From Watergate to Trump: Does the System Really Work?

By David Corn  June 14, 2022

On August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon waves goodbye after resigning the presidency. Chick Harrity/AP

It’s rather appropriate that the ongoing January 6 hearings coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. On the night of June 17, 1972, five operatives working for Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign who had broken into the Democratic Party’s office in search of political dirt were arrested by undercover cops dressed as hippies. The caper—described as a “third-rate burglary attempt” by Ron Ziegler, Nixon’s White House press secretary—would lead to years of revelations showing that Nixon and his henchmen had run a wide-ranging criminal enterprise out of the Oval Office. As Garrett Graff puts it in his excellent new book, Watergate: A New History, “‘Watergate’ was less an event than a way of life for the Nixon administration—a mindset that evolved into a multiyear, multifaceted corruption and erosion of ethics within the office of the president.” It was a scandal composed of many scandals: illegal surveillance, illegal campaign contributions, illegal war, illegal political dirty tricks, illegal kickbacks, and more. At the root of all the sleaze and skullduggery was the age-old threat to political order: abuse of power.

The comparison to Donald Trump’s misuse of the office of the president to overturn a free and fair election to retain power is obvious and unavoidable. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who relentlessly pursued the Watergate story, recently noted the correlation: “As reporters, we had studied Nixon and written about him for nearly half a century, during which we believed with great conviction that never again would America have a president who would trample the national interest and undermine democracy through the audacious pursuit of personal and political self-interest. And then along came Trump.” Nixon and Trump each posed a danger to the republic. One paid dearly, forced to resign the presidency. The other remains at large.

The occasion of Watergate’s semicentennial overlapping with the January 6 inquiry prompts (for me) a contemplation of how presidents and other people of tremendous power often escape accountability for wrongdoing. Yes, Nixon was compelled to abandon the White House, fleeing just as he was about to be impeached (and after being informed by leading Republican senators that he would likely be convicted in a Senate trial). But he had managed to win reelection, and after his resignation, thanks to a pardon from his handpicked successor, President Gerald Ford, Nixon avoided criminal prosecution. Ronald Reagan never faced impeachment for the Iran-contra scandal, which included a secret and illegal war. George W. Bush was reelected after being revealed as a liar who had flagrantly misled the American public about the threat presented by Saddam Hussein to whip up support for the invasion of Iraq—a war that led to the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and 200,000 or so Iraqi civilians and a disastrous geostrategic mess that plagues us to this day. Bush ended his second term with one of the lowest presidential approval ratings ever, but he has not been drummed out of polite (political) society. (See his much-hyped friendship with Michelle Obama.) In 2016, Trump paid no price for aiding and abetting the Russian attack on the US election. And despite his more recent Big Lie crusade and his (perhaps illegal) plotting to overthrow a legitimately elected government, he remains the titular leader of the Republican Party and the choice of 53 percent of Republican voters to be the GOP presidential nominee in 2024.

These guys certainly have gotten away with much. And that reminds me of one of the key but lesser-known components of Watergate: the Chennault Affair. This is the perfect example of a politician escaping a scandal that should have damned him forever.

Graff tells this story well in his book. During the 1968 campaign, when Nixon was the GOP nominee, President Lyndon Johnson was trying to achieve progress in peace talks with North Vietnam. Nixon and his camp feared that any progress would benefit Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Nixon’s opponent. In public, Nixon supported the negotiations. Yet behind the scenes, Graff writes, “he worked to undercut the U.S. negotiating position, keeping track of key developments in the Paris peace talks via [campaign adviser Henry] Kissinger, who was engaged in his own campaign of subterfuge—advising Johnson’s team even as he slipped details to Nixon’s camp.” In late October, as Election Day approached, the stalemate in the talks began to break. But the Johnson White House received an intelligence report and a separate tip that Nixon was trying to block a breakthrough by signaling to the South Vietnamese government that it would get a better deal under a Nixon administration. His hope was that Saigon would obstruct the negotiations.

The go-between conveying messages from the Nixon crew to the South Vietnamese was Anna Chennault, the widow of a World War II general and a Washington-based socialite and influencer who led the so-called “China Lobby” that opposed the communist regime in Beijing. Known widely by the anti-Asian slur “the Dragon Lady,” she lived in a penthouse apartment in—wait for it—the Watergate, where she hosted extravagant parties for DC’s in-crowd, and she was a top fundraiser for Nixon’s 1968 campaign. The details of her conniving are not fully known decades later. But she arranged secret meetings between Nixon and the South Vietnamese ambassador and delivered the message (or plea) from Nixon that Saigon should obstruct the talks.

