6.7 Live Lesson

The two biggest scandals of the 1970s were the release of the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate scandal. As a result, many Americans started to lose faith in their government. You

will read two investigative articles about these events. At the end, you will come to a conclusion on why you think Americans started to lose faith in their government.

Group One will read an article by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward about the early findings of the Watergate scandal. While reading, please keep in mind the following questions:

What crimes was Nixon accused of? What was Nixon’s ultimate goal? How does this articles contribute to the growing mistrust of the US Government?

Group Two will read a TIME Magazine article about the Pentagon Papers and what they revealed about US involvement in Vietnam. When reading the article, please keep in mind that the US public knew very little about our involvement in Vietnam during the 1950s and early 1960s. It wasn’t until August 1964 (after the passing of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) and march 1965 (first U.S. combat troops in Vietnam) did the American public become more aware of our involvement in Vietnam. This article explains what was going on behind the scenes in Vietnam. As you are reading, please keep in mind the following questions:

Publicly, what the US goal in Vietnam? Privately, what was the goal? Why the US government so secretive when it came to the Vietnam War? How does this article contribute to the growing mistrust of the US Government?

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Group #1

FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats

By Carl Bernstein and Bob WoodwardWashington Post WritersTuesday, October 10, 1972; Page A01

FBI agents have established that the Watergate bugging incident stemmed from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of President Nixon's re-election and directed by officials of the White House and the Committee for the Re-election of the President.

The activities, according to information in FBI and Department of Justice files, were aimed at all the major Democratic presidential contenders and -- since 1971 -- represented a basic strategy of the Nixon re-election effort.

During their Watergate investigation, federal agents established that hundreds of thousands of dollars in Nixon campaign contributions had been set aside to pay for an extensive undercover campaign aimed at discrediting individual Democratic presidential candidates and disrupting their campaigns.

"Intelligence work" is normal during a campaign and is said to be carried out by both political parties. But federal investigators said what they uncovered being done by the Nixon forces is unprecedented in scope and intensity.

They said it included:

Following members of Democratic candidates' families and assembling dossiers on their personal lives; forging letters and distributing them under the candidates' letterheads; leaking false and manufactured items to the press; throwing campaign schedules into disarray; seizing confidential campaign files; and investigating the lives of dozens of Democratic campaign workers.

In addition, investigators said the activities included planting provocateurs1 in the ranks of organizations expected to demonstrate at the Republican and Democratic conventions; and investigating potential donors to the Nixon campaign before their contributions were solicited.

Informed of the general contents of this article, The White House referred all comment to The Committee for the Re-election of the President. A spokesman there said, "The Post story is not only fiction but a collection of absurdities." Asked to discuss the specific points raised in the story, the spokesman, DeVan L. Shumway, refused on grounds that "the entire matter is in the hands of the authorities."

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Three attorneys have told The Washington Post that, as early as mid-1971, they were asked to work as agents provocateurs on behalf of the Nixon campaign. They said they were asked to undermine the primary campaigns of Democratic candidates by a

1 one employed to associate with suspected persons and by pretending sympathy with their aims to incite them to some incriminating action

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man who has been identified in FBI reports as an operative of the Nixon re-election organization.

All three lawyers, including one who is an assistant attorney general of Tennessee, said they turned down the offers, which purportedly included the promise of "big jobs" in Washington after President Nixon's re-election. They said the overtures were made by Donald H. Segretti, 31, a former Treasury Department lawyer who lives in Marina Del Ray, Calif.

Segretti denied making the offers and refused to answer a reporter's questions.

One federal investigative official said that Segretti played the role of "just a small fish in a big pond." According to FBI reports, at least 50 undercover Nixon operatives traveled throughout the country trying to disrupt and spy on Democratic campaigns.

Both at the White House and within the President's re-election committee, the intelligence-sabotage operation was commonly called the "offensive security" program of the Nixon forces, according to investigators.

Perhaps the most significant finding of the whole Watergate investigation, the investigators say, was that numerous specific acts of political sabotage and spying were all traced to this "offensive security," which was conceived and directed in the White House and by President Nixon's re-election committee.

