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To my sister Penny, Dad, and The Friends of Bill Moorhead
After the history of the first term is written and you look back, youre going to see that, compared to other administrations or by any other standards youd want to apply, that it has been an extraordinarily clean, corruption-free administration, because the President insists on that.
John Ehrlichman, September 7, 1972
Watch what we do, not what we say.
John Mitchell
Ten years ago the greatest scandal in American political history was coming to light. Some of us drank it in daily, savoring every new revelation or outrage. Some of us tried to follow the goings-on, but never sorted out the details. And some of us, finally worn down by the numberless charges, countercharges, and innuendoes, and mystified by interlocking bureaucratic chains of command, did our best to ignore the whole thing (all the while suspecting that everyone involved was probably guilty of something).
The Watergate Quiz Book is for you whether you thought Watergate was a national joke or a national disgrace, whether you sat in front of the tube and screamed Guilty, guilty, guilty as one TV witness after another grinned and lied, or didnt watch at all. The book is a delicious opportunity for buffs to wallow anew in Watergate, and also an irreverent and ironic chronicle for anyone who missed (or avoided) many of Watergates bombshells.
Watergate is undeniably the greatest political scandal in our history, but it is also one of the centurys greatest entertainments, starring a man who held Americas highest political office, was proven to have deliberately lied to the public for more than two years, but when finally hounded out of office still had the nerve to say, I wasnt lying. I said things that later on seemed to be untrue.
Return with me now to those thrilling days of wiretapping, spies, tough guys, coded memoranda and code names, paper-shredding extravaganzas, government burglaries, interagency sabotage, big-dollar influence peddling, international financial schemes, and an epic showdown among the three branches of government. Welcome back effrontery, sheer gall, bald-faced lies, paranoia in high places, inoperative information, and vaulting ambition oerleaping itself! Remember the Rose Mary Stretch? Did you know which presidential aides were not recruited from the J. Walter Thompson advertising agencys Los Angeles office? Did you ever learn what Gemstone was? Operation Candor? The Mullen Agency? What did the President know, and when did he know it?
The Watergate Quiz Book organizes two years of confusing allegations, revelations, and testimony into ten chronological chapters of nasty and challenging questionstrue/false, multiple choice, direct response, andfor Watergate fanatics onlyDeep Throat questions.
Test your Watergate IQor learn it all for the first time.
W. S. Moorhead
Washington, D.C.
Its hard to explain. Its a constant barrage. Henry [Kissinger] and others go around wringing their hands for the President. After a while you lose your perspective. All of the things that you think about later you become inured to while in the White House. It isnt a matter of constant moral torment when youre there.
Roger Morris, White House aide
What those fellows [the Plumbers] did was no crime; they ought to get a medal for going after Ellsberg.
President Nixon, April 18, 1973
THE TIMES (19691972)
The Vietnam War rancored the American political scene increasingly as it became clear that the new Administration was unable to deliver a tidy conclusion to the conflict. The White House could not keep sensitive internal information from surfacing in the press, and increasingly saw itself as persecuted by antiwar left-wingers and black militants.
Quickly slipping into a siege mentality, the White House developed a ravenous appetite for covert intelligence. The demonstrations, random acts of violence, and lawlessness of antiwar activists seemed to Nixon to justify the sort of rough, gutter warfare usually relegated only to the world of professional agents in the international struggle against Soviet-backed communism. As existing U.S. government agencies were unable or unwilling to cooperate, Nixon began chartering his own spies (the Plumbers) in secret.
Right after the 1968 election, Nixon started wiretapping White House aides and newsmen. At Nixons insistence, aide Tom Huston drew up plans for a sweeping scheme of internal espionage, complete with black bag jobs and sabotage. When former Pentagon official Daniel Ellsberg gave classified documents (the Pentagon Papers) to The New York Times, the White House hounded him viciously.
QUESTIONS
. To what was Attorney General Kleindienst referring when he said that zoo up the street?
. Certain White House aides may have thought that they were above the law, but none ever stated so publicly. True or false?
. About whom was White House director of communications Ken Clawson speaking when he said the following: There is no policy [he] is responsible for, yet there is no policy he doesnt have a hand in somehow?
a) Haldeman
b) Colson
c) Dean
. In the following, is Haldeman describing Ehrlichman or is Ehrlichman describing Haldeman: my crafty friend who loved intrigue and was given [to] the more devious approach?
. What manan expert on the esoteric legal points of municipal-bond financing, recognized as without peer in this legal specialty by 1967allowed Nixon to join his profitable practice, and in less than six years had ruined his family life, nearly lost his wife, watched his law practice dissipate, was no longer speaking to the President, faced multiple indictments on a host of criminal charges, and finally went to jail?
. What key Nixon advisor disavowed participation in White House wiretapping and knowledge of the Plumbers, and, by cultivating his public image as the one solid higher-up in the besieged White House, managed to avoid serious investigation by Watergate prosecutors and the Senate Watergate Committee?
. What member of the Nixon Administration had the following nicknames: The Cold Bastard, Chief of Dirty Tricks, King of the Hardhats, Mr. Dirty Tricks, Hatchet Man, Superloyalist, The Power Mechanic, and Chief Ass Kicker?
. What man saw his legal stature rise, his practice grow to include clients like Atlantic-Richfield and United Air Lines, became Nixons personal attorney (preparing even his tax returns and residential purchase documents), raised money for Nixons campaigns, ran the enormous post-1968 campaign surplus as a slush fund to finance dirty tricks, acted as bagman for hush money to silence Watergate burglars, and finally went to jail?
. What member of the Administration had the following nicknames: Iron Butt, Nicks, Gloomy Gus, The Mad Monk, Le Grande Fromage, Thelmas Husband, and Rufus?
. What was Bebe Rebozos nickname for Nixon?
. What man refused a full scholarship to Harvard because he was turned off at the bomb-throwers in Harvard Square, played a marginal role in the 1968 campaign, yet in one year under Haldemans sponsorship became the focal point for White House dirty tricks, and, before pleading guilty to obstruction of justice, became a born-again Christian?