106. Watergate: Part 1

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And for blockbuster value you can't be guaranteed rewards in our free-to-play game gift wheel, where you'll get a daily bonus just for playing. Nice one. So download Novibet today and play your way. Novibet, more parody. This is your name versus. Quite the unconventional grill setup you got there Barry. Still, those marinated pork chops smell nice. Thank you Jack. 29 for malady. What have gone for a clockwise rotation system for the sausages myself? Hattone and paprika. Also 29 for malady. Oh, watch that airflow on the Piri wings buddy. Yep. 29 for malady. Even the burgers. Buddy. Silence barbeque boars with selected barbeque meats only two-year-old 99 at Aldi. It's not complicated. Hello and welcome to the rest is history. There are bad reviews and then there is the obituary that the Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson gave President Richard Nixon. If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral Thompson wrote, his casket would have been launched into one of those open sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was legal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin. And as I read that, I hear the laughter from top historian of modern America, Dominic Sambrook. Dominic, you gave me that quote. Obviously a favourite of yours. And today's episode, it's not on Nixon per se, but it's on Watergate and Nixon obviously lies at the absolute heart of that scandal. I thought that maybe the best we've got had loads and loads of questions on this. But I thought maybe the way to kick it off is with a friend of the show Stephen Jensen who asks, "What is it about Watergate that has made the suffix gate synonymous with scandal?" Compared to the alternatives, does it deserve the dubious honour of being the linguistic mother of all scandals? Well, that's a great question Tom. As you know, I've been looking forward to doing this since we started this podcast. And just on the Hunter S. Thompson line, I used to get my students. We did a whole course on Nixon that ran all year. We had four hours every week just on Nixon in their third year. And I used to get them to read that, a bit tree and write comments on it. Hunter S. Thompson actually travelled with Nixon in the 1972 election campaign. You were going to book about it, didn't you? And they talked about-- Fear and Lathering on the campaign trail, and they talked about American football. Hunter S. Thompson was astounded by Nixon's knowledge of American football. So they did have a little bit. There was a little bit of common ground between the two of them. But, Stephens question, which is a great question. Nixon is at the core of Watergate. So part of it is the character is this extraordinary Shakespearean character that we'll be talking about in a second. It's also because I think Watergate is the first great TV scandal. So it plays out live on American television often. The Senate hearings are on TV every afternoon where soap operas used to be. So there's this sense of this kind of melodrama. And these extraordinary characters, I mean, we're going to come to some of these characters. You know, the actual essence of the scandal is actually pretty small. But it comes to consume this sort of almost de-cension cast of kind of misfits and eccentric. And it takes off the scandal. It's the cover up. Yes. Although the scandal itself is a pretty good scandal. I mean, bugging your opponent's headquarters. And actually, it's also what the scandal reveals about the Nixon White House and Nixon's own bizarre and tortured psychology. I mean, I think that-- I like to think that this podcast is definitely the podcast for 70s political scandals. And so we've already done the Jeremy Thoughts scandal. Yeah. Which features dead dogs, and-- Through machine magnets, or crap. Through machine magnets. But it is-- I mean, it is as British as a carry on film. It is. Whereas this, this is the scandal for Imperial America. It is. And I guess that that's why it has the resonance that perhaps the Jeremy Thoughts scandal does. Well, it's the combination, actually, Tom. You're absolutely right. It is the climax of what political historians call the Imperial Presidency, so the kind of Cold War Presidency. But it's the combination of that with the humdrum every day, very human kind of almost petty resentments of Nixon himself that drive the scandal. I mean, I've got so much to say about this, but so much of it is about Nixon. Because without Nixon, there is no watergate. He's at the absolute center of it. And lying at the center is his background and his-- I think that's his-- So on that topic, we have a question from James Baggaly. I hope I have pronounced his name right. How important is Richard Nixon's feeling of outsider status in understanding his actions? And do you both agree, effectively Dominic, do you agree, that what links Trump and Nixon is that they are both driven by an anger towards a ruling class that will never truly accept them? Now, I think we should just part the comparison with Trump for now. But that question about Nixon's upbringing, sense of himself as an outsider, important? It's very important. And this is great, because I can now launch into my hour-long prepared biography of Richard Nixon. So as I said, I taught this course on Nixon that went all year. And the first thing I got the students to get the students to do is to say, well, we're not going to call him Nixon. We should call him Dick throughout. Because I really want to dematize him, Nixon, also just mused me in a very childish way. And I think getting inside, as I used to say, you've got to get inside Dick's head. And I thought, I think that's absolutely crucial to understanding how the scandal played out. So let's talk about Nixon. Nixon is born in 1913 in a place called Your Belinda, California, which is this scruffy, sort of