RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE, 1974 THE FALL (Part 1) If You Can't Find it, Make it up, and Put it There

The Richard Nixon Experience

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In this , the season premier or our final season on "Richard Nixon and Watergate 1974 - 1994 The Fall and Re-Rise of Richard Nixon" we take a thorough examination of the actual crime that our President had been accused of by the Watergate Special Prosecution Force. It was that he authorized the payment of $75,000 in hush money to Howard Hunt. They laid out a convincing case. They met in secret with John Doar, the House Judiciary Committee's lead legal staffer. They met in ex parte meetings with Judge John Sirica, to insure that all the accumulated evidence they had was going to be moved over to the Judiciary Committee, Grand Jury secrecy rules be damned. It all went down flawlessly when the indictments were handed down on March 1, 1974.
There was just one problem. They had a gargantuan hole in the story.
There was even more than a small possibility that the money had been paid outside of a window of time when President Nixon could have even known about the blackmail threat made by Hunt.
Now that's a problem.
But you got to give it to Leon Jaworski, Henry Ruth, and the Special Prosecutor's for coming up with a creative way around the problem.
They met with John Doar late at night and over dinner at Henry Ruth's house and made a case to him. Then somebody, be it Doar on his own, or from the advice of his friend Henry Ruth, decided to go against the advice of his top advisors, Bernard Nussbaum and Hillary Rodham, and not investigate anything on their own. He would collate the evidence given to him from the Watergate Special Prosecutors and follow their road map. A road map with only one goal in mind; take down the President of the United States of America. The President they could not defeat at the ballot box.
It's all here and you will hear it in their own words, and in one case, when asked a direct question, you will even hear one prosecutor, Jill Wine Banks, attempt the artful dodge rather than answer the question "How did you know for sure Richard Nixon authorized the payment to Howard Hunt?"