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Chapman Law Review
Spring 2012
Article
WATERGATE AND VIETNAM: THE COLD WAR ORIGINS OF A CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS
Stephen M. Griffin [tippy title=”*” header=”off”]Rutledge C. Clement, Jr. Professor in Constitutional Law, Tulane Law School. Copyright by Harvard University Press. All rights reserved. I thank the participants at the conference for their comments. This essay is drawn from a larger project on war powers. The project is based on an extensive review of diplomatic history and is tentatively titled Long Wars and the Constitution: Presidents and the Constitutional Order From Truman to Obama (Harvard University Press, forthcoming 2013).[/tippy]
Copyright (c) 2012 Chapman Law Review; Stephen M. Griffin
Watergate is usually thought of as the scandal and constitutional crisis which followed the June 1972 burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. by persons associated with President Nixon’s reelection committee and the subsequent cover-up, led by Nixon himself, of White House involvement in the burglary.
As such, it is regarded as a domestic crisis centrally involving President Nixon’s efforts to undermine his political opponents. [tippy title=”1″ header=”off”]See, e.g., William Bundy, A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency 470 (1998); John Yoo, Crisis and Command 371 (2009).[/tippy] Legal scholars at least are not familiar with the substantial evidence showing that the origin of much (though certainly not all) of what we call “Watergate” lies in the foreign policy of the Johnson and Nixon administrations. [tippy title=”2″ header=”off”]Bundy, supra note 1, at 472.[/tippy] It has long been appreciated by historians of the Vietnam War that there was a meaningful link between Watergate and the domestic intelligence operations used to counter the war’s critics. [tippy title=”3″ header=”off”]See George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975, at 299-300 (4th ed. 2002); Robert Mann, A Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam 687 (2001); Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars: 1945-1990, at 238, 260-61 (1991).[/tippy] In this respect, there is a case to be made that this symposium should have been held in 2011, the fortieth anniversary of the White House-ordered break-in to the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in Los Angeles.
In this essay, I situate Watergate within the context of the Cold War and the Vietnam War in particular. This perspective might be called “Watergate as foreign policy.” Certainly Nixon’s misdeeds ran in many directions besides those connected with the June 1972 burglary. [tippy title=”4″ header=”off”]For useful accounts of the events surrounding the Watergate scandal, see generally Fred Emery, Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon (1995); Ken Gormley, Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation (1997); Stanley I. Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (1990) [hereinafter Kutler, Watergate]; Stanley I. Kutler, Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes (1997) [hereinafter Kutler, Abuse]; J. Anthony Lukas, Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years (1988); Michael Schudson, Watergate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past (1992).[/tippy] To see Watergate afresh and understand how it makes sense as a crisis of what I call the “Cold War constitutional order” requires some rearranging of standard understandings.
The premises of the Cold War order, generally supported by the public, required presidents to have the ability to respond if necessary with the full panoply of military force to the challenge of communist expansion. [tippy title=”5″ header=”off”]See Stephen M. Griffin, Reconceiving the War Powers Debate 39-40 (Tulane Univ. School of Law, Working Paper No. 11-06), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1943652.[/tippy] President Johnson was simply the latest heir to this legacy. [tippy title=”6″ header=”off”]Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973, at 105-06 (1998) [hereinafter Dallek, Johnson].[/tippy] When the Vietnam War did not go as expected, the presidency became a cockpit of tension and frustration. [tippy title=”7″ header=”off”]Id. at 155-56.[/tippy] The strains of war led Johnson and his successor Richard Nixon to a fixated concern with internal security. They turned the capacities of the intelligence agencies, built-up during the Cold War, inward against American citizens. [tippy title=”8″ header=”off”]Emery, supra note 4, at 4-5.[/tippy] This was one of the key causes of Watergate. [tippy title=”9″ header=”off”]See id.[/tippy]
This essay elaborates on this foreign policy explanation of Watergate in three parts. In Part I, the scene is set by showing how an increased concern with internal security by both the Johnson and Nixon administrations flowed from the Vietnam War. Part II concentrates on the Nixon administration and sets Watergate within the context of Nixon’s foreign policy and the Cold War more generally. Part III explains why Watergate was a genuine constitutional crisis and how it, somewhat ironically, came to interfere with Nixon’s conduct of foreign policy.
