired or not, or there was a conspiracy or not. Besides Oswald definitely had the skills to do it.”

I don’t believe Mr. Oswald was the assassin.  Jack Ruby killed him because O knew too much about the case and someone in the government didn’t want Oswald to open his mouth.  My opinion is that Mr. Oswald was the decoy and patsy to keep the real killers covered.

Samson,
You asked, “Are we a nation of laws today,” among several questions about presidential lawbreaking.
I really did not want to spend all that much time simply saying, with documented evidence to show it, that Nixon, Hunt, and the other CIA/Cuban Watergate burglars had been directly involved in the assassination nine years before Watergate. The most recent CIA types who were involved have admitted their involvement.

The point I was trying to make was that it is imperative that, if we wish to prosecute a president, or former president, there has to be an in depth investigation into his crimes. The massive amount of hard evidence of what Hixon, LBJ, Hoover, Connolly, Bush, Sr., Felix Rodriguez, Frank Sturgis, and others of Op-40 CIA kill Castro fame, now makes it clear what they did to Kennedy.

That was really all there was to it. Just trying to point out the need for carrying forward with a real investigation of Bush, Jr, and potentially Sr. as well, based on what has now been proven from our past political/national history. I gave resource evidence for what I was saying. The guy who verbally attacked my positions really had no first hand proof to support his arguments.

One additional important note would be that, among the other Op-40 CIA officers and assets who were involved in what E. Howard Hunt described as “the run-up to the big event,” was that Bush, Sr. was the primary money-driving and recruitment force behind Op-40 and it’s plans to kill Castro-turned-against-Kennedy. He and his son are still very much alive today, and should be publicly questioned about the covert ops history of the last 45 or so years.

Now, I hope you will at least try to understand why I tried to get the documented historical truth out on TD.

I agree with you, there does need to be a legal inquiry, followed by a grand jury investigation, into the covert actions of both former presidents, Bush. If found culpable, then put on trial for their heinous crimes against humanity. Not to mention that one of them was documented by CIA Director, Richard C. Helms in the mid-70’s of involvement in the JFK hit.

An important article. It reminds us of the days when Americans used to stand up and fight to defend their democracy against the crooks like Nixon who would try to subvert it.  It of course raises interesting questions about current affairs, for instance both what did Bush do, and why don’t the Democrats impeach/prosecute.

Naturally, as whenever there is an important article that should lead to an important discussion, the comment section is filled by fools who have completely diverted the conversation off to never-never-fantasy land.

I strongly suspect that is no accident.

I with the ‘Ignore List’ feature worked.  Mine doesn’t.

The important questions we should be asking are….

Are we a nation of laws today?
Is no man, not even the President, above the law today?
Given evidence of Bush’s lawbreaking, why no impeachment and why no prosecution now that the Republicans are a weak and imploding minority party?

What would it take to return to an America where not even a President can break the law and get away with it?

What do we need to do as citizens to return this nation to being a nation where no person is above the law?

Looking back at Nixon shows clearly how much America has changed in my political lifetime.

Google and find the actual text of the articles of impeachment against Nixon ... read them.

Much of what Nixon got impeached for is exactly what Bush was doing with no (real) legal or political challenge thirty years later. 

In the 1970’s, there were still government officials who believed in the rule of law and that no person, not even the President was above the law. 

The thing that has me most angry at the Democrats has been their refusal to pursue impeachment while Bush was in office and their refusal to prosecute the crimes of that era now that the Democrats have nearly total control of the government.

“I dig (used to) rock and roll music and I love to get the chance to play (and sing it) Ah think I could say somethin’ if you know what I mean.But, I can’t really say it. The radio won’t play it. Unless I lay it between the lines….boppa, baba ba baba, ba boppa bah. Peter, Paul and Mary must have joined the author in creating this song, Inherit, just for you.

Your attempts of be “funny” while trying to obfuscate what your CIA friends know is true, makes about as much sense as “When the Beatles tell you they really love to nail you against the waaallll. Boppa Boppa ba, pa bappa boppa bah….....! Keep trying Interit… Boppa boppa bah….you’ll really make it some daaaayyyyyy, boppa boppa boppa bah.

