Pat Buchanan's Skeleton Closet

Allied with Fringe Anti-Semite Socialists -- Did Venereal Disease Keep Him Out of the Army? -- Watergate -- dirty tricks, IRS abuses, obstruction of justice -- Disgruntled Staff -- Hypocrite -- Praise for Hitler -- Racist -- Holocaust Revisionism -- Anti-Semitic Statements -- Defender of Nazis -- Sheltered Washington Insider -- All talk, no action (the Republican Jesse Jackson) -- Flirting With Fascism -- Assaulted Police Officers -- Good Points -- Character -- Quotes -- Sources

Pat Buchanan is a very interesting character.

The good parts: He is very smart, a brilliant polemicist and strategist, an excellent stump speaker, and surprisingly funny (much funnier than Rush Limbaugh, who is overrated).He seems to have had a genuine conversion to concern for the declining wages and lost jobs among blue collar workers, which fuels his economic nationalism.

He is the only Republican willing to attack big corporations or sincerely support campaign restrictions on lobbyists and big campaign money. Buchanan runs a low-budget campaign (he spent $600,000 - $700,000 in Iowa, vs. $4 million for Forbes) and doesn't suck up to big donors nearly as much as the other major party candidates, including Clinton. Of course, this is relative -- Buchanan raised $6.7 million last year from 86,000 people, vs. Dole's $25 million, and Alexander's $10.2 million from only 17,629 contributors.) Though much of Pat's money came in small donations, he uses very slick (and expensive) direct mail professionals to get them. Still, he clearly has more grass roots support than any other candidate in the Republican primaries.

Another great thing about Buchanan is his willingness to take surprising political positions for such a right- winger. Most famous, of course, is his trade protectionism and attacks on corporations. More impressive -- and much less known -- is his support for allowing medical use of marijuana by dying cancer patients -- a decent, principled stand that few politicians will take in the face of heavy emotions over the drug issue.

The bad parts:

Hypocrite

Buchanan is a big hypocrite. Though he attacks big corporations like AT&T and General Electric for laying off Americans and investing overseas, he gets a piece of their profits from the stock he owns -- between $15,000 and $50,000 each in AT&T, DuPont, General Motors and General Electric. Pat owns between $50,000 and $100,000 in IBM stock as well. His multi-million portfolio also includes interests in a British bank, YPF Sociedad Anonima (an Argentine oil company), and China Light and Power, a Hong Kong utility that owns part of a Chinese power plant.

Buchanan attacks immigrants and foreigners, but his housekeeper is South American, and when he eats at his favorite restaurant -- Washington's pricey Jockey Club -- his favorite desert is the Grand Marnier soufflé. His expensive house is just down the road from Ted Kennedy and Colin Powell in McLean Virginia.

He likes to brag that his biggest campaign contributor -- Roger Milliken, a textile billionaire -- gave him just $60,000. But Milliken also secretly gave $1.7 million to The American Cause, Buchanan's protectionist group, and to an affiliated lobbying arm. And Milliken directly paid for "99 percent" of the anti-GATT ads Buchanan ran in 1994, according to a Buchanan accountant quoted in Newsweek.

Sheltered Washington Insider:

Pat has always led a very sheltered upper class life, and has never worked for anyone except the federal government and the media -- while attacking both the whole time. In fact, he lived off the federal payroll even as a kid -- his dad was a government accountant and then managing partner of Councilor, Buchanan & Mitchell, one of the largest accounting firms in the Washington D.C. area. He earned enough to raise several kids in an affluent neighborhood, with enough left over to buy a Cadillac. Even George Bush was less sheltered than Buchanan -- he at least lived in Texas and China, and worked in the private sector.

Has Buchanan really grown up? Here is a man who apparently has never challenged anything he learned from his father or his school. He has never lived or worked outside of the Washington "beltway" cocoon, except a 3 year stint as an editorial writer for a now-defunct conservative paper in St. Louis. His own big sister runs his campaign, for God's sake. By all accounts she is a bright, hard working woman, but still -- the guy needs to get out a little more.

Buchanan's sheltered life explains why it took him until 1992 to discover that working men were losing jobs, and their wages were falling. That's why he didn't notice his own hypocrisy of preaching "America First" while driving a Mercedes in the 1992 election. (Worse yet, he tried to blame it on his wife.) As of 1992, he had never ridden the Washington subway in a lifetime living there, and his work for the "liberal media" was earning him close to a million dollars a year.-- Back to the top

Flirting With Fascism

He has expressed his admiration for Francisco Franco and Joseph McCarthy (not to mention Hitler), and during the Iran Contra scandal said that reporters should be "Americans first and reporters second" - in other words, suppress free speech to help Reagan cover up a scandal.

Several prominent Republicans and conservatives have come to this conclusion. "Flirting with fascism" is how William Bennett described Buchanan. Both William F. Buckley, Joshua Muravchik (a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute) and William Safire (Pat's fellow speech writer on the Nixon staff) have all concluded that Buchanan showed consistent (if carefully worded) hostility toward Jews throughout his public statements. Even Alan Keyes "confronted top Buchanan aides and angrily accused them of appealing to racist and anti-Semitic voters" after the WMUR debate in New Hampshire this year.

During a talk show early in early 1995, Buchanan's liberal co-host mentioned Senator Jesse Helms' support for right-wing tyrants in Latin America.Buchanan shouted, "You just wait, you just wait," but was interrupted by a commercial. As soon as they were off the air, he burst out laughing and said, red faced, that he nearly had said on air, "You just wait until 1996, then you'll see a real right-wing tyrant."

This is nothing new for Pat. Buchanan has said that as he grew up, his family's heroes were Francisco Franco ("a Catholic savior")and Joseph McCarthy. Note that these are not simply very conservative, authoritarian leaders -- he didn't mention Cuba's Batista, DeGaulle or Chiang Kai Shek. His heroes pursued that wild populism where vicious attacks on your enemies, and fear of becoming the enemy if you don't fight hard enough, fuse into one jagged adrenaline surge. That's dangerous stuff. But Buchanan seems addicted to that surge - and it's hard to know when he would stop as a leader.