I. From Johnson to Nixon: Vietnam and Internal Security
War imposes unique psychological stress on the inhabitant of the Oval Office. The risks attendant to war and the personal responsibility that any President would feel for the men and women under his command tend to occupy the mind and crowd out everything else. Because LBJ and his top advisers made the decision for war without any meaningful participation by Congress, the stress was all the greater. [tippy title=”10″ header=”off”]Dallek, Johnson, supra note 6, at 155-56, 283.[/tippy] Consider that fewer than six months after his muted July 1965 announcement that he was escalating the war, LBJ and his administration were under extraordinary strain. [tippy title=”11″ header=”off”]Id. at 344-45.[/tippy] Even in the fall of 1965, the administration could sense that the public was not strongly behind the war. [tippy title=”12″ header=”off”]Id. at 290-91.[/tippy] While this may have troubled them, it would not matter if their expectations of quickly forcing North Vietnam to negotiate had worked as planned. [tippy title=”13″ header=”off”]See id. at 284-85.[/tippy] When this did not occur by the end of the year, the administration plunged into a series of recriminations and a fruitless debate about a bombing halt. [tippy title=”14″ header=”off”]See id. at 345-46.[/tippy]
Somewhat unexpectedly, the decision for war had narrowed the range of options available to the President. Once LBJ chose bombing as the method to force North Vietnam to negotiate, bombing had to work. [tippy title=”15″ header=”off”]See id. at 343.[/tippy] This had the further effect of making administration policy hostage to the responses of the governments in both South and North Vietnam. [tippy title=”16″ header=”off”]See id. at 240-41.[/tippy] LBJ could sense that now he had to win or his presidency would be forever discredited. [tippy title=”17″ header=”off”]See Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam 369-70 (1999).[/tippy] A war fever took hold in the executive branch, creating a vicious circle, which undermined effective policymaking as officials saw that the President wanted only good news and interpreted new developments in their most favorable light. [tippy title=”18″ header=”off”]Dallek, Johnson, supra note 6, at 103, 356-57, 377-78, 388, 470-71; Logevall, supra note 17, at 370-72. See also David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War 460-61 (2000).[/tippy] It did not help that they were susceptible to the same distortions in viewpoint that afflicted the President; they also knew that their personal credibility was on the line. [tippy title=”19″ header=”off”]See Dallek, Johnson, supra note 6, at 470; Kaiser, supra note 18, at 462; Logevall, supra note 17, at 389.[/tippy]
Under the strains of war, the Johnson administration’s attitude toward critics took a hard set. By early 1966, LBJ thought that Senate critics such as J. William Fulbright were actually under communist influence. [tippy title=”20″ header=”off”]Dallek, Johnson, supra note 6, at 352.[/tippy] The ideological domestic downside of the Cold War associated with McCarthyism had returned with a vengeance. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director J. Edgar Hoover encouraged LBJ in his belief that critics of the war were subversives and operated from the worst motives. [tippy title=”21″ header=”off”]Id. at 367.[/tippy] All of the major intelligence agencies–the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), as well as the Army–developed covert domestic intelligence programs aimed at monitoring and disrupting opposition to the war. [tippy title=”22″ header=”off”]Id. at 486-87.[/tippy] Presidents Johnson and Nixon both believed that the antiwar movement was inspired by agents of international communism. [tippy title=”23″ header=”off”]Id. at 489 (discussing Johnson’s beliefs); Melvin Small, The Presidency of Richard Nixon 70 (1999) (discussing Nixon’s beliefs).[/tippy] When careful investigation by the intelligence agencies showed this to be false, they in effect ordered the agencies to prove the relationship. [tippy title=”24″ header=”off”]Dallek, Johnson, supra note 6, at 489; Small, supra note 23, at 70.[/tippy]
How did the strains of war and internal security affect Nixon? [tippy title=”25″ header=”off”]For histories of Nixon’s administration and foreign policy, see generally Bundy, supra note 2; Robert Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (2007) [hereinafter Dallek, Nixon]; Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (rev. ed. 1994); David Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image (2003); Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War (1998); Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008); Small, supra note 23. For useful memoirs and biographies, see generally Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (2005); Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (1978).[/tippy] When he took office, there were still well over 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam with combat action continuing at a high tempo. [tippy title=”26″ header=”off”]Henry Kissinger, Vietnam’s Lessons, L.A. Times, May 31, 2007, http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kissinger31may31,0,3265672.story.[/tippy] Nixon rejected the option of a quick withdrawal in favor of a strategy that had several elements in pursuit of his overall goal of “peace with honor”–a negotiated settlement in which the North Vietnamese would somehow be persuaded to withdraw their forces and guarantee the viability of the South Vietnamese government. [tippy title=”27″ header=”off”]Kimball, supra note 25, at 72-73.