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Fred Thompson does not want to meet the Butter Princess. Everywhere he turns at this morning's meet-and-greet at the Minnesota State Fair, he is surrounded by hundreds of star-struck onlookers, many of them "Law & Order" fans who line up three-dozen deep for a close-up with the actor who would be president. Thompson, a sometimes reluctant campaigner, is in full movie-star mode, and has his good-ole-boy charm set on high. All the women he meets are "honey" and the men "buddy." Even dressed down in khakis and a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, he is hard to miss....

Poland's Government Silences Witnesses In Polish Watergate Scandal - In a move that will prevent Poland's Former Interior Minister and Former Chief of Police from testifying before the Polish Parliamentary Secret Services Committee tomorrow, the Polish Internal Security Agency arrested both this morning.

Fred D. Thompson rose to national prominence in the mid-1970s. As chief counsel to the Republicans on the Senate Watergate Committee, he famously asked the question that revealed the existence of the White House taping system that ultimately led to President Richard M. Nixon's resignation. But Mr. Thompson was also an active participant in the White House's efforts to deflect blame from the president and discredit his accusers, plotting strategy with Mr. Nixon's lawyers and leaking information to them. (Continued for 9 more pages)

In addition to his former role on NBC's "Law & Order" as tough-talking, gruff-but-lovable and fair District Attorney Arthur Branch, pending presidential candidate and former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee has benefited from a reputation for having served as an aggressive prosecutor while serving as minority counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee, officially known as the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, chaired by Sen. Sam Ervin, D-N.C. Thompson's own exploratory committee Web site, ImWithFred.com, even lauds this bit of his history. "He gained national attention for leading the line of inquiry that revealed the audio-taping system in the White...

A figure from the Watergate scandal who now lives in central Ohio was hospitalized today after smashing his sedan into a motorcycle, then a truck on Rt. 315, authorities said. Jeb Stuart Magruder, 72, was in serious condition at Riverside Methodist Hospital tonight, a hospital spokesman said. It's the third time in four years that Magruder, of Victorian Village, has been in trouble in Ohio.

WASHINGTON - Fred Thompson gained an image as a tough-minded investigative counsel for the Senate Watergate committee. Yet President Nixon and his top aides viewed the fellow Republican as a willing, if not too bright, ally, according to White House tapes. Thompson, now preparing a bid for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, won fame in 1973 for asking a committee witness the bombshell question that revealed Nixon had installed hidden listening devices and taping equipment in the Oval Office. Those tapes show Thompson played a behind-the-scenes role that was very different from his public image three decades ago. He comes...

WASHINGTON - Fred Thompson gained an image as a tough-minded investigative counsel for the Senate Watergate committee. Yet President Nixon and his top aides viewed the fellow Republican as a willing, if not too bright, ally, according to White House tapes. Thompson, now preparing a bid for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, won fame in 1973 for asking a committee witness the bombshell question that revealed Nixon had installed hidden listening devices and taping equipment in the Oval Office. Those tapes show Thompson played a behind-the-scenes role that was very different from his public image three decades ago. He comes...

FOR THE last six years, Vice President Dick Cheney has seized myriad opportunities to reassert the executive branch authority that he believes was unduly curtailed after the Watergate scandal. Time after time, Cheney has directly or indirectly played a role in White House efforts to aggressively expand presidential powers and limit oversight by Congress, the press and the public. He refused to reveal the participants in secret meetings he convened to come up with a national energy policy. He and his legal advisers were driving forces behind the administration's attempt to wiretap domestic calls without judicial review and to routinely...

William Hungate, a former federal judge and Missouri congressman who introduced an article of impeachment against President Richard Nixon, died Friday at age 84, his family said. Hungate, who was living in the St. Louis suburb of Town and Country, suffered complications from a June 6 surgery after he had a blood clot to the brain, they said. The Democrat represented Missouri's 9th District from November of 1964 to January of 1977. He was the Chair of the Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on criminal justice, which investigated the presidential pardon of Nixon by his successor, President Gerald Ford. It the only...

The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s, according to declassified documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden announced today that the Agency is declassifying the full 693-page file amassed on CIA's illegal activities by order of then-CIA director James Schlesinger in 1973--the so-called "family jewels." Only a few dozen heavily-censored pages of this file have previously been declassified, although multiple Freedom of Information...

