Episode 126 RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE : 1974 Through the Fire ( Part 1) Conventional Wisdom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Link to the Geoff Shepard Book Launch event on You Tube

https://youtu.be/LZre5OZ8IOs

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