[/tippy] Roughly, Nixon’s policy with respect to Vietnam was to satisfy domestic pressure for an end to the war by withdrawing U.S. forces, but slowly enough to preserve meaningful military options. [tippy title=”28″ header=”off”]Id.[/tippy] To compensate for the withdrawal, the U.S. would build up South Vietnam’s ability to resist, a process of “Vietnamization,” which had begun under Johnson. [tippy title=”29″ header=”off”]Id. at 73; see Military: 1969- Vietnamization, GlobalSecurity.org (May 7, 2011, 2:05 PM), http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/vietnam2-vietnamization.htm.[/tippy] More ambitiously, Nixon wanted to reframe the war against a new global strategy of détente with the Soviet Union and opening relations with China. He felt sure that these leading communist states could bring pressure to bear on North Vietnam. [tippy title=”30″ header=”off”]Don Keko, Nixon and Détente, Examiner.com (Aug. 12, 2001), http://www.examiner.com/american-history-in-national/nixon-and-detente[/tippy]
Sooner than Nixon anticipated, his Vietnam strategy involved him in new military responses, as North Vietnam continued to exert significant pressure–especially by using its sanctuaries in Cambodia, which was nonetheless a neutral country. [tippy title=”31″ header=”off”]President Richard M. Nixon, Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia, Mekong.net, http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/nixon430.htm (last visited Mar. 20, 2012).[/tippy] At the same time, the reaction of the antiwar movement and the public generally was always a concern. [tippy title=”32″ header=”off”]Kimball, supra note 25, at 166.[/tippy] So when Nixon decided to bomb Cambodia early in 1969, his first year in office, he determined it would have to be conducted in secret, something difficult to do with a major military operation. [tippy title=”33″ header=”off”]Dallek, Nixon, supra note 25, at 118; Kimball, supra note 25, at 131.[/tippy] When news of the operation leaked, Nixon was upset and ordered FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to wiretap the phones of administration aides and journalists. [tippy title=”34″ header=”off”]Kimball, supra note 25, at 136.[/tippy]
Major antiwar protests were scheduled for the fall of 1969. At roughly the same moment, Nixon was considering “Duck Hook,” a major strike to force North Vietnam to settle the war on U.S. terms. [tippy title=”35″ header=”off”]Id. at 159.[/tippy] Nixon knew that this expansion would require unusual “mental resolve” and a “go-for-broke public relations campaign, in which he would have to expend most or all of his political capital to survive ‘the heat.”’ [tippy title=”36″ header=”off”]Id. at 160.[/tippy] Duck Hook was dropped, but the idea of the decisive intervention remained. [tippy title=”37″ header=”off”]Id. at 170-71.[/tippy] Nixon appreciated by the end of 1969 that the war was now his responsibility in full. [tippy title=”38″ header=”off”]Id. at 169-70.[/tippy] Taking control of the war amid hostile domestic opposition would mean going on the offensive both abroad and at home. [tippy title=”39″ header=”off”]Id. at 170.[/tippy] In April 1970, Nixon ordered U.S. troops to invade border regions in Cambodia to eliminate the North Vietnamese sanctuaries. [tippy title=”40″ header=”off”]Context of ‘April 24-30, 1970: Nixon Orders Invasion of Cambodia; Kissinger Staffers Resign Rather than Participate in Coordination’, History Commons, http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a04242670parrotsbeak&scale=2#a04242670parrotsbeak (last visited Mar. 20, 2012).[/tippy] It was characteristic of Nixon’s Vietnam strategy that all of these deliberations occurred in secret; thus Nixon shared his plans with very few people other than Henry Kissinger, his National Security Advisor. [tippy title=”41″ header=”off”]Id.[/tippy] This occasioned intense stress, as Nixon considered it an operation he knew would be perceived as expanding the war. [tippy title=”42″ header=”off”]Kimball, supra note 25, at 196-97.[/tippy]
Nixon did not foresee how much crisis management the Cambodian invasion would impose on his administration. Universities all over the U.S. demonstrated in protest and several of Kissinger’s aides resigned. [tippy title=”43″ header=”off”]Id. at 213.[/tippy] Under considerable pressure, Nixon began to act erratically. [tippy title=”44″ header=”off”]Dallek, Nixon, supra note 25, at 198-200, 205; Isaacson, supra note 25, at 260-62.[/tippy] In the period leading up to the invasion, he seemed hyperactive to his subordinates, indulging in an “aggressive mania” as he attempted to steel himself for ordering a major military operation without congressional or public support. [tippy title=”45″ header=”off”]See Kimball, supra note 25, at 204.[/tippy] The invasion of Cambodia was perceived, not without cause, as a major expansion of the war by members of Congress and the antiwar movement. [tippy title=”46″ header=”off”]See id. at 221.[/tippy] The unprecedented backlash and public protest that was the result of the Cambodian invasion was the turning point that gave significant credibility and impetus to efforts already underway to curb the war-making power of the executive branch. [tippy title=”47″ header=”off”]Id. at 220-21.[/tippy]
