Michael Kranish, writing for the Boston Globe has an interesting article on Fred Thompson entitled Not all would put a heroic sheen on Thompson’s Watergate role. Thompson served as staff counsel for the Senate Republicans during the Watergate hearings. Without authority to do so, Thompson apparently tipped off the White House that the Senate committee knew about the administration’s taping system and would be making the information public. “It was one of many Thompson leaks to the Nixon team, according to a former investigator for Democrats on the committee, Scott Armstrong , who remains upset at Thompson’s actions.” Thompson apparently dodged the question when asked this week about his role as a leaker to the Nixon administration.
In a bit of editorializing, the article says that Thompson’s support of Nixon puts in context his support of Bush’s special treatment of Scooter Libby. Thompson is on the board of Scooter’s legal defense fund which apparently has something like $5 million.
Oops! Turns out the Globe story is full of holes:
http://race42008.com/2007/07/05/time-to-put-an-end-to-the-fred-thompsonnixon-mole-party/#comment-128650
Thompson’s call to inform the White House lawyers that the committee had knowledge of the tapes turns out to be nothing as sinister as the Globe reports.
Anyone who know anything about the law understands the concept of “discovery.”
Thompson to Buzhardt: “‘The committee is aware of the fact that every conversation in the White House is on tape. I know you realize the significance of that. It’s not my place to give you advice, but I think that if I were you I’d start making plans immediately to get those tapes together and get them up here as soon as possible.’
There was a short pause. Then Buzhardt said, ‘Well, I think that is significant, if it is true. We’ll get on that tomarrow.'”
Also, Armstrong, the main source for the Globe story, admitted to leaking and falsifying information: “After Rolling Stone Magazine published an article that characterized almost every member of the staff as incompetent or worse, Armstrong admitted to Sam Dash that he had provided information for that article.”
This is all in Fred’s Book, and it’s all been public information for more than 30 years.
Molehills.
Now Sturm is going to have to discredit Thompson’s lobbying on behalf of pro-choice group, then having his campaign lie about it. Should be fun.