Thread by @maxbergmann

The Woodward book for the Trump era isn’t Fear; it’s “Final Days” from 1976. I just finished it and it has a ton of lessons for the present day, especially for WH reporters on the pitfalls of access journalism when covering a criminal conspiracy. THREAD 1/ amazon.com/Final-Days-Bob…

https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1052236644840030209

What is clear is that Nixon White House staff at the end were BOTH totally complicit in covering for Nixon and were totally in the dark about what happened. That sounds contradictory b/c it is. 2/

This is b/c WH staff at the end weren’t involved in the Watergate conspiracy so they didn’t actually know what happened. Nor were they interested in knowing. 3/

Nixon’s new COS Haig and Nixon’s lawyers were actively orchestrating a concerted campaign to protect Nixon, to buy time, to cover up, to stonewall and attack the investigation, to keep the GOP on side and attack Dem-led impeachment hearings. 4/

In the WH staffers defense, they were their to serve the POTUS! Just so happened the POTUS was a crook! But they were all working really hard to protect the POTUS.

The impact of this delayed Nixon’s fall; it kept the GOP on-side, as well as much of the public. 5/

It also... helped convince much of the press that maybe there was nothing to this Watergate thing...

This is the big lesson for WH reporters and those relying on info from “WH insiders.” 6/

In the case of Watergate, the WH insiders were either:

1. Totally ignorant of what happened.
2. Totally suspected Nixon did it, but didn’t actually “know” or want to know.

The only one in the WH that knew what happened was ... Nixon. 7/

Why are WH staffers ignorant? B/C you don’t include a lot of people in a criminal conspiracy! Only a few actually know what transpired. That’s those directly involved in the conspiracy! So after Haldamen/Erlichmen/Dean left, the new team wasn’t brought up to speed. 8/

Haig deliberately stayed ignorant. As did Nixon’s lawyers. They never asked the President what happened! They tried to avoid listening to the tapes! They weren’t legally liable then for obstructing justice. 9/

So the sources for much of the press reporting - don’t actually have any idea of what happened. Worse they are inclined to believe the President who they are working for. That this is just all lib hysteria, etc. 10/

So imagine a reporter gets 2 WH sources: the CoS and POTUS’ lawyer. That’s great access! Maybe it w/d tell you about WH strategy to deal w/ investig, but nothing about what actually happened. The COS and WH lawyers were useless sources to understand what happened on Watergate 11/

Same is true now. The “insider” sources in the WH probably don’t actually know anything.

My guess is John Kelly has made himself deliberately ignorant. Likely Trump’s lawyers too. Their client assures them nothing happened; they don’t ask any more questions. 12/

In turn, they’re working hard to get this go away. Stonewalling the investigation, buying time, running political attacks vs. Mueller/Rosenstein in coord w/ members of the House. They’re just “serving” the POTUS. But really they’re complicit in defacto obstruction of justice. 13/

Another point, Nixon’s staff thought they were going to survive Watergate. Why? B/c they didn’t know what happened, and even if they suspected they didn’t think the “smoking gun” w/d come forth. IOW they didn’t really care if he actually did it, only if he got caught. 14/

Lastly, we applaud the bipartisanship of the GOP... but they broke very very late. Defected only when tapes came out and it became clear he was going down. Nixon even had rally in AZ w/ GOP deleg shortly before resigning. Basically tapes broke the floodgates. 15/

Lesson here is that few thought Nixon was going down. So everyone stuck w/ him. When the equation changed, the GOP broke vs. him. If Republicans break vs. Trump, it will happen suddenly and abruptly. END