MIchael Winship: 40 Years After Watergate, It's Almost

Impossible to hold the Government accountable. At moments, The Lessons of Watergate conference, held a couple of weeks ago in Washington, DC by a citizen's lobby Common Cause, was a little like that two man roadshow, retired baseball players Bill Buckner and Mookie Wilson have been touring. In it, they retell the story of the catastrophic moment, during the bottom of the last inning of game six of the 1986 World Series, when the Mets' Wilson hit an easy ground ball toward Buckner of the Red Sox, who haplessly let it roll between his legs. That notorious error ultimately cost Boston the championship. As The New Yorker magazine's Reeves Wiedeman wrote of the players' joint public appearance, "It is as if Custer and Sitting Bull agreed to deconstruct Little Bighorn." Or those World War II reunions, where aging Army Air Corps men meet the Luftwaffe pilots who tried to shoot them down over Bremen. So, too, in Washington, four decades after the Watergate break in scandal that led to the downfall of President Richard Nixon. Up on stage, was Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, one of the first victims of Nixon's infamous plumbers, the burglars who went skulking into the night, to attempt illegal break ins, including one at the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist. I want to add something to the history here, that I've never told, Ellberg said, then asked. Is Alex Butterfield still alive? A voice shouted from a corner of the room, I'm over here. And sure enough, it was Alexander Butterfield, former deputy to Nixon chief of staff HR Bob Haldeman, and a pivotal, if accidental notable in the Watergate saga. In July 1973, Butterfield let slip to the Senate Watergate committee, that Nixon made secret audio tapes of all his meetings at the White House, a revelation that cracked the scandal wide open. We never did hear the story Ellsberg wanted to tell, he decided he needed to clear it with Butterfield before he went public. The Common Cause event was filled with such slightly surreal Moments, kind of like a Comic Con for history buffs and policy wonks. Just moments before Ellsberg spoke, I had been chatting with former Brooklyn Congresswoman Liz Holtzman, when Butterfield walked over, introduced himself, and told Holtzman, I was in love with you, even when I was at the White House. Holtzman was a prominent member of the House Judiciary Committee, that in July 1974 passed three articles of impeachment against Nixon. He resigned less than two weeks later.