It was at this moment, amid the superheated atmosphere produced by the Cambodian invasion, when Nixon summoned the chiefs of the major intelligence agencies to chastise them for not cooperating more effectively against the nation’s domestic enemies. [tippy title=”48″ header=”off”]Kutler, Watergate, supra note 4, at 98-99.[/tippy] It would have been appropriate for Nixon to raise this issue with respect to foreign enemies, as the lack of cooperation between Hoover’s FBI and the CIA had been causing trouble for many years. [tippy title=”49″ header=”off”]Small, supra note 23, at 56.[/tippy] But like Johnson, Nixon was convinced that the antiwar movement was inspired and led by communist agents. [tippy title=”50″ header=”off”]Tom Wells, Running Battle: Washington’s War at Home, in Long Time Gone: Sixties America Then and Now 75, 89 (Alexander Bloom ed., 2001).[/tippy] Not only was this false, a fact that the intelligence agencies had already confirmed, but it also illustrated the Nixon administration’s isolation from reasonable voices within the antiwar movement with which it could have had a meaningful dialogue about how to wind down the Vietnam War. [tippy title=”51″ header=”off”]Small, supra note 23, at 70.[/tippy] Nixon, however, had worked himself into such a temper that he saw antiwar protesters on campuses as terrorists threatening the state itself. [tippy title=”52″ header=”off”]Dallek, Nixon, supra note 25, at 208; Greenberg, supra note 25, at 82.[/tippy] As summarized by historian Jeffrey Kimball, “[t]he Vietnam War heightened Nixon’s sense of world crisis, contributed to his emotional tension, compounded his personality disorders, and influenced his stratagems and tactics for dealing with home-front and foreign issues.” [tippy title=”53″ header=”off”]Kimball, supra note 25, at 225.[/tippy]
The solution to the lack of cooperation among the intelligence agencies was later known as the Huston Plan, after the White House aide who wrote it at Nixon’s direction. [tippy title=”54″ header=”off”]See Kutler, Watergate, supra note 4, at 96-101 (detailing the Huston Plan).[/tippy] The plan called for the centralization of domestic intelligence activities in the White House and involved aggressive, illegal measures such as break-ins to combat domestic protest. [tippy title=”55″ header=”off”]Lukas, supra note 4, at 33.[/tippy] When FBI Director Hoover objected, fearing disclosure of illegal activities, the plan was formally abandoned. [tippy title=”56″ header=”off”]Id. at 32-34.[/tippy] Informally, however, these options continued to percolate at the White House. [tippy title=”57″ header=”off”]Id. at 35-37.[/tippy] If the intelligence agencies would not take suitable action on their own, the White House itself would go operational and conduct break-ins and wiretaps in pursuit of information that would discredit its political enemies. [tippy title=”58″ header=”off”]See id.[/tippy] This effort was a principal origin of what came to be known as Watergate. [tippy title=”59″ header=”off”]See generally Perlstein, supra note 25.[/tippy]
II. Nixon, the Cold War, and Watergate
To understand Nixon’s presidency in the context of the Cold War, we should keep in mind that Nixon always intended to be a foreign affairs President. He wanted to be remembered in history as someone who brought peace to the United States and the world. [tippy title=”60″ header=”off”]Garthoff, supra note 25, at 30; Small, supra note 23, at 60-62.[/tippy] Nixon retained beliefs with respect to foreign policy that he had formed as Senator, and as Vice-President in the Eisenhower administration. [tippy title=”61″ header=”off”]See America and the Cold War: The Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy Years, Academic American, http://www.academicamerican.com/postww2/coldwar.html (last updated Jan. 5, 2012) (describing the views on foreign policy which were dominant while Nixon was Vice-President).[/tippy] He accepted the verities of the Cold War and saw the conflict between the United States and communist countries as central. [tippy title=”62″ header=”off”]John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA 546 (1987); Robert D. Schulzinger, A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975, at 332 (1997).[/tippy] At the same time, he perceived strategic opportunities arising from the relatively new conflict between the Soviet Union and China. [tippy title=”63″ header=”off”]Small, supra note 23, at 64-65; Sino-Soviet Border Clashes, GlobalSecurity.org, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/prc-soviet.htm (last visited Apr. 7, 2012).[/tippy] Nixon saw Vietnam in this context. It was a war he had to settle, but on a global basis with terms favorable to the U.S. [tippy title=”64″ header=”off”]See Small, supra note 23, at 65.[/tippy]
It was crucial to Nixon’s conception of his presidency that he wanted to carry out this far-reaching strategy entirely in secret in order to announce it at the right moment to secure his place as one of the greatest presidents in history, confound his political opponents, and achieve reelection. [tippy title=”65″ header=”off”]Cf. id at 61-62.[/tippy] This meant that during his administration an enormous amount of diplomatic and military activity occurred off the bureaucratic books. [tippy title=”66″ header=”off”]See id. at 54.[/tippy] This did not bother Nixon, as he entered office with grievances against a number of government agencies centrally important to foreign policy, such as the State Department and the CIA, which he felt had mistreated him as Vice-President. [tippy title=”67″ header=”off”]Id. at 55; Dallek, Nixon, supra note 25, at 84.[/tippy] Partly for this reason, he resolved to be his own Secretary of State and he and Kissinger centralized control of foreign affairs and national security policy in the White House. [tippy title=”68″ header=”off”]See Dallek, Nixon, supra note 25, at 84-85; Small, supra note 23, at 51-52.[/tippy] The State and Defense Departments, as well as the CIA, were often cut out of both formulating and implementing policy. [tippy title=”69″ header=”off”]Dallek, Nixon, supra note 25, at 84-85; Small, supra note 23, at 51-52; Ranelagh, supra note 62, at 499-501, 538-39, 540-41.[/tippy] The White House and especially the national security staff thus went “operational” in foreign affairs from the beginning of Nixon’s presidency.
