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It is January 1974, and the nation is all a buzz over two missing conversations and an 18 and a half minute gap on subpoenaed tapes from the White House. Judge Sirica has demanded that the tapes all be turned over to him. It is a no win scenario for the White House and for the first time they are losing the public relations war.  The gap would be one of the enduring mysteries of Watergate.

Years later a couple of investigators would attempt to resolve the mystery of "who done it?" with , in my opinion, a less than satisfying answer complete with lots of unprovable innuendo.  The National Archives too would attempt to figure out if there was more to the notes that Bob Haldeman left behind that may give a clue about what was discussed in the famous meeting.  It seems it was a mystery the public never tired of trying to resolve.

In the end, the more likely and plausible answer is offered up by Geoff Shepard, who was there, a member of the White House staff who dealt directly with the tapes and the people transcribing the tapes. The machine in question, the Uher 5000, had a history of various recording issues and there is some evidence of a faulty plug in the wall of Rose Mary Woods' small working office.  Here in this episode you will get to hear every version of what could of happened that I could find, but if you are a believer in the old adage the most likely version is the least complicated one, you will probably be right. However, this is one mystery we will likely never know the answer too.

There are also other issues on the front burner in January of 1974. One of them is a growing Energy Crisis, that grew to a serious crisis over the winter of 1974. In this episode we revisit a symposium with the major players as they remember the crisis and how the President dealt with it. We also feature an oral history with James Schlesinger , the cabinet member who had to help develop the strategy to combat the issue. In it he talks about the environmental President who is so responsible for how clean our air and water is today as he sought solutions to those problems and he moved us closer towards energy independence as well.

We also hear how Watergate began to hamper every other initiatives the administration was working on as 1974 began and President Nixon once again took to the stage for his  State of the Union address. He was under siege over a scandal that was crippling his administration even as our Union was the strongest it had ever been in its nearly 200 year history under the leadership Richard Nixon  had provided.

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This is our second episode where we listen to lectures from Geoff Shepard that deals directly with two of the most important, and frankly, sinister factors that led to the downfall of Richard Nixon. 

Judge John Sirica, often portrayed as the hero of Watergate, was in fact a known attention seeker with one of the worst records of any Judge on the D.C. Court. He was famous for disregarding the rights of defendants. It is combination of these weaknesses and his desire to play the hero, all fed to him by private, ex parte,  meetings he was having with those interested in seeing that Richard Nixon would eventually be politically hurt by the case. It is a  damning indictment of his alleged behavior on the Bench, that if it had  been known at the time would have led to his disbarment.  

Then we get a look at the Watergate Special Prosecutors Task Force, a team of lawyers we have labeled the Sinister Force of Watergate. They were formed with only one target in mind and they never hid it. That target was Richard Nixon, and over these lectures you will see a case form that should scare any person who has ever thought that somehow they could end up in the crosshairs of the criminal justice system. 

This is an excellent overview of the way things unfolded that led to the resignation of President Nixon. It is following this road map, complete with historical documents and various news reports from the time period that our podcast will soon begin to move you through the events of early 1974 that would lead to indictments of the President's top aids and the naming of President Nixon as an unindicted Co-Conspirator on March 1, 1974. 

Links to lectures and Website below: 

1. https://youtu.be/hZIF0oSXBJE  Mysteries of Watergate Lecture Nixon Library  May 29, 2010

2. https://youtu.be/qXA2T23yoFU  Geoff Sheppard lecture Richard Nixon Library  August 11, 2015

3. https://youtu.be/9EPgLIWpFKA    Geoff Shepard - Special Prosecutors: Yesterday and Today
November 21, 2018 St. Vicente College 

4. https://youtu.be/gHRv7WG7yTM  Watergate lecture at Hillsdale College  November 6, 2018

*** For more information please go to the following website ShepardonWatergate,com

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If you love the show, the easiest way to show your support is by leaving us a positive rating with a review. You can also tell your family and friends about " Randal Wallace Presents : Nixon and Watergate " too

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In this first of two episodes,  we have culled several important points on the case that Geoff Shepard has laid out in his three books from several lectures he has made that are available on the internet and at his site. The links to which are below. 

This episode centers on various theories of Watergate that have been out there for a number of years, the role of Senator Ted Kennedy and his various staffers, and finally a focus on the role of former White House Counsel to the President,  John Dean. 

This is an excellent overview of the way things unfolded that led to the resignation of President Nixon. It is following this road map, complete with historical documents and various news reports from the time period that our podcast will soon begin to move you through the events of early 1974 that would lead to indictments of the President's top aids and the naming of President Nixon as an unindicted Co-Conspirator on March 1, 1974. 

