"During the Watergate fiasco, one interview stamped itself on my memory. Larry O’Brien was the national chairman of the Democratic Party, and it was his office that was broken into by Richard Nixon’s “plumbers.” O’Brien had a long political career in Massachusetts which concluded with his appointment as the manager for both John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson’s presidential campaigns. Johnson had rewarded him with an appointment as U. S. Postmaster General. While Nixon’s men scrambled to escape the tightening noose of Congressional investigations and impeachment subpoenas they engaged in an unseemly display of finger pointing as they tried to heave one another beneath a tsunami of criminal indictments.
O’Brien was asked what would have happened if a similar disgrace had unfolded in the Kennedy White House where he served. His reply was enlightening. He said, “Six Irishmen, myself included, would have marched onto Pennsylvania Avenue and thrown ourselves on our swords and that’s the last you would have ever heard about it.” He went on to explain that these willing volunteers would have served out their federal prison sentences in silence, and none would have yammered on or written books about who was responsible, who was to blame. This scenario stands in stark contrast with the criminal scrambling to cover their tracks evidenced by Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Liddy, Dean, Mitchell and others...."
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