Rontruth:

I just came across some new, revealing evidence:
1) Nixon was the shooter in the TBD.
2) Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover and Allan Dulles were on the grassy knoll.
3) It’s been found that Zapruder was secretly an NSA agent and used NSA facilities to change the timing on his film to hide the magic dancing bullet.
4) The entire forensics team in Dallas were all CIA agents or their children were being held hostage.  Naturally all record that these children ever existed has disappeared.
5) Jack Ruby was secretly related to the Dole family and wanted to hide and protect the pineapple interests of Dole.
6) Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld obtained all the guns.
7) Lee Harvey Oswald actually never was in Dallas until AFTER JFK was shot—he was flown back in to be the patsy.
8) The motive was JFK’s refusal to proceed with an insane war desired by Johnson, Nixon, the GOP and the Hearst publishing empire.
9) The whole thing was engineered by the Mossad in Israel because JFK wouldn’t give them an atom bomb and carte blanche to use across Arabia. 

“There’s only one thing wrong with your theory.”—Col. Flagg.
“Only one?”—Hawkeye Pierce.

Without Nixon we wouldn’t have had Reagan, Bush I and II, and the undermining the Chinese people, and of course the war in Indochine. Technically this makes Nixon, Satan.

Nixon also explains O.J. Simpson in an odd, nonlinear way.

Two stoned observations about Nixon:

1, I’m alive and he’s still dead;
2. John Lennons also dead and Nixon’s responsible

and he was at heart a cheater and a crook.

Inherit,
Why would Cronkite spend so much time and effort, with Lifton, and Peters, and all the other Dallas physicians who attended Kennedy, trying to prove that their WAS a massive, gaping wound on the back of Kennedy, if he did not believe that there was one there? Ask yourself some unbiased, reasonable questions.

You need to remember that the government you so adhere to every word from, is only stating a “thoery.” You act as if, with little first hand knowledge, since you have never spoken, or at least you have not yet said you had spoken to, any of the eye/ear witnesses to the events of Nov. 22, 1963.

And, what are you calling Gerald R. Ford, who made his admission to the Assassination Records Review Board in 1995 about having ordered the change in the location of the back wound after his own Warren Commission hand-written notes were discovered in the National Archives? A liar?

Now,Inherit, I would say that, yes, Gerald Ford did LIE to the American people. But that was back when he served as a leading member of the Warren Commission.

I would ask you: was Ford lying back then during the Warren Commission “investigation”, or in 1995 after his hand-written Warren Commission notes were found, and he felt he had no choice but to tell the truth when conftonted with his WC notes?

I think Americans are:
A. Smart enough to figure this out, and arrive at the same comclusion that poll after poll has found is a large majority of the American people; that there was a government-led/mafia-led conspiracy that killed President Kennedy, based on the vast bulk of the collected hard evidence, and

B. They have a right to know that what they have seen on film, in several films taken by by-standers along Elm Street in Dealey Plaza, and know that their government has, at long last, thrown in the towel and admitted what it tried so hard for so many years to keep covered up: it’s own covert role in the assassination.

You might try seeing http://www.jfkmurdersolved,com and order the recently released documentary, “The Grassy Knoll.” It is a well documented treatise and study by ex-FBI agents who passed along specific FBI information to private investigators that the FBI had known about James E. Files since 1964. A tip was passed along by an FBI informant who had been a close friend of James Files for a long time. They trusted each other.

Files and his friend travelled through Dealey Plaza in a stolen, hijacked car, on their way do a certain dealership, when Files, as they rolled past the grassy knoll, made the comment that, “If the American people really found out what happened here, no one would be able to handle it.” The informant told the Chicago field office of the FBI. That was the beginning of Files’ downfall.

From there, it was only a matter of a few years when Files’ lawbreaking past finally caught up to him, and he was charged, found guilty for his criminal past, and the former FBI agents found him where he is at now.

