It was fifty years ago today that security guard Frank Wills noticed something funny at the Watergate hotel - a door had been taped open. He removed the tape and when he came back later and the tape had been replaced he called the cops.
I am celebrating by watching "The Post" which is about the fight to publish The Pentagon Papers, followed by "All the President's Men" which I must have seen at least ten times by now and is of course about Watergate, which happened shortly after the events of "The Post."
Woodward and Bernstein, the reporters most well-known for their articles on the Watergate investigation, recently published a piece in The Washington Post, comparing Nixon to Trump - both evil men. From the piece, I learned something new about Watergate and I thought I'd heard it all:
In one of the strongest and most effective espionage efforts, Elmer Wyatt, a Nixon campaign operative, was planted in Muskie’s campaign, where he became the senator’s chauffeur. Wyatt was paid $1,000 a month to deliver copies of sensitive documents he transported between Muskie’s Senate office and his presidential campaign headquarters. It was a spectacular yield. The volume was so great that Wyatt, code-named “Ruby I,” rented an apartment midway between the two offices, equipped with a photocopying machine.
As evil as Nixon was, Woodstein clearly believe Trump is even worse:
As reporters, we had studied Nixon and written about him for nearly half a century, during which we believed with great conviction that never again would America have a president who would trample the national interest and undermine democracy through the audacious pursuit of personal and political self-interest.
And then along came Trump.