The Richard Nixon Experience

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This episode covers the last day of the administration of Richard Nixon. It begins with the arrogant Special Prosecutors as they reminisce about their plans to figure out a way to get Richard Nixon indicted knowing they had him at his weakest moment. Host Randal Wallace will discuss the fairness of that attempt, the stealing of the President's records and tapes even as he was having them packed to be shipped to San Clemente, and several other of the indignities thrust on him as his power slipped away on that August day. 

Then we travel back in time and hear from the oral histories of three men intimately involved with the events of that day, President Richard Nixon, Vice President Gerald Ford and speechwriter Ray Price. It was a day of high drama an extreme emotion as the power of the Presidency moved smoothly in the orderly transfer of power that has been the hallmark of our national history. 

You will also get to hear one of the most inspirational speeches ever given by an American President as Richard Nixon addresses his White House Staff from the East Room just before he leaves to go back to San Clemente, California. Then you will listen in as Vice President Gerald Ford is sworn in as the nations 38th President and delivers his own Inaugural Address. 

As we close out our three season look at the Watergate Scandal, if you agree with our presentation we hope you will consider contacting the United States Justice Department and let them know that you would like to see a resolution to the currently stalled complaint registered there by Geoff Shepard of Prosecutorial Misconduct by the Watergate Special Prosecutors Office. You can do that by writing to: 

 United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington D.C. 20530

or calling the Department comment line at 202-353-1555

Let's get Justice for Richard Nixon and allow him to take his rightful place in American History.  It is after all long overdue. 

Stay tuned for our Epilogue series on the Re-Rise of Richard Nixon and our special bonus episodes too!!

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If you have never read the book "In the Arena" by President Richard Nixon let me assure you that it is a must read book. It was the most personal of his books and it is written farther down the road from his Presidency than his Memoirs were and therefore provides a lot more perspective on the events that ended his Presidency. 

Late into the process of putting this series together I was given the cassette audiobook of "In the Arena" and I went through to find the sections the President read personally on the Watergate Scandal. They are, I thought, the best defense available coming directly from the former President himself. 

So in this episode we let President Nixon address the many myths of Watergate, in person, in his own words, narrated personally. It is a fascinating tape to listen too for anyone who has studied Watergate. Also we read a section from the book "The Nixon Tapes"  by the premier historians on the subject of Richard Nixon, as they lay out their thoughts on why a trial of Richard Nixon would certainly have never happened.

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In this episode we examine the Legacy of Watergate. It was the one question everyone was asked by historian Timothy Naftali and the answers were fascinating.  This is a study of what each person thought the lesson of Watergate is for history. The one that caught the most interest from me was that of Bernard Nussbaum, who was the second in command on the staff of the House Judiciary Committee. He calls the Special Prosecutor's Office " a dangerous, dangerous office."
He runs through all the ways this office can be abused and how President Nixon and his friend President Bill Clinton should never have allowed the office to have been created in either of their cases. 

While Nussbaum pays token defenses of the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office it is clear that he holds the institution in fairly low regard and in every point he makes we are in agreement. His warning is one every President and leader needs to heed. There is no reason the office should ever exist again, in my opinion.  

Former Senator Trent Lott also makes a valid point too about what happens when a person gets in trouble and how the price they pay can be very different depending on which political party they are a member of when it happens. 

Here is the Legacy of Watergate, including my opinion, which is  its unfairness to President Nixon and the battles over the war in Vietnam planted the seeds of the  disfunction in politics we see today

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In this episode we simply relive this unfathomable moment in history.  Not only the resignation of an elected President of the United States, but the resignation of arguably one of the greatest in the history of the country. 

In this episode we tune in to the live coverage of the time from the three networks then in existence, CBS News, ABC News, and NBC News. They will interview many of the common everyday Americans so shell shocked by the events of the past year, some of  the political figures of the era, and let some of their own talking heads analyze the historic moment. 

Then at 9pm on  August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon addresses the nation.  You will witness it all here, on "Nixon and Watergate" ,  just like you were flipping through the dial as it was occuring that fateful day. 

A day  when we overthrew the President that had gotten us out of Vietnam, saved the nation of Israel, sensibly protected the environment, desegregated the southern school system, opened up China, thawed the Cold War with the Soviet Union and brought peace and stability to a very troubled and divided world.

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In this episode, the Smoking Gun Tape has pulled the rug out from under  President Nixon and now he is being urged to resign by even his most loyal defenders.  However, his family unanimously urged him to fight on. It is in this final emotional week that President Nixon goes back and forth about what to do. The President himself seems to have already come to the decision to resign, while at the same time hoping to find a glimmer of hope from somewhere. 

