Ex-Sec. Rice Says President Is Above The Law

Although the ex-Secretary of State tried to word her statement carefully, she failed terribly in her answer to a student concerning torture and her involvement in it. Cenk Uyugr helps publicize the exchange where she pretty much has a Frost/Nixon moment declaring the President is above the law.

Meet Fred Thompson: Nixon Mole

Fred Thomspon is known for many things. Law and Order actor, former U.S. Senator from Tennessee and even as a lawyer working in the Senate for the Watergate Committee. One thing you many not know about that last factoid is that he wasn't only working for the Senate, he was feeding information to President Nixon as the proceedings went on. Come meet the real Fred.

From The Boston Globe:

Thompson tipped off the White House that the committee knew about the taping system and would be making the information public. In his all-but-forgotten Watergate memoir, "At That Point in Time," Thompson said he acted with "no authority" in divulging the committee's knowledge of the tapes, which provided the evidence that led to Nixon's resignation. It was one of many Thompson leaks to the Nixon team, according to a former investigator for Democrats on the committee, Scott Armstrong , who remains upset at Thompson's actions.

"Thompson was a mole for the White House," Armstrong said in an interview. "Fred was working hammer and tong to defeat the investigation of finding out what happened to authorize Watergate and find out what the role of the president was."

Asked about the matter this week, Thompson -- who is preparing to run for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination -- responded via e-mail without addressing the specific charge of being a Nixon mole: "I'm glad all of this has finally caused someone to read my Watergate book, even though it's taken them over thirty years."

Thompson's non-answer is at odds with the image he has tried to put out there. A tough independently-minded conservative he is not. Thompson's behavior is more in line with the other candidates he is facing off with.

His star is burning so brightly now in the polls because the voters believe he is something new and untainted like the rest of them. While he shares the "conservative" values that the current field has (save Ron Paul), he also shares the sleaze.

"Nixonian"

Sen. Patrick Leahy was on Press The Meat yesterday and slammed the Bush Administration for stonewalling the investigation of the Justice Department. Not only did he bark at them, but threatened to bite by taking the matter to the courts if the White House does not comply by the beginning of next week.

Newspapers Are A Bunch Of Sluts

I don't know about them being sluts, perhaps in some instances maybe. I would never make that assertion like former President Nixon did a while back. Who the media are sluts to is another difference between Nixon and myself. Today I would say they are beholden to their corporate masters by and large. Thirty-five years ago the only thing that mattered was Nixon's enormous ego.

This information and more was brought to light by Vanity Fair's Robert Dallek. In addition to writing an article for the magazine, he is writing a book on the power struggle between Nixon and Kissinger. While both men agreed on the newspapers being sluts, the two sparred against each other in their own quests for power of the Nixon Administration.

From RawStory:

In next month's Vanity Fair, Robert Dallek illustrates how President Richard Nixon "was losing his epic power struggle with Henry Kissinger," a thesis drawn out in his upcoming book Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power. He describes the two similarly as "paranoid and insecure, deceitful and manipulative, ruthless and strangely vulnerable."

Dallek bases his argument on a new analysis of Nixon administration archives -- what he calls a "real-time rendering of events often at variance with official portrayals" -- which includes diary entries, transcripts, tapes, records and official papers. "Henry Kissinger never wanted the 20,000 pages of his telephone transcripts made public," writes Dallek, "not while he was alive, at any rate. And for good reason."

The historian highlights "moments of high drama" and depicts Kissinger as "a man whose growing power derived from Nixon's deepening incapacity." Dallek also discusses how the archives "reveal Kissinger's troubling personality and methods across a broad front."

There'll be plenty more in the article and the upcoming book. Be sure to check it out, the pages should be exciting, even if you aren't a Presidential historian. The battle between these two paranoid and egocentric men is one for the ages.