NIXON'S A.G. REDUX
NIXON’S A.G. REDUX WHEN THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked Robert Novak to review my book, The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate (“Big Bad John,” May 26), I doubt they knew that...
...Consider, too, that Novak’s last review of a major biography in these pages, in November 2007, bore the headline: “McCarthy = Bad: But the truth is more complicated...
...Then Novak accuses me of posing, but never addressing, two questions: about the role the CIA played in Watergate, and the connection between Nixon’s foreign policy and ultimate fate...
...This he does for the purpose of harrumphing that the anecdote related therein—attested to by two sources, not just the one Novak mentioned—cannot possibly be true because, he, Novak, never heard about it “in gossipy Washington during the past forty-eight years...
...What to make, for example, of Novak’s argument that Mitchell, with his 1971 prediction that the country was moving to the right, “was feeding Nixon’s worst prejudices...
...or that he used his column, as early as 1970, to clamor for Mitchell’s head...
...ROBERT NOVAK RESPONDS: I am sorry that James Rosen is so upset with a review that praised his “unfailingly honest reportage” in writing “an engrossing account” of the Nixon years...
...Finally, there is Novak’s unpardonable revelation, at the outset of his review, of the ending to my 609-page book, indeed his reproduction of the closing sentences...
...JAMES ROSEN Washington, D.C...
...but to give away the surprise ending of a book to a readership, such as THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s, that might actually be disposed to purchase said book is an act of bad manners, or worse still, bad faith...
...and chronicles in depth (pp...
...The nine-page section deals with the espionage operation against President Nixon performed by Adm...
...In all, “The Prince of Darkness” has not been this instructive on the subject of morality and ethics—his own, chiefl y—since the outing of Valerie Plame...
...THE WEEKLY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor...
...We obviously disagree on the merits of John Mitchell...
...I was disappointed by Rosen’s attack on my “morality” and “ethics” for relating the closing anecdote in his book...
...Was Mitchell’s prophecy not correct...
...Similarly, Novak argues that the much-maligned Mitchell “deserves his reputation,” even while conceding: “Rosen makes a convincing case that perjured testimony . . . formed the basis of the case that made Mitchell ‘the highest-ranking government offi cial ever to serve [prison] time.’” Since Mitchell’s bad reputation derives chiefly, if not wholly, from his criminal convictions in Watergate, how can that reputation be “deserved” when it was created, as Novak acknowledges, by men bearing false witness...
...280-285) how CIA director Richard Helms used at least three different men to neutralize Gordon Liddy and the Plumbers in the Ellsberg and Watergate missions...
...You may fax letters: (202) 293-4901 or email: editor@weeklystandard.com...
...In fact, The Strong Man describes in detail (pp...
...Thomas Moorer, and never connects it with Watergate, much less retribution for Nixon’s Soviet and China policies...
...It is an exceptional brand of solipsism when someone asserts that an event could not have happened because he, personally, in his travels through “gossipy Washington,” didn’t witness it...
...He cites two sections in the 609-page book (one of six pages and the other of nine pages...
...Unlike a suspense novel, a biography never contains a surprise ending that the reviewer is constrained from revealing...
...168-176) the internal espionage committed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the relationship between that episode and one of its key players, Alexander Haig, to Watergate...
...I feel I must respond to Rosen’s allegation that I “missed” passages in the book that addressed the questions raised in its prologue: whether “the CIA and the intelligence community” played a “role” in Watergate and whether “Nixon and his men” paid a price for d?tente with the Soviet Union and rapprochement with Communist China...
...that Novak publicly blamed the attorney general for fostering “national disunity...
...And hasn’t the enlargement of the right since 1968, been, on the whole, rather good to Bob Novak...
...I don’t know how Novak missed these passages, but Sollozzo’s lament in The Godfather—“The don, rest in peace, was slippin’”—comes to mind...
...Rosen writes that “the role of CIA in the collapse of the Nixon presidency” was “a mystery that bedeviled Mitchell to his grave...
...REDUX WHEN THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked Robert Novak to review my book, The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate (“Big Bad John,” May 26), I doubt they knew that the syndicated columnist, long and rightly a respected fi gure, has nurtured an animus toward John Mitchell that predates his service as attorney general...
...that Novak claimed Mitchell “very nearly proved fatal” to Richard Nixon’s victorious presidential campaign of 1968, which campaign Mitchell, in fact, managed...
...Presumably, Novak believes Joseph McCarthy to be a worthier subject of principled revisionism than the attorney general who desegregated the southern school system...
...Even I, however, was surprised by the confused logic and erroneous assertions of fact that plagued Novak’s review...
...The six-page section details the well-known CIA connections of the Watergate burglars and provides evidence only of the failed White House effort to pin the blame on the CIA...
...In fact, they do not address the questions Rosen claims they do...
...Are all those who have welcomed this movement “prejudiced...
Vol. 13 • June 2008 • No. 37
