War, Not Politics

BY STEWART ALSOP WAR, NOT POLITICS WASHINGTON—The Watergate scan- and S.O. The letter to The Manchester CREEP, the stubbornly silent G. Gor- dal, it is clear by now, is different— Union Leader during the New Hamp- don Liddy seems to be the only opera- truly different, different in kind—from shire campaign accusing Senator Ed- tive to fall into this category. all the scandals that have preceded it mund Muskie of sneering at "Canucks" His closed mouth and sardonic salute in American history. It is this difference was a classic X-2 operation. So was the when he was condemned to a long jail that makes Watergate so frightening. faked telegram from President John term somehow recalled to this writer's All those other scandals—Credit Mo- Kennedy to the Saigon mission, calling, mind the magnificently childish beau bilier, the Whisky Ring, Teapot Dome, in effect, for the assassination of Diem. geste of one of the first OSS agents Sherman Adams and his vicuna coat, The burglarization of the office of in Germany. He mailed a postcard, Bobby Baker and his wheeling and Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist was es- in English, to Adolf Hitler, Wilhelm- dealing—were motivated by greed, an sentially an S.I. operation, as was the strasse, Berlin: "Dear Hitler: F--- you. emotion effortlessly understood by al- much earlier attempted burglarization An American IN GERMANY." most all of us. But although the Nixon of the office of the doctor who was In wartime, G. Gordon Liddy would campaign was awash with hundred- treating John Kennedy for Addison's have been festooned with decorations dollar bills, none of the Watergate men disease. If either had been successful, rather than slapped into jail. As so of- seems to have stuffed large quantities it would no doubt have been used as ten in wartime, his stubborn silence into his pockets. They seem to have part of a major morale operation. did no good. As the pressure mounted, been motivated by more complex emo- other members of the reseau cracked— tions—by a certain self-righteousness, MORALE OPERATIONS James McCord, Jeb Stuart Magruder, by fear, by a special kind of political- The operation in which CREEP ar- John Dean III. Perhaps CREEP should ideological hatred. ranged to flood the White House with have distributed some death pills as a As a result, the people who were telegrams supporting the President's Vi- precaution. running the President's election cam- etnamese policy was of course a morale The Watergate operation has provid- paign were not really running the kind operation. (It might have been named ed a giggle or two, as OSS did in its of campaign this country has known Operation Gub-Gub, after the pig in day. But Watergate is a deadly serious since the party system was founded. "Doctor Dolittle's Post Office" who, to business all the same, as deadly and as They were not practicing politics. They bolster his own morale, sent himself serious as this reporter has seen in a were making war, a special kind of war. numerous letters, filled with banana quarter century of covering politics. The kind of war they were making has peels.) Another morale operation was For Watergate has been an attempt to been made between nations for a long that in which homosexuals were alleg- alter the very nature of the ancient time now, and it is still being made. But edly hired to give ostentatious support American political system. this special kind of war has not before to Senator McGovern. been made within a nation, certainly The basic mission of Donald H. Se- TERRIFYING INNOVATION not within this nation. gretti, whose services were generous- Politicians have played tricks on each ly rewarded by Mr. Nixon's private other since politics was invented. But FROM OSS TO CREEP lawyer, Herbert W. Kalmbach, was to this is not politics; this is war. The spiritual ancestor of the Com- head an intelligence network—what the The special form of warfare waged mittee to Re-elect the President, better French and many intelligence officers by OSS against Adolf Hitler was moral- known as CREEP, is OSS. Gen. Wil- call a reseau. Segretti was clearly also ly justified by the moral necessity to liam Donovan's Office of Strategic expected to do some morale opera- destroy Nazism. The more limited and Services, in which this writer served tions work. circumspect form of warfare waged by for a while, was this country's first se- One even recognizes in the people the CIA against the KGB, and vice rious attempt to wage war by covert who have surfaced in CREEP some of versa, is also justified by hard necessity. and unconventional means. OSS was the same sort of people as in wartime But to transfer such secret-service tech- patterned on the British Secret Serv- OSS. There were many brave and good niques, on an obviously planned and or- ices, and the Central Intelligence men in OSS, as well as many creeps. ganized basis, to the internal American Agency has in turn been patterned on Curiously enough, in another time, G. political process is a genuinely terrify- OSS. In fact, all the world's secret Gordon Liddy would have been regard- ing innovation. services, including Russia's KGB, have ed as among the bravest and the best. Any person proven to have used four main missions. Like all secret services, OSS was these techniques should not only be In OSS they were called S.I. (Secret compartmentalized, so that if one oper- punished by the law; he should be Intelligence), S.O. (Secret Opera- ative was captured and broken by the banned forever from participation in tions), M.O. (Morale Operations) and Gestapo, for example, he could not be- American politics. Every sensible Amer- X-2 (Black Propaganda—in the KGB tray the whole reseau. Agents who ican—including, as he has said in a it is called "Department of Disinforma- went behind the lines in Europe were fine speech, George McGovern—deeply tion"). These branches overlapped and given "death pills," to give them an op- hopes that Richard M. Nixon is not competed bitterly, of course. But in tion to being broken by the Gestapo. such a person. But if the Niagara of ev- general, all OSS covert operations fitted In all secret services, it has to be as- idence, which will surely now result into one category or another. sumed that any captured agent can in from the breaking of the CREEP re- So did CREEP's covert operations. time be broken. But there were a few— seau, conclusively proves the contrary, The ludicrously bungled Watergate a very few—captured OSS agents who Mr. Nixon, who has been a good Presi- break-in itself, for example, was a clas- remained unbreakable, and they were dent in many ways, must resign, or be sic combined operation between S.I. regarded as true heroes. In the case of impeached. 132 Newsweek, May 14, 1973 L'S o 4,5-g Po s -r tv, A- ,2-• 73 e p es.r x R Ca .

Load more