nondescript edge of LA kind of, now a suburb, but then kind of on the edge of LA quite rural. And he's absolutely one of those people that we talked about in that California podcast, and again in our Silicon Valley podcast. He's a white, he's a white Protestant kind of Midwestern American stock. Kind of Quaker, middle American. He is a Quaker. And that's really important. So his Quakers don't swear. They don't, they don't drink. They don't swear. They don't dance. They don't approve of kind of fun to put it bluntly. So his parents, Frank and Hannah, they've moved from kind of the Midwest. And they are the classic kind of people who moved to California, and it doesn't quite work out. It, everything goes wrong. So they've found a lemon ranch, and it doesn't work. They don't sell any lemons. And then they found a grocery store and a garage, a gas station attached to it. And it's really hard work. And young Richard has to get up at four o'clock and kind of load, I don't know, potatoes or whatever it is. So he grows up in relative poverty. And this Midwest, in this Quaker family, Midwestern stock in California, there's this sense of disappointment that hangs over them in the kind of 1910s, 1920s, 1930s. He's one of multiple brothers. You've enjoyed this ton. They're all named after, well four of the five are named after English King. So there's Harold, Arthur, Richard and Edward. And then there's also Donald, who's called Richard is, Richard Nixon named after Richard. Richard the Ninth, apparently. But he'll be not Richard the, no, no, no, that's a great comparison. Or indeed Richard the second. No, he's Richard the Lionheart. So two of the brothers, Diabtubocullosis, Harold and Arthur. And this kind of hangs over the family. It's quite a sort of grim environment. Nixon says in his memoirs, his mother, his mother never hugged him or showed him any physical affection, but he could see from her eyes that she loved him. So it was, it's a sort of very telling. So a kind of classic upper class British. Yes, yes, yes, yes, so the difference is there so poor. So Nixon is that classic, is that classic thing. He's very driven. He's very bright. He does very well at school and he's offered a scholarship. I think I'll offer a place at Harvard. There's no doubt that he's very clever. I mean, this is why the Donald Trump comparison rather falls down. He can't take it up because he's needed at home to help. And also because his brother is ill and his mum needs to look after the care and all this kind of thing. So Nixon goes to his local college, Whittier College. And right there, you have the or, you could almost say Watergate starts right there. He is, and a bit of an outsider, kind of a low middle class, kind of poor, relatively poor kid, although very bright. He talks later on about the laughs and slights and snubs that he suffers when he's there. He's not allowed. He's not invited to join the top of the fraternity on campus who are called the Franklin's. I think we talked about this right at the beginning of the podcast series with Alex. Trump and Caesar and all that sort of stuff. He so he found his own called the ortho-gonians, the square shooters who are for the kind of outsiders. And right there you have this, he's got that sense. I hate to say this Tom but it's you and your yachting shoes. Richard Nixon is a man who goes through life permanently in the wrong shoes. There's even a very famous story. Well yeah the right one. That Nixon is told to do a Kennedy star photo of by his aides and he walks onto the beach and he's wearing his shoes are too smart. He's wearing smart kind of office shoes when he should be wearing kind of you know deck shoes. Your yachting shoes. So that that nags at him the whole time. He actually does really well. He goes to Duke Law School. He goes into the Navy, he's a lieutenant. He's really going to scholarship. Yeah he's very bright. Everybody says he's hard working. Interestingly one of the things people say about him at this stage is he's honest. So he's not he's not unpopular but he's just he's an outsider. He's a he's that classic. He's quite a good ward doesn't he? Yeah he's a quartermaster in the Navy. So so Quakers don't fight either. So he could have so he could have. Right he overcomes that. And his Quakerism I think doesn't matter to him kind of theologically as it were. Yeah I think it matters culturally. And I think there's always this sense of Nixon that he's a bit repressed. Somebody's always having more fun than he is and he's missing out. And it obviously becomes the candidates. And you can absolutely see I mean we'll come back to this point but you can absolutely see he is that classic you know that the self-made driven kid very bright who's conscious that he's missing out that other people have a grace and elegance and he's he's never going to be James Bond. Okay okay so so just so he then he kind of gets into Republican. Yeah because he's a Quaker by the way he makes and he has to go into Republican party because he's a Protestant because that's the the thing that you do. Okay so just this idea that the the the kind of guy who's looking up at the the elite. Yeah I mean that that's I guess kind of something that is a feature of the Republican party now. But not then you're right. Yeah Nixon's one of the people who who's so it's unusual isn't it? It's quite unusual. And so in a sense is he kind I mean he's a he's a kind of portent of this idea that the deplorable is again to sign up to the Republican party. A little bit. A little bit. A little bit. Yes a little bit. He doesn't really emphasize that as much in the 1940s and 1950s but certainly later on he's he's the man who coins the phrase the silent majority. He talks again and again when he's president about the little guy the little man the common man all these kinds of things. So absolutely he does that he's absolutely part of that kind of realignment. And he's