[HN Gopher] The Nixon White House plotted to assassinate a journ...
___________________________________________________________________
The Nixon White House plotted to assassinate a journalist
Author : mzs
Score : 74 points
Date : 2023-02-27 20:37 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| mcsniff wrote:
| "[...] but in the real world, you sometimes have to employ
| extreme and extralegal methods to preserve the very system whose
| laws you're violating."
|
| This is what everyone tells themselves when they flip on their
| own morals, or "it's for the greater good" with the trolley
| problem.
| tabtab wrote:
| Indeed. "Ends justify the means" is one of the biggest mis-
| rationalizations used by people in power. "We have to be
| devious to protect our people, culture, religion, system, etc."
| Often with a dose of "the other side probably cheats also".
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| We covered the prince in high school civics. It took me too
| decades to come up with an answer to the Ends Justify the
| Means. The objection is that The means are an end. How you do
| things is important in and of itself. And more important than
| just one particular thing at the moment.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| I recommend reading The Anti-Machiavel by Frederick the
| Great as a counter-argument to The Prince.
| mc32 wrote:
| Didn't one of our semi recent presidential candidates, as a
| secretary of state, ponder whether a journalist she didn't like
| could be "droned"?
|
| Is this better than Nixon?
| krapp wrote:
| >Is this better than Nixon?
|
| Assuming it's true, yes, because:
|
| 1) a Presidential candidate, which is to say a civilian who
| is not commander in chief, pondering a drone strike, which is
| not a war crime, is not equivalent to a sitting President
| acting as commander in chief ordering a war crime.
|
| 2) The guy Americans voted for instead - the "peacemaker" to
| Hillary Clinton's "warmonger" - wound up launching even more
| drone strikes than Obama anyway. Actual ones, not, you know,
| rhetorical ones.
| wpietri wrote:
| What's your source for this claim?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| It's a popular right-wing conspiracy theory based on a
| completely unsubstantiated claim by an anonymous blog
| poster.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| who said that? it's not coming up in my Google results.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| Referring to this I assume https://twitter.com/wikileaks/st
| atus/782906224937410562?s=20
|
| I haven't looked into whether it comes from a reliable
| source
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| Snopes labels it "Unproven":
|
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/julian-assange-drone-
| strik...
| jfengel wrote:
| I honestly don't expect people to have a consistent moral code.
| We never really know all of the ends, so we're just guessing
| anyway. I'm just as suspicious of "I'm going to do this
| obviously horrendous thing because my moral code says I have
| to."
|
| The ends do, sometimes, justify the means -- as best we can
| understand the ends and the means. And Richard Nixon was just a
| violent asshole, using the thinnest pretext of "the greater
| good" for his own short-term and selfish purposes.
|
| All I can hope for, morally, is for people do at least try not
| to be deliberately cruel to each other. Even that seems too
| much to ask a lot of the time.
| flandish wrote:
| > people
|
| And that's key - if _people_ can't have consistency, a system
| of government never can.
|
| Therefore _all_ governments have a nonzero chance of "evil"
| and should be, at all levels, distrusted and where
| appropriate, dismantled.
| Convolutional wrote:
| In 1976, in Washington DC, the Chilean secret service
| assassinated the wife of an American economist, as well as a
| former minister of the previous Chilean government (which had
| been overthrown in a Nixon backed military coup).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Orlando_Letel...
| bediger4000 wrote:
| This reflects poorly on the Chilean secret service, not Nixon.
| Although as noted, Nixon was very bad.
| miguelazo wrote:
| If you find this interesting, read "The Devil's Chessboard" by
| David Talbot. Nixon was highly indebted to the Dulles brothers,
| and they carried out many operations like this at home and abroad
| (including against their own-- see Frank Olson). They also looked
| the other way (if not helped facilitate) such plots that were
| carried out by foreign governments they were working with (see
| Jesus Galindez case). But let's not pretend this is only
| something that happened in the past, and would only happen in
| "Putin's Russia" today as this article's annoying preamble
| suggests.
