“And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I could say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got.”
US President Richard Nixon
(November 17 1973)
November 17 2023 — On this day, US President Richard Nixon famously stated that: “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook.” The rest is History. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
RELATED POST: One Year Ago — Historian Webster Tarpley : Nixon Was Ousted By The CIA
RELATED POST: Nixon Goes To China [Humour]
RELATED POST: On This Day — Nixon Announces Vietnam Peace Agreement (January 23, 1973)
RELATED POST: Blast From The Past: Nixon & the CIA’s Daily Briefs
RELATED POST: On This Day — Did Richard Nixon Frame Alger Hiss? (December 6 1948 – The Pumpkin Papers)
“Woodward story is based on an alleged memorandum from your national security adviser with lengthy quotes . … But I’ve come to the conclusion that Mr. Woodward is probably Deep Throat.”
Ronald Reagan
(October 2 1986)
UPDATE (November 17 2023) — 50 Years of Deep Throat
“Deep Throat” refers to an informant who divulges damaging information under cover of anonymity.
This expression is one of the most enduring legacies of the Nixon’s Watergate scandal. But do you actually know the origin of that expression?
The quickest answer is pretty well summed up at Wikipedia:
“Howard Simons, the managing editor of the Post during Watergate, dubbed the secret informant “Deep Throat”, alluding to the deep background status of his information and to the movie which was a cause of controversy at the time. The name was chosen due to the amount of publicity of the film and the ambiguity of its lacking an identifiable connection to the events.”
The movie “Deep Throat” was one of the first pornographic movies to gain mainstream attention. The title refers to oral sex and was in the public “eye”, so to speak, at the time of the coverage of Watergate.
It works so well on so many levels that it stuck in the public consciousness even with those unfamiliar with the movie title from which it sprang, especially after the movie based on Woodward and Bernstein’s book: “All the President’s Men”.
On October 2 1986, the Washington Post published an extraordinary story written by legendary journalist Bob Woodward: “Gadhafi Target of Secret U.S. Deception Plan”.
RELATED POST: 35 Years Ago — Gaddafi Target of U.S. Disinformation (October 2 1986 — Bob Woodward) [Disinformation Goes Mainstream]
Under orders from the White House, the US Intelligence Community was planting false information in the US media. As a result of this scandal, the use of the word ‘disinformation’ became mainstream in the English language.
In a desperate attempt to deny the facts, Reagan suggested that Woodward had made up the whole story. “I’ve come to the conclusion that Mr. Woodward is probably Deep Throat,” Reagan said.
Then just a few weeks later, the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa exposed the Iran-contra scandal. As a result, the media largely forgot Woodward’s story…
RELATED POST: On This Day — The Iran-Contra Scandal Revealed (November 3, 1986) [UPDATE : Factual vs Fantastical Conspiracies]
RELATED POST: On This Day — Reagan Approves Covert Arms Sales to Iran (January 17, 1986) [The Lockerbie Solution — Timeline]
X Files series creator Chris Carter has stated that the character of Deep Throat was “of course” inspired by the historical Deep Throat.
The real Deep Throat was an informant leaking information on the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate scandal to journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.
After the conclusion of The X-Files, this Deep Throat was later revealed to be FBI Associate Director Mark Felt.
Lockerbie — Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…!
To make it easier for the readers to retrieve various chapters of my book, I have created a special page “Lockerbie” where all the links to the chapters will be listed with a brief description. You can access that page directly as it appears at the far right of the top bar of this blog.
Lockerbie — Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…!
Over the last two decades, many people have tried to identify the “Lockerbie Deep Throat”, a police officer who was known as The GOLFER.
RELATED POST: 10 Years Ago — SCCRC report published online by Sunday Herald [Unmasking The GOLFER. Who was Lockerbie Deep Throat?]
In May 2012, the Sunday Herald published the full Lockerbie Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) 800-page report. For those who like statistics, this report contains 285,300 words, and a total of 1,384,109 (no space) characters.
The chapter regarding GOLFER was redacted to hide his identity. But one letter of just one word had been only partially redacted. After a bit of thinking, I came to the conclusion that this letter was a (Times New Roman) capital G. And that was all that was needed to start cracking a two-decade-old secret.
