Watergate vs. Scandalgate: why didn’t Nixon destroy the tapes?

The New Neo Posted on by

Scandalgate (a name that, for want of a better term, has been given to the current spate of brouhahas simultaneously hitting the Obama administration) is raising the specter of Watergate, which celebrated its 40th anniversary about a year ago.

I’m old enough to remember Watergate well; we were riveted to our TV screens (no TiVo-ing back then) watching revelation after revelation. But the biggest revelation, and the one that made all the difference in the world to Nixon’s fate—without it, I’m almost certain he would have served his full second term as president—was the news that he had taped all of his conversations. Until then, turncoat John Dean was the main witness Nixon had to fear, but it was the tapes that provided the smoking gun. Without them, Nixon’s denials might very well have held.

I have long wondered about those tapes. Why record conversations that Nixon obviously would have wanted to be off the record? And why, if those conversations had somehow been inadvertently recorded, did Nixon not make sure they were destroyed before they saw the light of day? It’s a puzzlement, but here’s an explanation.

Now you may or may not believe the story told at that site. I agree that it seems implausible. But I can’t come up with a more logical one that explains the facts as they emerged. Apparently the tapes were automatically voice-activated, and Nixon was unaware of that feature. He also apparently gave Haldeman an order to destroy the tapes, or at least some of them, and Haldeman did not comply (by that time, he may have thought they constituted his only defense against being set up to be the Watergate fall guy).

However, how could those in charge have been so stupid as to install voice-activated tapes and not tell Nixon about it in advance? But strange as it may seem, this may be the only credible explanation for the tapes’ existence, because if Nixon had known in advance, it makes sense that he would have found a way to turn them off before having the incriminating conversations, or at the very least have held those conversations in a place safe from prying recordings.

You may come up with more Byzantine explanations (the world doesn’t lack for conspiracy theories, and Nixon was a convoluted guy). But one thing of which we can be fairly sure: Obama does not have a similar device in place. I cannot imagine Obama having his conversations automatically recorded, or that his underlings would do so without his knowledge. Obama makes Tricky Dick look transparent. And without the tapes or their equivalent—or at the very least, a John Dean figure willing to spill the beans in return for a reduced sentence—I predict that Obama’s m.o. will be constant denial of any involvement (as Nixon’s was, by the way), blaming others, and posturings of outrage at the pettiness and politicization of those who would continue to even discuss the issue any more.

Dennis Miller on the press’s priorities

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s beautiful, says Dennis Miller:

But when you tap an AP reporter’s phone line and find out how much they’re not getting laid, that’ll get the press P.O.’d. The rest of this is all smoke and mirrors. They don’t care about Benghazi. They don’t care about the IRS. They’ll feign a little indignation, but nobody’s going to go after this guy on that. To think he was tapping reporter’s phones ”” what a perfect symbiosis that they’re such ass-kissers and he’s someone who really just looks them in the eye and says ”˜kiss my ass.’ It is beautiful, it is beautiful that they met each other on this planet.

[Hat tip: Ace.]

Could conservatives be the reality-based community?

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s an idea that must deeply trouble the left. Here’s a summary of why these scandals are so potentially dangerous to that side:

For five years, this president has been making the case that a growing and activist government has good intentions and can carry these intentions out with competence. Conservatives have warned that government is dangerous, and even good intentions get bungled in the execution. In different ways, the IRS uproar, the Justice Department leak investigations, the Benghazi tragedy and the misleading attempts to explain it, and the growing problems with implementation of health care reform all bolster the conservative worldview.

They do indeed. Could it possibly be because this “conservative worldview” bears more resemblance than the liberal one to, you know, reality?

The war against the Tea Party

The New Neo Posted on by

Whether or not Obama or the White House or anyone high in the Democratic pecking order winds up being directly implicated in the IRS scandal, their influence has been strong.

From the very start of the Tea Party movement, it was recognized by leaders on the left as being a bona fide populist grass roots movement against taxes and against big government, with the potential to appeal to a great many moderates who were fed up with both. Therefore the Tea party had to be demonized, and fast, and the entire left took up that cause with its usual alacrity and its usual methods.

