Letter from Washington

The most unfinished of the many unfinished scandals is the one involving the military spying on the White House. Thus far the defense offered by the Pentagon high command—especially by Admiral Thomas Moorer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—is a familiar one: John Dean did it. Well, not the real John Dean. A surrogate. A “John Dean figure.” The busy and important men who received the documents stolen from the White House were too busy with important matters (winning the peace, etc.) to pay much attention to where they came from. And Henry Kissinger, from whom the documents were stolen, is siding with the Pentagon brass. He says that the young Navy yeoman who did the stealing (he was assigned as a military liaison to Kissinger’s National Security Council) was just “an eager beaver” trying to please his military superiors. The yeoman agrees, sort of: he says he was trying to please the admirals who, he says, trained him in spying and asked him to spy on Kissinger. At this point, two things are clear. Either the yeoman or an admiral has committed perjury in giving sworn testimony about all this to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The appointment of Dean Burch— longtime friend of Barry Goldwater, former Goldwater aide, GOP National Chairman during the 1964 campaign— is another White House attempt to keep conservatives (as they say in White House lingo) “on the reservation.” Burch, stepping down as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, will become a counselor to the President, with Cabinet rank. It is not clear exactly what he will have to do.

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The most unfinished of the many unfinished scandals is the one involving the military spying on the White House. Thus far the defense offered by the Pentagon high command—especially by Admiral Thomas Moorer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—is a familiar one: John Dean did it. Well, not the real John Dean. A surrogate. A “John Dean figure.” The busy and important men who received the documents stolen from the White House were too busy with important matters (winning the peace, etc.) to pay much attention to where they came from. And Henry Kissinger, from whom the documents were stolen, is siding with the Pentagon brass. He says that the young Navy yeoman who did the stealing (he was assigned as a military liaison to Kissinger’s National Security Council) was just “an eager beaver” trying to please his military superiors. The yeoman agrees, sort of: he says he was trying to please the admirals who, he says, trained him in spying and asked him to spy on Kissinger. At this point, two things are clear. Either the yeoman or an admiral has committed perjury in giving sworn testimony about all this to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The appointment of Dean Burch— longtime friend of Barry Goldwater, former Goldwater aide, GOP National Chairman during the 1964 campaign— is another White House attempt to keep conservatives (as they say in White House lingo) “on the reservation.” Burch, stepping down as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, will become a counselor to the President, with Cabinet rank. It is not clear exactly what he will have to do.