If you want to dispute these things, at least do yourself, and truth, the favor of investigating what your opposition says. Go to the sources they quote from, and check it out for yourself.

Forgery on the autopsy?  You gotta be kidding me! Cronkite NEVER said that and you know it!

Perhaps you better re-view the NOVA episode.  The conclusions were clear.  Or are you going to insist NOVA is lying too?

I noticed you shied away from that accusation.

Was that the one where Walter Cronkite interviewed the Dallas doctors who told NOVA that there was the large,gaping wound on the back, right side (left side if looking straight at Kennedy from the front), part of the president’s head?

He interviewed the doctors, took them to the National Archives, and Doctor Paul Peters, one of the attending physicians at Parkland Hospital, told about the “incision” that had been made about the hairline and right temple as not what he saw when he worked on President Kennedy, along with many others, trying to save the president’s life. The incision was not seen by the Dallas doctors.

It is obvious, therefore, and Cronkite agreed with them that those who wanted Oswald blamed instead of the real killers, had done post-mortem surgery on the president’s head. They did a soft-core matte insertion forgery of the autopsy photos, but did not find the originals to destroy them. Those have now been located. The knell bell is up on this case.

David Lifton did the research and documentation discovery work that showed that JFK’s body had to have been taken from the casket the mortuary technicians, Aubrey Rike, and assistants put it into, between Parkland and Bethesda, including a transcript of LBJ saying that the body should be taken to Walter Reed Army Hospital. That is likely where Kennedy’s brain was removed before the autopsy began. LBJ said these things while on board Air Force One on the way back to Washington, DC.

Jimmy Files, of the Chicago mob was almost killed when “police officers” stopped him, took him out of his car, and beat him until he was unconscious. They left him for dead along a road in Illinois. He was rescued by other “police” who apparently did not know why he was beaten.

He had with him the map of Dealey Plaza that was given to him by his mafia immediate supervisor, Charles Nicoletti who worked directly for Sam Giancana. He has hidden that map so that if anything happens to him while incarcerated at Stateville Prison, Joliet, Illinois, those who have the map can, in total secrecy, make many copies of it, with his and Nicoletti’s hand-written notes, and disperse them to radio and TV stations who are not predjudiced against his truthful role in the Kennedy assassination being brought to light. The CIA and FBI have done their darndest to discredit him.

Actually, I was referring to the NOVA special on the shooting, not Posner’s book.

We all know what a bunch of liars the producers of NOVA are at PBS, right?  [sarcastic smirk] [/sarcastic smirk]

OK Inherit…You take the cake for adlibbing about “CRAP.” You are quoting from Posner’s book, “Case Closed” about the so-called “science” prooving that a shot was “fired from the TSBD sixth floor window,” or something close to that statement. But, at least you, having obviously not spoken to any eye/ear witnesses to that event, even though I have, and at least you admit the possibility that a shot(s) were fired from the fence on the grassy knoll.

As to the acoustic evidence, carried out through much better acoustical analysis by scientists for the House of Representatives Select Commmittee on Assassinations, and maintained through 2001, with even better scientific testing, there WAS at least one shot fired from the grassy knoll in the picket fence area. The HSCA scientists were corroborated by the scientists who reported to several government agencies in 2001, including the US Government’s own Assassination Records Review Board.

The ARRB was the same group of US presidentially appointed investigators and researchers to whom, in 1995, Gerald R. Ford, a former leading member of the 1964 Warren Commission that he had ordered the Warren Commission’s medical illustrator to “move upward by several inches the wound on JFK’s back (so it would comport with the Oswald shot from behind theory used by the Warren Commission as it’s basis for blaming Oswald.)

When Ford’s 40,000 hand-written Warren Commission notes, which he used for his book, “Portrait of the Assassin,” released on the same day that the Warren Commission Report was released, were found by the Assassintion Records Review Board, and they cornered Ford in Vale, Colorado, and he admitted what his own notes said about the change of the location of that back wound, are you now even saying that Ford was a conspiracy buff, and therefore was LYING?

