Author Archive

The hero of Watergate: Frank Wills

Posted: June 14, 2022 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

By Christopher Harper

As talking heads and journalistic wannabes pontificate about this week’s anniversary of the Watergate break-in and its aftermath, few will mention Frank Wills.

“If there is no accountability, another president will feel free to do as he chooses. But the next time, there may be no watchman in the night,” said U.S. Rep. James Mann (D-South Carolina) of the House Judiciary Committee as he cast his vote to impeach Richard Nixon.

Wills was that watchman at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972, when five men tried to plant electronic listening devices.

Then 24, Wills called the police after discovering that locks at the complex had been tampered with. Five men were arrested inside the Democratic headquarters, which triggered the Watergate scandal and eventually the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.

Although hailed as a hero, Wills spent much of his life jobless and in poverty.

Wills was born in Savannah, Georgia. His parents separated when he was a child, and he was raised by his mother, Margie. After dropping out of high school, Wills studied heavy machine operations in Battle Creek, Michigan, and earned his high school equivalency degree from the Job Corps. He found an assembly-line job at Ford in Detroit, Michigan, but had to give up the position because of asthma. Wills then traveled to Washington, D.C., and worked at several hotels before landing a job as a security guard at the Watergate complex.

On the night of June 17, 1972, Wills noticed a piece of duct tape on one of the door locks when he was making his rounds. The tape was placed over the latch to prevent the door from shutting. He removed the tape and continued his patrol. Thirty minutes later, Wills returned to the door and noticed there was more tape on the same door. Without hesitation, Wills called the police. 

The police turned off the elevators and locked the doors while accompanying Wills to search the offices one by one. Five men—all with ties to the Committee to Re-elect the President—were found in the offices and arrested. “When we turned the lights on, one person, then two persons, then three persons came out, and on down the line,” Wills recalled.

According to media reports, Wills quit his job because he did not receive a raise.

After his brief fame, Wills had difficulty keeping a job. He said in an interview that Howard University feared losing its federal funding if it hired him. A security job with Georgetown University did not last long. Also, he worked for a brief time for the comedian Dick Gregory.

In the mid-1970s, Wills settled in North Augusta, South Carolina, to care for his aging mother, who had suffered a stroke. Together, they survived on her Social Security checks of $450 a month. In 1979, Wills was convicted of shoplifting and fined $20. Four years later, he was convicted of shoplifting a pair of sneakers from a store in Augusta, Georgia, and served one year in prison. By the time of his mother’s death in 1993, Wills was so impoverished that he had to donate her body to medical research because he had no money to bury her.

Only when significant anniversaries of the Watergate break-in occurred did the media remember him for a bit. In 1992, on the 20th anniversary of the burglary, reporters asked if he would do it all over again. “That’s like asking me if I’d rather be white than black. It was just a part of destiny,” he replied.

At 52, Wills died in Augusta, Georgia, from a brain tumor with neither fame nor fortune–little more than a footnote in history. 

But he was the hero of Watergate. Without his actions, it’s unlikely anyone would know what the Nixon administration was up to. 

The unintended consequences of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon

Posted: June 7, 2022 by chrisharper in middle east
Tags: , ,

By Christopher Harper

The Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which began 40 years ago this week, created a variety of unintended consequences from the rise of militant Islam to a Shia swath from Lebanon to the Arab Gulf. 

I traveled as a reporter throughout the Arab World for many years, covering some of the worst episodes of human despair and devastation of the 20th century. But the Israeli invasion, which began with Tel Aviv’s goal of removing the Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon, had a devastating effect on the world.

On June 6, 1982, Israeli forces launched an invasion of Lebanon called “Operation Peace for Galilee.” About 60,000 troops and more than 800 tanks, heavily supported by aircraft, attack helicopters, artillery, and missile boats, crossed the Israel–Lebanon border. A few days later, the Israelis and their Christian allies had encircled Beirut, where my colleagues and I reported on a siege that would end nearly three months later when the PLO evacuated Lebanon for other Arab countries.

Accurate casualty figures are difficult to find, but the independent Beirut newspaper An Nahar published an estimate of deaths from hospital and police records that claimed that more than 17,000 people died, roughly half civilians.

After the PLO’s departure, Christian forces murdered between 700 and 2,000 people in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in South Beirut. Israeli forces stood by as the massacre happened in September. I worked on an excellent documentary about the tragedy, “Oh, Tell the World What Happened,” for ABC News.

Although the PLO had many flaws, it was distinctly nonreligious. After the Israelis drove the PLO from Lebanon, Shia Muslims took control of the Lebanese government, creating an even more hostile force with Syria and Iran’s military and religious backing. That resulted in an attack on October 23, 1983, when 241 Marines and seamen died in a truck bombing in Beirut. The attack used Iranian funds, Syrian know-how, and Shia bombers. 

Here is the ABC 20/20 investigation I produced:

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfhAAhQ4FBg&t=2s

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgAFQYIYGpY&t=11s

The cross-border confrontations between Israel and Hezbollah, the Shia group in Lebanon, led to a war in 2006, which emboldened the Islamists. Furthermore, Hezbollah joined forces with Hamas, a Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip that continues to harass Israel today.

The Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon became a critical training ground for guerrillas and terrorists worldwide under the control of both Sunni and Shia extremists. Many foreign soldiers who fought U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000s got some of their training in the Bekaa Valley. 

It’s rare that a decision from 40 years ago continues to create havoc, but that’s precisely what occurred when Israel decided to invade Lebanon in 1982. 

Righteous Among the Nations

Posted: May 31, 2022 by chrisharper in Israel, war
Tags:

By Christopher Harper

Master Sergeant Roderick “Roddie” Edmonds didn’t talk about his heroism in World War II, including his actions to save hundreds of his fellow soldiers, including several hundred Jews.

