The Country RICHARD NIXON Inherited a Preview

Even as Watergate begins to dominate the news coverage of the Administration there are still other very important things going on for President Nixon to attend to for the country.  Ironically, even though his second term is considered a failure he still was able to accomplish a lot of things that would be listed among the greatest accomplishments of some of our lesser Presidents. 

In this episode we will listen in to coverage of his attempt to deal with growing economic problems, leftover issues brewing in South East Asia and as he prepares for yet another historic meeting with the leader of the soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev. 

It is a testament to just what an extraordinarily great leader we were actually blessed to have in the White House at that moment that he was still able to perform his duties with such expertise even as a conglomeration of his enemies were preparing , as Hugh Hewitt once referred to it as, "A D-Day style Landing" with the goal of robbing the American People of a great leader it had overwhelmingly re-elected to the Presidency of the United States. 

"The White House counsel is a senior staff appointee of the president of the United States whose role is to advise the president on all legal issues concerning the president and their administration.

The Office of Counsel to the President and Vice President was created in 1943, and is responsible for advising on all legal aspects of policy questions; legal issues arising in connection with the President's decision to sign or veto legislation, ethical questions, financial disclosures; and conflicts of interest during employment and post employment. The Counsel's office also helps define the line between official and political activities, oversees executive appointments and judicial selection, handles presidential pardons, reviews legislation and presidential statements, and handles lawsuits against the president in his role as president, as well as serving as the White House contact for the Department of Justice."

(This is the definition provided by the website Wikipedia)

If ever anyone in the history of employment ever failed anymore totally at the job description provided in the hand book than John W. Dean, I would like to know who it was.  His entire job description can be summed up in shorthand like this

"Sit there and when you hear something that sounds illegal, say Mr. President, you can't do that" 

That is all you have to do, I mean really how hard can it be?  

John Dean not only did not do that, he actively made himself the "desk officer of the cover up" , and when he goes up to Camp David to write the report the President has asked him to write, he suddenly realizes all roads filter into one that leads from the Committee to Re-elect the President to the White House Staff itself, like the middle of an hourglass, through one "poison line".....HIM. 

So what does he do, he shops a deal, at first to the career prosecutors who want nothing to do with  it, and then to the Ervin Committee.  That committee totally controlled by the Democratic Party, leap at the chance to embrace "The Chief Desk Officer of the Cover up"
 
All of this occurs while another force emerges and enters the battlefield.  This force more sinister than anything Richard Nixon has had to face since the North Vietnamese gave up in Paris. 

A force determined that they would destroy Richard Nixon using any tool, distortion, lie, or sleight of hand they could engineer;  they were the partisan lawyers who made up the staff of the Watergate Special Prosecutors Task Force and it is their sinister rise that begins in this episode. 

If our last episode was one of the saddest we will ever cover on our podcast, this was one of the happiest.

On May 24, 1973, underneath an enormous tent on the grounds of the White House, the largest state dinner and event ever held occured in honor of the Vietnam Prisoners of War.  It was a star-studded event.  Bob Hope hosted with guests the New Christy Minstrels, Phyllis Diller, Joey Harrington, Vic Damone, Edgar Bergman, Jimmy Stewart, Ricardo Montalban,  Jimmy Stewart, Roy Acuff and the Smokey Mountain Boys, Irving Berlin and the Legendary Actor John Wayne. All of whom played tribute to the soldiers of Vietnam.

The event was the visionary idea of one famous entertainer, Sammy Davis Jr. , and he will come on and sing a few songs including an incredibly moving moment with Irvin Berlin singing his song " God Bless America". It was a night like no other and when it was over we listen in on a call between President Richard Nixon and his new Chief of Staff, a former General and assistant National Security Advisor during the Vietnam War, Alexander Haig. In it they talk about the power of this night and how no matter what was to come, this night and the honoring of our now free, former POW's had made it all worth it. 

The call ends with a very powerful moment between the two men as Al Haig ends the call with some powerful words for a discouraged President as Nixon steals himself for the horrible days he knows are sure to be coming at the hands of a rabid conglomeration of enemies. 

On a side note, this is so far my favorite episode because it brings so many legendary figures into one episode honoring some of our greatest Americans and we get to see Richard Nixon at his best, in one of his finest hours,  as one of our greatest American Leaders. 

In this episode we get to listen in on what was probably the most agonizing and personally painful decisions that President Nixon had to make, save decisions involving the war in Vietnam. It was during these days that Nixon had to finally step up and force the resignations of two of his closest aids and confidantes, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman and John Ehrlichman.  Two men who had been by his side through all the triumphs and tragedies of his entire administration and even stretching back to his wilderness years. They had been known as "The Berlin Wall" and they had protected the President from friend and foe alike. 

