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Tuesday, November 6, 1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Too Many Scandals
"Who will throw the first stone?" has become the fashionable response to the charges of abuse in the Nixon administration.
Certainly other administrations have had their scandals. For President Truman it was the Alger Hiss case. For President Johnson it was the Iran hostage crisis, and most recent administrations have had a minor scandal or two.
But too many people think that offical law breaking is a universal fact of life. "All politicians are corrupted," they murmur as the nightly news reveals yet another scandal. For these people, the accountability is the concern of the press and other outraged minorities, or the rallying ground for subversives.
But all politicians are not crooks just as all nations are not aggressors. Men still have control over their actions and there is still a place for moments of right and wrong and there are still things worth fighting for.
Especially after the demise of Vice President Agnew, many politicians across the nation wondered with dread about potential investigations into their own past dealings. And the new surge of governmental investigations will probably reveal many fudging politicians, both Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal. No party has a monopoly on dishonest men.
But there is no question about the
pattern of the current set of scandals. Nearly all of the blame can be placed on the shoulders of the Nixon administration.
Never has one presidential administration been so thoroughly saturated with scandal. The long list of sticky capers includes the Russian wheat deal, the ITT case, the Ellsberg burglary, the milk scandal, the mysteries of the Nixon property improvements, the overhaul of the Watergate break-in and cover-up and the various dirty tricks.
John Mitchell, Maurice Stans,
John Ehrlichman, H.R. Haldeman,
John Dean, Herbert Malchab,
Fre LaRue, Gordon Strachan,
James McCord, G. Gordon Liddy,
Gordon Liddy, G. Gordon Liddy,
those who have left the Nixon
administration because of con-
nections with various illegal acts.
Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshouse were fired. Agnew was convicted of a felony for kickback crimes which were completely unrelated to the Watergate capers. Even the President himself has been accused, and serious talk of impeachment has begun for the first time since the days of President Andrew Johnson.
Many conservatives and Republicans have already disinherited the Nixon administration. How many more shocks will the American public face for this kind of administration is thoroughly rejected? Perhaps it already has been.
-Bill Gibson
Cause for Impeachment Remains
By BARBARA TUCHMAN
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom," wrote Tom Paine, "must undergo like men the fatigue of supporting it."
BY BANDA POCORN
Special to the Washington Post
In the affairs of a nation founded on the premise that its citizens possess certain inalienable rights, there comes a time when those rights must be defended against creeping authoritarianism. Liberty and authority exist in eternal stress like water or fire, the second measure authority is forever hungry; it is its nature to expand and usurp.
To protect against that tendency, which is as old as history, the framers of our constitution established three co-equal branches of government. In October 1973, we have come to the hour when that arrangement must be called upon to perform its function. Unless the executive is brought into balance, the other two branches will dwindle in power and become a part; by defying it the President brought on the crisis. The fact that he reversed himself does not alter the fact that he tried, just as the fact that he reneged on the domestic surveillance plan of 1970—a fundamental invasion of the Bill
of Rights—does not cancel the fact that he authorized alteration it, nor does withdrawing from Cambodia cancel the fact of lying to the public about American intervention.
The cause for impachment remains, because President Nixon cannot change—and the American people cannot afford—the lack of support from the power which has been normal to him. Responsibility for the outcome now rests upon the House of Representatives which the framers entrusted with the duty of making this decision, not bring the abuse of executive power to account, it will have laid a precedent of acquiescence—what the lawyers call constructive condemnation—that will end in 2006 birthday we are about to celebrate.
NO GROUP EVER faced a more difficult task at a more delicate moment. We are in the midst of international crisis; we have no vice president; his nominated successor is suddenly seen, in the shadow of an empty presidency, as hardly qualified to move up; he is not the most scandal and criminal charges; public confidence is at low tide; partisan politics for 1976 are in everyone's mind; the impeachment process is feared as likely to be
long and divale and possibly paralyzing.
Under the circumstances, resistance and
stiffness may be present.
Yet the House must not evade the issue, for now as never before it is the hinge of our political fate. The combined forces of Congress and the judiciary are needed to curb the executive because the executive has the advantage of controlling all the agencies of government, including the military. The last should not be an unthinkable thought. The habit of authorizing the president is so suitable, will slowly but surely draw a ruler, if corrooned, to final dependence on the Army. That instinct already moved Mr. Nixon to call out the FBI to impound the evidence.