a big anti-communist. Yeah so it's an interesting thing. Nixon right from the start is regarded as a as a deplorable himself by the kind of patrician liberal kind of democratic elite. He I think it's because California politics is pretty rough. He uses anti-communism in 1946 and again in 1950 when he runs for the Senate. He he always seems to this this weird thing which I he always seems to fight a little bit dirtier or to be a bit more competitive than everybody else. And it's not just a question of substance question of style actually. So something that you would forgive in a more patrician who would then be able to make a joker about it afterwards. Nixon there's always this stuff that he is he's he starts to be perceived quite early on as kind of dark, jauli, over aggressive. So there's a famous cartoonist of the 50s called Herb Locke who was always drawing him kind of climbing in or out of a sewer. And and then he really that Thompson picks up on. Yes. And he really disgraces himself in the eyes of the sort of patrician liberals. In the early 1950s when he exposes a genuine communist spy a guy called Alja Hiss in the State Department. So I thought that was contested. It used to be contested but it's not really contested anymore. Sort of declassified Soviet archives show that beyond I would say reasonable doubt. I mean some people would disagree but beyond reasonable doubt Hiss was a fellow traveler probably a communist spy. Nixon exposes him in a very aggressive way and this is perceived as you know it's in for a dig. It's not what you do. Alja Hiss was one of us very well educated. Nice fellow you know lovely guest at a dinner party. Nixon's this goddleful hick from you know California. So so people hold that against him but that gets in the places vice president Eisenhower. But then when he gets when he gets that ticket doesn't he then run into problems again he does a some he does. So this is a nothing scandal. It's a it's a made up scandal really that he has been profiting from a fund for a public and donors in California but he have the essence of Nixon's appeal. Because what Nixon does Nixon is terrified that Eisenhower is going to drop him from the ticket. Eisenhower World War II General because he thinks Eisenhower is basically made it clear that he thinks of Nixon as a kind of an ant beneath his shoe and that he's and his Batman. Yeah he despises Nixon. I mean he basically signs up to he just he regards Nixon as an unfortunate necessity. So Nixon makes this unprecedented live TV address. Right okay so Dominic and Dominic we mentioned the Jeremy Thorpe scandal. Yes. Which feature the dead dog. Yeah. This feature is a live new. You can't have a dog in every podcast right. So this is a live dog. Nixon basically said there were two great lines so one of them he basically says this is all nonsense. There was a fund but I haven't profited from it. You know it's perfectly legal. Blah blah blah. He says people then one of the most damaging allegations is that people say my wife Pat has got a a mink coat and he says she has not got a mink coat. She has a respectable republican cloth coat and all across the land people are saying oh oh laughing Nixon isn't this wonderful. And then he says now there is one gift that we have that we have taken. He said somebody wrote in the newspaper that my girls Trisha and Julie and they wanted a dog and what did they send us in a box they sent us a lovely dog and the girls called him checkers and the girls love the dog and whatever they say about it we're going to keep it or something and of course you see high-minded Tom Holland's people across America are vomiting into their yeah wait a minute baskets and sort of the earth Dominic Sandbrook's of wiping away manly tears and saying what a man what a family so I think Eisenhower was one of these people who's vomiting into a waste paper basket but he's forced his hand has been forced by Nixon so Nixon then stays on as on the ticket and then of course there's another great sort of crisis in Nixon's life. There are simple ways to save too. Switching supplier, checking your plan and managing your energy use can all cut your bills. Saving energy saves money. Visit gov.ie/reduceyouruse. Brought to you by the Government of Ireland. With NovyBet it's time to take a spin with the future of online casinos. And for Blockbuster value you can't be guaranteed rewards on our free-to-play game Gift Wheel where you'll get a daily bonus just for playing. Nice one. So download NovyBet today and play your way. NovyBet more parody. So in 1960 he basically inherits the Republican nomination from Eisenhower. Has he been a good vice president? He's been alright actually. He's done more than any vice president before. I mean Eisenhower treats him like dirt throughout and tries to get rid of him in 1956. But Nixon's like a sort of, he's like a cockroach. He can't be killed. So Nixon goes on trips and stuff and people throw stones at him in South America and. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he kind of looks. he's fine. And he's right in the centre of the rubble. He's standing up to the coffee. He's a moderate. He's actually not on the right. He's he's slap-bang in this sort of sense. He'd fit perfectly into kind of the Tory party of the 1950s actually in England. So he's the Republican candidate in 1960 and he's against basically his worst nightmare. An East Coast patrician hand incredibly handsome, you know, who absolutely know the right shoes to wear on it. Yeah. A man who's completely over-sexed, who's always wearing yachting shoes. A man who'd won the Pulitzer prize for something that somebody else had written for him. A man whose father had got his mates to do his university thesis for him. John F Kennedy. So a man who's got all the grace and elegance and all the connections. Everything that Nixon hasn't got. And Kennedy wins by this very tight margin after a