English

It Didnt Start With Watergate

The more one reads, the more one comes to the author's conclusion that the sins of Nixon were greatly overshadowed by those of his predecessors. There is no lack of examples. For instance, Lasky tells of how Kennedy used the Internal Revenue Service against Nixon and his campaign manager, Robert Finch, after his 1960 election victory. More vicious was the Kennedy use of the Federal Communications Commission, as well as the IRS, to silence right-wing organizations and spokesmen in preparation for the 1964 election—all in a surreptitious manner that would have made latter-day "plumbers" and money launderers proud. "The irony," Lasky writes, "is that the IRS witch-hunt, particularly as it was concentrated against right-wing dissenters, was applauded by the very same people who later were to raise unshirted hell when the Nixon administration sought to use the same techniques to 'contain'…the Black Panthers, the Weathermen and other violence prone New Left groups." And Kennedy did not limit himself to abusing only right-wing radio commentators. Anyone who dared criticize Camelot found himself on the White House "enemies list" of that day. Even Washington Post Editor and sometime-Kennedy

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