Despite the efforts of my grandfather and his researchers, and those of the media and Watergate committees, the basic questions about the scandal remain unanswered. It is unclear what Nixon’s advanced knowledge of entry was, if any. Although the president is charged with approving silent payments of money to defendants, it is unknown whether he personally played a role in raising funds. As a result, the extent to which HR Haldeman, White House Chief of Staff and Attorney General John Mitchell conducted illegal day-to-day activities has not come to light.
These questions, of course, are analogous to those currently being faced by the January 6 committee.
Richard Ben-Veniste, one of my grandfather’s top MPs who was at the meeting, said the January 6 committee asked him for advice. “Gener. 6 was the massacre on Saturday night with steroids, “he said. “Nixon, in spite of all his criminality and authoritarian sensibilities, had a sense of shame.”
The continuum that stretches from Watergate to the present presents some irony. During and after the Nixon scandals, congressional controls on executive power were enacted, including the Powers of War Act of 1973 and amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act. Those legislative initiatives sparked accusations of excess and a backlash by some Republicans who wanted to restore power to the executive branch.
One of them, a former Nixon White House aide named Dick Cheney, was elected to Congress four years after Nixon’s resignation. Mr. Cheney, of course, was vice president during the George W. Bush administration, and his daughter, Liz Cheney, is the January 6 committee vice chair who has harshly criticized Mr. Trump as an abuser of the executive branch.
An additional irony behind Nixon’s secret presidency was the push for greater transparency in government: more sunlight, fewer smoky rooms. But this effort has not necessarily translated into more efficient governance. To take a recent example, House Conservatives led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia’s first-year far-right born three months before Nixon’s resignation, have used the virtue of legislative transparency as argument to curb the House Democrats ’agenda by insisting on roll-call votes for the entire legislative calendar.
At the meeting, Rep. Deborah Ross, a Democrat from North Carolina, was mingling with guests as she recalled listening to Watergate Senate hearings at age 10 as she drove across the country in her family’s family van. Pointing out the coincidence of Watergate’s anniversary in the middle of the January 6 committee hearings, Ms. Ross said that “what the two scandals had in common was that we’re talking about two men who wanted to stay in power. No matter what. The irony is that Nixon would have won in 1972 anyway, if it hadn’t been so paranoid about Democrats. “