What the President knew and how he knew it

30 years ago, Howard Baker asked "What did the President know and when did he know it?" Now, surviving Nixon crony Jeb Stuart Magruder says that Tricky Dick had intimate knowledge of the Watergate break-in from the beginning--because he personally ordered it.

The question in the eighties was what another Republican President knew and when he knew it. By law, we ought to have learned a bit about Ronald Reagan and the Iran-Contra affair before now, from Presidential papers that should have been released to the public. But George W., alternately citing Executive Privilege and National Security (the traditional twin refuges of potentially embarrassed Republicans), has refused to hand over documents from when Bushdaddy was veep.

Meanwhile, questions about the younger Bush and his buddies continue to pile up. From the hard-drinking, coke-snorting, AWOL-from-the-Guard years he refuses to discuss, to the shady dealings before and after the 2000 election, to the breakdown of security that led to his "lucky trifecta" of 2001, to the blatant lies of 2002 and 2003, there's a lot to be answered for. You have to wonder, 30 or 40 years from now, what the last surviving Bush Leaguers will have to reveal about this President, how much he knew, and how active a hand he had in the abuses, atrocities, and outrages that have characterized his time in office.