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Title: Watergate: A Skeptical View
Author: Noam Chomsky
Date: September 20, 1973
Language: en
Topics: United States of America, skepticism
Source: Retrieved on 8th June 2021 from https://chomsky.info/19730920/
Notes: From The New York Review of Books, September 20, 1973

Noam Chomsky

Watergate: A Skeptical View

Even the most cynical can hardly be surprised by the antics of Nixon and

his accomplices as they are gradually revealed. It matters little, at

this point, where the exact truth lies in the maze of perjury, evasion,

and of contempt for the normal—hardly inspiring—standards of political

conduct. It is plain that Nixon’s pleasant crew succeeded in stealing

the 1972 election, which probably could have been theirs legally, given

the power of the Presidency, in spite of Muskie’s strength at the polls

when the affair was set in motion. The rules of the political game were

violated in other respects as well. As a number of commentators have

pointed out, Nixon attempted a small-scale coup. The political center

was subjected to an attack with techniques that are usually reserved for

those who depart from the norms of acceptable political belief. Powerful

groups that normally share in setting public policy were excluded,

irrespective of party, and the counterattack thus crosses party lines.

The Dean-Colson list of enemies, a minor feature of the whole affair, is

a revealing index of the miscalculations of Nixon’s mafia and raises

obvious questions about the general response. The list elicited varied

reactions, ranging from flippancy to indignation. But suppose that there

had been no Thomas Watson or James Reston or McGeorge Bundy on the White

House hate list. Suppose that the list had been limited to political

dissidents, antiwar activists, radicals. Then, it is safe to assume,

there would have been no front-page story in the New York Times and

little attention on the part of responsible political commentators.

Rather the incident, if noted at all, would have been recognized as

merely another step, inelegant perhaps, in the legitimate defense of

order and responsible belief.

The general reaction to the Watergate affair exhibits the same moral

flaw. We read lofty sermons on Nixon’s move to undermine the two-party

system, the foundations of American democracy. But plainly what CREEP

was doing to the Democrats is insignificant in comparison with the

bipartisan attack on the Communist Party in the postwar period or, to

take a less familiar case, the campaign against the Socialist Workers

Party, which in the post-Watergate climate has filed suit to restrain

government agencies from their perpetual harassment, intimidation,

surveillance, and worse. Serious civil rights or antiwar groups have

regularly discovered government provocateurs among their most militant

members. Judicial and other harassment of dissidents and their

organizations has been common practice, whoever happens to be in office.

So deeply engrained are the habits of the state agencies of repression

that even in the glare of Watergate the government could not refrain

from infiltrating an informer into the defense team in the Gainesville

VVAW trial; while the special prosecutor swore under oath that the

informer, since revealed, was not a government agent.[1]

Watergate is, indeed, a deviation from past practice, not so much in

scale or in principle as in the choice of targets. The targets now

include the rich and respectable, spokesmen for official ideology, men

who are expected to share power, to design social policy, and to mold

popular opinion. Such people are not fair game for persecution at the

hands of the state.

A hypocrite might argue that the state attack on political dissidence

has often been within the bounds of the law — at least as the courts

have interpreted the Constitution — whereas Watergate and the other

White House horrors were plainly illegal. But surely it is clear that

those who have the power to impose their interpretation of legitimacy

will so construct and construe the legal system as to permit them to

root out their enemies. In periods when political indoctrination is

ineffective and dissent and unrest are widespread, juries may refuse to

convict. In fact, in case after case they have done so, inspiring

tributes to our political system on the part of commentators who

overlook a crucial point. Judicial persecution serves quite well to

immobilize people who are a nuisance to the state, and to destroy

organizations with limited resources or to condemn them to

ineffectiveness. The hours and dollars devoted to legal defense are not

spent in education, organization, and positive action. The government

rarely loses a political trial, whatever the verdict of the courts, as

specialists in thought control are no doubt well aware.

In the President’s “longer perspective,” stated in his April 16 speech,

we are to recall the “rising spiral of violence and fear, of riots and

arson and bombing, all in the name of peace and justice.” He reminds us

that “free speech was brutally suppressed as hecklers shouted down or

even physically assaulted those with whom they disagreed.” True enough.

In 1965 and 1966, peaceful public meetings protesting the war were

broken up and demonstrators physically assaulted (for example, in

Boston, later the center of antiwar activity). Liberal senators and the

mass media, meanwhile, denounced the demonstrators for daring to

question the legitimacy of the American war in Indochina. Peace movement

and radical political centers were bombed and burned with no audible

protest on the part of those who were later to bewail the decline of

civility and the “totalitarianism of the left” — those “serious people”

(in Nixon’s phrase) who “raised serious questions about whether we could

survive as a free democracy.” Surely nothing was heard from Richard

Nixon, who was then warning that freedom of speech would be destroyed

for all time if the United States were not to prevail in Vietnam —

though when awards are given out for hypocrisy in this regard, Nixon

will not even be a contender.

