WEBVTT - Bonus: Watergate 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:05.040 Rip Current is the production of iHeart Podcasts. The views 0:00:05.040 --> 0:00:08.520 and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the host, 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:12.280 producers or parent company. Listener discretion is it fine? 0:00:15.280 --> 0:00:17.920 This is a rip Current bonus episode. You don't need 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:20.400 to listen to follow the rip Current storyline, but it 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:24.320 provides more information, context and analysis to enhance the main 0:00:24.360 --> 0:00:25.959 podcast enjoy. 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:34.720 As we worked on rip Current, it became apparent that 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:38.440 fifty years after the fact, not everyone was clear on 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:42.960 what exactly was Watergate. To get a basic overview of 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:46.239 the Watergate crimes and scandal and the repercussions that came 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:49.479 out of it, I talked with Kirk Dorsey, chair of 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:52.560 the History department at the University of New Hampshire. 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:55.720 My name is Kirk Dorsey. I'm the chair of the 0:00:55.760 --> 0:00:58.320 History department at the University of New Hampshire. I teach 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:01.360 US foreign Policy and US fronmental history and I'm now 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:02.960 in my thirtieth year in the department. 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:06.080 Can you just tell us about Watergate? 0:01:07.120 --> 0:01:09.440 So, first of all, Watergate, everybody has heard of it 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:11.880 at some level, because every scandal is a gate. Now 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:14.639 because of that to flight Gate with their New England 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:16.720 Patriots fans here I probably just turned all you off 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:19.520 by mentioned to flight Gate, but everything is Gate. And 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:22.720 it's interesting because the Watergate actually was a building. It 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:25.200 was a building that was still a hotel. You can 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:27.919 make a reservation I think still in the Watergate Hotel, 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:31.920 but it also had offices, and the Watergate building had 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:35.319 the offices of the Democratic National Committee. In nineteen seventy 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:38.400 two that the people who worked for the Nixon re 0:01:38.480 --> 0:01:40.920 election campaign, who worked in the Nixon White House as well, 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:44.000 broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:47.160 the Watergate Hotel and they actually were caught by a 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:50.440 security guard in the summer of nineteen seventy two, but 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:52.640 it looked like just a run of the mill burglary. 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:56.120 So when we talk about Watergate, there is this incident 0:01:56.160 --> 0:01:58.720 of a break in at the hotel to go after 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:02.320 the Democrats campaign strategy for nineteen seventy two, which apparently 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:04.400 was to lose as badly as possible since only won 0:02:04.440 --> 0:02:07.800 one state. But then it spiraled out into all these 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:10.560 other things that the Nixon administration was doing that were secret, 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:13.200 So that Watergate is much more than just the break in. 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:17.200 Can you kind of talk about the scope of the 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:21.040 things that have sort of collectively been under the Watergate banner. 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:24.840 Yeah, So it really started in nineteen seventy one. So 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:28.040 there was a guy named Daniel Ellsberg who released a 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:30.600 collection of documents put together by the Defense Department that 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:33.320 were known as the Pentagon Papers. And the Pentagon Papers 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:36.120 were an attempt by the Defense Department to understand how 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:38.440 the United States had gotten into the Vietnam War, which 0:02:38.480 --> 0:02:41.919 was complete mass in nineteen seventy one, and they were secret, 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:45.079 but Ellsberg thought the America people deserved to know what 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:47.480 the US government had done way back in the forties, fifties, 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:51.000 and sixties, so he leaked the Pentagon Papers. They got 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:53.760 a lot of publication. There were court cases about whether 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:57.280 or not the newspapers were allowed to publish them. And Nixon, 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:00.240 who was president at the time, could have said, well, 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:02.919 these really embarrassed my predecessors. I'll just let it go. 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:06.000 But he was really paranoid about leaks, and he was 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:09.480 worried that things in the Nixon administration would also leak. 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:14.800 So some of his aides assembled a group of covert operatives, 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:17.200 guys who are known to history like Gee Gordon Liddy, 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:19.480 who had a radio show for a long time Chuck Coulson, 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:22.440 who later went on to become a born again preacher. 