That's why Buchanan's Back to the top

Anti-Semitic Statements

Anti-Semitism isn't cut or dried: Lots of Americans grew up hearing anti-Jewish slurs, and many keep some of that with them. William Safire (Buchanan's colleague on the Nixon speechwriting team) put it this way: Buchanan is an extremist whose anti-Semitism would rank at level four or five -- on a scale that has Adolf Hitler at 10 and Black Muslim leader Rev. Louis Farrakhan as a seven.

When he attacks the Supreme Court, he always names "Ruth (pause) Bader (pause) Ginsburg", though she is the newest and least influential member. When he attacks Wall Street investment firms, he always names Goldman Sachs, the only major Jewish-run firm in a WASP dominated industry.

He described Congress as "Israeli-occupied territory", and opposed the Gulf War by saying only "the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States" wanted to fight Saddam Hussein. (Which was crazy, apart from any Jewish angle. Desert Storm was one of the most popular wars in U.S. history.)

And Brock Meeks, reporter for Hotwired, broke the story that Buchanan included in his official World Wide Web page an article claiming that Hillary Clinton is a spy for Israel. After ABC News ran the story, the Buchanan campaign pulled the article off their site. You can see the article, exactly as it appeared on Pat's web site, by clicking here.

Buchanan also seems to relish Catholic vs. Jewish antagonism, one part of pre-Vatican II Catholicism that most Catholics don't miss. During the controversy over a proposed Carmelite convent at Auschwitz, Buchanan wrote some of his most frightening words:

"If U.S. Jewry takes the clucking appeasement of the Catholic cardinalate as indicative of our submission, it is mistaken. When Cardinal O'Connor of New York seeks to soothe the always irate Elie Wiesel by reassuring him, 'there are many Catholics who are anti-Semitic...it's deep within them,' when he declares this 'is not a fight between Catholics and Jews,' he speaks for himself. Be not afraid, Your Eminence; just step aside, there are bishops and priests ready to assume role of defender of the faith."

Appeasement means trying to stall an attacker by making concessions -- what attacks were Catholic groups "appeasing"? What did Pat think the faith should be defended against? The only issue was that Jewish groups thought it disrespectful to build a convent right next to a major Holocaust death camp. The man clearly has a king-sized chip on his shoulder.

Then, of course, there is Buchanan's defense of Nazis, his praise for Hitler,, and his Holocaust revisionism.

It isn't a statement here or there that reveals Buchanan's fixation with Jews -- it's the consistent theme of it that appears in his statements over the years. Even William F. Buckley reluctantly concluded that Buchanan was an anti-Semite after carefully reviewing dozens of his statements about Jews in a very long National Review article. And John Muravchik, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, concluded a similar review in Commentary Magazine by saying that "Taken cumulatively, Buchanan's rhetoric about Jews pretty clearly betrays an underlying sense of grievance or irritation." -- Back to the top -- Sources

Defender of Nazis

Buchanan continues to declare that Demanjuk has been proved "innocent". Actually, a key piece of evidence (from German documents) that exonerated him as Ivan showed Demanjuk to be a willing guard at Sobibor, another extermination camp where 250,000 died. Even the National Review, while generally defending Demanjuk and Buchanan's support for him, concedes that "Demanjuk was probably guilty of being a lesser accomplice in the Nazi machinery of genocide. That is a fair summary of the Israeli court's findings."

More to the point, Demanjuk is only one of several accused Nazis Buchanan has defended in one way or another. These include Karl Linnas (Buchanan personally appealed to Ed Meese, then Attorney General, to block his deportation to the Soviet Union); Klaus Barbie (Buchanan did not oppose his trial, but argued the US should not have apologized to France for sheltering Barbie after WWII); Arthur Rudolph, a rocket scientist involved in slave labor and severe punishments at a German rocket factory (Buchanan argued his confession was a "lie" while acknowledging he was a "nominal member of the Nazi party and of the SA until 1934"); and Frank Walus (of all the accused, the one most likely innocent.)

One of the most striking examples is Kurt Waldheim, the disgraced former UN leader. Buchanan repeatedly attacked him during his tenure, but once his Nazi past came out, Pat complained that "the ostracism of President Waldheim [has] an aspect of moral bullying and the singular stench of selective indignation." He also rationalized that "like others in Hitler's army, Lt. Waldheim looked the other way."

In each of these cases, Buchanan found a factual reason to defend the accused, an appeal to justice. But put together, it is striking how often he rushes to the defense of accused Nazis. He has also attacked the US Justice Department's Office of Special Investigation (which pursues war criminals) more generally:
"You've got a great atrocity that occurred 35, 45 years ago.... Why... put millions of dollars [into] investigating that?"

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Weird Allies: Pat Embraces Socialist Anti-Semite Fringe Candidate Fulani

In 1998 and 1992, Fulani's campaign and the NAP was often dismissed as a silly parody of liberalism designed primarily to qualify for and scoop up federal campaign funding. In fact, she got nearly $3 million in public money despite getting less than one percent of the vote. She actually received more federal matching funds than either Jerry Brown or Paul Tsongas, despite receiving just 200,000 votes in 1992. But there were scarier overtones as well, and the NAP was often described as cult-like.

Fulani describes her former NAP co-leader, Fred Newman -- whose support Buchanan also sought -- as her "theoretician and tactician." Newman first started a radical psychotherapy collective in New York in the late 1960s, then formed the International Workers Party in 1974 after splitting off from an alliance with Lyndon Larouche, the convicted felon who is clearly a political cult leader. The IWP adapted Leninist cadres and Soviet psychiatric treatments to further a "workers' revolution" in part by handing out, in their own words, "the most obscene brochures and pamphlets in the whole city -- filthy -- incredibly offensive."

