The Real Watergate Scandal

I have been a follower of the America's Untold Stories You Tube Channel. The channel hosts recently interviewed Geoff Shepard who wrote this book on the Watergate scandal. Shepard worked in the Nixon White House and has an intriguing viewpoint on the scandal. This book was published in 2015.

The publisher's summary:

“The system worked’—Carl Bernstein’s famous assessment of Watergate—turns out to be completely wrong. Powerful new evidence reveals that in the prosecution of the most consequential scandal in American history, virtually nothing in the justice system worked as it should.

The roles of heroes and villains in Watergate were assigned before Marine One carried Richard Nixon into exile on August 9, 1974. But Geoff Shepard’s patient and persistent research has uncovered shocking violations of ethical and legal standards by the "good guys”—including Judge John Sirica, Archibald Cox, and Leon Jaworski.

The Watergate prosecutors’ own files reveal their collusion with the federal judges who tried their cases and heard their appeals—professional misconduct so extensive that the pretense of a fair trial is now impossible to maintain.

Shepard documents that the Watergate Special Prosecution Force was an avenging army drawn from the ranks of Nixon’s most ardent partisan foes. They had the good fortune to work with judges who shared their animus or who quickly developed a taste for the media adulation showered on those who lent their power to the anti-Nixon cause.

In the end, Nixon’s fall was the result of the “smoking gun” tape recording in which he appeared to order a cover-up of the Watergate burglary. Yet in a stunning revision of the historical record, Shepard shows that that conversation, which he himself was the first to transcribe, was taken out of context and completely misunderstood—an interpretation with which Nixon’s nemesis John Dean concurs.

Crimes were committed, and an attempt was made to cover them up. But by trampling on the defendants’ right to due process, the Watergate prosecutors and judges denied the American people the assurance that justice was done and destroyed the historical reputation of an exceptionally accomplished president and administration. This book will challenge everything you think you know about the Watergate scandal.

Author Geoff Shepard believes that the Nixon resignation was a coup d'etat and that Nixon should not have had to resign the presidency. Normally I would reject such a notion as a conspiracy theory. Having lived through Watergate I believe that I know everything about it because I read many newspapers around the time that it occurred. However, since Shepard worked in the White House as a lawyer at the time of the scandal, I believe that his opinion matters. Shepard's main argument is that the judges hearing separate Watergate cases met together several times with prosecutors and colluded to bring down a president that they opposed politically. This reasoning does not ring true for me. 

Leon Jaworski and John Sirica were at the juxtaposition of the case. Leon Jaworski served as the second special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal. John Sirica,  as a D.C. District Court judge, was responsible for hearing a request by Jaworski to force Nixon to turn over evidence. Jaworski had issued a subpoena for the tapes of 64 presidential conversations to use as evidence in the criminal cases against indicted former Nixon administration officials. Sirica issued an order granting the request. Nixon refused and Jaworski followed up with an appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court and won the appeal. Nixon, with his back to the wall and having been impeached by the House of Representatives, chose to leave office.

Years later the author obtained full copies of the judicial record of each case. Inside those boxes of documents he uncovered contact between the prosecution and the Judiciary that the defendants were not aware of. It is true that if one party in a lawsuit contacts a judge, that a copy of the request to see the judge must be given to all parties and all the parties must be present together with the judge in any meeting. Also, there is alot of case law overturning convictions based on this type of due process violation. However, it happens all the time in the U. S. and usually to people no one will ever know or care about.

My question for the author is "who cares" if this happened to Nixon. Shepard acknowledges in the book that crimes were committed and that Nixon was "flawed." OK. He admits Nixon is guilty. So what if there was a technical violation of the law. It happens every day in this country and to people who are not guilty of a crime. It is hard to feel any pity for Nixon who was guilty. Not only was he guilty of several crimes but he tarnished the office of the presidency. I feel no compassion for him and reject the author’s premise that the resignation was a coup d'etat. 

Nixon resigned in order to receive a pension. If he stayed in office and was removed after a trial in the Senate, then he would lose his pension based on official misconduct. Nixon did not want to risk losing his pension. That was his decision to make. It was not forced upon him. It was not scandalous for him to choose this path and was not the "real" scandal in this matter. Therefore, I reject the author’s premise that the resignation was a scandal and a coup d'etat.

I am rating the book 3 out of 5 stars mainly because the material was not presented in chronological order. I understand what Shepard is saying because I lived through Watergate. Younger generations may not understand and will need to have the facts laid out in order.