When Ford ordered the upward movement of what is normally a fixed location; that of a bullet’s entry, he had a reason for doing so. He lied to the American people. He therefore, whether or not you like it, committed high treason, Period.

If you want further corroborating information and filmed evidence, see http://www.YouTubeThe Mauser 7.65 Rifle. You will see none other than Walter Cronkite announcing that officers had found “a German-made Mauser 7.65 rifle with a telescopic scope that they took from the Book Depository, and you can see the officers standing in front ot the Book Depository holding the rifle. It’s way to large to have been a Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 rifle.

The Mannlicher Carcano was brought in to the Book Depository by the lady with whom Oswald’s wife and children stayed: Ruth Paine. Oswald told the police about her pink rambler stationwagon being present in Dealey Plaza, and Oswald said he knew who she was, but “to please leave her out of this.”

One might assume that Oswald was fearful for the lives of his wife and two children. Ruth was an actress and madrigal singer, with Bush, Sr. long-time friend, oil engineer, George DeMohrenschildt, who helped Oswald get the job at the Book Depositor building.

If you really want to know the truth, you have to learn to look for it. Those involved in something like this will not just run up to you, shake your hand, and say that they “did it.”

Jon,

I was addressing RonTruth, who can live in his little fantasy world, not you.

I’ll bet he believes extra-terrestrial beings landed in Roswell, NM in 1947 and the Air Force is still covering that up—taking Indian Jones and the Crystal Skull as fact rather than a fantasy.

And I see the birthers can produce just as much evidence of a Manchurian Candidate conspiracy to put a half-white/half African black newborn in the White House 48 years after he was born…..

I’ve seen the scientific analysis of the shots that killed JFK—they came from the window of the Texas Book Depository, grassy knoll or not, multiple shooters or not, conspiracy or not.  I have not seen ONE SHRED of evidence that even comes CLOSE to refuting the clear-cut evidence that Kennedy was shot in the back and then in the head from that window.  All I’ve seen is a lot of really, really bad science that tries to disprove the clear-cut laws of physics.

I don’t know if Oswald was in that window, firing, but someone was and that someone killed JFK firing that rifle.  No one else shot him but that shooter in that window, regardless of whether there were would be assassins or not on the grassy knoll, or whether the grassy knoll ghosts fired or not, or there was a conspiracy or not. Besides Oswald definitely had the skills to do it.

Unless someone formulates a viable theory that puts a different shooter in that window, setting Oswald up, I will continue to accept that he was the killer.

And any conspiracy theory that does NOT have the shooter killing JFK from that window with that rifle is pure, undocumented and unadulterated BS.

Believe what you want.

Inherit The Wind, who were you addressing?  Did I post something bad?  Help me out on this one.

OK, Inherit,
When Nixon, on tape, said “I was deeply involved in the Bay of Pigs thing,” he obviously then was NOT talking about the invasion at Baya de Conchinos, Cuba. Let his top man, Haldeman, speak for himself and what he said Nixon was talking about: “the Kennedy assassination.” If you can’t listen to a witness, or in Erlichman’s case when Nixon said, “The Warren Commission was the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetrated,” a second witness, then it appears to me that you do not want, or do not want to know what the witnesses said was/is truth on these matters. Pure and simple.

You simply will not accept the recorded testimony of those who were involved in the Watergate scandal, and what the actual evidence says was the real reason for the breakin. You sound an awful lot like Gerald Posner, author and admitted CIA asset when talking about his plagerism of the Warren Commission Report: “Case Closed.”

He tries to keep blaming Oswald for something that Gerald R. Ford’s 1995 testimony to the Assassination Records Review Board, when Ford told the investigators that he had in fact “moved upward by several inches the wound on President Kennedy’s back from where it appeared in the autopsy photographs, but only to clarify things.” He never explained to the investigators what it was that he tried to “clarify.”

What he ended up clarifying was his, and Commission’s pre-ordained conclusion that Oswald had to be the killer of JFK, no matter what evidence they committed treason by altering.

But, of course, I imagine you will not accept the testimony of a leading member of the Warren Commission, likely just because it does not conform to your determination to defend that which you have no evidence to defend.

