A CLEAR CASE OF IMPROPER CONDUCT YET NIXON TARRIED

“The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm,” Macaulay, Essays: Hallam.
 
Had former United States president, Richard Nixon, been nurtured in the Westminster tradition he would have resigned immediately following on clearly damaging, and it should be emphasised irrefutable evidence of his improper conduct in public office which had become an undeniable and undenied part of the public domain. Perhaps I should add: If he had any regard for the Westminster system, his office and his calling. Instead, stubborn and selfish and willing at any cost to hold on to power and remain a big fish in whatever pond, Nixon had been content to risk hurting his office and the image of a United States of America committed to the principles of fairplay, truth and justice. 

Had it not been for a free press in the United States, determined to seek out and find the truth, and specifically, had it not been for the courage and fearlessness of two reporters — Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward — and the willingness of individuals to “leak” or provide crucial information to the media, Nixon would have been able to effect the most shameful cover up in US history. Bernstein and Woodward would later co-author and publish a book, All the President’s Men, detailing the events of Watergate, during that period in American history. What was particularly frightening about Nixon’s abuse of office was his determination, and that of some of his close “advisers,” to employ every trick in the book, forgive the clich?, to frustrate any official inquiry into his impropriety in office. In the process, he sought to intimidate senior public officials, many of my readers will undoubtedly recall the infamous “night of the long knives,” and to place freedom of the press under presidential siege.

The Watergate break in of June 17, 1972 and the shameful attempt by Richard Nixon to discredit the media and to prevaricate with respect to what he had done or ordered to have had done, and to literally terrorise those who held it to be their duty to ferret out the truth and yet others who sought to pass on information on what had transpired, must take their place among the most shameful acts of US history, including the invasion of Iraq and the chemical warfare — Agent Orange — against Cambodia and North Vietnam. Ironically, when after more than a year of investigations into the break in at Watergate it was the discovery of the taping of conversations Nixon had at the White House with specific officials that would prove to be his Waterloo. Of critical importance here, was that whether or not any of Nixon’s advisers could have argued that the taped conversations would not have been admissible in court, they were still documents of record.

Of course, the point was also made that Nixon could have caused certain things to be read into the record. But that is an entirely different matter. Voiced incriminating statements were on tape. Admittedly, not many of Nixon’s close aides or advisers were actually aware of the existence of the recording mechanisms. But if people, and of course I mean Nixon’s people, are prepared to make statements which in the final analysis can incriminate them, then if the tapes are exposed they must be prepared to stand the bounce. Of course there is another side to the equation. Once the existence of the taping procedure was exposed this meant that individuals would have been wary of whatever they said to Nixon, regardless. But I have strayed. The Washington Post, which was at the forefront of newspapers exposing the misdeeds of Nixon, had been in turn at the receiving end of the brunt of criticisms by Nixon and others. It is to the credit of The Post that it had made the crucial exposures and while others had followed, some with additional major information, it had been at the forefront.

The Washington Post had even been accused of mud slinging by the National Chairman of the Republican Party, Senator Robert Dole. In Carl Bernstein’s and Bob Woodward’s monumental work, All the President’s Men, Dole is quoted on page 162 as having stated: “For the last week, the Republican Party has been the victim of a barrage of unfounded and unsubstantiated allegations by George McGovern and his partner-in-mud-slinging, the Washington Post. Given the present straits in which the McGovern campaign finds itself, Mr McGovern appears to have turned over the franchise for his media attack campaign to the editors of the Washington Post, who have shown themselves every bit as sure-footed along the low road of this campaign as their candidate.”

An earlier comment in All the President’s Men had stated: “The White House had decided that the conduct of the press, not the conduct of the president’s men, was the issue.” The Washington Post had recognised that it was the right of the public to be informed on matters of public interest, and had been prepared to do this. What the White House had affected to ignore was that the US Constitution embraces a Bill of Rights, in its first ten amendments which guarantees, inter alia, freedom of the press. The Bill of Rights became part of the Constitution in 1791, and while there were always those with “cocoa in the Sun,” fearful of the power for good and the clear need for press freedom, who affected to speak dismissively of what they represented as “mud-slinging” by the press and its “sure-footed along the low road,” nevertheless the public’s right to know should and must remain inviolable.

It is a belief mistakenly held by a few, deeply ingrained and frightening, that they and they alone must determine what the people should be permitted to know and to be told. Meanwhile, Nixon had, apparently, missed a critical constitutional principle, the Rule of Law which held that the law had to be administered equally to all.  It was Lord Mansfield in his celebrated Rex vs Wilkes judgment, who would say: “Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.” To that I add fairplay and truth, and I need hardly remind that fairplay, like truth and like justice, is “not a cloistered virtue.”