Send us a Text Message.In this episode we are going to step back to October of 1973. The singular event that changes everything in Watergate was the Saturday Night Massacre. When we originally told the story we did so from the overall perspective of the Nixon White House and the news media that covered it. We travel back in this episode and let you hear the story from the oral histories of the members of the Special Prosecutor's office whose boss was fired. It is, we thought, the best way to introduce you to several people whose oral histories will take you to the very end of our Podcast Documentary look at Richard Nixon. While this episode centers more on the Special Prosecutors you will hear from two top level Nixon staffers, Ray Price and an oral history of Alexander Haig, read by me. You will also hear from Elliot Richardson, Williams Ruckelshaus, and Robert Bork. But at the end you will get a play by play from three members of the special prosecutor's office we have only brushed upon in our earlier episodes. They are the number two man in the office, Henry Ruth, who will one day become the Special Prosecutor,  along with Richard Ben Veniste, and Jill Wine Banks.  It will give you some insight as to what it was like for those in the office on the night of the firing of Archibald Cox. This is the first of three episodes centered on the people of the Watergate Scandal and their roles in it.

Send us a Text Message.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 tp 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 initiative 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.

Send us a Text Message.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 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 behavior on the Bench that had it 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, 20102. https://youtu.be/qXA2T23yoFU  Geoff Sheppard lecture Richard Nixon Library  August 11, 20153. https://youtu.be/9EPgLIWpFKA    Geoff Shepard - Special Prosecutors: Yesterday and TodayNovember 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

Send us a Text Message.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, 20102. https://youtu.be/qXA2T23yoFU  Geoff Sheppard lecture Richard Nixon Library  August 11, 20153. https://youtu.be/9EPgLIWpFKA    Geoff Shepard - Special Prosecutors: Yesterday and TodayNovember 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

Send us a Text Message.Who in the World is Geoff Shepard?This show is an attempt to introduce you to him and exactly who he is. We have discussed him at various times in our 1973 episodes but this as an indepth 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.  I also wanted to address the usually skillful way the other side of this debate undermines everyone with a different viewpoint in the eyes of the public and how it actually usually works, and for a brief while even with me. 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 through 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 occured 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 w

Send us a Text Message.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

Send us a Text Message.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

Send us a Text Message.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 websiteShepardonWatergate.com

Send us a Text Message.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 websiteShepardonWatergate.com

Send us a Text Message.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.

Send us a Text Message.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.

Send us a Text Message.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.

Send us a Text Message.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.

Send us a Text Message.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.

Send us a Text Message.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.

Send us a Text Message.Spiro Theodore Agnew was the 39th Vice President of the United States of America. Today the average person knows almost nothing about him. His only real vague claim to fame is that he was forced to resign the Vice Presidency in a long forgotten, unrelated to Watergate, scandal in 1973.  Only recently was he attacked by MSNBC Host Rachel Maddow in her book " Bag Man, the Wild Crimes, audacious cover up and Spectacular downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House" Well anyone who is familiar with our podcast knows we don't think much of Miss Maddow, nor her far left opinions and predilection for exaggeration and sharing of nonfactual material. Not that we believe that Vice President Agnew was anywhere near as innocent as we believe President Nixon was of the smears against him. Because we don't.  However, there is some level of unfairness in the way his case was portrayed from the very start, and we believe it is fair to say that he fell victim to the age old bug of having risen to far to fast at his given profession. In just 11 years, Spiro Agnew rose from being an attorney for a Union and serving on the Zoning Board of Appeals, to being elected Baltimore County Executive, and after taking advantage of a feud with in the Democratic Party, finding himself elected Governor of the State of Maryland. Richard Nixon in need of a running mate that did not drag down his poll numbers, turned to the unknown Agnew to be his running mate in 1968 for Vice President of the United States.  An amazing rise for anyone to have come so far so fast.  The State of Maryland had a very unusual way of doing business that apparently everyone was aware of and no one really talked about. It involved people looking to do work with various local governments subsidizing the decision making office holders income.  Now today that would be considered illegal, and it is rather shocking to me that it was not considered illegal then, but the  truth is it wasn't. That basic fact is a part of the story rarely if ever discussed and it is about the only defense available for not only a Vice President forced to give up his office but for the rather large list of other public figures this scandal involved in the state of Maryland. Over the next two episodes we are going to introduce you to the man, Spiro T. Agnew,  who had risen so quickly from obscurity, the intricacies of the scandal that brought him down, and the story of his fall.  A fall that was only made possible not because he had continued to take as Governor and Vice President  what appears to be kickbacks involving projects he oversaw as a County Executive,  but because he, like the gangster Al Capone, had not reported any of it on his Federal Income Tax.

Send us a Text Message. Richard Nixon loved baseball and football and was actually fairly insightful in both sports. There are countless pictures of Richard Nixon over his long and storied years in the public eye at sporting events.  He also made a number of appearances on radio and television shows for the Major League Baseball Teams he loved to watch. We have a few for you here. In his retirement, he did an interview with the California Angels and then later the New York Mets for their radio broadcasts and while in the White House he talked with a reporter on the White House taping system about his all time all star baseball team. He also talked fondly of the man he considered the most courageous of all athletes, the late Lou Gehrig. We also will hear President Nixon talk football with the great Head Coach of the Washington Redskins (now Commanders) , George Allen. He once famously sent in a play to the Coach who actually called the play in a game. I understand the Skins lost yardage,  but oh well at least he gave it a good try!!We also will get to hear a few words of inspiration from a speech Richard Nixon gave to the University of Nebraska after he went to the school to help celebrate their winning the National Championship in College Football in 1971.

