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| 29/06/2005 |
| NIXON’S WHITE HOUSE & PAKISTAN: THE TILT THAT FAILED |
Paper for the State Department Conference: SOUTH ASIA IN CRISIS: United States Policy, 1961-72 (June 28-29, 2005), Loy Henderson Auditorium, U.S. Department of State, Washington D.C.
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| President Richard Nixon once expressed the regret that his presidency would be remembered for only two things – for Watergate, and for China. After his resignation in August 1974 until his death twenty years later, Nixon tried to live down the trauma of that first deception, and live up to his triumph in achieving the second. |
| The Watergate episode is in a sense the Count Dracula of U.S. politics. It can remain buried within the vault of memory for years, until suddenly it resurrects itself, as it did recently by the dramatic revelation that The Washington Post’s ‘Deep Throat’ was in fact Mr W. Mark Felt, a disgruntled senior FBI official, passed over for promotion as the FBI chief by President Nixon. |
| Watergate will always carry as many connotations as there are human minds. To Dr Henry Kissinger, who had escaped Watergate by the skin of his intellect: ‘It was a minor event that was played into a national and international tragedy by a group of very short-sighted people.’ To Chairman Mao Zedong, Watergate was ‘unnecessary’. [EXTRACT] |
| The full text has been published in WHEN BUSH COMES TO SHOVE & OTHER WRITINGS (2006). |
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| 29 June 2005 |
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| All Speeches |
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