AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGAN TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973----Episode 3

THE WATERGATE BURGLARS GOT CAUGHT IN JUNE 1973

   After the Watergate burglary, Nixon and Agnew fell swiftly. In the November 1972 presidential election, they had won 60 percent of the popular vote and carried every state except Massachusetts, defeating an antiwar candidate, George McGovern. By June of 1973a Gallup Poll showed 67 percent of those polled thought Nixon was involved in the Watrergate break-in and lied to cover it up. 

By the fall of 1973 eight different resolutions had been introduced in the House of Representatives for the impeachment of Nixon. The following year a House committee drew up a bill of impeachment to present it to the full House. Nixon's advisers told him it would pass the House by the required majority and then the Senate would vote the necessary two-thirds majority to remove him from office. On August 8, 1974,Nixon resigned. 

Six months before Nixon resigned, the business magazine Dun's Review reported a poll of three hundred corporation executives. Almost all had voted for Nixon in 1972, but nw a majority said he should resign. "Right now, Wall Street would cheer if Nixon resigns," said vice-president of Merrill Lynch Government Securities. When he did, there was relief in all sectors of the Establishment. 

Gerald Ford, taking Nixon's office, said : "Our long national nightmare is over." Newspapers, whether they had been for or against Nixon, liberal or conservative, celebrated the successful, peaceful culmination of the Watergate crisis. "The system is working," said a long-time strong critic of the Vietnam war, New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis. The two journalists who had much to do with investigating and exposing Nixon, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post wrote that with Nixon's departure, there might be "restoration." All of this was in a mood of relief, of gratitude. 

No mainstream American newspaper said what was said by Claude Julien, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique in September 1974 : "The elimination of Mr. Richard Nixon leaves intact all the mechanisms and all the false values which permitted the Watergate scandal." Julien noted that Nixon's Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, would remain at his post --- in other words, that Nixon's foreign policy would continue."That is to say," Julien wrote, "that Washington will continue to support General Pinochet in Chile, General Geisel in Brazil, Stroessner in Paraguay, etc. . ." 

Months after Julien wrote this, it was disclosed that top Democratic and Republican leaders in the House of Representatives had given secret assurance to Nixon that if he resigned they would not support criminal proceedings against him. One of them, the ranking Republican of the Judiciary Committee, said : "We had all been shuddering about what two weeks of floor debate on impeachment would do, how it would tear the country apart and affect foreign policy." The New York Times articles that reported on Wall Street's hope for Nixon's resignation quoted one Wall Street financier as saying that if Nixon resigned : "WHAT WE WILL HAVE IS THE SAME PLAY WITH DIFFERENT PLAYERS." 

When Gerald Ford, a conservative Republican who had supported all of Nixon's policies, was nominated for President, a liberal Senator from California, Alan Cranston, spoke for his on the floor, saying he had polled many people, Republicans and Democrats, and found "an almost startling consensus of conciliation that is developing around him." When Nixon resigned and Ford became President, the New York Times said : "Out of the despair of Watergate has come an inspiring new demonstration of the uniqueness and strength of the American democracy." A few days later the Times wrote happily that the "peaceful transfer of power" brought "a cleansing sense of relief to the American people." 

In the charges brought by the House Committee on Impeachment against Nixon, it seemed clear that the committee did not want to emphasize those elements in his behavior which were found in other Presidents and which might be repeated in the future. It stayed clear of Nixon's dealings with powerful corporations ; it did not mention the bombing of Cambodia. It concentrated on things peculiar to Nixon, not on fundamental policies continuous among American Presidents, at home and abroad. 

The word was out : get rid of Nixon, but keep the system. Theodore Sorensen, who had been an adviser to President Kennedy, wrote at the time of Watergate : "The underlying causes of the gross misconduct in our law-enforcement system now being revealed are largely personal, not institutional. Some structural changes are needed. All the rotten apples should be thrown out. But save the barrel." 

Indeed the barrel was saved. Nixon's foreign policy remained. The government connections to corporate interests remained. Ford's closest friends in Washington were corporate lobbyists. Alexander Haig, who had been one of Nixon's closest advisers, who had helped in "processing" the tapes before turning them over to the public, and who gave the public misinformation about the tapes, was appointed by President Ford to be head of the armed forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. One of Ford's first acts was to pardon Nixon, thus saving him from possible criminal proceedings and allowing him to retire with a huge pension in California. 

The Establishment had cleansed itself of members of the club who had broken the rules ---but it took some pains NOT to treat them too harshly. Those few who received jail sentences got short terms, were sent to the most easygoing federal institutions available, and were given special privileges not given to ordinary prisoners. Richard Kleindiest pleaded guilty ; he got a $100 fine and one month in jail, which was suspended.