This organizational setup assisted Nixon in making swift, decisive moves to advance U.S. interests. With respect to intelligence policy, for example, John Ranelagh makes the valuable point that although the CIA had become something of a status quo agency by the late 1960s, Nixon did not want to be a status quo President. [tippy title=”70″ header=”off”]See Ranelagh, supra note 62, at 546.[/tippy] He wanted aggressive action to create a more favorable balance of power. [tippy title=”71″ header=”off”]Id. at 546, 552; Kimball, supra note 25, at 33.[/tippy] Historian Kimball has argued persuasively that Nixon’s “madman theory” of exercising power in unpredictable ways was related to the Eisenhower administration’s “massive retaliation” policy. [tippy title=”72″ header=”off”]See Kimball, supra note 25, at 76-77; Francis A Boyle, The Relevance of International Law to the ‘Paradox’ of Nuclear Deterrence, 80 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1407, 1413 (1986) .[/tippy] While Nixon saw himself as an American Charles de Gaulle, a world leader in the grand European manner, his chief diplomat Kissinger thought the primary objective of the government was order. [tippy title=”73″ header=”off”]Bundy, supra note 1, at 517; Isaacson, supra note 25, at 45; Kimball, supra note 25, at 2, 148; Small, supra note 23, at 61-62.[/tippy] Neither Nixon nor Kissinger believed in democratic governance in foreign affairs in the sense of building support for their policy in Congress and the Senate. [tippy title=”74″ header=”off”]Isaacson, supra note 25, at 206-07, 327, 486-87; Kimball, supra note 25, at 189; Small, supra note 23, at 61-62, 242.[/tippy]
Any breach in the wall of secrecy around the White House, and thus Nixon’s and Kissinger’s diplomatic efforts was therefore a mortal threat. [tippy title=”75″ header=”off”]Dallek, Nixon, supra note 25, at 208.[/tippy] It was all the worse if the breach could be traced to someone who was part of the antiwar movement, a movement which to them was inspired by foreign communists and led by revolutionary terrorists. [tippy title=”76″ header=”off”]Id.[/tippy] Thus the administration had a severe reaction in June 1971 to Daniel Ellsberg’s leaking of the Pentagon Papers to major newspapers including the New York Times. [tippy title=”77″ header=”off”]See Kutler, Abuse, supra note 4, at 3-37; Kutler, Watergate, supra note 5, at 110.[/tippy] The Papers were a secret Department of Defense history of the Vietnam War ordered by Robert McNamara during the Johnson administration. [tippy title=”78″ header=”off”]Peter E. Quint, The Separation of Powers Under Nixon: Reflections on Constitutional Liberties and the Rule of Law, 1 Duke L.J. 1, 9 (1981) .[/tippy] Nixon commanded his aides to destroy Ellsberg’s credibility and, by extension, the credibility of the antiwar movement in the eyes of the public. [tippy title=”79″ header=”off”]See Kutler, Abuse, supra note 4, at 3-37.[/tippy] Unbelievably, Nixon and his aides planned to dig up information on both Ellsberg and the Johnson administration by committing illegal break-ins. [tippy title=”80″ header=”off”]Id.[/tippy]
Nixon’s remarks on the Pentagon Papers and Ellsberg, recorded by his taping system in the White House, leave an indelible and disturbing impression. Nixon believed the young lawyers on his team did not have the proper attitude:
These kids don’t understand. They have no understanding of politics. They have no understanding of public relations. John Mitchell is that way. John is always worried about is it technically correct? Do you think, for Christ sakes, that the New York Times is worried about all the legal niceties? Those sons of bitches are killing me. I mean, thank God, I leaked to the press [during the Hiss controversy]. This is what we’ve got to get–I want you to shake these (unintelligible) up around here. Now you do it. Shake them up. Get them off their Goddamn dead asses and say now that isn’t what you should be talking about. We’re up against an enemy, a conspiracy. They’re using any means. We are going to use any means. Is that clear? [tippy title=”81″ header=”off”]Id. at 8. John Mitchell was the Attorney General. John Newton Mitchell, U.S. Dept. of Justice, http://www.justice.gov/ag/aghistpage.php?id=66 (last visited Apr. 8, 2012).[/tippy]
Nixon went on to refer to a scheme to burglarize the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, to retrieve classified documents on Vietnam he believed might be in its possession. [tippy title=”82″ header=”off”]See Kutler, Abuse, supra note 4, at 8.[/tippy] He continued, “Did they get the Brookings Institute raided last night? No. Get it done. I want it done. I want the Brookings Institute’s safe cleaned out and have it cleaned out in a way that it makes somebody else [responsible?].” [tippy title=”83″ header=”off”]Id.[/tippy]
