Wait, Nixon Was Innocent?—Geoff Shepard

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2017

⏱️ 109 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Richard Nixon left the White House over 40 years ago, yet he remains embedded in American pop culture like no other ex-president. He was the body-less leader of Earth in Futurama, the five-time president in Alan Moore's Watchmen, and arguably the most awkward guest star in Laugh-In's history. Part of the reason is that he is thought to represent America's political id: the dark, paranoid side of politics that keeps an enemies list and never forgives. After all, Watergate was the biggest political scandal of the 20th century, leading to the only presidential resignation in American history. But what if Nixon was innocent? That's exactly the point that today's guest, Geoff Shepard, argues. He was not an outsider to Watergate: Shepard joined John Ehrlichman’s Domestic Council staff at the Nixon White House, where he served for five years, first as a staff assistant and ultimately as associate director. He also worked on President Nixon’s Watergate defense team, where he was principal deputy to the President’s lead lawyer, J. Fred Buzhardt. In that capacity, he helped transcribe the White House tapes —which run 3,400 hours—ran the document rooms holding the seized files of H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Dean, and staffed White House counselors Bryce Harlow and Dean Birch. Working from internal documents he recently uncovered at the National Archives, Shepard exposes what he calls judicial and prosecutorial misconduct that has remained hidden for four decades with his book, “The Real Watergate Scandal: Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot That Brought Nixon Down.” He describes it as the following: an aging judge about to step down. Aggressive prosecutors friendly with the judge. A disgraced president. A nation that had already made up its mind. The Watergate trials were a legal mess—and now, with the discovery of new documents that reveal what he calls shocking misconduct by prosecutors and judges alike, Shepard says the wrongdoing of these history-making trials was actually a bigger scandal than the Watergate scandal itself. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE The Real Watergate Scandal: Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot That Brought Nixon Down Geoff Shepard's website TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher

Transcript

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0:28.4	Available now.
0:58.4	Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast, the unscripted show that celebrates unsung heroes, myth busts historical lies, and rediscoveres the forgotten stories that changed our world.
1:17.0	I'm your host, Scott Rank.
1:19.7	Richard Nixon occupies a weird place in the American political psyche, sort of like the manifestation of dirty underhanded dealings in the paranoia that exists in US politics.
1:35.6	The reason I say that, I'm not just spitballing here, but how many times a president who was in power basically four decades ago still shows up so much in pop culture?
1:46.1	If you're a fan of Point Break, which I am, there's a Nixon mask that shows up there.
1:49.9	There's President Nixon in Futurama, Nixon who serves five terms in Alan Moore's Watchman graphic novel and then the movie.
1:58.3	Alec Baldwin was Richard Nixon on 30 Rock, or there's the movie All the Presidents Men, which recreates the Washington Post investigation that led to the first resignation of a sitting president in US history.
2:10.8	Now he casts a long shadow over America, because people would say, well obviously he committed crimes due to Watergate.
2:16.8	But what if that isn't true?
2:19.1	Well, I have a guest who's written quite profound book of revisionist history that challenges the conventional wisdom on Richard Nixon.
2:26.8	Former Nixon staffer, Jeff Shepard wrote a book called The Real Watergate Scandal, collusion conspiracy and the plot that brought Nixon down.
2:34.8	Here's what he says, the conventional wisdom about Watergate is all wrong.
2:38.4	People follow Carl Bernstein's quote that the system worked.
2:42.3	Shepard says that this is false because he's found evidence that showed the judge who presided over the Watergate investigation was colluding with prosecutors.
2:52.4	Basically, the members of the jury had already made up their mind what the verdict would be.
2:56.8	He says the Watergate trials were a legal mess and he's found new documents that reveal shocking misconduct by the prosecutors and judges alike.
	...

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