Johnson consulted with Walt Rostow, Rusk and Defense Secretary Clark Clifford in a Nov. 4 conference call. Those three pillars of the Washington Establishment were unanimous in advising Johnson against going public, mostly out of fear that the scandalous information might reflect badly on the U.S. government.“Some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I’m wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story and then possibly have a certain individual [Nixon] elected,” Clifford said. “It could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I think it would be inimical to our country’s interests.”
Though sounding reluctant to go along, Johnson concurred with the judgment. An administration spokesman told Davis, “Obviously I’m not going to get into this kind of thing in any way, shape or form,” according to another “eyes only” cable that Rostow sent Johnson. The cable added:
“Saville Davis volunteered that his newspaper would certainly not print the story in the form in which it was filed; but they might print a story which said Thieu, on his own, decided to hold out until after the election. Incidentally, the story as filed is stated to be based on Vietnamese sources, and not U.S., in Saigon.”
Rostow’s cable also summed up the consensus from him, Rusk and Clifford: “The information sources [an apparent reference to the FBI wiretaps] must be protected and not introduced into domestic politics; even with these sources, the case is not open and shut.
“On the question of the ‘public’s right to know,’ Sec. Rusk was very strong on the following position: We get information like this every day, some of it very damaging to American political figures. We have always taken the view that with respect to such sources there is no public ‘right to know.’ Such information is collected simply for the purposes of national security."
Amazing how no one states the obvious, i.e., that Nixon's actions were against the law.
Also too, liberal media bias.
To anyone who has read Seymour Hersh's The Price of Power, the gist of this story is fairly old news, but it helps to explain in an obvious way why nearly every Republican presidential administration since then has behaved like an organized crime family, and why Democratic administrations have been so easily depicted as "weak" or "soft" on law and order: Because, when it comes to lawbreaking by Republican administrations, Democrats have been weak, soft and willfully accommodating. This hands-off approach doesn't stop the lawbreaking from occurring, as history has clearly shown, and it works against Democrats' own interests. Put another way: if you keep enabling people whose overarching strategy is to undermine your legitimacy to govern, eventually your legitimacy to govern will be, well, undermined.
Unfortunately, our post-millennial Democrats have learned nothing from their own moral failings in this regard, except perhaps to answer Republican lawlessness with outlaw behavior of their own. For some reason, this outcome doesn't make me think of a moral arch of justice that's bending ever upward.
---Vitelius
Comments