Tag Archives: The Strong Man

Serial Liar James Rosen Responds To Me Again

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It looks like James Rosen, who wrote a book filled with words, has trouble understanding his own words.  Never fear. I’m here to help.

Rosen, for those smart enough to avoid watching Fox “News,” is the mendacious channel’s Chief Washington Correspondent. However, Rosen also wrote a doorstopper of a book about John Mitchell — Richard Nixon’s Attorney General and, later, head of the Committee to Re-elect the President (aptly shortened to CREeP). The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate can charitably be called Revisionist History, but more accurately it’s filled with lies, half-truths, and shaded language. To make a long story short, according to Rosen, John Mitchell was innocent of all Watergate crimes — even those for which he was convicted —  because he was out for a pack of cigarettes when they happened, or something.

My bun fight with James Rosen began in February of 2012, back when we were all so young and innocent. It flared into life when Rosen rudely jumped into a Twitter conversation I was having with Watergate whistle-blower John W. Dean. While I promised Rosen I would read his book, and did so almost immediately, it took me a year to finally review it for Not Now Silly because, quite frankly, it wasn’t much of a priority. That post, Did Roger Ailes Dupe James Rosen, Or Did Rosen Dupe ‘Merka?, has risen to become the #5 All Time post at Not Now Silly. However, more importantly, in it I made the claim that Fox “News” Chief Roger Ailes was Rosen’s secret source quoted on Page 61.

Six months later, when Rosen found himself embroiled in a federal probe of Top Secret links and possible espionage, I returned to the topic of The Strong Man, Roger Ailes and Anna Channault in a post that asked the musical question: James Rosen: Blundering Biographer or Enemy of the State? Hilarity ensued.

Despite having blocked me blocked me a year and a half earlier, Rosen finally woke up and responded a mere 5 days later. He did so in a tweet that is a classic example of attacking the messenger because you don’t like the message:

Which prompted my next Watergate-related blog post, James Rosen Responds To Me, Sort Of, in which I call Rosen’s tweet a non-denial denial because I know a non-denial denial when I read one. To be charitable again: Maybe Rosen doesn’t know a non-denial denial when he writes one.

Then yesterday — totally out of the blue — I got a new tweet from James Rosen after I promoted all my Watergate posts in a tweet. (Okay, so maybe it wasn’t so “out of the blue.”)

The thing of it is this: Yes, Rosen’s tweet is finally a declarative denial. However, Rosen did not “told [me] before,” despite what he may think the words he used meant. With tweets limited to 140 characters, Rosen spent more than half of it making fun of my beard, which surely pleased Johnny Dollar and The Flying Monkey Squad. Better he should have used some of that Twitter real estate to have made an actual denial.

I called it a non-denial denial because it denied nothing. So, no. You didn’t done told me before, James.

This is how my copy of The Strong Man looked when I was done

The bigger thing of it is this, James: I didn’t believe your book while I was reading it. “I have told you before” how I dropped a sticky note on every question I wanted to ask you. When I was done my copy of The Strong Man was filled with enough sticky notes to supply an Office Depot, and all fall under the general rubric of “bullshit.” For that matter, James, I don’t believe your Fox “News” reports when I see them, nor are you the Beatles expert you hold yourself out to be.

So, I think it’s a legitimate question to ask: Why should I believe your little tweet, especially as it contradicts your previous tweet?

However, as we head in to the Holiday Season, I just want to get this contretemps behind us and go back to those halcyon days of yore, when you and I were happily exchanging Beatles’ trivia, without a dark cloud on our horizon. Consequently, help me understand how the lie on Page 61 of your book came to be printed. We can achieve détente if you answer the following questions:

1). Who is the secret source on Page 61, the source promised anonymity according to the book’s end notes? [While you may have promised anonymity, I don’t feel you need be bound to a deal that protects someone who fed you a falsehood.]
2). Did you, or did you not, not recognize that the quote was factually incorrect when you printed it?
3). Did you, or did you not, understand when you printed this false information that it went to the topic of whether Richard Nixon committed treason?
4). Why is Roger Ailes, your current boss and an intimate of Nixon and
Mitchell — and, more importantly, the re-election campaign’s behind-the-scenes media man — not mentioned or quoted in The Strong Man whatsoever?
5). What about all my other sticky notes? [See pic above.] Care to discuss them? The Anna Channault Affair is just one pile of bovine manure in a book filled with cow patties.

Just send a tweet, James. Otherwise, you’re as full of shit as your book.

James Rosen: Blundering Biographer or Enemy of the State?

