I dodged most of the last few months of my university classes to see it. I sensed – as a journalist-in-training in the early 1970s – that reality was more important than theory. So, we all crowded into a student lounge at Toronto Metropolitan University (then Ryerson) to watch the daily TV Senate Committee hearings into connections between the Watergate break-in and then president Richard Nixon.
I specifically remember Committee Chair Sen. Sam Ervin sparring with Nixon’s then White House adviser John Ehrlichman.
“The President seems to extend executive privilege way out past the atmosphere,” Ervin said later. “What he says is executive privilege, is nothing but executive poppycock.”
For those who don’t recall, the U.S. Senate hearings resulted when evidence published by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post revealed that the Nixon administration had tried to cover up its involvement in the June 17, 1972, burglary of Democratic Party documents from their headquarters in Washington, D.C., the Watergate Office Building.
What made the Senate Watergate Committee hearings necessary, in part, were Nixon’s repeated attempts to cover up the truth, label the media as “enemies of the state” and fire those who didn’t cooperate in the cover-up. For example, Nixon attempted to have the CIA block the FBI’s investigation. He tried to discredit Judge John Sirica’s initial hearings. He tried to keep his tape-recorded Oval Office conversations from going public.
All Nixon’s attempts to hide truth were revealed by FBI investigators and Senate lawmakers that summer of 1973.
It occurs to me that the Ford government ought to study the history of the Watergate scandal as a primer for what not to do in a crisis of truth and revelation. Throughout Premier Ford’s mishandling of the protected Greenbelt land swap, he has denied knowledge or understanding of the actions taken by his former housing minister Steve Clark and Clark’s political appointee Ryan Amato.
When outed on August 9 by then auditor general Bonnie Lysyk’s criticism that “the process was biased in favour of certain developers and landowners … (who) could ultimately see more than a collective $8.3 billion increase to the value of their properties,” Ford said he’d work with Clark to fix the process.
That’s kind of like Nixon turning to H.R. Haldiman, John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell, “the White House plumbers,” to plug the Watergate leaks.
When Lysyk’s report stated that the Ford government’s selection process “was not publicly transparent, objective or well-informed, and was inconsistent with the vision, goals and processes of the Greenbelt Plan,” Ryan Amato handed in his resignation.
Media later reported that Amato was questioned by the Integrity Commissioner David Wake, who charged the Ford government with failing “to oversee the process by which lands in the Greenbelt were selected for development,” which Amato admitted in interview with Wake.
For me, that so parallels the moment in the Watergate investigation when John Dean, Nixon’s White House counsel turned state’s evidence cooperating with U.S. attorneys revealing to them that the White House plumbers were implicated in the cover-up. Nixon then demanded Haldeman’s and Ehrlichman’s resignations. They were later indicted, convicted and sentenced to prison.
Then, last week, at another of their doubling-down press conferences, Premier Ford and Paul Calandra, the new housing minister, announced a completely “new and transparent” review of the Greenbelt land acquisition process, but did not reveal its criteria.
Within 24 hours, however, the new minister did reveal the criteria; he said he’d review the entire process and redo it. Then, he added one crucial criterion – not only might he subtract swapped Greenbelt lands available for development, but he might also add more Greenbelt land available for developers.
Reminds me of the moment in the Watergate scandal, when Nixon appointed a new attorney general, Elliot Richardson, gave him the authority to designate special counsel for the Watergate investigation, and told him he could operate completely independently of regular Justice Department jurisdiction.
Well, even that scam couldn’t hide the truth. Next, Nixon’s secret Oval Office audio tapes were revealed, and the president’s whole house of cards cover-up collapsed. Nixon was about to be impeached, when he resigned August 8, 1974, claiming, “I am not a crook!”
Yes, Premier Ford, Minister Calandra, Minister Bethlanfalvy, we the people agree we need a full-fledged review of the Conservavtive government’s “process” for withdrawing lands from the protected Greenbelt.
However, we the people believe the only honest, comprehensive and credible review left is one not led by you, but by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
After all the Ford Conservatives’ apparent deceit on the Grenbelt file, that’s the only transparent review any of us is prepared to trust.