Fred Thompson aided Nixon on Watergate

[ck4829]

Fred Thompson gained an image as a tough-minded investigative counsel for the Senate Watergate committee. Yet President Nixon and his top aides viewed the fellow Republican as a willing, if not too bright, ally, according to White House tapes.

Thompson, now preparing a bid for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, won fame in 1973 for asking a committee witness the bombshell question that revealed Nixon had installed hidden listening devices and taping equipment in the Oval Office.

Those tapes show Thompson played a behind-the-scenes role that was very different from his public image three decades ago. He comes across as a partisan willing to cooperate with the Nixon White House's effort to discredit the committee's star witness.

It was Thompson who tipped off the White House that the Senate committee knew about the tapes. They eventually cinched Nixon's downfall in the scandal resulting from the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington and the subsequent White House cover-up.

(Read the rest of the article, Nixon and his crew liked Thompson, but they all thought that he wasn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070707/ap_on_el_pr/thompson_watergate

[sallyseven]

1. Keep this going.

:dem:

[MasonJar]

2. We must keep this idea front and center. Thompson is scary; he's

a Nixon neo-con.

[Major Hogwash]

3. Doesn't surprise me in the least. Thompson was ineffectual as a Senator too.

He's about as close to being a 3-time-loser as anyone I've ever seen in public.
Couldn't hack it as a movie actor, so he went to Congress.
Couldn't hack it as a Senator, so he went back to acting on tv.
Couldn't hack it as an actor, so now he wants to be President.

Thompson will wind up as a footnote in history.
A Nixon crony, a Bush apologist, and a traitor.
Anybody who would defend Libby the way he defended him, is nothing less than a traitor.

This isn't about "a cultural war".
This is about the law of the land, and the way they started the Iraq War.
Anybody who would defend what Libby did is nothing less than a traitor.

[TwilightGardener]

4. Well-said!