Panel examines the impact of Watergate after 40 years

Investigators of the Watergate Scandal revealed only a portion of President Richard Nixon’s infractions to the public, a panel of those close to the incident told a crowd of about 250 people at the University Club last night.

“Watergate: Third-Rate Burglary or Historical Turning Point?,” a panel discussion and Q-and-A presented by the University Honors College on Thursday evening, featured a panel of five people with special knowledge of the Watergate events and their coverage by the media, including Alexander Butterfield, the former head of Nixon’s Federal Aviation Administration; Egil “Bud” Krogh, head of Nixon’s Special Investigations Unit; Robert Meyers, a California-based correspondent for The Washington Post; Tim Naftali, former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Jill Wine-Banks, a member of the counsel that prosecuted Nixon.

The Watergate Scandal and subsequent investigation occurred after a June 1972 break-in at the Watergate Hotel — then headquarters for the Democratic National Committee — by a group of Nixon associates in hopes of planting listening devices and photographing valuable documents. A federal investigation led to the discovery of the Nixon administration’s involvement in the break-in, ultimately resulting in the president announcing his resignation August 8, 1974.

After David Shribman, executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and moderator of the event, posed the question of what the American public still doesn’t know about the investigation, Naftali said only about 5 percent of the information was revealed to the general public.

“It doesn’t end. It goes on, and on and on,” Naftali said.

The infractions, which were recorded on tapes that the Supreme Court forced Nixon to reveal, included Nixon telling White House officials how to testify to the FBI, using the IRS against political enemies and “hiring thugs to break the bones of anti-war demonstrators,” according to Naftali.

Butterfield attributed these infractions to Nixon’s overwhelming sense of paranoia. He said the president “hated and resented” opposition, especially the elite from the northeast United States, who Nixon called “sons of b*tches who had it given to them.”

As an example, he cited an instance when Harvard University President Derek Bok arrived at the White House, and an outraged Nixon insulted Bok in front of his staff members and security detail.

“The guy was paranoid,” Butterfield said.

Despite the relatively small amount of information about the scandal that was revealed to the public, Wine-Banks said it was sufficient to launch a full-scale investigation into Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate Hotel break-in and subsequent cover-up. In particular, she said, the “Rose Mary Stretch” shifted the court in the prosecution’s favor.

The Rose Mary Stretch occurred when Wine-Banks cross-examined Rose Mary Woods, Nixon’s secretary, about an 18 1/2 minute gap in a tape recovered from Nixon’s records. Initially, Woods explained that the gap was a result of her attempting to answer a phone while recording the tape. But, after Wine-Banks succeeded in transferring the case to the White House for a realistic reenactment of the event, it was quickly revealed that Woods’ original claim would’ve been impossible.

It was this inconsistency, Wine-Banks said, that shifted public opinion against Nixon.

“That was the point at which the public said ‘OK, this was not true,’” Wine-Banks said.

Because of the severity of Nixon’s infractions, the panel agreed that Gerald Ford, who became president after Nixon’s resignation, missed an opportunity to make a statement regarding the rule of law when he decided to pardon the first president in American history to resign.

Naftali said Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon caused U.S. citizens to believe that his actions weren’t out of the ordinary for the president — a level of cynicism Naftali says is unfounded.

“People can make the argument … to say Nixon did nothing out of the ordinary,” he said.

But members of the panel did agree about the positive role of the press in shaping public opinion, though they downplayed the role of investigative reporting by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of The Washington Post as well as other media outlets.

Although Meyer, who collaborated with Bernstein during the reporting, said he didn’t believe Woodward and Bernstein broke the Watergate Scandal themselves, he admitted that their work helped shape public opinion and turn it against the guilty Nixon and the remainder of his administration.

“I don’t believe in investigative reporting — I believe in reporting,” Meyer said.