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:26.040 And these guys tried to make Elsberg's life miserable. They 0:03:26.080 --> 0:03:29.160 broke into his psychiatrist's office to steal his files, things 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:34.520 like that, And apparently one of these guys relatives said well, 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:36.440 what are you doing in the White House, And to 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:40.000 cover themselves, they said were plumbers because their job was 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:42.280 to fix leaks, and so they became known as the 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:45.600 White House plumbers. And you know, the problem with once 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:48.360 you hire plumbers is you can't really fire them without 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:51.240 them knowing things. So the administration kept them around, and 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:53.000 they were the ones who did the break in at 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:56.920 the Watergate hotel, for instance. But as we discovered over 0:03:56.960 --> 0:03:59.040 the course of the next sort of two years after 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:02.040 nineteen seventy two, so the Nixon administration was not just 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:04.160 using the plumbers to go after its enemies. They were 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:08.200 using the regular people in government. So John Dean, who's 0:04:08.200 --> 0:04:10.480 a regular on CNN now, is a legal expert on 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:13.560 presidential corruption. He's there because he was a young lawyer 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:15.920 in the Nixon White House. One of his jobs was 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:18.880 to compose a list of enemies of the Nixon administration, 0:04:18.920 --> 0:04:21.840 which included such hard hitting political figures as Joe Namath 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:25.040 and Paul Newman, because they were popular people who were 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:28.280 anti Nixon. And it wasn't just to compile a list. 0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:31.560 It was, for instance, to say to the IRS audit 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:35.400 our enemies. Use the powers of the federal government, the IRS, 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:38.400 the FBI, and even the CIA to go after people 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.200 in the domestic sphere who were potentially enemies of the 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:44.680 Nixon administration. So what started as a break in is 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:47.720 the investigations compounded. They discovered there was a lot more 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:50.720 to it than just a bunch of second rate burglars 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:53.920 getting caught trying to steal Georgian governor's campaign secrets. 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:57.200 So then how does this start to unravel? 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:01.120 So it starts unravel because they're a journalists who are 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:03.040 just trying to sort out, like there's something that doesn't 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:06.160 smell right. And as they began asking questions, there's a 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:09.080 guy named Mark Felt who worked for the FBI, who 0:05:09.480 --> 0:05:11.599 was aware of what was going on, and he becomes 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:14.400 a secret source, takes on the unfortunate name of Deep 0:05:14.400 --> 0:05:17.239 Throat after a pornographic film that was poker at the time, 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:20.360 and he begins telling Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:25.520 the Washington Post details and pieces of information that are 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:28.320 not publicly known, and that leads them to continue to 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:32.080 ask questions over the course of nineteen seventy two. So 0:05:32.120 --> 0:05:34.440 the break in in seventy two at first is thought 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:37.120 just to be some random burglars looking for stuff that 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:39.560 they could steal, so it doesn't affect the seventy two 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:42.359 election at all, and Nixon wins in a landslide. But 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:46.000 they keep asking questions into nineteen seventy three, and they 0:05:46.040 --> 0:05:48.960 begin to reveal that the people who were involved in 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:51.440 the burglary actually have connections back to the White House, 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:54.640 and once they see that, that's when more journalists pile on, 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:58.599 and most importantly, Congress decides to start holding hearings to 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:01.520 find out what was going on. And Nixon did a 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:04.039 pretty good job for nineteen seventy three of fending off 0:06:04.120 --> 0:06:07.039 allegations by saying I didn't know about any of this. 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:10.839 This was all people underneath me doing these things, until 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:14.640 in late nineteen seventy three one of his aides, justin testifying, 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:18.240 accidentally says, well, you know, the president was taping all 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:20.919 the conversations in the White House and nobody knew that 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:22.640 outside the White House. And this is a guy named 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:25.919 Butterfield who says this. When he says it, Congress are like, Okay, 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.400 we need these tapes. And that becomes a source of 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:33.000 a huge fight between Nixon and Congress over presidential immunity. Basically, 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:34.960 does the president have the right to hang onto these 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:37.400 things as the president or are these government documents to 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:40.120 serviation able to see? And eventually the Supreme Court rules 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:41.800 that the tapes have to be turned over, and that's 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:45.760 really when that leads to Nixon recognizing that he is 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:49.280 on tape authorizing a lot of these illegal acts, well 0:06:49.279 --> 0:06:53.240 beyond what happened in the Watergate hotel, and that he's 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:55.600 doomed once these tapes are out, there's no way he 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:58.839 can stay in power. And not to get two presentists. 