The investigators said that a major purpose of the sub rosa2 activities was to create so

much confusion, suspicion and dissension that the Democrats would be incapable of uniting after choosing a presidential nominee.

The FBI's investigation of the Watergate established that virtually all the acts against the Democrats were financed by a secret, fluctuating $350,000 -$700,000 campaign fund that was controlled by former Attorney General John N. Mitchell while he headed the Justice Department. Later, when he served as President Nixon's campaign manager, Mitchell shared control of the fund with others. The money was kept in a safe in the office of the President's chief fundraiser, former Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stans.

According to sources close to the Watergate investigation, much of the FBI's information is expected to be revealed at the trial of the seven men indicted on charges of conspiring to eavesdrop on Democratic headquarters at the Watergate.

"There is some very powerful information," said one federal official, "especially if it becomes known before Nov. 7."

A glimpse of the Nixon campaign's spying and disruptions are to be found in the activities of Segretti. According to investigators, Segretti's work was financed through middlemen by the $350,000-$700,000 fund.

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According to the three attorneys interviewed by The Post, Segretti attempted to hire them in 1971 as undercover agents

2 Happening or done in secret

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working on behalf of President Nixon's re-election. All three said they first met Segretti in 1968, when they served together in Vietnam as captains in the Army Judge Advocate General Corps.

One of the lawyers, Alex B. Shipley, a Democrat who is now assistant attorney general of Tennessee, said Segretti told him, "Money would be no problem, but the people we would be working for wanted results for the cash that would be spent."

Shipley, 30 added: "He (Segretti) also told me that we would be taken care of after Nixon's re-election, that I would get a good job in the government."

According to Shipley, Segretti said that the undercover work would require false identification papers under an assumed name; that Shipley recruit five more persons, preferably lawyers, for the job; that they would attempt to disrupt the schedules of Democratic candidates and obtain information from their campaign organizations; that Shipley would not reveal to Segretti the names of the men he would hire; and that Segretti could never reveal to Shipley specifically who was supplying the money for the operation.

Shipley recalled in a telephone interview: "I said, 'How in hell are we going to be taken care of if no one knows what we're doing?' and Segretti said: 'Nixon knows that something is being done. It's a typical deal.' Segretti said, 'Don't-tell-me-anything-and-I-won't-know.'"

Segretti's first approach, said Shipley, came on June 27, 1971. "He called me before then and told me he would be in Washington and he came to a dinner party

at my apartment at South Four Towers (4600 S. Four Mile Run Drive, Arlington) the night before," said Shipley. "Nothing was said about it then. The next morning I met him for breakfast and drove him to the airport -- Dulles."

On the way to Dulles, said Shipley, Segretti "first mentioned the deal. He asked would I be interested because I was getting out of the Army. We were both setting out shortly...and didn't have anything lined up. He mentioned on the way to Dulles that we would do a little political espionage."

Shipley continued: "I said, 'What are you talking about?' He (Segretti) said: 'For instance, we'll go to a Kennedy rally and find an ardent Kennedy worker. Then you say that you're a Kennedy man too but you're working behind the scenes; you get them to help you. You send them to work for Muskie, stuffing envelopes or whatever, and you get them to pass you the information. They'll think that they are helping Kennedy against Muskie. But actually you're using the information for something else.

"It was very strange," Shipley recalled. "Three quarters of the way to the airport I said, 'Well, who will we be working for?' He said, 'Nixon' and I was really taken aback, because all the actions he had talked about would have taken place in the Democratic primaries. He (Segretti) said the main purpose was that the Democrats have an ability to get back together after a knockdown, drag-out campaign. What we want to do is wreak enough havoc so they can't."

Shipley said he told Segretti, "Well, it sounds interesting; let me think about it."