There is nothing new in any of this. Recall the reaction of defenders of

free speech when McCarthy attacked the New York Times and, by contrast,

the National Guardian.[2] Recall the pleas that McCarthy was impeding

the legitimate struggle against domestic subversion and Russian

aggression, or the reaction to the judicial murder of the Rosenbergs. In

fact, the mistake of the Watergate conspirators is that they failed to

heed the lesson of the McCarthy hearings twenty years ago. It is one

thing to attack the left, or the remnants of the Communist Party, or a

collapsing liberal opposition that had capitulated in advance by

accepting — in fact, creating — the instruments of postwar repression,

or those in the bureaucracy who might impede the evolving state policy

of counterrevolutionary intervention. It is something else again to turn

the same weapons against the US Army. Having missed this subtle

distinction, McCarthy was quickly destroyed. Nixon’s cohorts, as recent

events have amply demonstrated, committed a similar error of judgment.

The immediate consequence of this deviation is that Nixon’s wings have

been clipped, and power is being more broadly shared among traditional

ruling groups. Congress has imposed constraints on executive actions,

and in the changed political climate, the courts have refused to permit

executive encroachment on the legislative function through impoundment.

Most important of all, Nixon and Kissinger were unable to kill as many

Cambodians as they would have liked, and were thus denied such limited

successes in Cambodia as they achieved in South Vietnam, where all

authentic popular forces were severely weakened by the murderous assault

on the civilian society. Although the failure of the terror bombing of

Christmas, 1972, may have compelled Nixon and Kissinger to accept the

DRV-PRG offer of a negotiated settlement (formally at least),[3] they

nevertheless continued to support the openly announced efforts of the

Thieu regime to undermine the Paris Agreements of January. At the same

time, they simply shifted the bombing to Cambodia in the hope of

decimating the indigenous guerrilla movement. As recently as April,

Senate doves feared that the “political mood is not right” for a

challenge to Nixon’s war policy, though they recognized that compliance

might be the “final act of surrender” to presidential power.[4] But as

Nixon’s domestic position eroded, it became possible to enact the

legislation urged by opponents of the American war and by politically

more significant groups who have come to realize, since the Têt

offensive of 1968, that the war was a dubious bargain for American

capitalism.

To John Connally, it is “an impressive fact, and a depressing fact, that

the persistent underlying balance-of-payments deficit which causes such

concern, is more than covered, year in and year out, by our net military

expenditures abroad, over and above amounts received from foreign

military purchases in the United States.”[5] Rational imperialists who

find this fact impressive were, no doubt, less than impressed by the

fact that Nixon and Kissinger were able to “wind down the war” over a

period equal to that of American participation in World War II, and were

still intent on pouring resources into an attempt to crush revolutionary

nationalism in Indochina. Though the attempt will surely continue,[6]

the scale — temporarily at least — will be reduced. This is surely the

most significant outcome of Watergate.

Nixon’s personal authority has suffered from Watergate, and power will

return to men who better understand the nature of American politics. But

it is likely that the major long-term consequence of the present

confrontation between Congress and the President will be to establish

executive power still more firmly. Nixon’s legal strategy is probably a

winning one, if not for him (for he has violated the rules), then for

the position that the Presidency is beyond the reach of the law.

Kleindienst, Ehrlichman, and Nixon’s lawyers have laid the issue out

squarely. In spite of their occasional disclaimers, the import of their

position is that the President is subject to no legal constraints. The

executive alone determines when and whom to prosecute, and is thus

immune. When issues of national security are invoked, all bars are down.

It takes little imagination for presidential aides to conjure up a

possible foreign intelligence or national security issue to justify

whatever acts they choose to initiate. And they do this with impunity.

The low point of the Ervin committee hearings was the failure to press

Ehrlichman on the alleged “national security issue” in the release of

the Pentagon Papers, or his implication that Ellsberg was suspected of

providing these documents to the Russian embassy. Mary McGrory has

suggested plausibly that the factor that led the White House to such

excesses in the Ellsberg affair was the fear that it might inspire

further exposures, in particular of the secret military attack on

Cambodia.

More generally, the President’s position is that if there is some

objection to what he does, he can be impeached. But reverence for the

Presidency is far too potent an opiate for the masses to be diminished

by a credible threat of impeachment. Such an effective device for

stifling dissent, class consciousness, or even critical thought will not

be lightly abandoned. Furthermore, Congress has neither the will nor the

capacity to manage the domestic economy or the global system. These

related enterprises take on new scope with the increasing

internationalization of production and economic affairs and with the

Nixon-Kissinger diplomacy, which accepts the USSR as a junior partner in

managing what Kissinger likes to call “the over-all framework of

order,”[7] much as Stalin seems to have intended in the early postwar

years. It is fitting, in more ways than one, that Nixon’s most loyal

constituency should prove to be the POWs and the Politburo.

