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Watergate’s Forgotten Lessons "The United States was resolved to intervene on behalf of its interests, but it was also resolved to intervene in such a way as not to violate the principle of nonintervention," wrote Prof. Han J. Morgenthau, examining the lessons of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion that was intended to overthrow Fidel Castro. "In order to minimize the loss of prestige, the United States jeopardized the success of the intervention…and we lost much prestige as a great nation able to use its power successfully on behalf of its interests…It sought the best of both worlds and got the worst." The Bay of Pigs invasion which occurred April 15-19, 1962 failed because then-President John F. Kennedy lost his nerve and denied the air cover needed to protect the invading forces of CIA-trained Cuban freedom fighters. Earlier, the original point of invasion had been moved to the Bay of Pigs, sixty miles away from Havana, giving Castro’s forces tactical advantage. Mostly, though, the intelligence that underwrote the fiasco was just wrong. For generations raised on Hollywood films and television programs in which American spies and military heroes triumph over evil, the distance between that popular fiction and the reality of how America has applied its power militarily and through the tradecraft of spying has been perceived by Americans as a string of defeats. We shall never know how many plots against our nation have been thwarted because it is the nature of espionage that they are rarely, if ever, revealed. Sometimes, though, it seems as if no lessons were ever learned or ever applied from the Bay of Pigs, the Watergate break-in, and the subsequent long nightmare of the Vietnam War. The generals we trained for military leadership often proved too timid to resist the hubris of political leaders and those that did sometimes found their careers ended abruptly. This was not lost on those who replaced them. What had begun as the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, a daring and innovative group composed mainly of the sons of America’s elite, graduates of Yale and Princeton, born to patriotism as they were born to privilege, would at war’s end be disbanded and then reincarnated as the Central Intelligence Agency. In time, the CIA, despite its many successes fighting the spread of Soviet Communism, would reportedly evolve into just another politicized bureaucracy. The more that ethos took over, the less effective the Agency, often called "The Company", became. By the time George W. Bush was in the Oval Office (his father had briefly served as the Agency’s Director), the CIA was not led by someone with field experience in intelligence, but rather a seasoned political operator, George Tenet, who now denies having told the President that the invasion, removal of Saddam Hussein, and the democratization of Iraq would be "a slam dunk." In his new book, he concedes the CIA analysis was wrong. "The echoes of the Bay of Pigs have resonated in our international policy ever since," writes E. Howard Hunt, a former member of the OSS who served over twenty years as a CIA operative. He was a legend within the Agency by the time he retired and he would be involved in the Watergate scandal to the extent that his name would forever be linked to it. He had been drawn into the totally paranoid world of Richard Nixon’s White House and his judgment deserted him.
It besmirched the Oval Office in ways that even the sexual dalliances and mass pardons by Bill Clinton could not. A generation or more of Americans learned to no longer trust the judgment and integrity of our presidents in ways that linger to this day. As Hunt writes, "Watergate set off a blood feud between Democrats and Republicans that may continue for generations," adding, "Americans now suffer from political fatigue, lacking faith in the leadership of both parties." "And we never seem to learn," writes Hunt. "Lessons taken from the Bay of Pigs should have kept us out of Vietnam, but they didn’t. The ‘quagmire’ of Vietnam should have kept us from invading Iraq, but it didn’t. Watergate should have made each successive administration more transparent and mindful of the law, but it didn’t. Instead, almost every administration has had some scandal important enough to hang a ‘gate’ on, such as Iran-Contragate under Ronald Reagan and Monica-gate under Bill Clinton." As the American philosopher George Santayana warned, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The hubris of Richard Nixon found renewed life in George W. Bush. The sexual appetites and lack of judgment of John F. Kennedy found renewed life in Bill Clinton. No one has quite matched the flat-out stupidity of Jimmy Carter whose failure to support an Iranian ally in 1979 set in motion the Islamic Revolution that threatens the Middle East and the world today, but few recall that it was the revulsion against the excesses of Watergate that had propelled the little-known former Governor of Georgia into the Oval Office. If our leaders cannot learn these lessons, where are we headed? As we remind you every week, the work of the Center is entirely dependent on your donation. The Center does not engage in the kind of fund raising other organizations do. We do not keep your name or email address on a mailing list. We do ask and we do need your financial support. Take a moment to help. Thank you. Muddling Around in the Middle East "It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game." This is from a secret report to a president that has since been declassified. It wasn’t written for George W. Bush. The report was delivered in September 1954 to then-President Dwight Eisenhower who had requested a World War II hero, General James Doolittle, to examine how the Central Intelligence Agency’s covert operations could be made more effective. Whatever success the United States had against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and whatever success it has had in either capturing or killing al Qaeda operatives in Iraq or elsewhere has been almost entirely dependent on the gathering of intelligence. It was intelligence that led American forces to where Saddam’s sons were hiding, then to where he was hiding, and then to where Abu Musab Zarqawi, al Qaeda’s "emir" in Iraq was killed. It