In the late 1970s, Newman reformed his group as the National Alliance Party wiht an aim of winning elections, and discovered Fulani. He later boasted "I organized her. She is one of my life's proudest accomplishments." As the NAP broadly appealed to extreme liberals, ex-members say that the IWP continued to exist, using Soviet-style secret cells and hoarding guns. An FBI report from March 1988 says that "members of the New Alliance Party should be considered armed and dangerous as they are known to possess weapons."

After Fulani's two national campaigns, the NAP disbanded amid an FEC investigation of embezzling federal funds. (The notoriously toothless FEC basically accepted any receipts produced by the group, and dismissed most of the charges.) Since then, the two have worked diligently to build power inside the Reform Party.

Fulani and her party have long supported Louis Farrakhan, the very controversial racist and anti-Semitic demagogue who has run the National of Islam for many years, and supported anti-Israeli terrorists. Newman publicly described Jews as "dirty", "self-righteous dehumanizers" and the "stormtroopers of decadent capitalism against people of color the world over."

And therein lies the connection. Though they disagree on just about every single other issue, Fulani and Buchanan share two things; anti-Semitism and a willingness to use any ideology or argument to further their own political goals.

But Buchanan may have met his match in clever demagogues. The Fulani-Newman group -- now operating through a shrouded, unincorporated group called CUIP (the Committee for a Unified Independent Party) -- is a major force in the Reform Party today. According to the New Republic magazine, the Fulani-Newman faction now control as many Reform Party delegates as Ross Perot or Jesse Ventura, in part through clever use of a little known method of proxy voting in New York state.

And after the successful meeting between Buchanan, his sister Bay and wife Shelley, Fulani and Fred Newman, Newman bragged that "This was really a culmination of what we had been doing all along." Which appears to be quietly infiltrating and controlling larger and larger political groups. Lenora Fulani is now Pat Buchanan's campaign co-chairman. -- Back to the top -- Sources

Racist

"If we had to take a million immigrants in, say Zulus, next year, or Englishmen, and put them up in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less problems for the people of Virginia?" ("This Week With David Brinkley," 1/8/91)

Generally, though, Buchanan hides his feelings behind code words, or hides them altogether. This memo, which Pat sent to Nixon back on August 26, 1971, only recently became public. Buchanan cited an article claiming that heredity determines intelligence (similar to the more recent Bell Curve book) and wrote:

"If correct, then all our efforts and expenditures not only for 'compensatory education' but to provide an 'equal chance at the starting line' are guaranteeing that we wind up with the intelligent ones coming in first. And every study shows blacks 15 I.Q. points below whites on average. . . . If there is no refutation, then it seems to me that a lot of what we are doing in terms of integration of blacks and whites -- but even more so, poor and well-to-do -- is less likely to result in accomodation than it is in perpetual friction -- as the incapable are played consciously by government side by side with the capable." -- Back to the top -- Sources

Disgruntled Staff

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Praise For Hitler

"Those of us in childhood during the war years were introduced to Hitler only as caricature. ... Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him."

He went on to say:

"Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path."

This column was a review of a biography of Hitler by John Toland, which Buchanan called "brilliant." To read the entire column, click here.

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Holocaust Revisionism

In his March 17, 1990 column, he wrote that diesel engines, the exhaust from which was used in the Treblinka gas chambers, "do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody. ... Demanjuk's weapon of mass murder cannot kill."

His evidence was a 1988 accident where a train stalled in a tunnel, with the engine running for a few minutes. No one died. Of course, the train operator was not trying to kill anyone. Apparently, properly tuned diesels do not produce much carbon monoxide, but they can be (and were) tweaked to produce deadlier exhaust. Many people actually think that in the gas chambers, the exhaust was used to suffocate, not poison. In a crowded, sealed chamber this would happen much more quickly.

As Muravchik points out in the Commentary article, "diesel exhaust fumes were used not only at Treblinka but also at Chelmno, Sobibor, and Belzec, and were moreover employed extensively by the Nazi killing squads inside the USSR." Denying that diesel exhaust can kill means that much of the generally accepted history of the Holocaust must be false.

Buchanan has refused to discuss his statements on the record, but told reporter Jacob Weisberg of a "bolder debunking claim (concerning the gas chambers) than he is willing to endorse in print." When Weisberg asked him where he got the anecdote about the stalled train, he would say only "Somebody gave it to me." All evidence points to Buchanan getting this from Holocaust Revisionist groups. Treblinka is often singled out by these extremists, because the gas chamber was destroyed, and most witnesses murdered, before Allied troops arrived at the end of the war.

A well-researched article by Jamie McCarthy persuasively identifies Buchanan's source as the July 1988 issue of the German American Information and Education Association, a revisionist group.That issue goes on to say "the German people were 'holocausted' after WW II, especially by the Bolsheviks, originally a Jewish/Zionist movement."

In his Ivan the Terrible column, Buchanan also tried to explain away death camp eyewitnesses by saying "Since the war, 1,600 medical papers have been written on 'The Psychological and Medical Effects of the Concentration Camps on Holocaust Survivors.' This so-called 'Holocaust Survivor syndrome involves 'group fantasies of martyrdom and heroics.' "

To this day - the last week of February 1996 to be exact - Buchanan still defends his Demanjuk columns as "the best journalism I ever did."

And he contests several other generally accepted aspects of German history. (He is himself entirely German, on his mother's side, and half Irish on his father's.) Buchanan argued that the British started the terror-bombing in WWII (causing Germans to retaliate). He wrote Reagan's infamous description of the German soldiers buried in Bitburg, Germany (including SS members) as "victims of the war". He wrote a column in 1990 publicizing "Other Losses", a book alleging that one million German POWs died in American camps at the end of WW2, due to General Eisenhower's supposedly fanatical hatred of Germans. He argued Britain started WWI and pulled us into a fight with Germany through "lying British propaganda."

And during the reunification of Germany in 1989, many neighboring countries pressured Germany to accept its postwar borders and give up claims to land it lost at the end of WW2. Buchanan applauded Helmut Kohl as a "patriot" for his "reluctance to sign away all rights to the lost German territories."