I spoke with Jean Lollis Hill, in May, 1997, for about 45 minutes by phone. She was the lady in red, seen by many other witnesses helping her friend, Mary Ann Moorman by peeling the thin development covering off the top of each polaroid photo as it came out of Moorman’s camera. She told me what she saw and what she heard, as she had done for many others by that time.

How many actual eye/ear witnesses have you spoken to about what they saw and heard from Elm Street, November 22, 1963? At least one or two shots were fired from behind the white stockade fence on the top edge of the grassy little hill, known as the “grassy knoll,” a phrase coined by William Newman, an eye/ear witness, with his wife and two children standing near the sidewalk on the north grassy knoll.

As far as what you accept, or reject from what I say, that is your business. But, at least I present witness testimony and other documented facts to support what I say I believe is the case.

No, I’m not going to waste the time for the 100th time refuting your crap theories.  There is NO corroborating evidence, just a lot of inferences made from statements taken post hoc.

It’s like reading Nostradamus, seeing “Hister” and post hoc assuming it means “Hitler” rather than the river Ister.  Or taking every reference to “The 3” as the Kennedy brothers without realizing there were 4 brothers.

Just one question:  Have you examined the Bay of Pigs’ timeline?  Planning began in early 1960, when Nixon was still VP.  His being involved AT THAT TIME is not unexpected.  But when the invasion occurred in 1961, Nixon was a private citizen, beginning a run for California governor.  Have you ANY evidence he was involved in the Bay of Pigs AFTER January 20, 1961? Evidence, not the usual conspiracy buffs’ inferences.

I made a terrible mistake: Kissinger and Zbigniev were just before Reagan, I am so sorry.  Please disregard that first paragraph.  But the GOP under Nixon began the process of pulling the stopper from under the Democrats, and except for a brief moment under Jimmy Carter, the GOP bulldozer was moving quickly and steaming ahead.

So, Rontruth, what you are telling us then, that the GOP had plans to dominate our political system, starting with their infiltration of Mr. Zbigniev and Kissinger in the Carter administration:

“”“...Nixon former Chief of Staff, H. Robert Haldeman’s book, “The Ends of Power,” in which he describes his personal experiences with President Nixon?

“”“C.“The Bay of Pigs thing” was a Nixon-coined phrase, described by Haldeman as Nixon’s reference to the assassination of President Kennedy.” Nixon, on tape, said “I was deeply involved in the Bay of Pigs thing.”

“”“On the same tape, Nixon says, this time to John Erlichman when they were discussing how they could try to use the media to have the public blame either Ted Kennedy or George McGovern (the Democratic presidential candidate for 1972) for the attempted assassination of Independent candidate, former Alabama Governor, George C. Wallace,: “The Warren Commission Report was the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetrated.”

Things didn’t look right back then, nor did they feel right either.  Under Jimmy Carter, the GOP advisors in his Cabinet (my opinion, mind you) started the ball rolling with the Taliban (we hatched the idea) and Afghanistan, a process that has come back to haunt us and helped to make our planet less stable and secure.  The GOP strategy was to cripple the Democratic Party and weaken the influence of third parties, and it worked!  From what I have heard and read, Mr. Nixon was not the nicest person to be around, and his wife Pat went through a lot of ####.  Those Watergate tapes also revealed that he had a lot of contempt for minorities, not to mention that he freely used the “N” word frequently, except of course, when he was in the public eye.  I am sure that many more shocking facts will come to light in the years ahead.

And may we also remember Vice-President Nixon, who under Dwight D. Eisenhower, was involved in a scandal during that era, “The Checkers” scandal.  Apparently, the voters had forgotten all about that when Nixon won the White House in 1968.  Those who forget the past will be doomed to repeat it!

Inherit…
A. I do believe what I have posted, or I wouldn’t post the things I do.

B. How much hard, in fact real, evidence do you need? Or, have you ever read the transcripts of some of the Nixon Watergate tapes, or read Nixon former Chief of Staff, H. Robert Haldeman’s book, “The Ends of Power,” in which he describes his personal experiences with President Nixon?