debate in which Nixon is perceived to have done better on radio and famously worse on television because he looks sweaty and kind of jaillty and stuff. It's shadow exactly. And what's worse, what's even worse for Nixon is that he could have won that election actually. I mean, what I mean is he may well have won that election, but it didn't Kennedy's daddy buy it. - Right. - There were allegations of vote stuffing in Illinois and in Texas, maybe not enough, but enough for there to be a question mark. - And Nixon doesn't contest the results unlike Donald Trump. - Right, so I was gonna say it, because we've already had the comparison with Trump raised. I mean, Nixon doesn't contest it, even though he thinks it might have happened for the good of the American Republic. - Yeah, for the good of the American Republic. - He's a fair. - But well, it's partly that. It's also because partly around people around him is saying, you know, this is when the middle of the Cold War, you know, you shouldn't really contest it. And it's not like he takes ages to make a decision. He doesn't, straight away, he basically, well, very quickly, he decides he's not gonna contest it, and it is the right decision. - It's the right decision. - Yeah, it is the patroenter decision. And I think it's also the right decision from its own sort of career point of view, 'cause of course he does then come back. - Eight years later to become the Republican nominee in 1968. So he kind of, sort of going off to become, I mean, he does go off to become a New York lawyer, but his heart's not really in it. What he really wants to do is get back into politics. He has that. - He tries to, he runs, he runs for the governorship of California. - He does in 1962, and it doesn't really work out. - And that doesn't go well. - No, and at the end, he loses to Pat Brown. And at the end, he loses it with the press, and he says, you know, you've got what you want it. Well, gentlemen, you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore. And they will say, oh, typical Nixon, such a bad loser, such a sort of, you know, he's such a scumbag from your Belinda, of course he doesn't know how to behave. But that aside, after that, he then kind of slightly reinvent himself as the kind of sane center of the Republican party. So he basically just-- - And the context for this, the context for this, I guess, going into '67, '68, is the counterculture-- - Yeah. - It gets Vietnam war. - Absolutely. - Hippies, all that kind of stuff. - Yeah. - And he's a guy who wears business shoes to the beach. - Yeah, exactly, right. - It's all about shoes, shoes and dogs. What in this podcast is all about? - What are we really specializing? - That's absolutely right. So America feels like it's happening. - But it's the culture war. - The Democrats-- - Yeah, it's the first blast of the culture war as we would now reckon. - A little bit, actually. Yes, a little bit. - There were Democrats that were tearing themselves apart. Lyndon Johnson's been booted out because of Vietnam. You'll write that the headlines are full of rioting. The civil rights movement has passed its peak. And Martin Luther King has been assassinated and then Robert Kennedy says, "And against that background, Nixon basically says, you know, I am the 50s in human form. I am-- - Yeah. - I promise law and order. He says law and order again. And again, he says he has a secret plan to end the Vietnam war. You won't tell anybody what it is, but people say, oh, that sounds splendid. Yes, there are. So he is elected quite a tight election, but it's fine. He gets in. - He gets in. - And-- - Okay, so he becomes president. And I think it's time for another question. This time from classist who asks, for most people, Nixon is synonymous with Watergate and nothing else. Did he have any significant political achievements during his presidency that have been overlooked or ignored? What would his legacy have been if Watergate had never happened? - Okay, well, that's a great question. So his presidency is very turbulent, but you could argue quite successful. So he takes office at-- - We get some moon landings, doesn't he, for instance? - Well, that's-- - Not that he must have enjoyed that, because that was a kind of kind of-- - It was a kind of anything, yes. - He's enabled a pocket. - Yeah, I think he has probably a slightly mixed feelings about it, because everyone knows this is a kind of a thing. But you're right, he does sort of-- he congratulates the astronauts and stuff. He-- Vietnam completely overshadows his first term, trying to pull out. I mean, basically, he escalates in order to get out by widening the warrant of Cambodia. Massive student protests throughout his whole first term. But actually, when you go through-- I mean, I don't think I'm out on a limb, we're almost all historians and Nixon's presidents, you would say this. When you go through policy by policy, he's actually pretty moderate. So his ambition is to be-- and these are his kind of words with his aids, the American Disraeli, a Tory man with liberal measures. And actually, you can look at lots of things. He thinks about talks about having a guaranteed income, which is a thing that people talk about now, sort of left-wing idea. And Dominic, hadn't he-- I mean, he'd been in favour of civil rights. Yeah, he's pretty moderate in the early '60s. Exactly, he's pretty moderate on civil rights. When it suits him, he bangs the law and order drum, and he sort of condemns radicals and all this kind of thing. But by and large, yes, he is on the sort of moderate wing of the Republican Party on civil rights. He's keen on kind of the environment. I mean, he sort of mones and groans about it, but he does it. He goes to China. Well, of course, this is about to get into it. His foreign policy achievements say his big things. So he goes to Moscow and he goes to Beijing. I mean, amazing. And lots of people say, only Nixon