(09-11-2014 12:59 PM)DaSaintFan Wrote:  

Quote:If Watergate wasn't Nixon's idea, whose idea was it, and who would dare to give the order on something that illegal/dangerous without getting a go-ahead from the boss first?

I remember one rumour had it that it was George HW Bush's idea from the get-go... have no idea how true it was.

We should always be cautious about saying something is "impossible", but the idea that George H.W. Bush came up with Watergate… Wow. In 20-25 years of studying Watergate (just as a hobby), that is one of the wackiest things I've heard yet. Just, wow.

The idea of Nixon ordering the break-ins (which I don't believe happened) is infinitely more plausible.

I was once talking about this with an older left-wing activist (someone who marched in the '60s and actually had some mutual acquaintances with people like Saul Alinsky and Daniel Ellsberg. I was hoping she had met Bill Ayers, but no dice). She said that while she celebrated Nixon's resignation and wanted him to go to prison, she still believes that (1.) the role of the CIA and FBI in Watergate was never fully exposed, and that (2.) one or both of those agencies had -- at the minimum -- upper-level executives with prior awareness that the break-ins were going to occur, and that (3.) those individuals chose to sit back and "let it happen" because (4.) they believed knowledge of a crime committed by Nixon's Re-Election Campaign would give their agencies leverage against the Nixon Administration, which they (FBI/CIA) disliked and resented.

Howard Baker, the Republican Senator from Tennessee (died in June) who famously asked "What did the President know, and when did he know it?", also is known to have believed that FBI/CIA had some hidden, undefined role in the whole affair. At this point, we will probably never know, although there are still a lot of tapes yet to be transcribed.