Nixon Scandal Resulted In A Law To Prevent The Politicization Of Antitrust Cases; Meanwhile Trump Uses His Politicized Antitrust Effort In Campaign Ad

from the different-times-apparently dept

Everyone knows about President Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, but you might now know as much about another huge scandal that preceded that one -- involving Nixon meddling, for political purposes, in an antitrust case by his Justice Department against a large "tech" company/conglomerate at the time. The case involved ITT trying to buy up some smaller companies, and the DOJ brought an antitrust case against them. The scandal part was that ITT approached the White House and worked out a deal: ITT would donate $400,000 (roughly $2.5 million today) to the 1972 Republican National Convention, and Nixon would get the DOJ to drop the case. Which he did. As the Nixon tapes eventually revealed, he called up then deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst and said:

“The I.T.T. thing — stay the hell out of it. Is that clear? That’s an order ... I do not want McLaren to run around prosecuting people, raising hell about conglomerates, stirring things up.”

Kleindienst's responded that he understood. Soon after he was nominated to be Attorney General, and during his Senate confirmation hearings he was asked whether the White House had interfered in the DOJ case against ITT, and he denied it. During Watergate, when the Nixon tapes came out, proving that Kleindienst lied, he ended up pleading guilty for lying to Congress.

The reason that the IIT quid pro quo deal with the White House was revealed was because a lobbyist for ITT named Dita Beard had sent around a memo with the details of the deal, which amusingly closed with "please destroy this, huh?" It wasn't destroyed, and instead was leaked to the Washington Post's Jack Anderson who sent his associate, a young Brit Hume, to Beard's house to verify the memo and get an explanation for it.

So, what's this historical story got to do with anything? Well, as we've discussed a few times now, current Attorney General Bill Barr's antitrust crusade against Google is clearly a politicized farce. Barr told the DOJ that they had to file before the election. DOJ staffers resigned from working on the case in protest. And the final case is stunningly weak.

But, after the ITT/Nixon debacle, Senator John Tunney introduced and got passed into law the Antitrust Procedures and Penalties Act, better known as the Tunney Act. It was designed to prevent another ITT/Nixon situation from happening again, by trying to stop the DOJ/White House from politicizing antitrust. The mechanism to do so is somewhat simplistic, but any settlement agreement is supposed to go before a judge to check to make sure the deal is in the public interest, rather than for shady political reasons. Parts of the law are often ignored in antitrust settlements, and it makes news when judges remember it exists.

However, it does seem notable that the whole intent of the law was to stop sketchy backroom politicization of antitrust activities by the White House telling the Justice Department what to do. And yet, now, we literally have a President of the United States directly politicizing his own DOJ's antitrust campaign. On Wednesday evening Trump tweeted out a weird campaign ad that rambles incoherently about "big tech" being bad, and how something needs to be done. Then he flat out admits that because he believes big tech is "against him" that's why "we" are going after Google:

Big tech has to be spoken to and probably in some form has to be stopped because they're taking away your rights. They're taking away things that nobody would have believed possible. So one of the things we're doing -- you saw what happened with Google -- with the lawsuit. One of the things we're doing is looking very powerfully and strongly at big tech. Go out and vote.

In any other administration in history, this alone would have been a scandal. The DOJ is supposed to be an independent agency from the President, and isn't supposed to bring cases based on political whims, such as tech companies "not liking" the President. And the President isn't supposed to be claiming direct credit for the lawsuit. Like others have pointed out, this is like Stupid Watergate. Things that Nixon did behind closed doors Trump is doing blatantly out in the open, and somehow that's why he gets away with it.

Here, he's flat out admitting that the DOJ cases against Google is not for legitimate reasons by for political ones, and he's using that case, for which he takes credit, in a literal campaign ad. If the courts actually cared about the Tunney Act (and a few judges out there might still believe in it) this would be yet another giant gaping hole in the case. Google now has more than enough evidence to highlight that the entire case was brought for political purposes, and not for legitimate ones.

The Nixon/ITT mess raised enough concerns that it caused some to talk about impeachment (of course that was then superseded by Watergate). Here, Trump is doing worse things in public, and it barely gets a shrug.

Filed Under: antitrust, doj, donald trump, motives, politicization, richard nixon, tunney act
Companies: google

Before Snowden, Nixon Admin Pioneered Evidence-Free 'Russian Spy' Smears Against Daniel Ellsberg

from the someone-has-the-same-playbook dept

The New Yorker published an interview with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden last night in which he explains why recent claims by Rep. Mike Rogers that he is a Russian spy are “absurd.” Rep. Rogers, who made the allegations on Sunday, did not present any evidence to support his statements and even the FBI reportedly believes Snowden acted alone.

While it’s well-known that Rep. Rogers has a long history of making things up and telling the media, it's less known that his tactics are drawn straight from Richard Nixon’s playbook, when his administration tried to discredit Daniel Ellsberg after he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971.