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My latest Watergate book

Lately the federal government has been having a bit of fun at the expense of James Rosen, the Fox “News” Channel’s Chief Washington Correspondent. Over the past fifteen months Not Now Silly has also been having a bit of fun at the expense of James Rosen. Not that he doesn’t deserve it. Rosen wrote, and stands behind, his historical revisionist doorstopper of a book about John Mitchell and Watergate, “The Strong Man.”

My first chapter, Aunty Em Ericann’s Bun Fight With James Rosen of Fox “News,” tells the HIGH-LARRY-US story of my earliest real life encounter with Rosen, who reached out to me first under the nom de tweet “cutebeatle.” cutebeatle was having a very public spat with someone who knows far more about Watergate than he does: John W. Dean. Hilarity ensues.

In the subsequent Twitter exchange with Rosen, I took up his challenge to read his book for myself and not be bullied by “ex-felon” John Dean. In point of fact, I kind of felt bullied by Rosen to read his book. He made me promise TWICE before he would finally agree to play Beatles Trivia with me. In addition to Watergate, Rosen also pretends to be an expert on The Beatles. Yet he failed my simple two-part question: Who did The Beatles say was their favourite ‘Merkin musician and who did they say was their favourite ‘Merkin band?*

Then I also proved I also know more Watergate trivia than he does because, when I started asking Rosen uncomfortable questions about his book, he blocked me. Later he claimed — through an intermediary, because that’s how he rolls — that he blocked me because I wrote about him for NewsHounds. That’s true. It’s still online and you can read how I tagged Rosen in a post called “Happening Now” Drops Pretense At Objectivity When James Rosen Reads Right Wing Tweets To Defend Limbaugh. However, if he blocked me over that, he needs to get a thicker skin. I was just doing my job.

Still, my many questions about his silly book The Strong Man have gone unanswered.

After I was finished reading James Rosen’s book I had a few questions. They are marked with yellow Post-It notes.

Eventually, after follow-up questions and phone messages were ignored, I decided to write the 2nd Chapter of this sad story. My more recent post asks the musical question Did Roger Ailes Dupe James Rosen, Or Did Rosen Dupe ‘Merka? Rosen’s big mistake was to challenge me to read his book. Watergate is a subject I know intimately, possibly second only to my Beatles knowledge.

While reading Rosen’s book I laughed and took notes. I flagged every
falsehood. I took notice of every example of loaded language I could find. I also marked every shading away from the truth. If you know little about the era, the Nixon White House, and/or Watergate you might feel that Rosen exonerated Mitchell of any possible connection to any possible crimes that may, or may not have, occurred before, during, and after Watergate, not limited to his stint as Attorney General, ‘Merka’s top law enforement officer.

When I
was done reading The Strong Man it looked like it does in the photo above. Out of the MANY questions I have for James Rosen, I summed up the book’s mendacity in that one blog post. It’s reason enough to have Rosen’s so-called book laughed out of the marketplace of ideas like David-Barton has been. 

While my beard has gotten longer, James Rosen’s
book has gotten falser, if that’s even possible

It’s still an important question to ask because its about treason committed by Richard Nixon before he was elected President. It’s also about whether James Rosen wittingly, or unwittingly, participated in a cover-up of Nixon’s treason when he wrote his book. Classified recordings released since Rosen wrote his book proves the assertions on page 61 of The Strong Man are false.

However, it’s not just recordings released since Rosen wrote his book that debunk page 61. The recently released recordings merely prove conclusively a fact that has been known for decades. That’s why the bullshit on page 61 of Rosen’s book is now the yardstick against which anyone can judge how terrible Rosen’s book really is. I call it the Chennault Challenge and it can be done with almost any Watergate-related book.

F’rinstance: I recently acquired a used copy of the hardcover pictured at the top left. “Perfectly Clear; Nixon From Whittier To Watergate” was written by Frank Mankiewicz in 1973. That’s a year before Nixon resigned the Presidency and, for the record, 35 years before James Rosen wrote his joke of a book.

Turning to the index of Perfectly Clear, on page 234, under the Cs, sandwiched between Checkers Speech [36, 61-63] and Chicago Seven [138] is the entry Chennault, Anna [14]. Flipping to page 14 reveals these two paragraphs filled with unintended irony:

Sticking with a good story even after it has been proven false is a habit with Nixon. He told every White House staffer who would listen, apparently, that he had been wiretapped by Lyndon Johnson in 1968, a story he ascribed to J. Edgar Hoover. But Johnson had never caused Nixon’s phone to be tapped. Theodore S. White and others had reported that Nixon had been overheard advising Anna Chennault, an old China (and Nixon) hand, to encourage President Theiu of South Vietnam not to go to the conference table before the 1968 election, but to wait for a better deal with Nixon. The tap was placed on Chennault’s phone, and as James McCord was to learn, it’s almost as good to be overheard on someone else’s tap as it is to be tapped yourself.

