A Quote by Bob Woodward
After Nixon resigned in 1974, he engaged in a very aggressive war with history, attempting to wipe out the Watergate stain and memory. Happily, history won, largely because of Nixon's tapes.
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When Richard M. Nixon resigned and Ford became the 38th president of the United States, the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office, of which I was a member, was preparing for the criminal trials of Nixon's top aides - H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell.
[democrats] hated Richard Nixon, and no wonder. It was Nixon who sent Alger Hiss to jail, and Nixon who waged the Vietnam War after the Democrats gave up.
Presidential power was overruled by the high bench in July 1974, when President Nixon was ordered to turn over some audio tapes of his White House conversations, including the 'smoking gun' tape of June 23, 1972, that revealing the Watergate cover up.
I thought a lot about Nixon's personal history and the changes in America during his lifetime and tried to craft stories, which I thought reflected some of his personal history but also the backdrop of a changing America. Nixon grew up in a strict Quaker family. The idea of the American Dream, of hard work and not much fun, was ingrained in Nixon as a child, but curiously so was a love of music. Nixon himself was a pretty good piano player. So it's the contradictions that interest me, as I think we all have them.
I recently read some of the transcripts of Nixon's Watergate tapes, and they spent hours trying to figure out who was leaking and providing information to Carl and myself.
Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.
If Nixon is not forced to turn over tapes of his conversations with the ring of men who were conversing on their violations of the law, then liberty will soon be dead in this nation. If Nixon gets away with that, then Nixon makes the law as he goes along - not the Congress nor the courts. The old Court you and I served so long will not be worthy of its traditions if Nixon can twist, turn and fashion the law as he sees fit.
Kennedy is remembered as a success mainly because of what came after: Johnson and Vietnam. Nixon and Watergate.
Indeed, it was largely the clubbiness of the Washington village press corps that let Nixon get away with Watergate and still win his landslide in 1972.
The White House tapes, recording Nixon's nefarious doings from Watergate to the bombing of Vietnam, made frightening reading once made public on the orders of Congress.
Nixon had some large achievements in foreign affairs. They will be remembered. But a president probably gets remembered for one thing, and Watergate will head the Nixon list, I suspect.
The Watergate is a hotel in Washington where Nixon operatives broke in to steal campaign information from the Democratic Party. Nixon's people subsequently described that act as a 'third-rate burglary.' In the same manner, Clinton has described the FBI investigation of her email escapades as 'a security review.'
In the Obama administration's Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press. The administration's war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post's investigation of Watergate.
Nixon's full term was one of the most successful in U.S. history, which is why he was re-elected by the largest plurality in the country's history.
The old Court you and I served so long will not be worthy of its traditions if Nixon can twist, turn and fashion If Nixon gets away with that, then Nixon makes the law as he goes along - not the Congress nor the courts.
There are similiarities between Nixon and Trump, no question. But there are also big differences. Nixon was shy, private, he attacked the media behind closed doors and insulted people behind their backs, and we only know about it because of the taping system in the Oval Office. The dark side, the vengeance we only know because of these tapes. Trump is right out and front with it. He actually campaigned on how nasty he can be, which found resonance with enough voters to get him into the White House.
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