Willing, If Not Too Bright
Posted on | July 8, 2007
Actor and former senator Fred Thompson first became known nationally in the seventies, as a Nixon stooge:
WASHINGTON — Fred Thompson gained an image as a tough-minded investigative counsel for the Senate Watergate committee. Yet President Nixon and his top aides viewed the fellow Republican as a willing, if not too bright, ally, according to White House tapes.
Thompson, now preparing a bid for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, won fame in 1973 for asking a committee witness the bombshell question that revealed Nixon had installed hidden listening devices and taping equipment in the Oval Office.
Those tapes show Thompson played a behind-the-scenes role that was very different from his public image three decades ago. He comes across as a partisan willing to cooperate with the Nixon White House’s effort to discredit the committee’s star witness.
It was Thompson who tipped off the White House that the Senate committee knew about the tapes. They eventually cinched Nixon’s downfall in the scandal resulting from the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington and the subsequent White House cover-up…
At a hearing on July 16, Thompson asked former White House aide Alexander Butterfield: “Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?”
Butterfield’s confirmation of the recordings set off a cascade of events that led to Nixon’s resignation 13 months later.
The question made Thompson instantly famous. His political Web site - http://www.imwithfred.com“>http://www.imwithfred.com - prominently notes: “Friends in Tennessee still recall seeing the boy they’d grown up with on TV, sitting at the Senate hearing-room dais. He gained national attention for leading the line of inquiry that revealed the audio-taping system in the White House Oval Office.”
What rarely is mentioned is that Thompson knew the answer to the question before he asked it. Investigators for the committee had gotten the information out of Butterfield during hours of behind-the-scenes questioning three days earlier, on July 13.
Thompson was not present, but a Republican investigator immediately tracked him down at the Carroll Arms Hotel bar where he was meeting with a reporter. Thompson called Buzhardt over the weekend to tip off the White House that the committee knew about the tapes.
“Legalisms aside, it was inconceivable to me that the White House could withhold the tapes once their existence was made known. I believed it would be in everyone’s interest if the White House realized, before making any public statements, the probable position of both the majority and the minority of the Watergate committee,” Thompson wrote in his book.
Scott Armstrong, a Democratic investigator for the committee who was part of the Butterfield questioning, said he was outraged by Thompson’s tip-off.
“When the prosecutor discovers the smoking the gun, he’s going to be shocked to find that the deputy prosecutor called the defendant and said, ‘You’d better get rid of that gun,’” Armstrong said in an interview.
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July 8th, 2007 @ 9:39 pm
The punchline? According to Nixon, Thompson is as “dumb as hell. When Nixon groused about the choice of Thompson to ask the questions, H. R. Haldeman shrugged, “Well, we’re stuck with him.”
So yeah, keep reminding us of your halcyon years in Watergate, Fred. That’s a winner for you.