With how well Fred Thompson is doing in the polls these days, you can expect lots of people to come out of the woodwork to weigh in with their attacks or accolades. Yesterday, Bob Woodward took a shot in a Washington Post online chat at Mr. Thompson's role in the Watergate hearings. Mr. Thompson is often credited with asking a question that led to the disclosure of the fact that President Nixon had installed recording devices in the Oval Office. Mr. Woodward said Mr. Thompson's role has been exaggerated... According to Raw Story: A questioner from Fairfax, Va., asked Woodward's...

Just a link, due to copyright reasons: http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070507/NEWS0206/705070376

When the old spymaster thought he was dying, his eldest son came to visit him at his home in Miami. The scourges had been constant and terrible recently: lupus, pneumonia, cancers of the jaw and prostate, gangrene, the amputation of his left leg. Long past were his years of heroic service to his country. In the CIA, he had helped to mastermind the violent removal of a duly elected leftist president in Guatemala and assisted in subterfuges that led to the murder of Che Guevara. But no longer could you see in him the suave, pipe-smoking, cocktail-party-loving clandestine operative whose...

Former Senate Republican leader Howard Baker said Friday he is urging his friend Fred Thompson, a TV actor and former U.S. senator, to run for president and is encouraging others to draft him. Among potential complications in a Thompson race is that he is good friends with McCain, a current presidential candidate. Thompson endorsed McCain for president in his 2000 bid. Baker said his wife, former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker, R-Kan., already supports McCain for president and Baker said he too might back McCain if Thompson does not run.

Heard of Watergate? Get ready for Lowellgate. On Sept. 18, 1972, the evening before the primary election during his second attempt for Congress, Kerry's brother Cameron and one Thomas Vallely, both part of his current campaign team, were arrested by Lowell police at 1:40 a.m. and charged with breaking and entering with the intent to commit larceny. The two were apprehended in the basement of a building whose door had been forced open, police said. It housed the headquarters of candidate DiFruscia. The Watergate scandal was making headlines at this time, and it was called the Lowell Watergate. "They wanted...

It is being compared to Watergate, on a much smaller scale. Two Democrats were caught on tape rifling through a Republican's desk drawer at the Legislative Office Building. For nearly five minutes, on a day late last month, after 5 o'clock, the security camera showed a man going through a desk while a second man watches. The desk belongs to Republican assistant clerk Juliana Simone. A four-day investigation concludes that this was intentional employee misconduct, but not criminal behavior. "I think I'm in the minority party and they just wanted to let me know that and that I should not...

Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein, who, along with colleague Bob Woodward, exposed the Watergate affair, has been grumbling that the Bush administration has done "far greater damage" than President Nixon. But perhaps the intrepid reporters of "All the President's Men" fame should turn their attention to a modern-day conspiracy of truly epic proportions. When Sandy Berger, national security advisor under President Clinton, was caught stealing and destroying documents from the National Archives prior to appearing before the 9/11 Commission in 2003, there was barely a peep in the Democrat-dominated mainstream media. And the near silence has continued to this...

Everette Howard Hunt, the man who helped plan the Watergate break-in and wiretapping operation, is dead at age 88, FOX News has learned... With his involvement in Watergate and the Bay of Pigs, Hunt became a magnet for conspiracy theorists of all kinds. Those researching the assassination of President John F. Kennedy began claiming in the mid-1970s that Hunt and Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis appeared in photographs dressed as tramps and being arrested by Dallas policemen near the site of the assassination on Nov. 22, 1963. Hunt vigorously contested the charges publicly and in court, and he and his second...

MIAMI - E. Howard Hunt, who helped organize the Watergate break-in that led to the greatest scandal in American political history and the downfall of Richard Nixon's presidency, died Tuesday. He was 88. Hunt died after a lengthy bout of pneumonia, according to his son, Austin Hunt. The elder Hunt was many things: World War II soldier, CIA officer, organizer of both a Guatemalan coup and the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, and author of more than 80 books, many from the spy-tale genre. Yet the bulk of his notoriety came from the one thing he always insisted he wasn't...

Bob Woodward insists that then-White House chief of staff Al Haig offered Vice President Gerald Ford a deal to pardon Richard Nixon if he resigned the presidency. Haig flatly denies that assertion and calls it an "insult." Appearing on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Dec. 27, the day after Ford died, Woodward – who interviewed Ford extensively in recent years – was asked why he thought Ford pardoned Nixon. Woodward responded: "Well, first of all, one of the things Ford told me, which I published a number of years ago, is that he believes, he, Gerald Ford, believed that Al...