Three leaders from congress, John Rhodes, the Republican House Minority Leader, Hugh Scott, the Senate Minority Leader and Senator Barry Goldwater , the 1964 Republican Presidential Nominee, all come down to the White House for a fateful meeting to tell him that his support in Congress had totally evaporated. It was then that Richard Nixon moved forward with his decision to resign the Presidency. 

He would enlist his main speech writer Ray Price to help him put together the words for an address to the nation and his Chief of Staff Alexander Haig would reach out to the Vice President and the Congress people who had fought so hard and valiantly on President Nixon's behalf, men like Representatives Charlie Wiggins of California and Charlie Sandman of New Jersey.  In order to prepare them for the momentous decision now just hours away. 

Then the President would meet with the Congressional Leadership and have a moment with his old friend from Oklahoma, a man who had come to the House in the same class as Nixon, and who had risen to the position of Democratic Speaker of the House,  but Carl Albert had not been able to tame his out of control caucus and in one of the most telling moments of the entire Watergate Scandal says what sounds like a sad admission of guilt, that he knew what had happened was totally unfair. 

Speaker Carl Albert says as he was leaving the meeting, with the President's last remaining ally in leadership , Senator James Eastland D- Mississippi , by his side  " Dick, I hope you don't blame me for this....." 

This is that story and will lead you right up to the moments just before Richard Nixon  would address the nation. 

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Finally, the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee cast its vote on the Articles of Impeachment. It is an emotional vote for the congressmen who were thrust into history and  totally unprepared for the experience.  They did their best they felt, and cast the vote they had to cast. 

It was strangely an unemotional moment for the President himself.  Richard Nixon, worn out by two years of public assault, had prepared himself for the moment, and ever since his talk with Governor George Wallace had felt the vote was coming and it would be bad. He talks about his own emotions in this episode. 

Then a tape emerges in the subpoenaed 64 conversations that would totally devastate President Nixon's defense. We will let you hear the portion of the tape in question. We will also hear the part of the story that no one in the country knew at the time it was released. 

Ironically, this conversation and its actual meaning, not the meaning assigned to it by conventional wisdom, the media, and the President's lawyers at the time. But its actual meaning  is one of the few things that Geoff Shepard, the President's last defense team member, and John Dean, the main witness against President Nixon, then and now, actually agree about. 

 and you will hear them both in this episode of  "Nixon and Watergate".

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This episode opens with President Richard Nixon's March 1974 visit to the Grand Ole Opry.  Nixon was there to open the brand new Opry House on its first night after moving from downtown Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. It is a symbol of the one section of the country that never wavered, as President Nixon's problems mounted. In the South, we don't cut and run, especially when it is a President that stood strong during war time as this President had done. 

Unfortunately, the public support was not translating to the Judiciary Committee's three influential Democratic Congressmen Representatives Walter Flowers of Alabama,  Ray Thornton of Arkansas, and Jim Mann of my home state of South Carolina. They were moving toward impeachment, undercutting the President's support in their states delegations. President Nixon sensing the momentum shifting away from him, reached out to Governor George Wallace of Alabama to see if he could not help him sway Walter Flowers, when Wallace refused, it was the moment President Nixon knew this fight was lost. He would lose the southern firewall that stood between himself and Impeachment.  

The President was also having trouble holding his Republicans together as Representatives William Cohen, Tom Railsback, W. Caldwell Butler, and Lawrence Hogan had decided to side with the democrats. As we listen in on the debate in this episode, you will hear these men, as some struggle to vote their conscience, and some make their decision in  matter of fact fashion. You  will get to hear the moments of high drama and one speech that has been an enormous part of the history of the moment from Representative Barbara Jordan of Texas. Jordan's speech contained many charges, most notably  was that of Howard Hunt faking cables to embarrass the Kennedy Administration and involvement in the overthrow of the South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.  

While that charge of Hunt faking cables tying Kennedy personally to the assassination of Diem was faked, it was faked by a man who, as a member of the CIA, had seen the real ones that had tied Kennedy to the overthrow of the Diem Government.  A fact hidden from the public and Barbara Jorden for  years afterwards. This is but one of many examples of charges made that with time, unsealed documents, and an explosive set of Church Hearings in the United States Senate would later be proven untrue. 

All to late for Watergate and Richard Nixon. 

But the President did have defenders,   Representatives Charlie Wiggins of California and Charlie Sandman of New Jersey.  The case they made has, in reality, stood the test of time and you will hear it in this episode too. Plus we will dismantle the mythology of the Watergate debate that the defense case was dismantled by a hearing full of specific accusations concerning the President that overwhelmed his defenders and that President Nixon's attorney, James St. Claire, was actually able to perform a real defense of the President.

