The Richard Nixon Experience

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Our 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 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 Susan Gahagan 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, Alai 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 

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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

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THE TRUTH HAS FINALLY COME HOME!!

Season 4 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. 

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 

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THE TRUTH HAS FINALLY COME HOME!!

Season 4 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 

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In our 1973 Enemies at the Gate  season finale, we look at the explosive circumstances around the 2 missing calls and an 18 1/2 minute gap on one conversation in the tapes requested by the prosecutor's office. It sets the prosecutors off and the Judge does it all with the maximum of theatrics to insure the spotlight shines brightly on him, John J. Sirica.  It will all set the stage for the contentious year to come in 1974. 

At the sametime the appointment to the Vice Presidency sails through the Senate with a 97 - 3 vote to make Gerald R. Ford the 40th Vice President of the United States. We will sit in for the vote and hear the new Vice President address the nation. It is in this address he very humbly says to the nation "I am a Ford not a Lincoln". It is that humbleness that will serve Ford well over the next year as it becomes increasingly certain that he will end up President of the United States. 

We wrap up 1973 with an address by President Richard Nixon as he lights the Washington D.C. Christmas Tree and tries once again to put the nation back on track. But 1973 turns out not to be the year the nation had hoped for after the long protracted war in Vietnam. The divisions caused by that war are now breaking apart the very administration that had been able to set us free from its poisonous effect. 

But it appears that in 1974, Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States, may end up its final casualty.

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As the year winds down several things are happening at once. Representative Gerald R. Ford begins the process of being confirmed for Vice President. The entire procedure is a first under the new 25th amendment to the Constitution.  Ironically, it would be used again in 1974 to confirm Nelson Rockefeller. The process was about the only easy thing confronting Nixon at the moment as he has two other major things to contend with at the same time. 

The OPEC Arab nations in retaliation for our helping Israel order an oil embargo which causes an energy crisis in the United States. In yet another moment of crisis President Nixon goes right to work to come up with a plan that would have made our nation energy independent by 1980. It was not implemented due to the growing crisis over Watergate.  Another of his brilliant plans thwarted by the desire of democrats to remove him from office. 

Then there is the selection and arrival of a new Special Prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. He was selected by the White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig along with Robert Bork, the acting Attorney General. Jaworski was a seasoned prosecutor who had actually prosecuted war criminals at Nuremberg. He was renown in legal circles and was by reputation a very formidable man. When he arrives you will see the Watergate investigation pick up speed. However, he was not the only new arrival. President Nixon hired his own lawyer, James St. Clair, and this will also change the ballgame as the prosecutors and the Judge find that this formidable man is someone they can't jerk around as they had been doing the Nixon team. 

Still the rabid partisans at the Watergate Special Prosecutor's office are determined to run over Jaworki if necessary to get at their target Richard Nixon and as the end of the year approached you will see it is an uneasy relationship between the new prosecutor and the staff his predecessor had assembled. 

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In this episode we bring this historic month to an end. The Israeli's agree to a ceasefire with Egypt and Syria at the behest of our government and negotiated by Henry Kissinger.  The ending of the war where it was, would eventually help lead to the Camp David Accords between  two of the three countries involved that would come to fruition years later by President Jimmy Carter.  Egyptian President Anwar Sadat probably lost his life for his willingness to reach out for peace with Israel as well. 

The aftermath of the Saturday Night Massacre also weakened President Nixon's position and was the catalyst for the first real push to move toward impeachment against him.  In my opinion, one clear hero of the events emerged, Robert Bork the Solicitor General.  It would come at a price a decade later when Ted Kennedy mauled him and worked to steal his dream of becoming a Supreme Court Justice. No matter those events, Robert Bork would become and continue to be a hero to the conservatives of America and his mistreatment at the hands of Ted Kennedy was the single event that galvanized a movement that would eventually succeed in getting six conservative justices on today's Supreme Court. 

We end this show with a long segment that dealt with two of the historic events of October 1973 with the only real heroic figure to emerge from these events, Robert Bork. 

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SHOWDOWN!!