C.“The Bay of Pigs thing” was a Nixon-coined phrase, described by Haldeman as Nixon’s reference to the assassination of President Kennedy.” Nixon, on tape, said “I was deeply involved in the Bay of Pigs thing.”

On the same tape, Nixon says, this time to John Erlichman when they were discussing how they could try to use the media to have the public blame either Ted Kennedy or George McGovern (the Democratic presidential candidate for 1972) for the attempted assassination of Independent candidate, former Alabama Governor, George C. Wallace,: “The Warren Commission Report was the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetrated.”

Ahh, how did Nixon know it was a “hoax,” if he didn’t in fact know who the real killers were???
Now, Inherit, I’m guessing that you are a studied person. If you were one of the Senate trial attorneys and had investigated Nixon and his reasons for the Watergate burglary and attempted cover-up, to what reasoned concusions would you come?

By the way, you can call me a conspiracist, or buff, or whatever else you please. However, if you would just refute, using reference materials, and explain your “theory(ies), I could then be given the opportunity to find what you are saying, and if I agree that what you have said is based in hard, documented fact, then I might be convinced to at least potentially adjust my thinking on a particular subject.

Rontruth:  Another fiction writer at TD.  The scary thing is, he probably believes that crap, just like the birthers believe THEIR crap that Obama is a Kenyan citizen and part of a 48-year long plan to be the “Manchurian Candidate”.

BTW, Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum and even Dale Brown all do it far better.  Hell, in “Debt of Honor” Clancy has a 747 crash into the Capitol Building—before 9/11.  In “The Sum of All Fears” he has a secret, tiny radical Islamic sect create an atom bomb with stolen plutonium and use it to create a major attack on the United States.

Nixon was a complex president during a complex era. An interesting aspect of the Nixon years that we tend to overlook was his social policies. Examining these gives us some insight into how far to the right the nation has actually gone. Nixon’s poverty policies today, more than anything else,  would be considered truly progressive, if not wildly leftist.  So, reviewing these policies shows us just how complex Nixon was, and tells us quite a lot about our own progress (or lack of…) as a culture.

Peacedragon,
You may be right. Except that, as it in fact turned out, the Democrats did have the evidence of Nixon’s top CIA Bay of Pigs invasion henchmen, Eugenio Martinez, Frank Fiorini Sturgis, Felix Ismael Rodriguez Mendigutia, and their “former” (since when was any CIA officer a “former” one??), E. Howard Hunt, and others, and their direct involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy.

Nixon suspected that they had the evidence and could not allow the Dems to go unchallenged and allow them to publicize the evidence (they had already posted photos of the “three tramps” taken in Dealey Plaza just an hour or so after the killing of President Kennedy) The photos appeared everywhere inside the US, courtesy of the Democratic National Committee.

To be sure, the Democrats knew that their man, Lyndon Johnson,had also been involved, in fact likely gave the final go-ahead, for the assassination of Kennedy. But Johnson was much better at covering his own rear-end than was Nixon.

Nixon felt he had to find a way to stop the Democrats from winning the 1972 election by outing him, and the CIA, over their collective involvement in the JFK hit. With a president McGovern, helped to win by being seen everywhere with Senator Ted Kennedy, the slain President’s brother, would cause the American people of every political stripe to demand that Nixon be investigated, along with Hunt and the others.

That McGovern and Ted Kennedy would have opened up a real investigation, with everything stacked in the Democrats’favor, there can be little doubt. But, to even things out, Nixon knew that Democrat, LBJ had also been directly involved in JFK’s murder.

Problem was Nixon had no real evidence of it against LBJ. Thus Nixon, in the short run, stood to lose more in an honest JFK assassination investigation than did the Democrats, in large part because none of the Dems who had been involved in the JFK hit were still in political office. LBJ was about to die down on the ranch along the Perdenalas River. He died one year later, in 1973, exactly 10 years after he authorized the dastardly act in Dealey Plaza so he could become president.

