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**A quick poll.. do we have a poll mechanism ? ** We should.
**Were you aware **that Woodward of Watergate fame was, before his journalistic career an officer in the Navy, one trusted enough to handle nuclear codes?
Were you aware 'Deep Throat' of Watergate was deputy director of FBI, someone who had many reasons to hate Nixon ?
I was aware of the latter, but not of the former. I thought he was just a young journalist, not a young journalist fresh off from fed-land with a top secret clearance.
There's this incredible segment by Tucker Carlson that basically lays out a theory Nixon was not as big a crook as we think, and that he was set up because he tried to keep the government subordinate to its notional head.
To sum it up, the claim is that Watergate was a palace coup, where the secret services overthrew the US government, and have kept it under control ever since through influence operations.
It does look persuasive to me. Too persuasive, if you were pulling a coup of this sort, would you make one of the protagonists a retired naval officer with that kind of background ? Ok, I'm done expressing my confusion and astonishment with what I've learned today. If this isn't content fit for themotte, please let me know!
Supplementary viewing: Interview with 'Kay Griggs' , talking about deep state influence ops and what the military gets up to in secret. Was allegedly filmed during her divorce as a 'dead man' measure. Her husband was involved with it and drank / talked too much to her.
It's eight hours, I mean, anyone wants a rabbit hole to fall down through. I feel like I should watch it at some point, though there's probably an analysis somewhere.
It seems to be fairly tame conspiracy stuff: some classic secret societies, homosexuals, political murder, drug running, saudis, etc. However, the nice lady talking about is, if she says who she is, in a position where she may have actually learned something. If she made it up, it's a great performance, if she hasn't, it's not very surprising.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=4fdS5cdtPOA
This is honestly fascinating. It demands further research.
I see that a certain Geoff Shepard's written a few relevant books.
The best short thing I found: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/06/20/watergate_at_50_revelations_from_newly_declassified_evidence_147766.html
Here's the tape recording of Nixon saying he knows who shot Kennedy: https://rogerstone.substack.com/p/nixon-threatened-to-reveal-the-cias
But so much of it seems like pure paranoia e.g. here Nixon claims everyone was out to get just him: https://nypost.com/2022/06/16/watergate-gave-rise-to-the-culture-war/ besides how aggressively partisan they are, not digging into the actual topic, but primarily using it as a quick thing to besmirch various actors, to influence current perception. Stuff like:
really weakens a piece and narrative.
That's a good post. I ought to get the book.
Yeah.
There's some overlap between security state and the 'radicals (people with odd agendas, mostly connected to university system)', but IMO the post article is too simplistic.
There was some such overlap during WW2, but I imagined they somewhat purged themselves for obvious reasons after the break with USSR?
I'd still like to know whether it was, as someone posted here "common knowledge in OSS that communist OSS operatives would attempt to murder non-communist OSS once deployed to occupied Europe"..
Why would you think that instead of the opposite?
There were communists in the OSS and CIA when the US was supposedly in a conflict with the USSR - IOW, when there would have been pressure on them to hide that fact.
After the collapse of the USSR there's been a CIA director who voted for CPUSA - any pressure to hide radical left wing affiliations is long gone.
Do you have some reading on that?
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