Ellsberg is commonly looked at as the quintessential whistleblower today, but shortly after he leaked the top secret Vietnam War study, the Nixon administration made a concerted effort to paint him as a Soviet spy in the press, using anonymous quotes and non-existent ‘secret’ evidence. (Sound familiar?)

This is from the New York Times on August 11, 1973:

An attorney for Dr. Daniel Ellsberg has chided the Senate Watergate committee for failing to challenge what he called “totally false and slanderous” testimony by the former White House aide, John D. Ehrlichman, suggesting that Dr. Ellsberg delivered copies of the Pentagon papers to the Soviet embassy.

“During his testimony before your committee, Mr. Ehrlichman repeatedly asserted that the Pentagon papers had been given in 1971 to the Soviet Embassy and implied that this might have been done by my client, Dr. Daniel Ellsberg, or with his knowledge,” the attorney, Leonard B. Boudin, who wrote the committee. “These allegations are made of whole cloth; they are totally false and slanderous of Dr. Ellsberg.”

In December 1973, the New York Times reported on the Nixon administration’s alleged reasoning for starting the White House Plumbers unit, which conducted several illegal operations against Ellsberg and the Watergate break-in:

One was a fear—nourished in part, some sources said, by Henry A. Kissinger, then the President’s national security adviser—that Daniel Ellsberg, who said he turned over the Pentagon papers to the press, might pass on to the Soviet Union secrets far more important than any information contained in the Pentagon study of the Vietnam war.

Specifically, the sources said, the White House feared that Dr. Ellsberg, a former Rand Corporation and Defense Department official, may have been a Soviet intelligence informer who, in the weeks after publication of the Pentagon Papers in June, 1971, was capable of turning over details of the most closely held nuclear targeting secrets of the United States, which were contained in a highly classified documents known as the Single Integrated Operation Plans, or S.I.O.P.

The second major concern was that a highly placed Soviet agent of the K.G.B., the Soviet intelligence agency, operating as an American counterspy, would be compromised by continued inquiry by the special prosecutor and the Senate Watergate committee into the Ellsberg case. The agent informed his F.B.I. contact that a set of the Pentagon papers had been delivered to the Soviet Embassy in Washington shortly after a Federal court had ordered The Times to stop printing its series of articles on the papers.

In July 1974, the New York Times published a leaked Nixon administration memo written in August 1971 on how they could discredit Ellsberg’s principal lawyer Leonard B. Boudin:

Most of what Daniel Ellsberg has said in public since he acknowledged stealing the Pentagon Papers seems calculated to position him as having responded to an order of morality higher than his onetime solemn undertakings to his country. This rationale, let it be remembered, was earlier employed by atomic spies Klaus Fuchs, David Greenglass, Morton Sobell and Bruno Pontecorvo.

And although there is as yet no conclusive evidence that Daniel Ellsberg acted on specific instructions of the Soviet Union—as did those earlier informants—the distinct possibility remains that Ellsberg’s “higher order” will one day be revealed as the Soviet Fatherland. For history is replete with repetition and notable similarities exist.

...

But in the case of Daniel Ellsberg the benefits of [an acquittal] will accrue to the Soviet Union, the Vietcong and Communist China. For if Boudin is again successful—as he has been so often in the past—the agents of foreign powers will enjoy a liberty of action never before accorded them in the history of our country.

Whether it’s the Nixon administration or anyone else, any allegations made with no proof—and under the veil of secrecy—deserve extreme skepticism and strong pushback from the press. Rep. Mike Rogers' evidence-free smears against Edward Snowden are no different. As Snowden himself told the New Yorker, "It’s not smears that mystify me. It’s that outlets report statements that speakers themselves admit are sheer speculation."

Republished from the Freedom of the Press Foundation blog. Note: Daniel Ellsberg is on the board of directors of Freedom of the Press Foundation. Edward Snowden will be joining the board in February.

Filed Under: daniel ellsberg, ed snowden, mike rogers, richard nixon, russian spy, smears

Document Surfaces Showing NSA Intercepted Communications Of Prominent Americans During Vietnam War

from the if-it's-available,-it-can-be-abused dept

The NSA's abuse of American citizens isn't solely limited to the current revelations. A recently uncovered document shows the NSA intercepted the communications of over 1,000 American citizens in the late 60s and early 70s. Some very notable names are on the list of those surveilled under this program, formally referred to as "Minaret."

During Minaret's six-year lifetime, the NSA secretly monitored the overseas telephone and cable communications of 1,650 U.S. citizens, most of them anti-war dissidents, civil rights leaders, and members of what the occupants of the White House at the time deemed to be extremist or subversive organizations. A declassified document found at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan, while not mentioning the NSA, confirmed that from 1967 to 1973, the U.S. intelligence community monitored the foreign travel and overseas communications of anti-war activists such as David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, Bernardine Dohrn, Kathy Boudin, and Robert Franklin Williams, as well as a number of prominent African-American militants, such as Eldridge Cleaver and Stokely Carmichael.

It wasn't just activists and militants being stalked by the NSA under this program. It was also prominent DC politicians and civil rights leaders.