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| Remember:
|
| 1. The prohibition War on Drugs had nothing to do with public
| health, it was a cynical plot by the Nixon admin to attack its
| perceived enemies, African-Americans and leftist hippies, using
| the establishment and media. Ehrlichman admitted it in 1994 on
| tape.
|
| https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
|
| 2. The ideological cause of the Nixon admin was recreated by
| Roger Ailes in the vehicle of Fox News. It largely accomplished
| its goals of radicalizing millions of Americans towards their
| warped views and permitted the denigration and exploitation of
| women employees along the way. I would wager most nursing homes
| play Fox News constantly and their inhabitants, both worker and
| housed tend to lean that way. It's inexplicable how many poor
| whites believe/d Nixon and Trump were their saviors.
|
| 3. Nixon's alma mater's newspaper at Whittier College found an
| old listening device https://rense.com/general20/whi.htm
|
| 4. The assassination of Fred Hampton in 1969 by the Cook County's
| State Attorney, state police, Chicago police, and the FBI (J.
| Edgar era). Surely, POTUS Nixon signed-off on it.
| https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/1/24/22244731/new-fbi-reco...
|
| 5. The first episode of the Nixon interviews drew a 45 share, the
| highest in history for a political documentary which still
| stands. The interviews has its own play and a movie, both named
| Frost/Nixon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_interviews
| flandish wrote:
| Adding to 2.:
|
| Reagan. My mother, born in 1961, adores him for some reason. I
| was born in 1979. Hell, my father has a room of trinkets
| to/about him.
|
| I'm a leftist. Reminding them he was an evil man and his wife
| was a wack-a-doo is.. fun.
| DerekL wrote:
| Title needs (2022).
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Considering all of the shady things that have since been
| conducted by "non-Nixon" White House administrations I'm just
| left wondering what recent event I'm supposed to ignore in favor
| of this piece.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why would learning a historical fact force anyone to ignore a
| current fact? The logic does not compute
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I'm not sure how to approach this question. I didn't use the
| word "force".
|
| If you're just generally wondering what I mean with my
| comment, it's that this article is talking about something
| that happened "historically" ("Nixon's White House") even
| though similar things are considered today (or I guess 2
| years ago)[0].
|
| It is an interesting story, admittedly it may not actually be
| a distraction piece, but this comment is not a good rebuttal
| to mine. Certainly the idea of diverting attention from one
| thing to another is not so nonsensical.
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/sep/27/senior-cia-
| off...
| dylan604 wrote:
| But certain information from an administration naturally
| becomes available after an amount of time after the
| administration ends. There will be new information about a
| past administration that becomes available during a
| different administration. Your comment "I'm just left
| wondering what recent event I'm supposed to ignore in favor
| of this piece" makes it sound to readers as if you're not
| capable of doing both, hence the "forced" word used by me.
|
| While media can be used as misdirection, it is not always
| so. Just because some historical information comes out does
| not mean it was done for the sole purpose of distraction
| from a current situation. Your comment definitely implies
| that was the intent. Assuming that is the only reason it is
| being released comes across as being closed minded to fit
| an agenda you have.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I believe I understand your point now. Thanks for
| clarifying.
| pessimizer wrote:
| They might wait until 2063 to tell us what happened to Michael
| Hastings, except they probably won't ever confirm their
| successes, only aborted plans and failures. It's a conspiracy
| theory to believe that the government has ever been successful at
| anything.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Just one?
| coldtea wrote:
| Just Nixon?
| bombcar wrote:
| I mean if you're reporting in the White House and they aren't
| trying to kill you are you even really doing reporting?
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| "Can't we just drone this guy?"
| rospaya wrote:
| Anyone even remotely familiar with Nixon or Kissinger won't be
| surprised.
|
| "If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his
| casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage
| canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He
| was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon
| was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his
| pants on every morning"
| consumer451 wrote:
| Nixon was quite a fellow. I recently learned that Henry Kissinger
| reversed a drunk Nixon's orders to start a nuclear war.
|
| https://www.warhistoryonline.com/cold-war/richard-nixon-nort...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _recently learned that Henry Kissinger reversed a drunk Nixon
| 's orders to start a nuclear war_
|
| It's a good, plausible story. But it's not terrifically sourced
| [1].
|
| [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north-korea-richard-
| nixon-...
| krapp wrote:
| The only part of this story that seems fishy to me is the
| part where Henry Kissinger isn't already down for mass-
| murder.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Every anecdote about Nixon has this same problem because it
| turns out his administration was full of garbage people with
| horrific moral compasses. Maybe we shouldn't be so skeptical
| of those claims though, since the verifiable stuff from the
| tapes are also pretty terrible
| boringg wrote:
| Sounds like another president I've heard of.
| TravisLS wrote:
| So tired of people on HN disparaging Warren G Harding.
|
| Seriously, though: several of the Trump campaign's
| architects (Paul Manafort, Roger Stone) got their start
| in the Nixon administration.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > (Paul Manafort, Roger Stone) got their start in the
| Nixon administration.
|
| Nixon for life apparently. Stone has a tattoo of Nixon on
| his back.
|
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/roger-stone-nixon-
| tattoo/
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-02-27 23:02 UTC)