Months before Richard Nixon set Michigan congressman Gerald Ford on the path to the White House, Nixon turned to Ford, who called himself the embattled president's "only real friend," to get him out of trouble. During one of the darkest days of the Watergate scandal, Nixon secretly confided in Ford, at the time the House minority leader. He begged for help. He complained about fair-weather friends and swore at perceived rivals in his own party. "Tell the guys, goddamn it, to get off their ass and start fighting back," Nixon pleaded with Ford in one call recorded by the president's...

You just knew it. "Today" was going to find a way to use the death of President Ford to take a shot at George Bush. You had to wait till the very end of the first half-hour, but sure enough, it came. The preceding twenty minutes had been a respectful review of the life of the 38th president. And after all, if there is one Republican president it's not too hard for the MSM to like, it was Ford, who replaced the hated Richard Nixon. Tom Brokaw even admitted that, in retrospect, Ford had made the right decision in pardoning...

Anyone else peeved as I am at this nonsense? I am assuming it is a patriotic song. The images you see during this commercial are Vietnam War protestors, the peace sign, Nixon waving goodbye before he gets on his helicopter, and Katrina flooding. What a depressing commercial. Kind of defeatist if you ask me. Thoughts?

The latest- the blogs are all over this- go to them and use their links:   Foley Setup? - Part V - Uncovering the Conspiracy--I don’t think I’ve ever seen a political conspiracy unravel as fast as this one that involves former representative Mark Foley. These you must read to catch up on the story...MacsMind - Foleygate Part IVMacsMind - Foleygate Part V   [Foley Outer] Mike Rogers Tried To Blackmail Senator On Alito Vote--Rogers was named as one of Genre Magazine’s Men We Love. http://www.pageonenewsmedia.com/docs/bio.html Here's the list of intimidation. http://www.blogactive.com/2006_06_01_blogactive_archive.html I don't think that these Gay activists who...

Helen Clark is the Prime Minister of New Zealand. In her youth she picked coffee for the Sandinistas, was leader for many years of a local "Peace Action group" and is reported to have spat on soldiers returning home from Vietnam. She was once accused by a prominent journalist of being the nominated New Zealand contact for the Philippines Communist Party, when information referencing this fact was found on computer disks during a police raid on the party's headquarters. She was a big influence on the breaking of the Australia New Zealand United States alliance (ANZUS) when as a member...

Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential hopes were sunk when he buckled under to “authoritarian” conservatives hellbent on smearing his military record as part of a larger “proto-facist” movement, says a former top White House aide whose testimony helped sink Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. John Dean, a Republican who served as Nixon’s top counsel, said Kerry slipped up during the 2004 campaign against President Bush by not suing the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth when they published a book calling into question the Bay State senator’s Vietnam service. “What most surprised me is that Kerry never did anything with...

A D.C. author who co-wrote W. Mark Felts' 1979 memoir, in which the former top FBI official denied being the legendary Watergate source "Deep Throat," says in a lawsuit that he was tricked into signing away his rights to the work. Ralph de Toledano, in a lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court here, states that Mr. Felt, his son and an attorney concealed their intention to disclose that Mr. Felt was indeed Deep Throat -- first in Vanity Fair magazine, then in a revised book. -snip- Mr. de Toledano says in his suit that California attorney John D. O'Connor...

Left-wing nostalgia dies hard, but can it survive the events of this week? It has been a tough 10 days for those who see current events through the prisms of Vietnam and Watergate...[snip] Historians may regard it as a curious thing that the left and the press have been so determined to fit current events into templates based on events that occurred 30 to 40 years ago...[snip] Journalists in the 1940s, '50s and early '60s tended to believe they had a duty to buttress Americans' faith in their leaders and their government. Journalists since Vietnam and Watergate have tended to...

President Jacques Chirac was further drawn into a dirty tricks scandal rocking the French government on Thursday, with the publication of leaked evidence showing he knew of a secret enquiry into his political rival, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. - Le Monde newspaper printed excerpts of hand-written notes kept by spy-master Philippe Rondot, which it said "Demolish" denials by Chirac and his ally, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, that they ordered an investigation into Sarkozy's alleged secret bank accounts...." "...But De Villepin's political future remains on a knife-edge after he was accused of Lying before Parliament over the affair and the...

CIA Director Porter Goss abruptly resigned yesterday amid allegations that he and a top aide may have attended Watergate poker parties where bribes and prostitutes were provided to a corrupt congressman.

