Category Archives: Politics

Arts, Books, History, Politics, United States

Book Review – ‘Watergate: A New History’

LITERARY REVIEW

Intro: A masterful retelling of the Watergate scandal reveals the very human flaws that surrounded it – from a paranoid president terrified of losing his grip on power, to a security chief piqued at being passed over

In August 1974, President Richard Nixon was engulfed by the ever-expanding scandals of the Watergate affair. It had become a way of life. Nixon was often alone, depressed, anxious, and drinking heavily. He was uncertain of what to do as the scandals intensified.

A couple of days before he became the first man to voluntarily resign the presidency, he told his Chief of Staff, Alexander Haig: “Al, you soldiers have the best way of dealing with a situation like this. You just leave a man alone in a room with a loaded pistol.”

Haig knew Nixon was speaking figuratively about suicide. But Defence Secretary James Schlesinger believed it went beyond that.

He recalled an alarming remark Nixon had made to U.S. politicians when asked about fighting Communism: “I can go in my office and pick up a telephone, and in 25 minutes millions of people will be dead.”

Increasingly concerned about the President’s mental state and fearful that he could plunge the world into a holocaust, Schlesinger took an extraordinary step. He told America’s military leaders that if the President gave them any orders, commanders should check either with him or the Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. In other words: “If you’re ordered to push the button, make sure you run it by me first.”

In the event, the final days of the Nixon presidency passed off without alarms.

This extraordinary insight into the pressures engulfing the most powerful man in America is just one of countless rich anecdotes in Garrett Graff’s monumental history of the Watergate affair.

Graff, a prolific and award-winning journalist and historian, vividly and effortlessly clarifies the strands of one of the most complex episodes in modern history. The narration is full of vivid characters: doomed advisers, diligent journalists, and assiduous political investigators on Capitol Hill.

“My goal,” writes Graff, “was not to reinvestigate.” Instead, he relies on voluminous sources and documentary evidence to tell the story as clearly as possible.

RUIN

WATERGATE might have started with a failed robbery, but it led to dozens more arrests, the ruin of several political careers – including two Attorneys-General – an alleged kidnapping, investigations by the FBI and Congress, an FBI director imprisoned, the sinking of a Vice-President (Spiro Agnew was convicted of bribery), and the ruin of the President as well as most of the President’s men.

It is one of the most reported stories ever. There are more than 30 memoirs from key participants, hundreds of pages of transcripts of Nixon’s tapes and 30 volumes of a senate committee report.

For people in this country and elsewhere, the defining image, from the Oscar-winning movie All The President’s Men, will be of Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as the Washington Post’s investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, leaping over newsroom desks in their haste to uncover the scandal after another meeting with their source, Deep Throat, and bring what turns out to be a corrupt President to justice.

The driving force behind the scandal was the insane levels of paranoia in the White House, which became critical in 1971 when the Washington Post and New York Times published what became known as the Pentagon Papers, thousand of leaked documents chronicling decades of U.S. involvement in Vietnam and revealing the insidious lies told to the American people.

With Nixon furious at the leaks, hostile to the Press and determined not to have his re-election jeopardised, a ruthless attitude of “win at all costs” developed in the White House. To this end, the President signed up a team of former CIA and FBI operatives to do his dirty work. Determined to smear Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, one of their first jobs was to break into the offices of his psychiatrist, hoping to find something damaging.

But the scandal really began on June 17, 1972, with a 2:30am break-in at the Watergate building, a mile from the White House.

When police arrived, they found five men in the offices of the Democratic Party National Committee, wearing suits and latex gloves, and carrying bugging devices and walkie-talkies, as well as hundreds of dollars to bribe security.

Not your typical burglars, then. That became even more apparent at the first court hearing a few hours later, when one of the defendants, James W. McCord Jr, told the judge he was a security consultant, recently working for the CIA. The judge was visibly taken aback. It was clear this was no normal break-in.

Graff argues that there were two conspiracies. The first, to burgle the Democrats, was part of the Republican Nixon world’s paranoid obsession with dirty tricks – bugging, smearing, stealing documents. It was chaotic, but it was a worked-out plan to subvert the 1972 presidential election. Quite why is beyond anyone’s guess: Nixon won it by a landslide.

The second conspiracy – the cover-up – just grew and grew because no one stopped it. And it went right to the top.

As the shockwaves of the break-in widened, with allegations of slush funds, corruption, misplaced campaign funding, bribery and tax fraud, the proliferating scandal was blown wide open in July 1973 when it was revealed that Nixon had routinely taped every conversation and call in the Oval Office.