Links to lectures and Website below: 

1. https://youtu.be/hZIF0oSXBJE  Mysteries of Watergate Lecture Nixon Library  May 29, 2010

2. https://youtu.be/qXA2T23yoFU  Geoff Sheppard lecture Richard Nixon Library  August 11, 2015

3. https://youtu.be/9EPgLIWpFKA    Geoff Shepard - Special Prosecutors: Yesterday and Today
November 21, 2018 St. Vicente College 

4. https://youtu.be/gHRv7WG7yTM  Watergate lecture at Hillsdale College  November 6, 2018

*** For more information please go to the following website ShepardonWatergate,com

Support My Work

If you love the show, the easiest way to show your support is by leaving us a positive rating with a review. You can also tell your family and friends about " Randal Wallace Presents : Nixon and Watergate " too

Questions or comments at  , [email protected] ,  https://twitter.com/randal_wallace   , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
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Who in the World is Geoff Shepard?

This show is an attempt to introduce you to him and get to know exactly who he is. We have discussed him at various times in our 1973 episodes but this as an in-depth look at who he is and why he is a man of unquestioned stature.

I also wanted to put this show together because of my own experience with coming to learn about this man and his work , a chance to address the usually skillful way the other side undermines everyone with a different viewpoint in the eyes of the public. It's also a way to keep a skillful eye on current events too.

The first time I had ever heard of Geoff Shepard I was arguing with a former anchor at my local television station over drinks.  Since the advent of social media I have developed a reputation as a rabid Nixon defender.  My friend, who was on WPDE - TV 15 in Myrtle Beach, was not a Nixon fan. Over the course of our argument he said something along the lines of me believing looney conspiracy theories, and threw out Geoff Shepard's name. I had never heard of him but was aware that a little cottage industry of hairbrained conspiracy theories had cropped up over Watergate and various other historic events from the Lincoln Assassination to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, to the Bermuda Triangle for that matter.  But for me after the back and forth with the anchorman, I mostly forgot about it.

A while later I got to talking with a friend of mine who was the Assistant City Attorney for the City of Myrtle Beach. He was the young man who had broken up the fist fight years before between our Mayor Mark McBride and a City Councilman Wayne Gray in executive session.  That fight had made national news at the time.  The Assistant City Attorney had since moved on before I was elected, but we became friendly acquaintances. He had seen some of my posts on Facebook about President Nixon and had told me about his own legal work with Geoff Shepard and how Shepard had told him all about his time working with Richard Nixon. Then he sent me an article that had been in The Atlantic Magazine.

It was a fascinating look at what had really happened in Watergate.  That is when I realized that there may be more to this man than what the anchorman had portrayed to me earlier.  When Geoff Shepard's second book came out "The Real Watergate Scandal (Collusion , Conspiracy and the plot that brought down Nixon) "  I went out and bought a copy. It was a stunning, shocking, mesmerizing book that I almost highlighted from cover to cover. It was one of the best books on Richard Nixon and Watergate I had ever read.  So I did some research on the author. 

What I discovered was he is a very serious man, and more importantly, a very credible one with a long resume of experience both as part of the Nixon Administration an after.  So with this episode I want to establish with you, our audience, that Geoff Shepard is not a conspiracy theorist, not a person pedaling a story of a vast intricate plot of espionage designed to destroy a President, but a serious man who has uncovered a rather simple case of Prosecutorial Misconduct that has sadly occurred in far less dramatic fashion  in courtrooms and legal cases all over America.

 It is a simple case of partisans in a political scandal who took control of the wheels of justice, with no real supervision, with over 100 of the best partisan lawyers and investigators in America, and a willing press covering it all, and then made a case up out of a mountain of materials and tapes they were able to force the President to turn over to them in an unprecedented way , with massive historical consequences for the country and the President it had overwhelmingly elected to office.

*** You can look at the documents we use at ShepardonWatergate.com

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Our Season 7 story opens with a look at the conventional wisdom most of America, and the world holds on Watergate. It is the story of the heroic  Special Prosecutors who investigated the heinous crimes of Watergate. The story of a Washington Press Corp determined not to let the sly , crooked , Richard Nixon get away with running his, as Dan Rather called it, "crime syndicate" from the White House.

It is the story of the heroic Democrats in Congress who continued to push for more and more information in order to protect the country from a President determined to undermine our constitutional democracy and trample over the American Criminal Justice System. It is the story of those brave, unselfish, upstanding, righteous Republicans who finally said enough. It was nothing less than saving our democracy itself and stopping fascism from reigning over our mighty and free land.

I don't know about you, but I ain't never bought that line of happy Horse manure!!

But I also never had anything but a feeling that "something was not right in Denmark". I had studied the career of Richard Nixon most of my life. What I had found was if you really looked at it almost none of the accusations, other than those of Watergate, ever stood up.