The tap on Chennault’s phone may have been illegal, since it is not clear whether the attorney general (Ramsay Clark at that time) ever signed an approval for it. But if any national security wiretappping is legal, that one was. After all, the lady was advising a foreign government to go back on the solemn agreement it had reached with her government. If that isn’t a matter of national security, then what is?

All of that info has since been proven, with a few caveats: LBJ had, in actuality, bugged Nixon’s campaign plane over national security concerns, which turned out to be true. Whether Chennault’s phone was tapped as well is unknown. However, the tape recording referenced above is of LBJ and his aides discussing Nixon’s treason. First they listen to a recording from the bug on Nixon’s campaign plane, where the treason with Anna Chennault was discussed. Then LBJ and his advisers turn to discussing whether to release the evidence of Nixon’s treason. In the end they decided not to because it would have been hard to explain why they had bugged Nixon’s campaign plane. They did, however, give all the info to Hubert Humphrey, who never used it because he thought he was going to win the election.

James Rosen has brown eyes because he’s full of shit

Yet 35 years after Mankiewicz blew the whistle on Nixon’s treason with Anna Chennault, this is the bullshit that James Rosen attempts to peddle to his brain-dead readers who will accept his historical revisionism at face-value:

A
source close to the [Anna Chennault] affair — who demanded anonymity — strongly
challenged the veracity of the prime witness. “Simply do not trust what
Anna Chennault says about this incident,” said the source, a senior
policy adviser to Nixon and other GOP politicians in later years. “She
manufactured the incident, then magnified her self-importance.”

She
caused untold problems with her perpetual self-promotion and, actually,
self-aggrandizement, because she was only interested in the money. I do
not put it in the realm of fantasy that she was paid by the SVs [South
Vietnamese]; she had them bamboozled, believing she was an authentic and
important “channel” to the campaign. John Mitchell . . . did not have
the bullocks to kiss her off, a tough and persistent woman who could
grind you down. . . . . Anna thought of herself as a puppet master. She
had no assignment, no tasks, and was an over-the-transom type that can
never be suppressed in a campaign.

Yet
the Chennault affair continued to haunt Nixon’s presidency. His
infamous orders to burglarize the Brookings Institution, issued in the
summer of 1971 following publication of the Pentagon Papers and never
carried out, stemmed from the president’s concern that the Washington
think tank possessed documents related to “the bombing halt” — a
euphemism for Nixon’s and Mitchell’s own back-channel machinations to
counter it.

Got that? An anonymous source tells Rosen a fact known by every Watergate buff for 35 years — everyone but James Rosen, apparently — is not true, and he prints it uncritically. The same anonymous source tells Rosen that Anna Chennault is a liar, despite the tapes that back up her story, not to mention the dozens of Watergate-related books that do the same, and Rosen doesn’t question it at all. Then the anonymous source has the audacity to suggest “the bombing halt” is merely a ephemism for Nixon’s and Mitchell’s attempt to combat a myth about Anna Chennault, even though every available piece of evidence released since Watergate says it’s fact, not myth, yet Rosen repeats it without comment.

It begs the question, “What did James Rosen know and when did he know it?”

As early as 1973 Mankiewicz debunked what Rosen would write 35 years later. If I knew it was a lie when I read it, why didn’t Rosen know when he wrote it? Not only did Rosen’s source lie to him — and I refuse to believe Rosen didn’t really know the truth — but Rosen gives his source anonymity, the only source in the entire book afforded that protection. We don’t know who to blame for this bullshit, but the ultimate responsibility is Rosen’s. Why would he be so reckless with the truth? 

Animation by author from public domain stills.

In my post Did Roger Ailes Dupe James Rosen, Or Did Rosen Dupe ‘Merka? I make the case that Rosen’s anonymous source is his current boss, Roger Ailes. Many years before Ailes headed up Fox “News,” he was the media consultant for Richard Nixon. Ailes worked under John Mitchell during the re-election campaign and his absence from a biography of Mitchell is conspicuous. Ask yourself this: Who is left from those olden days who still has a motive to cover up Nixon’s treason? Ask yourself this: For whom else other than Roger Ailes would Rosen throw out 35 years of Watergate scholarship to sell a known lie?