Nixon had to drastically reduce Ted Kennedy’s political clout. Nixon told Haldeman, as recorded in the Watergate tapes, that “Kennedy, that poor guy never knew what was really down there when the lady died.” He was talking about Mary Jo Kupechni, a lady friend that Kennedy was driving home with, when his car suddenly slid to one side of a small wooden bridge and went over into a river. He managed to escape, and ran, drunk, until he found someone with a phone and called the police. His GOP enemies made big use of what “may have happened at Chappaquidick.

McGovern’s closeness to Ted Kennedy ruined his chances for winning the 1972 election. Nixon, who knew enough to say, on tape, that Kennedy had not been prepared for what Nixon knew (was a bridge upon which powdered snow had been sprayed), won the 1972 election. Did I tell you that most GOP politicians are in fact “crooks?”

The irony of Watergate is that Nixon won his reelection in a landslide, which indicates that he would have won without commiting the crimes.

In “Where the Buffalo Roam”, Bill Murray, as Hunter Thompson, has a dummy with a Nixon Halloween mask, and two toilet plungers for arms. When, in a drunken, frustrated rage, Murray shouts “NIXON!” at his Doberman, the dog leaps and bites the dummy on the crotch.

Later he meets Nixon in a men’s room and Nixon says “Fuck the doomed.”

That expresses my feelings about Richard Nixon in a nutshell.

Political historians have pointed out that with each of America’s seemingly incessant wars (7 during my lifetime alone) the Executive Branch, specifically the President, has gained power - and quite naturally none has ever chosen to abrogate any accrued by his predecessor. 

(The artless Nixon was merely inept at keeping his power grabs, most of which other presidents had freely exercised, confined within the walls of the Oval Office.)

Fast-forward to George Bush (and 4 wars later) whose power grabs make Nixon’s pale by comparison. But, unlke Nixon, George didn’t have to resign when his were revealed because at this point in time they go-with-the-office.  There had better be some heads-up time before the next guy who just may be another Bush gets into office or this already decaying democracy will be beyond salvaging.

Limits on the Executive, ChaoticGood? How about one term of six year’s duration and no provision for re-election—you have six years to carve out a “legacy”; no more, no less. And if both houses of Congress vote, by a 3/4th majority, to pass a “no-confidence” motion, the president is out—O - U - T, out. And in case the vice-president gets funny ideas, if the president dies in office, resigns, or is incapacitated, the vice-president just holds the higher office for the duration of the incumbent’s term; no one, no matter who he/she is, may EVER serve more than six years as president. And finally, the president is commander-in-chief ONLY during a formally declared war (by Congress; Art. 1, Sec. 8, clause 11)—if the nation is not in a formally declared war, the nation is at peace, and the president may not exercise CinC powers.

In exchange, the president gets the line-item veto—something only one American president has ever had: Jefferson Davis. (Remember, the Confederates considered themselves Americans, too—they just didn’t want to be ruled from Washington DC any longer.)

There must be limits on the Executive.  The lack of limits invites abuse. We all know that.  Nixon was a mixed blessing for the USA.  He was at one time a pragmatist when he talked to China and when he abandoned Vietnam.  He was also a manipulator and a bully, when he orchestrated the break-ins at the DNC Watergate offices.
I think that the time has come to offer an amendment to the US Constitution that ends the pardon power of the President when that pardon would be for one of his appointees, associates or him/herself.

I have to agree with just about everytning previous posters here have said about Nixon and his legacy’s relationship to the modern corporate-controlled presidency. I would have to say that Bush, and the so-called “national security” he did not provide for almost a year (nine months before 9/11/2001) were a happenstance caused by the actual red-flag operation that the Watergate break-in was in fact really meant to cover up.

The “Committee To Re-elect The President” is where the Watergate break-in scandal all really began. The C.R.P.’ chairman, a man named George Herbert Walker Bush, given that job when former Texas Governor, John B. Connolly,The man who sat one seat in front of President John F. Kennedy as his limousine rolled down Elm Street in Dealey Plaza, taking JFK into history,refused Nixon’s offer of a White House job unless Nixon also took Bush in, knew the Democrats had incriminating evidence on Nixon.

