I know it is popular to demonize Karl Rove as Bush’s brain, but in fact he is merely the latest in a profession that goes as far back as Democrat Amos Kendall, who was Andrew Jackson’s brain. And more directly, Rove’s take no prisoners style can be traced through Lee Atwater, (of “Willie Horton” ad fame) to Murray Chotiner.
Murray Chotiner was probably the last political campaign manager who had a day job. As a political manipulator Murray claimed to have created Earl Warren, who was elected California Governor in 1942. But Murray’s tactics in that campaign so alienated Warren that the Governor refused Murray’s help for his 1946 re-election campaign. The politician Murray is usually credited with “creating” and the one who never broke trust with him was Richard Nixon.
Doctor John Lungren, personal physician to Richard Nixon, recalled a breakfast lecture he received from Murray Chotiner in 1952. Said Murray, “First, a basic truth – you must define your opponent, never let him define you. If he does you are through, pure and simple. Then you find your opponent’s weakness in his record or conduct – he’s too liberal, he’s soft on defense, he’s too weak on criminals, he’s got character problems – and you move in, hitting harder and harder – with no letup. And you never give voters more than they can handle. They have their own lives. Most people can’t absorb more than two or three issues during a campaign. So limit your themes, focus and refine the issues and drive them home again and again.” (Healing Richard Nixon; A Doctor’s Memoir 2003.)
Murray was a “cigar chomping wheeler-dealer”, “…a chubby lawyer…(dressed in) monogrammed white-on-white dress shirts and silk ties with jeweled stickpins. The monograms said “MMC” because…he billed himself as Murray M. Chotiner, though, in reality, he lacked a middle name.” Murray was married four times, hung out with gangsters, and the L.A. Times described him as “…a brilliant, abrasive and passionate political strategist whose campaign instincts were so acute and effective that his opponents feared him as the “Machiavelli of California politics.” A friend described him as a “…a very aggressive, hard driving fellow… a mechanic, a nuts and bolts man”. And a future Nixon aid described Murray as “...a hardheaded exponent of the campaign philosophy that politics is war.”
Murray’s first experience in politics came when he worked for Herbert Hoover in 1932. In 1938 he ran in the Republican primary for a California Assembly seat and lost. In 1942 came his work for Earl Warren, and in 1944 Murray was elected president of the California Republican Assembly. In ’46 he worked for Republican Senator William Knowland, under the slogan, “We Will Not Surrender” without ever identifying to whom the Senator would not surrender to. That same year he advised Richard Nixon’s first run for office against Democrat Congressman Jerry Voorhis. Both Nixon and Knowland won. 
Politics was still a “hobby” at this point for Murray. To earn a living he practiced law, sharing an office with his older brother, Jack. Their clients were, according to Murray, "unsavory, to say the least"; over four years - from 1949 to 1950 – the Chotiner brothers defended 249 mob clients, ranging from local bookmakers to New Orleans mobster Carlos Marcello and L.A.’s mob boss Mickey Cohen. In fact Cohen donated $5,000 to Nixon’s 1946 campaign and provided free space for a “Nixon for Congress” office in one of his buildings”, again according to Chotiner.
There are two pronouncements usually credited to Murray Chotiner. The first is “Chotiner’s Law”; "An incumbent forced to fight in a close primary election almost always loses the general election that follows.” (This was the origin of Ronald Reagen’s 11th Commandment – “Never speak ill of a fellow Republican”). And the second pronouncement was the professional code of conduct which Murray Chotiner lived by: “Victory is all that matters".
In 1950 Murray took full control of Nixon’s U.S. Senate campaign, labeling his opponent, Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas, as “The Pink Lady”, alleging that she was a communist sympathizer – “Pink right down to her underwear,” said Murray. 
Gangster Mickey Cohen threw another fund raiser for Nixon that year. Mickey later recalled, “Everyone from around here that was on the 'pad' naturally had to go. It was all gamblers from Vegas. There wasn't a legitimate person in the room.'' While introducing Nixon, Mickey announced the doors had been locked and no one could leave until $75,000 had been collected. Cohen also claimed that his support for Nixon had been ordered by “''…the proper persons from back East. '' It is assumed Mickey meant gangster kingpin Myer Lansky.
It was Murray’s advice that lead Nixon to accept the vice-presidental post from Eisenhower in 1951. And when, during the campaign, Nixon was accused of influence peddling, it was Murray who tore up Nixon's resignation telegram to Ike, and pushed him to make his famous “Checkers speech; “We did get something, a gift, …It was a little cocker spaniel dog…and our little girl Tricia, the six year old, named it Checkers….and I just want to say this,…we are going to keep it.” Needless to say, even though Nixon never fully answered the questions about his favors for friends, the speech saved his career and propelled him into the vice-Presidency.
