BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode we step back to the events in question. The actual burglary on June 17, 1972. You will get to hear oral histories from G. Gordon Liddy, John Dean and several other players in the events of that night and days afterword. 

We will also use footage from a nearly 30 year old BBC documentary that has interviews with all the major players as they discuss the events in a sequence that will bring you right inside the operation.  It will include the Cubans in the room when the lights came on and a very excited, somewhat frightened, set of policeman busted the burglars, all dressed in suits and ties, inside the Democratic National Headquarters. 

One of the burglars described the scene perfectly;  " You could see the excited looks on their faces as, one by one, we came out from behind the desk, all dressed up, you could see that they did not know what they had but it was clear we did not look like the average burglar."

And so we begin an ordeal that would dominate the World news for the remaining 18 months of the Nixon Administration. 

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

In this episode we start introducing you to the major characters of the Watergate scandal at its roots.  We start with the guy who masterminded it all, though mastermind may not be the correct description. 

G. Gordon Liddy was a former FBI agent, a lawyer, and it seems fantasy espionage agent.  He somehow seems to have bungled his way upwards from a job in the Treasury Department to the Nixon White House and finally on to the Nixon Campaign Staff. He originally was in charge of the efforts to plug leaks at the White House after the Pentagon Papers were released to the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers.  He ran the Plumbers Unit as its on the ground operations guy.  If a decision needed to be made and it fell to G. Gordon Liddy to make it,  it appears Liddy constantly made the wrong one. 

We also reintroduce Geoff Shepard, then a policy guy in the Nixon White House he moved over from the Treasury Department just before Gordon Liddy did. He knew Liddy from his days in the Treasury Department and his warnings to his immediate supervisor Egil "Bud " Krogh got largely ignored. In a bit of my own short hand he told Krogh not to walk, but to run, as far away from G. Gordon Liddy as he could and instead Krogh hired Liddy anyway. 

And the rest , as we say, is a disproportionate section of every American History book in the land. 

In this episode we we will hear the story of how the various characters got where they were and in positions to create the biggest scandal in American History, from Liddy, to E. Howard Hunt, to all the various Cuban burglars who were also later captured in the Watergate. This is the foundation for the disaster to come. At the end, we also will hear from another player, Jeb Magruder, who was supposed to be supervising this train wreck and prevent it from having ever occurred in the first place. 

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

In this our third episode of RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE, we have our second part of a look at the journalists who covered Watergate in 1973 and 1974.  Most of them were truly awful, but not all.

 In this episode you will hear from journalists, like Dan Rather and David Brinkley, who show a stunning lack of self awareness,  in one case especially where the person actually says they could not stand Richard Nixon and had no respect for him but "I never attacked him on the air, and I always treated him fairly"....No s#&! He actually says that!!! (Tune in to hear it for yourself) 

But we do move on to some truly ethical, fair minded, and good people in the media who deserve to be shown for the champions of integrity they actually were  in the history of journalism. Many of the journalists featured worked for one major news network ,  ABC News. We will listen to oral histories of Howard K. Smith, Ted Koppel , Mike Wallace (the one CBS exception)  and Barbara Walters as they describe the President they covered and interviewed throughout their careers. 

In the end, you will get to hear from President Richard Nixon himself, the victim of arguably the most unfair media coverage in the history of politics, and what he says will shock you!! In his early 1990's  interview with Hugh Sidey,  he actually defends the importance of protecting the media's right to cover political figures however they see fit. 

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

*** This episode was divided into two episodes, the second will post tomorrow morning

In our second episode of RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE: 1973 Enemies at the Gate , rather than dive right into our storyline we decided to take an in-depth two-part look at those enemies at the gate, or at least the important ally the Democratic Party could count on in their campaign to undermine President Nixon, THE PRESS, or more specifically The Washington Post. 

 In this episode, we will look closely at the cozy relationship between Katherine Graham and former President Lyndon Johnson, Sally Quin and Ben Bradlee and the relationship they had to the Kennedy family. The ties between Kennedy and Johnson aid Joe Califano and his client The Washington Post, and on and on. 

It will definitely leave you with a sickening feeling about the motivations the paper had to go after the man in the White House who had just won a 49 state landslide and gotten our troops and POW's home from a long protracted war in Southeast Asia. 

But , just in case you think we here at "Bridging the Political Gap" are to swayed by our obvious editorially positive opinion of President Nixon, we will be taking a trip back in time to one of the most sickening displays of liberal journalistic arrogance ever recorded and saved for posterity, (and saved by the very rag-sheet whose journalistic integrity is being called into question, The Washington Post, no less.)  They actually hosted a 40th anniversary celebratory event with Elizabeth Drew, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Ken Hughes, and Ruth Marcus and when they are done you will be filled with absolute disgust. 