Now in the chaos of the Watergate Scandal they had been sucked into the events and were going to have to be forced out.  Richard Nixon trusted these men, he tried very hard to protect them, and now he was left with no choice but to cut them loose.  He would also fire John Dean, a man who had betrayed him to the Prosecutors in his attempts to secure immunity for his own crimes. 

This is a painful episode to listen to because you see the emotional toll it takes on the President. Who by all accounts was a man who did not like to have confrontations, or make decisions of this kind. It would be as though he had cut off his arms for him to lose so trusted a pair of assistants. 

The toll is even more evident as we listen to the only actual calls that sound as though  President Nixon has been drinking in order to emotionally handle the day.  (Charges of his drinking being one of the more scurrilous and false of the many targeting the President through the years)  We close with his conversations with Bob Haldeman and California Governor Ronald Reagan late in the night after he addresses the nation.  

It was a  sad day in the life of this truly great American Leader.  

In this short, special edition broadcast, we give you a taste of some of the exculpatory materials we are going to be delving into over the next two seasons as we look back at Watergate. 

These two snippets were tapes that we discovered as we were researching this project in 2022. They did, however , come to light after we had gotten to far along in the process to incorporate them into the then storyline of our podcast. Both would have fit in right about where we are now and so I thought this short special edition would fit in at this point after we  highlighted the earlier phone call between Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen and President Richard Nixon. 

 In our previous episode we let you hear Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen updating the President on what was going on at that moment in time. These snippets of a later set of calls allow you to hear Richard Nixon's reactions to the information he has been given. 

These calls are stunningly clear, and also  stunningly  clear in their opposition to the running narrative that Richard Nixon was trying to cover up the burglary from the start. If anything, they show a President eager to get the honest truth out and into the public.  While these are among the clearest of any tapes out there of Nixon working to find the truth and expose it, they are not the only tapes that show that. We will be allowing you to hear them, often in there entirety throughout our highly acclaimed series and we hope, with this special edition, we wet your appetite for the truth, as we begin our 6 month journey back through Watergate on this the 50th anniversary of the end of the Nixon Administration. 

In this episode we hear the President on the phone with the Deputy Attorney General, Henry Petersen. Petersen is a man whose name we have heard a lot as the early events unfold. He would come under fire for simply doing his job and informing the President of the United States of events occuring in the scandal as they unfolded. This is one of the calls he made to let President Nixon know what was happening. We thought it would give you some feel for the relationship between the President and this highest career official at the Justice Department. As the head of the Criminal Division he oversaw both the Watergate investigation, early on, and the investigation into Vice President Spiro Agnew which we will be covering in detail in later episodes.

So who was Henry Petersen?

Here is his Justice Department Bio:

Henry E. Petersen (1972-1974)

Early History: Henry E. Petersen was born in 1921 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  He grew up in Washington, D.C., and served as a U.S. Marine in the South Pacific Theater during World War II. In 1947, while a student at Georgetown University, Mr. Petersen began his 27-year career in federal service as a clerk for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He subsequently received his law degree from Catholic University and joined the U.S. Department of Justice.

Mr. Petersen started in the Antitrust Division and then moved to the Criminal Division. He held a variety of posts including serving as Chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section during the 1960’s, where he created the Division’s Organized Crime Strike Force, which enhanced interagency law enforcement coordination.

Tenure: In 1972, Mr. Petersen was the first career staffer directly appointed to the role of Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division. As Assistant Attorney General, Mr. Petersen supervised investigations involving allegations of vote rigging and fraud, and oversaw the investigation of the burglary at the Democratic National Convention’s Watergate complex in 1972, which he led until the appointment of a special prosecutor by Congress in 1973. Mr. Petersen also supervised an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Baltimore that eventually led to the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew. In 1974, he retired.

Later Career: Mr. Petersen passed away in 1991 in Sunderland, Maryland. In his honor, the Henry E. Petersen Memorial Award is bestowed on those who have made a lasting contribution to the Criminal Division and exemplify character, diligence, courage, professionalism, and talent. Past recipients include former Attorney General Eric Holder, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jack Keeney of the Criminal Division.

After the pandamonium of the James McCord letter dies down inside the courtroom it becomes very clear that Watergate is now an entirely new ballgame. 

In this episode we see events move swiftly as the White House Counsel , John Dean, starts making his overtures to the prosecutors trying to cut a deal that will get him immunity. You can also see how off guard the other players are with in the White House. All of this while President Nixon is busy trying to prepare for the many goals he has set for the country in his second term. 

 We will hear President Nixon address the nation about all of the things he wants to begin as he has finally been able to free the nation from the divisive war in Vietnam.  But even as he speaks it is becoming clearer  that the events unfolding over the  Watergate scandal are now starting to consume his time, and his focus, as the story of the cover up moves closer and closer up the chain of command and begins to put the spotlight on several of his key advisors.

