The latest installment of TIME magazine’s “10 Questions” features former Nixon aide John Dean. Read the whole piece, and you’ll note that Dean appears to have little good to say about either his former boss or the Bush administration.
But one excerpt in particular attracted this observer’s attention.
Does the case of Edward Snowden and NSA surveillance show that post-Watergate limits on the presidency are working or that they’re not working?
I find interesting the comparison between Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg, [whose Pentagon Papers leak] provoked so much of Nixon’s anger and effort to deal with leaks. The Obama Administration has been much more aggressive than [Nixon’s] in dealing with leaks.
Nixon personally authorized the Brookings Institution burglaries and other crimes in response to Ellsberg’s leak.
Nixon only prosecuted one leaker … What Obama has done more aggressively than Nixon and more aggressively than Bush even is prosecute journalists and leakers … I’m sure Nixon is smiling.
The Nixon-Obama comparison should surprise no one who visits this forum regularly.
