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Fred Thompson aided Nixon on Watergate....
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| Fred Thompson aided Nixon on Watergate....
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| Fdubya247 |
....Sounds like the "perfect" republicunt....no standards or sense of honor...and of course, stupid...
Fred Thompson aided Nixon on Watergate
Fred Thompson, third from left, listens during a hearing of the Senate Watergate Committee in this Aug. 3, 1973, file photo. From left are: Sen. Lowell Weicker, Jr; Sen. Edward J. Gurney, Thompson, Sen. Howard H. Baker, Jr; Rufus Edmisten, Sen. Sam Ervin; Sam Dash, Sen. Joseph M. Montoya, Sen. Daniel K. Inouye was absent. Testifying before the committee is Lt. Gen. Vernon Walters.
By JOAN LOWY, Associated Press WriterSat Jul 7, 4:38 PM ET
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.
Thompson, then 30, was appointed counsel by his political mentor, Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker, the top Republican on the Senate investigative committee. Thompson had been an assistant U.S. attorney in Nashville, Tenn., and had managed Baker's re-election campaign. Thompson later was a senator himself.
Nixon was disappointed with the selection of Thompson, whom he called "dumb as hell." The president did not think Thompson was skilled enough to interrogate unfriendly witnesses and would be outsmarted by the committee's Democratic counsel.
This assessment comes from audio tapes of White House conversations recently reviewed by The Associated Press at the National Archives in College Park, Md., and transcripts of those discussions that are published in "Abuse of Power: The New Watergate Tapes," by historian Stanley Kutler.
"Oh s---, that kid," Nixon said when told by his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, of Thompson's appointment on Feb. 22, 1973.
"Well, we're stuck with him," Haldeman said.
In a meeting later that day in the Old Executive Office Building, Baker assured Nixon that Thompson was up to the task. "He's tough. He's six feet five inches, a big mean fella," the senator told Nixon.
Publicly, Baker and Thompson presented themselves as dedicated to uncovering the truth. But Baker had secret meetings and conversations with Nixon and his top aides, while Thompson worked cooperatively with the White House and accepted coaching from Nixon's lawyer, J. Fred Buzhardt, the tapes and transcripts show.
"We've got a pretty good rapport with Fred Thompson," Buzhardt told Nixon in an Oval Office meeting on June 6, 1973. The meeting included a discussion of former White House counsel John Dean's upcoming testimony before the committee.
Dean, the committee's star witness, had agreed to tell what he knew about the break-in and cover-up if he was granted immunity against anything incriminating he might say.
Nixon expressed concern that Thompson was not "very smart."
"Not extremely so," Buzhardt agreed.
"But he's friendly," Nixon said.
"But he's friendly," Buzhardt agreed. "We are hoping, though, to work with Thompson and prepare him, if Dean does appear next week, to do a very thorough cross-examination."
Five days later, Buzhardt reported to Nixon that he had primed Thompson for the Dean cross-examination.
"I found Thompson most cooperative, feeling more Republican every day," Buzhardt said. "Uh, perfectly prepared to assist in really doing a cross-examination."
Later in the same conversation, Buzhardt said Thompson was "willing to go, you know, pretty much the distance now. And he said he realized his responsibility was going to have be as a Republican increasingly."
Thompson, who declined comment for this story, described himself in his book, "At That Point in Time," published in 1975, as a Nixon administration "loyalist" who struggled with his role as minority counsel. "I would try to walk a fine line between a good-faith pursuit of the investigation and a good-faith attempt to insure balance and fairness," Thompson wrote.
When Dean began testifying on June 25, he implicated Nixon in the break-in and cover-up. But his testimony had little legal impact because it was his word against the president's.
During Dean's testimony, Baker asked the question that became the embodiment of the Watergate scandal: "What did the president know and when did he know it?" Thompson is sometimes credited with supplying the question to Baker.
The question was widely perceived at the time as an example of Baker's willingness to press for truth at the expense of his party's leader. Historian Kutler, however, said he believes that in the context of Dean's testimony, the question was Baker's attempt to point out that the evidence hinged on one witness's word.
It was not until three weeks later — after the disclosure of the existence of tape recordings that might either corroborate or disprove Dean's testimony — that Baker's question took on new meaning, Kutler said.
At a hearing on July 16, Thompson asked former White House aide Alexander Butterfield: "Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?"
