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Notes -
I think the podcast was this one:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/06/podcast-everything-you-know-about-watergate-is-wrong-part-1.php
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/07/podcast-everything-you-know-about-watergate-is-wrong-part-2.php
Shepard covers this in chapter 11 of his book, available on libgen, if you are interested.
From reading Caro's LBJ series, Flynn's book on FDR, skimming Lasky's "It didn't start at Watergate", reading an establishment history of the FBI, etc, it seems like there was a much higher-level of criminality and dirty tricks in politics from FDR onward than what the American people were aware of. The FBI performing break-ins, for instance, was something they had been doing for a long-time. I remember talking to a Trump-hater about how he stank of corruption due to all his dealings with foreigners -- she had simply no idea of that this kind of stuff is par for the course for any modern elite, see the Clinton Foundation, or Bush dealings with the Saudi's, etc. I suspect that Nixon, like Trump, was actually more law-abiding than average because he knew he was in less of a position to work the system in his favor. That is why Nixon did not just simply destroy the tapes early on (and he did not destroy them because he thought he was innocent and thought there was nothing incriminating on them).
This is an interesting case because under classical international law a 'neutral' country forfeits its rights of sovereignty if it cannot prevent one of the fighting powers from using it as a base of operations. USA was fully justified in entering Cambodia to get the Vietcong. However, it certainly makes me queasy to use bombing to get the Vietcong, a method of warfare with a very high rate of collateral damage, especially when that collateral damage is on peasants in a country that wanted to stay out of the war. I'm not sure what I would have done if I was President in that situation. Maybe just build a big concrete wall from the sea all the way to the Mekong at the 17th parallel?
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