It is all here for you to listen too, the mocking of the President, the totally inaccurate claims, the the obvious disdain, and from Ruth Marcus one of the most outrageously laughable claims ever made about comparing the tapes of Richard Nixon to the apparently saintly Lyndon B. Johnson.  It will make you sick.

BUT we do invite you to our second part of this analysis of the press,  when we look at more of the journalists of the Watergate era, some awful, but not all. The press is after all not a monolithic entity and there are good folks in the media and in the next episode we will introduce you to some of them as well, in part two of "The Press is the Enemy" 

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

Our Season 6 Premier and the first in our NIXON and WATERGATE series:

This season opens just as the Vietnam War ends for America. Even as the treaty is signed there are still last minute maneuverings that President Nixon and Henry Kissinger have to deal with in order to get our Prisoners of War out of Vietnam. You will listen in on the discussions between the President and his speech writer Ray Price and then Dr. Henry Kissinger as the war finally comes to an end. 

Then we will listen to the memories of the brave soldiers of that war and the ordeals they suffered through as Prisoners of War in the Hanoi Hilton. The most famous of which, the future Senator from Arizona, John McCain, recounts his years in the prison and the moment that the Vietnamese almost broke his indominable spirit. You will hear several other soldiers tell their stories as well.

Then we will shift gears to the burgeoning scandal that would soon dominate the Nixon Administration, Watergate. You will hear ABC News set the stage for the coming sentencing of the Watergate burglary defendants and we will be introduced to a cast of characters from G. Gordon Liddy, to Judge Sirica to future Chairman of the Watergate Committee in the Senate Sam Irvin of North Carolina. 

In this episode we will also meet Geoff Shepard, the last living defense Attorney for Richard Nixon, he had been a mid level employee, and White House Fellow , there working on policy. He would move up to being Nixon Attorney Fred Buzhardt's right hand man.  He will play a major role in the telling of our story on "Bridging the Political Gap" over the next three seasons. 

You can read up on Mr. Shepard and get copies of his three landmark books at his website:

 https://shepardonwatergate.com/

 and starting with this episode you will hear excerpts from his extraordinary  podcasts with the Nixon Foundation and its then President Hugh Hewitt titled "Known Unknowns" , here is a link to the first episode and you can then go from there to the rest. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWxWKSK0cmc 

We will be using a lot of these conversations throughout our series on Watergate over the next three seasons

Finally our show will then return to the POW's as they are released and we get to hear their stories of returning, finally, home. 

It remains perhaps the true high point of one of the greatest Presidencies in all of American History, the Presidency of Richard Nixon. 

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

Its the Summer of 2022 and we are on the verge of the 50th Anniversary of the Watergate Break in.  No better time to look back at the Presidency of Richard Nixon. 

So with the help of Hollywood's biggest Summer blockbuster's we thought we would set the stage for our summer to come. As we clear the bar of the shocking untruths, spread by the liberal media elitist sharks, who attempted to reprogram the Justice System and control the narrative for a half century. 

But all of that is about to change and we leave you one more question if you are willing to sit, listen and learn,

Can you handle the truth!!!  

Tune in this Summer for the podcast Landmark, Blockbuster 3 season series  RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE and see if you can handle it for real!!

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

Preview for Season 6 , RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE 1973 Enemies at the Gate

Protests in the streets, an FBI in full investigation mode, massive leaks coming out of the White House, a Press Corp attempting to undermine the policy initiatives of a President and determined to accuse the President of criminal activity, racism, and questioning his mental stability,  all while that President is struggling to get us out of a War he inherited and finally an opposition party jumping on a scandal that may or may not be exactly what they are saying it is. 

It all sounds familiar doesn't it? 

Is it Donald Trump or Richard Nixon? 

Or is it all from a playbook, used by a liberal elite, in coordination with an angry bureaucracy, a willing media, and the gaggle of Washington D.C. insiders of both political parties who will not dare to allow their power to be questioned.  

It is a plan that worked in 1974, but time has not been kind to the Impeachment attempt of Richard Nixon and the resignation it caused.

 Now with an avalanche of new evidence, and a public receptive to knowing the facts with a much more open mind that it had in 1974. 

We are going to go back through the era of Watergate.

It is a different world than it was in 1974, we have more than just  5 media sources, and we have a general public that is  no longer as trusting of the media as it was in 1974 and  who has watched the nonstop attacks on Donald Trump even before he was elected President. 

Now it seems  time to take another look at Watergate and the President that was destroyed by the scandal. 

What we now know will shock you, and we invite you to tune in, and hear it all for yourself. Over the next three seasons we will present a case of facts to you that will change everything you ever thought you knew about Richard Nixon. 

