[Steely Tom]

Perhaps he was involved in so much skulduggery — legitimate skulduggery — that his ability to tell which skullduggery crossed the line was compromised.

By legitimate skullduggery I mean the countless classified projects and initiatives that any President has to sign off on almost every day. I'm thinking specifically of the Glomar Explorer project that lifted Soviet submarine K-129 off the seabed 17,000 feet down, but there were countless others that we've never found out about.

Nixon had to sign off on Glomar explorer.

[ought-six]

“Nixon had to sign off on Glomar explorer.”

Absolutely.

But I don’t think that was “skullduggery.” It was a significant intelligence coup, and Nixon would have been derelict had he opposed the mission.

It’s no different from a crashed military aircraft that had classified material or components on board: Adversaries or potential adversaries would be beating feet to that crash site to recover the secrets. We do it; Russia does it; China does it; pretty much EVERYONE does it. And, from their viewpoint, it is fully justified. That’s just how the game is played.