SAN FRANCISCO - The man who revealed himself as Watergate's "Deep Throat" says in a new memoir that he saw himself as a "Lone Ranger" who could help derail a White House cover-up. In the memoir, which hit bookshelves Monday, former FBI second-in-command W. Mark Felt explains what motivated him to become the key source for Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during the Watergate investigation. Felt said he was upset by the slow pace of the FBI investigation into the Watergate break-in and believed the press could apply some much-needed pressure on the administration to cooperate. "From...

Serene actress Gwyneth Paltrow and her rock star husband Chris Martin have perfectly balanced up their family with the birth of a baby boy to join their little girl, Apple. The new arrival, Moses, was born in New York City over the weekend, but no further details were immediately available. It's a very family time for the 33-year-old Oscar winner, who has recently been directed by her brother Jake in the comedy The Good Night. And though she once said she would take time out of her career to bring up her children, the Shakespeare In Love star seems to...

    Let's say you were part of a group designing the news media from scratch. Someone says that it would be a good idea to have competing news media -- daily newspapers and weekly magazines, radio and television news programs. Sounds like a good start.     Someone else says that it would be a good idea to staff these news media with people who are literate and well-educated. Check. Then someone says let's have 90 percent of the people who work for these organizations be from one of the nation's two competitive political parties and 10 percent from the other.     Uh, you...

WASHINGTON –Nixon White House counselor John Dean asserted Friday that President Bush's domestic spying exceeds the wrongdoing that toppled his former boss from power, and a veteran Republican snapped that Democrats were trying to “score political points” with motion to censure Bush. “Had the Senate or House, or both, censured or somehow warned Richard Nixon, the tragedy of Watergate might have been prevented,” Dean told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Hopefully the Senate will not sit by while even more serious abuses unfold before it.” Testifying to a Senate committee on Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold's resolution to censure Bush, Dean...

MADISON, Wis. A retired University of Wisconsin historian noted for his research into the Watergate scandal pleaded no contest today to threatening to blow up a health insurance building. Seventy-one-year-old Stanley Kutler entered the plea in Dane County Circuit Court to a disorderly conduct charge arising from a phone call with his insurance company. He's best known for his successful 21-year fight to obtain President Nixon's secret tapes, Judge Patrick Fiedler fined Kutler 50 dollars and imposed 149 dollars in court costs. The case hinges on an April 26th phone call between Kutler and Dean Health over a billing dispute.

Traitors of Record: The Record of the New York TimesBy Fedora “. . .the most untrustworthy paper in the United States. . .” --President Dwight Eisenhower, referring to the New York TimesIntroductionLast week Senator John Cornyn criticized the New York Times for endangering national security with a James Risen story on NSA surveillance timed to coincide with a vote on the Patriot Act and, incidentally, with the release of a book by Risen. A review of the record illustrates that endangering national security through irresponsible leaks is nothing new for the New York Times. Some particularly outrageous examples are worth...

Last night, a Southwest Airlines plane skidded off a runway at Chicago's Midway Airport, killing a six year-old boy who was a passenger in a car on Central Avenue. On a another snowy December 8 thirty-three years ago, a United Airlines plane crashed into some homes near Midway, killing 45 people. Among the passengers on the flight was West Side Chicago Congressman George Collins and Mrs. Dorothy Hunt, wife of Watergate scandal figure Howard Hunt. In Dorothy's luggage was over $10,000 in cash, widely believed to be "hush money" for her husband's "silence."

Woodwardgate: Deep Throat or Shallow Reporting?By Fedora One, Woodward wrote about how Deep Throat, he had a long friendship with Deep Throat. There's no evidence that he ever had any kind of friendship with Mark Felt. Secondly, why would the number two man at the FBI choose to confide in a young metro reporter for 'The Washington Post' who had only been there for nine months? Three, Deep Throat is given credit by Woodward with the story of the destruction of the tape. How would Mark Felt have known about that? On the other side of the coin, Mark Felt...

Ephron threw this tidbit out about the first gate, Watergate, in her post: "Bob is not a liar. This isn’t to say that he hasn’t told a lie or two in the course of his life (there was a big whopper during the Deep Throat saga)." Ephron was once married to Woodward's Watergate reporting partner Carl Bernstein, so she may have good reason to know something here.