He had in fact exposed a real communist spy in Alger Hiss. He had defeated Helen  Cahagan Douglas for the U.S. Senate  in a nasty race where most of the nastiness had been provoked by her not him. He had had a special fund to help with legitimate expenses related to his political career but he had been able to account for every dime spent from the fund, something the 1952 Democratic Nominee for President, Adlai Stevenson, who also had a similar fund  could not do for himself. The 1960 election for President had been arguably stolen from Richard Nixon and Nixon had had his taxes audited by the IRS and his airplane and phone lines bugged by the FBI during the subsequent Kennedy and Johnson years.

It just seemed that every time you really looked at it, except for Watergate, Richard Nixon was actually not at all what he was constantly being presented to the public as having been.  So you just always had this feeling that maybe Richard Nixon's claim that he would one day be vindicated, yet again, would prove true.  But like most Americans, while sympathetic, I guess I kind of doubted that it could actually be possible.

Until I read three riveting books by a lawyer, former Nixon staffer, and a man whose own credibility is unquestioned. That man's name was Geoff Shepard, and starting with this episode we are going to do a deep dive into documents he has unearthed over the past nearly two decades.  I think what you will see us lay out is an absolutely shocking and overwhelming story of alleged Prosecutorial Misconduct.

And it will change everything you thought you knew about Richard Nixon.

*** If you would like to see the documents they are available at ShepardonWatergate.com

Link to the Geoff Shepard Book Launch event on You Tube

https://youtu.be/LZre5OZ8IOs

Support My Work

If you love the show, the easiest way to show your support is by leaving us a positive rating with a review. You can also tell your family and friends about " Randal Wallace Presents : Nixon and Watergate " too

Questions or comments at  , [email protected] ,  https://twitter.com/randal_wallace   , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
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THE TRUTH HAS FINALLY COME HOME!!

Season 7 Richard Nixon and Watergate, 1974 Through the Fire will take you from the start of the New Year in 1974 through the March 1, 1974 indictments against the defendants in the Watergate Case. One of the 19 people named as an unindicted Co-Conspirator was President Richard Nixon. 

This is the story of how the President was named, how the defendants were indicted, and the ways those decisions were made. Using oral histories and newly released documents made available to us from the National Archives and organized in three extraordinary books written by Geoff Shepard. Our show will attempt to lay out the case of alleged Prosecutorial Misconduct so extreme that it was hidden from the public for nearly five decades. This conduct is now the subject of an ethics complaint that was filed in 2021 with the Justice Department. 

In this introduction to our season we want to explain how this season will be different than how our other episodes have been constructed. We chose several players in the events of the period that would eventually lead to the fall of President Nixon. Here we introduce you to those players, who they were and what their role was in the events of 1974.

We will be listening to oral histories from:

The Special Prosecutors Jill Wine Banks, Richard Ben Veniste , and Henry Ruth. The Nixon Administration figures Alexander Haig, Ray Price, and Geoff Shepard. The House Judiciary Committee Members Trent Lott and Elizabeth Holtzman. House Judiciary Staff members Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bernard Nussbaum, and William Weld. Plus interviews with President Richard Nixon himself. All are discussed and introduced to you here in this introduction of Season 7, Richard Nixon and Watergate 1974 Through the Fire.

By the time our story is through, It will change everything you thought you knew about the fall of President Richard Nixon

*** To read the documents we will be using you can go to the following website

ShepardonWatergate.com

Support My Work

If you love the show, the easiest way to show your support is by leaving us a positive rating with a review. You can also tell your family and friends about " Randal Wallace Presents : Nixon and Watergate " too

Questions or comments at  , [email protected] ,  https://twitter.com/randal_wallace   , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
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For Immediate release: 

We here at the Podcast " Bridging the Political Gap" are proud to announce the changing of our name from " Bridging the Political Gap" to " Randal Wallace Presents" with each season being the name of our moniker. 

As we begin Season 7 ,   " Richard Nixon and Watergate 1974: Through the Fire" we thought it the perfect time to announce the new name, unveil the new cover art, and move forward with a name more suitable to the given subject matter we are covering at any given moment. 

We hope you like the new name and look.