could have done this, because he has the anti-- Because the United States had they recognised China to that point? No. No. So basically, their relations were utterly non-exercised. Because they recognised Taiwan as just a man. Exactly. So he ditches China and gets into bed, basically, with-- but I mean, the imagery. Nixon on the Great Wall of China. Nixon invading-- It's a great wall. Yes. This is a great wall, as he says. Nixon kind of clinging glasses with Mao Zedong. I mean, that's extraordinary. And then he does the same with Brezhnev in Moscow. So this is the heyday of Daytona. And he and Henry Kissinger are a sectorist stateworking. I mean, this is basically their passion. They think they're reordering the world. And actually, they are. Nixon's meeting with Mao is the moment that China comes out of the cold. And if you stand right back from this, that's more significant than anything Eisner, Kennedy, Johnson did arguably. I mean, I know that American listeners will say, oh, the civil rights movement is the big story. And of course, in many ways it is for Americans. But in terms of world politics, Nixon going to China is absolutely seismic. OK. Is that in his first term? Yeah. Right. So 72, he wins re-election. Yeah. So we get to get to actually Watergate itself. But right. 72. Let's just go through what he does in his press. So 72. The Democrats do a British Labour Party in 1983. So they nominate a very impressive and admirable man who is a ridiculous man to choose as your nominees. They nominate a man called George McGovern. He was a bomber pilot in World War II. He's a historian. Tom has got a history PhD. He's a very admirable, decent guy. But he's a kind of on the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. He's the Michael Foot. He is the Michael Foot of American politics. And right from the moment they nominate him, it's obvious that Nixon is going to win. The Republicans called him the candidate of the three A's, acid, amnesty, and abortion, amnesty for world, for Vietnam war, draft of aiders. And we're going to never shake the tag on which Nixon wins this colossal landslide, massive lands, biggest Republican landslide, I think ever at that point. And if you want a clue of Richard Nixon's tortured psychology is this, what does he do on the night of that landslide victory? He goes alone to his study in the White House and he kind of turns off all the lights except this desk lights. So he's sitting like the sort of vampiric figure in the darkness. He puts on his four of his favorite pieces of music, which is Victory at Sea, a sort of really kind of rubbishy 1950s, 1960s kind of classical soundtrack. But imagining ships clashing in the storm. So he listens to that silent kind of alone, head in his hands. And then he gets out of pad and he starts writing down what people will say about him, about his failures. So he writes, the opposition line will be, R N let down his party. All this stuff, if only he'd known what people would write about him. I know, Dominic. Dominic, I think that's the perfect note on which to go and take a break. OK. So this episode is about Watergate. So far. We haven't got to-- it's like you and Scottish we've done what? It's like you and my Beth. I know. I know, with the Mopoli or whatever. I know. Well, that's fine. If it needs me, we can go into another episode. That's absolutely fine. I think we're clearly going to have to do another episode. So let's take a break. And then when we come back, are you ready to actually look at what happens? I'm absolutely poised. I'm pumped. OK. Brilliant. OK. Fabulous. When we get back, Watergate. Reduced fuel excise, lower vat on energy, a diesel rebate scheme, and an expanded fuel allowance are helping right now. We're also supporting homes, farms, and businesses to lower costs with grants for energy upgrades, electric vehicles, and solar. There are simple ways to save, too. Switching supplier, checking your plan, and managing your energy use can all cut your bills. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [MUSIC PLAYING] With Novi Bed, it's time to take a look. been with the future of online casinos. Nice one. Hello welcome back to the Restless History. Our topic today is Watergate and in classic Restless History style. We have done it off an episode and we are yet to mention it. So Dominic, Watergate. What is it? What's going on? So right from the start of Nixon's presidency, his administration had kept, had started crossing the line. In terms, as we said before the break, it's an era of intense domestic turbulence but it's also an era when they're in a war. Okay, just on that the question from Guillermo T. Avaleda. We'll never get to Watergate. No, I think this ties in. Richard Nixon's personality and anguish has been storied and abused, but how much was his seeming paranoia against his adversaries justified? The US were on the height of radical mobilisation by the early 70s. Is that the context? Is Nixon feeling properly paranoid? Yeah, I think it's not the 1950s. I think that's a reasonable point. I mean, as Henry Kissinger famously said, even paranoid people do have enemies. And they feel in battle. At various points in his first term, the White House is literally surrounded by student protesters so they can't really go out and Washington is brought to a halt. There is some domestic terrorism by kind of far left groups like the weather men in the late 60s, early 70s. There are the Black Panthers. I mean, all these things are kind of exaggerated a little bit within the Nixon White House. That's John Lennon. John L. Yes. And Elvis offering to help bring him down. So, I think Nixon genuinely feels that Nixon and Kissinger generally feel they're in a war and they also feel that they can't trust the people around them. So from 1969 onwards, both Nixon and Henry Kissinger are constantly putting pressure on other people to find out who's leaking. They