KEY POINTS:
When people cannot get together for political purposes without fear that their premises will be burglarised, their conversations bugged, their phones tapped ... you breed distrust, you breed suspicion, you lost confidence, faith and credibility."
The words of principal Assistant United States Attorney Earl J. Silbert as he
asked a jury to "bring in a verdict that will help restore the faith in the democratic system that has been so damaged by the conduct of these two defendants and their co-conspirators" over the bugging of the Democratic Party's Watergate headquarters in June 1972.
Silbert was referring to Gordon Liddy and James McCord Jnr - two former officials of Richard Nixon's re-election committee - who were the final pair to be jailed over the infamous political spying that brought down a US President.
You won't hear anything from polemicist Nicky Hager about the parallels between the bugging of the Democratic Party's HQ and the email theft that was employed in the successful conspiracy to bring down National Leader Don Brash some 30 years later.
Unlike McCord - who with four others was apprehended dressed in business suits, wearing rubber surgical gloves, carrying electronic bugging equipment and sophisticated cameras - Hager's anonymous conspirators will be hopeful they have not left any fingerprints at the scene of the crime.
But if Parliament's Speaker Margaret Wilson does not now insist on a full-scale inquiry into the electronic theft of the Opposition Leader's emails from Parliament's server at the time of last year's election, suspicion will continue to build that Hager is simply the front man for sources connected with Brash's political opponents, not the internal hatchet men lining up to administer a death blow.
This breach of Parliament's security is serious.
If Wilson is anything other than a cipher for the Labour Party hierarchy, which obviously had copies of Brash's private correspondence, she will take steps to ensure that communications by Opposition political leaders and MPs are protected from electronic surveillance. They can then go about their planning secure in the knowledge that their emails will not find themselves in their opponents' hands.
She will also realise that her own office is not equipped to undertake the inquiry and seek the help of the Chief Justice in making the case for a full, publicly funded inquiry backed by a proper forensic investigation to try to get to the bottom of what has gone on.
Brash now knows he was a fool for failing to insist on a full-scale police investigation when the first of his emails - planted by Hager - appeared in the Sunday StarTimes' story just before the election.
Police are working through the footnotes to Hager's book as they try to establish just who stole the emails in the first place.
But anyone who has read the results of the police investigations into alleged Electoral Act breaches at the last election would have doubts about their rigour in investigating this particular conspiracy.
There is a constitutional aspect to this affair that has been glossed over as the news media republish vast tracts of Hager's book without doing the hard yards to stack up what happened, and what was merely electronically talked about as the National leader's office got down to campaigning.
Hager defends his role by saying he was simply the recipient of material allegedly provided to him by six disaffected senior members of the National Party who were concerned at the undue influence exerted by money-men and the Exclusive Brethren on their leader.
In Hager's mind, there was a public interest in publishing the emails that outweighed any claims to confidentiality. But Hager produces no evidence to suggest that his writing is based on anything other than a vast amount of confidential emails that were clearly downloaded from Parliament's server. Not just Brash's emails but also the emails of others, like previous adviser Bryan Sinclair.
The book contains no quotations from interviews with the six anonymous sources he claims provided the basis for The Hollow Men.
He asks us to believe he sent the emails back to his six sources once Brash took out his initial injunction against their publication. But in a classic dry-powder operation, he was able to quickly produce a further email when Brash disputed the book's "evidence" that he was donkey-deep with the Brethren.
Another who had the emails, NZ First Leader Winston Peters, says his office destroyed them once Brash sought his injunction against their publication.
But so far there is little evidence that police are interviewing holders of the stolen material, like Hager and Peters, on this issue.
Nor is there any sign that Prime Minister Helen Clark and her deputy Michael Cullen have been questioned by police over just how they were appraised of the contents of Brash's parliamentary emails.
We might be able to accept Hager's claims at face value if he had not also disclosed that he did give a number of emails to the Sunday StarTimes before the last election to try to make sure Brash was not elected.
This takes Hager's actions out of the realm of the mere journalistic inquirer seeking to get behind the big business machinations surrounding the Brash appointment, to the realm of a political operative who wants to influence an election result.
The National Party - with all other opposition parties - should be joining Brash in seeking to bring the perpetrators of this outrageous operation to justice.
This is not a time for National to try to draw a line under their former leader's time at the top.
If National Leader John Key is confident that Brash was not brought down by conspirators on his own side he should back the push to clear his predecessor's name.
