Whitewater Revives Watergate Memories

Any time anything goes wrong in this city, the mother of all political scandals--Watergate--looms overhead. Just look at the names doled out to presidential flaps in recent years: Contragate, Travelgate, Filegate. And the overuse of the Watergate-period query: “What did the president know and when did he know it?”

The current controversy over tainted fund-raising practices in the 1996 election may not yet have a “gate” moniker, but it is eliciting especially vivid memories of the brouhaha that led to Richard Nixon’s downfall more than 20 years ago.

After all, from First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton on down, many of those who figure in the current furor got their first taste of political scandal when those White House-sponsored burglars broke into national Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel on June 17, 1972.

The-then Hillary Rodham, fresh out of Yale Law School, was a low-level staff attorney on the House committee that considered Nixon’s impeachment. Now she is being quizzed about her involvement in creating a White House computer system that may have been used for political purposes, her attendance at White House coffee klatches whose guests included many Democratic donors, and other related issues.

Asking some of those questions as chairman of the Senate committee that soon will start hearings on the various fund-raising controversies is Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), who was the GOP counsel on the Senate Select Watergate Committee. A generation ago, it was Thompson who asked former Nixon aide Alexander P. Butterfield the fateful question: “Are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?”

The answer, of course, was, “Yes,” and it was those tapes that ultimately proved Nixon’s undoing.

While the scandals themselves are quite different, it was Watergate that prompted the formation of some of the existing campaign finance rules that Democratic National Committee fund-raisers are now accused of skirting. And improper campaign contributions were one of Watergate’s many facets. In fact, illegal corporate donations to the campaign coffers of Nixon and others resulted in charges against 18 corporations and 24 individuals.

Thompson downplays comparisons between his current investigation and the one he honed his skills on years ago. In particular, he says, he dislikes the notion that in order to be successful in many people’s eyes, a congressional investigation these days has to topple a presidency.

Yet, in his first major Senate floor speech on his plans for the current probe, Thompson drew guffaws when he mistakenly referred to President Clinton as “President Nixon.”

On a more substantive note, Thompson tapped his right-hand man during Watergate, attorney Mike Madigan, as chief counsel of the fund-raising inquiry. Madigan picked up the nickname “Mad Dog” during the Watergate probe because of his particularly aggressive questioning. The name has stuck all these years.

Other Watergate connections abound, particularly in legal circles (Washington scandals have been providing steady work).

Attorney Earl J. Silbert, the first Watergate prosecutor, is now representing James Riady, the Indonesian financier who figures prominently in the Democratic fund-raising controversy.

Another target of investigators, Truman Arnold, a former DNC finance chairman, has hired attorney Richard Ben-Veniste, the No. 2 man on the task force that prosecuted the Watergate cover-up defendants.

At the White House, advising Clinton, is Charles F.C. Ruff, who was the final special Watergate prosecutor.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), meanwhile, had his first moment in the national spotlight as a member of the House Judiciary Committee that approved articles of impeachment against Nixon. Lott remained one of Nixon’s staunchest supporters to the bitter end.

Elected to the Senate in 1988, he has been a key behind-the-scenes player in the chamber’s current fund-raising investigation, struggling with fellow Republicans to come up with a budget and scope for the probe.

Jerome Zeifman, the House Judiciary Committee’s chief counsel during Watergate, has resurfaced in the fund-raising controversy. He has been advising congressional Republicans about how they might bring impeachment proceedings against Clinton if investigators uncover some “smoking gun.”

Even some of the journalists writing about the current affair started out chasing leads during Watergate. Bob Woodward, who achieved fame as one of the duo of Washington Post reporters who broke many key Watergate developments, has weighed in recently with pieces outlining Vice President Al Gore’s personal involvement in Democratic fund-raising efforts and the FBI’s investigation of possible meddling by the Chinese government in U.S. politics.

One Republican senator joked that it was good news for the Democrats that Woodward’s reporting partner during the days of Watergate, Carl Bernstein, gave up daily journalism years ago.