THE WATERGATE CORRUPTION SCANDAL......40 YEARS LATER............

Sunday marked the 40th anniversary of what the White House Press Secretary at that time - Ron Ziegler, initially attempted to pass off as a, "third rate burglary".  It was a break-in and burglars discovered at 2:30 a.m., in a Washington, D.C. office and hotel complex, on June 17, 1972, that over the following two years unfolded and exploded as the Watergate Corruption Scandal, with its inception rooted in the White House and the Administration of President Richard Milhous Nixon.  Far more than just a bungled burglary attempt on the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in the re-election year of President Nixon a Republican; this criminal act turned out to be the tipping point of a systemic series of corruption concocted and controlled by persons affiliated directly with the Nixon White House.  John Dean, H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Gordon Liddy, Egil 'Bud' Krogh, E. Howard Hunt, John Mitchell, were among the dozens of persons involved in the planning, carrying out, and cover-up of the crime and the scandal, which President Nixon's own personal White House audiotapes have shown included the President himself in the discussion, planning, and carrying out, of the crimes and the cover-up of Watergate.  Some forty persons went to prison, due to their involvement in, or for perjuring themselves about the Watergate caper.  The Watergate scandal also brought to prominence the young Washington Post newspaper reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who became the first truly famous,"investigative reporters".  The judgment, courage, and wisdom, of their Editor Ben Bradley, and that of CBS Evening News Anchor and Managing Editor Walter Cronkite, and CBS News President Richard Salant,  in unrelentingly reporting the unfolding story and an anonymous source codenamed, "Deep Throat", learned only in 2005, to be an Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.)  Mark Felt, providing information that drew out the story of the Watergate affair,, were instrumental in unraveling it.  In a Washington Post special retrospective  June 10th, and 12th, last week on, "Watergate 40 Years Later", Woodward and Bernstein wrote about, and then with PBS/CBS 's Charlie Rose spoke about, what they have learned and reported on subsequently about the Nixon White House shenanigans along these lines from its outset in 1969.  They define what they now call, "The Five Wars of the Nixon White House from its inception ; 1.) the Anti-Vietnam War Movement war;  2.) the News Media war;  3.) the war against the Democrats;  4.)  the Justice system war;  and  5.) the war against History itself;  all which were overlapping and endemic throughout the Nixon Presidency.  Woodward and Bernstein also state that the historical record now provides documentation attesting to, "the President's dominance over a massive campaign of espionage, sabotage, and other illegal activities against (President Nixon's) real or perceived enemies".  They argue in their fortieth anniversary  essay that, "Long before the Watergate break-in, gumshoeing, burglary, wiretapping, and political sabotage, had become a way of life in the Nixon White House".  This Washington Post Woodward Bernstein Watergate 40th essay describes the above as the pervasive and organizing principle of the Nixon Presidency.  As a student of the American Presidency and Richard Nixon's political / governmental career, I have long said that despite the intelligence and academic acumen he possessed,  personal insecurity and almost, paranoiac obsession with political opponents and perceived enemies, so threatened him that he continuously went beyond the bounds of fairness, justice, honesty, and ethics, to achieve his goals.  From portraying his first political opponent,  Democratic Representative Jerry Voorhies in 1946, a five term member of the House and New Deal Democrat, as a Communist; to painting actress and Congresswoman Helen Gahagan  Douglas, his 1952 U.S. Senate opponent, a liberal Democrat, as the "Pink Lady", a Communist sympathizer; to his Re-Elect the President Committee's 1972 efforts to destroy the Senators Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, and Henry Jackson, presidential campaigns to get his preferred Democratic challenger, Senator George McGovern;  Richard Milhous Nixon, the politician and governmental leader, always had to have an unethical or illegal activity in the works, lacking the self confidence and esteem to act straightforwardly and trust that legitimate dealings would achieve desired results.  Forty Years following Watergate and what we continue to learn from it, may every citizen of the United States and the World, from pauper, politician, president, pope, or potentate, learn and unwaveringly practice the values and virtues, of honesty, integrity, compromise, and public service, for the common good, and not just self interest............Fr.  Troy