marcusmarcusrc

This would be one of many books that I acquired from my building's "Leave a Book Take a Book" laundry room (sadly, I think our new management is discontinuing this wonderful tradition). In any case, I finally read Bernstein + Woodward's account of the Watergate scandal over "break" (mostly on the plane), and found it enthralling, surprising, and depressingly timely.

I mean, I really feel like you could do a regexp-search-and-replace for Bush + Nixon, Rove + Ehrlichman, Gordon Liddy v. Scooter Libby (I mean, their names even sound the same!) etc. and not be too far off. Illegal wiretapping. A President pushing executive privilege to its limit. Leaks to newspapers, and throwing reporters in jail until their sources give them permission to reveal them. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of laundered money.

Some notes:
The guy who appoints the head of the FBI and the Attorney General can arrange things such that grand juries indict only the grunts in an operation (eg, the Watergate burglars. Parallels to the Abu Ghraib investigation, and also Fitzmas?)

The public can elect an unethical criminal who tampered significantly with the electoral process in a 61% landslide even when reports of their activities have been published in the "eastern elitist liberal press" for months.

The Nixon case might never have broken without all of the following:
A) A free, independent and aggressive press
B) A Senate run by the opposing party to pull together its own investigation to go beyond the original grand jury investigation.
C) Significant incompetence by the conspirators
D) Leaks from inside

So, in the absence of most of A to D: what could the Bush administration have gotten away with that has never made the news? (given that what _has_ made the news is already kind of damning)

4.5 stars out of 5 (loses half a star for sometimes getting lost in too much detail) (Also: Woodward used to move his flowerpot in order to signal Deep Throat that they should meet at 3 am in a deserted parking garage? If that appeared in a spy novel, I'd think it was exagerrated and dumb!)