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Extremist Staff Members, With Ties to White Supremacy and Militia Groups

Larry Pratt, Militia Man

Pratt, who took a leave of absence from Buchanan's 1996 campaign after his background became known, is a major supporter and promoter of militias, and said of Buchanan, "I'm quite sure he would support exactly what the founders of our country had in mind. They put the militia into federal law, and it is still in federal law in Title X."

The Southern Poverty Law Center charges that Pratt was the person who introduced the concept of militias to the right-wing underground, in 1992. Historian and author Mark Pitcavage, who runs a very comprehensive web site on right-wing extremists, thinks that overstates Pratt's role, since the militia idea floated around Posse Comitatus before 1992, but he agrees that Pratt was an important figure in popularizing militias, comparable to Bo Gritz.

Pratt argues that the Bible calls for citizen militias and that it teaches we have a "responsibility" to keep and bear arms. His 1990 book is called "Armed People Victorious. " He advanced this view in print and in numerous personal appearances at "Preparedness Expo" type events.

Pratt was invited to speak at the widely publicized 1992 rally in Estes Park, CO by Pete Peters, a leader of the Christian Identity Movement. At the same rally, Peters said "Your enemies are pumping all the Talmudic filth they can vomit and defecate into your living room." (The Talmud is a Jewish holy book). Christian Identity religions hold that Jews are a "mud people" and that "Israelites" referred to in the Bible are not Jews, but actual "Aryan" or "Celtic" peoples. Jesus could not have been Jewish, in their view. Usually they claim that He was British. Other speakers at the same rally were Richard Butler, pastor of the Aryan Nations church in Idaho, and Louis Bream, former head of the Texas KKK.

Pratt admits appearing several times on a television show hosted by Pete Peters after that rally. The Wall Street Journal reported that Pratt has written for "the Jubilee", an openly racist and anti-Semitic publication, and the group that publishes it sells two audiocassette tapes of Pratt's lectures. Pratt spoke at the Jubilation Conference, sponsored by Jubilee's publisher Paul Hall, Sr., in 1993.

Pratt has appeared at a number of other extremist rallies, including a Christian Identity meeting in Branson, Missouri a few days after the Oklahoma city bombing, the "Dallas Preparedness Expo 95" (along with Mark Koernke of the Michigan Militia and Bo Gritz), and the "U.S. Constitution Restoration Rally" in Lakeland Florida, in 1994 (where Red Beckman argued that the constitutional amendments banning slavery and giving blacks' full citizenship were never ratified). Pratt is a contributing editor to a newsletter published by United Sovereigns of America, a group that sells extremist materials including the forged anti-Jewish "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and the Posse Comitatus handbook.

In defense, both Pratt and Buchanan deny any racism. (To be fair, even the Jewish Anti-Defamation League admits it does not have evidence of Pratt himself making racist or anti-Semitic statements.) In fact, Pratt is married to a black woman. Pratt also says he is a member of the group "Jews For the Preservation of Firearms Ownership", an extreme pro-gun group that raised controversy a few years ago by linking the Brady Bill (waiting period before gun purchase) to Hitler and the Nazis. That does not mean Pratt himself is Jewish, though. He says the president of that group likens him to "those righteous gentiles that resisted the Nazi murderers."

In any case, the significance of this is not Pratt's personal views -- it's that one of Buchanan's national campaign chairmen has frequent contacts with, and is happy to ally himself with the most extreme right-wing elements. It's ironic that Buchanan attacks Dole for working together with Democrats but finds no problem in his staff working with neo-Nazis.

Michael Farris, Anti-Abortion Activist

Another of Pat's 4 national co-chairman, Michael Farris, attended the "White Rose Banquet", a dinner honoring antiabortion activists who have gone to jail for acts of violence against abortion clinics and physicians. Paul Hill, convicted of murdering a doctor and his bodyguard, received a special award. Farris was the only mainstream politician there; many anti-abortion activists, including even Randall Terry of Operation Rescue, refused to attend.

Farris claimed that he didn't know the subject of the meeting. "I was absolutely clueless. I thought it was just a pro-life banquet." However, Farris went with a friend who was a key participant, reading aloud a prison letter from a person convicted of arson in firebombing an abortion clinic. He was welcomed from the podium by Michael Bray, who spent 4 years in prison for bombing 10 clinics. And the program announced that "the just sanction for the capital crime of abortion, as with any other murder, is death."

Farris is no newcomer to the anti-abortion movement, either. He ran for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia in 1993 despite the victory of Republican governor candidate George Allen, in large part because of his extreme anti- abortion and religious right statements. He is also a home-schooling activist, calling public schools a "godless" system that promotes "evolution, hedonism and one-world government."

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Protected by His Media Friends

One reason Buchanan can run such an inexpensive campaign is that he gets tons of free news publicity, and makes hundreds of appearances on talk radio shows -- over 25 on the morning of the Iowa caucuses alone.

After the most recent set of attacks on Buchanan for anti-Semitism, he called in talk show host Larry King, an old friend from CNN who is Jewish, to deny those charges. -- Back to the top -- Sources

All Talk and No Action

Pat Buchanan is a great speaker, political organizer and strategist -- among the more extreme partisans of his party. He can whip a crowd into a frenzy and knows how to hit all of their emotional buttons. All of this makes him a great campaigner -- but not a leader.

In fact, the mundane business of running something (like the United States) requires working with bureaucracy, cutting deals with opponents, compromise, and hard choices. All of which kills political passion as quickly as housecleaning undercuts romance. That's why Pat has carefully avoided running anything in his lifetime. Unfortunately, this kind of management is 2/3rds of being a successful President.

