LETTERS EDITOR TO THE

To the editor:

Decline and Pending Downfall of Our American Republic: Richard Nixon (Part 1)

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the bungled burglary of the Democratic Party’s headquarters in the Washington, DC, Watergate complex. Two young reporters at the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, investigated the incident and the massive cover-up that it inspired, which led all the way to fascinating and scary Senate hearings and to the resignation of a president who had won re-election in a landslide.

This month, we are witnessing televised hearings presenting the findings of the House committee investigating the origins of the failed coup d’etat of January 6, 2021, which was an insurrection to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from one chief executive to another, the hallmark of our American democratic system. These hearings are as important as those of the Watergate hearings and of the Iran-Contra hearings during the Reagan Era. All expose(d) how close we came to having an autocratic takeover of the executive branch of our government and an end to our constitutional system as we know it. Each crisis was more dangerous than the previous one.

I never thought of Nixon as a Republican: he was a Nixonian. He, like the current leader of what still calls itself the Republican Party, was only in it for himself. Nixon created the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) to orchestrate his campaign. He went it alone, essentially thumbing his nose at the rest of his party. It got him re-elected, but it also got him nearly, justifiably impeached and convicted.

From the Watergate hearings, we learned that the reason for the cover-up was to prevent everyone from knowing about all the illegal, unethical, and corrupt operations that the Nixon administration and CREEP were involved in. Nixon had his lawyer John Dean set up an enemies list and planned to use the agencies of the federal government under the president’s jurisdiction to get them. Some on the list included actors such as Paul Newman, Gregory Peck and Tony Randall. On publication, that list became a badge of honor for those on it.

Nixon and CREEP had access to huge amounts of donations from undisclosed sources. As Deep Throat (FBI Associate Director Mark Felt) told Woodward and Bernstein: “Follow the money.” Nixon set up a secret “Plumbers” unit to plug leaks from his administration and his activities. He feared his re-election would be jeopardized if the Brookings Institution released its evidence that Nixon had sabotaged President Lyndon Johnson’s effort to end the Vietnam War in 1968: He wanted his plumbers to blow their safe and get those documents. They didn’t do that, but they did break into the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, hoping to find something to discredit the man who leaked The Pentagon Papers – they found nothing.

The Watergate hearings exposed a man that many of us already understood and feared, while others were surprised and left shaking their heads. Could they ever trust any president again?

David Offutt

El Dorado

To The Editor:

Our local paper could use some significant improvement. First of all correcting the typos and misspelled words. Also there needs to be more local news in the paper. There’s too much National news. Also remodel the headquarters. Out with the old and in with the new. Put up a new sign with the title El Dorado News Times in old English lettering, just like the heading of the newspaper. Now this is just perspective criticism. Everybody at one time or another needs improvement. Likewise could you remodel the outside exterior with buff colored bricks? We need to make downtown El Dorado beautiful. The newspaper is no exception.

Thank you very much. Donald Putman

El Dorado