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***During a meeting on July 25, said Shipley, Segretti "didn't go into much detail because it was mostly 'Are you with me or not?'" When he asked Segretti exactly what would be expected of him, in participating in clandestine activities, Shipley said he was told:

"'Enlist people, be imaginative' One thing he stressed was asking lawyers because he didn't want to do anything illegal. It wasn't represented as a strictly strong-arm operation. He stressed what fun we could have. As an example, he gave this situation:

"'When a rally is scheduled at 7 p.m. at a local coliseum by a particular candidate, you call up and represent to the manager that you're the field manager for this candidate and you have some information that some rowdies, some hippies or what-have-you are going to cause trouble. So you ask him to move the rally up to 9 o'clock -- thereby insuring that the place would be padlocked when the candidate showed up at 7.'"

"At one time during these conjectural3 discussions," Shipley continued, "Segretti said it might be good to get a false ID to travel under, that it would be harder for anyone to catch up with us. He mentioned he might use the pseudonym Bill Mooney for himself...

"Segretti said he wanted to cover the country," Shipley continued, "that he would be more or less the head coordinator for

the country. But some of the things he proposed to do didn't seem that damaging, like getting a post office box in the name of the Massachusetts Safe Driving Committee and awarding a medal to Teddy Kennedy -- with announcements sent to the press."

"The one important thing that struck me was that he seemed to be well-financed," Shipley said. "He was always flying across the country. When he came to Washington in June he said he had an appointment at the Treasury Department and that the Treasury Department was picking up the tab on this -- his plane and hotel bill."

Segretti later told him, Shipley said that "it wasn't the Treasury Department that had paid the bill, it was the Nixon people. He said, 'Don't ask me any names.'"

(According to travel records, Segretti criss-crossed the country at least half of 1971. Stops included Miami, Houston, Manchester, N.H., Knoxville, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, Salt Lake City, Chicago, Portland, Ore., Albuquerque, Tucson, San Francisco, Monterey and several other California cities.)

(Federal investigators identified the following jurisdictions as the locations of the most concentrated Nixon undercover activity: Illinois, New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, California, Texas, Florida, and Washington, D.C.)

3 inference from defective or presumptive evidence

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What crimes were Nixon accused of? Include as least three examples(Identify)

What was Nixon’s ultimate goal? (Assess)

How does this article contribute to the growing mistrust of the US government? (Apply Concept)

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Group #2

Pentagon Papers: The Secret War

(TIME, June 28, 1971) -- "To see the conflict and our part in it as a tragedy without villains, war crimes without criminals, lies without liars, espouses and promulgates a view of process, roles and motives that is not only grossly mistaken but which underwrites deceits that have served a succession of Presidents." -- Daniel Ellsberg

The issues were momentous, the situation unprecedented. The most massive leak of secret documents in U.S. history had suddenly exposed the sensitive inner processes whereby the Johnson Administration had abruptly escalated the nation's most unpopular -- an unsuccessful -- war. The Nixon Government, battling stubbornly to withdraw from that war at its own deliberate pace, took the historic step of seeking to suppress articles before publication, and threatened criminal action against the nation's most eminent newspaper.

The records revealed a dismaying degree of miscalculation, bureaucratic arrogance and deception. The revelations severely damaged the reputations of some officials, enhanced those of a few, and so angered Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield -- a long-patient Democrat whose own party was hurt most -- that he promised to conduct a Senate investigation of Government decision making.

The sensational affair began quietly with the dull thud of the 486-page Sunday New York Times arriving on doorsteps and in newsrooms. A dry Page One headline -- VIETNAM ARCHIVE: PENTAGON STUDY TRACES 3 DECADES OF GROWING U.S. INVOLVEMENT.A Study Ignored

The Times had obviously turned up a big story. Daniel Ellsberg, a former Pentagon analyst and superhawk4-turned- superdove5, apparently had felt so concerned about his involvement in the Vietnam tragedy that he had somehow conveyed about 40 volumes of an extraordinary Pentagon history of the war to the newspaper. Included were 4,000 pages of documents, 3,000 pages of analysis and 2.5 million words -- all classified as secret, top secret or top secret-sensitive.

