Without Honor: Crimes of Camelot and the Impeachment of President Nixon

Zeifman was the majority counsel to the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon impeachment hearings. This book is an interesting peek into the political considerations that overrode any attempt at justice in the hanging of Richard Nixon. Zeifman is a long-time liberal Democrat who kept a detailed diary of events leading up to Nixon's resignation, and of course what he discovered in that job should have been made public at the time. Now that most liberals have adopted the theory of what Nixon did in the Watergate fiasco was worthy of his removal from office, it should come as no surprise that those same people still view JFK as a paragon of virtue when in fact the crimes he committed while in office were far worse than anything that Nixon did. Zeifman goes into great detail about how the Democrats were terrified of having to put Watergate figures on the stand as they would have had to testify how JFK and the CIA were guilty not only of illegal wiretapping of their political enemies, but also of the CIA's involvement in JFK instigated assassination attempts on Castro, and the Kennedy's involvement in ordering the death of South Vietnamese leaders. Much of this was recently published in Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA and was the reason I bought this book. Another little insight into Hillary comes from this book where Zeifman actually fired her for repeatedly lying and stealing records that were essential to a fair trial of Nixon because the documents implicated Democrats in illegal actions during the Camelot years. A really interesting book, but I can see why it went nowhere since it showed that Nixon was a petty crook compared to JFK for doing far worse things than ever occurred during the Watergate fiasco.

The material here has been hinted at in several histories of Watergate, but this book makes it plain, that Nixon impeachment became embroiled in fear of exposing the Camelot shadows. Whether the conspiracy to produce a sham enquiry was real, one can well imagine Nixon and gang sabotaging the attempt to close in on him by threatening to break any public judicial action wide open with reverse finger wagging about Kennedy's _worse_ actions, up to and including political murder. Make my day? Done.

Zeifman's inside-the-Judiciary Committeee look at the infamous Watergate scandals provides compelling first-hand knowledge that both Democrats (loyal to the Kennedys) and Republicans "stonewalled" both the investigation and the move towards the impeachment of President Nixon. The author also paints a picture of "the system" which demonstrates that it barely "worked", and dispels the triumphalist version of events presented by the mainstream media. And, for Clinton scandal-mongers (and no, I'm not someone who relies on Rush Limbaugh for information on HRC), Hillary Rodham (not yet Clinton), makes a few cameo appearances as a special sub-committe underling. Her unlawerly actions reveals that if she is not a liar, at least she has no interest in justice. Highly recommended, and should be reissued by the publisher to counter the smug self-congratualtory satisfaction of the post-Watergate era. Current history is rarely what it seems.

The haplessness of the House's investigation of the Nixon White House over the Watergate cover-up is revealed being intentional. The author, who was majority counsel to the House Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate investigation, shows that it was the result of obstruction by the very Democrats supposedly driving the investigation, done to prevent revelation of abuses of power during the Kennedy Administration that subsequently came out in the Church Hearings. Probably the best, and most poignant, aspect of the book is the tone of the diary excerpts, which reveal the author as a lawyer who believes in the Constitution deeply, and is increasingly dissillusioned by the machinations he observes. The book is both a good read and essential source material for serious students of Watergate and the resulting erosion of public confidence in elected government.