Can't help it. Now that the GWB43 tale is getting major attention (see Dan Froomkin's take on it here), we are hearing voices comparing the Rove/Ralston/Abramoff emails to the 18 1/2 minute gap in the Watergate tapes. Except this time, we may get a chance to grab hold of the missing material. The technology has changed.
But then the thought hit me: How do we know that those infamous 18 1/2 minutes of Nixonian Deep Thoughts are lost forever?
Yes, I know that techs have tried to nudge some latent vocal material out of the electronic fuzz, to no avail. But everyone is missing one key point: The tape system installed by Nixon was not the only one in the Oval Office. Strong evidence indicates that the CIA had bugged the White House -- which is precisely why Nixon could not simply erase the tapes; if he had, his enemies at the Agency would have released the material. I make the case at some length here.
This is not just my theory. Nixon aide Chuck Colson once said "The CIA had tapes of everything related to the White House." More than that: Colson tried to hire a guy named Gordon N. to erase the CIA tapes. Gordon, in those days, was palling around with the CIA's James J. Angleton -- a fact which tells us which spook had physical possession of the other set of tapes. (If you've read anything about Angleton, you'll know that he was gutsy enough to pull off a stunt like that.)
We may thus begin to deduce what was on the erased 18 1/2 minutes. Whatever the subject of conversation was, it must have been something that neither Nixon nor Angleton wanted to become public. An area where Nixon knew that he and the Agency had a common interest in silence.What do you think the topic could have been?
1 comment:
sofla said....
Surely as one who has followed the JFK assassination saga for many years, you already know the answer, right?
Based on what was the topic of discussion right before the gap, evidently, Nixon was discussing the group he called 'the Texans,' which would be the oil money-connected group surrounding guys like GHW Bush, John Connelly, LBJ-- people like Clint Murchison, the Hunts, probably the Kochs (whoever were the people who co-owned Penzoil with Bush), and later Bush Commerce Secretary/money man, Robert Mosbacher.
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