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Show Election methods: Testing one, two... Picture an organization that routinely monitors phone calls and tails its opponents. It forges letters on phony letterheads, leaks misinformation to the press and seizes confidential files. They investigate in-vestigate the personal lives pf 0& officials of the White House and the Committee for the Re-election of the President." Imagine thatl Using the White House for "spying and sabotage"! George McGovern, Ed Muskie, Larry O'Brien, et al., must feel they've been wasting their time paying federal taxes. The Post uncovered several instances. KenW. Clawson, deputy director of White House communications, com-munications, allegedly wrote a letter let-ter to the Manchester Union-Leader Union-Leader attacking Senator Muskie (the letter was a factor in Muskie s famous "crying episode" and his subsequent poor showing in the New Hampshire primary). The CRP planted agent provocateurs among the demonstrators at both the Democratic and Republican conventions, apparently hoping to incite the crowds to violence. In plain words, since the middle of 1971 the CRP-led by former Attorney General John Mitchell and then by former Congressman Clark MacGregor-has apparently done a host of things for which a child would be thrashed and a poor man would go to jail. Politics is one thing, even fudging a little bit on the facts. But this goes far beyond the usual bounds of smear, fabrication fabrica-tion and exaggeration. The CRP, it now appears, has spent several hundred thousand dollars as part of its "basic strategy" to "discredit individual Democratic Presidential candidates and disrupting their campaigns" in short, to disrupting the American political system, the one based on democracy, on free debate ,on rationality. It's sad that Mr. Nixon has selected such men with such an evident lack of respect for democratic principles, the right of privacy, the breaking-and-entering laws and fundamental tenets of morality to run his campaign. Just as sad, perhaps, is the confusion con-fusion and boredom this produces among the electorate. There is no evidence that these disclosures will prevent anyone from using similar tactics in the future, or that they aren't being used even now. The country deserves better of a Presidential campaign, and of a President, than the spectacle we are now witnessing. Well, we've got diplomacy and we've got grace and ignoring Watergate, We'll save face. opposing workers and plant agents munications, allegeldy wrote a letter let-ter to the Manchester Union-Leader Union-Leader attacking Senator Muskie (the letter was a factor in Muskie's from the mid-sixties, right? Wrong. It's a powerful political organization. Their current operation is running a man for the Presidency of the United States, and he has an excellent chance of winning. The organization is the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CRP or CREEP), and it is the campaign of Richard M. Nixon. According to Tuesday's Washington Post, "FBI agents have established that the Watergate bugging incident stemmed from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of President Nixon's reelection and directed by |