Back in 1973, as the recession was heating up, American prestige was taking a beating over Vietnam and Watergate, Canadian broadcaster Gordon Sinclair broadcast an impassioned defense of America and Americans, as seen from Canada's uniquely liberal perspective: "You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times ... and safely home again. You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everyone to look at. Even the draft...

AT WHAT point does naiveté become something to be ashamed of? The revelation last week that Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward abetted the Bush administration's program of lies and character assassination left you feeling as if you, too, have been a coconspirator in the sleaze.

>Consider this:****On Wilson/Plame/Leakgate/ and the rest.................................. Speaking of Chappaqua Rose, to me this whole thing has Hillary's fingerprints all over it. Remember when she "fudged" things when she was involved in writing up the articles of impeachment for Nixon?*** From http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/benshapiro/2003/06/19/169878.html Hillary Clinton cut her teeth on the Watergate scandal. As a counsel for the House Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry staff, she made it her mission to topple President Nixon. Hillary helped drafted a document that would provide the legal basis for three articles of impeachment. The House Judiciary Committee's former chief counsel, Jerome Zeifman, later revealed that the Hillary-penned...

If special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald delivers indictments of a few functionaries of the vice president’s office or the White House, we are likely to have on our hands a constitutional crisis. The evidence of widespread wrongdoing and conspiracy is before every American with a cheap laptop and a cable television subscription. And we do not have the same powers of subpoena granted to Fitzgerald. We know, however, based upon what we have read and seen and heard that someone created fake documents related to Niger and Iraq and used them as a false pretense to launch America into an invasion...

"Lt. Gov. Steele was extremely disturbed to learn about the alleged criminal identity theft of his personal finance records by (a staff member of U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.,) at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

No, not Howard. The Dean whom Democrats have tapped to represent them at John Roberts's confirmation hearings this week is John W. Dean III, White House Counsel to President Nixon and one of the architects of the Watergate coverup. This isn't the first time Mr. Dean will be appearing in the Caucus Room of the Senate's Russell office building. In 1973, he sat at the witness table during the Watergate hearings and testified about a "cancer on the Presidency." This was shortly before he spent two years in jail for obstruction of justice. This paragon of the law is now...

My, what a busy summer it's been! I've been away for awhile enjoying time with the family and, during my travels, I noticed something very odd happening out there. People are talking about Iraq instead of "American Idol." They're bitching about gas prices instead of bitching about the wrong person being "fired" by The Donald. There are more and more people expressing outrage about what they're reading and seeing on the media rather than being outraged with the media itself. There seems to be a tsunami of buyer's remorse sweeping over the land and the size and nature of this...

The Washington lawyer is the quintessential Washington type. He has the huge house in Wesley Heights or Potomac; the million-dollar partnership bonuses; the Rolodex with everyone's private number; the squad of young associates who do the grunt work and call him Godfather; the easy intercourse with pols and corporate chieftains seeking free advice or high-priced counsel--and, of course, the ego to go with all of the above. He slips and slides in and out and around government, usually making his reputation through political work he can then sell on the open market. The Washington lawyer comes in a number of...

It is the ultimate Washington story, told by the ultimate Washington chronicler. But in Washington and just about everywhere else, sales of "The Secret Man," Bob Woodward's story of the source known as Deep Throat, have been underwhelming. At Politics and Prose, a well-known independent bookstore in Washington, sales were "not very good, compared to expectations," said Mark LaFramboise, who ordered 400 copies of the book for the store. As of last week, Politics and Prose had sold "60-something," he said. "I expected it to be a blockbuster," he said. "I was wrong." At Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City,...

Santiago, Chile - W. Mark Felt managed to remain in history’s shadows for more than 30 years. It would seem that his energetic daughter Joan, the person most influential in persuading her father to make public his role as “Deep Throat,” also had a past in her past. Daughter Joan played a prominent role not only in “outing” her now-invalid 91-year-old father, but also in engineering book and movie deals. Long-estranged, father and daughter reconciled after he was widowed in the 1980s, and he has lived with her since. Following his Deep Throat revelation in June, Felt has been praised...

Karl Rove — whistleblower, patriot and hero. That's an epitaph you won't read with regard to the Valerie Plame kerfuffle. But those are precisely the words that dominated commentary about Watergate leaker Mark Felt little more than a month ago. Felt, of course, did the country a great service by secretly revealing to the media the cancer that was growing on the Nixon presidency. But Felt, it should be remembered, had more than simply altruistic motives for doing so. Richard Nixon slighted Felt by passing over him for the top job at the FBI after J. Edgar Hoover's death. That...