The Special Investigative Unit (commonly known as “the Plumbers”), a team set up in the White House to combat leaks, was available to conduct the projected break-ins. [tippy title=”84″ header=”off”]Kutler, Watergate, supra note 4, at 111-12; Kutler, Abuse, supra note 4, at 28.[/tippy] One was carried out in September 1971–a burglary of the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in Los Angeles. [tippy title=”85″ header=”off”]Kutler, Abuse, supra note 4, at 28.[/tippy] Once this occurred, Nixon and his men were ensnared in a criminal conspiracy. [tippy title=”86″ header=”off”]See Nixon, supra note 25, at 841-42.[/tippy] Everyone involved in the operation knew something that could be of mortal danger to Nixon and his top aides in the White House. [tippy title=”87″ header=”off”]Small, supra note 23, at 238, 276.[/tippy] Historians have argued that when the burglary at the Watergate complex was discovered in June 1972, Nixon had to lead a cover-up of this operation to ensure that the links between the Ellsberg and Watergate burglaries would not be discovered. [tippy title=”88″ header=”off”]See e.g., Small, supra note 23, at 238, 276. For Nixon’s remarks in his memoirs see Nixon, supra note 25, at 841-42.[/tippy]
These operations were carried out in the main by E. Howard Hunt, who had recently retired from the CIA. [tippy title=”89″ header=”off”]Ranelagh, supra note 62, at 521.[/tippy] Hunt had participated in various CIA operations, including the Bay of Pigs. [tippy title=”90″ header=”off”]Id.[/tippy] Nixon and his aides believed that Hunt could be relied on to carry out the kind of operations originally anticipated in the Huston plan. [tippy title=”91″ header=”off”]See Kutler, Abuse, supra note 4, at 3-6, 27-28.[/tippy] When Hunt needed men to help him, he turned to Cubans who had been trained by the CIA to commit acts of sabotage against Castro. [tippy title=”92″ header=”off”]Lukas, supra note 4, at 94-97.[/tippy] Many of these same people were involved in the 1972 break-in at the Watergate complex along with James McCord, a former chief of security at the CIA. [tippy title=”93″ header=”off”]Small, supra note 23, at 255.[/tippy]
After the Watergate burglars were arrested, the leading idea among Nixon’s men was to quash the FBI investigation by claiming that Watergate was a CIA operation having to do with the Bay of Pigs. [tippy title=”94″ header=”off”]Kutler, Abuse, supra note 4, at 61-62, 67-70.[/tippy] Nixon was later convicted in the court of public opinion by the disclosure of a June 23, 1972 tape in which Nixon ordered his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, to order the CIA to carry out this plan. [tippy title=”95″ header=”off”]Id. at 67-70. See also Kutler, Watergate, supra note 4, at 218.[/tippy] CIA Director Richard Helms and his deputy Vernon Walters were confident that Watergate had nothing to do with the Bay of Pigs and resisted White House overtures to assist with the cover-up. [tippy title=”96″ header=”off”]Kutler, Watergate, supra note 4, at 221; Ranelagh, supra note 62, at 522-30; Small, supra note 23, at 277.[/tippy]
Ironically, there was an important sense in which Watergate did relate to the Bay of Pigs. The various break-ins were carefully planned, requiring training, discipline, and knowledge of specialized equipment. [tippy title=”97″ header=”off”]See Lukas, supra note 4, at 94-101, 190-93, 196-200.[/tippy] The men carrying them out could not be ordinary criminals–that would leave the administration too vulnerable to involvement with unpredictable characters. The Kennedy and Johnson administrations invested significant resources in training a covert army of operatives against Castro. [tippy title=”98″ header=”off”]Id. at 95.[/tippy] After the Bay of Pigs invasion failed in 1961, these operatives were based in the Miami area. [tippy title=”99″ header=”off”]Id. at 95-96.[/tippy] In this respect, the Cold War efforts against Castro, particularly in the Kennedy administration, became braided together with Nixon’s efforts to destroy domestic opposition to his war policies in a very dangerous way. It is likely that the break-ins could not have occurred as they did had these operatives, accustomed to living above the law, not been available to the administration. [tippy title=”100″ header=”off”]Id. at 94-96.[/tippy] The Cuban operatives were hard-line anticommunists who perhaps believed they were acting to protect the United States against the communist-inspired antiwar movement. [tippy title=”101″ header=”off”]See Kutler, Watergate, supra note 4, at 254.[/tippy]
Nevertheless, once they were caught, the imperatives of a criminal conspiracy took over. [tippy title=”102″ header=”off”]Id. at 248-49 (detailing issues such as “hush money”).[/tippy] This put the President of the United States in the incredible position of being vulnerable to blackmail by the Watergate burglars. [tippy title=”103″ header=”off”]Id. at 249.[/tippy] The country was fortunate that Hunt and his fellow conspirators simply wanted Nixon to give them money to pay for their defense and expenses. [tippy title=”104″ header=”off”]See id.[/tippy] Suppose they had wanted changes in government policy? This dire possibility was a logical consequence of the President becoming involved in a conspiracy to break the law.
