Sorry, this is hardly a diary at all, but in all the reading I’ve seen on the impeachment proceedings, I haven’t seen anybody make this point.
I hate to admit it, but I’m old enough to remember Watergate vividly. In 1972, burglars who were later revealed to be working for Nixon’s Committee to Reelect the President (“CREEP”) broke into Democratic campaign headquarters in the Watergate Hotel and attempted to plant a bug. The bug didn’t work, so they went back in a couple of days later. Unfortunately for them, the President, and the Republican party, this time they were caught in the act.
For many months, they succssfully stonewalled the process of justice, and no one discovered their connection to Nixon. The White dismissed the caper as a “third rate burglary.” Nixon went on to win the 1972 election in a landslide. He, John Dean, John Mitchell, and others engaged in an elaborate cover-up, and I imagine they thought they got away with it.
However, two young, and at the time obscure, Washington Post reporters — Woodward and Bernstein — were not willing to let the matter drop. They started digging, and Woodward discovered a deep background source — Mark Felt, referred to as Deep Throat, whose identity remained a secret until just a few years ago. Based in part on his tips, Woodward and Bernstein, and later a few other reporters following their lead, uncovered enough facts to lead to Congressional investigations, and ultimately the impeachment inquiry which led to Nixon’s resignation — in large part due to the damning tapes he had made of his conspiratorial oval office meetings and phone calls.
Republicans don’t really change, though they seem to have gotten more blatant over the years. Most of the Republican members of Congress then defended Nixon just as vigorously as Nunes, Jordan, Graham, et al defend Trump today. Their arguments were just as specious, they whined about due process and how unfair those mean Democrats were being to Nixon. But even those Republicans were never so shameless to argue that the impeachment inquiry was illegitimate because the Democrats wouldn’t reveal Deep Throat’s identity or subject him to cross-examination.
This situation is really parallel to today’s Ukraine scandal. There was no need to call Deep Throat as a witness because the investigators had much more direct evidence — testimony of administration officials and the Nixon tapes. Similarly, there is no need to out the whistleblower now — there is much more direct evidence, including testimony of administration officials and Trump’s own damning call summary.
So the perfect response the next time someone says the process is illegitimate because the whistleblower hasn’t testified: “So you’re saying the Nixon impeachment was illegitimate because Deep Throat didn’t testify? if your position is correct, Nixon would have served out his term.”