“If Lockerbie is Scotland’s Watergate then Golfer is our Deep Throat.“
Policing Lockerbie
A Bella Caledonia Special Investigation
(Sept. 7 2011)
Who was the Lockerbie GOLFER?
Ian Hazelton (born August 13 1947) retired [as a Detective Sergeant] from the Strathclyde police in 1995 after 30 years of service.
Hazelton was on the witness list [n° 517] but he did not testify. His name does not appear once in the trial’s transcripts.
Ian Hazelton was already the source of Leppard’s articles in the late 80’s. [Hazelton and Leppard may be related. (uncle/nephew)]
“TRUST NO ONE”
PS — During one of the SCCRC interviews, the GOLFER revealed that he had “worked” at MacKechnie & Associates’ office.
In the Commission’s view, this involvement with the company “went beyond that normally expected of a witness.”
As researcher and author John Ashton wrote:
“There is little doubt that these episodes soured the Commission’s view of MacKechnie’s further submission and may have cost his team a good deal of credibility.”
The lies of the GOLFER were a terrible distraction for the SCCRC officers. As a result, they became convinced that there was no credibility to the allegation that evidence had been fabricated.
RELATED POST: Lockerbie — The Mysterious Case of David Harvie
And thus, they ignored the irrefutable scientific evidence that PT/35(b) — the key piece of evidence linking Libya to Lockerbie — is a forgery.
Folks in Scotland like to say that, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” I want to know who paid for GOLFER’s lies. Everything else will follow… I already know that he wanted to be ‘rewarded’ with Golf trips to South Africa… Why on earth South Africa? Think about that!
Did you know that there is a real “Lockerbie X File”?
During its investigation, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission [SCCRC] uncovered the existence of a “Lockerbie X File”.
The relevant part of their 2007 800 pages report reads:
“The presence of Mr McKee on PA103, along with certain others, appears to have been the focus of high level discussions between Senior Police, Security Service and American officials.
It is clear that the American authorities were keen to recover any items that may have belonged to McKee in particular, which could be linked to their duties.
It may well have been the case that certain items were not recorded in the normal manner to protect American interests …”
Obviously you want to know who is Mr McKee? Who are the “certain others”? What items were not recorded in the normal manner?
END of UPDATE
“When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
Richard Nixon
On November 17 1973, President Richard Nixon was knee-deep in the Watergate controversy when he arrived at Disney’s Contemporary Resort to give his now infamous “I am not a crook” speech.
In an attempt to quell the outrage surrounding his presidency’s involvement with the scandal, Nixon spoke before the Associated Press Managing Editors annual conference, and it was actually during a Q&A portion of the speech where he blurted out the words that would ultimately define his legacy.
“I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service — I earned every cent.
And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice.
And I think, too, that I could say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook.
Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got.”
The next day, in the Nov. 18 edition of the New York Times, the paper concluded that the president did a nice job acquitting himself:
“The president seemed composed and on top of the subject throughout the session, faltering perceptibly only during the discussion of his taxes.
In contrast with some of his recent appearances he did not berate his critics or his political enemies.”
Any resemblance to current events may not be purely coincidental…
Three years after leaving office, Mr. Nixon defended his actions to the British television personality David Frost: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
A recent New York Times article about political sex scandals and technology highlighted the sense of invincibility some politicians seem to share: “Part of that has to do with politics, which self-selects for people with risk-taking behavior and a high degree of self-regard.”
Mr. Nixon said, “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook.” Do you agree?
Would you rather have a leader who is honest but cannot affect change, or one who uses dishonest methods to achieve positive results?
Do you think politicians are more prone than others to behave unethically because they view themselves as above the law, or do you think that as public figures, they just receive more attention when their misdeeds come to light? Why?
Do you think that violations on the scale of the Nixon administration’s misconduct and subsequent cover-up could take place today? Why or why not?
Richard Nixon – “I’m not a crook”
REFERENCES
Nov. 17, 1973 | Nixon Declares ‘I Am Not a Crook’ — New York Times
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50 Years Ago — US President Richard Nixon : “I am Not a Crook” (November 17 1973) [UPDATE : 50 Years of Deep Throat]
Intel Today 