The “Dirty Tricksters”


They claimed that Muskie cried and he lost the election.

But it wasn’t a tear that brought him down but the efforts of one Donald Segretti, hired by Nixon’s Inner Circle to raise doubts and cast suspicions and ‘do the dirty’ to the opposition.

And they excelled.

In fact, they’ve virtually interfered in every election since Nixon.


Nor was it the first time that dirty tricks was used to bring down a politician.

For that, you would have to go back to Jefferson’s attacks on Adams or even
Later on, the attacks on Jackson’s wife by the Washington faithful.

Muskie took the attacks very hard.

But Jackson gave it back in spades.

Today, I wonder in watching the attacks on Clinton whether it might not be the descendents of the ‘dirty tricksters’ starting up again.

It wouldn’t be a surprise.

At the time—the elections of 68, everyone thought that all of the accidents, all of the mistakes were simply dumb democratic mistakes; nobody realized that there were a crew of mischief makers who were losing speeches, misdirecting the media, tampering with airplanes so that they didn’t arrive on schedule and doing other things to make the democratic candidates look especially foolish.

The great genius of republican politics was awed by the Segretti tactics and borrowed them himself to do the Willy Horton bit against the democratic candidate and spread the pictures of him looking foolish riding in a tank.

And their were many acolytes ranging from Dick Armey to Newt Gingrich.

Most of us may not realize that these were the antecedents of the Segretti’s “dirty tricksters.”

Even the swiftboaters owe their genesis to the days of Nixon when a veteran by the name of Kerry told the truth on the Dick Cavett Show….

Nixon made it a point to go after this man Kerry using another pro-government Vietnam veteran. As it turned out, the recent Swift Boat attacks were the work of the same man Nixon used to go after Kerry but thirty some odd years later!.....

And these kind of tactics never seemed to end.

We could go on and on. The Bush tactics against McCain accusing him of fathering a black child in order to destroy his presidential aspirations.

The attacks on Clinton with the Whitewater charges….the unjustified assaults on Gore…the lost votes, the interference with the voting process by the Secretary of State of Florida.

All more evidence that the Segretti tactics are still in play….

So it is not entirely out of line to think that maybe the republican attack team is already in political mode and starting their attacks on Hillary.

It wouldn’t surprise me.

Hillary’s been the bane of hard-liners since she served on the Watergate Committee.

Republicans have long memories for that sort of thing.

Nor are they very introspective when it comes to their own failings. Their Senator who likes young boys, or the kind of people who build bridges to nowhere, or take money from Indian reservations (How do these people live with themselves? ), or make deals with big oil companies, or lose 9 billion dollars of tax funding and treat it as if it were nothing….


In any event, now the rumors are spreading that the democrats are messing around with the votes.

I think that highly unlikely since the two owners of the voting machines are sworn to see a republican get into office and wouldn’t help democrats if someone’s life was in the balance.


All we can suggest is that democrats keep their perspective.

And remember when it comes to wheeling and dealing, it’s not the democrats who are the experts; it’s the other guys you don’t hear too much about who are busy building the next traps we need to avoid….

Les Aaron
The Committee for Positive Change

hubmaster@aol.com