One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon (57 page)

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Authors: Tim Weiner

Tags: #20th Century, #Best 2015 Nonfiction, #History, #Nonfiction, #Political, #Retail, #United States

BOOK: One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon

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The Supreme Court banned the warrantless wiretapping of Americans on the Monday after the Watergate break-in. The president had claimed he had an unassailable right to wiretap at will. In a unanimous decision, the Court wrote that the government had to obtain a judge’s warrant for a wiretap: “This inconvenience is justified in a free society to protect constitutional values [and to ensure] that indiscriminate wiretapping and bugging of law-abiding citizens cannot occur” (
United States v. U.S.
District Court, 407 U.S. 297 [1972], also known as the
Keith
case). The White House wiretaps also kept Kissinger in court for two decades. Morton Halperin, his aide at the NSC, sued Kissinger over the taps, seeking a formal written apology, not a financial windfall. It took until 1991, and a ruling from the Supreme Court, before Kissinger wrote that letter.

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Ten months later, to the day, Mitchell, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman were convicted of conspiracy and perjury. Each served a substantial sentence. Colson became a born-again Christian, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, went to prison, and spent most of his life as an evangelical devoted to prison reform. Additional defendants were former assistant attorney general for internal security Robert Mardian (convicted at trial but acquitted on appeal); CREEP lawyer Kenneth Parkinson (acquitted on all charges); and Haldeman aide Gordon Strachan (who won a separate trial and was found not guilty). The special prosecutor struck again on March 7: Ehrlichman, Colson, and Liddy were indicted for the Plumbers’ break-in at Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office. All were convicted. Ehrlichman, in a memoir, called that break-in the seminal Watergate episode, the one that set the stage for all that followed.

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