Murray was there when Kennedy defeated Nixon in 1960, and when Nixon failed to win the Governorship of California in 1962. In 1968, when Nixon won the Presidency by a narrow margin, Murray was still there again, if now behind the scenes. In May of 1972, when the “Plumbers” were arrested planting "bugs" inside the Democratic Party National Headquarters in the Watergate complex, Murray Chotiner had an office directly above them. As the crises grew and began to engulf Richard Nixon’s Presidency, on Thursday, January 24, 1974, Murray’s Choitner’s car collided with a truck in suburban Washington, D.C. Curiously the accident happened directly behind the home of Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy. In fact, Kennedy called for the ambulance. Murray was taken to the hospital with a broken leg and seemed on the way to a quick recovery when he developed a blood clot. A week after the accident, on Janurary 30th, he died.
Nixon’s office released the following statement on February 3rd, 1974; “I am profoundly saddened by the death of Murray Chotiner. For more than a quarter of a century, he was an ally in political battles, a valued counselor, and a trusted colleague. But above all, Murray Chotiner was my friend. His friendship never wavered; in periods of adversity it grew stronger. While some recoil from the label "politician," Murray was rightly proud of it because he was a professional who had the respect and admiration of those who worked with him…he will forever have my gratitude”
Effective at noon on August 8, 1974 Richard Nixon resigned as President. I suspect that Murray Chotiner would have called him a quiter.
It was Murray’s advice that lead Nixon to accept the vice-presidental post from Eisenhower in 1951. And when, during the campaign, Nixon was accused of influence peddling, it was Murray who tore up Nixon's resignation telegram to Ike, and pushed him to make his famous “Checkers speech; “We did get something, a gift, …It was a little cocker spaniel dog…and our little girl Tricia, the six year old, named it Checkers….and I just want to say this,…we are going to keep it.” Needless to say, even though Nixon never fully answered the questions about his favors for friends, the speech saved his career and propelled him into the vice-Presidency.Murray was there when Kennedy defeated Nixon in 1960, and when Nixon failed to win the Governorship of California in 1962. In 1968, when Nixon won the Presidency by a narrow margin, Murray was still there again, if now behind the scenes. In May of 1972, when the “Plumbers” were arrested planting "bugs" inside the Democratic Party National Headquarters in the Watergate complex, Murray Chotiner had an office directly above them. As the crises grew and began to engulf Richard Nixon’s Presidency, on Thursday, January 24, 1974, Murray’s Choitner’s car collided with a truck in suburban Washington, D.C. Curiously the accident happened directly behind the home of Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy. In fact, Kennedy called for the ambulance. Murray was taken to the hospital with a broken leg and seemed on the way to a quick recovery when he developed a blood clot. A week after the accident, on Janurary 30th, he died.Nixon’s office released the following statement on February 3rd, 1974; “I am profoundly saddened by the death of Murray Chotiner. For more than a quarter of a century, he was an ally in political battles, a valued counselor, and a trusted colleague. But above all, Murray Chotiner was my friend. His friendship never wavered; in periods of adversity it grew stronger. While some recoil from the label "politician," Murray was rightly proud of it because he was a professional who had the respect and admiration of those who worked with him…he will forever have my gratitude”Effective at noon on August 8, 1974 Richard Nixon resigned as President. I suspect that Murray Chotiner would have called him a quiter.- 30 -
New York City in 1776 was a crowded town of 25,000 at the southern tip of Manhattan. Tyron’s web was strung between the city’s many taverns; “The Highlander” at Beaver Street and Broadway, “The Sergeant At Arms” run by conspirator Alexander Sinclair, and most significantly “The Corbie”, near Spring and Wooster Streets, which was just a few yards southwest of General Washington’s isolated headquarters on Richmond Hill. At his own establishment on Broadway - “The Sign of the Sportsman” - gunsmith Gilbert Forbes, “a short thick man”, waited patiently to buy ale for weary Continental soldiers and listen to their complaints. And in exchange for five gold guineas, he swore them in as members of the Governor’s conspiracy. It was Forbes who first swore in eighteen year old Sergeant Thomas Hickey, a member of General Washington’s personal guards.
The 180 officers and men of the Life Guards were as formed on March 11, 1776 out of the regiments laying siege to Boston, as a personal guard for General Washington and his baggage. Washington’s orders called for “…good men, such as they can be recommended for their sobriety, honesty and good behavior…handsomely and well made”
We know that Sergeant Hickey was a “black Irishman” who must have been very handsome because he was neither sober nor honest. He had deserted from the British Army, and had for some years lived in Wethersfield, Connecticut. And we know he was a man who wanted money. Hickey said he got involved with the conspiracy “…for the sake of cheating the Tories and getting some money from them”. We know that Forbes put him on an allowance of 15 shillings a week. We know that Hickey brought with him into the conspiracy four other Life Guards, and that for each he was paid a bounty. And we know that on June 15th Hickey and Private Lynch were both arrested for passing counterfeit continental dollars.
To finance the revolution two million Continental Dollars were printed on thick rag paper by Hall and Sellers of Philadelphia. And immediately counterfeiters began copying the sad little notes. An advertisement in the journal “Rvington’s Gazette” openly promised, “Persons going into other colonies may be supplied with any number of counterfeit Congress notes ….They are so neatly and exactly executed…it being almost impossible to discover that they are not genuine”. Once locked in the crowded three-story city jail, Hickey was greeted by his fellow inmates.
