NIXON’S A.G. REDUX
WHEN THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked Robert Novak to review my book, The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate (“Big Bad John,” May 26), I doubt they knew that the syndicated columnist, long and rightly a respected figure, has nurtured an animus toward John Mitchell that predates his service as attorney general; that Novak claimed Mitchell “very nearly proved fatal” to Richard Nixon’s victorious presidential campaign of 1968, which campaign Mitchell, in fact, managed; that Novak publicly blamed the attorney general for fostering “national disunity”; or that he used his column, as early as 1970, to clamor for Mitchell’s head.
Even I, however, was surprised by the confused logic and erroneous assertions of fact that plagued Novak’s review. What to make, for example, of Novak’s argument that Mitchell, with his 1971 prediction that the country was moving to the right, “was feeding Nixon’s worst prejudices”? Was Mitchell’s prophecy not correct? Are all those who have welcomed this movement “prejudiced”? And hasn’t the enlargement of the right since 1968, been, on the whole, rather good to Bob Novak?
Similarly, Novak argues that the much-maligned Mitchell “deserves his reputation,” even while conceding: “Rosen makes a convincing case that perjured testimony . . . formed the basis of the case that made Mitchell ‘the highest-ranking government official ever to serve [prison] time.'” Since Mitchell’s bad reputation derives chiefly, if not wholly, from his criminal convictions in Watergate, how can that reputation be “deserved” when it was created, as Novak acknowledges, by men bearing false witness? Consider, too, that Novak’s last review of a major biography in these pages, in November 2007, bore the headline: “McCarthy = Bad: But the truth is more complicated.” Presumably, Novak believes Joseph McCarthy to be a worthier subject of principled revisionism than the attorney general who desegregated the southern school system.
Then Novak accuses me of posing, but never addressing, two questions: about the role the CIA played in Watergate, and the connection between Nixon’s foreign policy and ultimate fate. In fact, The Strong Man describes in detail (pp. 280-285) how CIA director Richard Helms used at least three different men to neutralize Gordon Liddy and the Plumbers in the Ellsberg and Watergate missions; and chronicles in depth (pp. 168-176) the internal espionage committed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the relationship between that episode and one of its key players, Alexander Haig, to Watergate.
I don’t know how Novak missed these passages, but Sollozzo’s lament in The Godfather–“The don, rest in peace, was slippin'”–comes to mind.
Finally, there is Novak’s unpardonable revelation, at the outset of his review, of the ending to my 609-page book, indeed his reproduction of the closing sentences. This he does for the purpose of harrumphing that the anecdote related therein–attested to by two sources, not just the one Novak mentioned–cannot possibly be true because, he, Novak, never heard about it “in gossipy Washington during the past forty-eight years.” It is an exceptional brand of solipsism when someone asserts that an event could not have happened because he, personally, in his travels through “gossipy Washington,” didn’t witness it; but to give away the surprise ending of a book to a readership, such as THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s, that might actually be disposed to purchase said book is an act of bad manners, or worse still, bad faith. In all, “The Prince of Darkness” has not been this instructive on the subject of morality and ethics–his own, chiefly–since the outing of Valerie Plame.
JAMES ROSEN
Washington, D.C.
ROBERT NOVAK RESPONDS: I am sorry that James Rosen is so upset with a review that praised his “unfailingly honest reportage” in writing “an engrossing account” of the Nixon years. We obviously disagree on the merits of John Mitchell.
I feel I must respond to Rosen’s allegation that I “missed” passages in the book that addressed the questions raised in its prologue: whether “the CIA and the intelligence community” played a “role” in Watergate and whether “Nixon and his men” paid a price for détente with the Soviet Union and rapprochement with Communist China. He cites two sections in the 609-page book (one of six pages and the other of nine pages). In fact, they do not address the questions Rosen claims they do. The six-page section details the well-known CIA connections of the Watergate burglars and provides evidence only of the failed White House effort to pin the blame on the CIA. Rosen writes that “the role of CIA in the collapse of the Nixon presidency” was “a mystery that bedeviled Mitchell to his grave.” The nine-page section deals with the espionage operation against President Nixon performed by Adm. Thomas Moorer, and never connects it with Watergate, much less retribution for Nixon’s Soviet and China policies.
I was disappointed by Rosen’s attack on my “morality” and “ethics” for relating the closing anecdote in his book. Unlike a suspense novel, a biography never contains a surprise ending that the reviewer is constrained from revealing.
