Vance: Nixon Was Set Up. Some Conspiracy Theories Warrant Serious Inquiry

Listen To This Story

I don’t agree with JD Vance very often. Hardly ever, in fact. But not long ago, I read a facile attack on him, from a former Washington Post managing editor, Len Downie, deriding the vice president’s claim, in a speech at the Nixon Library, that Richard Nixon had been taken down by the so-called “deep state.” 

For those unfamiliar with this term, it has been used for decades by some academics and others (typically outliers, but not always) to characterize entrenched constituencies within government, a phenomenon that saw its peak in the postwar era through the 1980s, as large numbers of (mostly) men — typically from privileged backgrounds and the same Ivy League schools, social circles and networks — came to inhabit high positions in government. 

Deep State may also have a positive connotation, and it is one the Trump/MAGA elements attack: an embedded bureaucratic stability that helps keep the country balanced when reckless interests have gained power and are causing severe damage to institutions serving peace, safety, public health and other important interests.

In his dismissal of Vance’s claim, the Post editor toted up the familiar legacy-media narrative, with the same stilted presentation of “facts” redolent of the establishment’s now-familiar and tiresome recitation of the findings of the Warren Commission that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing John F. Kennedy — despite massive evidence piling up over the years that Kennedy’s death was certainly not the work of Oswald acting alone, and that evidence to the contrary was assiduously suppressed, and still is. 

The Post, the Times, and most of the old-line media continue to insist that every single killing of significant leaders — including Martin Luther King and Malcolm X — could only have been the work of deranged loners. “Nothing to see here, folks — now move along!” 

On Watergate, on this one thing… Vance got it right. 

I grew up and spent much of my adulthood believing what Downie says. I only learned what a mistake that was when researching my book, Family of Secrets, which I began by trying to understand the trajectory of George H.W. Bush, who served as the Republican National Committee chair in the Watergate era. 

And who I discovered had little-known CIA ties from his earliest adult years — decades before being named CIA director after Nixon’s fall (as a purported intelligence neophyte!) — and who had seemed strangely pleased to see Nixon ousted.

Most of the legacy media, which quickly embraced the narrative put out by The Washington Post, never properly investigated Watergate — and ignored many strange aspects of the known facts. Here are just a handful of the things I found, some corroborated by other serious journalists and authors. 

1. Nixon and the CIA (and the military leadership as well) were locked in a bitter, behind-the-scenes struggle for power. On a little known tape, Nixon, far from admitting knowledge of Watergate, appears baffled as to why anyone would burgle the DNC. Whereupon John Dean, a staffer who had CIA ties, explained to him that the Watergate break-in was undertaken without his (Nixon’s) authorization. 
2. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein became star journalists owing to their role in bringing down Nixon. But Woodward had virtually no journalism experience before being brought in to “catch” the story, almost as the burglary unfolded. But he did have ties to Naval intelligence, which are rarely mentioned in hagiographic articles about him. On the other hand, Bernstein left the Post and began to write for other outlets, including about the remarkable extent of the CIA’s penetration of newsrooms, detailing numerous examples, in a 1977 Rolling Stone article. (Go here for more on this.)
3. Numerous indications suggest that Watergate was not the first attempt to link Nixon to scandal in the absence of documented proof. (NOTE: This is not to ignore his complicity in ordering the elaborate cover-up of the embarrassing burglary, which led to the threat of impeachment and ultimately his resignation. In one conversation, Nixon says that if these are his men, and they believed they were serving him, it is necessary to aid them.)
4. The Washington Post, the Senate Watergate committee, and other institutions revered for their roles in bringing Nixon down, had deep connections to the intelligence-military establishment that was warring with Nixon.  

If you want to learn more, I refer you to these chapters in Family of Secrets specifically devoted to this matter:

Watergate Revelations: The Coup Against Nixon, Part 1 of 3 

Watergate Revelations: The Coup Against Nixon, Part 2 of 3 

Watergate Revelations: The Coup Against Nixon, Part 3 of 3 

Watergate and the Downing of Nixon, Part 4

Other serious books, like former Harper’s correspondent Jim Hougan’s Secret Agenda and the works of Len Colodny and others, corroborate the thrust of what I’m saying here. 

While writing about that era, I was warned, repeatedly, that exposing the official Watergate story as a myth would engender vehement attacks by establishment media individuals and institutions. 

True to form, I’ve faced continuous efforts to suggest that, despite my credentials, I had gone amiss on this and perhaps in general. Instead of tasking it to one of the paper’s own staff, the Post assigned a review of Family of Secrets to an outside writer with a penchant for irony, who praised my general capabilities, then said that, sadly, I now “saw the Bushes in the bushes everywhere.” Ha ha! 

As for Vance, he didn’t do any work on this at all. I’m not pleased that he and other right-wingers have embraced the truth about Watergate for their own cynical purposes, and am disappointed that so many otherwise reasonable people refuse to consider it — just as they continue to chuckle about “conspiracy theorists” and fail to examine our country’s true history. 

If this all sounds new to you, well, it should, if your information diet is dominated by establishment sources. Do some homework. Read reputable, independent journalism. Then decide for yourself who is telling you the truth — and who is jerking your chain.