Obama’s need for “Executive Privilege”

Those of us who watched Richard Nixon's staff lie and cover up the Watergate burglary in the early 1970s saw Senators Howard Baker and Sam Ervin ask the Congressional witnesses repeatedly, "What did the President know and when did he know it?"

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Bruce

"Watergate dented Americans' faith in government and tainted public servants with a distrust that continues four decades after the burglary. USA Today

Watergate scandal changed the political landscape forever
By Daniel P. Finney, The Des Moines Register

It began with tape on door latches.

It ended with the fall of a president and a scandal that echoes in American culture four decades later.

The time was just after 1 a.m. 40 years ago Sunday when a security guard at the Watergate Complex in Washington, D.C., discovered adhesive tape covering the latches of several doors.

The guard called police. Five men were arrested for burglary and attempting to illegally wiretap the Democratic National Committee offices. The arrests proved to be the first in a series of scandals that led to the August 1974 resignation of President Richard Nixon.
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After taking office, Barack Hussein Obama began a coordinated effort with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to control the purchases and ownership of guns in the United States. To justify the implementation of tougher gun control laws and in a direct assault on the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, this administration cited a statement made to Congress by William Hoover, Assistant Director for Field Operations for the BATFE on February 7, 2008. According to that report, 90 percent of the weapons used by the Mexican drug cartels were purchased from or originated in the U.S.

That stunning revelation empowered the Obama administration to solicit public support for banning so-called assault weapons in the U.S., and calling for tougher gun control laws. The problem, however, is that the statement is disingenuous at best.

First and perhaps most transparent, it has been noted that only 1 in 5 guns that have been recovered in Mexico actually underwent any form of tracing, leaving 80% untraced. Accordingly, the 90 percent figure is already factually inaccurate.

In 2009, 21,313 guns were recovered in Mexico and submitted for tracing. Less than a quarter of those guns were found to have originated in the U.S.

Secondly, and perhaps the most scandalous of all, is that all figures cited by this administration pertaining to weapons tracing include weapons sold to the Mexican military via U.S. arms-trading policies under programs such as Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) initiatives. The fact is that the bulk of the arms used by the Mexican drug cartels did not and do not originate from gun shop sales in the U.S., but from U.S. government sponsored programs that sell weapons and ammunition to the Mexican military as well as other third-world nations. This process was accelerated under Obama."