elizabeth drew

In our second episode of RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE: 1973 Enemies at the Gate , rather than dive right into our storyline we decided to take an in-depth two-part look at those enemies at the gate, or at least the important ally the Democratic Party could count on in their campaign to undermine President Nixon, THE PRESS, or more specifically The Washington Post. 

 In this episode, we will look closely at the cozy relationship between Katherine Graham and former President Lyndon Johnson, Sally Quin and Ben Bradlee and the relationship they had to the Kennedy family. The ties between Kennedy and Johnson aid Joe Califano and his client The Washington Post, and on and on. 

It will definitely leave you with a sickening feeling about the motivations the paper had to go after the man in the White House who had just won a 49 state landslide and gotten our troops and POW's home from a long protracted war in Southeast Asia. 

But , just in case you think we here at "Bridging the Political Gap" are to swayed by our obvious editorially positive opinion of President Nixon, we will be taking a trip back in time to one of the most sickening displays of liberal journalistic arrogance ever recorded and saved for posterity, (and saved by the very rag-sheet whose journalistic integrity is being called into question, The Washington Post, no less.)  They actually hosted a 40th anniversary celebratory event with Elizabeth Drew, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Ken Hughes, and Ruth Marcus and when they are done you will be filled with absolute disgust. 

It is all here for you to listen too, the mocking of the President, the totally inaccurate claims, the the obvious disdain, and from Ruth Marcus one of the most outrageously laughable claims ever made about comparing the tapes of Richard Nixon to the apparently saintly Lyndon B. Johnson.  It will make you sick.

BUT we do invite you to our second part of this analysis of the press,  when we look at more of the journalists of the Watergate era, some awful, but not all. The press is after all not a monolithic entity and there are good folks in the media and in the next episode we will introduce you to some of them as well, in part two of "The Press is the Enemy" 

During the investigation of Former President Donald Trump over whether he had been colluding with the Russian Government in attempts to sway the 2016 Presidential election, television host Rachel Maddow and her host network MSNBC decided they would be cute and put on a television special designed to use the example of Richard Nixon committing treason to somehow allude to President Trump as guilty of the same. 

It was a true gift to the memory of President Richard Nixon. It had so many clear and glaring errors, assumptions of facts, and in the case of Joe Califano out right misrepresentations (I could use a stronger word but won't) , that we decided that it made the obvious contrast with our research of the facts.  So enjoy as we take the network special  through a thorough examination of what I will term as historical fiction vs Historical fact.

Then we will also look at one aspect of the Chennault Affair that seems to be often over looked. That much of the basis for this accusation comes from former President Lyndon Johnson's tape recordings. Much of what we know we learned because Johnson had illegally taped Anna Chennault, the South Vietnamese Ambassador and the President of South Vietnam's phone lines in Saigon. That based on that material Lyndon Johnson commented on what he believed was a vast conspiracy to undermine him, his administration's efforts for long hoped for peace in Vietnam, and to secure the Presidency for his successor and his party.  However, there is one big problem with believing any of it. Lyndon Johnson had a long history of delusions, paranoid fantasies, and chronic manic depressive behavior, so much so that his own staff commented on it for years after the administration ended, and we will get to hear some of them talk openly about it, and their concerns about the mental stability of an otherwise great man. 

This episode is one of final thoughts on Richard Nixon. 

Our thoughts cover a number of areas.   We start with the shameful treatment he received from the national news media and how they have actively worked to keep the public in the dark on the  facts of Watergate. This was a problem both when it occurred and even today as an enormous amount of easily verifiable documentation has come to light that has exposed misconduct across the board by just about every entity involved in the Watergate story. 

We will look at the current status of the prosecutorial misconduct complaint that was received last year at the United States Justice Department and continue to encourage you to weigh in on the case so it is not swept under the rug. 