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:01.119 But one of the big differences between then and now 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:05.080 is that there were key Republican senators who turned against him. 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:07.800 Howard Baker, who was a Tennessee Republican who was an 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:11.600 upstanding a citizen. He worked for the Reagan administration. He 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:13.720 was the person who famously said, what did the president 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:16.040 know and when did he know it? And asking that 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:19.520 question coming from the Republican side. Was an indication that 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:22.760 there were Republican legislators in nineteen seventy three and then 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:25.320 into seventy four who were starting to give up on Nixon. 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:27.040 They thought he had crossed too many lines. 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:31.320 What is he on tape, sort of authorizing. 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:35.480 Using federal agencies to go after his enemies, knowing about 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:37.640 the break in that he claimed he knew nothing about 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:40.000 in the Watergate hotel. And then there's all the other 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:42.240 stuff that he was famous for, you know, some of 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:45.600 the just incredibly inflammatory things he said, even you know, 0:07:45.800 --> 0:07:48.400 these incredibly anti Semitic things he was saying to Henry Kissinger, 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:51.480 his Jewish National security advisor. So the tapes were a 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:56.080 combination of direct evidence that Nixon knew that things were 0:07:56.080 --> 0:07:59.000 being done that were illegal, not just the sort of 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:02.000 low level petty but also using agencies in the way 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:04.800 they weren't supposed to be used. But then also that 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:07.160 he was a really awful person on top of it. 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:09.560 So they were embarrassing, and you know, nineteen seventy five 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:12.880 Congress held hearings on the CIA because of these tapes, 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:15.000 because it was clear that Nixon had used the CIA. 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:17.520 These are the Church Committee hearings and named after a 0:08:17.600 --> 0:08:20.160 senator from Idaho, Frank Church. And that's, for instance, where 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:22.880 we learned all these things about the efforts to assassinate 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:25.400 Fidel Castro in the early sixties. All sorts of things 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:28.080 came out of these Church Committee hearings. So our current 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:29.960 vision of the CIA is a bunch of you know, 0:08:30.280 --> 0:08:32.960 sort of semi rogue guys go around trying to execute people. 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:35.280 That all comes out of the Church Committee hearings, because 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:39.160 most of that was secret before nineteen seventy five. More 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:41.920 than anything, what it does is damage this idea that 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:44.520 the federal government is basically telling you the truth most 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:46.319 of the time, because knowledge did we learn from the 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.320 Pentagon papers that they lied repeatedly about the war. But 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:51.040 then we have all these hearings, we find out that 0:08:51.200 --> 0:08:53.320 Nixon and his people were lying about the ways the 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:54.679 federal government was being used. 0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:59.080 Can you talk a little bit about how Nixon tried 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:01.040 to serve as presidency. 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:04.760 Basically, the Attorney General appointed a special council to investigate 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:08.480 what the Watergate crimes and all the assembled other crimes were, 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:12.080 and Nixon got really frustrated that this guy was getting 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:14.440 closer and closer to getting the truth out about him. 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:18.000 So he ordered his attorney general to fire him, and 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:21.000 the Attorney Onnor resigned and then there was a second 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:23.360 command who also resigned, in the person in the Justice 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:28.240 Department who ultimately agreed to fire Cox. The special investigator 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:30.880 was Robert Bork. Bork would come back in the nineteen 0:09:30.920 --> 0:09:33.040 eighties as a nominee for the Supreme Court, and he 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:36.920 was the first of this run of really controversial Supreme 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:39.960 Court nominations, and Bork ended up getting I did not 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:42.800 obviously get a seat on the Supreme Court. So Nixon 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:47.120 really fought hard in the courts to protect his rights 0:09:47.240 --> 0:09:49.880 basically as president, to do what he wanted. In fact, 0:09:49.920 --> 0:09:52.800 he said after he left office at one point something 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:55.400 to the extent of, if the president does it, it's 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:57.960 legal again. You know, the echoes to today are really 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:01.080 really powerful. That Nixon's base take on the matter was 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:03.160 he could do whatever he wanted and if he wanted 0:10:03.200 --> 0:10:05.319 to take people, if he wanted to give orders as president, 0:10:05.760 --> 0:10:08.480 he could do those things, and that Congress had no 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:11.800 power to oversee him. Of course, Congress had the power 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:14.920 to impeach him. And what ultimately drove him from office 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:18.800 was as these tapes were released, he recognized that there 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:21.440 were not enough Republicans in the Senate who would vote 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:24.160 to acquit him, that impeachment was going to go through. 