In asking a High Court Judge to re-examine and review the documentation and material already available the Cabinet, and in particular the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny and the Minister for Justice and Defence, Alan Shatter are attempting to out-Nixon Nixon.
Back in early 1973, as the scandal of the Watergate Break In and Cover Up began to break, the then US President Richard M Nixon, in conjunction with his advisers John Ehrlichman and Bob Haldeman, devised a plan to get Nixon’s White House Counsel John Dean to write a report for the President on Watergate that “basically clears the President and White House staff of involvement”. Their plan was that they could cite Dean’s Report as what they had relied upon and that they could blame Dean for deceiving them.
While Dean did initially agree to go to Camp David at the President’s request to write such a report, but he soon came to realise that he was being lined up as the scapegoat and decided not to complete the report. Nixon sacked him shortly afterwards, on the same day as he announced the resignations of Ehrlichman and Haldeman.
While the Government is not asking a retired High Court Judge to become is scapegoat, it does seem to be looking to get a supposedly independent review that it determines will verify its own jaundiced version of events.
How else can we interpret the fact that while the Justice Minister was indicating how the review would operate he announced that he had decided on the review as he had received a review of the Verrimus report from RITS, a Dublin based IT security firm, that concluded that there was “no evidence at all”.
So, even as the Minister announces the review he sets out his view on what it should, if not must, conclude.
This, as with Nixon’s Dean Report, is all about attempting to draw a line under a growing political scandal rather than getting to the core of what caused it: allegations of bugging at GSOC’s premises?
Why opt for such a limited review, reporting to the Justice Minister and with Terms of Reference set by the Minister instead of an inquiry under the Commissions of Inquiry legislation?
Today’s Cabinet decision, albeit deeply flawed, runs counter to last week’s comments by both An Taoiseach and the Justice Minister and suggests either 1). A realization that the government’s spinning on the subject is not having the same impact now as it had at the start, and/or 2). Pressure from Labour members of the Cabinet growing tired of defending the Justice Minister.
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Background material on the Nixon/Dean Watergate Report
The timeline for Dean’s Watergate Report
March 20, 1973: In his conversation with chief of staff H. R. Haldeman about White House counsel John Dean’s phony “Dean Report,” which will say that no one in the White House was involved in the Watergate conspiracy, President Nixon says: “[The report] should lay a few things to rest. I didn’t do this, I didn’t do that, da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da. Haldeman didn’t do this. Ehrlichman didn’t do that. Colson didn’t do that. See?”
March 22, 1973: President Nixon tells his aides to ensure that the nation never learns of the political and financial machinations that surround the Watergate burglary from his aides under investigation: “And, uh, for that reason, I am perfectly willing to—I don’t give a sh_t what happens, I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover-up or anything else.” But he wants something on paper that he can point to and say he knew nothing about the Watergate conspiracy, and that he had ordered an internal investigation of the matter. He sends counsel John Dean to Camp David for the weekend to write the document
March 27, 1973: President Nixon orders senior aide John Ehrlichman to conduct his own “independent investigation” of the conspiracy, since White House counsel John Dean has not yet produced the results of his own “investigation”
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