I do not believe the dangers and difficulties of the situation should keep Congress from the test. Certainly the situation in the Middle East is full of perils, including some probably unforeseen. But I doubt if the Russians would seize the oppressed Ukrainians or embroiled in impaction. Not that I have much faith in nations learning from history; what they do learn is the lesson of the last战. To a war be-aggressor, the lesson of
both world wars is not to count on the theory held by the Germans and Japanese that the United States, as a great lumbering mushmind deeged democracy, would be unable to mobilize itself in time to prevent their victory. I am sure this lesson is studiously taught in Russian general staff courses.
NOR SHOULD WE be paralyzed by fear of exacerbating divisions within this country. We are divided anyway and always have been as any independently minded people should be: Talk of unity is a burden, not an enemy; people worth its salt is politically unjust. A nation in consensus is a nation ready for the grave.
Moreover, I think we can forgo a long and malignant trial by the Senate. Once the House votes to impeach, that will be a good thing because it rather than face an investigation and trial that he cannot stop. If the House can accomplish this, it will have vindicated the trust of the founders and made plain to them why there are limits he may not exceed.
(The writer is an historian and author.)
No-Knock Violates Citizens' Rights
Drug Raid Victims Still Suffer
By FRANCIS B. WARD The Los Angeles Times
COLLINSVILLE, III.—A car horn horns, "and I get the slain." A dog barks in the distance, "and I listen out for somebody knockin' at the door." That's the way life is these days for Herbert Joseph Guliotto.
and his slim, attractive wife, Loisse, also 29, has not stopped since the night of April 23 when federal narcotics agents broke into their Collinsville apartment looking for drugs, or a narcotics suspect, depending on whom you believe.
He's never at ease, always peering over his shoulder, fidgeting, smoking (a habit he picked up recently), nervously stumbling over words, but always coming back to the same bewildering question: "How could it happen? I don't know. I just don't know."
That raid, and another one by the same agents about an hour later at the Collinsville home of Donald and Virginia Askew, has caused more tremors in the seamy, turbulent world of narcotics law enforcement than any action in years.
Bewilderment for Herb Giglotto, 28, a bouncy. 5-foot-7. 200-pound boilermaker,
Twelve agents (eight federal, four local) have been inducted for their part in these and other raids. Sen. Charles Percy, R-ILL, has called for federal of no-know
laws that permit unannounced entry into
houses or agents' searches for
travelers on illegal travel
THERE HAVE BEEN published charges, echoed by Pen. Percy, that narcotics agents across the country have conducted questionable raids, in which citizens' rights were violated, using tactics similar to those alleged in the Collinsville raids.
Two other victims of raids in the southern Illinois area, along with the Gliotto and Askews, have filed civil suits against the government asking $8.4 million in damages.
Life will never be the same for narcotics
bitterly charge they've been made
scapegoats or their superiors) or tor the Askew or Giglio family.
Both claim they've been harassed since the raids and获赔 incalculable mental damage.
Donald Askew is of medium build, 41, and a “pretty good” self-employed contractor who used to run a profitable filling station in east St. Louis, eight miles west of Collinsville. After overhead, he easily cleared $300 a week, he says.
“But since the day, we haven’t been able to do anything,” he and his wife calmly explain in their small, modest kitchen. Receipts from the station dropped from the records according to their records) to $1,331 in May. He closed the station for good in June.
From Kennedy to Nixon
The Los Angeles Times
By ROBERT J. DONOVAN
Watching, Mr. Nixon's televised press conference Friday evening brought to mind that it was ten years ago this week that President Kennedy had his next to last press conference. Incredibly, it was a quiet time in Washington, lacking altogether in omens of the impending torrent. Twenty-two days later he was assassinated in a car crash. He was on. Indeed, to some considerable extent, the malaise that has since spread through the country can be traced to that shattering tragedy.
WASHINGTON—It is a strange coincidence that it finds Richard M. Nixon passing through a grave crisis of his presidency just as the country prepares to observe the tenth anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's death. It has been an incredible decade.
The last ten years have been too much.
Martin Luther King, *B.* Robert F. Kennedy
Vietnam, the riots at the Democratic
conference in 1968.
Tet, the siege of Lyndon B. Johnson
Cambodia, Kent State, Carswell and
Haynesworth, the Black revolt, drugs
violence pornography
Watergate Cox. Agnew . new war in the Colony
proportion to the pace at which earlier generations lived, a century has been passing. Many such a rush people can scarcely remember them, let alone digest them and fit them into a coherent philosophy. Government by the people is put to a severe test in such con-
A WASHINGTON EDITOR, hearing on a radio while he was out of town last week that the armed forces of the United States were on a world-wide alert, called his office and demanded to know what was going on. "I asked him, 'What was it, morning,' one of his editors informed him.