Johnson was enraged that Nixon, a private citizen, was interfering in this sensitive foreign policy matter. He contacted Sen. Everett Dirksen, the Republican minority leader, and warned him that Nixon ought to cease and desist. “It’s despicable,” Johnson said. “If it were made public, it would rock the nation.” On a call with Nixon and Humphrey, Johnson updated them on the talks and noted he knew “some of the old China lobbyists” were stirring things up—an oblique warning to Nixon. But the Nixon squad did not stop. John Mitchell, his campaign manager, pressed Chennault to lean on “our Vietnamese friends.” When Johnson learned that Chennault was continuing to push the South Vietnamese ambassador to impede the talks, he again called Dirksen and exclaimed, “This is treason.” Dirksen replied, “I know.”

Johnson and his aides pondered what to do with this information about Nixon’s treachery. When the Christian Science Monitor sniffed out the Nixon-Chennault plotting and asked the White House to comment, Johnson and his aides concluded it would be wrong to confirm the story, for that would entail using intelligence gained from authorized wiretaps for political purposes. Imagine that—Johnson could have sunk Nixon’s campaign and elected not to do so. In one discussion of the matter, Defense Secretary Clark Clifford noted that should Nixon triumph, disclosure of this deviousness “could cast his entire administration under such doubt that I think it would be inimical to our country’s interests.”

Nixon narrowly defeated Humphrey by 0.7 percent. It’s a good bet that exposure of this betrayal would have yielded a different result. And there’s no doubt Nixon had engaged in this treasonous conspiracy. In 2017, Nixon biographer John Farrell published notes from H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff during the campaign, that said, “Keep Anna Chennault working on SVN,” and stated that the goal was to “monkey-wrench” the talks.

Nixon succeeded in obstructing negotiations that possibly could have ended or limited the war—and saved American and Vietnamese lives. With bloody hands, he gained the White House. This should stain him—as well as Kissinger—forever. (There is so much that should stain Kissinger.) Yet this piece of the Nixon story remains less-known. Nixon, though, did not entirely escape this episode. When the Pentagon Papers were published in 1971, Nixon feared that Democrats possessed evidence of his particular act of treachery and that the information was being kept in a safe at the liberal Brookings Institution. Nixon instructed his operatives to break into the think tank: “Goddamnit, get in and get those files—blow the safe and get it.” This order was one of the antecedents of Watergate.

Watergate was an assault on constitutional government. Though Nixon was never held accountable for his 1968 perfidy, he eventually was snared in his own web of deception and abuse. And once he skedaddled from the Oval Office, there was much commentary that the political system had preserved itself. Trump is a different story. He was voted out of office in 2020, but he still is a potent political force and embraced as a champion by tens of millions of Americans. Watergate might have proved the system worked, at least in a limited fashion. The January 6 investigation and the hearings underway have revealed and affirmed much about Trump’s war on American democracy. We just don’t know yet if that’s enough to protect the Constitution.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

More from Inside the 1/6 Committee Hearing Room

I was there again on Monday for the second hearing in its current series. The mood was not as intense as opening night last week. But the committee again delivered evidence that showed Trump’s Big Lie was a big lie—and that many in his inner circle knew that all along. I wrote about this and the question of whether Trump believes his own crap. You can read my report here.

The Watch, Read, and Listen List

Paul McCartney. Six days before he was to turn 80 years old, I was in the 11th row at one of Paul McCartney’s final shows of his Got Back 2022 concert tour. The former Beatle worked damn hard Sunday night at Camden Yards in Baltimore. Two hours and 45 minutes of nonstop songs from his more than six-decades-long canon. Everything was impressive. He doesn’t phone it in. He plays counterpoint bass lines and simultaneously sings melodies. He screams on “Hey Jude.” There are no long water breaks or filler material. Sir Paul doesn’t cheat. After all these years, he’s still a working-man musician delivering the goods. There was plenty of nostalgia. He opened with “Can’t Buy Me Love.” He played the first song he, George Harrison, and John Lennon ever recorded: “In Spite of All the Danger.” But he also featured offerings from his recent albums. There were pyrotechnics. On “Live and Let Die,” flames burst from the stage. Real flames. You could feel the heat. And there was much poignancy. As a tribute to Harrison, he played “Something,” starting the song by strumming on a ukulele that the Quiet Beatle gave him many moons ago. To honor Lennon, he performed “I’ve Got a Feeling,” singing along with Lennon, thanks to director Peter Jackson, who made the wonderful The Beatles: Get Back documentary and who isolated the Lennon vocals on the track used for the Let It Be movie and album. It was eerie to have octogenarian Paul duetting with the 28-year-old John, but a tear gathered in my eye.

Paul McCartney waving a Ukrainian flag during his concert at Camden Yards in Baltimore on June 12, 2022.

