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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
Please, host. You're the most partisan regular poster in Tilted Politics. If you can't acknowledge that about yourself, then we really have nothing to discuss. Even the Democratic operative that posts here will occassionally acknowledge that not all Republicans are bad people.
The fact that I find it far easier to discuss anything with Ustwo than you for the simple reason that he'll accept shades of grey should speak volumes to you. I don't have any problem with you bringing your axe to grind in every thread, but the fact that you expressly refuse to acknowledge your agenda really detracts from your overall message here.
I've never said that Thompson was a choir boy or an angel. Far from it, as a matter of fact. What I have said, at least in the last 24 hours worth of posts is that Thompson pumped the White House for information that he used against them.
Really, all of this stuff has been in the historical record for decades and it's nothing new. The only reason it's being dredged up again is Thompson's political aspirations. Why is it relavent what the White House thought of Thompson at the time when the results CLEARLY show something completely different actually happened? There were always accusations that the Republicans on the Watergate committee were taking orders from the White House. Those who made those accussations changed their tune after Nixon's resignation.
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The_Jazz, it is an extreme provocation that you would compare me to Ustwo. I meticulously and studiously provide ALL of the information that shapes my opinions.
Again, please stop shooting the messenger and discuss the information, Challenge it, or ignore it, but stop coming at me. Your argument is weak, and since it is weak and contrary to the news reporting it can reasonably be described as a meritless, partisan defense of Fred Thompson's conduct when he served as minority counsel on the Watergate investigation committee.
Again, I am not "one of the most partisan". The "most partisan" are folks who post unsupported statements of opinion, or supported only by, over and over, highly prejudiced sources, instead of by news reporting.
My expectations are dashed more as I read each new post from you, but I still hold out a sliver of hope that you are able to do the right thing here, since I believe that you have repeatedly directed opinions at me, and about me, that are inappropriate and uncalled for. You've made it more difficult for me to participate here. Please stop doing it.
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http://www.columbiamissourian.com/st...-of-watergate/
Exposing the tapes of Watergate
Don Sanders set aside his interests to do what was right — and played a pivotal role in bringing down Nixon
By BRENDEN CLAWSON
June 12, 2005 | 12:00 a.m. CST
The revelation that former FBI second-in-command W. Mark Felt was “Deep Throat” has brought new attention to the role reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein played in unraveling the Watergate conspiracy.
But Michael Sanders says another man, who was just as responsible for bringing down Richard Nixon, has been mostly forgotten by history. That man was his father, Don Sanders, who was a lawyer, an FBI agent, Boone County commissioner, and the man who, during the Watergate hearings, discovered there was a tape recorder in the Nixon White House.
“It’s always been a little bit frustrating to me that the Woodward and Bernstein team got all of the attention,” Michael Sanders said. “Uncovering the White House tapes was the key. That’s what my dad did, and nobody even knows his name.”....
....Sanders, a Republican, was chosen to be the deputy minority counsel to the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, better known as the Watergate committee. He worked under Fred Thompson, who would later become a senator and an actor.
Two documents in the archive illuminate Sanders’ role in the Watergate proceedings: a handwritten account of his interview with Butterfield, who was the former deputy assistant to Nixon, written just three days after the interview and a draft of “Watergate Reminiscences,” dated March 1987. The article about his work on the Watergate committee was first published in the Journal of American History in 1989.
In “Reminiscences,” Sanders wrote that he noticed something odd about a White House document containing a list of conversation summaries between Nixon and former White House counsel John Dean. He felt that they were almost too precise, a fact that he mulled over as he waited for his turn to question Butterfield.
“As the minutes passed, I felt a growing certainty that the summaries had been made from a verbatim recording,” Don Sanders wrote. “I wondered whether Butterfield would be truthful if asked about a hidden recording system.”
This led to his decision to ask Butterfield a question he hoped would reveal the existence of a taping system. The handwritten account relates that before Sanders asked his question, he considered what the implications could be to both national and international security.
“I also took into consideration the political impact on the president and the party, and admittedly, the effect it would have on my future,” Sanders wrote. “I decided that this was a matter too important for personal considerations, that the people were entitled to the facts and that the tapes, if made, might even exonerate the president. I could not conceive that the president would utter incriminating statements knowing he was being recorded for history.”
Sanders then asked the question that contributed to Nixon’s demise.
“I asked Butterfield if he knew any reason why the president would take John Dean to a corner of a room and speak to him in a quiet voice, as Dean had testified,” Sanders wrote in “Reminiscences.”
Butterfield admitted that there was a recording system in the White House.
What followed was a yearlong battle in which the Watergate committee tried to gain access to Nixon’s tapes. On Aug. 5, 1974, Nixon finally released tapes that showed he had called for a cover-up of the Watergate burglary. He resigned three days later....
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