Source: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/06/28/russia-gate-is-no-watergate-or-iran-contra/
By Robert Parry
By Robert Parry
Russia-gate, the sprawling investigation into whether
Russia meddled in last year’s U.S. election, is often compared to the two big
political scandals of the latter half of the Twentieth Century, Watergate and
Iran-Contra. Sometimes you even hear that Russia-gate is “bigger than
Watergate.”
e
bugged phone from the Watergate office of Democratic Party official Spencer
Oliver. Placed on the phone during a May 1972 break-in, the bug was the only
device that worked. A second break-in on June 17. 1972, led to the capture of
Richard Nixon’s Watergate burglars.
Yet what is perhaps most remarkable about those two
Twentieth Century scandals is how little Official Washington really understands
them – and how these earlier scandals significantly contrast, rather than
compare, with what is unfolding now.
Although the historical record is still incomplete on
Watergate and Iran-Contra, the available evidence indicates that both scandals
originated in schemes by Republicans to draw foreign leaders into plots to
undermine sitting Democratic presidents and thus pave the way for the elections
of Richard Nixon in 1968 and Ronald Reagan in 1980.
