HOW THE DEEP STATE TOOK DOWN NIXON:

Since the publication of Secret Agenda, books such as Len Colodny’s and Robert Gettlin’s Silent Coup (1991), James Rosen’s The Strong Man (2008), and Geoff Shepard’s The Real Watergate Scandal (2015) and The Nixon Conspiracy (2021) have drawn on declassified documents and unsealed judicial and congressional hearings to help us better understand what really happened. Although these authors disagree about many details, they agree that Nixon was removed from office not because he endangered the constitutional order, but because his bureaucratic and political enemies plotted successfully against him. And while scholars shy away from endorsing some of the more dramatic claims that have been made over the years, the best of them understand Watergate not in terms of the conventional narrative, but as an institutional “conflict” in which Nixon was the most important casualty. Nixon had to go—not because of a bungled break-in, but because he challenged the national-security state.

Thanks to the revelations concerning Felt, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s role in Nixon’s downfall is better understood. The Central Intelligence Agency’s role, however, remains mysterious. It was only one of several US intelligence agencies spying on Nixon and his officials, but Langley’s role in Watergate set it apart. As Hougan shows, it infiltrated and sabotaged “The Plumbers,” the covert unit responsible for the Watergate burglaries, run by several figures in Nixon’s re-election campaign committee with connections to the White House. It was the CIA that set in motion the events that forced Nixon from the presidency.

The CIA, the military, and other agencies spied on the White House because Nixon the president acted differently than Nixon the politician. As congressman, senator, and vice president, Nixon was a dyed-in-the-wool Cold Warrior. While this position earned him the ire of media and academic elites, especially when he exposed the treason of their darling Alger Hiss, anti-Communism was at the time a fairly conventional position within military and intelligence circles. In backing Nixon in 1968, his supporters in the military and intelligence communities thought they were getting a hawk who would stop trying to micromanage the Vietnam War and national security from the White House.

Nixon had other ideas.

Read the whole thing.