Butterfield's confirmation of the recordings set off a cascade of events that led to Nixon's resignation 13 months later.
The question made Thompson instantly famous. His political Web site — http://www.imwithfred.com — prominently notes: "Friends in Tennessee still recall seeing the boy they'd grown up with on TV, sitting at the Senate hearing-room dais. He gained national attention for leading the line of inquiry that revealed the audio-taping system in the White House Oval Office."
What rarely is mentioned is that Thompson knew the answer to the question before he asked it. Investigators for the committee had gotten the information out of Butterfield during hours of behind-the-scenes questioning three days earlier, on July 13.
Thompson was not present, but a Republican investigator immediately tracked him down at the Carroll Arms Hotel bar where he was meeting with a reporter. Thompson called Buzhardt over the weekend to tip off the White House that the committee knew about the tapes.
"Legalisms aside, it was inconceivable to me that the White House could withhold the tapes once their existence was made known. I believed it would be in everyone's interest if the White House realized, before making any public statements, the probable position of both the majority and the minority of the Watergate committee," Thompson wrote in his book.
Scott Armstrong, a Democratic investigator for the committee who was part of the Butterfield questioning, said he was outraged by Thompson's tip-off.
"When the prosecutor discovers the smoking the gun, he's going to be shocked to find that the deputy prosecutor called the defendant and said, 'You'd better get rid of that gun,'" Armstrong said in an interview.
The committee chairman, Sen. Sam Ervin, D-N.C., had agreed to allow Thompson to question Butterfield first at the July 16 hearing as a show of bipartisanship because a GOP investigator had elicited the initial information from Butterfield.
"Fred (Thompson) and Baker carried water for the White House, but I have to give them credit — they were watching out for their interests, too," Kutler said. "They weren't going to mindlessly go down the tubes for this guy."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070707...NFECNFGeg4Gw_IE |
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| Fdubya247 |
...The goose-stepping Hitler Youth love him...shocking...! Nothing but empty and meaningless "red meat" rhetoric for the ignorant and slavering fascist Right Wing Authoritarians of the "base"....I bet VacateTheTurd and NCDikey will start sucking his balls in here soon...and drooling down the front of their Brown Shirts...
:rolleyes:
Thompson wows young Republicans
By BRENDAN FARRINGTON, Associated Press WriterSat Jul 7, 4:26 PM ET
Not yet a 2008 candidate, Fred Thompson energized young Republicans with a speech Saturday that was heavy on rhetoric and short on policy pronouncements. He branded Democrats as "the party of despair."
Chants of "Fred" and "Run, Fred, Run," greeted the actor and former GOP senator from Tennessee from many among the 350 people at the Young Republicans National Convention. The crowd interrupted his nine-minute speech with wild applause and mobbed him when he left.
"It makes me feel like the waters are pretty warm," Thompson said afterward. He has formed an exploratory committee to gauge support for a White House run and raise money. He is expected to announce presidential campaign plans to run soon.
While he has yet to join the 10-man Republican race, he has soared in polls, taken in at least several million dollars, assembled a staff and visited early primary states New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Thompson's speech came on the heels of reports that a pro-abortion rights group hired him to lobby President George H.W. Bush's administration 16 years ago. At issue were attempts to ease a regulation that prevented clinics that received federal money from offering abortion counseling.
Thompson gave an oblique response when asked about the matter, first reported by the Los Angeles Times.
"I'd just say the flies get bigger in the summertime. I guess the flies are buzzing," said Thompson, who is considering running for president as a social conservative. He refused comment on whether he recalled doing the work.
His supporters did not seem bothered, citing policy stands by some of the leading GOP presidential contenders, including former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Arizona Sen. John McCain.
"Whatever choice do we have? Mitt Romney has been on both sides of the issue," said Paul Boyd, 26, of Memphis, Tenn. "Rudy Giuliani is 100 percent pro-choice. John McCain, at least for the first four years of the Bush term, was against whatever the president was for. Everybody has their flaws."
In his speech, Thompson fired up the crowded when he said he was the top target of The New York Times and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. He said the United States was the greatest country, and that set the audience off, too.......