And make you better prepared not to let it happen ever again!!

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

It was 10 years ago that we ran for Congress in South Carolina.  At that time we campaigned on three crisis's we felt the nation needed to address.  A Jobs crisis,  a debt crisis, and a crisis of spirit in the nation. For a little while our campaign shocked the South Carolina establishment and we were doing well despite money issues, and a lack of establishment support from either the business community nor the Republican Party hierarchy in the District.  But the race was not to be and as the money poured in for my opponents our "little engine that could" campaign fell by the waist side. 

But when I look back at the issues we attempted to address at least two big ones still resonate today. Our nation was around 16 Trillion in debt a decade ago, today it is a staggering 30 Trillion in debt, with no end in sight,  and no politicians in either party even seriously trying to get it under control.  Today we are on the verge of inflation rising at a rate unseen since the administration of Jimmy Carter in the 1970's. I still believe we must address the debt before it takes our country over a fiscal cliff. 

The other crisis that I still feel is relevant is the crisis of spirit in our country. A decade ago I felt like the Doctor trying to tell people you need to address your health issues now before it gets out of control,  If I were running today I would be the cancer specialist trying to figure out how to save you from full blown stage 4 cancer. I have never been more discouraged in all my life as I am today by the quality of our leadership on the national level. They are simply a collective national embarrassment and it is largely an issue of both political parties. It is not just in the leadership but in the trenches and in the media too. The mentality is fight to the death, we want it all or nothing, while the media fans the flames of division nonstop. 

As best I can tell, only one politician in Congress has been willing to admit that they are even a part of the problem, Senator Chris Coons of Delaware (who while I disagree with him tremendously on policy impresses me every time I hear him talk about divisions in America)  

I still believe as I did in 2012, that our country desperately needs to sit down and figure out ways to address the crisis of spirit that is destroying our country. It may also mean going after the social media giants who have allowed their platforms to be the playground of the extremes so determined to undermine every institution from Government, to the police, to the Church. All of which has happened while our nations authority figures refuse to make decisions and say no when necessary, the way a generation of leaders did in the last half of the 20th century. A generation of leadership and authority figures that made America the greatest country in the world, and the beacon of freedom all the world looks to in times of crisis. 

We need leadership desperately, and it needs to be real leadership, not people  masquerading as leaders but in reality pushing  extremist, mean spirited zealotry.  In my final interview on this show, it is from 2013, when I am running for reelection for the Myrtle Beach City Council and in that race we talk about a city where leadership worked well together and resolved issues, not every issue, but many in ways that found real, creative solutions for the problems we faced. 

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 basis of the this podcast when we started it were stories about the relationships of the World War 2 Generation of leaders. The stories of the original podcast episodes were from my book "Always Vote Your Conscience, Don't take it personally and Don't fight the same old battles over and over again". That book was originally going to be a policy book of ideas from my 2012 campaign for the United States Congress South Carolina District 7 seat that I lost, now amazingly a decade ago.  Time sure flies. The eventual winner of the seat was Congressman Tom Rice. He has held the seat continuously from its start. 

I thought it might be interesting to some folks to replay a few of the moments from that long ago campaign that is sort of the Grandfather of our podcast. So here is an interview taped in 2012, with the nationally broadcast "Exceptional Conservative Show with Ken McClinton".  I was honored that he asked me to come on his show for the full 45 minutes. What was even more amazing is we had been  at a BBQ in Georgetown County the night of our original call in interview and the reception was so bad that we had to stop and do the show later. The fact he was willing to do it again later and for the full amount of time we agreed to was very gracious I thought by Mr. McClinton and I appreciate it to this day .

I don't know exactly how or why but the show was saved and placed on You Tube, and I stumbled back upon it a few years ago and saved it for my own later enjoyment. So with a few hours of programming to fill I thought our listeners here might enjoy my views on issues of the day in 2012 and by in a large I think  many of the issues in  the conversation are still relevant today. 

I hope you enjoy the talk. 

*** Just a housekeeping note we discussed several bonus shows in this episode that were going to run. Due to the passing of Orrin Hatch , the shows mentioned will run later in the year as time allows. 

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

From the Richard Nixon Foundation video collection introduction to this speech: 

"On January 14, 1971, President Nixon made an appearance at the University of Nebraska to present its football team with a presidential plaque recognizing them as undisputed national champions. The President also took the opportunity to address some of the problems currently facing the Nation, "common problems, for younger people and older people as well."

The speech is an excellent one with inspiring words for the University full of young people with deeper meaning than just giving an award to the National Championship Football team. I thought it a great speech to share with you.  That some hopes and thoughts about our country and its greatness and opportunities, especially for our young people, are timeless no matter how divided we are nor what era we are living in. 

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!!