Buchanan is the Jesse Jackson of the Republicans -- a favorite among more extreme partisans, a great speaker, no kind of a leader. In fact, even Jesse Jackson has more management experience than Pat Buchanan -- he ran "Operation PUSH" (badly) in Chicago. Like Jackson, Buchanan has always been underestimated as a campaigner (Jesse won a couple of states against Dukakis in 1988), but makes minimal effort to appeal to America as a whole, and actively avoids real leadership. They are fun candidates if you like their policies, and bad choices to actually run anything.

Involvement in Watergate

Surprisingly, no one is talking about Pat Buchanan's involvement in the Nixon Administration and its scandals. Pat joined Nixon's staff as a young (25 year old), bright and extreme partisan. He was part of Nixon's absolute inner circle -- the first full-time staffer hired when Nixon began his comeback in 1966, and one of the last half-dozen friends and aides who remained loyal until the end. Buchanan avoided major attack because he declined a chance to lead the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's office (for strategic reasons), and documented his decision in a memo. But he was involved in a number of disturbing episodes that are innocent only relative to crimes of Colson, Haldeman and Magruder. For example, unethical and even illegal dirty tricks against campaign opponents, his admitted attempts to cover up Watergate by urging Nixon to burn the infamous White House tapes, and worst of all, his role in using the IRS against political enemies.

Buchanan to have no limits of fairness or even ethics when attacking his enemies. You have to worry what he would do to his many enemies if he controlled the entire Federal government. Toward the end of Watergate he openly advocated demagogy in his bitterness at Nixon's enemies:

"The Left has an enormous stake in Watergate; they have nothing else, and they fully intend the exploitation of this scandal to cancel the Nixon Counter-Revolution.... If we have to drift into demagoguery, so be it. We owe them a few."

Nor did he have any regrets over Nixon's tactics. In the book "All The President's Men", Woodward and Bernstein -- the reporters who broke much of the story -- describe running into Pat Buchanan at a party in the April of 1973. He was arguing with the Washington Post's lawyer about the scandal. They quote Buchanan as saying,
"The Watergate's all you had. Some Cubans going in to look at Larry O'Brien's mail. ... You blew it out of all proportion." After Williams replied that they had won the 1972 election in a "dirty" manner, Buchanan answered "A little spying, Ed. That's politics."

(The Watergate break-in involved 6 employees of Nixon's re-election campaign, who were caught in the office of Democratic Party national Chairman Lawrence O'Brien with wiretapping equipment, burglar's tools and lots of $100 bills from the Nixon campaign's illegal slush fund.)

Buchanan even admits to obstruction of justice in the matter. He urged Nixon, in a documented memo, to destroy the White House tapes that eventually proved his crimes and led to his resignation. That, of course, would have been illegal obstruction of justice, as even Fred Buzhardt, the White House lawyer at the end, acknowledged. "If we'd decided to destroy the tapes, that would have been real obstruction of justice, and we couldn't even talk about it." Nonetheless, Buchanan defends his memo to Nixon, even to this day. His only regret? "I should have pressed him harder to burn them."

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Nixon's "Dirty Tricks" against Political Opponents

According to Anthony Lukas' book "Nightmare", Buchanan took part in Nixon's "Dirty Tricks" another way -- editing a phony pamphlet pretending to be from a liberal Democrats group that attacked Muskie. (His assistant Ken Khachigian wrote it.) Many investigators also think Buchanan or Khachigian wrote the infamous "Canuck letter", a forged letter claiming Muskie has slandered French Canadians as "Cannocks" (sic). The Canuck letter was one of two slams against Muskie that caused the Democratic front runner to break down crying in frustration at a New Hampshire news conference, crippling his candidacy.

In the current campaign, Steve Forbes' strong lead in Iowa and New Hampshire disappeared in part because of a series of anonymous phone calls attacking him on abortion, and from phony "polls" whose questions insinuated attacks against Forbes. Buchanan's campaign and Bob Dole's campaign are the prime suspects (Dole has also pulled similar dirty tricks in tight spots in the past); in fact they may well have worked together, as the campaigns admit to doing in Louisiana, where their combined effort aborted Phil Gramm's campaign.

Also, in Louisiana (where only Buchanan and Phil Gramm campaigned), a flier was distributed pointing out that Gramm had married an "Asiatic" after leaving his "white wife". (Gramm's 2nd wife is Korean.) Buchanan's campaign workers have been accused of distributing it, and no one else was running. -- Back to the top

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Promoted IRS Abuses

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VD: A Fun Way to Avoid the Draft?

Buchanan himself said that in 1960, when he was 21, the draft board rejected him because he had Reiter's syndrome. What's that, you ask? It's a form of arthritis usually caused by chlamydia, a venereal disease (at least in America. In third world countries, a form of dysentery is the most common cause.)

When pressed, a Buchanan aide said that if, indeed, sexual contact is the only way to get Reiter's, Buchanan would never have admitted it. That's an honest if cynical response, but it assumes that Buchanan knows what causes Reiter's. He also could have had chlamydia for years, even to this day, without knowing it; chlamydia often has no symptoms, especially in men. Notice also that this aide's statement is not a denial. The Buchanan campaign has refused to confirm or deny whether Pat has had chlamydia or any other venereal diseases.

Now normally we wouldn't bring this up, as an issue of privacy, except for two things.
1) Pat loves criticizing gays for the "perverse" sex life, and invites criticism of his own possible sluttishness.
2) He has criticized so many people who opposed the war for cowardice or lack of patriotism, despite his own failure to contribute.

I guess Pat's a lover, not a fighter. Given the sexual revolution and unpopularity of the war, VD could have become downright fashionable in the 1960s if people knew how Pat got out of fighting.