 Neither was true and you will hear it here for yourself. 

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Here is a preview of an extraordinary week of shows that will bring us to the end of the Administration of Richard Nixon.  Over this five days we will relive the emotional week between the the time the Smoking Gun becomes public and the President's resignation.  You will be able to relive through news coverage and oral histories the emotions of the historic week that will end with the resignation of arguably one of the four greatest American Presidents in the entire history of our great nation. 

Aug 2  The House Judiciary Committee Review 
Aug 2  The RICHARD NIXON WEEK Preview 
Aug 3  The Public Debate on the Impeachment of Richard Nixon 
Aug 4   A Court , A Vote, and A Smoking Gun 
Aug 5  The Emotional Final Week
Aug 6  The Resignation of a President
Aug 7  The Legacy of Watergate
Aug 8   In the Arena: Dispelling the Myths of Watergate from Richard Nixon himself
Aug 9   The Last Day

Then please stay with us as we return with :  

"The Epilogue : The Re-Rise of Richard Nixon " throughout the rest of August  and the bonus episodes including a tribute to the late United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman and the Watergate Symposium courtesy of the Federalist Society. As we close out our 5 season look back at Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Vietnam, and Watergate. 

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This episode is an in-depth look at the House Judiciary committee itself as they went through the work of deciding whether or not they should impeach a President of the United States for high crimes and misdemeanors for the first time in 106 years.

In this show you will hear the memories of each of the members and staffers of the committee we selected. They will go in-depth to recall the procedures they followed, their own feelings upon hearing the tapes, their own judgements, the work ethic of the staff and members and their thoughts about Watergate all these many years later. 

Of particular interests will be the oral history segments of Bernard Nussbaum and his assessment of both John Dean, the star witness and the former Counsel to the President , and of John Mitchell the former Attorney General and head of the Re-Election campaign for President Nixon. He says at one point that he found John Dean "the perfect Nazi corporal" who would mirror the opinion and thoughts of the person who had power over him at any given point. It is a startling revelation as to what this member of the staff thought of the main witness against the sitting President. Nussbaum also says that this issue of mirrorring the powerful person in the room made him watch what he said "out of fear of putting words in his mouth" and " while some prosecutors will do that , that is not what I do". 

 It will make your jaw drop. 

We also will hear from President Richard Nixon, in an interview conducted by his former aid Frank Gannon from 1983, in which the President will lay out his version of several of the lesser remembered accusations of the Watergate years: his taxes, the improvements to his homes, the accusations of enriching himself etc.. If you listen with an open mind it will certainly cause you to question a lot of the claims made by his accusers. 

Then we let Geoff Shepard lay out the articles of impeachment that are to be drafted by the House Committee after they had reviewed the overwhelming evidence they had in their hands.  Evidence, in our opinion, tainted by the decision of John Doar, the lead House Staffer, to only be a collation of evidence provided by the Watergate Special Prosecution Task Force and the Watergate Senate Committee. 

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In this second edition of our look at the relationship Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon had with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin , we take a little detour to listen to some of the current thoughts of Dr. Henry Kissinger, who is now 99 years old and out with yet another book. This time a book that chronicles the great examples of leadership he has seen up-close.  The book is titled "Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategies"

"In Leadership, Kissinger analyses the lives of six extraordinary leaders through the distinctive strategies of statecraft, which he believes they embodied. After the Second World War, Konrad Adenauer brought defeated and morally bankrupt Germany back into the community of nations by what Kissinger calls “the strategy of humility.” Charles de Gaulle set France beside the victorious Allies and renewed its historic grandeur by “the strategy of will.” During the Cold War, Richard Nixon gave geostrategic advantage to the United States by “the strategy of equilibrium.” After twenty-five years of conflict, Anwar Sadat brought a vision of peace to the Middle East by a “strategy of transcendence.” Against the odds, Lee Kuan Yew created a powerhouse city-state, Singapore, by “the strategy of excellence.” And, though Britain was known as “the sick man of Europe” when Margaret Thatcher came to power, she renewed her country’s morale and international position by “the strategy of conviction.” " - From the book description for "Leadership"  Here is a link
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0593587065/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_04W7PHVB27WHRSESNDP1 

Then we get to hear both Dr Henry Kissinger and President Richard Nixon working with Ambassador Dobrynin in an example of the very leadership in which Dr. Kissinger chronicled in his new , outstanding book.  Two calls during the final days of the Vietnam War in 1972 - 1973.