If Watergate had simply been a matter of the June 1972 burglary and the subsequent rather improvised cover-up, it might be appropriate to view it as an external hindrance to the administration’s foreign policy initiatives. [tippy title=”105″ header=”off”]This appears to be the view of diplomatic historians with experience in government. See Bundy, supra note 1, at 470; Garthoff, supra note 25, at 458-59, 485.[/tippy] But Watergate was inextricably connected with the foreign policy of the Nixon administration and thus with the Cold War itself. [tippy title=”106″ header=”off”]See Garthoff, supra note 25, at 458-59.[/tippy] The maintenance of the Cold War, and any conventional war such as Vietnam, required an enormous effort on the part of the government to maintain morale on the domestic front. [tippy title=”107″ header=”off”]See, e.g., Kimball, supra note 25, at 165-67 (discussing having Nixon speak at universities and devising a POW plan to help alleviate negative public opinion over the Vietnam War).[/tippy] President Truman had the public behind him when he went to war in Korea in June 1950, despite the lack of congressional authorization, given that the preceding three years had seen a rising public concern over the communist challenge. [tippy title=”108″ header=”off”]Gary R. Hess, Presidential Decisions for War 31-32 (2d ed. 2009).[/tippy] Nixon’s task of garnering public support for military actions in Vietnam was far more difficult, and thus suggested the waning of the Cold War. He knew the Vietnam War was unpopular and that the end would at least have to be in sight by the time he ran for reelection. [tippy title=”109″ header=”off”]Kimball, supra note 25, at 62; Small, supra note 23, at 64-67.[/tippy] He decided to combat the antiwar movement with all the means available to him, including intelligence capabilities built since the 1950s. [tippy title=”110″ header=”off”]See supra Part I.[/tippy] This pushed the entire political system into a constitutional crisis. [tippy title=”111″ header=”off”]See generally Griffin, supra note 1.[/tippy]
III. Watergate as a Constitutional Crisis
Watergate has been regarded as a paradigm case of a constitutional crisis, not simply in the heat of the moment, but in the sober reflection of history. [tippy title=”112″ header=”off”]See, e.g., Greenberg, supra note 25, at 333-34; John W. Dean, forward to Watergate and the Resignation of Richard Nixon: Impact of a Constitutional Crisis, at x (Harry P. Jeffrey & Thomas Maxwell Long eds., 2004); Kutler, Watergate, supra note 25, at 209, 316; Thomas E. Mann & Norman J. Ornstein, The Broken Branch 118-19 (2006); Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan 8 (2008).[/tippy] However, a few knowledgeable and historically-minded scholars have surprisingly claimed that it was not. [tippy title=”113″ header=”off”]See Sanford Levinson & Jack M. Balkin, Constitutional Crises, 157 U. Pa. L. Rev. 707, 712, 742 (2009) (calling the events and aftermath of Watergate a political crisis); Keith E. Whittington, Yet Another Constitutional Crisis?, 43 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 2093, 2131 n.175 (2002) (stating that “the Nixon episode led to substantial constitutional conflict, and eventually to constitutional change, but not to crisis”).[/tippy] The problem with these accounts may be an overemphasis on the fact that the Watergate crisis ended in Nixon’s prospective impeachment and resignation, procedures allowed by the Constitution, rather than with riots and troops in the streets. [tippy title=”114″ header=”off”]U.S. Const. art 2, §4 (discussing impeachment of the President, Vice-President and civil officers of the U.S.); U.S. Const. amend. XXV, §1 (stating that if the President should, among other things, resign, the Vice-President shall become President).[/tippy] Although we can be thankful that Nixon did not attempt to retain his office by force, the inescapable constitutional aspect of Watergate was how all of the circumstances I have highlighted flowed from Nixon’s abuse of his office, an office whose powers had been greatly altered by the post-1945 constitutional order. Nixon’s extreme abuse of his powers was not the only reason Watergate was a constitutional crisis; the consequences of Watergate also mattered. One consequence was that it rendered Nixon ineffective as President, especially with respect to foreign policy. [tippy title=”115″ header=”off”]See Garthoff, supra note 25, at 458-59.[/tippy]
