Wood and Felt

by Cliopatria

Today's New Republic has a fine review by Brown historian Gordon Wood of Gary Nash's new study of the American Revolution. Nash describes the book as a"history of inclusion," giving agency to women, lower-class whites, slaves, and Indians. Wood's review is less than flattering, but perhaps its most interesting paragraph was the following:

Since Pennsylvania experienced the most radical change in 1776, largely through the efforts of Scots-Irish farmers and urban artisans, Nash gives its new state constitution a good deal of attention. The constitution provided for a unicameral legislature, term limits, a broad suffrage, and a plural executive. The constitution also stipulated that the assembly be re-apportioned every seven years."This commitment to proportional representation," Nash observes,"was followed by no other state." It is a strange statement, since four other states--New Jersey, New York, Vermont, South Carolina--wrote into their constitutions specific plans for periodic adjustments of their representation, so that, as the New York constitution stated, it"shall for ever remain proportionate and adequate." This error is only one of many that Nash makes throughout his book. He mistakes Horace Walpole for his father Robert Walpole as prime minister of England. He writes that"American colonists, with rare exceptions, agreed that Parliament was entitled to pass external taxes meant to control the flow of trade," even though Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan decisively refuted this point more than fifty years ago. He refers to Edmund Randolph as Jefferson's son-in-law, confusing him with Thomas Mann Randolph. He says that Richard Henry Lee was"destined to be one of Washington's generals," mixing him up with his cousin Harry Lee. Small matters, perhaps; but cumulatively they tend to undermine the reader's confidence in Nash's knowledge of the period.

Even in a narrative that treats political history as irrelevant to understanding the Revolution, such mistakes are remarkable.

On another matter entirely--for those interested in what Nixon himself had to say about Mark Felt, the Miller Center has posted some audio excerpts on its website.

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Jeff Vanke - 6/3/2005

That term today usually means voting by party, as in Weimar Germany, as opposed to voting for an individual representatives for respective districts of equal population. The former system returns a legislature more representative of the full spectrum and particular interests of voters, but also more instability.

Maarja Krusten - 6/3/2005

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/02/felt.nixon/index.html

Maarja Krusten - 6/3/2005

Yesterday's Washington Post had two articles that discussed Felt's possible motives. See
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/01/AR2005060101831.html
and Woodward's account at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/01/AR2005060102124.html.

Woodward feels that "Felt believed he was protecting the bureau by finding a way, clandestine as it was, to push some of the information from the FBI interviews and files out to the public, to help build public and political pressure to make Nixon and his people answerable. He had nothing but contempt for the Nixon White House and their efforts to manipulate the bureau for political reasons."

I don't think that historians and journalists believe that the political pressures that confronted a Felt while working for a Nixon loyalist such as L. Patrick Gray disappeared after Watergate. At least, I hope they understand Washington better than that. Surely they understand that such pressure still can affect any executive branch agency, including the National Archives and the DOJ lawyers that represent it in court. But, for reasons I don't understand, no one has studied the court record of Stanley Kutler's lawsuit or written about the ramifications.

Archivists know this. With the forthcoming move of the Nixon materials to the Nixon Library in California, they are fleeing NARA's Nixon Project at Archives II in College Park in droves. They've seen the silence that has greeted my efforts to protect them and to draw attention to their plight here on HNN and in the media. In the last 5 months, some 5 or 6 people already have left the Nixon Project in College Park and the pool of knowledgeable archivists that historians rely on is dwindling. The institutional memory of the Nixon Project is disappearing. The director of the Nixon Project, the highly respected Karl Weissenbach, who has striven mightily during the last 10 years to see that the right thing was done with the Nixon records, is about to transfer to a new job as deputy director at the Eisenhower Presidential Library.

I'm not saying these people, many of whom I know and respect and some of whom I worked with during my tenure at NARA, necessarily will be replaced by compliant careerists. I do know the Project is facing some crippling hits in institutional memory. And that it is awfully hard to do the right thing in Washington, not just for the Mark Felt's of the world. It's especially hard when few scholars speak out, and what voices there are, come only from the Left side of the political spectrum. (I, of course, am an Independent, and once voted straight Republican. I'm not referring to myself, I'm referring to Dr. Kutler, Dr. Greenberg.)

So, on behalf of the archivists who once worked for you all, and now are looking for new jobs, I'd be interested to hear what any of you have to say in response to the question I posted Wednesday to the Washington Post. The Washington Post ignored it, you all well may do so as well. But the cause is worth it so I'm still asking. Please see my post at
http://hnn.us/readcomment.php?id=61999