By early 1964, the U.S. was supporting and directing a number of covert operations: air strikes over Laos by CIA-hired civilian pilots and by Thai flyers, South Vietnamese harassment raids along the North Vietnam coast, and U-2 reconnaissance flights over the North. Announced U.S. retaliatory air strikes against the North started in August 1964. A sustained air campaign (Rolling Thunder) was ordered to assault the North in February, 1965. The first U.S. ground troops landed in force in South Vietnam during the spring of 1965. By the end of the year, 184,000 U.S. troops had been deployed in the South.

4Pro- Vietnam War 5 Anti-Vietnam War

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As the documents bared the planning process, they also demolished any lingering faith that the nation's weightiest decisions are made by deliberative men, calmly examining all the implications of a policy and then carefully laying out their reasoning in depth. The proliferation of papers, the cabled requests for clarification, the briskness of language but not of logic, convey an impression of harassed men, thinking and writing too quickly and sometimes being mystified at the enemy's refusal to conform to official projections.

Ambassador to Saigon Maxwell Taylor, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, candidly declared in November 1964: "We still find no plausible explanation of the continued strength of the Viet Cong6 if our data on the Viet Cong losses are even approximately correct. Not only do the Viet Cong units have the recuperative powers of the phoenix, but they have an amazing ability to maintain morale." The experienced Taylor sounded downright naive when, on assuming his post in Saigon, he advised the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "No sophisticated psychological approach is necessary to attract the country people to the GVN [Government of Vietnam, Saigon]7at this time. The assurance of a reasonably secure life is all that is necessary." That assurance was at the core of the conflict -- and has still not been wholly achieved.

The most surprising specific disclosure of the Times's papers include:

WAR AIMS. Both publicly and in a National Security memorandum in March 1964, President Johnson insisted that the central U.S. aim was to secure an "independent, non-Communist South Vietnam." McNamara used identical wording in a memo to L.B.J. the same month, but fuzzed the goal by adding the far broader view of Vietnam as a "test case of U.S. capacity to help a nation meet a Communist war of liberation---not only in Asia, but in the rest of the world." Then, in January 1965, McNamara penciled his approval on a statement by his assistant, McNaughton, that the real U.S. goal was "not to help friend, but to contain China." A month later, McNaughton, demonstrating the McNamara team's fondness for figures, put the U.S. aims in a far different order: "70% -- to avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat. 20% -- to keep SVN (South Vietnam) territory from Chinese hands. 10% -- to permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life. Also -- to emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used." That was hardly an idealistic statement of U.S. purposes.

PESSIMISM ABOUT SAIGON. While higher officials sought to knock down persistent reports by newsmen in Saigon that the war was going badly, McNaughton in a memo on Nov. 6, 1964, offered a firm evaluation and prediction: "The situation in South Vietnam is deteriorating. Unless new actions are taken, the new government will probably be unstable and ineffectual and the VC will probably continue to extend their hold over the population and territory. It can be expected that, soon (6 months? two years?), (a) government officials at all

6 The Enemy. Communist forces in North Vietnam (also referred to as “VC”)7 Saigon is the capital of South Vietnam; non-communist (our allies)

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levels will adjust their behavior to an eventual VC takeover, (b) defections of significant military forces will take place, (c) whole integrated regions of the country will be totally denied to the GVN, (d) neutral and/or left-wing elements will enter the government, (e) a popular front regime will emerge which will invite the U.S. out, and (f) fundamental concessions to the VC and accommodations to [Hanoi] will put South Vietnam behind the Curtain." Generally, officials put a carefully cheerful face on matters and berated the U.S. press for its position while privately agreeing.

CONCEALMENT OF AIR STRIKES. The documents reveal that, in Operation Barrel Roll, the CIA was regularly using U.S. civilian pilots flying U.S. planes to make air strikes along infiltration routes in Laos early in 1964. In December, this campaign was stepped up to semiweekly attacks by regular U.S. Air Force and Navy flyers, but the National Security Council ordered: "There would be no public operations statements about armed reconnaissance [a euphemism for operations in which pilots are allowed to attack any target they find rather than limited to assigned targets] in Laos unless a plane were lost. In such an event the Government should continue to insist that we were merely escorting reconnaissance flights as requested by the Laotian Government."