Civil rights leaders Martin Luther King and Whitney Young were on the watch list, as were the boxer Muhammad Ali, New York Times journalist Tom Wicker, and veteran Washington Post humor columnist Art Buchwald. But perhaps the most startling fact in the declassified document is that the NSA was tasked with monitoring the overseas telephone calls and cable traffic of two prominent members of Congress, Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Sen. Howard Baker (R-Tenn.).

This program, which apparently operated at the behest of presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, was noxious enough that the NSA's current representatives referred to it as "disreputable if not outright illegal" when asked to comment.

Most of the citizens targeted by Minaret were strongly anti-war. Some were just merely anti-establishment. Others, like humor columnist Art Buchwald and Sen. Baker are a bit more of a mystery. Frank Church, whose Church Committee exposed widespread wrongdoing within American intelligence agencies, appears to have been "investigated" during the course of his investigations, albeit most likely for his anti-war stance, rather than his investigative work.

The most surprising aspect is the surveillance of members of Congress, something the agency doesn't seem to be doing at this point in time, although it certainly has the capability. The fact that it has done so in the past isn't very comforting. (And the fact that past presidents utilized the intelligence agency to keep tabs on personal "enemies" lists isn't very comforting either, but at least Nixon's downfall gave us the heads up that such lists existed.)

It's no surprise the agency was tasked with watching activists and civil rights leaders. The FBI had been doing this for years under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, and the Vietnam War/ Cold War created a low-level resurgence of the Red Scare. Even those on relatively good terms with the White House found themselves added to the Minaret list if they stepped out of line (or simply experienced a regime change in the White House).

One of the most cautious of the major African-American civil rights leaders, National Urban League Executive Director Whitney Young, had a good relationship with President Johnson and was frequently invited to the White House as a member of LBJ's informal "civil rights cabinet." He initially avoided voicing any criticism of the Vietnam War and thus was not put under surveillance by the FBI. In October 1969, however, shortly after Nixon took office, Young publicly turned against the Vietnam War. The war, he argued, was "tragically diverting America's attention from its primary problem -- the urban and racial crisis -- at the very time that crisis is at its flash point." This single act most likely prompted someone, most likely the FBI, to add Young to the Minaret watch list despite the fact that Young had never been accused of ever doing anything that could be described as illegal or subversive.

Journalist Tom Wicker, Washington bureau chief for the New York Times, was likely surveilled because of his critical reports detailing Johnson and Nixon's mishandling of the Vietnam War. If Johnson didn't add Wicker, then Nixon definitely did, seeing as Wicker also made Nixon's personal "enemies" list. Humor columnist Art Buchwald also criticized the war and his addition to Minaret's tracking shows these administrations weren't too amused with his jabs at their foreign policies. (Not that Buchwald's work couldn't be as scathing as any "straight" article.)

FP's Matthew Aid and William Burr find Sen. Baker's appearance on the list strangest -- perhaps only explainable by Nixon's wide-ranging paranoia.

The most inexplicable name on the watch list is Sen. Howard Baker (R-Tenn.), who served in the U.S. Senate from 1967 to 1985, including a term as majority leader from 1981 to 1985. Unlike Church, Baker, the first Republican to ever be elected to the Senate from the state of Tennessee, was a fervent supporter of the U.S. military's role in the Vietnam War. He was critical of the Johnson administration for not doing enough to win the Vietnam War, but he consistently defended the Nixon administration's handling of the conflict, never wavering in his support despite the growing chorus of criticism of the conflict among his colleagues in the Senate. Baker hardly fits the profile of the other watch-list targets, so perhaps it was a matter of Nixon wanting to know what Baker was saying about him in some of the senator's conversations.

When the program hit its peak (1969), the NSA was collecting over 150,000 communications each month and passing its findings on to the White House. The NSA knew the program operated in a very gray area (the page acquired here mentions that the program is "almost certainly illegal"), and sent each report via an agency courier. The reports themselves were stripped of any identifiable information -- well, anything identifiable that would trace the document back to the NSA. Reports were issued on plain bond paper, completely devoid of logos or any other NSA-related markings.

When defenders of the NSA like Michael Hayden claim that the agency's employees are "bound" by the limits of the law and would not exceed their "authority," he's obviously just plain wrong, if not simply lying. This program alone shows the NSA is perfectly willing to work outside the legal limits, especially when granted the "authority" to do so by its superiors.

The current NSA may have issued a statement distancing itself for its past work, but the fact remains that as long as the capabilities are present, the authority to bypass the law may present itself. While we'd all like to believe that Nixon's actions were an anomaly, seeing that Lyndon Johnson acted just as vindictively towards his enemies indicates that any president can wield this power for his own ends.

No evidence has been produced that a Minaret-esque program currently exists, but the machinery is already in place. All it needs is for someone to flip the switch.

Filed Under: art buchwald, enemies list, frank church, lyndon johnson, martin luther king, minaret, nsa, nsa surveillance, richard nixon