Especially prominent was #13 of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals:

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Numbers 5, 6, 8, and 10 were in there, too:

Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.
A good tactic is one your people enjoy.
Keep the pressure on. Never let up.
The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.

The Tea Party was accused of racism, and if evidence couldn’t be found it was created. The Tea Party was in general the enemy, a group of ignorant and evil people with bad intentions.

So is it any wonder that the IRS treated them that way? Whether you look at the agents who harassed the Tea Party groups through the tax process, or the higher-ups who winked at it or directed it, or the people who kept the information from the public until now (when Obama has been safely installed in his second term) although it was known earlier, or the ones who ignored and ridiculed GOP efforts to investigate the Tea Party groups’ many allegations that in fact they were being persecuted in just this way by the IRS, what almost certainly unites the entire lot of them is the idea that they were fighting Tea Party groups that needed fighting.

Obama’s efforts to polarize an already-polarized political process are unusually overt and blatant, and they have borne fruit. His message has been heeded, whether his fingerprints are directly on these offenses or not. It is especially ironic—and an example of his especially well-developed and shameless hypocrisy—that this comes from a president who long ago (remember?) billed himself as a great uniter.

Just because you’re paranoid…

The New Neo Posted on by

…it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you—at least once in a blue moon.

That’s another frame liberals are using to deal with the multiple scandals that have suddenly broken simultaneously—especially the IRS overreach.

This article is typical. The message is that the right is ridiculously paranoid, accusing the left of persecuting them when of course that’s an outrageous smear on the righteous left. And the thing that’s so infuriating about the IRS scandal is that, just by complete chance and in a freakily coincidental way, it ends up giving the appearance that there may actually be some truth to the right’s preposterous charges!

Not that there actually is any truth to what the right says, of course. But my goodness, doesn’t this make them look better than they actually are!

Here’s another example of the genre—a very funny one, but an example nonetheless:

Escaping from the house of horror

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I wrote the following post last night. In it, I speculated on some of the conditions under which the three Cleveland captives had been held, and how that might have made it virtually impossible for them to escape. When I finished writing it, I happened across an article that went into some hitherto-undisclosed details of their captivity that indicated just how greatly they had suffered and how incredibly difficult it would have been for them to free themselves.

Read the article linked above with the caveat that the details are grisly, disturbing, and sadistic, and will probably make you feel both sick and deeply deeply angry. The plight of these women demonstrates once again that human depravity is quite creative, and also that human resilience—the fact that the girls survived at all, and that they have at least a chance of recovering with time, patience, and love—can be powerful and inspiring.

I decided to publish this post anyway, as is, even though (assuming the article is factually correct) we now know more of the horrific details about which I was merely speculating.]

Commenter “Gina” writes:

I don’t understand how these three young women [kidnapped by Castro] allowed themselves to be jailed for ten years without screaming and crying and tearing the house down. Why were none of them seen outside? Why didn’t they smuggle one out to alert the police? Why didn’t they set the house on fire? I just don’t get it.

It’s an interesting fact that many people (not just Gina; I’ve noticed it on a lot of discussion boards, and not just about this case but about other kidnappings as well) tend to blame kidnapping victims, at least in part, for not having done more to escape. I think that reflects a failure of imagination, as well as an understandable self-protective desire to believe that, in a similar situation, we wouldn’t have been so vulnerable, we would have somehow found a way out and not been at the mercy of a sadist. But usually that’s just wishful thinking.

For the three kidnapped women in Cleveland, one needs to consider their youth when kidnapped, and more importantly the fact that they were raped, humiliated, and tortured, and under the complete control of their kidnapper 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Only a few days of being plunged into that sort of situation would make most people crack, much less ten years of it. We don’t know all the details of how Castro exerted his control, but part of it was apparently by chaining them, starving them, boarding up windows and locking doors securely, as well as tricking the women by pretending to leave the house and then “punishing” them (i.e. torturing them) when they tried to take advantage of his supposed absence to escape.

