Kremlin Cover-Up on Watergate

To judge by the Soviet news treatment of Richard Nixon's fall from power, the former President was an innocent hounded from office by political enemies and the press. For months, Tass and Pravda completely ignored the scandal, presumably to avoid embarrassing Party Chairman Leonid Brezhnev, who had personally aligned himself with Nixon in negotiating detente and who had three times held summit meetings with him. When the official press finally noted Nixon's resignation, it did so with such a mixture of fantasy and fallacy that an American would have a hard time recognizing the familiar Watergate events. Worst of the distorted Soviet accounts was a special half-hour television program conducted by two of Russia's best-known journalists, Leonid Zamyatin, 52, head of the official news agency Tass, a sophisticated man who has spent considerable time in the U.S. (including ten days last May); and Valentin Zorin, 50, a hard-lining television commentator.

The two purported to give the inside story of Nixon's fall, but what the millions of Russian listeners heard was something Nixon's last-ditch defenders in the U.S. would have been embarrassed to offer. The commentators referred several times to the "socalled Watergate affair" without once explaining it or even suggesting that Nixon had done anything to warrant removal from office. Neither Zamyatin nor Zorin ever mentioned the Watergate breakin, the coverup, the indictments of so many Nixon aides, the Nixon income tax imbroglio, the incriminating tapes, the articles of impeachment, or the falsehoods that the former President admitted in his fatal Aug. 5 statement.

Instead, the Soviet spokesmen had a triple-barreled explanation for what did Nixon in: he was 1) victimized by a Democratic Congress, 2) weakened by inflation and 3) finished off by "brainwashing" of the U.S. public by the media. Excerpts from the Moscow telecast:

Zamyatin: I would like to emphasize that the impulse for this affair came after the Democratic Party suffered defeat. It was in fact used as the chief weapon in the interparty struggle, and it was given the coloration of a conflict between the Executive, in the person of the President, and the legislative power, represented by the Congress. Even more because of the result of the 1972 elections, a Republican President had a Congress which was in fact Democratic. Because in the House of Representatives and the Senate, the Democrats had the overwhelming majority. This created a situation in which the President was put in a difficult situation in getting his internal legislation through, given his relations with the Congress. I think that the sharpness and heat of this affair were to a considerable degree a continuation of the interparty electoral struggle which began in 1972 after the crushing defeat of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party had to work out some sort of basis or platform in its preparation for the mid-term election this November and the presidential election for 1976.

Zorin: The complicated and difficult economic situation within the country created a certain backdrop and a certain discontent among the American people. It is indicative that when an opinion poll was taken among ordinary Americans, 80% of them said that they considered the most important thing for themselves was not the interparty squabble in Washington but the economic problems which have arisen before every American. This created the background...

Zamyatin: Yes, a certain background. But to this was also added the propagandistic background. I was recently in the U.S. with a Soviet parliamentary delegation, and we had the opportunity to observe all the emotional heat that was being created round the President and round this entire affair through the U.S. mass information media. A very definite brainwashing of U.S. public opinion was taking place both on radio and television, and certainly not in favor of the U.S. President, for internal political motives. Throughout this whole campaign, the chief motive was an internal political one. Here I would cite as an example the following fact: in the history of the U.S., it had never happened that sessions of the House or Senate had been televised live. There is no such practice in the U.S. Congress.* [The TV coverage of the House Judiciary Committee sessions] shows what emotional heat they wanted to give to this entire affair, by putting it in front of public opinion in the U.S.

Why does the Kremlin bother with what amounts to its own fantastic Watergate coverup? Aside from protecting Brezhnev, the outrageous distortions of what really happened to Nixon are obviously tailored to fit the official conspiratorial view of the U.S. system. Says one Western diplomat in Moscow: "It jibes with what are probably their basic beliefs about how America operates. It also fits the deep-rooted Slavic feeling about plots." Adds a Scandinavian official posted in the Soviet capital: "No one wants to raise the question of popular pressure bringing down a government that lies. Imagine what that could mean here." But Moscow's preposterous Watergate coverage raises another question: whether the concept of detente includes an obligation on the part of Soviet authorities to convey to their people at least some glimmer of truth about the American political system.

* In fact, House and Senate hearings, but not formal committee debates, have been televised on several occasions.

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