One of those inmates was a professional counterfeiter, Isaac Ketcham, and he appealed to the patriot colonial council to release him in the name of his “six poor children”. And in case that didn’t work he added he had “…something to observe…entirely on another subject.” In private Ketcham told the council that he had heard Hickey’s drunken boasts (liquor seems to have been in ample supply in the jail) that “…there were near seven hundred men enlisted for the King" and insisted he would he never again fight for the American cause.”
At one in the morning of Saturday, June 22nd colonial troops surrounded Mayor Mathew’s house in Flatbush near the village of Brooklyn on Long Island. Mathews was arrested, and over the next several hours hundreds of other loyalist conspirators were taken into custody. On the 27th Sergeant Hickey faced a court martial and was quickly found guilty and condemned to death.
The very next day, July 29th, four new British warships dropped anchor in New York harbor. They were the vanguard of 130 ships carrying 34,000 troops which would arrive over the next week. In the face of that fleet the patriots of New York might have been more willing to listen to the siren song of Governor Tyron. But he had recruited too many agents too quickly. There were too many rumors swamping the city. And General Washington was too competent not to have paid attention to them. And in that the citizens of the young nation (the Declaration of Independence would not be voted on for another week) were very fortunate.
When Silas Deane arrived from France, carrying a treaty pledging French military and financial aid for the American Revolution, as personified by the French Ambassador to the new nation, M. Gerard, Deane was rightly expecting to be received as a hero. Instead he was treated like a traitor and grilled about the last packet of letters the Congress had received from the American delegation to France. When those secret dispatches had arrived in America in January of 1778 they had contained nothing but blank pages. Obviously the actual dispatches had been stolen and bare pages substituted; and Congressional paranoia set in. The ship’s captain was jailed and questioned and jailed again.
The public reaction in America was immediate and vicious. “The educated public saw in his (Deanes’) publication a betrayal of an official trust, and the public regarded it as effusion of an angry and detected man”. The public now joined the members of the Congress in believing Silas Deane of theft and betrayal.
The British were thrilled with Paine's story because for the first time the Americans had revealed a rift within their own ranks. But more importantly, if the supplies had really been promised and assigned to America before Mr. Deane had arrived in France, then the King of France, Louis XVI (above), had lied when he publically assured the British and the Spanish that he was not helping the Americans prior to 1778. Worse, he had violated the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which had ended The Seven Years War (known as the French & Indian War in America.) To call the French King a liar and say he had violated a standing treaty was to say that his word was worthless.
The brand new French ambassador, M. Gerard, was enraged and demanded an explanation. The Congress, recognizing they had been put out on a limb by Mr. Paine (and by Mr. Lee, although they never seemed to have realized that), beat a hasty retreat and announced that “…his most Christian Majesty…did not preface his alliance with any supplies whatever sent to America, so they have not authorized the writer of said publication to make any such assertions…but, on the contrary, do highly disapprove of the same." Congress also recalled what was left of the Paris delegation, both Franklin and Lee. They were replaced with one man, Thomas Jefferson. 
Deane returned to Paris, intending to obtain his account books to prove his loyalty to the cause. But the books had been destroyed. Dejected and angry, Deane moved to London where he became friends with that other disabused American patriot, Benidict Arnold. That friendship did nothing to help Deanes' cause in America.
Deane always dreamed of returning to America, and the last month of his life was spent preparing for the voyage. But he died (in September 1789) before his ship could sail. In his obituary published in a London newspaper Silas Deane received his final defense. “Having (been)accused of embezzling large sums of money entrusted to his care…Mr. Deane sought an asylum in this country, where his habits of life …penurious in the extreme, amply refuted the malevolence of his enemies. So reduced, indeed, was this gentleman, who was supposed to have embezzled upwards of 100,000 pounds sterling,...that he experienced all the horrors of the most abject poverty in the capital of England, and has for the last few months been almost in danger of starving.”
And what about Arthur Lee, the source of all this venom? After the war Arthur Lee was elected to congress and for the first time his friends and allies got an up close view of him in action. They found him so “…perpetually indignant, paranoid, self-centered, and often confused” that his fellow Virginians, Jefferson and Washington, avoided all contact with him. I wonder if any of them gave thought to how they had depended on this man in their judgement of Silas Deane? Evidently not. Arthur Lee opposed the new American Constitution and after losing that fight he ran for a seat in the new congress. He was defeated. Arthur Lee died "embittered" on his 500 acre farm in Virginia in December, 1792.
It was not until 1835 that Congress finally acknowledged the debts Silas Dean had incurred in defending America. Hs surviving family was paid $38,000 (the equivalent of almost a million dollars today). It was generally admitted that this was but a fraction of the money Silas Deane had spent in helping to create our nation. Thank you, Silas; for whatever it is worth.