has been the cooperation of Arabs that has been undermining whatever success al Qaeda or the Palestinian groups such as Hezbollah or Hamas have striven to achieve. They don’t want them in charge anymore than we do. It is a great irony that Saudi Arabia, the source of vast funding for the spread of the most extreme version of Islam, Wahhabism, is now locked in a battle with the very people they influenced. The recent arrest of a terrorist cell in their own nation is testimony to the Frankenstein creature they have created. In the Middle East, both the CIA and Israel’s Mossad are widely regarded as virtually omnipotent. Indeed, Arabs have so little faith in themselves that few initially believed that nineteen Arabs had destroyed the Twin Towers. Instead, they attributed it to the CIA or the Mossad as an excuse to justify the invasion of the Middle East. Arabs, if possible, are more addicted to conspiracy theories than we are. It restricts their ability to rationally solve problems. In the course of events reaching back to the Iranian seizure of U.S. hostages in 1979, Americans have come to view the people of the Middle East as irrational, devoted only to terrorism and the expansion of Islam to dominate the world. While it is true that Islam’s theology includes the belief that it must supercede all other religions, the real roots of the troubles in the Middle East rest in the many Islamist movements that have existed since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War One. The Islamists want to replace secular or monarchical governments. The Middle East had been in a state of turmoil throughout most of the last century, but American eyes were focused on the totalitarian threats from Europe and Japan. This was followed by the long Cold War with the Soviet Union, and concerns about the Communist takeover of China. The only thing we wanted in the Middle East was sufficient stability to insure the flow of oil. The only other major concern involved Israel, established in 1948. Attacked repeatedly by its Arab neighbors, America has been its most faithful supporter in part from the memories of the Nazi Holocaust and in part because Americans have been sending missionaries to the Middle East since the end of the Civil War. The British and French also had extensive colonial interests there after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The West has intruded in other ways that are in serious conflict with Muslim culture and beliefs. Our films, our television, our economic superiority, and our view of the way nations should govern themselves has put a serious strain on the individual Arab whose entire life is encompassed by Islam, a religion that requires communal prayer from dawn to dust every day and one which plays a role in daily life that has no comparison in Western nations. Jihadists, often drawn from the educated classes, see Islam as a perfect system for both government and one’s personal life. Islam became the core of the many efforts to replace secular and monarchal governments that oppressed freedom and retarded economic opportunity for most Arabs, no matter where they lived. That Western nations gave tacit support to the leaders of their nations was sufficient cause to join in a holy war against them. The tipping point came when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. The war that followed drew jihadists from Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood had been established decades earlier and from Saudi Arabia that gave substantial financial support to the effort, but then barred many of the participants from returning because they posed a danger to the Royal Family. The support given by America’s CIA tipped the scales against the Russians, but it was part of the larger Cold War to defeat the Soviet Union. Al Qaeda, the creation of a disaffected Saudi, Osama bin Laden, posed a threat to Middle Eastern governments and thus to the flow of oil from the region, the lifeblood of their regimes. The Saudis exiled him and, in time, he was driven from Sudan and forced to regroup in Afghanistan. It is the general view of Middle East experts that al Qaeda has been severely degraded. Saddam Hussein was also seen as a threat to the stability of the region. His overthrow was welcomed by Iraq’s neighbors and by the Iraqis that had suffered under his regime, but his overthrow came not from Arabs, but from Americans and allied Western nations. Once again the West was shaping the history and direction of the Middle East. What is happening now is the growing realization that life under Sharia as envisioned by Islamists is as bad as the dictators and monarchs it seeks to replace. The Iranian revolution is a demonstration of that. Thus, the Middle East is changing whether it wants to or not. The views of the Arab Street are changing as they experience the terror the jihadists employ. A closed, insular society is yielding to the visible and invisible invasion of new ideas, new perceptions, and the ancient desire of all people to live lives devoted to their families and a better future. It is the real revolution at work in the Middle East and, as with all revolutions, much blood will be spilt as the failed past makes war on the promise of a better future. Every week the Center asks for your donation for one reason only, because we must. It is through the support of visitors to this website that we are able to maintain it and our communications program that includes significant outreach via talk radio. If you can spare even a few dollars, please pause and take a moment to help the Center. If you prefer to send a check, please make it payable to The Caruba Organization, 28 W. Third St., Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ. Thank you!
©
2007 Alan Caruba. |
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I know this because I recently read his excellent autobiography, "American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate & Beyond", written with Greg Aunapu, and with a foreword by his longtime friend and conservative legend, William F. Buckley, Jr. I know it, too, because I can recall living through the aftermath of that abortive break-in of the Democrat Party headquarters on June 17, 1972. It brought down all the key players around Nixon and it forced the only resignation by a President in the long history of this nation.