We also examine, as best we could, the one lingering question that we felt we never fully resolved from our 144 episode examination of this historic period of American History. Why did a man as revered as John Doar, Chief Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee,  decide not to investigate on his own the material provided to him by the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office?  It appears to be an elusive question if you believe as I do that people do not suddenly become dishonest. There is no history of John Doar being anything other than an honorable man. So we asked six experts on Watergate, who either lived through it, or studied it extensively as historians: 

Bob Bostock, writer of much of the exhibits located at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, 
Dwight Chapin, President Richard Nixon's right hand man and appointments Secretary during most of his Presidency, 
Geoff Shepard, the author of three outstanding books on Watergate and widely recognized as the World's leading expert on it,
 
and three historians 
Michael Koncewicz , of NYU and author of "They Said No to Nixon"
Kevin Kruse, of Princeton University currently working on a biography of John Doar,
Tim Naftali,  the former Director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and a CNN Contributor.

All six of them were gracious enough to  either answer me directly or pointed me to material that would be of assistance.

Then we move on to open ended mysteries, like the involvement of the intelligence agencies in the overall story of Watergate, and the exculpatory nature of the actual tapes that are now far more readily available to the public in places like Nixontapes.org run by historian Luke Nichter or his two outstanding books on the subject matter.  ( The Nixon Tapes 1971 - 1972 and The Nixon Tapes 1973  http://lukenichter.com ) 

Finally we will look back on this greatest of World Leaders who so fundamentally changed the world we live in today. As we recount his many achievements including the most important one. An effort, that has probably touched the lives of everyone on Earth in one way or the other.  For it was Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States, that poured billions of dollars into Cancer Research that has changed the diagnosis of this deadly set of diseases from a death sentence into a chance for life. 

It is here at the end of this epic five  season podcast documentary, that we make our final case that Richard Nixon belongs among the pantheon of our greatest leaders alongside  George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 

Ranked 4th as one of the best American History Podcasts of 2024
https://podcasts.feedspot.com/american_history_podcasts/

Questions or comments at , Randalrgw1@aol.com , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!!

*** This episode was divided into two episodes, the second will post tomorrow morning

In our second episode of RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE: 1973 Enemies at the Gate , rather than dive right into our storyline we decided to take an in-depth two-part look at those enemies at the gate, or at least the important ally the Democratic Party could count on in their campaign to undermine President Nixon, THE PRESS, or more specifically The Washington Post. 

 In this episode, we will look closely at the cozy relationship between Katherine Graham and former President Lyndon Johnson, Sally Quin and Ben Bradlee and the relationship they had to the Kennedy family. The ties between Kennedy and Johnson aid Joe Califano and his client The Washington Post, and on and on. 

It will definitely leave you with a sickening feeling about the motivations the paper had to go after the man in the White House who had just won a 49 state landslide and gotten our troops and POW's home from a long protracted war in Southeast Asia. 

But , just in case you think we here at "Bridging the Political Gap" are to swayed by our obvious editorially positive opinion of President Nixon, we will be taking a trip back in time to one of the most sickening displays of liberal journalistic arrogance ever recorded and saved for posterity, (and saved by the very rag-sheet whose journalistic integrity is being called into question, The Washington Post, no less.)  They actually hosted a 40th anniversary celebratory event with Elizabeth Drew, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Ken Hughes, and Ruth Marcus and when they are done you will be filled with absolute disgust. 

It is all here for you to listen too, the mocking of the President, the totally inaccurate claims, the the obvious disdain, and from Ruth Marcus one of the most outrageously laughable claims ever made about comparing the tapes of Richard Nixon to the apparently saintly Lyndon B. Johnson.  It will make you sick.

BUT we do invite you to our second part of this analysis of the press,  when we look at more of the journalists of the Watergate era, some awful, but not all. The press is after all not a monolithic entity and there are good folks in the media and in the next episode we will introduce you to some of them as well, in part two of "The Press is the Enemy" 

Ranked 4th as one of the best American History Podcasts of 2024
https://podcasts.feedspot.com/american_history_podcasts/

Questions or comments at , Randalrgw1@aol.com , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!!