Throughout the entire Nixon Administration, there were many decisions that were made that put the good of the Republican Party or the government as a whole, above what was the ethical choice. For instance, the Nixon Administration was discovered to have been taking excessive amounts of money from corporations, essentially, as bribes. In exchange for a generous "donation" to the Republican Party, a company would expect that a piece of legislation that they did not want to pass would be stopped. Hunt describes an article by Jack Anderson that revealed one of these instances. He writes:
Columnist Jack Anderson had published an article on February 29, 1972, revealing a memo from International Telegraph and Telephone lobbyist Dita Beard that promised the Nixon administration $400,000 from the company to finance the Republican convention if some annoying antitrust litigation for the multinational company was conveniently dropped. (198)
This company was trying to bribe the government. The Nixon administration could easily have denied this unethical proposal, but instead, they selfishly accepted the money and met the demands of the company in exchange for money. There were many other deals like this that went through during this time, but columnists such as Jack Anderson brought them to the attention of the people, causing great annoyance and pain in the government.
As a result of his columns, Anderson was singled out and E. Howard Hunt and his colleagues were told to stop him at “all costs”. They took this order to mean an assassination so they began making plans to dispose of Anderson. Hunt and his colleague, Liddy, justified their plans by saying that Anderson had caused harm to his country and had betrayed many undercover agents. He writes, "Liddy and I, feeling that Anderson had done such harm to the country by exposing foreign-based CIA agents who might be imprisoned and/or killed, spent a lot of time concocting ways to get rid of the pesky journalist" (199). Hunt believed that it was his duty to stop this man in order to save the lives of others. They faced the question of when it is ethical to kill one man in order to save the lives of many. This question is posed in much of our culture including many movies and books. It is also the question that was posed in class through the question "would you rather have your sibling or the cure for cancer?" This asks whether you would have your sibling die in order to find the cure for cancer and save millions of people, or would you rather have millions die of cancer in order to save the life of your brother or sister. It is a question that has no easy answer and everyone hopes they will never have to face. Unfortunately, some people will have to face it in their lives.
As a result of his columns, Anderson was singled out and E. Howard Hunt and his colleagues were told to stop him at “all costs”. They took this order to mean an assassination so they began making plans to dispose of Anderson. Hunt and his colleague, Liddy, justified their plans by saying that Anderson had caused harm to his country and had betrayed many undercover agents. He writes, "Liddy and I, feeling that Anderson had done such harm to the country by exposing foreign-based CIA agents who might be imprisoned and/or killed, spent a lot of time concocting ways to get rid of the pesky journalist" (199). Hunt believed that it was his duty to stop this man in order to save the lives of others. They faced the question of when it is ethical to kill one man in order to save the lives of many. This question is posed in much of our culture including many movies and books. It is also the question that was posed in class through the question "would you rather have your sibling or the cure for cancer?" This asks whether you would have your sibling die in order to find the cure for cancer and save millions of people, or would you rather have millions die of cancer in order to save the life of your brother or sister. It is a question that has no easy answer and everyone hopes they will never have to face. Unfortunately, some people will have to face it in their lives.
1 comment:
First, I'm kind of confused because you already have all six posts, and I thought we were supposed to be at about four right now. Congrats on being done early? Anyways, I think you did a really good job of splitting your post 50/50 in regards to plot and analyzation. You also did a good job of relating what you read to what we're doing in class, by bringing up the sibiling vs. cancer question.
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