PRESIDENT — Systemic Pattern of Corruption NIXON TO TODAY = 40+ Years

Interview of Burt Wides on Reality Asserts Itself by Paul Jay on Watergate scandal + White House above the law + Exposure of CIA assassinations plots. Burt Wides helped create Congressional and White House oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies including the CIA, FBI, and NSA. + Headed Church Committee investigation of CIA’s questionable activities. + Helped create Senate and House Intelligence Committees….

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FACT: Nixon only president to resign to avoid impeachment in the Watergate scandal.

Nixon also attempted to burglarize the psychiatrist’s office of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg.

FACT: Nixon ordered a burglary of the Brookings Institute may have had a memo about the Pentagon Papers. Not clear that break in ever happened.

Nixon Scandal = Led to Church Committee investigation into the activities of the CIA, FBI, and revealing CIA assassination plots against foreign leaders, including Fidel Castro and the successful plot against Patrice Lumumba. + Domestic spying by the CIA + CIA’s role in the 1973 Chilean coup led by General Pinochet.

Watergate office break in = Illegal Activity Pattern = Mainly Cubans against Castro working for CIA in the Bay of Pigs + Various sabotage efforts against Castro + Howard Hunt, a longtime CIA official, was then working in the White House, and he was also arrested.

WIDES: A map in The Washington Post during Nixon Era = Showed how to get from the Chilean Embassy to Watergate = Prior break-in at Chilean embassy.

Wides: Nixon Recordings show him getting on his top staff and pressing them to break into the Brookings Institution for other papers related to the Pentagon Papers. = NOTHING WAS OUT-OF-BOUNDS!

FACT: The CIA during the Kennedy administration worked with and used the mafia in various ways.

ONE of the Theories of the Kennedy assassination is the mafia might have been involved in a revenge.

WIDES: FBI did a lot of what they call black bag jobs = Some people were prosecuted and then pardoned. = Breaking into a foreign embassy to steal codes. + COINTELPRO + Break into dissidents premises + Lyndon Johnson had WHCA, the White House army communications agency, do telephone tapping of political opponents. = Wiretapping

FACT: National security in the case of domestic terrorism was not a sufficient excuse to avoid the Fourth Amendment (Judge Keith in Detroit made that ruling)

FACT: DOJ afraid of the Supreme Court involved foreign intelligence, agreed to the FISA Act which now says they need a warrant for wiretap of Americans = GW BUSH ordered all kinds of wiretaps without even going through the FISA court — even though they were rubber-stamping just about everything put in front of them.

NIXON = All politicians don’t like to take chances = Like to win by big margins to claim they have a mandate + PARANOIA + Getting political intelligence + Covert actions to thwart and embarrass opponents

FACT = NIXON had a pattern of break-ins and illegal activities

FACT = Watergate paved the way to the Church Committee investigations of CIA assassination plots + infiltration of antiwar groups.

1976 Church COMMITTEE = NO congressional committees overseeing the intelligence community = Lot of significant reforms. = Congress created Senate and House intelligence committees + FISA, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for court approval of wiretaps and surveillance and break-ins of American citizens + Machinery put in place to protect American citizens’ rights to their privacy, Fourth Amendment, and First Amendment from the national security part of the government. + Executive order on assassinations + Inspector generals + Carter created the Intelligence Oversight Board for the president to watch over agencies + Series of rules about what the FBI could do in investigations of American citizens = attorney general guidelines

FACT = Carter executive order to give nonlethal + financial support to the mujahedin in Afghanistan via Pakistani intelligence community = But WEAPONS were provided (Robert Gates’ memoir brags) to the mujaheddin

WIDES = Brzezinski bragged about how he seduced, enticed, entrapped Russia to go into Afghanistan while arming the mujaheddin.

WIDES: The oversight frequently does not seem to work. Sometimes it does. Primarily the oversight is focused on the rights of Americans.

WIDES: Executive orders of assassinations of Democratically Elected Leaders weren’t attacking a president, but were attacking the commander-in-chief of the army. = SAME = On that basis you could kill a lot of presidents.

WIDES = The presidency = Like a monarch is head of state = almost gets sainted. = The aura of the presidency = Was Broken with Nixon + The Pentagon Papers + Government lying and misleading the public + Watergate = Put USA in turmoil = Very tremendous cumulative effect on public skepticism about the government. = Congress feeling it needed more muscular oversight of the executive and national security apparatus.

WIDES = MEDIA WOKE UP AFTER ALL THESE SCANDALS = Every Cub reporter wanted to be the next Woodward and Bernstein = The public + Congress + Press were much more skeptical and eager to press for the real truth.