**** The press Conference feel to the announcement is for dramatic effect and we did not actually have a major press announcement   :) 

( You know you got to have fun and be able to shamelessly plug your book, "Always Vote Your Conscience", your website RandalWallace.com, and your back log of episodes too!!! ) 

Questions or comments at  , [email protected] ,  https://twitter.com/randal_wallace   , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
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"As the Watergate era passes into history, the voices of most of the key players now stilled, Dwight Chapin -- a loyal and discreet member of Richard Nixon's inner circle before and after he captured the White House -- emerges with an intimate and insightful memoir that students of the era never imagined we would see. With its eyewitness account of critical events, many previously undisclosed, "The President's Man" brings to life the extraordinary cast of characters of that tumultuous time: Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Kissinger, John and Martha Mitchell, and, of course, the late President himself. Dwight Chapin's unsparing  recollections make a significant addition to the literature of the Nixon Administration and the annals of the postwar presidency"  --- James Rosen, author of The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate

That is one of many powerful reviews for one of the most important books written on Richard Nixon over the past half century. It was authored by a man who can genuinely claim to be "The President's Man", Dwight Chapin. If you have followed our podcast it often seems that everywhere you look you will see Dwight Chapin. 

On our shows about President Nixon's remarkable run and the 1968 campaign, it was Dwight Chapin that got President Lyndon Johnson on the phone, that went with Nixon to Martin Luther King's funeral, that helped arrange the meeting with Hubert Humphrey at the elections end. He was there for the "Silent Majority Speech" and he was the man who helped put together every aspect of the trip to China that shook the World. No one was more intricately involved at every turn of the remarkable Presidency of Richard Nixon than Dwight Chapin. 

This episode is a brief look at this remarkable person entrusted to be at the side of one of our nation's greatest leaders. Dwight Chapin has recently written an outstanding book that we highly recommend, "The President's Man",  and here we have compiled some of the interviews, panel discussion, and a few added insights and materials we thought would compliment the material he has provided as he conducted his recent book tour.  It will give you some insight into the greatest of American Presidents on the eve of our podcasts deep dive into the scandal that ended Richard Nixon's Presidency. 

For more information on Dwight Chapin's new book and materials here is his website 

ThePresidentsMan.com  

Questions or comments at  , [email protected] ,  https://twitter.com/randal_wallace   , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
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During our hiatus and just after the 50th anniversary of the  Watergate break in we were invited to do an interview on the New York City based talk show podcast "The Alex Garret Show" where for the first time we were interviewed basically just on our podcast show.

  In it we discuss Richard Nixon , Watergate, how we put the show together, researching the material, our thoughts on the current state of politics, and what we have in store for our viewers over the next season or two as we cover the end of the Watergate scandal and the life of Richard Nixon,

We thought it would be fun to rebroadcast the interview here on our own show in a special edition. We did have some technical issues with moving their show over so they were kind enough to send us the raw file of the interview and that is what we will be sharing with you, including a little bit of the chatter we had at the start that was not on the actual broadcast 

We hope you will like the show. 

We have also included links to the "Alex Garret Show" in which we were interviewed and to the page if you would like to start listening in to the "Alex Garret Podcast" itself on a regular basis. 

Enjoy!! 

Our interview:
https://soundcloud.com/alex-garrett-podcasting/talkng-watergate50-with-randal?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing 

The Alex Garret Podcast:

https://soundcloud.com/alex-garrett-podcasting?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Questions or comments at  , [email protected] ,  https://twitter.com/randal_wallace   , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!!

Send us Fan Mail

THE TRUTH HAS FINALLY COME HOME!!

Season 7 Richard Nixon and Watergate, 1974 Through the Fire will take you from the start of the New Year in 1974 through the March 1, 1974 indictments against the defendants in the Watergate Case. One of the 19 people named as an unindicted Co-Conspirator was President Richard Nixon.  He had been the target of the Watergate Special Prosecutors Task Force from the start. 

This is the story of how the President was named, how the defendants were indicted, and the ways those decisions were made. Using oral histories and newly released documents made available to us from the National Archives and organized in three extraordinary books written by Geoff Shepard. Our show will attempt to lay out the case of alleged Prosecutorial Misconduct so extreme that it was hidden from the public by Prosecutors, in various ways for nearly five decades. 

Here you will hear the documents, listen to the stories , and finally catch the prosecutors continuing to present a case, that at least on face value,  appears to be untrue, and the documents they had sealed, or took with them, that were unknown for years, will show it.  

It is not some grand conspiracy, as we so often feel we need to make up to explain such enormous , monumentally,  historical events, like the removal of a President who had just won a 49 State landslide. Instead what it appears we have here is a basic case of alleged Prosecutorial Misconduct just like has happened in courtrooms and legal cases all across America. 

By the time our story is through, It will change everything you thought you knew about the fall of President Richard Nixon.

We start the season August 9, and we have two special editions:  an interview with our host on Watergate on  August 4, and a special on "The President's Man Dwight Chapin" on August 7

*** To see the documents we are using we invite you to go to the following website

ShepardonWatergate.com 

Questions or comments at  , [email protected] ,  https://twitter.com/randal_wallace   , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
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Thanks for listening!!