These new transcripts make abundantly clear that Watergate indeed sprang from the bitter soil of Nixon's vindictiveness, the longstanding grudges and festering slights and wounds going back decades. Arguably the scandal began in 1971 with the publication of the Pentagon Papers, a classified 7,000-page Defense Department document on the origins and conduct of the Vietnam War that had been obtained by The New York Times. Nixon saw the publication as evidence of a great liberal Democratic Establishment plot against him. And his inability to do anything about it triggered a towering rage.
''We're up against an enemy, a conspiracy,'' he thunders to Haldeman and Henry Kissinger on July 1, 1971, in a newly published transcript. ''They're using any means. We are going to use any means. Is that clear?'' This included dispatching a secret White House team, ''the Plumbers,'' to dig up dirt on Daniel Ellsberg, the former Kissinger aide who said he was the one who had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press. A few months later the Plumbers broke into the Los Angeles office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to photograph Ellsberg's records, but found nothing, and left behind a messy crime scene. Since some of the Plumbers were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel a year later, Nixon was understandably frightened that the Watergate investigation would reveal other illegalities, so a cover-up was vital, even if it meant paying the burglars hush money or trying to get the C.I.A. to obstruct the F.B.I.'s investigation using the pretext of national security.
If there were ever serious doubts that Nixon was directly involved in raising the hush money, these new tapes should put them to rest once and for all. There are several conversations here in which Nixon thanks a wealthy contributor, Thomas Pappas, for ''what you're doing to help out on some of these things. . . . I won't say anything further.'' (Nixon's lawyer and Judas, John Dean, called Pappas ''the Greek bearing gifts.'') Later, Nixon asks his longtime secretary, Rose Mary Woods, to reach Pappas and make sure he keeps his mouth shut -- ''I don't want to have anything indicating that I was thanking him for raising money for the Watergate defendants'' -- and cautions her not to talk on the phone.
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His vindictiveness is, at times, comic. ''I'm going to get that Council on Foreign Relations,'' the President sputters. ''I'm going to chop those bastards off right at the neck.'' Furious at The Washington Post, he demands revenge: ''They don't really realize how rough I can play. I've been such a nice guy around here. . . . But when I start, I will kill them.'' He's going to revoke the F.C.C. license of one of the Post-owned television stations and, what's more, ''They're off the guest list, they don't come to the Christmas party.''
And there are his squirmingly embarrassing attempts at expressing affection: ''You're a strong man, goddamn it, and I love you,'' he blurts out over the phone to Haldeman shortly after announcing Haldeman and Ehrlichman's forced resignations. ''I love you, as you know. . . . Like my brother.'' (Haldeman's response: ''O.K.'')
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Originally Posted by Demogorgon