call for FBI wiretaps. Kissinger wants his own staff to be bugged to find out who's leaking to the press. And in 1970, the Nixon administration, some of his aides talk about setting up their own intelligence service within the White House, not the FBI, not the CIA, but answerable only to Nixon and his aides that will basically, you know, survey their enemies, sort of do dirty tricks, all these kinds of things. And you get the first and how legal would that be? Very completely illegal. But of course, Nixon and his aides are saying to each other. The kind of people in Nixon's White House are really important. So they're not often traditional party political people. They're people he's brought with him from California. They're people who worked in TV or advertising their loyal just to Nixon, not to the party or not to. So who are the most significant? So as chief of staff at the man called HR Holderman. So I think he's a former advertising man. He's loyal purely to Nixon. So this is kind of Praitorian. Praitorian guard. He said the Berlin wall is there called. HR Holderman, John Erlichman, who is his domestic policy chief, a guy called Charles Colson, who everybody calls an evil genius, who basically goes around telling everybody he's an evil genius. Right, like Dominic coming. Right, exactly. Who's his political doctor? Henry Kissinger, obviously, it's his national security advisor. And a lot of these people don't have, maybe not so much Kissinger, but the others don't have links to the traditional kind of press elite. They're not part of that kind of what we in Britain would call the Westminster bubble. They're outsiders. Okay. And so again, that is kind of a parallel with Trump. Well, to a degree, I mean, Trump brings in kind of what kinds of old people who I suppose to some extent, but I mean, actually, this is that because some of these people are very bright people that Nixon has around them. They're bright, talented, self-made people. I mean, they're not the kind of, okay, well, it's flagrant leak corrupt kind of characters. But but in 1971, they do their first really big dirty trick, the first antecedent of Watergate, which is there's been leaks from within, there's been all these leaks about Vietnam. And the guy called Daniel Ellsberg links the Pentagon papers as they call this huge tranche of documents about Vietnam to show the government has been lying about Vietnam for years. But you know, going back to kind of Kennedy in Johnson, he leaks it to the press. Kissinger and Nixon say this is utterly intolerable and they get a unit within the warehouse who call themselves the plumbers because their job is to stop leaks. And the plumbers burglar, Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist in, I think it's Los Angeles, to look for documents that will smear him. And that's the first real serious criminality, I would say. And does Nixon know what they're doing? Well, this is the question. We don't really know, but I think it's, I think Nixon definitely, Nixon undoubtedly knows that something's going on because we know that throughout 1971, he is haranging his men and saying, I need you to find dirt on your position. I need you to go in. And he comes obsessed with this one think tag in Washington called the Brookings Institution, which still exists. He tells them again and again, I want you to get in there and blow the safe and find out what they've got. I mean, at one point they, the Brookings Inst. Yeah, at this thing, they cook up a scheme. What's he, why is he so proud? He doesn't know what they've got, but he thinks it might be interesting. So at one point, he says, why don't you fire bomb it? They have this plan to fire bomb it and then they'll all be dressed as firefighters and they'll run in, steal all the documents and run out to get him. So plumbers and firemen. Yeah. And the guys he's got doing this are bonkers. So one guy is called Howard Hunt. He was in this CIA and he was one of the orchestrators of the Bay of Pigs Shambles at the beginning of the 1960s. So that's him. The other man is even an even more interesting man, a brilliant man. A man called G Gordon Liddy. You aware of this man? He's the one who gets knelt for it, doesn't he? Yeah. And he ends up being pardoned by Reagan. I don't see you getting pardoned. I can't remember. He's basically, he's a Nazi. He's dead now, so I can say. I say. Because when the BBC filmed him for their Watergate documentary, he had himself filmed in front of this huge collection of guns. That's yeah. And somebody who was involved with that said to me, well, you should think that's bad. In the next room, he had all like Nazi flags and pictures of Lenny Reef and stuff. And he's an absolute lunatic and he says on camera in the BBC documentary, Richard Nixon had told me to go and assassinate such and such a colonist. I was poised to do it. I was waiting for the. Okay. So you've given the sketch of Nixon as a kind of moderate Republican. Yeah. With a lot of domestic and foreign policy successes to his name. I mean, clearly a very, very able smart guy. Yeah. Why is he employing a Nazi? I mean, I know what the counterculture of the Huntress Thompson Arts to that. He's a fascist, yeah. Because he is a fascist. But, but, but, I mean, he doesn't sound well. I think Gordon Liddy is a bit of an out as a very eccentric. And his, and his sort of strange, I mean, there is a story that he started showing footage of Nuremberg Raleigh's or something in the White House. Oh, I'm trying to. He's not Ray's Eyebrow. I think people just thought he's eccentric. They kind of smirked. You know, I think they. Because I mean, the rest of them aren't Nazis. They're nothing like Nazis. They're actually pretty moderate Republicans as well. But it's very Doctor Strange, like. It is a bit. It is a bit. It's a bit. But Liddy is a. I mean, so they're hanging around. They're hanging around the Nixon White House. And the