This is arguably the most important episode of the series and these events we will be revisiting through out the scandal of Watergate.  Up to this week, Richard Nixon had never been dealt with completely by anyone who was intimately involved in the Watergate debacle now on the verge of consuming his Presidency.  That includes his Counsel to the President, John Dean.

It is in the events of this week that a storyline would later develop implicating the President of the United States in a criminal act, which was the payment of hush money to E. Howard Hunt. The problem as we will learn as we go along is there is a gaping hole in the timeline of events and everything that could be done would be done to obscure that fact from the public, the President,  the Grand Jury and House Judiciary Committee.

Here we will listen in on the taped conversations themselves as compiled by Historian Luke Nichter for his website Nixontapes.org.  The article used was written 12 years ago and we read it verbatim and then play the tape for you. We would like to note that the tapes of conversations that are not on the phone are often hard to hear, especially President Nixon who was often sitting away from the microphone.  We chose to follow the historians article script and play the corresponding tape so that everything is as clear as we can keep it for this podcasting format. We did not change any of his script.  We begin at the March 13 dated conversation from http://nixontapes.org/passport.html 

In the script Mr. Nichter uses the word "Falsified Document" and we read it in as written.  Our understanding is that word choice was due to  the impression  from the tapes that Dean was being asked to write something comprehensive at Camp David. The President planned to take the report he asked his White House Counsel to write and then call on another review or investigation as to what had occurred.  The President does ask that the report be vague as to protect the staff who have already been named or testified.  But he states that  he would be waiving executive privilege  later. It is important to remember that this is , afterall, the first time Richard Nixon had had as full a picture of what had happened since the break in, some 9 months earlier,  in June of 1972. 
 
John Dean while working on the report realized at Camp David there was no way he could be fully truthful, and that all roads would lead to him, as he says "I was all over this thing like a blanket" , John Dean saw this request as being asked  to write a falsified report. But that doesn’t at all mean the others were asking Dean to write something untruthful. 

The point being that whatever Dean would have written could not have been the whole truth, if for no other reason because it would have been damaging to Dean.  In the end, and after about five days of trying, he was recalled by Haldeman without producing a report at all – and decided instead to retain criminal defense counsel, who sought out the career prosecutors, offering testimony against his colleagues in pursuit of personal immunity  (which they declined due to his leadership role throughout the scandal) and that is what our next episode will be about.   

Now we move back to February 1973. Judge Sirica, always trying to insure his place in the sun, asks the Congress to investigate. The Senate happily complies, originally under the guidance of an enthusiastic Senator, named Ted Kennedy.  There would be a fight about how the investigation would be handled, and what they would be looking into, and a partisan nearly straight party 77 - 0 vote. (Republicans decided not to vote) and a committee is formed.

That committee would only look into the campaign shenanigans of the 1972 election. The Democrats had thwarted an attempt to include investigations that would have effected their former Presidents and the actions they took in 1968, 1964 and 1960.  I am guessing they already knew the games they had played and wanted to insure nobody else would find out, while they worked to expose the Nixon campaign. 

Here we will go through the actual debates, from a well written article by former CNN analyst Jeffrey Lord, and we will hear from Geoff Shepard about the actions that led to the committee formation. It was also decided because of the blatant partisanship so far shown, that Ted Kennedy needed not be front and center and so a North Carolina Senator was chosen to lead the effort.  

Sam Irvin, one of the authors of the famous Southern Manifesto , an ardent supporter of segregation and foe to every Civil Rights Bill that had been offered up for the previous decade, but now ,  because of his role in Watergate, has had that part of his long and colorful history erased, as the left has canonized him as "The Senate's Greatest Constitutional Authority"  and as the man who saved the nation from Richard Nixon.  that Senator, Sam Irvin , would take over the committee and yet he would keep most of the Kennedy team  in place to control the narrative they would develop over a ratings bonanza summer. 

You will see that narrative no longer holds water. 

Then we will hear President Nixon on the phone with his White House Counsel John Dean, as they discuss dealing with the Grand Jury and the Senate and as March rolls through Nixon will ask Dean to come to see him to discuss the matters brewing on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue. 

In this episode we step back to the events in question. The actual burglary on June 17, 1972. You will get to hear oral histories from G. Gordon Liddy, John Dean and several other players in the events of that night and days afterword. 

We will also use footage from a nearly 30 year old BBC documentary that has interviews with all the major players as they discuss the events in a sequence that will bring you right inside the operation.  It will include the Cubans in the room when the lights came on and a very excited, somewhat frightened, set of policeman busted the burglars, all dressed in suits and ties, inside the Democratic National Headquarters. 

One of the burglars described the scene perfectly;  " You could see the excited looks on their faces as, one by one, we came out from behind the desk, all dressed up, you could see that they did not know what they had but it was clear we did not look like the average burglar."

And so we begin an ordeal that would dominate the World news for the remaining 18 months of the Nixon Administration.