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:26.520 The Democrats controlled both houses, but they didn't have a 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:30.040 two thirds majority in the Senate. So he recognized that 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:31.920 he was going to lose a vote in the Senate, 0:10:31.920 --> 0:10:33.560 he would be impeached to remove from office. So he 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:36.640 decided better to resign on his own terms than to 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:39.640 be impeached. This is one of the things that's really remarkable, 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:42.080 I mean, certainly about the Republican Party today. We've never 0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:45.720 had a party that's been so much in one person's pocket. 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:49.000 Even when Reagan was running in nineteen eighty and eighty four, 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:50.960 there were people in the party who thought he was 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:54.280 too conservative and who argued against him. His own vice 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:58.040 president H. W. Bush had called Reagan's economic policy voodoo economics. 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:00.000 And then as soon as he gets the nomination eighty eight, 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:03.080 tries to distance himself from some of Bagan's policies. And 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:06.199 I was reading up on Jerald Ford's voting record when 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:08.480 he was in Congress in the nineteen sixties. He voted 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:11.280 for all the Civil Rights Acts as a Republican, and 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:14.319 he voted for the Voting Rights Act in nineteen sixty five, 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:16.199 and there were a lot of Democrats who voted against 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:19.439 those bills. So the ways in which the parties had 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:22.800 these sort of strange overlaps that seem different to us 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:27.280 now is really a powerful thing. So the Southern Democrats 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:30.240 basically all became Republicans. I think about a guy like 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:33.400 Phil Graham, who was a long time Democratic centator, and 0:11:33.559 --> 0:11:36.319 John Tower, both of them from Texas, who switched parties 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:38.920 and became Republicans in the nineteen eighties. And that was 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:41.640 a pretty common thing in the nineteen eighties for these 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:43.760 Southern Democrats to become Republicans. 0:11:50.280 --> 0:11:53.120 So can you talk a little bit about Ford and 0:11:53.240 --> 0:11:56.160 Nixon and how that all kind of played out. 0:11:57.120 --> 0:11:59.040 So Ford is a really interesting character. I mean, he 0:11:59.200 --> 0:12:02.200 was our football player at Michigan. He was a Yale 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:05.400 law grad. He got elected to Congress in nineteen forty 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:09.240 eight after serving in the Navy honorably in World War Two. Interestingly, 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:12.000 nineteen forty six saw both Nixon and Kennedy get elected 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:14.199 after serving in the Navy in World War Two. So 0:12:14.240 --> 0:12:16.480 there was this sort of influx of veterans in the forties, 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:20.760 and then Ford spent twenty five years climbing the ranks 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:23.920 in Congress out of the district of Michigan. He was 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:27.640 the House Minority leader in nineteen seventy three, and his 0:12:27.760 --> 0:12:29.640 dream was to someday be Speaker of the House. When 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:31.719 it didn't look like Republicans whatever, we'd get to take 0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:36.120 control of the House. And in seventy three Richard Nixon 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:38.560 lost his vice president to a completely different scandal. So 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:41.839 his vice president was a guy named Spiro Agnew from Maryland, 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:44.560 and Nixon and Agnew ran in nineteen sixty eight. One 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:47.520 of their central campaign planks was law and order because 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:50.439 Agnew had helped keep order in nineteen sixty eight in 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:53.280 nineteen sixty seven after some of the urban riots, particularly 0:12:53.280 --> 0:12:57.240 after King's assassination in April sixty eight, so they were 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:01.079 running on this law and order campaign, and investigators in 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:05.000 Maryland eventually uncovered that Governor Agnew had been taking kickbacks 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:08.600 to give contracts to various supporters, so he was a 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:13.120 classic bribery scheme. So Agnew was forced to resign because 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:14.800 it was obviously a drag on Nixon to have it 0:13:15.040 --> 0:13:17.160 somebody who was almost as corupt as he was in 0:13:17.200 --> 0:13:19.840 the White House, and they had to find somebody who 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:23.600 could help the Republican Party and try to restore some 0:13:23.720 --> 0:13:26.880 of the image of the Republican Party in the middle 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:30.160 of nineteen seventy three, and Gerald Ford was exactly the guy. 