presidential campaign comes around. And Nixon says to his mate, because Nixon believes in fighting really hard, if not dirty. Even though he must know that he's going to be going. But Tom, he's paranoid. He feels. He's always. He's always been taken away from him. He's always been cheated by the Eastern establishment. And right at the beginning of 1972, he. And he says. I mean, he's. The committee to real it, the president, as they call it. They're actually the CRP, but everybody calls them "creep now," because they're. They're just kind of. Yeah, great acronym. Exactly. They're having all these meetings. And Nixon says, you know, I need to find out that you're fighting really tough, that you're doing tough things. So Liddy and Hunt have this ridiculous plan, it's got Operation Gemstone, they call it. I mean, some of it's absurd. They're going to deliver. I think they do do it. They deliver. They order a thousand pieces. And half of them. Half of them sent to the Democratic National Committee. Just glued with the bill. Just. Yeah, exactly. Just that way. Just kind of bankrupt. Right. That's. Just laughable. Liddy also goes. I mean, Liddy literally goes into a meeting and says, "I have a plan to. I'm going to hire a houseboat at Miami and have it. and have it staffed by the finest prostitutes in Florida. And then I will lure senior Democrats to this houseboat." Or whatever, and they will be. Which presumably is playing into the kind of the dark Quaker sense of. Maybe. Yeah. When Nixon's not in the meeting. And the neat demo to be fair, Nixon's not in the meeting about the prostitutes. But you're right. I think, well, the amazing thing is that when you hear the Nixon people talking about this as they do and have an undocumented sense, they don't just say this was absolutely laughable and we're all wetting ourselves with amusement. They seriously consider some of these ideas. And they allow Liddy and Hunt these clowns to keep kind of walking around the White House. or whatever. But it's suggesting mad schemes. I mean it's a bit like all the CIA plans to kill Castro. Right, they were exploding cigar. Can't believe that these guys are serious. Remember there was a seashell? They would plant a sea exploding seashell on the seabed that he would pick up. And there was also they were going to get powder that would make his beard fall out, that would humiliate him in the eyes of his Cuban fans. Yeah, I mean you just don't know do you, whether people are sitting around in meetings just completely taking the piss or whether they genuinely think these are good ideas. Anyway, anyway, so basically they're having all these meetings and they come up with a scheme. They're going to bug the Democratic National Committee. Now the amazing thing about this right is that at this point it's pretty obvious that Nixon is going to win the election. Yeah, by a massive margin, you know, he's going to coast. He could just stay in bed. So he doesn't need to play. He could stay in bed for six months, he'd still win the election. It's bad. It's everything is a shambles. They break into the Democratic. Okay, okay. So just before we actually do this. Yes. Question from Miguel Dumiel. What did the president know about the break in and when did he know it? So is this being licensed by Nixon? I think it's highly unlikely. We don't know about the, where that how much he knows beforehand. It's highly unlikely that he knows operational details. On the other hand, it is likely that he knows they are going to do something. He knows they're up to no good. He is the very man who has been telling them about fire bombing. I think tank. Yes, he's been leaning on them. He's been leaning on them. The pressure is coming undoubtedly from the top. What are you doing? I mean, no way. It's that weird thing where in any organization, they just basically need to be able to take a box that says have fire bomb somebody, have ordered pieces. It's again, Nixon off their case because he's pestering them. So they break into the Democratic National Committee in this sort of grim, concrete monolith called the Watergate Building, which is in Washington. And surprise, surprise, the bugs that they plant. Does they're breaking through an underground kind of car park, the garage at the bottom of the building? And the bugs don't really, I don't know, they don't work or they can't hear anything properly. And they say, we'll have to go back in and bug it again. So on the 17th of June, 1972, five men, I've got their names written down somewhere if you'd like to know who they are. They are James McCord, Frank Sturgis, Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez and Eugenio Martinez. So they're basically the majority of them are Cubans. They are people who worked for Howard Hunt when he was in charge of Bayer Pigs Cuban exiles CIA stuff. They're kind of the kind of we're country believers. Yeah, they're kind of weird Cuban exiles hanging around on the fringes of the CIA. Massively anti-communist. So if they're told they're doing a job for the White House, they'll be delighted. So they break him. And then there's this kind of comedy of errors. So the doors are sort of self-closing doors, self-locking. So they have to put masking tape over the kind of the bolts and the security guard, who is what's his name? Frank Will's, I think his name is, he spots the tape and he thinks, "Oh, that's weird." On the doors leading from the garage underneath the building and he takes the tape off. He then goes off. They sneak back again and put the tape the door back again. He comes back. They've gone. He spots the tape again. This is really weird and he calls the police. So the cops pitch up. They arrest these five blokes that Waukey talk is. And what then happens is one of them in his address book has HH Howard Hunt, the guy who was one of the plumbers. And the FBI start to, they think this is weird. It's kind of some political