He fought hard to keep his profanity-strewn recordings secret but lost in the Supreme Court – and the crucial tape, The Smoking Pistol, was revealed.

On it, in a conversation that took place just six days after the Watergate break-in, Nixon and his Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman are heard plotting to persuade the CIA to tell the FBI to drop any inquiry.

The cover-up had started in the Oval Office, but within days Nixon was gone.

MASTERFUL

THE tragedy was that in many ways he should be regarded as one of the greatest men to occupy the White House. Nixon wound down the Vietnam War, signed the Clean Air Act, created the Environmental Protection Agency, hiked social security, declared war on cancer, tripled the number of women in policy-making roles, calmed the Cold War and was the first to visit Peking and Moscow.

But he was betrayed by his darker side: paranoid, fearful of his opponents and the media, and determined to do them down.

Even now, the Watergate scandal retains its mysteries, admits Graff. Who ordered the break-in? What was the purpose and target? Were they looking for blackmail material – there were rumours of a call girl ring at Democratic HQ – or disruptive political intelligence?

For anyone growing up as a journalist in this period, the role of the anonymous source Deep Throat was heroic.

Graff is more sceptical. Deep Throat was outed decades later as Mark Felt, the deputy director of the FBI. But for Graff, Felt’s actions were the payback of an embittered man, furious that he had been passed over to succeed J. Edgar Hoover as FBI director.

This is a masterful and epic look at a story that is still barely believable. Adeptly, Graff guides us through the mass of supporting players, crooks, conmen, business aides, judges, lawyers, miscellaneous wives, White House operatives, spooks and cops. If anything, for those readers not totally steeped in the story for decades, a few pages listing the various players would not have gone amiss.

For America, the scandal ushered in an age of greater transparency and hard-nosed investigative journalism that still, thankfully, exists.

But despite the lessons of Watergate, in our own time President Trump not only wanted to screw up his opponents, just like Nixon, but unlike Nixon, refused to accept an election result.

He even fomented a revolt on the Capitol Building that has not lost its power to shock.

Perhaps we should go back to Watergate and re-learn its lessons. In politics, as in everything, morality matters.

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Britain, Government, Politics, Society

Sir Tony Blair

OPINION

THIS day was always going to come. Convention dictates that all British prime ministers eventually join the Order of the Garter – even the ones, like James Callaghan, that nobody actually voted for.

And let me make it clear that I have no loyalty or political affiliation to the Labour Party: in large part I’m a centrist who believe ministers should keep the ship of state afloat.

Certainly, like most people, there are aspects of Mr Blair’s behaviour that I find objectionable: his multi-billion money grubbing empire acquired from dodgy dictators after leaving office; his refusal to accept the Brexit result.

Despite that, though, there is also much to admire. He was the Labour leader who understood the concerns of Middle Britain, instead of dismissing them – as the Left so often does – with a sneer.

This open-minded, pluralistic approach allowed him to sell liberal policies to an essentially conservative nation.

The Labour of old redistributed wealth through vicious taxation, especially in the middle classes. New Labour under Tony Blair focused on growing the economy. Prosperity, this business-friendly party understood, increased revenue.

Instead of demonising aspiration, Blair openly celebrated it. He promised with political vigour to be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. Police numbers rose by twelve per cent during his premiership.

But equally he recognised that crime would never fall unless he also tackled deprivation and hopelessness.

Where Blair really stood out was in foreign policy. Few young people today understand how, before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the spectre of Irish republican terrorism hung over the streets of Belfast and London alike.

After 9/11, Blair saw Islamism for the threat to liberal democracy it was, cracked down on domestic extremists and asserted abroad the values of freedom, tolerance and the rule of law.

There are many that disagree with him on Iraq. I respect the principles these people hold but I continue to believe that Britain did the right thing in overthrowing Saddam Hussein. True leadership seldom wins friends.

More recently, too, he has been a voice of reason on the pandemic. He was an early advocate of mass-testing and for the vaccinated to be exempt from lockdown. Many lives – and businesses – might have been saved if ministers had listened.

Tony Blair created a fairer, more tolerant country at home and stood up for desperate people overseas. Whatever his flaws and mistakes, that is the legacy of a statesman. It is right that his achievements be so recognised.

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China, Defence, Government, Politics, Society, United States

China’s hypersonic missiles and its threat to the West

HYPERSONIC MISSILES

UNTIL very recently, few people outside of the military, intelligence and security services and the defence industry, had heard of hypersonic missiles or had an inkling as to what they were or their significance.

The revelation that China has tested such a missile – and that it was nuclear-capable – has sent shock waves around the world. The fact that it missed its presumed target by up to 24 miles brings scant comfort.