Send us a Text Message.Did you know that one man in World  History bares the distinction of not only saving one nation but actually saving two!! That man, was Richard Nixon. Like his 19th century predecessor, Abraham Lincoln, Richard Nixon would save our Union from self destruction. Then Richard Nixon would step up, in October of 1973, with the coalition of Arab Nations poised to wipe out the nation of Israel in retaliation for their humiliating defeat  in 1967 . The  Arab States, led by Egypt and Syria, had Israel with its back to the wall and forced them to call out for help, it was then that Richard Nixon   saved them  as well. The coalition of Arab Nations  attempted to invade Israel on two sides with the goal of gaining control of the East Bank of the Suez Canal. They stunned the Israeli forces and started backing them off the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. The Israeli's were clearly being outgunned. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was desperate and her cries were falling on deaf ears within the American Government. President Nixon was under siege here at home as the Democrats marched on with the aid of their media elite allies and the rabid staff of the Special Prosecutor's office,  trying to over step constitutional authority and the division of government by extending  the Legislative and Judicial Branches' power and interfere with the running of the Executive Branch of Government by the overwhelmingly  elected President .  President Nixon was doing all he could do just to keep his administration from coming off track. It was at exactly this moment that Golda Meir took matters into her own hands and called Richard Nixon, in the middle of the night, for help . It could only be described in the history of the nation of Israel, as a Yom Kippur miracle.Richard Nixon let his recalcitrant government and Defense Department know, in no uncertain terms, that the time of letting Israel bleed was over. His exact order was "You will send them everything we have, everything that will fly" and It would do far more than change everything for Israel it would save the nation of Israel from certain destruction ..

Send us a Text Message.Another of the unfair accusations often heralded against President Richard Nixon and his assistant Dr. Henry Kissinger is that they overthrew the government of Salvador Allende in Chile  and allowed him to be murdered on September 11, 1973.  Literally, every bit of that accusation is a total falsehood. The facts are that Salvador Allende , the world's only elected Marxist-socialist leader, was a devout communist. His government confiscated industry, land, and shut down freedom of the press over its brief three year run. His Communist policies led to massive inflation and total unrest so bad in the nation of Chile that its own Parliament  passed a resolution asking the military to seize power and topple the Allende regime. Which it did on September 11, 1973. The Chilean leader was given countless opportunities to flee his country before holding himself up inside the Presidential Palace. As the Army was starting its final assault on the Palace Salvador Allende took to the airwaves in a final defiant address to his nation and then shot himself, rather than be captured as the coup entered its final stage. None of this was a good way for the regime to fall, but none of it was Richard Nixon or Henry Kissinger's fault either. President Nixon did pull American investment out of the country.  Nixon did work against the Allende Government. But Richard Nixon did not OK the military coup that toppled Allende and he certainly had nothing to do with the death of Allende. Which after a nearly three decade mystery was finally proven to have been self inflicted.  Here again, is the amazing double standard of the liberal left in the United States, when a coup was given approval personally  in South Vietnam by John F. Kennedy , it led to the violent overthrow of our ally  President Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam and his death , by assassins as he waited in the backseat of his car to flee the country.  Not a word has been spoken about it in the mainstream media all the while President Nixon has been trashed as trampling human rights and disregarding a democratically elected regime for three decades. Occasionally whataboutism does matter!!

Send us a Text Message.BOMBSHELL!!!Assistant to the President for Special Files, Alexander Porter Butterfield would be questioned by lawyers for the Ervin Committee and while being asked questions he was directly asked if there were recording devices in the White House.  His answer to that question changed everything about the Watergate Scandal. It laid the groundwork for the downfall of the Nixon Administration. Years later, when asked if he should have burned the White House tapes Richard Nixon would answer " Yes, I should have because they were open to misinterpretation as we have seen."  He was very correct. To this day people think that the tapes proved Nixon's guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt. But in reality they don't. They do prove he cursed a lot, said the word "God Damn" a lot, made anti-semetic remarks , racist remarks, and he would fly off the handle saying things in anger that he should not have said, and he was a President who thought out loud, mulling over every angle of an issue, legal and illegal, moral an immoral, until a workable solution was determined. For an American people who had never heard a President talk in private before it was a shocking thing to hear. But what you did not hear, was a President committing an actual impeachable offense. But as in all situations in life it is often far more complicated than can be explained in a simple sentence and a lie, as the old saying goes, can be half way around the world before the truth can get out of bed. This series is dedicated to the truth, the ugly, complicated truth. The truth is Richard Nixon is no angel, but he faced some sinister forces in American Government determined to bring him down during the second most divided era in all of our history. This podcast documentary series is dedicated to showing you the facts about the scandal that derailed a presidency. We don't delve into conspiracy theories or guesswork as to the involvement of CIA connections, or secret plotters with innuendos. As this Podcast moves forward we will document everything we talk about and give you source material where you can read and look it up for yourself. Is there more to the story than what we will cover from this point on? Most likely. But what we will show you we can provide a paper or electronic trail for and it is not a pretty sight. What we can also show you is that Richard Nixon's claim about the misinterpretation of conversations made to fit a certain narrative is in fact very real.  We hope you will listen for yourself and be able to differentiate between things said in private, in  different contexts, and actual criminal intent.  Then you may come away with a totally different viewpoint of the events that brought down the President of the United States.But that is the story we will tell as we travel down the road of Watergate. This episode is the story of how the tapes came to light and the beginning of the fight that would become the final act of the Nixon Administration.