Buchanan's hypocrisy on the war is especially galling because he and his supporters make so much of his "fighting", referring to boyhood scraps where his many brothers backed him up, or his taking a poke at a policeman who wrote him a ticket (and broke his wrist). Explain to John McCain, or Rick Tompkins (a Libertarian candidate who fought in Vietnam) how much courage you showed there, Pat.-- Back to the top

Assaulted Police Officers

Pat actually plays this incident up, cultivating the image of a tough guy outsider, "fighting Irish" -- though he is much more German and Scottish than Irish, lives a wealthy Beltway life, and has rarely shown any honor in his fighting. Even in his own autobiography, he often brags about "sucker punching" people -- hitting them when they aren't looking. And of course he avoided military service despite his "tough" pro-war talk. -- Back to the top -- Sources

Quotes:

"You just wait until 1996, then you'll see a real right-wing tyrant." - Pat Buchanan, 1995

"Promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide." - Pat Buchanan 10/17/90

"If I were in the Congress of the United States, I would have a voting record just like Bob Dornan's." - Pat Buchanan

"Women are simply not endowed with the same measure of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism." - Pat Buchanan

"We are in the process of destroying the one working economy [in lower Africa -- South Africa] -- because it doesn't adopt an idiotic 'One man, one vote' regimen." -- Pat Buchanan

"Colin Powell disagrees with me on every issue." - Pat Buchanan

"[Hitler was] an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier... [and] a political organizer of the first rank." - Pat Buchanan

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Sources:

----------General:

"A potent trinity - God, country & me", The Nation, June 26, 1995p913

"Pat Buchanan, populist Republican" by Robert D. Novak, National Review August 14, 1995 p33

"Ex cathedra: why Buchanan is a bad Catholic." by Paul Elie, New Republic April 6, 1992 p15

"The Anti-Dole", Walter Shapiro, Esquire, September 1995 p66

"Right From the Beginning", Pat Buchanan, 1988 (autobiography)

"Buchanan's investments called into question", USA Today, March 2, 1996

"Beltway Populist", Jonathan Alter, Newsweek, March 4, 1996 p25

-----------Watergate (see Dirty Tricks below)

"The Anti-Dole", Walter Shapiro, Esquire, September 1995 p66

p66 - "Right after he heard about [Nixon's] White House tapes, Buchanan recalled, he wrote a memo to the president urging that Nixon keep the historic ones and burn the rest. You regret that memo? 'No,' said Buchanan, softly petting the cat. 'I should have pressed him harder to burn them."

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"Blind Ambition", John Dean (Simon & Schuster, 1976)

p. 72 - "At Haldeman's instruction, his assistant, Gordon Strachan, had begun to educate himself on the kind of tactics savvy insiders used in the big time. He had never been in a Presidential campaign before, and sought the advice of those who had worked in the 1968 campaign: Dwight Chapin, speechwriter Patrick J. Buchanan, chief advance man Ronald Walker. Strachan was surprised when the veterans regaled him with tales of what Richard Nixon's opponents had done to him in 1968-- infiltrated his campaign staff, disrupted and sabotaged his rallies, leaked false stories, planted rumors. Buchanan, who popularized the term 'political hardball,' argued for such tactics. We should expect the opponents to do what they had done in the past, and we should do it first, and better. There was general agreement. The Nixon campaign would not be soft.

"On August 14, 1971, Strachan wrote to Haldeman that he now had 'oral recommendations for political intelligence and covert activities.' Haldeman expressed interest only in independent operations, so that any slipups could not be traced back to the White House. Things began to move. Chapin called an old college friend, Donald H. Segretti...."

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"Breach of Faith", Theodore White, (Atheneum, 1975) p. 246-247

p. 247 - "Said Pat Buchanan, "The tapes were radioactive. We should have had a staff organized for defense; but unless you staffed up with lawyers, anybody else who listened could be taken to court [to answer questions on what they contained]. ... We had no information base, you understand. the Ervin Committee, Cox, the press-- they all knew more than we did. I don't want to listen to the tapes myself--I'm scared. There are people here I know who are entirely innocent, they're paying their life savings, five or ten thousand dollars a year, just to keep a lawyer on retainer; the lawyers are having a field day. I've got no lawyer."

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"All The President's Men", Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward (Simon & Schuster, 1974) p286
- - Many don't realize this was written while Nixon was still President in 1974

At the Wall Street Journal's party on April 14, 1973, during the White House Correspondents Association dinner, Edward Bennet Williams (the Post's lawyer) argued with Buchanan.
"'You're just a sore loser, Ed,' Buchanan was saying.
'But you did it dirty, Pat,' Williams said, heaving his large body to one side. 'You had to do it dirty. You won, but you had to steal it.'
'The Watergate's all you had,' Buchanan retorted. 'Some Cubans going in to look at Larry O'Brien's mail. ... You blew it out of all proportion.'
'Dirty, Pat, dirty election,' Williams said. 'Aren't you ashamed? You're a conservative, and all this law-breaking. And the Washington Post really sticking it to you. Oh, that must have hurt the most.' Williams threw his arm around Woodward. 'The Washington Post just jamming up your old ass.'
'Sixty-one percent, Ed,' Buchanan responded. "Sixty-one percent. Just the biggest landslide in recent history, and if it hadn't been for Watergate, it would have been more.'
'You did it dirty.'
'A little spying, Ed. That's politics.' "

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"Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years", J. Anthony Lukas (Viking, 1976) p163, 151, 384, 420

p. 384 -- Buchanan's memo urging burning of the White House tapes

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"The Resurrection of Richard Nixon", Jules Witcover (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1970) p122, 139, 127

p 122 --general background, how Buchanan was Nixon's first full-time paid staff member, starting in 1966.

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----------Dirty Tricks:

"Return of the Nativist: Does Larry Pratt Represent the True Face of Pat Buchanan?", James Ridgeway, The Village Voice, February 27, 1996 p19
"Last week, The Washington Post reported that Buchanan supporters were seen passing out literature showing a photo of Phil Gramm and his wife Wendy, campaigning together. Accompanying the photo was a caption about Wendy Gramm's Korean heritage. It read 'Many conservatives will not vote for him in the primary due to his interracial marriage. He divorced a white wife to marry an Asiatic."