Bombers carrying nuclear weapons are put in a state of readiness before breakfast, and they don't leave the caiming things before dinner. The world goes to a brink of some kind, then staggers back, the possible brush with catastrophe passing so swiftly it scarcely registers on
The House of Representatives ponders
whether impeachment proceedings against President Nixon are justified, and President Nixon meets with the National Security Council at 3 a.m. to weigh an American response to the possible movement of Soviet forces into Egypt.
This is a superhuman strain upon men. Uncomfortably, one recalls an admonition by former Secretary of State Dean Rusk after the frenzy over the Cuban missile crisis that went on for some days and nights in 1982. It has led to much a threat to nuclear war as exhaustion, Rusk said. Remembering his own sleepless hours of trying to avert a fatal Soviet-American clash, he feared that a situation might develop some day when men in a comparable position would ultimately exhausted their judgment would be impaired.
IT HAS BEEN A decade of questions that nag for answers that do not exist. Vietnam was the main source of the cancer. If President Kennedy had lived, would we have been dragged into the terrible dead end in which we found ourselves?
Maybe, given the momentum of United States rule, but then again maybe not.
if Kennedy had lived and had cut his losses in Vietnam, would Richard Nixon ever have become president? Probably not. Even when Kennedy was alive the two major candidates Barry Goldwater in 1964, Kennedy expected to face him, and Kennedy would have been the heavy favorite to win. Had it not been for Dallas, the Democratic party might have been in much stronger shape in 1968. They were in shambles, Nixon only won by a whisper.
The Bay of Pigs had been an anguish for Kennedy, Surely, he would have been wary of massive bombing, the real boomerang for Johnson and Nixon in Vietnam. Also Kennedy was more willing than Johnson to admit mistakes. One can visualize Kennedy cutting his losses in Vietnam. One can also visualize him and Bobby and the White House intellectual tempering the reaction among campus, which did so much to tell Johnson.
At the time, the great solace of Kennedy's death was that it produced a mood in which President Johnson, with his super political skills and volatile energy, could get involved in legislation that Congress would not give President Kennedy when he was alive.
Under the stress of the decade, however, disillusion has set in, as many of these reforms did not live up to the hope invested in them.
"WE SHALL OVERCOME." President Johnson told Congress in one of the high moments of the last ten years. But we did not. Even the aspirations have been laid bare, and the nation has been against integration. With reason, they no longer trust the white commitment.
Trust of all kinds has been the worst casuallity of the frenzied decade. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger put his finger on the truth last Thursday in commenting on whether President Nixon might have alerted American forces around the world to divert attention from his drastic troubles at home. "It is a symptom of what is happening," countenance Chairman it, that it could be suspected that the United States would alert its forces for domestic reasons." The phrase "credibility gap" was unknown ten years ago.
More than any other period that comes to mind, the last decade has revived the age-old question of whether man can govern a great society without it. Are there just too many people and too few resources? Political skills that once seemed adequate no longer endure. Lyndon Johnson was a tragedy. One of his biggest challenges was Lincoln and Roosevelt, the next minute, in the firelight of Tet, he was forced to abandon any thoughts of running for another term. Richard Nixon is a worse foe than Lincoln. Only yesterday he had everything.
WHAT SETS HIS situation apart from the deep troubles presidents inevitably get into is the pervasive smell of corruption in his administration. It was one thing for President Obama to disassemble the disaster of the Supreme Court packing bill or for President Truman to ride out the storm over the firing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur or for president Kennedy to join the war effort, another thing entirely for a president to escape a suspected swamp of corruption.
After a decade of turmoil, the country surely needs a time of tranquility. With the Watergate investigations certain to continue, with inflation unattended and the recession subsiding, schoolrooms this winter, it takes a good deal of optimism to see an early end to it all.
Griff and the Unicorn
by Sokoloff
14. 2
IT&TME
Readers Respond
President Deified
To the Editor:
Throughout the entire Watergate investigation there has been a lot of self-deception and reverse logic used to defend the impict motto of many Nixon support groups. But in the end, Eric Meyer's editorial Oct. 29 is a good example of this type of ethical blindness.
Nixon's crisis at home is not contrived, as Meyer states, but is the result of his own brand of leadership—a combination of megalomania and paranoia.
The Watergate break-in can't be positively disassociated from Nixon. Scone testimony from two witnesses attributes to him the order to cover up the break-in.
Meyer, like many Americans, has a psychological need for a president who is omnipotent. The President represents, in Meyer's mind, a combination God and father figure. By virtue of the office given him by the people, Meyer seems to say, the country should acquire spiritual enlightenment that will allow him to lead the country as he sees fit, unencumbered by the misguided blessing of Congress and the court system.
