BY STEWART ALSOP

WAR, NOT POLITICS

WASHINGTON—The Watergate scan- and S.O. The letter to The Manchester dal, it is clear by now, is different— CREEP, the stubbornly silent G. Gor- 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- all the scandals that have preceded it tive to fall into this category. 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 that makes Watergate so frightening. when he was condemned to a long jail faked telegram from President John term somehow recalled to this writer's All those other scandals—Credit Mo- Kennedy to the Saigon mission, calling, bilier, the Whisky Ring, Teapot Dome, mind the magnificently childish beau 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 Bobby Baker and his wheeling and in Germany. He mailed a postcard, 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 emotion effortlessly understood by al- strasse, Berlin: "Dear Hitler: F--- you. much earlier attempted burglarization An American most all of us. But although the Nixon of the office of the doctor who was IN GERMANY." campaign was awash with hundred- In wartime, G. Gordon Liddy would treating John Kennedy for Addison's have been festooned with decorations dollar bills, none of the Watergate men disease. If either had been successful, seems to have stuffed large quantities rather than slapped into jail. As so of- 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. been motivated by more complex - did no good. As the pressure mounted, tions—by a certain self-righteousness, MORALE OPERATIONS other members of the reseau cracked— James McCord, Jeb Stuart Magruder, by fear, by a special kind of political- The operation in which CREEP ar- ideological hatred. John Dean III. Perhaps CREEP should ranged to the White House with have distributed some death pills as a As a result, the people who were telegrams supporting the President's Vi- running the President's election cam- precaution. 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 of campaign this country has known ed a giggle or two, as OSS did in its 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 They were not practicing politics. They business all the same, as deadly and as 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 The kind of war they were making has quarter century of covering politics. 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- time now, and it is still being made. But alter the very nature of the ancient 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 FROM OSS TO CREEP ly rewarded by Mr. Nixon's private other since politics was invented. But lawyer, Herbert W. Kalmbach, was to The spiritual ancestor of the Com- this is not politics; this is war. head an intelligence network—what the The special form of warfare waged mittee to Re-elect the President, better French and many intelligence officers known as CREEP, is OSS. Gen. Wil- by OSS against Adolf Hitler was moral- 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- Services, in which this writer served destroy Nazism. The more limited and tions work. circumspect form of warfare waged by for a while, was this country's first se- One even recognizes in the people rious attempt to wage war by covert the CIA against the KGB, and vice 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 patterned on the British Secret Serv- But to transfer such secret-service tech- 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. Agency has in turn been patterned on ganized basis, to the internal American 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- services, including Russia's KGB, have ing innovation. ed as among the bravest and the best. Any person proven to have used four main missions. Like all secret services, OSS was In OSS they were called S.I. (Secret these techniques should not only be 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 tions), M.O. (Morale Operations) and banned forever from participation in 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 it is called "Department of Disinforma- ican—including, as he has said in a 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- competed bitterly, of course. But in hopes that Richard M. Nixon is not 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- into one category or another. idence, which will surely now result 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— The ludicrously bungled Watergate seau, conclusively proves the contrary, 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 sic combined operation between dent in many ways, must resign, or be 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