Weissman, Steve, ed. Big Brother and the Holding Company: The World Behind Watergate. Palo Alto CA: Ramparts Press, 1974. 350 pages.

Most of these essays reflecting on the implications of Watergate are reprinted from Ramparts magazine and NACLA's Latin America and Empire Report. What's most striking is that somewhere between the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. Left lost much of its capacity for this sort of informed analysis. Although several books on Iran-contra were factually comprehensive, they failed to connect the dots into a larger understanding of American elites and their political culture, and offered little beyond a compilation of what was available in the newspapers.

Steve Weissman contributes essays on Tom Huston's plan and criticizes Kirkpatrick Sale's and Carl Oglesby's "Yankee/Cowboy" theories. Richard Popkin writes about the Secret Army Organization in San Diego, while Lowell Bergman and Maxwell Robach analyze C. Arnholt Smith and the "San Diego connection." Donald Freed looks at Operation Gemstone, Barbara Morris Freed reviews Flight 533 (in which Watergate bagperson Dorothy Hunt, E. Howard Hunt's wife, was killed), and Fred Cook describes the government's set-up and prosecution of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. A theoretical analysis of Watergate is offered by Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy. Stu Bishop and Bert Knorr follow the money trail, Jon Frappier follows the law firms, and Jeff Gerth looks at Nixon, organized crime, and the Miami connection.
ISBN 0-87867-051-3

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