And, as I say, this is only one of the many questions I have about the veracity of Rosen’s book.

So, covering up for treason didn’t seem so far away from being an enemy of the state, or something. When Rosen made headlines for all the wrong reasons in May I could only shake my head thinking there had to be more to this little dealie from the Washington Post about a federal investigation into the leaking of top-secret information:

The court documents don’t name Rosen, but his identity was confirmed by several officials, and he is the author of the article at the center of the investigation. Rosen and a spokeswoman for Fox News did not return phone and e-mail messages seeking comment.

Reyes wrote that there was evidence Rosen had broken the law, “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.” That fact distinguishes his case from the probe of the AP, in which the news organization is not the likely target.

Using italics for emphasis, Reyes explained how Rosen allegedly used a “covert communications plan” and quoted from an e-mail exchange between Rosen and Kim that seems to describe a secret system for passing along information.

[…]

He [Rosen] also wrote, according to the affidavit: “What I am interested in, as you might expect, is breaking news ahead of my competitors” including “what intelligence is picking up.” And: “I’d love to see some internal State Department analyses.”

Court documents show abundant evidence gathered from Kim’s office computer and phone records, but investigators said they needed to go a step further to build their case, seizing two days’ worth of Rosen’s personal e-mails — and all of his e-mail exchanges with Kim.

Privacy protections limit searching or seizing a reporter’s work, but not when there is evidence that the journalist broke the law against unauthorized leaks. A federal judge signed off on the search warrant — agreeing that there was probable cause that Rosen was a co-conspirator.

While Fox “News” played the victim card, ask yourself: Would a journalist who covers up for his boss’ participation in treason have any problem helping someone leak top-secret information? I report, you decide.

By the way: My favourite part of the story is when Rosen says in one of his emails, “What I am interested in, as you might expect, is breaking news ahead of my competitors . . .” Rosen doesn’t even bother to claim, as many journalists and whistle-blowers before him have done, that he is in service of the greater good. No, James Rosen just wants to trump the competition and he doesn’t care how he does it, even if it’s trolling for top-secret information:

“I’d like to see some internal State Department analyses.”

Well, gee! Who wouldn’t? Which begs another question.Is James Rosen a blundering biographer or an enemy of the state? I report, you decide.

* The correct answer to both parts of the question is Harry Nilsson and this song is the reason why:

Did Roger Ailes Dupe James Rosen, Or Did Rosen Dupe ‘Merka?

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My remaindered copy of The Strong Man

Five years ago James Rosen, Fox “News” Chief Washington Correspondent, published a book on Watergate with a gigantic lie in it (surrounded by all kinds of smaller falsehoods). This lie continued the cover up of Richard Nixon’s treason during the 1968 presidential campaign.

Rosen is unjustifiably proud of his revisionist history called “The Strong Man,” which purports to tell the truth about John Mitchell, Richard Nixon’s Attorney General and, later, head of CREeP, the unfortunately accurate acronym for the Committee to ReElect the President.

Back in May I told the HIGH-LARRY-US story of my electronic bun fight with Rosen, but only hinted at The Big Lie. Even though I promised a full book review, I got bored with poking Rosen with a stick and let the topic die. However, it needs to be asked: Why did Rosen include this massive lie in his book when the truth was already known?

To understand this story one must go deeply into the Watergate Weeds. While most people use the term “Watergate” to refer only to the break-in at DNC headquarters that brought Nixon down, there was a whole litany of wrongdoing that falls under the rubric of Watergate, including this story. It goes back to the 1968 presidential election. President Johnson had already decided he would not run for office and Hubert Humphrey was the Democratic candidate. Meanwhile, LBJ had been pushing all parties involved to come to the Paris Peace talks in an effort to end the war in Vietnam.

An early picture of Anna Chennault,
nicknamed “The Dragon Lady”
by the Nixon White House.

Nixon didn’t get the nickname Tricky Dickie for nothing. Using a woman named Anna Chennault, a member of the so-called China Lobby, Nixon went around President Johnson to the South Vietnamese leader to scuttle the peace talks. She carried word from Nixon who said, in essence, if you don’t go to the Paris Peace Talks you’ll get a better deal from Nixon when he’s elected.

The broad outline of this treason has been known for decades (but more proof keeps coming to light). That’s why it was so puzzling that Rosen, in his laughable rewriting of history, would write:

James Rosen, historical revisionist

“A source close to the [Anna Chennault] affair–who demanded anonymity–strongly challenged the veracity of the prime witness.”