By the time of Nixon’s inauguration for his second term in January 1973, the Watergate cover-up was in a deep predicament. [tippy title=”116″ header=”off”]Kutler, Watergate, supra note 4, at 247-51.[/tippy] The blackmail demands of the burglars were escalating and various parties in the White House saw themselves as under threat of being implicated in the cover-up. [tippy title=”117″ header=”off”]Id.[/tippy] As a result, Nixon would be effective as President for only three more months. At the beginning of the pivotal month of April 1973, Nixon’s popularity and standing with the public were still intact. [tippy title=”118″ header=”off”]Small, supra note 23, at 282.[/tippy] But Nixon had conceded to his chief of staff H. R. Haldeman that governance would become impossible if public pressure increased. [tippy title=”119″ header=”off”]Kutler, Watergate, supra note 4, at 263.[/tippy] By the end of the month, a mounting series of disclosures had forced him to dismiss Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, his two most essential aides. [tippy title=”120″ header=”off”]Id. at 318-20.[/tippy]
After the dismissal of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Nixon sank into a depression and for some periods could not function as President. [tippy title=”121″ header=”off”]See Dallek, Nixon, supra note 25, at 544-45; Kutler, Watergate, supra note 4, at 324-25; Small, supra note 23, at 270-71. See also Nixon’s revealing comments in his memoirs. Nixon, supra note 25, at 848-49.[/tippy] During the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Nixon was incapacitated by the sudden crisis, which followed from his dismissal of special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and was unable to make crucial foreign policy decisions. [tippy title=”122″ header=”off”]Bundy, supra note 1, at 433, 440; Dallek, Nixon, supra note 25, at 522, 528; Isaacson, supra note 25, at 514, 531.[/tippy] Another special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, was appointed, and Nixon’s time in office (until his resignation in August 1974) was consumed by Watergate. [tippy title=”123″ header=”off”]Isaacson, supra note 25, at 514; Kutler, Watergate, supra note 4, at 427-29.[/tippy] He could not take meaningful action, for example, in addressing the serious energy crisis in the winter of 1973, which was the consequence of the war in the Middle East. [tippy title=”124″ header=”off”]See Franklin Tugwell, The Energy Crisis and the American Political Economy: Politics and markets in the management of natural resources 105 (1988).[/tippy]
Watergate was also a constitutional crisis because in some sense, Nixon willed it to be. Arguably like other conservatives during the 1970s, he sensed the high degree of entrenchment liberals had achieved in institutions both inside and outside the government. [tippy title=”125″ header=”off”]Nixon, supra note 25, at 761-62.[/tippy] It is likely he was weary of struggling with a persisting Democratic Congress and the interest groups that supported the Democratic Party. After the 1972 election in particular, he was obsessed with seeking revenge on the many people and groups whom he believed had wronged him. [tippy title=”126″ header=”off”]Isaacson, supra note 25, at 474.[/tippy] As he recounted in his memoirs: “In this second term I had thrown down a gauntlet to Congress, the bureaucracy, the media, and the Washington establishment and challenged them to engage in epic battle.” [tippy title=”127″ header=”off”]Nixon, supra note 25, at 850.[/tippy] Another self-willed moment of crisis occurred when Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Cox and earned the whirlwind of an impeachment inquiry. [tippy title=”128″ header=”off”]Kutler, Watergate, supra note 4, at 427-29.[/tippy] The significant point is that Nixon deliberately generated crises as a way of coping with the unwelcome reality that there were effective limits on his ability to reorder the policy universe. He certainly had no scruples about challenging any checks and balances the original Constitution put in his way. This was the most fundamental reason why “Watergate”–Nixon’s way of managing the burdens of the Cold War–was a constitutional crisis, but one intimately linked to the pursuit of the nation’s foreign policy.
Conclusion
Watergate can be usefully understood as part of an immense drama in which the constitutional order with respect to foreign policy and war powers founded after 1945 became increasingly unstable. The appalling costs of the Vietnam War and the crash of Nixon’s presidency showed the jerry-built and provisional character of the Cold War constitutional order. The qualitative difference that war makes to government reasserted itself with a vengeance and showed that the kind of deliberation allowed by the post-1945 order was shockingly inadequate. The premises of the Cold War order would never again be sufficient by themselves to compel the nation to engage in conventional war. A further consequence was the crippling legacy of the loss of trust in government. While Vietnam and Watergate were not the only causes of the decline of trust in government in the 1960s and 1970s, they were significant contributors to a decline that was permanent in the sense that it has never been restored to the level prevailing before the war. [tippy title=”129″ header=”off”]See Margaret Levi & Laura Stoker, Political Trust and Trustworthiness, 3 Ann. Rev. Pol. Sci. 475, 480-81 (2000).[/tippy] In this respect, we are still dealing with the consequences of Vietnam and Watergate.