Meyer says the removal of Haldeman and Ehrlichman was a power play—to regain control of the executive branch. It was merely a survival technique. The removal of Cox was another power play, he says. He asserts it is right, but his interpretation scares me.
Cox was not asked to abide by a compromise reached with the Watergate Committee, but with a translated version of the tapes. When the White House announced the compromise, "full transcripts" had been changed to read summaries." The House then sought to modify its position, promising a transcript summary combination.
Before Cox had a chance to consider the White House's new offer, he was fired.
The tuning, as Meyer points out, was beneficial to Nixon. But it was not, as Meyer suggests, a shrewd political move, at least not a shrewd move compatible with the American tradition. It more closely resembled a coup d'etat.
Cries for impaction stem not from the evidence of any investigation, but from the
naked abuse of power to thwart any significant investigation.
Don Levy
Lawrence graduate student
Evidence for Meyer
To the Editor:
I can foresee the day when Nixon, drowning in his own sea of paranoia and guilt, willfully shoot his attorney general, Robert Baldacci, who confesses and commits unspeakable crimes of violence upon Bebe Reboza. And Eric Meyer, in the purity of innocence, will still maintain that, "they (adavocates of impertinent) have no evidence against Nixon."
Point made.
Ken Stone
Omaha Sophomore
Magic Horn Mix-Up
To the Editor:
I read with some trepidation your review of the KU Children's Theatre production of "The Magic Horn," expecting as usual that your reviewer would not question it. When he was talking about, imagine my elation when your reviewer said that I had given "the best single performance, and the only one worth noting." I screamed. I turned handsprings. I run around the campus three times. I walk over to the Upposes. My little heart went nit-a-nat.
Now imagine my chagrin when I realized that your eagle-eyed but snake-eared reviewer had credited me with someone else's performance. That credit belongs to Joel Knapp, who played Udo and also the guard Bertaud (I was the tail one) to be heard). I know both Udo and I would be surprised. Mkisses who taught us the "fadine art."
I guess this means I'll have to tell my friends that I'm not worth mentioning. But after all, the play had a "simple" plot. It reviews a viewer review only six paragraphs to explain it.
Keith Pickering Freshman Bloomington, Minn
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Pro would camp Lawr comp
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MRS. ASKEW HAS suffered a nervous breakdown since the raid, and has been hospitalized three times for the nervous condition.
Giglotto, called Joey by his family and friends, is in hiding somewhere in the St. Louis area. He and his wife have rented a house in a quiet neighborhood, don't associate with their new neighbors and receive mail at another address.
The their medical bills now total $3,000, say the Askews. They owe about $2,000 for gas and accessories not covered by the sale price of the station. And there's about $1,800 in state occupation taxes and an unemployment tax of 1972 federal income taxes still owed.
At no time did the agents identify themselves, say the Gigotlos. They didn't find out who the men were until hours later at the police station, they say.
The Askew's memory of details is somewhat hazy. They do recall, though, "they, the agents, were pretty nice to us when they visited us," after that they scared us of us!
THEY WALKED THROUGH the house, looked in some closets. One said they were looking for a suspect. They didn't pull out their phone and went inside man who said his name was Ted Williams sat down on the living room couch and told us they were federal narcotics agents. He talked to us real calmly, told us the police would be there when then gave us two phone numbers to call.
one aspect of both raids which the Giglotts and Askews agree on completely is the agents' dress. "I thought they were kids," declared Donald Askew. "They could have thought maybe they'd come to rob us since I just come home with the cash from the station."
However, the hippie-looking charge is most vociferously denied by the agents, some of whom talked with the Los Angeles police and they asked that their identity not be disclosed.
They indignantly deny ransacking the Gigliotto home or forcing their way into either house. They knocked at the Gigliotto apartment, they insist, and announced themselves as policemen before entering. At the Askew home, say the agents, they met little resistance after displaying their sold federal badges.
when they entered his apartment, say the agents, Giglio was standing at the head of the stairs holding an object that looked like a gun in the dark.
The 12 agents are charged in a 17-count indictment with repeated civil rights violations and with entering homes without probable cause, search or arrest warrants, and that they acted without the knowledge of affinity of their superiors.
The agents insist, though, all their supervisors knew of their mission.
Thus, it's a strange twist of irony that the most celebrated federal narcotics controversy in years has made victims out of both policemen and mistaken suspects—neither of whom were the intended object of the law.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and exam periods and part-time courses. Second class postpaid package at Lawrence, KA 60454. Student subscription fee. Accommodations, goods, services and employment expressed are not necessarily color, creed or national origin. Opinions expressed are not necessarily the opinion of the State Board of Regents.
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