McCartney has assembled an impressive band that recreates Beatles magic and the fun-and-sassy Wings tunes without sappiness or cheap mimicry: Brian Ray on guitar and bass; Rusty Anderson on guitar, Abe Laboriel Jr. on drums; and Wix Wickens on keyboards. They ain’t no tribute band. With their fearless leader, they capture the feeling of modernity the Beatles songs had at their origins and that unfathomably they still retain. At the end of the night—after playing Abbey Road’s closing triptych, “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight,” and “The End”—McCartney said farewell: “There’s only one thing left to say—see you next time.” Next time? He’s been entertaining us since he was 15. We all know that after all these years, at this stage of the game, “next time” is an iffy proposition. But McCartney’s lot in life is to deliver joy and fun. While watching him still toiling hard to please his audience, it was not that difficult to believe there just might be a next time.

Here's a video from another show of the McCartney-Lennon duet:

The Staircase. No more true-crime, I told myself. I don’t consume a lot of this genre, but it has become so ubiquitous (and such a cash cow for Hollywood) that it has become tough to avoid. When done well, it can be compelling storytelling and entertainment. What’s more dramatic than a real-life murder mystery? But I still feel queasy about the voyeuristic and exploitative qualities of such fare. A real person (or persons) was killed; real people were affected; and big bucks are being made off the pain, often through a sensationalized treatment. But I’m no saint and often fall to such temptations. Which is what happened with The Staircase, the HBO Max miniseries, based on the real-life death in 2001 of North Carolina tech executive Kathleen Peterson, who may or who may have not been killed by her husband, Michael Peterson, a novelist. She was found dead at the bottom of a stairwell in their Durham home, the victim of an accidental fall or a beating or maybe an owl attack. (Yes, you read that right.) This case yielded an award-winning, multi-episode 2004 French documentary called The Staircase, which did not spur the modern true-crime fad—Truman Capote published In Cold Blood in 1965—but gave it a mighty boost. It’s odd it took so long for the inevitable to occur: a dramatized version of l’affaire Peterson based on the documentary.

The new Staircase is an eight-part series that chronicles the death of Kathleen (Toni Collette); the murder trial of Michael (Colin Firth), who professed his innocence; his subsequent 10 years in prison and battle for exoneration; the impact of the case on their children; and the making of the documentary, which was shot in real-time during the trial, with Michael’s cooperation. The tale also includes the romantic relationship between Michael, when he was behind bars, and Sophie Brunet (Juliette Binoche), who had been an editor on the documentary. There’s a lot of meta going on in this series. But it’s all riveting. The pacing, the reveals, and the overlapping chronologies are handled deftly by creator Antonio Campos. But what sucks the viewer into this can-we-ever-know-what-really-happened world is the acting. Firth delivers a fascinating depiction of the sphinx-like Peterson, who had secretly pursued sexual liaisons with men. Perhaps we don’t—and can’t—really know who he is because he has never come to terms with who he is. And if we cannot get a fix on him as a person, can we answer the main question at hand: Did he—could he—kill his wife? Collette and Binoche match the intensity and skill of Firth’s performance, as they portray people confronting their own complications. And a bravo to Michael Stuhlbarg as Peterson’s attorney, David Rudolf. He’s good in everything. (Watch him as the mob boss in Your Honor or Richard Sackler in Dopesick.) Of course, there’s been controversy about the HBO Max series, with Peterson, Rudolf, and the French documentarians complaining about serious inaccuracies and significant liberties taken by Campos and his team, and their gripes seem legitimate. But that doesn’t detract from the dramatic punch of the show. Campos aimed to attach a highfalutin notion to the tropes of true-crime entertainment: Can we ever truly know another person? This is certainly not a unique approach to a crime show. For instance, that was a theme of the 1990 film Reversal of Fortune, which was based on the attempted murder trial of Claus von Bülow. But Firth, Collette, Binoche, and Campos handle this task rather well in The Staircase. They make it easy to put aside any qualms about enjoying the fruits of a crime—or a possible crime.

Read Recent Issues of Our Land

June 11, 2022: In the room where it happened: covering the January 6 committee’s hearing; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Jesse Watters and others); my proudest moment in journalism; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

June 7, 2022: Barack Obama was right about the gun clingers; Special Emergency Dumbass Comment of the Week (Louie Gohmert); Our Land in Photos; the perfection of Better Call Saul; the sublime new album from Wilco; and more.

June 4, 2022: Are Democats pathetic?; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Ken Buck); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

May 28, 2022: What to hope for after the Uvalde massacre; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Candace Owens); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

May 25, 2022: The anti-ness of the Trumpified right; Our Land in photos; Tokyo Vice vs. Miami Vice; Sarah Shook and what makes a song cool; and more.

May 21, 2022: Why a threat to Pennsylvania is a threat to us all; Dumbass Comment of the Week (saying goodbye to Madison Cawthorn); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

May 17, 2022: Special Book Excerpt: How John Lennon’s murder led to preventing mass shootings; and more.

Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.