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:32.680 He had never done anything con to recy in his life. 0:13:32.840 --> 0:13:35.400 He had managed to annoy Lyndon Johnson, which is probably 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:38.920 something on his side. Linda Johnson said something like he 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:41.120 was too dumb to chew gum and walk at the 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:44.520 same time. So Lynda Johnson didn't like him. So Ford 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:47.040 was seen as a guy without a lot of ambition, 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:51.120 but very clean, and he would bring some credit back 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:55.400 to the Nixon administration. And of course, shortly after that, 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:57.520 about a year later, it was when Nixon finally found 0:13:57.520 --> 0:14:00.600 that he had to resign, and so Jared Ford found 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:03.680 himself President of the United States after never having gotten 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:06.840 a vote outside his district in Michigan. The thing about 0:14:06.880 --> 0:14:10.800 Ford is because he was unsullied by any sort of corruption, 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:14.000 and he was a negotiator in Congress. He wasn't a 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:16.440 legislation writer. He was a guy who sort of brought 0:14:16.480 --> 0:14:19.440 people together. I think there was a sense that Ford 0:14:19.520 --> 0:14:22.040 also could be a guy who could heal some of 0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:24.960 the divisions if for some reason Nick sent to leave office. 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:27.960 You know, and when Ford was appointed in nineteen seventy three, 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:30.880 you know, the Watergate scandal was brewing enough that you know, 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:33.240 reasonable people could see that Nixon might not serve out 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:35.240 his whole second term. That would not you know, that 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:38.880 wouldn't have been a surprise to anybody. And you know, 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:40.840 both the Senate and the House had to vote to 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:43.600 confirm him, and they voted overwhelmingly to confirm him. So 0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:47.240 I understand Haldeman's position, But I think also the people 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:50.440 in Congress recognized and Gerald Ford they had a guy 0:14:50.880 --> 0:14:54.640 who they could trust the presidency to if Nixon got 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:57.120 forced out of office, which was plausible in the summer 0:14:57.160 --> 0:14:58.040 of nineteen seventy three. 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:03.479 So about Ford's pardoning of Nixon. 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:07.160 Yeah, this is the great question about Ford's legacy. So 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:11.280 Nixon resigned in August ninth, nineteen seventy four, and al 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:13.920 Hague had called Ford about a week in advance and 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:17.800 said Nixon's going down. Basically, get ready to get sworn in, 0:15:17.800 --> 0:15:20.240 because it could happen anytime. So Ford had maybe a 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:23.560 week's notice that it was coming, and he made a 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:26.040 decision in September, so, about a month after he had 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:30.240 been in power, to issue a formal pardon for any 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:32.920 crimes that Richard Nixon might have committed, which made sure 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:36.120 that Nixon wouldn't be tried in any court. And Nixon 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:40.040 accepted the pardon, and there was a huge explosion about 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:44.240 the pardon because people thought that maybe Nixon and Ford 0:15:44.280 --> 0:15:47.360 had made some sort of deal that, for instance, maybe 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:50.680 Nixon agreed to step down on the understand that Ford 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:53.600 would pardon him, or maybe even further back than that 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:56.800 Nixon chose Ford in nineteen seventy three, because that's really 0:15:56.840 --> 0:15:59.920 when Nixon had some bargaining power and if he'd be 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:02.240 Ford would pardon him for something. I think one of 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:05.040 the things that fuels the pardon conspiracy theory is that 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:08.320 Ford was in fact on the Warren Commission, which draws 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:10.520 a lot of conspiracy theorists about what he might have 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:12.400 known and what he might have covered up he might 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:14.400 have been capable of it. So I don't think there 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:17.400 was any evidence I think Ford made of a conspiracy. 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:19.800 I think Ford just made a decision that putting Richard 0:16:19.880 --> 0:16:22.560 Nixon on trial for one thing was going to be 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:26.640 a zoo that the things that got revealed in a 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:29.520 trial might be pretty damaging for the nation as a whole, 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:31.840 and pretty divisive for the nation as a whole. You know, 0:16:31.880 --> 0:16:34.800 we have to remember that Nixon stood for election on 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:38.040 a national ticket five times, twice as vice president, three 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:40.080 times as president. I mean, I remember my dad saying 0:16:40.080 --> 0:16:42.120 he was so disappointed Nixon because he voted for him 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:44.000 five times, and then he had to find out that 0:16:44.080 --> 0:16:46.000 Nixon was this guy. I think there were a lot 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:47.640 of people like that. You know, the seventy two election, 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:50.000 Nixon got sixty percent of the vote, and there were 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:52.200 still sizeable numbers of people who were like, wow, everybody 0:16:52.280 --> 0:16:54.720 does it, you know, and Nixon shouldn't have to leave office. 