WATERGATE: IN THE CORPORATE STYLE
Bensman, Joseph
When Watergate was still a "caper," I saw it as a faded replay of Mission Impossible. The burglars then seemed to have filched an inferior scenario from a famous TV series. But as one expose...
...You start rumors that a competitive brand, say a new cigarette, is barred from the better hospitals because it uniquely causes cancer...
...Maurice Stans handled, as others laundered, part of this cash, and Stans had not only been a U.S...
...The counsel, or consigliere, is there to advise what undertakings are legal, shady, extralegal and illegal...
...While Watergate may reveal the accelerated transposition of corporate ethics to politics, business has not become more virtuous because government has become more corrupt...
...Was it unrecorded cash...
...Sometimes a manufacturer messes up the competitor's test market by introducing a brand of his own...
...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS Here is their explanation: Watergate stands for the everyday corporate approach...
...They gather intelligence by hiring wellinformed personnel away from the producer or his agency...
...Therefore chief executives never really "know" about the violation of antitrust laws, misrepresentation, fraud, misappropriation...
...It was negative, even scornful...
...The Segretti assignment, the theft of Muskie letterheads, and the distribution of damaging statements were all designed to knock out a strong competitor and guarantee a weak one...
...The Democratic primaries were such a market...
...And since they apparently had little fear of prosecution, they chose to be righteous, reckless, mindless, and arrogant...
...If quiz shows are rigged, no one is more surprised or offended than the president of a network who has ordered high ratings—with no necessary recourse to outright felony...
...This requires continuous surveillance, regulation, exposure, and prosecution...
...I was on the right track, but stopped too soon...
...The head of a large firm strives to achieve corporate objectives...
...He knew the limits of what he could sell and what he could get away with...
...My Madison Avenue friends, however, spoke wistfully of the position of the White House staff and the CRP prior to the Watergate scandal...
...Modern corporate management combines unlimited loyalty and personal honesty with outsized corporate and political crime...
...Nor is it unusual for an agency to tip off one client by violating the confidence of another...
...The traditional politician, especially the machine politician, knew what he was selling when he sold the public trust...
...The techniques are ingenious...
...When Watergate was still a "caper," I saw it as a faded replay of Mission Impossible...
...He expects obedience, loyalty, and success on the part of his staff—and insularity from its operational details...
...What, they wondered, had academic life done to me that I should so grossly mistake a part for the whole...
...Having satisfied myself that I essentially understood the Watergate affair, I arranged to meet with several people I had known while working in advertising...
...They lay hands on sales figures, technical developments, and marketing or promotion plans to which only insiders are lawfully privy...
...His fees depend largely on how much success he has at this...
...But most of them, in the course of market research, do illegally acquire vast amounts of information...
...Just now, attention has shifted away from the $6 million or more of illegal contributions by American businessmen to the CRP...
...Every sizable corporation has such monies on hand...
...Nor, I was reminded, should we overlook a certain parallelism between the corporate counsel and the President's counsel...
...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS...
...They knew everything about the snake oil of our pecuniary civilization, but to them it was the latter far more than the former that mattered...
...The burglars then seemed to have filched an inferior scenario from a famous TV series...
...Above all, he knew what he was selling...
...Just do them...
...The usual checks "would be," in their language, "inoperative...
...One so resembles the other in color, taste, name, or general appearance, that brand confusion is bound to ensue...
...Further similarities obtain between our President in the capital and presidents in the executive suites...
...secretary of commerce but something functionally more important, a CPA...
...If the investigative focus should shift back in that direction (and if all the records have not been destroyed) then the full involvement of American corporate interests in these crimes might unfold...
...The flow and control of undisclosed cash, money for which records may not be kept, constitute a standing challenge to big business accountants, treasurers, or other financial officers, not least those employed by the Mafia...
...Indeed, the emphasis on personal honesty within a context of corporate crime produces a management 280 group that is religious, righteous, upright, honorable, morally indignant, and sanctimoniously crooked...
...So long as the new brand's identity is obscured, the old brand need not even increase its sales...
...The formula is as follows: you maintain an old established brand—even one (like Richard Nixon) that languished for a while and got repackaged—mainly by damaging the competitor's test market...
...Not that most ad agencies hire clumsy burglars or involve the CIA in their business...
...The presence of ex-ad men like H. R. Haldeman, Dwight Chapin, Jeb Stuart Magruder, Ron Ziegler, and Kenneth Cole is a fact of some importance...
...They personify the continuous migration of Mad Avenue mentality and morality into government...
...Leaks and plumbers are no novelty in the ad world...
...Ignorance is innocence, and the boss must be kept in a state of innocence...
...This is standard operating procedure in Ad Alley...
...I have never stolen any money...
...Members of competitive agencies routinely exchange confidential information which they pass on to their superiors without discussing the criminal quid pro quo everyone takes for granted...
...It can learn its limits only by overstepping them...
...His job is mainly to achieve maximum undetectability, and when fatal risk-taking proceeds with or without his advice, he covers it up...
...And so on...
...You keep the new brand from achieving penetration by securing as much TV time and newspaper and magazine space as you can get...
...This approach includes advertising and marketing...
...In the case of the CRP and Watergate crimes, the supervisors and heads of federal agencies themselves planned, initiated, managed, and attempted to cover-up "an organized crime wave...
...Who paid how much...
...If so, will anyone be indicted for tax evasion...
...And what was promised and delivered...
...Watergate meant much more than the mere marketing of a President...
...It looked to me like ineptly applied advertising strategy, and about that I knew only too much...
...If expert, he is able to estimate the probabilities of detection and prosecution...
...They asked me to consider the phenomenon of unrecorded cash—a conservative estimate for the funds of CRP (the Committee to Re-elect the President) is upward of $6 million...
...Thus John Mitchell can claim: "I never did anything mentally or morally wrong...
...But as one expose after another tumbled off the presses, I concluded that Watergate was not a TV production but a Mad Avenue operation...
...He sold it in small lots for large sums...
...The staff can retain or enhance its standing only if underlings produce results...
...Exactly where did the cash come from...
...What was asked in return for the contributions...
...If Watergate stems from the migration of corporate managerial attitudes into politics, then the American public has something to worry about...
...Don't tell me how you do things...
...When criminal means are used, the staff has to protect the president from any suggestion of complicity...
...I presented my theory and awaited their verdict...
...A soft drink is rumored by its promoters to be an aphrodisiac and by its competitors to induce impotence...
...Most businessmen, in contemplating corporate crime, are forced to weigh the possibility that state and federal agencies might enforce the law: they are compelled to be moderately discreet...
...Threats are thus often squelched even before they can reach public awareness...
Vol. 20 • July 1973 • No. 3