This situation does not seem to fit the description of Stockholm syndrome, which can also occur in kidnappings and hostage takings, in which the victims develop positive feelings for their captors and sometimes fail to leave them even if the opportunity presents itself. We don’t know whether the three women in Cleveland developed a form of Stockholm syndrome towards Castro, but I would guess they did not because the syndrome is less common than usually thought, and tends to occur in victims who have been treated relatively well.

I am virtually certain that the women Castro held capitve had no access to communications such as phones, or weapons such as knives or other implements by which to smash something or dig something or start a fire (by all accounts there was no cooking; he mostly brought them fast food). When he was out of the house they were apparently chained much of the time, especially in the early years. This not only would break their spirits and bodies, it would make escape virtually impossible unless they were escape artists. Remember, also, that they had no exercise, and were kept in a state of semi-starvation as well as dehydration, which not only weakens the body but causes mental confusion.

Remember also that a person can scream, but in order to be rescued that person must be heard as well. Some of Castro’s relatives have reported (I can’t find the link at the moment, but I read it some days ago) that the basement (where the girls were chained for the first years) was “like a dungeon,” and that no one could have been heard down there no matter how long and hard they screamed. So perhaps during the beginning years the girls had worn themselves out with screaming, but it is likely that they had learned over time that screaming was futile. Many windows upstairs, where they were sometimes kept later on, were boarded up and that must have reduced the possibility of being heard there, as well.

We still don’t know what was different enough on their liberation day that it allowed Amanda Berry to finally get herself and her child to that door, scream, and finally be heard by rescuers. Did Castro slip up on that one day, and fail to chain or lock them as securely as usual? Or did something cue Amanda on that day that Castro was really and truly gone for a while, finally giving her the chance to make her break for freedom after ten long years of suffering? We don’t know, but some day we will probably hear the story.

[NOTE: Here’s a post I wrote about the Patty Hearst case.]

Methinks…

The New Neo Posted on by

…there’s some heavy-duty symbolism at work here:

battlingeagles

There was a crash landing Sunday at the Duluth International Airport, but it didn’t involve airplanes. Rather, it was two bald eagles, which were fighting in midair when they locked talons. In a rare spectacle of nature, they were unable to disengage in time before crashing to the runway.

“Apparently, mature eagles will sometimes fight over territories,” Randy Hanzal, a Minnesota Conservation Officer, told GrindTV in an email. “They will do battle in the air, crashing into each other and grabbing an intruding eagle with their talons.

“Usually, they will let go of each other before hitting the ground, but in this case, they had the talons so deeply imbedded in each other they may have been unable to let go.”

[NOTE: I believe this is the first time I’ve ever put a single post into the categories “nature” and “politics.”]

Ariel Castro and the monsters among us

The New Neo Posted on by

Jack Dunphy has a piece at PJ about Ariel Castro and how ordinary he must have seemed to his neighbors and acquaintances, and how it would have been very difficult to perceive the evil that lurked within.

Although I understand what Dunphy’s referring to—the man’s ordinary demeanor seems to have emanated a kind of general affability that gave no clue to the horrors he perpetrated—I disagree strongly that those who knew him better, or who lived near him, would have had no clues.

Of course, it’s easier to see these things in retrospect; 20/20 hindsight and all that. And there’s no way that, even with these clues, a person would necessarily think he had kidnapped three women and held them captive all those years of torture both physical and psychological.

Dunphy refers to Castro’s house, for example, as an “ordinary looking clapboard home.” But tell me whether you think the back of this house is business-as-usual, even for a pretty sketchy neighborhood such as the one Castro lived in—considering that people knew this house was inhabited and not vacant:

Ariel Castro's Backyard

Of course, that’s the back of the house rather than the front. But still, it appears to have been quite visible to neighbors, and it seems at the very least rather suspicious in terms of activity that might be going on in there that the owner didn’t want observed.

Dunphy (an officer with the LAPD) also writes: “And as for those who say the police should have done more to find the women, one must ask: What more could they have done?”

