WASHINGTON REPORT: Watergate and Related Matters
Sisyphus
WASHINGTON REPORT WATERGATE AMD RELATED MATTERS Some, but not all, of the President's Men tried to put him back together again. A few did it because they believed for a long time that he was...
...However, all the efforts just didn't work...
...It is this Subcommittee, under Senator Church, which disclosed Lockheed Aircraft's intensive and extensive activities...
...In this connection, the Senate Banking Committee has disclosed that 30 or more major companies have recently said they have made political payments to help in their business overseas...
...Secretary Simon, who is properly business-like when it comes to New York," Proxmire said, "turns indulgent when the beneficiary is Lockheed...
...WASHINGTON REPORT WATERGATE AMD RELATED MATTERS Some, but not all, of the President's Men tried to put him back together again...
...The two reporters know this, as do many others around this Town...
...The matter of devising more effective methods for providing supervision over the numerous intelligence-gathering agencies of the executive branch of the federal government is not going well in the spring of this year...
...It is, legally, behind us...
...The most publicized book, of course, was written by Bob and Carl, the yearling Washington Post reporters who contributed to the downfalll of Richard...
...He was persuaded not to go on trial before the Senate on a charge of wrong-doing agreed upon by the House Judiciary Committee...
...At most, a few of the books made a good effort at setting down what happened...
...The bill, explained Senator Humphrey, was designed to give the Congress, as well as the executive branch, a role in decisions about arms sales...
...And so the matter is not one of ending a Watergate...
...If a Watergate in book or movie form helps us all to understand how much more needs to be done, then more power to the publishers and producers...
...A few did it because they believed for a long time that he was maligned...
...Setting Watergate aside, there are numerous problems that demand more attention than they're receiving...
...The hazard is that we leave the movie house, or put the finished book down, and chortle that everything is fine and we can go back to doing whatever we've been doing, in peace...
...It is quite possible that (here will be no basic change made, as is necessary, in the set-up now of which agencies report to which committees...
...The President, himself, occasionally tried to help himself in a vague way...
...Senator Proxmire, chairman of the committee, has accused the Treasury Secretary, William Simon, with assisting Lockheed in terms of giving the company a break on the bribe question so as not to interfere with Lockheed's being able to repay its indebtedness under a federal loan guarantee...
...The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, however, did beat the "arms industry" when the latter gathered to defeat a revised arms-sales and military-policies bill (S-2662...
...In the Senate, a resolution to establish a Senate Intelligence Committee is being mauled by other committees that don't want to lose their jurisdictions...
...It is a daily matter of putting an end to a variety of actions by foreign-sales manufacturers, sometimes in cooperation with highly placed individuals and/or agencies in the executive branch...
...And so, Richard resigned as President two years ago this August...
...The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is setting out to determine how a weekly newspaper obtained a copy of sections of a final report by the House Select Intelligence Committee...
...One contract would be worth more than $1 billion to Lockheed...
...Armed Services, Foreign Relations and Judiciary Committees are among the standing committees which prefer no new committee be established to oversee all intelligence-gathering agencies...
...And the movie was taken from The Book they had written...
...The arms men, however, objected to a variety of provisions disclosure of fees paid to agents who negotiate military contracts and prohibiting arms sales to countries that practice racial or religious discrimination...
...But to a degree larger than most of us are willing to concede...
...The main effort should be to have the report itself widely distributed and an effort made to prevent the disorders caused by the CIA and other agencies involved improperly in domestic affairs yours and mine...
...In so doing, they are saying that the federal government is still one that in a large degree depends on the well-being of men and not laws...
...Watergate is one matter...
...A movie and dozens of books have tried to tell the story like it was...
...Not to the degree, of course, found in such countries as the Soviet Union and China and Uganda...
...Far less attention is given the final report itself...
...Proxmire said he thought it "galling" when the Lockheed loan is extended indefinitely because an amount of money, equaling more than 10 percent of the loan, has been paid in bribes, approximately $24-million...
...there were those, of course, who helped in order to save their skins...
...SISYPHUS...
...Somewhere, perhaps in a recent issue of tins magazine, there's a criticism that the movie and the book, in a way, too tells more about the two reporters and the technique of their working than it does and can tell about the scandal of Watergate...
...This included paying funds to "influential persons" in Italy, the Netherlands, Japan and West Germany...
...Of course, the main problem is that the Watergate scandal is simply an illustration of what's wrong with the way things are going here in Washington...
...The Multinational Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee is trying to explore further the abuses by domestic corporations in their dealings with foreign governments...
...But the larger problem is yet unsolved, although Democratic and Republican party leaders, including most candidates, are willing to let the matter lie...
Vol. 103 • May 1976 • No. 10
