Stephanie
Diamond Member
- Jul 11, 2004
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Interesting history
links in article at site
1973 Democrats blocked investigation of LBJ.
SNIP:
It is the real lesson of Watergate.
As South Carolina’s Congressman Trey Gowdy, the new chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, begins his task, it is worth recalling a lesson from Watergate. Specifically a lesson about the creation of what became known as the Senate Watergate Committee — and how the Senate Republicans of 1973 lost a fight that literally changed the course of American history.
The date is November 17, 1972. The Democrats in the United States Senate are not happy with the results of the just concluded presidential election in which their nominee and Senate colleague, South Dakota’s Senator George McGovern, had lost 49 states — all but Massachusetts and the District of Columbia — to President Richard Nixon.
In the middle of the campaign — back in June — the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee had been burglarized. Among other things, the objective was to bug the phones to monitor the DNC Chairman, ex-JFK and LBJ White House aide Lawrence O’Brien. The story had been a detail of the campaign, but a small one. Not until October had the story gained any kind of traction, moving in a bigger way from print media and the hands of the Washington Post’s young reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to television. Walter Cronkite at CBS had spent two nights in a row on the scandal, a big deal in a day where the three TV networks only had a single half-hour news show at the dinner hour. There were strands of a story — a connection between Nixon’s re-election committee, the story of an intelligence fund at the committee. And not much else. The news reports had no effect whatsoever on Nixon’s impending landslide victory.
During that campaign there had been a Senate election in Montana, a re-election campaign for the state’s junior senator Lee Metcalf, a Democrat. His senior colleague and fellow Democrat Mike Mansfield, out campaigning hard for Metcalf, had seen the news reports on the burglary. Understanding that McGovern was about to go under in a tidal wave, Mansfield told Montana voters that when the election was over he would go back to Washington and “pave the way” (his words) for an investigation not just of the Watergate break-in but the whole business of campaign financing.
The importance? Mike Mansfield was not just a run-of-the-mill U.S. Senator. He was the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate. The Harry Reid of his day.
Mansfield kept his vow. On November 17 he wrote two letters. One to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Eastland of Mississippi. The other to another Judiciary member and Democrat, North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin. Mansfield’s flat assertion? That Republicans had manipulated the presidential election of 1972 with a “cynical and dangerous intrusion into the integrity of the electoral processes by which the people of the nation choose the trustees of federal office…”
On February 5, 1973 Mansfield went out with his resolution to create what was formally titled the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. It would soon become known to history as the Senate Watergate Committee.
The Republican response?
If in fact the Democrats really believed that it was critical to investigate what Mansfield had called a “cynical and dangerous intrusion into the integrity of the electoral processes by which the people of the nation choose the trustees of federal office” then that was fine by them. Game on. Immediately they offered an amendment to include in the new Select Committee’s purview not just the 1972 election — but the 1968 and 1964 presidential elections as well.
Why? Specifically.
• 1964 and the Johnson-Goldwater campaign: Under the orders from President Lyndon B. Johnson, the White House was used as the headquarters of a dirty tricks “Anti-Campaign” operation — with the FBI used to wiretap the Goldwater campaign.
As Lee Edwards would later describe in his biography Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution:
ALL of it here with COMMENTS HERE
Trey Gowdy and the Real Lesson of Watergate | The American Spectator
links in article at site
1973 Democrats blocked investigation of LBJ.
SNIP:
It is the real lesson of Watergate.
As South Carolina’s Congressman Trey Gowdy, the new chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, begins his task, it is worth recalling a lesson from Watergate. Specifically a lesson about the creation of what became known as the Senate Watergate Committee — and how the Senate Republicans of 1973 lost a fight that literally changed the course of American history.
The date is November 17, 1972. The Democrats in the United States Senate are not happy with the results of the just concluded presidential election in which their nominee and Senate colleague, South Dakota’s Senator George McGovern, had lost 49 states — all but Massachusetts and the District of Columbia — to President Richard Nixon.
In the middle of the campaign — back in June — the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee had been burglarized. Among other things, the objective was to bug the phones to monitor the DNC Chairman, ex-JFK and LBJ White House aide Lawrence O’Brien. The story had been a detail of the campaign, but a small one. Not until October had the story gained any kind of traction, moving in a bigger way from print media and the hands of the Washington Post’s young reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to television. Walter Cronkite at CBS had spent two nights in a row on the scandal, a big deal in a day where the three TV networks only had a single half-hour news show at the dinner hour. There were strands of a story — a connection between Nixon’s re-election committee, the story of an intelligence fund at the committee. And not much else. The news reports had no effect whatsoever on Nixon’s impending landslide victory.
During that campaign there had been a Senate election in Montana, a re-election campaign for the state’s junior senator Lee Metcalf, a Democrat. His senior colleague and fellow Democrat Mike Mansfield, out campaigning hard for Metcalf, had seen the news reports on the burglary. Understanding that McGovern was about to go under in a tidal wave, Mansfield told Montana voters that when the election was over he would go back to Washington and “pave the way” (his words) for an investigation not just of the Watergate break-in but the whole business of campaign financing.
The importance? Mike Mansfield was not just a run-of-the-mill U.S. Senator. He was the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate. The Harry Reid of his day.
Mansfield kept his vow. On November 17 he wrote two letters. One to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Eastland of Mississippi. The other to another Judiciary member and Democrat, North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin. Mansfield’s flat assertion? That Republicans had manipulated the presidential election of 1972 with a “cynical and dangerous intrusion into the integrity of the electoral processes by which the people of the nation choose the trustees of federal office…”
On February 5, 1973 Mansfield went out with his resolution to create what was formally titled the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. It would soon become known to history as the Senate Watergate Committee.
The Republican response?
If in fact the Democrats really believed that it was critical to investigate what Mansfield had called a “cynical and dangerous intrusion into the integrity of the electoral processes by which the people of the nation choose the trustees of federal office” then that was fine by them. Game on. Immediately they offered an amendment to include in the new Select Committee’s purview not just the 1972 election — but the 1968 and 1964 presidential elections as well.
Why? Specifically.
• 1964 and the Johnson-Goldwater campaign: Under the orders from President Lyndon B. Johnson, the White House was used as the headquarters of a dirty tricks “Anti-Campaign” operation — with the FBI used to wiretap the Goldwater campaign.
As Lee Edwards would later describe in his biography Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution:
ALL of it here with COMMENTS HERE
Trey Gowdy and the Real Lesson of Watergate | The American Spectator
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