I would submit the following: they might have heeded the suggestion of Fernando Colon, who allegedly fingered Castro as a probable suspect back in 2004 when Georgina de Jesus had first disappeared:

Fernando Colon [boyfriend of Castro’s ex-wife Grimilda Figueroa] said that he was intensively interviewed, followed by officers and made to give samples of his DNA following the disappearance of Georgina DeJesus, who was then 14, in 2004.

Ms DeJesus had last been seen walking home from school by her friend Arlene Castro, the youngest daughter of Ariel Castro and Grimilda Figueroa, who had by then left the school bus driver.

Mr Colon, who as Ms Figueroa’s boyfriend was a stepfather figure to Arlene, was suspected by police of being involved with her friend’s disappearance and became the focus of their inquiries.

“Ariel wasn’t investigated at all,” Frank Caraballo, his former brother-in-law, told The Daily Telegraph. “Why was Arlene’s actual father out of the picture? He’s the bus driver, he knows where all these kids go.”

Mr Colon, now 49, claimed to have told his FBI interviewers that Mr Castro was a more likely culprit, but said that his suggestion was totally ignored by investigators.

In addition, Castro’s ex-wife Figueroa and her family members claimed Castro had physically and mentally abused her in very severe and provable ways (multiple physical injuries), systematically, and continually. But the case was dismissed and never pursued again because of legal irregularities involving non-appearances of Castro as well as non-appearance of Figueroa’s attorney.

Obama: nobody ever tells me anything

The New Neo Posted on by

They say the president’s always the last to know.

Actually, they don’t say that. But Obama seems to be saying that—and he wants us to believe him.

Either way it’s an exceptionally weak response: it makes Obama look clueless, or we must assume he’s lying and actually did know. Of course, some of his worshipers will excuse him on the grounds that he is so serene and lofty and above-it-all that he doesn’t bother with the mud beneath, and so his ignorance of IRS audits and other nefarious matters would actually be the result of his virtues.

Obama’s no good, horrible, very bad week

The New Neo Posted on by

I have no idea whether the revelations of the last week or so will end up eroding Obama’s support in any way that matters. But I do know that they appear to have presented him with the worst set of political problems since his presidency began, and at least have the potential for finally making the American people distrust him in a major way.

It’s not Benghazi that makes the difference. Benghazi, important as it is to us blogosphere wonks, is just too complex, too distant in time and place, and therefore too difficult for most people to process and relate to. And it’s probably not any single one of the rest of the machinations, either, although they come closer: the IRS audits, the AP press phone records being obtained by the Department of Justice, or the “unusual” fundraising methods Sebelius used in an attempt to fund Obamacare (a scandal-in-the-making that has so far raised less of a ruckus than the others, but which could become more prominent with time). It’s the picture presented by the whole thing, the sense of something very much not right with the Obama administration, its vaunted “transparency,” its sneaky and heavy use of power, and the atmosphere it has created in government as a whole. Simply put, these actions—whether or not Obama personally ordered them—foster distrust and feed into people’s already-existing paranoia about possible government excesses.

The IRS investigations, especially, may have this effect. As many people have pointed out, everybody hates the IRS. And so the IRS audit of conservative groups is both easy to understand and easy to fear even if a person isn’t conservative him/herself. As for secretly invading AP reporters’ privacy—including their personal cell phone records—to find a leaker, that’s a case of the Obama administration actually doing what many people feared about Bush. The airwaves are full of people explaining that the information could, and should, have been obtained in a number of simpler ways, and that this was way too broad a fishing expedition.

What’s more, the administration has by this action bitten the very hand that feeds them—the AP, which has been nothing if not kind to Obama. What an excellent way to turn allies in the press into enemies.

Whether or not Obama was aware of all or most of these goings-on (and I believe he was), the multiple and almost simultaneous disclosures create a strong suspicion that he was aware—either that, or that he has been incompetent at reining his people in, and/or has created an atmosphere in which his underlings feel they can flex their powerful government muscles without ever being checked. As William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection asks, “The whole fish is rotten, but the head doesn’t know?”

[ADDENDUM: If you’re having trouble sorting all the Troubles out, here’s a guide.]