WATERGATE AND THE JEWS

From today's Best of the Web (Wall Street Journal):

Watergate and the Jews
Last month the Middle East Media Research Institute translated a "news story" from Iranian television called "The Untold Story of the Watergate Affair":

Today, it has become clear that Nixon's dispute with Israel and the Zionist lobby was among the main causes for his downfall. In fact, the reporters who exposed the Watergate affair and blew it out of proportion were Zionists, recruited to the ranks of the Zionist lobby. By using the media as its tool, Zionism tried to get one of its main opponents out of the way.

Nixon wrote in his memoirs: "One of the main problems I had to face was the narrow mindedness and the pro-Israeli views."

Nixon wrote: "In the 25 years since the end of World War II, these views spread and grew stronger to the point that many people consider refraining from supporting Israel to be anti-Semitism. I tried to make them understand that this is not true, but did not succeed."

Indeed, Nixon did not succeed. Along with Kennedy, he is considered a victim of a major political coup carried out by the Zionist lobby.

Nixon apparently agreed. In 1999 Slate's Timothy Noah quoted from a tape-recorded October 1972 conversation between Nixon and chief of staff H.R. Haldeman:

Haldeman: . . . We know who leaked it.
Nixon: Somebody in the FBI?
Haldeman: Yes, sir. Mark Felt. . . .
Nixon: Is he Catholic?
Haldeman: [unintelligible] Jewish.
Nixon: Christ, put a Jew in there?

Just one problem with the Zionist-conspiracy theory: As John O'Connor reports in Vanity Fair, "Felt, of Irish descent, is not Jewish and claims no religious affiliation."