DOUBLE STANDARD IN THE CAPITAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00418R000100200006-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 10, 2012
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: September 30, 1990
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/10: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100200006-4
STAT
STAT
The Washington Post
The New York Times SECo
The Washington Times
The Wall Street Journal
The Christian Science Monitor
New York Daily News
_
USAToday
The Chicago Tribune
Date
,t QT /~
Double Standard
In the Capital:
By Patrick J. Buchanan
coking back at Year One of our deliver-
ance, 8 Aug. 1974 looms as less a
victory for morality in government
than a triumph by one set of politi-
cians over another. And the conspicuous bond
among the victorious seems less love
of country than hatred of Richard Milhous
Nixon.
From the atrocities unearthed and the
skeletons exhumed since our "moment of
shared wonder," one claim can surely be
validated: When Mr. Nixon said his Adminis-
tration was being judged by a double stand-
ard, he was indulging in uncharacteristic un-
derstatement.
Recall now the "Huston Plan," the blue-
prints of those who "almost stole America."
It transpires that what Tom Charles Huston
proposed and Mr. Nixon approved for five
days - mail covers, surveillance, surrepti-
tious entries and infiltration of extremist and
terrorist groups - was a matter of routine
for the Army, the Federal Bureau of Investi-
gation and the Central Intelligence Agency in
the Kennedy-Johnson years.
And the significant difference between the
Nixon wiretaps and those of his predecessors
was that the latter were more numerous, pro-
ductive and professionally managed. What
"Gordon Liddy failed to do to Larry O'Brien,
the Kennedy brothers and L.B.J. did success-
fully to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The civil liberties lobby also covered itself
with glory by looking the other way as John
Mitchell and John Ehrlichman were denied
the right to change of venue out of this poi-
Patrick J. Buchanan, former assistant to
Richard M. Nixon, is a syndicated columnist.
soned city - a right routinely conceded to
Russell Means and Joan Little.
There was also that unfortunate oversight
when the special prosecutor, to the amuse-
ment of all, let the three-year statute of limi-
tations run out on accusations that the ami-
able Democratic National Committee chair-
man, Robert Strauss, had as party treasurer
accepted illegal corporate contributions
from Ashland Oil.
The truth that dares not speak its name in
this town is that both press and judiciary had
a vested interest in Watergate convictions,
an interest they were unprepared to jeopard-
ize over something so insignificant as the
civil rights of Mr. Nixon's men.
The respected Richard Helms is permitted
to refresh his memo and revise his testi-
mony concerning C.I.A. con uctin Watergate
and the Chilean operations, while on Sun ay
Dwight Chapin begins a 10- to 30-month
prison term for misremembering what Don-
a egretti to im a ut political
ranks.
The "Get-Nixon" gang could not have suc-
ceeded without Mr. Nixon's cooperation.
They had been hacking away at his lifeline to
middle America, with indifferent success, for
25 years. It was Mr. Nixon himself who sev-
ered that lifeline irreparably when he im-
plored his people, again and again, to believe
that which the "smoking pistol" tape showed
not to be true.
If he had leveled with his people, they
would have pulled him through. Still, when
the trap door dropped beneath him, it was not
truth, justice and morality visible at the foot
of Mr. Nixon's scaffold but - heads bowed as
in prayer - malice, vindictiveness and hy-
pocrisy.
Page A_l
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/10: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100200006-4