While the US is continuing to develop its own hypersonic missile, Russia has already tested them and even North Korea has claimed to have test-fired one. China is not alone but it has shown it is far more advanced than the West suspected.

Washington and other world capitals are now waking up to the implications of Beijing possessing a missile that can circle the globe at five times the speed of sound – and can sneak under the radar of US anti-missile defences.

The missile, carried on a “hypersonic glide vehicle”, was launched into space by rocket boosters (like those that launch spacecraft) in August. When they run out of fuel – typically within minutes – the boosters detach and fall away, and the glide vehicle continues to orbit the Earth at nearly 4,000mph, under its own momentum.

Although slower than ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles fly at much lower trajectories – more like cruise missiles – so are easier to manoeuvre and harder to track. Such a weapon could help negate American defence systems. They are designed to destroy incoming ballistic missiles which soar high into space before descending on their target.

Certainly, China’s achievement is a game-changer in East-West relations. For a generation, the West has been used to China manufacturing more and more of what we buy as consumers. More than a quarter of manufactured goods, for example, bought in America are made in China. But when it came to high tech items, not least in the defence sector, the assumption was that the US still held a distinct edge over China.

In the space of just a few weeks that complacency has been rocked to its core. Even before the disclosure of the Chinese hypersonic test, the Pentagon had warned that Beijing was heading for global dominance because of its advances in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and cyber capabilities – and that gap was growing.

ANTI-BALLISTIC MISSILE SYSTEMS

THERE has been anger within the higher echelons of the Pentagon at the slow pace of technological transformation in the US military.

What the advent of hypersonic weapons does is shatter faith in anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems because these are our guarantee against a surprise attack by a nuclear-armed rival. China’s new hypersonic missile launch puts the West on notice that its technological advantage is an illusion.

ABM defence systems, such as the American Patriot, point up at missiles incoming in a supersonic arc through outer space from launch pad to target. Targeting a low-flying hypersonic missile which harnesses AI to dodge defences is a vastly harder prospect.

Since the 1980s, America has invested billions in anti-missile defence. It was started by President Ronald Reagan who believed effective defence against ballistic missiles would reduce the risk of nuclear war – making disarmament and peace possible.

Sadly – as so often in history – scientists have found ways around apparently invulnerable defence systems. German tanks bypassed the incredibly sophisticated French fortifications that made up the Maginot Line in 1940 by diverting through Belgium. Now hypersonic missiles effectively undercut America’s anti-ballistic Maginot Line mentality.

CHINA’S UPSWING AND STRENGTH

BACK in the 1980s, the architect of China’s extraordinary economic upswing, leader Deng Xiaoping, advised future Chinese leaders to ensure their country rose “unobserved”. Deng recognised that China must bide its time until it reached full spectrum domination, from the military to the economic spheres. That meant avoiding antagonising rivals and neighbours.

Today’s leader, President Xi Jinping, is more inclined to exploit China’s new heavyweight standing. From border disputes with India to bullying breakaway Taiwan, Xi has been flexing his muscles. Indeed, Taiwan is the most likely flash point between the superpowers. President Xi is bent on reunifying the Chinese-speaking island democracy, while, after his humiliating retreat from Afghanistan, President Biden is determined not to look weak over Taiwan.

What if Beijing thinks American public resolve is just bluff and makes a land grab for the island? Miscalculation leads to world wars. In the 20th century, the democracies led by Britain and the US came out on top in two world wars. The Americans guided the West to a peaceful defeat of Soviet Communism in the Cold War.

But past glories do not guarantee future victories. Nor do decades of mutual nuclear deterrence between Washington and Moscow mean that the growing number of other nuclear-armed states will show the self-restraint of the Cold War era.

Any war between nuclear-armed states is too horrible to contemplate – or should be. But the development of hypersonic missiles and new AI weaponry raises the terrible spectre of Chinese Dr Strangeloves calculating the chances of emerging from their bunkers into a post-atomic desert as the world’s only superpower.

When Mao said that the Chinese would outnumber all the other survivors of any nuclear war 60 years ago, the then Soviet leaders thought he had gone mad and promptly cut nuclear cooperation with his regime.

Maybe today’s vastly more powerful and technologically sophisticated Communist China has escaped from Maoist thinking. But if it hasn’t, it is fast acquiring the futuristic weaponry to put its founder’s chilling words into practice.

Worst case scenarios are never certain. But planning for the best case is never wise. China’s military modernisation is going at hypersonic pace. The West will be worried. It must catch up – and fast.

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