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"Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years", J. Anthony Lukas (Viking, 1976) p163, 151, 384, 420

p. 151 -- "According to [Gordon] Strachan, [Haldeman's assistant,] Chapin and Buchanan had been involved in some 1968 campaign pranks, such as a false mailing in the New Hampshire primary."

p. 163 -- [Discussing the 'Canuck' letter; Clawson said he hadn't written it but wished he did.] "Some investigators believe it may have been written by Pat Buchanan or his assistant, Kenneth L. Khachigian, who had already proved adept at fakery. Khachigian was the author, and Buchanan the editor, of a bogus pamphlet widely distributed during the Muskie campaign. Purporting to come from "Citizens For A Liberal Alternative" (a fictitious group of liberal Democrats), it attacked Muskie's positions as overly cautious and conservative. The pamphlet was mailed to some four hundred "liberals" across the country, distributed by Segretti's agents in Florida, and kept cropping up throughout the New Hampshire primary."

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"For Dole and Buchanan, Bad Blood Began at Nixon White House", James Perry and Phil Kuntz, Wall Street Journal, March 14, 1996pA20 (western edition)
"Among Mr. Buchanan's tricks was editing a fake pamphlet from a phony liberal group charging that Mr. Muskie was too moderate, a charge that in those days could be damaging to a Democrat. Although other things had more to do with Mr. Muskie's downfall, by September 1971 Mr. Buchanan was bragging: "Our operations contra Muskie have met... with considerable success." --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Watergate", Fred Emery (Times Books/Random House, 1994) p95
- - A look back at Watergate by the BBC's Washington reporter during the early 1970s

p95 -- "He [Donald Segretti] had first been contacted by the White House in 1971, when Strachan, Buchanan and and others, including Dwight Chapin, a young man Haldeman had selected to be the president's appointments secretary, discussed the need for a "non-Colson dirty tricks operation."

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"The Haldeman Diaries", H.R. Haldeman (G.P Putnam's Sons, 1994) p74, 106, 502

p.74 July 21, 1969 "[The President] Also wants to set up and activate 'dirty tricks' -- with Buchanan, Nofziger, Mollenhoff, Woods and Klein." Haldeman adds "Dirty Tricks as used here refers to the general political campaign activity of harassment and needling of the opposition, planting spies in their camp, etc."

p.502 September 8, 1972 "He [the President] wants a study made by Buchanan and Allen on the 20 most vicious, influential DC reporters and television people, and make a list for each of them of the things they would like to forget they said."

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"The Resurrection of Richard Nixon", Jules Witcover (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1970) p122, 139, 127
- - a largely sympathetic account of Nixon's 1968 victory, written at his peak before Watergate

p 127 -- "Buchanan was trying to keep track of what Nixon called the political intelligence, and Nixon was most interested in that."

p 139 -- "Between events, he [Nixon] would examine files containing local political intelligence prepared for him by Buchanan, or talk with a local Republican leader, then sketch out the speech on a yellow legal pad in terms of the demands of the local situation."

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"Nixon, Volume 2: 1962-1972", Stephen Ambrose (Simon & Schuster, 1989) p84

p 84 -- "[In 1966], He [Nixon] set Pat Buchanan, who was young, energetic, and highly partisan, to work on 'political intelligence.' Nixon had always been concerned with what his opponents were doing and saying, but that concern was now becoming a near obsession.Kennedy had caught him flat-footed in October of 1960 when he called for support for the anti-Castro Cuban rebels. He never wanted to be surprised again; to prevent it, he set Buchanan to following the enemy around."

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Abusing the IRS

"For Dole and Buchanan, Bad Blood Began at Nixon White House", James Perry and Phil Kuntz, Wall Street Journal, March 14, 1996pA20 (western edition)
"Although in his current campaign Mr. Buchanan promises to 'get the intrusive IRS out of your life,' he was an early advocate of using the Internal Revenue Service against enemies. 'We are continuing to keep pressure on IRS to jerk tax exemptions of anti-administration groups that are patently violating existing IRS regulations,' he told the president."

"A potent trinity - God, country & me", The Nation, June 26, 1995

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----------Anti-Semitism: "Buchanan and Anti-Semitism", by Norman Podhoretz, The Wall Street Journal, October 25, 1999, pA52

The Auschwitz controversy -- "The Heresies of Pat Buchanan", Jacob Weisberg, The New Republic, October 22, 1990 p22

"Buchanan Caught In the Web", David Einstein, San Francisco Chronicle, February 20, 1996 pB1

"Campaign Dispatch", Brock Meeks, Hotwired Magazine, February 19, 1996

"Four Years Later, Buchanan's Advisers, Not His Words, Draw Cries of Extremism", Glenn Simpson, Wall Street Journal, February 22, 1996 pA20

"Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner" quote - McLaughlin Report TV show, August 26, 1990

"Congress is Israeli-occupied territory" quote - McLaughlin Report, June 1990

"Bilious Buchanan open to attack", Ian Brodie, London Times News Service, in SF Examiner, February 23, 1996 pA1

"Buchanan: The Us against Them Candidate", Christopher Matthews, San Francisco Examiner, February 25, 1996

" Buchanan Likes a Good Fight", Kenneth J. Garcia, San Francisco Chronicle, January 29, 1996 pA6

Conservatives who find Buchanan to be anti-Semitic:

Safire - from Meet The Press, February 25, 1996, quoted in newspaper article:
"Buchanan is the Press' Favorite Son -- And Its Whipping Boy", Eleanor Randolph, Los Angeles Times, February 28, 1996

"In search of anti-Semitism", William F. Buckley, National Review, December 30, 1991 p20

"Patrick J. Buchanan and the Jews", Joshua Muravchik, Commentary, January 1991 p29

Keyes - "Buchanan: The Peasants Are Revolting", The Hotline, February 19, 1996 in "Updates" section.

Bennett -- " If I said what I meant, I'm sorry", Time, April 3, 1995 p17

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----------Praise for Hitler sources

This was Buchanan's August 25, 1977 column, distributed by the New York Times Special Features syndicate. It appeared in many papers around the country, though not the New York Times (according to its index.) One place it appeared is below -- click here to see the entire column.

