The Company

Back in the 70's I read most of the watergate related books and novels. This one was the most memorable of them all. Even the two Woodward and Bernstein books didn't seem to have any answers about what really happened. The nixon was pure evil versions don't wash. This book was also made into a movie. Until we got the book Silent Coup, this fictional telling in novel form, gave us some of the best incite into the many questions raised in other books. The book gives a CIA based story of what may have happened, and I see only minor conflicts with Silent Coupe.Time has so distorted what happened then, but it is important to understand what happened and the political motives to get nixon. Certainly Dean is no longer the hero, some believed him to be.

A month ago I was watching a presentation on C-SPAN about Presidential records. Apparently a company claims it has the technology to erase the 18 1/2 minute gap on one of the Nixon Watergate tapes. I don't know if we'll ever hear the contents of that tape, but if we do I'll be full of curioristy and fear.John Ehrlichman served as Nixon's top domestic policy advisor and served jail time as a result of the Watergate scandal. A few years after he came out of prison he wrote this novel, which gives one of the most fascinating portraits of the Nixon administration and comes closest to telling the truth about Watergate then any memior or third hand historian's account ever has.Nixon resigned from the Presidency a day after a Presidential tape was released that revealed that he obstructed justice and engaged in cover-up. The lies of Nixon have been well documented and he has been tarnished over the years. Nixon told his lawyers at the time that he was not engaging in cover-up to protect himself, but to protect "national security." He repeated that line until the day he died.Although Watergate would never have happened if it wasn't for Nixon, he was not lying when he said that he the cover-up was to protect "national security." That is why he was able to obstruct justice by getting the CIA to tell the FBI to stop investigating the Watergate break in and the burglars.But what was being kept secret under the name of "national security?"Part of the answer is on Chapter One of H.R. Hadleman's book The Ends of Power. The rest of the answer is in this novel. If you read this novel you'll understand the secret behind two of the greatest crimes of the 1960's and you'll be shocked.There are some truths that simply can't be written down as facts or weaved into works of history. The journalist or historian who tries to deal with them will be deried as a crackpot or insane. They are too dangerous to be known. That is why no great works of nonfiction came out of Soviet Russia, but several great novels did. It is also why it would probably be best if the tape with the 18 1/2 minute gap were destroyed. Let those curious be left with this novel.And heck its a good read. Probably one of the best in the genre of White House and inside the beltway fiction - as far as storytelling and writing go. And for those who want to know what Watergate was really about this is really the only source they have. Just ask Howard Hunt. Anything else that is left is sitting in a safe of his somewhere as insurance.