If the choice is between impeachment and the principle that the

President has absolute power (subject only to the need to invoke

national security), then the latter principle will prevail. Thus the

precedent will probably be established, more firmly and clearly than

heretofore, that the President is above the law, a natural corollary to

the doctrine[8] that no law prevents a superpower from enforcing

ideological conformity within its domains.

The Watergate affair and the sordid story that has unfolded since are

not without significance. They indicate, once again, how frail are the

barriers to some form of fascism in a state capitalist system in crisis.

There is little prospect for a meaningful reaction to the Watergate

disclosures, given the narrow conservatism of American political

ideology and the absence of any mass political parties or organized

social forces that offer an alternative to the centralization of

economic and political power in the major corporations, the law firms

that cater to their interests, and the technical intelligentsia who do

their bidding, both in the private sector and in state institutions.

With no real alternative in view, opposition is immobilized and there is

a natural fear, even among the liberal opposition, that the power of the

Presidency will be eroded and the ship of state will drift aimlessly.

The likely result will therefore be a continuation of the process of

centralization of power in the executive, which will continue to be

staffed by representatives of those who rule the economy and which will

be responsive to their conception of domestic and global order.

It is true, as critics allege, that Nixon’s tactics threatened to

subvert the two-party system. The illusion that the people rule rests on

the regular opportunity to choose between two political organizations

dominated by similar interests and restricted to the narrow range of

doctrine that receives expression in the corporate media and, with rare

exceptions, the educational institutions of American society. Nixon’s

tactics thus tend to undermine the conventional basis for stability and

obedience, while falling far short of supplying some form of

totalitarian doctrine as an ideological alternative.

But the conditions that permitted the rise of McCarthy and Nixon endure.

Fortunately for us and for the world, McCarthy was a mere thug and

Nixon’s mafia overstepped the bounds of acceptable trickery and deceit

with such obtuseness and blundering vulgarity that they were called to

account by powerful forces that had not been demolished or absorbed. But

sooner or later, under the threat of political or economic crisis, some

comparable figure may succeed in creating a mass political base,

bringing together socioeconomic forces with the power and the finesse to

carry out plans such as those that were conceived in the Oval Office.

Only perhaps he will choose his domestic enemies more judiciously and

prepare the ground more thoroughly.

Nixon’s front men now plead that in 1969–1970 the country was on the

verge of insurrection and that it was therefore necessary to stretch the

constitutional limits. The turmoil of those years was largely a reaction

to the American invasion of Indochina. The conditions, domestic and

international, that have led successive administrations to guide “Third

World development” in the particular channels that suit the needs of

industrial capitalism have not changed. There is every reason to suppose

that similar circumstances will impel their successors to implement

similar policies. Furthermore, the basic premises of the war policy in

Indochina have not been seriously challenged, though its failures led to

retrenchment. These premises are shared by most of the enemies on the

Dean-Colson list and by others within the consensus of respectable

opinion.

The reaction to recent disclosures illustrates the dangers well enough.

While public attention was captivated by Watergate, Ambassador Godley

testified before Congress that between 15,000 and 20,000 Thai

mercenaries had been employed by the United States in Laos, in direct

and explicit violation of congressional legislation.[9] This

confirmation of Pathet Lao charges, which had been largely ignored or

ridiculed in the West, evoked little editorial comment or public

indignation, though it is a more serious matter than anything revealed

in the Ervin committee hearings.

The revelation of secret bombings in Cambodia and northern Laos from the

earliest days of the Nixon Administration is by far the most important

disclosure of the past several months.[10] It would be difficult to

imagine more persuasive ground for impeachment were this a feasible

political prospect. But in this case, too, the reaction is largely

misplaced. It seems that congressional leaders and commentators in the

press are disturbed more by the cover-up and the deceit than by the

events themselves. Congress was deprived of its right to ratify — no one

who has studied the Symington committee hearings of the fall of 1969 can

have much doubt that Congress would have ratified the bombings and

incursions had the opportunity been given.

