zeal of Professor Richards would benastonishing even for Soviet literaturentoday. After the fall of AUende, ancertain lady “gasped at her bill for oilnand sugar.” This resembles Sovietnnovels about Nazi Germany, accordingnto which all Germans, except for andwindling handful of “moneybags,”nwere starving paupers. Soviet propagandancould not admit that an evilnregime may be quite prosperous. In annevil regime the prices of oil and sugarnmust be sky-high. Similarly, whennchildren sing in the post-Allende coun-nStans’ StandnMaurice H. Stans: The Terrors ofnJustice; Everest House; New York.nby Charles E. RicenWho needs another book on Watergate.”nUnfortunately, we all do and thisnis the book. Watergate in a sense wasna bloodless coup d’etat, in which thenruler was deposed not by tanks and gunsnbut by typewriters and television. ThenPresident endured the ignominy ofnresignation and many of his men sufferednconviction and imprisonment. Butnwe the people did not emerge unscathed.nSince President Nixon’s abdication onnAugust 9, 1974, we have endured annorgy of self-congratulation by the medianheroes of the coup. Worse still is thenclaim of establishment academiciansnand pundits that Watergate is a watershednin the history of public morality,nthat Nixon’s men committed unexampledncrimes and that the affair mustnlead us to a new and higher morality.nThe trouble with this mainstreamncharacterization of Watergate is that itnis substantially, though not entirely,nuntrue. It is true, of course, that Nixon’snlieutenants and their chief were oftennCharles Rice is Professor of Law atnNotre Dame University.n14 inChronicles of Culturentry, this is a “thin, wobbly melody,” andnthe entire Christmas party is a “miserablenflop,” for successful children’snparties are not possible in an evilnregime either.nUostoyevsky said that under a certainnkind of sentimentality there isnblood. The sugary sentimentality ofnProfessor Richards, mingling with hernprofessional torture descriptions, addsnto the ignorance, smugness and bigotrynin this world, and hence there is, indeed,nblood under her sweetness. Dnwholly pragmatic in their approach tonmoral issues. In this they reflected thendominant positivism of American legalneducation arid the dominance of thenpragmatic ethic in much of Americannlife. But the media and the ideologicalnprosecutors carried the Watergate inquirynto an extreme by seizing uponnrelatively minor sins of their opponentsnto effect a change in regime while leavingnunnoticed the worse offenses ofntheir political allies. Sooner or later,nhowever, the real story of Watergatendential race the Nixon committees andntheir officers were singled out for prosecutorialnattention, while serious violationsnby Democratic candidates werentolerated and candidates for seats innthe Congress by and large got full clearancenby prosecutorial inattention.”nIt was a time of variable standards ofnjustice, with the media bringing publicnpressure to bear on the courts and thenInternal Revenue Service and prosecutorsnraising selective enforcement of thenlaw to the level of principle.nThis review will not attempt a summarynof Watergate. Rather, it merelynoffers the reviewer’s impression thatnthis is one book that cannot be ignored.nI picked it up reluctantly, regarding ancommitment to read another “Watergatenapology” as only slightly less onerousnthan a commitment to the countynroad gang. That reluctance, however,nwas quickly dispelled. From the outsetnthe book is factual and only occasionallynrhetorical. Those facts speak for themselves.nOne of the most telling passagesnrecounts the erroneous and contradictorynaccounts issued by AP, UPI, thenNew York Times, Parade magazine,nthe Washington Post and the WashingtonnStaroi the testimony of Hugh Sloan,nJr. Those accounts claimed that Stansn”This portrait of a Middle Wcsierii iiaVt vicrimi/.ed In Wa.shinuron sliarpiesnsimply does not ring true.”n— Xi’ir York Times Honk Rericivnwill penetrate the public consciousness.nWhen it does, the major creditnshould go to this volume.nMaurice Stans, former Secretary ofnCommerce and Chairman of PresidentnNixon’s finance committee, is an honestnman who was compelled by the exhaustionnof his personal and financial resourcesnto plead guilty to two countsnof nonwiUfully receiving campaign contributionsnwhich, unknown to him,nwere technically illegal and three counts,nalso nonwillful, of late reporting ofncontributions. The record justifies hisnconclusion that “after the 1972 Presi-nnnpersonally approved the payment ofn$199,000 to Watergate defendant G.nGordon Liddy. Although the Times ultimatelynretracted the charge the effectnwas to link Stans in the public mindnwith the Watergate payoffs. The victimnof such erroneous if not willfully mendaciousnreporting has virtually no recoursenunder the law. Which leads tonone aspect of Watergate that is oftennoverlooked: the role of the SupremenCourt in giving to the media a virtualnlicense to lie.nBeginning with New York Times v.nSullivan, in 1964, the Supreme Courtn