"A lesson in tyranny too soon forgotten", Pat Buchanan, Chicago Tribune, August 25, 1977, Section 3 page 3

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---------- Defender of Nazis sources

"Buchanan on Trial", Joshua Muravchik (letter), National Review, November 29, 1993 p2

"The Demanjuk fallout" (editorial response to above letter), National Review, November 29, 1993 p18

"Patrick J. Buchanan and the Jews", Joshua Muravchik, Commentary, January 1991 p35-36

The column defending Waldheim was reportedly in the Chicago Sun Times, March 1989.

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---------- Holocaust and Historical Revisionism sources

"Ivan The Terrible -- More Doubts?", Pat Buchanan, New York Post, March 17, 1990

"Denying the Holocaust", Deborah Lipstadt, ISBN 0-452-27274-2, p 5-6, p 26, p 238 notes 13 & 14

"The Heresies of Pat Buchanan", Jacob Weisberg, The New Republic, October 22, 1990 p26-27

Jamie McCarthy, USENET, April 8, 1995

"Buchanan on Trial", Joshua Muravchik (letter), National Review, November 29, 1993 p2

"The Demanjuk fallout" (editorial response to above letter), National Review, November 29, 1993 p18

"Patrick J. Buchanan and the Jews", Joshua Muravchik, Commentary, January 1991 p35-36

"The Beltway Populist", Jonathan Alter, Newsweek, March 4, 1996 p26

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----------Extremist Staff Members

Under The Influence: The 1996 Presidential Candidates and Their Campaign Advisers, Center For Public Integrity, 1996

Carter, Bruno -- "Buchanan aide confirms removal from campaign", USA Today, February 23, 1996

"Buchanan Aide Was at Tribute to Doctor's Killer", James Risen and Sam Fulwood III, Los Angeles Times, February 26, 1996

"Buchanan Decries 'Evil' of Abortion", San Francisco Chronicle, February 24, 1996 pA1, A11

"Buchanan Aide Attended Fete For Extremists", San Francisco Chronicle, February 27, 1996 pA2

"'Outsider' runs filled with 'insider' advisers", Steve Goldstein, Philadelphia Inquirer, February 18, 1996 pA16

"Buchanan Co-Chair Linked To White Supremacist Groups", Under The Influence: The 1996 Presidential Candidates and Their Campaign Advisers, Center For Public Integrity, 1996

"Four Years Later, Buchanan's Advisers, Not His Words, Draw Cries of Extremism", Glenn Simpson, Wall Street Journal, February 22, 1996 pA20

"Campaign Dispatch", Brock Meeks, Hotwired Magazine, February 15, 1996

"Return of the Nativist: Does Larry Pratt Represent the True Face of Pat Buchanan?", James Ridgeway, The Village Voice, February 27, 1996 p19

"Nightline", Ted Koppel and Larry Pratt, ABC TV, February 15, 1996

"Report: Buchanan aide linked to anti-Semitic group", USA Today, February 19, 1996

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VD and Avoiding the Draft sources

"A Protectionist Without Protection", Jeanette Walls, Esquire Magazine, May 1996 p16

Russell Cecil, "Cecil's Essentials of Medicine," Editors: Andreoli, Carpenter, Plum, and Smith; "Reiter's Syndrome"; pp. 636-637. c. 1986. (as interpreted by a surgeon who's a member of our group.)

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Racism Sources

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----------

Disgruntled Staff Sources

---------- Media Friends sources

"Buchanan is the Press' Favorite Son -- And Its Whipping Boy", Eleanor Randolph, Los Angeles Times, February 28, 1996

"Bilious Buchanan open to attack", Ian Brodie, London Times News Service, in SF Examiner, February 23, 1996 pA1
----- p A16 - "David Broder, senior political writer for the Washington Post, has raised the questions of whether Buchanan has been spared more withering criticism from the Washington media because he has spent so many years in its midst as one of them. He wrote: 'For Buchanan, the palsy-walsy atmosphere is a protective blanket.' Broder's criticism has stung the U.S. media..."

"Surging Buchanan Squeezes GOP", Wall Street Journal, February 14, 1996 pA4

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---------- Assaulting An Officer sources

" Buchanan Likes a Good Fight", Kenneth J. Garcia, San Francisco Chronicle, January 29, 1996 pA6

"The Making of Buchanan", Richard Stengel, "Right From the Beginning", Pat Buchanan, 1988 (autobiography)

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---------- Weird Allies sources

"What you don't know about Lenora Fulani could hurt you. Coming Soon to a Presidential Election Near You," by David Grann, The New Republic, December 13, 1999, p1

" "Guru Fred Newman Enchants Loyal Followers and Pat Buchanan" by George Gurley, The New York Observer, December 6, 1999, p1

"RIGHT WOOS LEFT, Part 30: Third Position and Black Nationalism" by Chip Berlet, Political Research Associates, The Public Eye, (online magazine)

fulani funding -- "CAMPAIGN FINANCE REGULATION: FAULTY ASSUMPTIONS AND UNDEMOCRATIC CONSEQUENCES , by Bradley A. Smith, Cato Institute Policy Analysis Number 238 (online), September 13, 1995

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---------- Quotes sources

"Patrick J. Buchanan and the Jews", Joshua Muravchik, Commentary, January 1991 p35-36

"Patrick Buchanan: In His Own Words", Judy Balint, Jewish Communication Network -- Election '96 Web Site

" Buchanan Likes a Good Fight", Kenneth J. Garcia, San Francisco Chronicle, January 29, 1996 pA6

"Bilious Buchanan open to attack", Ian Brodie, London Times News Service, in SF Examiner, February 23, 1996 pA1

South Africa quote -- , Crossfire, CNN, February 2, 1990

homosexuals are hellbent quote - his column, October 17, 1990

Hitler quote - Buchanan's August 25, 1977 column

Women quote - "Bilious" article, apparently from a 1983 column

Colin Powell quote - "Scrappy Buchanan" article

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