As for the press, it showed as much interest in the bombings at the time

as it now devotes to the evidence that Thai mercenaries in Laos are

being shipped to Cambodia and that casualties of fighting in Cambodia

have already arrived in Bangkok hospitals.[11] The press is much too

concerned with past deception to investigate these critical ongoing

events, which may well have long-term implications for Southeast

Asia.[12] Similarly, when Jacques Decornoy reported in Le Monde on the

intense bombing of towns and villages in northern Laos in the spring of

1968, the American press not only failed to investigate, but even failed

to cite his eyewitness reports. A Cambodian government White Book of

January, 1970, giving details of American and ARVN attacks, evoked no

greater interest or concern. Nor did the reports of large-scale

defoliation of Cambodian rubber plantations in early 1969 or the

occasional incidents of “bombing errors” that were conceded by the

American government since 1966 when American observers happened to be

present.[13] The complaints over government deception ring hollow,

whether in the halls of Congress or on the editorial pages.

Still more cynical is the current enthusiasm over the health of the

American political system, as shown by the curbing of Nixon and his

subordinates, or by the civilized compromise that permitted Nixon and

Kissinger to kill Cambodians and destroy their land only until August

15, truly a model of how a democracy should function, with no disorder

or ugly disruption.

Liberal political commentators sigh with relief that Kissinger has

barely been tainted — a bit of questionable wire-tapping, but no close

involvement in the Watergate shenanigans. Yet by any objective

standards, the man is one of the great mass murderers of the modern

period. He presided over the expansion of the war to Cambodia, with

consequences that are now well known, and the vicious escalation of the

bombing of rural Laos, not to speak of the atrocities committed in

Vietnam, as he sought to achieve a victory of some sort for imperial

power in Indochina. But he wasn’t implicated in the burglary at the

Watergate or in the undermining of Muskie, so his hands are clean.

If we try to keep a sense of balance, the exposures of the past several

months are analogous to the discovery that the directors of Murder Inc.

were also cheating on their income tax. Reprehensible, to be sure, but

hardly the main point.

[1] John Kifner, ” ‘Best Friend’ of Gainesville 8 Defendant Testifies to

Being FBI Informer,” New York Times, August 18, 1973.

[2] Those whose memories are short might turn to James Aronson’s review

of the record in The Press and the Cold War (Bobbs-Merrill, 1970).

[3] To be sure, this is not the official version. With the complicity of

television and the press, the government has succeeded once again in

imposing on events an interpretation that is wholly at variance with the

facts. For some details on government and press deception with regard to

the Paris Agreements and the events that led to them, see my “Indochina

and the Fourth Estate,” Social Policy, September, 1973.

[4] See John W. Finney, New York Times, April 12, 1973.

[5] May 28, 1971, Department of the Treasury News, cited by David P.

Calleo and Benjamin M. Rowland in America and the World Political

Economy (Indiana University Press, 1973), p. 99. The editors of the

Monthly Review have been particularly effective in explaining the

contribution of imperial policy to the economic crisis. One might also

recall Seymour Melman’s efforts to arouse awareness of the debilitating

effects of the policies of the militarized state capitalist

institutions, long before the topic became fashionable.

[6] See Jack Foisie, “US still financing Thai forays into Cambodia,” Los

Angeles Times-Boston Globe, August 19, 1973. He reports from Bangkok

that “Cambodia still is a clandestine target for US financed and

directed activities from bases inside Thailand,” noting that the Thai

retain their “long-range hope — to regain Battambang Province.” The

attempted August 19 coup in Laos was also launched from Thailand,

suggesting that the Thai may still intend to incorporate parts of Laos

in their mini-empire, in accordance with policies outlined by such doves

as George Ball in 1965. Cf. Pentagon Papers, Senator Gravel edition

(Beacon Press, 1971), Vol. IV, p. 618.

[7] American Foreign Policy (Norton, 1969), p. 97. This is properly the

concern of the United States, in his view, rather than “the management

of every regional enterprise,” to be left to subordinates.

[8] Generally called the “Brezhnev Doctrine,” though it was explicit in

virtually the same terms in the earlier doctrines of Eisenhower,

Khrushchev, Kennedy, and Johnson, as Thomas M. Franck and Edward

Weisband have shown in their important study Word Politics: Verbal

Strategy Among the Superpowers (Oxford, 1971).

[9] For some congressional reactions to earlier exposures, see my For

Reasons of State (Pantheon, 1973), p. 13f.

[10] Much was known before, at least to those who wished to know. See my

For Reasons of State, chapter two, and references cited there. For some

recent revelations, see Tad Szulc, “Mum’s the War,” New Republic, August

18–25, 1973; Walter V. Robinson, “Cambodian Raids — the Real Story,”

Boston Globe, August 12, 1973.

[11] See Marcel Barang, “Le Laos, ou le mirage de la neutralité,” Le

Monde diplomatique, June, 1973.

[12] See note 6 for a rare exception.

[13] As early as January, 1962, Roger Hilsman observed the bombing of a

Cambodian village by American planes, who then attacked the Vietnamese

village that was the intended target. Cf. To Move a Nation (Delta,

1967). For a partial record, see my At War With Asia (Pantheon, 1970),

chapter three.