Many citizens today, with varied sources of information, understand the highly unethical lawfare waged against President Donald Trump, as exemplified by the Russiagate hoax. By contrast, the more restricted media environment of the early 1970s made prosecutorial misconduct during Watergate harder to scrutinize. With fresh eyes now taking a closer look at the reporting and prosecution of Watergate, it is becoming clear that DOJ investigators should sanction prosecutorial misconduct and set the historical record straight on Richard Nixon’s innocence.
As a refresher, Watergate refers to a political scandal stemming from the June 17, 1972, burglary of the Democratic National Committee’s offices in the Watergate building by burglars with known CIA ties. After two years of investigations, committee inquiries, and trials, over 40 government officials were convicted or jailed, and President Richard Nixon was forced to resign from office.
Recently, former Nixon aide and historian Geoff Shepard presented his case to the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), arguing that the proceedings against Richard Nixon amounted to dishonest, partisan “lawfare” enabled by prosecutorial and Congressional misconduct. Hopefully, the OPR will follow up with a vigorous investigation and clear the record of this unfairly maligned former president.
Modern Watergate critics are familiar with Shepard’s excellent work, The Real Watergate Scandal. In this book, Shepard details what he describes as serious ethical lapses by the Watergate Special Prosecutor in pursuing Nixon and his aides. More importantly, he argues that the evidence strongly suggests Nixon was innocent of the long-alleged “cover-up.”
In addition to Shepard’s tour de force, several key revisionist works have been published in recent years, including Secret Agenda (Jim Hougan), Silent Coup (Colodny and Gettlin), and my book, Postgate. Additionally, White House Call Girl (Phil Stanford) covers a minor but convincing set of lurid background facts showing the motivation for the burglary.
Oddly, Watergate: A New History (Garrett Graff), while conventionally anti-Nixon in tone and intent, confirms the earth-shaking revelations of James Rosen’s book, The Strong Man, showing a lack of approval by John Mitchell or the Oval Office for the Watergate burglary.
These works, together with Shepard’s detailed documentation of corrupt insider framing of Nixon, are proof not only of Nixon’s lack of guilt but also of the massive unethical cover-up of the true story by those we are asked to believe without question: the Special Prosecutor, the Democrat-led Senate Watergate Committee and the mainstream media, specifically the Washington Post.
Why, fifty years later, should we investigate any flaws in Nixon’s prosecution? Because key questions remain: 1) was the prosecution of Nixon and aides (with Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator) so clearly unethical that the OPR should conclude formally that the prosecution was fatally and unethically flawed; and 2) were the Senate investigation and Majority Watergate Report false in material particulars, constituting a willfully false official Report to the public? In light of the attempted replay of Watergate and the Russiagate hoax, these questions are existential.
To understand both scandals, we should first note the prosecution’s duty to provide the defense with all exculpatory evidence and all summaries and recordings of witness statements; the related prosecution should be dismissed.
We present here the crucial information deliberately concealed by Watergate Special Prosecutors, by the Congressional committees investigating Nixon, and also hidden by the Post.
- Former Attorney General John Mitchell did not order the Watergate break-ins.
John Mitchell did not order the Watergate break-ins, either as Attorney General or later as Director of the Nixon reelection campaign (CRP), as aide Jeb Magruder falsely testified. The Oval Office had no connection to the burglary and could not cover up what it did not know.
Shepard’s book is invaluable in showing that Magruder, eager to avoid jail, constantly changed his story to prosecutors and contradicted himself and others on more than forty aspects of his statements. But the Special Prosecutor never, it appears, disclosed to the defense the facts showing Magruder’s constantly changing story, its memos reflecting his changing statements, or those memos in which prosecutors cast serious doubt on his story as inconsistent with other facts. In addition, prosecutors put on the stand this internally known perjurer.
Shepard’s treatment alone suggests the prosecution violated its duty of disclosure to the defense and put a perjuring witness on the stand, both grounds for overturning a conviction.
Graff’s work strongly shows that John Mitchell did not order the break-in, although he oddly argues that the question of who actually ordered the burglary should not be pursued, given the passage of time. Interestingly, Len Downie, editor emeritus of the Washington Post, echoed Graff’s findings.
Graff’s conclusion that John Mitchell did not order the break-in is not new. Both reporter James Rosen in The Strong Man and I in Postgate concluded similarly.
- The Watergate burglary was primarily a CIA operation, not a Nixon campaign operation, as the prosecution and Senate have claimed.
The prosecution and the Senate had ample evidence that Watergate was primarily a CIA operation designed to gain ostensible authority for its prostitute-taping program. Howard Hunt was an undercover CIA agent who, in his criminal Watergate trial, was prepared to offer a “CIA defense,” which he pursued until pleading guilty at the urging of John Dean, Nixon’s White House Counsel, who turned state’s evidence.
The prosecutors were well aware of this defense, while another CIA operative, burglary leader James McCord, told his Metropolitan Police friend on the morning of the burglary that this had been a CIA operation.
Republican Senator Howard Baker published a detailed, persuasive 43-page, unpublicized minority report on July 2, 1974, detailing CIA participation in the burglary, but the Washington Post’s reporting of it concealed its findings, and the highly publicized 1,250-page Watergate Committee Report (also known as the Ervin Report), prepared by the Democrat majority, ignored this key evidence.
- The burglary targets were the wiretapping and documentation of prostitutes and their johns.
While the prosecution and congressional investigations premised the break-in as a campaign operation gone wrong, it was, beyond a doubt, about wiretapping prostitutes and their visiting Democrat johns.
The Washington Post has been overheated in its rhetoric denying this incontrovertible fact, but this strenuous denial only shows its guilt for this gross concealment.
- The “key” to the burglary was likely undisclosed to Nixon and his aides.
Upon arrest, Eugenio Martinez, an active CIA agent, was wrestled to the ground as he tried to rid himself of an object in his pocket—a desk key of the secretary arranging the prostitution calls overheard.
The DOJ should therefore investigate and report that this key was the true key to Presidential innocence. Nixon was not concerned with prostitution, nor was his campaign.
- The smoking gun White House tape was misrepresented as a cover-up of criminality.
Shepard and Dean both concur on Nixon’s innocence relating to the “smoking gun” White House tape of June 23, 1972, which ultimately forced his resignation when disclosed in July 1974. It was on this tape that Nixon plotted to ask the CIA to call the FBI off the “Mexican Money Trail” investigation.
To this day, most think that Nixon was attempting to shut down the FBI’s Watergate investigation. But in fact, he simply did not wish to expose the names of key Democrat campaign donors, including Dwayne Andreas of ADM, for fear of their embarrassment for contributing to a Republican.
With all these surrounding false depictions of the scandal, most notably by false Post reports, this tape, to be sure, incorrectly seemed like a material cover-up.
The OPR should then apply the same framework it uses to examine Watergate to the prosecutorial practices surrounding Russiagate. False history should be corrected, and this is a good start.
About John D. O’Connor
John D. O’Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as Deep Throat in 2005. O’Connor is the author of the books Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism and The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened. O’Connor and Mark Felt also collaborated on the 2006 book, A G-Man’s Life.