0:16:55.000 --> 0:16:58.400 So I think Ford made the decision that it was 0:16:59.000 --> 0:17:01.080 the right thing to do, even if it was a 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:03.040 politically damaging for him, because you know, once you're in 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:04.960 the White House, you can't help but think, well, maybe 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:06.760 I'll run for president in nineteen seventy six. And I 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:09.159 don't know how soon he decided that. I suspect it 0:17:09.240 --> 0:17:10.919 was about August tenth, about the day after he got 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:12.440 into the White House. I think he started thinking I 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:14.879 could be president too, and I'm gonna stick around. So 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:16.880 he made the decision to parton Nixon. There were never 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:19.560 any trials. When Nixon got to write his memoirs and 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:21.320 that it explained what he did, he got to get 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:24.239 interviewed by David Frost and other people and explained his 0:17:24.680 --> 0:17:26.280 what he did and why he did it without the 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:31.479 power of potential being charged with perjury. And so, you know, 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:34.480 this is one of those great what ifs. Should Ford 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:38.440 have let Nixon go on trial, I think generally, while 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:41.159 people at the time were pretty upset about it, most people, 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:44.120 I think over time the decision to pardon Nixon probably 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:48.399 his worked out as the less bad of those two choices, because, 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:50.600 in part, in some ways, if you accept a part 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:52.280 and you're sort of acknowledging that you were guilty and 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:54.840 you're taking it. You know, Nixon never did that directly, 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:58.000 but I think there was something to that. Having Nixon 0:17:58.040 --> 0:18:00.720 accept the pardon was his way of saying, yes, I 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:02.959 did the wrong things, and now I'll go back. And 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:08.359 I think also the pardon weirdly gave Nixon the opportunity 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:11.760 to do this elder statesman thing, which is still kind 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:14.280 of remarkable to me that not long after that, people 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:16.879 were going to Richard Nixon for commentary on foreign policy 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:19.720 in particular, And you know, it was okay for presidents 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:22.280 to consult with Richard Nixon to talk about foreign policy 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:25.639 because most of the scandals were seen to be domestic 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:28.480 and not foreign policy. So Nixon managed to retain this 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:32.520 elder statesman quality. And you know, I remember when he died, 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:34.880 people were saying, well, you know, you know, we shouldn't 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:37.400 be so harsh on Nixon. Everybody did those things, And 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:39.680 you know, the reality is everybody didn't do those things. 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:42.440 There were some you know, Johnson did some bad things, 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:44.520 but nothing on the level that Nixon did them. 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:48.080 So how about legacy of Watergate? What do you think 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:49.440 kind of survives from that? 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:53.520 Well? What survives? Actually, it's interesting because for many years 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:56.160 there were all these reforms in government that Congress passed. 0:18:56.200 --> 0:18:58.440 For instance, campaign finance reform was one of the big ones. 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:00.840 All the rules about how much money could give, who 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:03.480 could give it, how it had to be disclosed. Because 0:19:03.560 --> 0:19:04.879 one of the things that came out was that the 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:08.400 Nixon campaign team was just getting scads of cash from 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:10.719 corporations that was not being reported. They were using that 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:12.840 cash to pay the plumbers. You know, there's a lot 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:14.879 of stuff below board. So in some ways, the conviction 0:19:14.960 --> 0:19:17.399 of Donald Trump in New York State was a post 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:21.480 Watergate thing because he was taking campaign donations to cover 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:23.720 up the I don't want to call it an affair 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:27.320 with Stormy Daniels, that meeting with Stormy Daniels, that brief interaction. 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:31.679 So there's that. There was also, I think this larger 0:19:31.720 --> 0:19:35.480 sense in the public between the Pentagon papers and Watergate 0:19:35.920 --> 0:19:40.360 that the government was just repeatedly lying and couldn't be trusted. 0:19:40.400 --> 0:19:42.760 And I think we talked about this with your previous podcast. 0:19:42.760 --> 0:19:45.320 You know, there's that Pew poll like do you trust 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:46.960 the federal government to do the right thing? Most of 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:49.880 the time? And in the early sixties was like eighty 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:52.560 percent of the American people said that. By the early eighties, 0:19:52.600 --> 0:19:55.960 it's down to twenty percent. So ironically, one of the 0:19:56.000 --> 0:19:59.800