Edmonds served in the 106th Infantry Division, 422nd Infantry Regiment in the United States Army. He was captured and became the ranking U.S. non-commissioned officer at the Stalag IX-A POW camp in Germany, where – at risk to his life – he saved an estimated 200-300 Jews from being singled out from the camp for Nazi persecution and possible death. 

Edmonds arrived in the combat zone in December 1944, only five days before Germany launched a massive counteroffensive, the Battle of the Bulge. During the battle, on December 19, 1944, Edmonds was captured and sent to a German POW camp: Stalag IX-B. Shortly after that, he was transferred, with other enlisted personnel, to another POW camp near Ziegenhain, Germany: Stalag IX-A. 

As the senior noncommissioned officer at the new camp, Edmonds was responsible for the camp’s 1,275 American POWs.

On their first day in Stalag IX-A, on January 27, 1945—as Germany’s defeat was approaching—the commandant ordered Edmonds to tell only the Jewish-American soldiers to present themselves at the next morning’s assembly so they could be separated from the other prisoners. 

Instead, Edmonds ordered all 1,275 POWs to assemble outside their barracks. The German commandant rushed up to Edmonds in a fury, placed his pistol against Edmonds’s head, and demanded that he identify the Jewish soldiers under his command. Instead, Edmonds responded, “We are all Jews here.” 

He told the commandant that if he wanted to shoot the Jews, he would have to kill all of the prisoners.

The commandant backed down.

After 100 days of captivity, Edmonds returned home after the war but kept the events at the POW camp to himself.

After Roddie died in 1985, Edmonds’ wife gave his son Chris some of the diaries his father had kept. Chris, a Baptist minister, began researching his story and stumbled upon a mention of the event at the POW camp. He located several Jewish soldiers his father saved, who spoke about Roddie’s heroism. 

The interviews resulted in the 2019 book, No Surrender. See https://www.amazon.com/No-Surrender-Young-Readers-Extraordinary/dp/0062966170/

For his defense of Jewish servicemen at the POW camp, Edmonds, a Christian, was awarded the title “Righteous Among the Nations,” Israel’s highest award for non-Jews who risked their own lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

h/t to dawife Elizabeth

Reassessing presidential legacies: TR, FDR, and JFK

Posted: May 24, 2022 by chrisharper in politics, Uncomfortable Truths
Tags: , , ,

In my months-long deep dive into biographical treatises on U.S. presidents, I found several—Grover Cleveland, Calvin Coolidge, and Dwight Eisenhower—had not gotten their historical due.

I also found several—Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and John Kennedy—whose overrated administrations failed more often than they succeeded. 

Overall, these three presidents greatly expanded the power of the presidency, which until Teddy’s White House had often been subservient to the Congress. Moreover, the trio made citizens far more dependent on the government for their livelihood—an issue that still creates myriad problems today. 

Although Teddy’s reputation has fallen lately because of his racist views, his legacy has other significant failings.

Gary Gerstle, a professor of history at the University of Cambridge, said that Teddy’s economic legacy was a forebearer to the strategies of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

“If we brought him back, that’s exactly where he would fit on the political spectrum,” he said in 2019 on the 100th anniversary of Teddy’s death.

His presidency gave credibility to the progressive movement, lending the prestige of the White House to welfare legislation and government regulation. His creation of the Bull Moose Party in 1912 undermined the Republican Party, leading to the election of one of the worst presidents in history, Woodrow Wilson.

His cousin Franklin gets high marks for his efforts during World War II, albeit with some caveats. But FDR’s domestic policies created so much dependence on the federal government that his programs hamper many people even now.  

Sidney Milkis, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, summed up the downside of FDR’s reign. 

“Critics have questioned not only his policies and positions but also charged him with centralizing power in his own hands by controlling both the government and the Democratic Party. Many denounced his breaking the no-third-term tradition in 1940. Long after Roosevelt’s death, new lines of attack opened to criticize his policies regarding helping the Jews of Europe, incarcerating Japanese Americans on the West Coast, and opposing anti-lynching legislation,” Milkis wrote. Moreover, FDR’s capitulation at the Yalta Conference in 1945 led to the Soviet Union’s control of Eastern Europe for the next four decades. 

Many FDR supporters argue that he brought the country out of the Depression. But later analyses of his massive spending programs demonstrate that World War II finally created a sound economic footing for the country. 

William E. Leuchtenburg, professor emeritus of the University of North Carolina, wrote that little had changed from 1932 when FDR was first elected to deal with economic issues.

“[I]n the fall of 1937, industrial production fell by 33 percent, national income dropped by 12 percent, and industrial stock prices plummeted by 50 percent. Nearly 4 million people lost their jobs, and the total number of unemployed increased to 11.5 million. 

“World War II, not the New Deal, brought an end to the Great Depression. The war sparked the kind of job creation and massive public and private spending that finally lifted the United States out of its economic doldrums.”

The positive assessment of JFK’s presidency has puzzled me for some time. Simply put, he didn’t do much during his less than three years in office. In his book, Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth, my former colleague Fred Kempe excoriated Kennedy’s actions during the Bay of Pigs, his inept Vienna summit with Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev, and his dreadful response to the construction of the Berlin Wall. All these errors, Kempe argued, led Khrushchev to see the United States as weak and encouraged him to try to plant missiles on Cuban soil. Fortunately, JFK handled that showdown relatively well. See https://www.fredkempe.com/berlin-1961

JFK’s sexual antics went unreported by the media until long after his death—as did his many physical ailments and subsequent drug abuse hindered his judgment at times.

I think his legacy has been propped up by my generation’s seminal shared moment of remembering where we were on November 22, 1963. 

Older Entries
Newer Entries