The demand for anonymity is backed up by end note 66 on page 514, which reads: “E-mails from [a confidential source] to the author, January 21, 2003, 6:16 p.m.; and Wednesday January 22, 2003, 3:25 p.m.”

Here’s the full quote from the book [Pages 61, 62]:

A source close to the affair — who demanded anonymity — strongly challenged the veracity of the prime witness. “Simply do not trust what Anna Chennault says about this incident,” said the source, a senior policy adviser to Nixon and other GOP politicians in later years. “She manufactured the incident, then magnified her self-importance.”

She caused untold problems with her perpetual self-promotion and, actually, self-aggrandizement, because she was only interested in the money. I do not put it in the realm of fantasy that she was paid by the SVs [South Vietnamese]; she had them bamboozled, believing she was an authentic and important “channel” to the campaign. John Mitchell . . . did not have the bullocks to kiss her off, a tough and persistent woman who could grind you down. . . . . Anna thought of herself as a puppet master. She had no assignment, no tasks, and was an over-the-transom type that can never be suppressed in a campaign.

Yet the Chennault affair continued to haunt Nixon’s presidency. His infamous orders to burglarize the Brookings Institution, issued in the summer of 1971 following publication of the Pentagon Papers and never carried out, stemmed from the president’s concern that the Washington think tank possessed documents related to “the bombing halt” — a euphemism for Nixon’s and Mitchell’s own back-channel machinations to counter it.

Keep in mind that James Rosen challenged me to read his book for myself and not “let @JohnWDean (x-felon) bully” me about it being revisionist history. Rosen’s mistake is that I know almost as much about Watergate as I do about Beatles trivia. The minute I came to that passage on Page 61 I knew that he was hoodwinking his readers. The broad outline of the Anna Chennault story has been known for decades, but the actual proof has only come in drips and drabs over the years. However, by the time Rosen wrote “The Strong Man” it was generally acknowledged that Chennault was telling the truth and Rosen’s secret source was lying through his teeth.

Corpulent liar Roger Ailes [right]
with his evil overlord Rupert Murdock

As soon as I read that passage I started to think, “Who the hell is still around that would still want to cover up Nixon’s treason? Who’s left? The only people who would want to cover it up are all dead.”

Then suddenly it struck me. There is still one person who needs to cover it up. Just to confirm my hypothesis I jumped to the index to look for “Ailes, Roger.” Well, whaddaya know about that? Roger Ailes, Nixon’s media man and John Mitchell’s behind-the-scenes right-hand media man in the ’72 reelection campaign, is NOT mentioned anywhere in the index. Nor does his name ever come up in the 498 pages of the book.

There is no doubt in my mind that Roger Ailes is the “senior policy adviser to Nixon and other GOP politicians in later years” who Rosen so blithely quotes calling Anna Chennault a liar. And, if I knew that the passage was a lie when I was reading it, why didn’t James Rosen know it was a lie when he was writing it? Did James Rosen help cover up his boss’ treason? Because, make no mistake, covering up treason is a treasonous act in and of itself. Therfore, James Rosen, if he knew the truth — but printed the lie — has also commited treason.

When I started asking Rosen uncomfortable questions on Twitter as I was reading his book, he very quickly blocked me. He claimed he did it because I wrote negatively about him for NewsHounds, which, if true, just shows he’s as thin-skinned as Bully Boy Bolling. However, I have always believed it was because he knew I wasn’t buying the bullshit he was selling in his book. Over the last 10 months, since I first wrote about my bun fight with Rosen, I have left many phone messages at Fox “News” for him. All I want to do is clear up the mystery of who is his secret source on Page 61 of The Strong Man. Rosen never returns my calls.

There’s only one conclusion I can come to: James Rosen is a treasonous coward who is covering up for his treasonous boss Roger Ailes. Now, go ahead and sue me. I double-dog dare you.

Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be ► Happy Birthday Martha Mitchell

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John and Martha Mitchell before their 1973 divorce

Today would have been Martha Mitchell‘s 94th Birthday, had she not had the misfortune of dying in 1976. It’s a good thing she’s not around today, since that spared her the ignominy of having to read, or hear about, the book “The Strong Man; John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate.” This doorstop of historical revisionism, written by Fox “News” personality James Rosen, goes into painful detail, over and over and over again, about Martha Mitchell’s alcoholism, unseemly recounting marital fights and screaming matches observed by others. These details could have been omitted in favour of a few paragraphs here and there in the authors own words, informing the reader that Martha Mitchell suffered from alcoholism, a disease that affects an estimated 76 million people worldwide.