There was no question that after a junior officer of the Federal Government faced down the President of the United States on National Television that that junior officer was not going to have his job long and Archibald Cox didn't.  Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire him. Richardson refused, as did his next in line William Ruckelshaus before finally the true hero of the night stepped up and did the deed. Robert Bork, the Solicitor General, fired Cox and then held the Justice Department together for two and a half months all while being under attack for having done the right thing,  Richard Nixon was , contrary to popular belief, justified in that decision. 

We were dangerously close to a war with the Soviet Union as both sides sat on the sidelines helping the two sides of a conflict in the Middle East. In fact, this was the closest the two nations had come since the Cuban Missile Crisis a decade before. There was no way that Richard Nixon was going to let Archibald Cox, nor his Special Prosecution Force, get away with such insubordination at such a moment. I would dare say that the history you have read about would have looked totally different had it involved any other President other than Richard Nixon. That is how egregious this act by Cox was no matter how avuncular he appeared that night on television. 

The chain of events this situation set off changed everything for President Nixon and it was largely in my opinion unfair. Archibald Cox should never have been appointed in the first place. He was a known Nixon hater, puppet of the Kennedy family, and he loaded up his staff with rabid partisans that either came from the Kennedy-Johnson Administrations or were prosecutors who had spent years chasing gangsters and treated the Nixon staffers as though they were members of a crime family. 

From this point on Richard Nixon was at war with a prosecution staff willing to do , say, and perform any sleight of hand necessary to get the only target they were actually focused on, the facts be damned. And the at target was Richard Nixon and they cared not who all's lives they had to ruin to do it. 

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Spiro Agnew resigns on October 10, 1973, the Arab Forces go on another offensive on October 11, 1973 all the while the Special Prosecutor's continue to push forward trying to get their hands on the Presidential recordings. Tom Brokaw of NBC News is right to describe the situation as "Richard Nixon was a President under siege." He seemed to be facing historic level crisis everywhere he looked. 

Nixon went right to work to insure the Israeli government  would have everything they needed to defend themselves and he was given some hope by his Attorney General that finally a deal could be struck not to hand over the tapes. He was determined not to give in to the mounting pressure of allowing the prosecutor's free run over the Nixon White House. That hope would turn out to be false. 

Attorney General Elliot Richardson would waffle around on a proposal for third party verification of the tapes, in a compromise originally proposed by Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox himself. But when it was originally proposed Richard Nixon had turned the idea down and pursued his options in court. The court would rule against him 5 -2 but add that they wanted the party's to find a deal themselves. So Richardson took the initiative to re propose the compromise that had been earlier rejected.  It is a little murky as to what exactly happened or if it was all a misunderstanding  but an idea was proposed that a prominent, well respected Senator, John Stennis, a Democrat from Mississippi would listen to the tapes and verify what he heard on them. 

Stennis was a man of unquestioned character, (though he was a southerner and a segregationist) , he was also elderly, hard of hearing, and a huge supporter of the Republican President.  The Prosecutors wanted  no part of this deal and I actually can understand the reasoning on this point. However, it was Archibald Cox's idea, and though he now had a court decision saying he should get the tapes  he had asked for,  it could  reasonably be argued that in good faith he should have honored his original proposal. But either way he chose to hold a press conference and face down the President of the United States while the President was dealing with an enormous crisis in Israel and for that a showdown became inevitable. 

This episode takes you right up to that moment just before the most famous of showdowns happened and it  includes Archibald Cox's press conference. 

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In our second episode centered on Vice President Spiro Agnew we cover his fall from power. Here we listen as President Richard Nixon describes the events that took Agnew down from his perspective from his interviews with reporter David Frost.  We hear from a BBC Documentary the events as they unfolded that led to Agnew's resignation and the maneuvering he did to try and preserve his Vice Presidency and then to prevent himself from receiving a jail term. 

Then we listen in on CBS News coverage of the events of October 10, 1973 as Spiro Agnew showed up at a Baltimore Courthouse to plead Nolo Contendere to one count of Federal Income tax evasion after resigning the Vice Presidency. Then he exits the stage only to return for a brief moment to sell his Memoirs in which he claimed he feared for his life after a visit from Nixon Chief of Staff Alexander Haig who had been tasked with pushing the Vice President to resign by the Administration. 

It was the second of three major events that would grip the country in October 1973 as Richard Nixon found himself at war at home and abroad.