crime and they basically trace that number. And they're like, "Oh, it's a White House number. That's very weird." So at that point, the interesting point, the interesting question, which some people have raised I know is, at that point, what can Nixon do? What can the White House do? It's a difficult one. So six days after that, there's what's called the smoking gun conversation, because of course Nixon is taping himself. He's inherited a taping system from Lyndon Johnson. So why is he taping himself? Don't you tape all your conversations, Tom? Well, I am at the moment. Not all why is he? I mean, that's a really good question. Previous presidents had experimented with tapings. They Lyndon Johnson, most obviously. Nixon does it. It's a weird kind of self-protection, I think. If I record my conversations, they can't be used against me. I'll have control over them. People won't be able to say things that I haven't said. I mean, there's a fatal flaw in that, isn't there? Yeah. Well, if you're saying something that's massively incriminating. You just must make sure not to say anything stupid. And on the tapes, what it means, actually, interestingly about Nixon is, I think Richard Nixon is probably the most well-documented man who's ever lived in goodness. Because even now, in the. Well, maybe, maybe. Social media. Well, maybe, I don't know. We have hours. We don't have private. I suppose private conversations. No. That's the gold dust, isn't it? But the interesting thing is, we have conversations that are utterly rambling, inconsequential. I mean, there's some of the hilarious conversations. Nixon sits there with his sort of the Berlin wall, as they're called, Holdman, Erlichman, Kissinger and so on. And often they're just wittering in a way that would make us look erudite. I mean, they are. Good. Nixon is sort of saying. They're talking about how homosexuality brought down ancient Greece. Nixon says he won't shake hands with anyone from San Francisco, because they're all gay. They have these ludicrous conversations about which had more influence, television or Socrates. They're just sort of wittering. It's a good question. And Nixon is. And they're always. Nick, he's also slightly showing off to them, because he's always got that thing of. He's the school swat who wants to prove he's a kind of man's man. So he's always. And he's the president, isn't he? Yeah, he's always kind of trying to show off and say, you know, but he's also trying to be more aggressive and reactionary, I think, than he is in reality. So he says lots of anti-Semitic things, lots of racist things, which people in other contexts have said, "God, I can't believe Nixon could have been saying that, because he was never like that." But I think he's. So it's like someone going on a. A cricket tour, Tom. No, not a cricket tour, on social media or something, and showing off. Exactly. That's exactly what he's doing a lot at the time. But anyway, that's a bit of a side track. So on the 22nd of June 1972, he has the crucial conversation with HR Holderman, his chief of staff. Holderman basically says to him, he says, "What's going on with the Watergate thing?" Now, I think that the way this conversation goes, you can read the transcript, suggests that Nixon didn't have a lot of prior knowledge of the burglary. He knows their his guys and he's like, "What are we going to do to fix it?" And Holderman says, "Well, it's not great, you know, the FBI are tracing the leads, they've traced them to. they're tracing them to hunt and liddy, you know, it's going to come inside the White House." And Nixon says, "Well, okay, here's how we can shut this thing down. What we'll do is we will get. we'll call the. you call the CIA, the head of the CIA, and you say to him, "Call the FBI and tell him this is a top secret kind of CIA-ish operation involving our Cuban guys. Don't follow this. It's national security, it's a whole can of worms, it's just a bit of a mess. It's also a storm in a teacup, it's nothing. Don't get into it, just back off. That's his plan." And that, of course, is the incriminating thing, because that shows that Nixon is right then trying to obstruct justice. And that's the conversation, the revelation of that conversation, which we'll get to later on. That's what really brings him down, the fact that he knew straight away and he tried to stop the investigation and his tracks. Okay, Dominic, you said later on, we've. I think we've. we've been called in 50 minutes. Have we? 43 minutes, we have. According to my. 43 minutes. Okay, well I reckon that this. I think we should stop here, and I think we should put out another episode to follow on tomorrow. Okay. And when we come back, we'll look at the attempts to. the cover-up, how it comes out, and then how the process of the the the pardon and the afterlife of Watergate. Cool. I'm very excited about tomorrow's episode now. And the reason this pleases me is that you were very rude at me, because I didn't get to the battle of the Mopoli and Salamis in time. No, you didn't say. I feel it's. But we did get to the Watergate, breaking. Come on, give me a bit of slack. Yeah, we did. We did. Yeah, you did. You're better than me. All right, so thanks for listening to this episode, guys. We will be back tomorrow with the the aftermath of the Watergate breaking. See you then. Bye-bye. One of the darkest scandals of the modern era, a billionaire financier, powerful friends, hidden networks, and questions that refuse to go away. Was Jeffrey Epstein a spy? I'm Gordon Carrera. - And I'm David Baclasky. - And we're the hosts of The Rest is Classified, the Intelligence and National Security Podcast from Gohanger. - And we've just released a gripping new series investigating whether Epstein was linked to any spy agencies. - And asking what those agencies might have known about him. - Listen or watch now on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.