However, that would not have served Rosen, who used Martha’s alcoholism as the main excuse for John Mitchell having taken his eyes off the ball and getting trapped by the Watergate scandal. To read Rosen’s spin of the story, John Mitchell had nothing whatsoever to do with Watergate and it was all the fault of that rapscallion John Dean. This despite Mitchell being found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury. He served 19 months of a two and a half years sentence, but went to his grave covering for President Richard Nixon.

Further reading:

Aunty Em Ericann’s Bun Fight With James Rosen of Fox “News”

Unpacking The Aunty Em Ericann Blog ► Part New 

Watergate ► The Beginning of the End

Watergate ► The End of the End

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Unpacking The Aunty Em Ericann Blog ► Part New

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A moment in time

While I use this occasional series to peel back the layers and reveal some of the behind-the-scenes aspects of my blog, the more astute among my readers have already figured out that there is a hidden motive: This is my subtle way of trying to get people to click on the advertising on my blog.

Wait! That wasn’t subtle at all.

No, you’re right. Subtle can be over-rated. My need for people to click on the ads is not subtle either. I spend hours upon hours researching and writing some of these posts, yet the only compensation I receive is from the advertising…and only if you click on those adverts. If you liked something you’ve read here, why not help a blogger out?

Take a closer look at that column of ads over there on the right? Choose something that sounds interesting (but it doesn’t have to be interesting). Then click on it. That’s it!!! While it costs you nothing, dear reader, each click sends a few pennies (and I do mean “few”) my way. I bet that every time you click on one of those adverts, you will feel better. Go ahead, try it! See? Now try it again. Feel even better, doncha? It works every time.

A moment in time on the The Aunty Em Ericann Blog

Meanwhile, I’ve noticed some interesting things in the latest set of statistics. For the longest time — from almost the very day it was posted — Aunty Em Ericann’s Bun Fight With James Rosen of Fox “News” was my most popular all-time article. It was written on May 15th and remained at the very tippy-top of my All Time Popular Posts right out of the gate. However, it was recently overtaken — by a very wide margin — in just this last week by my Musical Appreciation ► Brian Jones post. The Brian Jones post went up on July 3rd, almost 2 months after the Rosen post, yet has jumped to the top of the leader board.

It probaly didn’t hurt that The Rolling Stones celebrated their 50th Anniversary since I posted the Brian Jones appreciation. Most people arrived at the Aunty Em Ericann Blog through a Google search. I wonder if yesterday’s birthday of Mick Jagger will boost the latest numbers.

NUMBER 6 WITH A BULLET: It’s also gratifying to see my Coconut Grove series rising in popularity, especially the post Unpacking Coconut Grove ► Part Two ► E.W.F. Stirrup House. This is the article in which I lay out the history of Ebenezer Woodbury Franklin Stirrup and why his house and legacy should be saved. I would be gratified if you will pass this along to people who are interested in historical preservation.

Stay tuned for Part Three of this series. In the next installment, which is almost complete, I will expose who controls which properties surrounding the E.W.F. Stirrup House and who is responsible for the Demolition by Neglect that the house is currently undergoing. This could get very ugly, especially since there are millions of developers’ dollars at stake.

James Rosen of Fox “News” who
wrote “The Strong Man.” his and
cover-up of John Mitchell

ROSEN UPDATE: For those of you clamoring for Part Two of Aunty Em Ericann’s Bun Fight With James Rosen of Fox “News,” fear not: It’s coming. While it’s partially written, I have had more important things on my plate than proving why the 4-year old book “The Strong Man,” by Fox “News” correspondent James Rosen, is nothing but revisionist history. And, not to put too fine a point on it, there are still a few interviews I need to conduct in order to expose Rosen’s secret source on Page 61 (of the hardcover).

When Rosen wrote his John Mitchell apologia, his anonymous source could be assured that (s)he could lie with impunity about whether Anna Channault was telling the truth. However, subsequent releases of information about the 1968 presidential election, years before Watergate, proved that what Channault said was THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH.

This might be considered by some to be arcane, academic knowledge not worth revisiting at this point, some 44 years, or 11 presidential elections, after the one that put Richard Nixon in office. However, TREASON is never an academic issue and that’s what Rosen’s secret source is covering up by lying about Anna Chanault.

The million dollar question needs to be asked: Who could possibly be still around from those bygone days still interested in covering up Richard Nixon’s TREASON? Rosen knows who it was and, by now, must know he printed an untruth told to him by his anonymous source.

