In September 1972, approximately six weeks after the entry of “burglars” in the hotel “Watergate”, Carl Bernstein (Carl Bernstein) and Bob Woodward (Bob Woodward) came to confer a snack bar with vending machines in the old the Washington office of the newspaper The Washington Post on Sixteenth street. Two reporters met there almost daily, and then passed to the editorial office your new sensational materials. This meeting was especially exciting. They finally found proof that John Mitchell (John Mitchell), a former attorney General under Richard Nixon (Richard Nixon) and the Chairman of his campaign headquarters to re-election for a second term, controlled a secret Fund that paid for “hacking”.
As I told Bernstein, from the excitement of his shiver — since this never happened. He dropped a coin in the machine to drink coffee, and, turning to Woodward, said, “God, for a President that is exactly the impeachment.”
Woodward agreed, and they decided that they will never use “the word “and”,” as they called it, because I didn’t want anyone to think that they had some political purpose. “What measures have been taken based on this information — it was not our business,” said Bernstein. They did not include this episode in the cafeteria in his book “All the President’s men” (All the President’s Men), which was published in June 1974 in the midst of hearings in the House of representatives on the impeachment.
In July of that year, the Supreme Court forced Nixon to present the result of the tape recordings, which was called the “Smoking gun” (i.e., “Smoking gun” — approx. TRANS.) and served as proof that Nixon ordered the head of his administration, Bob Haldeman (Harry Robbins Haldeman) brokered by the CIA to force the FBI to stop investigating the “Watergate affair”. It was a clear obstruction and the reason for the fact that Republicans hold key positions on Capitol hill, refused to support Nixon. In August — in the face of certain impeachment and removal from office — Nixon resigned.
After over a week there were sensational reports of attempts by Donald trump to obstruct the FBI investigation against members of his election headquarters, I asked Bernstein about whether it seems to him that we had reached a turning point in 1972 or 1974.
“We reached the limit, when appropriate, when there is every reason to discuss the issue of obstruction of justice,” he said.
Chronology of actions trump in response to the inquiry is revelatory in nature. 26 Jan acting attorney General Sally Yates (Sally Yates) reported the administration of the President, the trump adviser for national security, Michael Flynn (as Michael Flynn) lied to officials about her talks with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. The next day, trump demanded that the FBI Director James Komi (James Comey) to swear allegiance to him, the Komi refused to do.
13 Feb Flynn resigned — after The Washington Post reported that he lied to the Vice-President Mike Pence (Mike Pence) and others. 14 Feb trump Komi asked to stop the investigation into Flynn. Quoting trump, The Times wrote: “Hope you know how to stop it, and get it out of your case Flynn”.
March 20, Komi Republic, speaking at a hearing of the house Committee on intelligence, has testified that the FBI really is investigating “what nature had connections between people associated with the electoral headquarters of the trump, and representatives of the Russian authorities, and whether coordinated action of the electoral headquarters of Russia”. Then, as he wrote to The Washington Post, the President asked the Director of the national security Agency Mike Rogers (Mike Rogers) and the Director of National intelligence Dan Coates (Dan Coats) to make public statements about any evidence that coherence is not, and asked the representatives of the security services, would they help to close the investigation. On Tuesday, speaking at a hearing of the Senate Committee on armed forces, Coates refused to confirm or deny this message. “I do not think it appropriate to describe the content of the discussions and conversations with the President either on this topic or other topics,” he said.
In early may, as The Times said, “Komi has addressed in the Ministry of justice with a request to use additional number of prosecutors and other staff in order to expedite the ongoing FBI investigation.” The ninth of may trump fired Komi Republic, saying that he did it on the recommendation of Deputy Prosecutor General kind of Rosenstein (Rod Rosenstein). The next day in an interview with Lester Holt (Lester Holt), host of the NBC News, trump admitted that he fired Komi because dissatisfied with the investigation, “the Russian intervention” of Russia, which, according to him, is “fiction”.
On the same day tramp at the request of Vladimir Putin took the White house Sergei Kislyak and Russian foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. According to reports, during the meeting, trump said Lavrov and Kislyak that the Komi Republic — “crazy, just crazy,” adding that “Russia is faced with great pressure. This is no more”.
Now there is strong evidence that trump is trying to hide something-something that is connected with the investigation, which leads the FBI. We just don’t know what it is. In Watergate, Bernstein said, “we knew that was “hackers” that carried out a massive campaign of political espionage and sabotage to weaken the political opposition.” If you talk about trump, he continued, there are opportunities for a range of offenses: “But it’s the specific actions taken in collusion? Its financial transactions with Russian and countries of the former Soviet Empire, or the transactions of other people from his entourage? Does this apply to obstructing the investigation, as the investigation will allow to expose impermissible contact between the members of the electoral staff and the people acting in the interests of hostile foreign States and maybe including the President? While we don’t know.”
Of course, according to a number of high-ranking representatives of the security services and the Ministry of justice who have spoken publicly on this case — Yates, Komi, Rogers and former Director of National intelligence James Clapper (James Clapper) — when members of the electoral headquarters of the trump of Russia deserve serious investigation. On Tuesday, former CIA Director John Brennan (John Brennan) gave testimony at a hearing of the house Committee on intelligence, saying that he saw “intelligence material pointing to the contacts and interaction between Russian officials and Americans associated with the electoral headquarters of the trump”. He was quite concerned that he passed information to the FBI so they could investigate.
On a question of the Congressman-Republican from South Carolina Trey gowdy (Trey Gowdy) about whether he had seen “evidence of collusion, cooperation and concerted action between Donald trump and representatives of the Russian state,” Brennan did not rule out this. “I saw information and operational data that deserve to study the FBI to determine whether there is interaction or collusion, or not,” he said. According to some Republicans, the main thing in all this is that there is no evidence of collusion there. But to answer the question gowdy, we must be careful, unimpeded investigation by the FBI, Congress, and journalists — those who trump every step of the way trying to prevent.
In April, after trump refused to speak at the annual dinner of White house correspondents in Washington, Bernstein and Woodward accepted the invitation to speak before a crowd of journalists. Bernstein in honor of his longtime colleague read a list of lessons he learned from the Watergate case. And on Tuesday he told me that when covering the actions of trump’s especially important the first of these lessons.
“Almost inevitable is that excessive and unreasonable the government’s right to secrecy of his activities carries a risk — and usually it unwittingly gives what may be the true events,’ said Bernstein. — When secrecy is accompanied by a lie, then, as a rule, you get a nice reference point, the guiding thread”. He added: “Yes, of course, watch “the money goes” — look at who benefits from it. But watch out for false statements — for those who benefit from the lie.”
