RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE 1974 The Fall ( Part 11) The House Judiciary Committee Review

The Richard Nixon Experience

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This episode is an in-depth look at the House Judiciary committee itself as they went through the work of deciding whether or not they should impeach a President of the United States for high crimes and misdemeanors for the first time in 106 years.
In this show you will hear the memories of each of the members and staffers of the committee we selected. They will go in-depth to recall the procedures they followed, their own feelings upon hearing the tapes, their own judgements, the work ethic of the staff and members and their thoughts about Watergate all these many years later.
Of particular interests will be the oral history segments of Bernard Nussbaum and his assessment of both John Dean, the star witness and the former Counsel to the President , and of John Mitchell the former Attorney General and head of the Re-Election campaign for President Nixon. He says at one point that he found John Dean "the perfect Nazi corporal" who would mirror the opinion and thoughts of the person who had power over him at any given point. It is a startling revelation as to what this member of the staff thought of the main witness against the sitting President. Nussbaum also says that this issue of mirrorring the powerful person in the room made him watch what he said "out of fear of putting words in his mouth" and " while some prosecutors will do that , that is not what I do".
It will make your jaw drop.
We also will hear from President Richard Nixon, in an interview conducted by his former aid Frank Gannon from 1983, in which the President will lay out his version of several of the lesser remembered accusations of the Watergate years: his taxes, the improvements to his homes, the accusations of enriching himself etc.. If you listen with an open mind it will certainly cause you to question a lot of the claims made by his accusers.
Then we let Geoff Shepard lay out the articles of impeachment that are to be drafted by the House Committee after they had reviewed the overwhelming evidence they had in their hands. Evidence, in our opinion, tainted by the decision of John Doar, the lead House Staffer, to only be a collation of evidence provided by the Watergate Special Prosecution Task Force and the Watergate Senate Committee.