I have my suspicions on who the source was. A few more interviews and I will be able to announce it as a fact. I am even willing to listen to what James Rosen might have to say, but he’d rather block me on Twitter than answer my uncomfortable questions about his book.

Another moment
in time.

BACK TO THE STATS: One of the statistics that continues to fascinate me is where my readership lives. While ‘Merkins are far and away the top readers of my blog, I find it surprising that #2 is Italy by a wide margin over #3, the United Kingdom. Both of those beat Canada, where most of my family and friends live.

Italy? I don’t even speak the language.

Meanwhile, feel free to poke around on my blog, leave some comments, call me names, whatever meets your fancy. However, don’t forget to click on one of those adverts. Pretty please with sugar on top!

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Aunty Em Ericann’s Bun Fight With James Rosen of Fox “News”

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Pic: Fair [and Balanced] use

I didn’t start it, but those who know me, or those who have grown to know and love Aunty Em Ericann, know that I won’t walk away from a fight. Johnny Dollar, aka Mark Koldys, is not the only person I’ve had a had a pissing match with on the interwoven nets lately. My Canadian friends won’t know James Rosen, Chief Washington correspondent for FOX “News” Channel. My ‘Merkin friends might know him only too well. Despite watching Fox “News” so you didn’t have to, Rosen hadn’t really registered on my radar until he reached out and introduced himself to me.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  It all started with a Tweet to John W. Dean. [Those who have known me a long time, and my obsession with President Richard Nixon, know what a thrill it is just to be able to say that.]

Wait!  What?  A Fox “News” person?  No kidding, Dean?  I happen to write about those.  I was in too much of a hurry to even glance at the name of the author when I bought the book.  I was merely using a bookstore to get from A to B more quickly when I spotted the book on a remainder table. Even with half his face cut off, I clearly recognized John Mitchell, President Richard Nixon’s Attorney General.  Here was a Watergate book I hadn’t seen before, even though I’ve always considered myself something of a Nixonphile.  I was born in Detroit in 1952, the year Nixon was first elected Vice President, and I have always felt a bizarre connection to the man.  By the time I was eight years old, with President Kennedy entering the White House and President Eisenhower leaving, Nixon was already a source of fascination to me.  [I had no hobbies, apparently.]  His winning the presidency in 1968 only added to my interest.  By the time he was reelected in ’72, I was already living in Canada and watched his presidency fall apart from afar.  Hours were spent watching the Watergate hearings instead of going to college classes.  By the time Nixon resigned it was clear to me that he made a Faustian bargain in order to become president.  That’s when I started reading books by and about Richard Nixon and Watergate. 

Some of my Nixon books. There are Nixon books behind the books.

On the day Richard Nixon died I happened to be in a K-Mart in Oak
Park, Michigan when a woman started berating me about Richard Nixon,
seemingly out of the blue.  It took almost 10 seconds to realize I was
wearing my original 1972 “President Nixon Now More Than Ever” button on
my denim jacket, where it had been for many years.  I’ve never worn it
since.

Here’s the truth: When I saw the John Mitchell book I grabbed it to add to my Nixon collection (pictured above). I stood in line, even though I was already running late.  After I paid for it I stuffed it in my knapsack without a second glance and hot-footed it to my appointment.  Later it occurred to me to tell John W. Dean about my new purchase.

Pic by Westerfield

As soon as Dean warned me off reading it, I ran to my knapsack, pulled out the book, and saw that the remaindered sticker covered the name of James Rosen, “Chief Washington
correspondent for FOX ‘News’ Channel,” as the Fox web site puts it.  It seemed like ironic synchronicity that I
was holding a book written by someone at Fox “News” when my side-vocation was to write about Fox “News” for NewsHounds. I told my BFF John Dean that I would read it anyway,
since I read just about anything Watergate related, even the prison apologia/biography
of Nixon, written by my former-countryman (until he renounced his Canadian
citizenship) Conrad Black, or as I like to call him Lord Black of Black Bottom.

[BTW: “Tit in a ringer” is not sexist; it’s inside Watergate, inside
John Mitchell, inside baseball talk.  If
it needs explanation, it’s not worth it.]

And, that was that…or so I thought.

The next day I received the following tweet from the book’s author, who
thinks himself some kind of Beatles expert. 

