Part One: Watergate
Quote: 'The American Dream has run out of gas. It longer applies the World with its images; its dreams; its fantasies. No more; its over. It supplies the World with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination; Watergate; Vietnam', British author J G Ballard, (15 November 1930-19 November, 2009), unquote, author of 'The Drowned World', 'Crash', 'High Rise', and 'Empire of the Sun'.
***
The beginning of the times before, and after, Watergate stemmed from the fallout of the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and the Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. Ever since the Cold War of the 1960s, and the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion on 17 to 20 April, 1961 in Cuba, when President Fidel Castro was the enemy of America.
The news over the Vietnam War dragging on and on filled the news. After the accusations by Joseph McCarthy, the Republican Senator from Wisconsin, went onto the podium to name names, stating that everyone was Communists. This was howled down by Edward Murrow on television. 'What proof do you have, Mr. McCarthy of shooting down people's reputations in Hollywood, and politicians?', he asked him. The Senator didn't answer, and his career was over after the scandal. In short, the paranoia, and anti-Government feelings, increased the unstable nightmare across the United States of America.
***
It was the idea of dread in Capitol Hill, and Washington, DC.
President John F. Kennedy defeated Vice-President Richard Milhous Nixon during the election of 1960. The date was: 8 of November. The 43 year old Jack Kennedy was bolder, brash, and married to Jacqueline Kennedy. And they had a family. By then, the Vietnam War was costing a lot of American soldiers' lives. It was also unpopular; it was costing millions of dollars a year. The hippies, and the anti war protestors, spilled across the streets; the angst in the country severed the ties that bound them; severed all thoughts of a New World Order.
President John F. Kennedy hired his brother, Robert Kennedy, a Democrat Senator, at the orders of their father Joseph Kennedy, Sr. Robert Kennedy was married to Ethel Kennedy. Sadly, Kennedy was also assassinated on June of 1968, after serving in New York since 1965, about three years' before.
By 1969, Senator Edward 'Teddy' Kennedy was attending a 'Kennedy party', which was for the 'Boiler Room Girls', that was off Chappaquiddick Island, off Massachusetts. The date was: Friday, April 18-Saturday, 19 April, of that year. Kennedy was friends with Mary Jo Kopechne, a political advisor to Attorney-General Robert Kennedy for four years from 1965 onward. Kopechne's death around 11:15 pm that night when Kennedy drove her home, and crashed the car into the deep lake, caused the end of the Kennedy name for a long time.
And, to close, the figure of a young boy, John F. Kennedy, Jr., at his father's funeral, spelled the end of Camelot forever.
***
In 1971, Katherine Graham, the Publisher of The Washington Post, and Ben Bradlee, the Editor of the newspaper, were irked by the controversies over the Pentagon Papers, and the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's Psychiatrist's office. Such sensitive news created a sense of distrust in the Government; distrust that created a chasm in which there was no leverage to go.
After the Post won the Court case, the freedoms of the Press to report news changed, but the scandals didn't go away. When Neil Sheehan of the New York Times broke the news about the Vietnam War, the newspaper war continued to cause mass panic for all journalists.
***
June 17, 1972
The 24 year old African-American security guard, Frank Wills, did his nightly rounds at the Democratic National Congress Building. It was a place he went regularly into; it wasn't full of the National Army Corps, or had the military influence of Fort Leavenworth County, in Kansas. The irrational behavior of American soldiers over Vietnam was terrible once they came home. People threw food at them, and protestors were arrested by the police. Such feelings of dread was happening since the 1960's...and spilled into the 1970's. Riots of a violent nature was part and parcel of the decade; riots were common after the deaths of several black men in Mississippi by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964. The decade was notable for the assassinations of Malcolm X; the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.; President John F. Kennedy; and Attorney-General Robert Kennedy.
Willis saw the tape that was off the door.
He grabbed the flashlight, and went inside.
'This is Frank Wills. I am at the Democratic National Congress Building in Washington, DC. There's evidence of a break-in. Can you send police officers here?', he asked to his boss.
'Yes, Frank. What's going on?'.
'I don't know. But it's weird'.
And he waited for the police to arrive.
***
Bob Woodward was in the Washington Post office. He had been home in bed when the call came; he was asleep since last night became full of stories about President Nixon's angry outbursts. 'What happened, Ben?', he asked. 'There's been a break-in at the DNC Building in Washington, DC. It's all over the six o'clock morning news', Ben answered.
'Who called it in?'.
'Frank Willis. A guard', Ben said.
'This is insane'.
'I want you on the story'.
'Sure, I'll do the best job possible'.
***
Carl Bernstein smoked.
He gazed at the typewriter.
He watched the Bob Woodward.
'What do you think of the break-in?'.
'An inside job', Carl said.
'What have you got?'.
'Look, this is my story'.
'Ben and Katherine want me to get someone with experience'.
'The point is you're here because of me'.
'Orders from the Boss, Ben Bradlee'.
'I figured that. Okay, what about the Kennedys?', Carl asked him.
'The President doesn't like the President, John Kennedy', Bob Woodward answered. He saw the picture of him in the Oval Office when he saw the newspaper article on Camelot; he knew America had fell down a deep chasm when the two Kennedy brothers died in 1963, and 1968 respectively.
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