Sandwedge (pronounced sand-wej)
(1) As Operation
Sandwedge, a proposed clandestine intelligence-gathering operation against the
political enemies of US President Richard Nixon.
(2) As sand wedge, a
specialized golf club, an iron with a heavy lower flange, the design of which
is optimized for playing the ball out of a bunker (sand trap).
1971: The name was
chosen for a “dirty tricks” covert operation as a borrowing from golf, the sand
wedge a club used to play the ball from a difficult position. The construct was sand + wedge. Dating from pre-1000, sand was from the Middle
English sand, from the Old English sand, from the Proto-West Germanic samd, from the Proto-Germanic samdaz, from the primitive Indo-European
sámhdhos, from sem- (to pour). Wedge
was a pre 900 from the Middle English wegge
(wedge), from the Old English wecg (a
wedge), from the Proto-Germanic wagjaz
(source also of the Old Norse veggr,
the Middle Dutch wegge, the Dutch
wig, the Old High German weggi (wedge)
and the dialectal German Weck (a
wedge-shaped bread roll) and related to the Old Saxon weggi. It was cognate with the
dialectal German weck derived from
the Old High German wecki and Old
Norse veggr (wall). The Proto-Germanic wagjaz is of uncertain origin but may be related to the Latin vomer (plowshare). Sandwedge is a noun; should the plural ever
be needed, it would be sandwedges (ie phonetically a la the use in golf (sand
wedges)).
In golf, when using a sand wedge, the player’s stance and the way in which the club addresses the ball differs from what’s done when using a conventional iron. Noted golfer Paige Spiranac (b 1993) demonstrates the difference although there may be some variations depending on an individual's weight distribution.
Operation Sandwedge
was a covert intelligence-gathering operation intended to be conducted against the
political enemies of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974). Beginning in 1971, the early planning was done
by Nixon's Chief of Staff HR Haldeman (1926-1993), his assistant for domestic
affairs, John Ehrlichman (1925-1999) and Jack Caulfield (1929–2012), then attached
to Ehrlichman’s White House staff “handling special assignments” and also
involved (though paid not by the White House but from external campaign funds) was
Tony Ulasewicz (1918-1997), later a bit-player in the subsequent Watergate affair. The core of Caulfield’s plan was to target the anti-Vietnam War movement and those figures in the Democratic Party Nixon
had identified as the greatest threat to his re-election in 1972, including Ted
Kennedy (1932–2009; US senator 1962-2009), Ed Muskie (1914–1996; US senator
1959-1980), William Proxmire (1915–2005; US Senator 1957-1989) and Birch Bayh
(1928–2019; US senator 1963-1981). Of interest
too was a settling of scores with those who had prevented G Harrold Carswell
(1919–1992) being confirmed by the Senate as Nixon's nominee for the Supreme
Court and the president's net was internecine too, others of the targeted figures in
his own Republican Party.
Operation Sandwedge was
intended to be clandestine but it wasn’t subtle and included physical and
electronic surveillance, the intelligence of particular interest that which
could be used either to feed damaging leaks to the press or for purposes of
blackmail including dubious financial transactions, mental health records and sexual
proclivities. However, the operation
never proceeded beyond the planning stages because Haldeman and Ehrlichman
thought the methods of Caulfield (a former New York Police Officer) unsophisticated
so transferred the project to G Gordon Liddy (1930–2021), a lawyer, one-time
FBI agent and later one of the great characters of the Watergate affair. Caulfield had chosen the name sandwedge
because, as a dedicated golfer, he knew the sand wedge was the club of choice
when one was in a difficult spot and if well-played, it was what could
transform a bad situation into something good.
At the time, the code-names were probably among the more imaginative things
to emerge from Pennsylvania Avenue, the name chosen for the squad to
investigate leaks of information to the press was dubbed “the plumbers”.
The Watergate affair was of course the most celebrated of the “dirty tricks” operations run out of (or
at least connected with) the Nixon White House but it was far from unique. Back channel operations had actually begun
even before the 1968 election but by 1971 the vista had expanded to include what
would now be called fake news plants, the infiltration of the staff of
political opponents and break-ins and burglary, among the most infamous of which was “the plumbers” (including Liddy) breaking into the office of the psychiatrist
treating Daniel Ellsberg (b 1931), the former Defence Department military
analyst who had leaked the “Pentagon Papers”.
Ellsberg’s file revealed nothing of interest but the burglary gained a
place in history, being recorded by Ehrlichman (who approved the operation) as "Hunt/Liddy
Special Project No 1". There would
be more.
Sandwedge had been
envisaged as an intelligence gathering operation, the most novel aspect of
which was that while the project documents presented an overview of something
using conventional methods of surveillance and the compilation of publicly available material, privately Caulfield advised illegal electronic surveillance
would also be used, something any expect presumably could have deduced from the
size of the requested budget. Of the
greatest interest were financial records (relating particularly to tax matters),
mental health conditions, undisclosed legal problems and sexual conduct, especially
if illicit and preferably unlawful. The
idea greatly interested Haldeman and Ehrlichman but they had never been convinced
by Caulfield’s “lack of background” by which they meant education and political
experience. Accordingly, Sandwedge and
all intelligence matters were transferred to Liddy, the article of faith in the White
House being that anything run by a trained lawyer would be legally secure, not
something they believed of ex-NYC policemen.
New York Times, Saturday 2 March 1974.
Liddy revelled in the
role as the White House’s clandestine clearing house for “covert ops” and
created his own list of spy-like code names (Gemstone, Diamond, Ruby et al) to an
range of activities expanded beyond Sandwedge including physical espionage, infiltration
of protest groups, secret wire-taps, sabotage of opposition campaigns and, of
course, “honey-pot traps”. Even for Haldeman
and Ehrlichman the implications of becoming essentially gangsters was too much
but the shell of Liddy's structure was in 1972 approved and even then it
included a range of unlawful activities, including the one which would trigger
the chain of events which would culminate in Nixon’s resignation of the
presidency and see dozens of the conspirators (including Haldeman, Ehrlichman and
Liddy) jailed: the break in and bugging of the Democratic Party offices in the
Watergate complex. As the affair
unfolded, suspicion fell upon Caulfield until it was realised his role in Operation
Sandwedge had ended before any dubious operations began and he’d never been
part of Liddy’s more ambitious plans. He
was compelled to resign from government but was never prosecuted, maintaining
to his dying day that if he’d been left to run Operation Sandwedge, there would
have been no burglaries in the Watergate complex or anywhere else and thus none
of the cascading scandals which at first paralysed and later ended the second
term of the Nixon administration.
Paige Spiranac's definitive guide to the use of one's sand wedge. This is one of a series of invaluable short clips called Paige Quickies.
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