Oh man, this is GREAT!!! I have John Dean and James Rosen arguing over my head on Twitter. The gang at the coffee shop certainly heard all about THAT the next day. All those days of skipping college classes to watch the Watergate hearings, and reading all those books, is finally paying off. Meanwhile, I’m not intimidated by a cutebeatle or anyone else at Fox “News.” If there’s one thing I know more about than Watergate, it’s The Beatles. So, I changed the subject and challenged Rosen with a Beatles trivia question.

Okay, maybe I made it worse with my next tweet.  And, maybe it was hubris on my part to also add Paul McCartney to my Beatles trivia challenge, but there it is:

And there it is, the gauntlet drawn. James Rosen will only play Beatles trvia with me if I promise to read his book and not be cowed by John Dean. Why do I suspect there is bad blood between Rosen and Dean and why do I feel that reading The Strong Man will provide the answer? But I don’t have time for that because there’s Beatles trivia with which to stump Rosen. Note my clue: You Can’t Do That.

And there we have it. I must have convinced Rosen that I would read his book because he finally deigns to play Beatles trivia with me.

Rosen’s second guess was Sophie Tucker, which if you know Beatles trivia isn’t that crazy an answer. But it was still wrong.  Rosen never attempted a 3rd guess, arguing instead that at the ’64 press conference The Beatles said Brian Wilson was their fave and at the ’66 press conference The Beatles said “Sophie Tucker” was their fave group. I had to remind cutebeatle about the ’68 press conference, when The Beatles were announcing the formation of Apple, they were asked their favourite ‘Merkin singer and they replied, “Harry Nilsson” and then were asked who is their favourite ‘Merkin group and they answered “Harry Nilsson,” which is how I discovered Harry Nilsson for myself.

So…I thought me and Rosen had a good thing going. Days later, a s I began reading his book we were still exchanging tweets back and forth, mostly Harry Nilsson-related at my instigation. Now I would see what the NYT and Doris Goodwin Kearns raved about.

Then several things occurred almost simultaneously:

  • I started asking James Rosen uncomfortable questions about The Strong Man;
  • I was besting him in Beatles trivia;
  • I told him an off-colour joke about President Nixon [It’s a pretty good joke. Rosen tweeted out that they had just released Nixon’s love letters. I told him that Nixon had watched Deep Throat 6 times because he wanted to get it down Pat. Buh Duh Boom!];
  • Wrote about him for NewsHounds, when he pulled the 21st Century Equivalent of the age old Fox “News” tactic of “Some people say” by reading anti-Obama tweets on the air. What was I to do? I couldn’t cut Rosen any slack just because he was now my Twitterific buddy.
Soon afterwards I learned that James Rosen, Chief Washington
correspondent for FOX “News” Channel, had a very thin skin because he blocked me on Twitter. However, for a while I didn’t know why. It could have been “All of the above” for all I knew. [He eventually cleared it up. It was “D.”]

Meanwhile I was reading Rosen’s book on John Mitchell just like I promised. Because so many things jumped out at me while I was reading it, I marked each one with a yellow Post It note. This is what the book looks like now that I have finished. Every one of those yellow slips is a question I have for cutebeatle.

However, more to the point, I believe I have unmasked Rosen’s secret source. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had their Deep Throat, the secret source that was later revealed to be Mark Felt, 2nd in command at the F.B.I., who kept them on the right track. Rosen appears to have his own Deep Throat, a secret source to whom he guaranteed anonymity. It comes early in The Strong Man, on page 61: “A source close to the [Anna Chennault] affair–who demanded anonymity–strongly challenged the veracity of the prime witness.” This is backed up by endnote 66, which reads: “E-mails from [a confidential source] to the author, January 21, 2003, 6:16 p.m.; and Wednesday January 22, 2003, 3:25 p.m.”

Here’s where we get into the weeds on Nixon. Rather than do that here, I am going to write a full review of The Strong Man by James Rosen, but I wanted to provide the background to why I would even bother to review a 4-year old book. Not only do I think Rosen made an overt challenge that requires a response in the form of a review, but now there are two other factors driving me: 

  1. It’s a book that deserved greater attention and condemnation when it was released. It’s full of contradictions, loaded language, softening of misdeads, and attempts to place the blame for Watergate on lower-downs; 
  2. I can break some news. I can not only expose Rosen’s confidential source, but can also explain who still has a reason to cover up Nixon’s misdeeds and why all these years later this confidential source still doesn’t want the public to know what happened way back then.

However, I miss playing Beatles trivia with cutebeatle.

Further reading on Not Now Silly:

Did Roger Ailes Dupe James Rosen, Or Did Rosen Dupe ‘Merka?