CONCEALMENT AT TONKIN. The North Vietnamese PT-boat attacks on the U.S. destroyer Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964 were among the most pivotal and controversial events of the war -- and the Johnson Administration clearly deceived the public about them. U.S. officials claimed to be unaware that South Vietnamese naval units had been covertly operating in the

area shortly before the Maddox was fired upon. McNamara was asked at a press conference on Aug. 5, 1964: "Have there been any incidents that you know of involving the South Vietnamese vessels and the North Vietnamese?" His reply: "No, none that I know of." Yet the secret Pentagon study declares that "at midnight on July 30, South Vietnamese naval commandos under General Westmoreland's command staged an amphibious raid on the North Vietnamese islands of Hon Me and Hon Ngu in the Gulf of Tonkin. Apparently [the North Vietnamese boats that attacked the Maddox] had mistaken Maddox for a South Vietnamese escort vessel." The rapidity of U.S. air reprisals -- within twelve hours of Washington's receipt of the news -- argued that the U.S. had been positioned to strike as soon as attacked.

CONCEALMENT ABOUT TROOPS. Similarly, when U.S. Marine battalions in South Vietnam were authorized for the first time to take offensive action, Johnson directed that "premature publicity be avoided by all possible precautions" and that steps be taken to "minimize any appearance of sudden changes in policy." The whole question of introducing ground troops into South Vietnam was so cloaked and confusing that Ambassador Taylor cabled Secretary of State Dean Rusk: "I badly need a clarification of our purposes and objectives." Taylor was especially angry at the fact that though he had sharply opposed the introduction of more U.S. troops into the area, his ostensible subordinate, General William Westmoreland, had been assigned an airborne brigade without Taylor's knowledge.

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ORDERING ALLIES AROUND. Throughout the papers, U.S. officials indicate that the various Saigon governments, the non-Communist Laotian Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma, other U.S. allies and even the U.S. Congress were too often regarded as entities to be manipulated in order to accomplish U.S. foreign policy aims. Administration officials framed a Tonkin Gulf-style resolution long before the PT-boat attacks but failed to ask Congress for concurrence on what they were doing in Vietnam. The State Department's Bundy writes of how Canada's J. Blair Seaborn, a member of the International Control Commission in Vietnam, could be "revved" up to carry secret messages to Hanoi. McNaughton described the Saigon government as being "in such a deep funk it may throw in the sponge."

The most abrasive treatment of an ally was Taylor's schoolmaster scolding of a group of young South Vietnamese generals, including Nguyen Cao Ky and Nguyen Van Thieu, after they had dismissed the civilian High National Council. Said Taylor: "Do all of you understand English? I told you all clearly at General Westmoreland's dinner we Americans were tired of coups. Apparently I wasted my words. Now you have made a real mess. We cannot carry you forever if you do things like this." Taylor's irritation seemed justified, but, as General Nguyen

Khanh said last week, "He was convoking8 me as if he were MacArthur on occupation in Japan."

PROVOCATION PLANS. Although the option apparently was never exercised, secret documents indicate that U.S. planners were seriously considering provoking the North Vietnamese into attacking U.S. units so that an open retaliatory air attack could be made against the North, a key escalation of the conflict. The step would be a prelude to sustained air strikes against the North. A Pentagon "Plan of Action For South Vietnam," drafted by McNaughton in September 1964, proposed actions that "should be likely at some point to provoke a military response [and] the provoked response should be likely to provide good ground for us to escalate if we wished." He suggested that the downing of any U.S. reconnaissance plane over the North by U-2 aircraft would be an appropriate incident.

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Publicly, what was the US goal in Vietnam? Privately, what was the goal?

Why was the US government so secretive when it came to the Vietnam War? (Your opinion,

support your opinion with facts from article and/or 6.6 lesson)

How does this article contribute to the growing mistrust of the US government?

8 call together or summon

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