Bush knew that, by 1970, Nixon had taken in E. Howard Hunt as the lead former CIA officer to direct his White House secret intelligence unit, the so-called “plumbers.” The unit was created when Daniel Ellsburg had discovered, and made copies of “The Pentagon Papers,” which detailed how Nixon and the CIA had set up the provocations that led to the Vietnam war and US involvement in it. It was meant to stop “leaks” of information to Nixon’s political enemies.

1972 was an election year. Nixon’s paranoiah led him to fear that the Democrats had the goods on Nixon’s connections to his Watergate “plumbers unit,” and knew about their involvement in the Nov. 22, 1963 assassination by the CIA/mafia alliance.

That was an alliance against Fidel Castro of Cuba. There was the failure at the Bay of Pigs invasion that Nixon and his rightwing cronies blamed on Kennedy. There was Kennedy’s withdrawal order, removing all US troops from Vietnam. Nixon had passed on orders, from Eisenhower, to the CIA.

Ellsburg,later, made sure the Pentagon Papers were released to the New York Times. The “plumbers” were meant to stop the leaks. Nixon’s fears about the evidence the Democrats might have about his and the CIA’s direct involvement in “our earlier venture,” (the JFK assassination), is what compelled Nixon to go ahead with Watergate and the attempt to cover it up. The “Plumbers” and Hunt, who was their immediate boss, got caught.

This was the reason for the June 23, 1972 “smoking-gun"taped conversation between Nixon and Haldeman. Nixon ordered the FBI to stop investigating Hunt’s CIA activities in Mexico City in the months just before the assassination of President Kennedy.

Some historians suspect that it was Howard Hunt who impersonated Lee Harvey Oswald’s voice on the tape of an “Oswald” in Mexico City, supposedly trying to get into Cuba, and a recorded conversation between “Oswald” and a Russian spy named Kostakov, supposedly trying to get a visa to go to Russia. They were setting Oswald up to take the blame for what Hunt later confessed having prior knowledge of: the assassination of JFK a couple of months later.

Nixon knew about Hunt’s acitivities in Mexico City. He knew about the JFK assassination before it happened. That is what Nixon was trying to stop the investigation of. That was the basis for the “Obstruction of Justice” impeachment article that the House of Reps. voted out and sent to the Senate. That is why Nixon resigned.

“Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Nixon used burglary, Bush used wiretaps, and to the same effect, not to work to better protect our nation but to better serve his re-election.

The fault lies with an American people apparently stupefied or comatose in the face of an increasingly undemocratic government working to benefit an increasingly fewer number of our citizenry. Obama refuses to even allow investigations to begin into the violations of our constitution, war profiteering and crimes against humanity.

Yet we sleep on.

It’s all Relative compared to, if and when, we get the heir apparent to the title of ‘Tricky Dicky’.
Nixons Crimes will pale in comparison- seem almost quaint and devlishly boyish compared to the outright treasonous acts of Dick Cheney &Co;.
It may be that Nixon committed some war crimes during Vietnam, but he was handed that cluster. Cheney created Iraq and possibly played a hand in building AQ’s lyre of Afghanistan (those ‘80’s Afgahani ‘Freedom Fighters’).
The suffix ‘Gate’ will not suffice when discussing, or describing, the totality of criminal activities committed by Cheney & Co,domestically & internationally. This will require it’s own unique term.

Right you are, Godistwaddle; the biggest idiotic mistake Ford ever made was to pardon Nixon and effectively let him off the hook of all but the condemnation of history. I understand that, right up to his death, Ford thought he’d “done the right thing”, but I’ll just bet that deep down, he knew he had not. So he’ll go down in history as the first (but maybe not the only) completely unelected president; might we see another one some day? Perhaps a military coup and a president/general/dictator?

If we’d hanged the bastard, we wouldn’t have had Bush undermining everything United Statesian.  Now any american, using Bush as an example, should break any law he finds it convenient to break.  Nation of laws, my ass.