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070707...0H.zTzdpHxh24cA |
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| Reverend Tyler |
| He does have a pretty hot trophy wife, though... |
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| Fdubya247 |
Quote: Originally posted by Reverend Tyler
He does have a pretty hot trophy wife, though... |
...there is that....! |
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| Reverend Tyler |
| I had thought he was pro-choice, but apparently he is ditching that to grab the evangelical vote. |
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| ChaseDC |
Quote: Originally posted by SDVT-2
:sleepin: |
enjoy getting your ass kicked in 08. :p |
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| harley-davidson |
| Quote: He does have a pretty hot trophy wife, though... |
Huge tits......are they real or implants ? knock out body too |
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| harley-davidson |
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| Fdubya247 |
...her fashion/style sense leaves a little to be desired....
Yikes. |
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| harley-davidson |
Quote: her fashion/style sense leaves a little to be desired....
Yikes.... |
Not to many that wouldn't hit that...just say'n |
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| SDVT-2 |
Quote: Originally posted by harley-davidson
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:idhitit: I like dem cracker bitches.... |
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| Fdubya247 |
Quote: Originally posted by harley-davidson
Not to many that wouldn't hit that...just say'n |
No doubt...But I wouldn't be seen in public with her if she had those boots on....! |
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| Fdubya247 |
Quote: Originally posted by SDVT-2
:idhitit: I like dem cracker bitches.... |
Where'd porn be without 'em..!?!?! |
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| SDVT-2 |
Quote: Originally posted by ChaseDC
enjoy getting your ass kicked in 08. :p |
If the donkies win it will be the USA getting an ass kicking. |
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| Reverend Tyler |
thats actually his EX-wife...she got too old for him...here is the new bride..
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| SDVT-2 |
Quote: Originally posted by Fdubya247
No doubt...But I wouldn't be seen in public with her if she had those boots on....! |
As much money as the man makes he could have hired someone not to make her look like a Bama Cowgirl. |
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| harley-davidson |
| Quote: I like dem cracker bitches.... |
Thats a racial slur...I like pussy...all colors...would you like me to refer to black women as "nigger pussy"....get a grip dude it's all pink on the inside |
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| SDVT-2 |
Quote: Originally posted by Reverend Tyler
thats actually his EX-wife...she got too old for him...here is the new bride..
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She is gonna have to hide the milk jugs once he becomes our new President of these United States of America. |
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| SDVT-2 |
Quote: Originally posted by harley-davidson
Thats a racial slur...I like pussy...all colors...would you like me to refer to black women as "nigger pussy"....get a grip dude it's all pink on the inside |
:rolleyes: |
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| Reverend Tyler |
Quote: Originally posted by SDVT-2
As much money as the man makes he could have hired someone not to make her look like a Bama Cowgirl. |
She was a country singer..I think its required |
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| SDVT-2 |
Quote: Originally posted by harley-davidson
Thats a racial slur...I like pussy...all colors...would you like me to refer to black women as "nigger pussy"....get a grip dude it's all pink on the inside |
Holy Shit you said the N word...............
Jessie Jackoff will be at your house soon to burn it down............ |
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| ChaseDC |
Quote: Originally posted by Reverend Tyler
thats actually his EX-wife...she got too old for him...here is the new bride..
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what the fuck is she thinking? He's an old ass turd. |
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| SDVT-2 |
Quote: Originally posted by Reverend Tyler
She was a country singer..I think its required |
It is in the handbook.... |
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| ChaseDC |
| He looks like the crypt keeper next to her. |
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| SDVT-2 |
Quote: Originally posted by ChaseDC
what the fuck is she thinking? He's an old ass turd. |
DUDE we are all gonna be old ass turds and I would like to think I could get a young woman :rolleyes: Yeah right. |
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| SDVT-2 |
Quote: Originally posted by ChaseDC
He looks like the crypt keeper next to her. |
Maybe he is the bodygaurd??? |
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| ChaseDC |
Quote: Originally posted by SDVT-2
DUDE we are all gonna be old ass turds and I would like to think I could get a young woman :rolleyes: Yeah right. |
Neither one of us will get a young bitch. |
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| harley-davidson |
Quote: Holy Shit you said the N word...............
Jessie Jackoff will be at your house soon to burn it down............... |
Wasn't trying to bust your balls, who cares what color or nationality they are good pussy is good pussy |
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| HotShotMagic |
Quote: Originally posted by SDVT-2
If the donkies win it will be the USA getting an ass kicking. |
Exactly what do you predict (other than general Doom and Gloom) will go wrong under a Dem?
Edit: Not to say it will be all Roses and Kitten's whiskers. There's a pile of war to inherit. Any party in charge is open to criticism and fault.
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