For eight years you’ve been a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. A loyal vice-president. Biding your time. Waiting your turn. You know the path to power. And you think you know the rules. But what happens when you discover you don’t even know how to play the game? Race for the White House s1e1: John F Kennedy & Richard Nixon, CNN 2016
1960 America, land of the free, is terrified of the Red Menace. ibid.
Kennedy does have one advantage being a candidate: his father Joseph, rich, powerful and the former ambassador to Great Britain has always wanted a son as president. ibid.
Glamour, showbizness and family – who can compete with that? ibid.
Kennedy’s illness is never mentioned again. It’s a victory for JFK’s team if not for truth. ibid.
Nixon In Hospital: Knee Infection Sidelines Vice President. ibid. Newsreel, commentary Peter Roberts
Nixon is exhausted, haggard, trailing in the polls, but then there is a ray of hope – the first ever television presidential debate. ibid.
Nixon has one last card to play – his old boss, ex-general and president Dwight D Eisenhower. ibid.
February 22 1975: The men who work closest to Richard Nixon in the White House and in politics today were sentenced to prison for their role in the Watergate cover-up. Watergate, US news, History 2019
For over two years President Richard Nixon secretly taped his White House conversations. ibid. caption
Vietnam threatened to dominate the 1968 election … Over a million Americans had been drafted. ibid. commentary
Kissinger Aide Quits in Protest Over War: Dr Morton I Halperin, one of the first men recruited by Kissinger in 1968 for a White House job, wrote Kissinger a letter of resignation last week. ibid. newspaper article
He [Nixon] intensified American bombing … They also used Napalm and cancer-causing defoliants. ibid. commentary
The Pentagon papers, seven thousand pages long, documented the history of American failure and dishonesty in Vietnam, evidence that many had known the war was unwinnable. ibid.
Chuck Colson was a ruthless ambitious young lawyer who quickly became Nixon’s favourite hatchet man. ibid.
Infuriated by leaks to the media, Nixon ordered Ehrlichman to create a secret White House organisation to identify leakers and attack them – starting with Daniel Ellsberg. ibid.
Nixon was truly loyal to Mitchell and refused to make him the fall guy. ibid.
How high up in the White House does it go? And is the president himself involved? ibid. Dan Rather
Again and again over the following months Nixon pressured his staff to attack the Democrats. ibid. commentary
The crown jewel of Nixon’s strategy was Vietnam. ibid.
Watergate just wouldn’t go away. There had already been rumours of payoffs to the Watergate burglars and suddenly they weren’t just rumours any more. ibid.
Katharine Graham and the Washington Post didn’t give an inch. ibid.
The Watergate committee took its job seriously. Starting in May 1973 its hearings produced a series of shocks, all broadcast live on national TV. ibid.
John Dean has gotten to the bottom of page 90 in a statement that is expected to to be about 245 pages … Almost every paragraph contains some sort of bombshell. Watergate II, television news
Though increasingly isolated, Nixon continued to fight including blocking requests from Ervin’s Watergate Committee. ibid.
The Senate Watergate Committee has just voted unanimously to issue a subpoena to President Nixon for the tapes that he has refused to release to the committee. ibid. television news 24 July 1973
Vice-president Agnew is under criminal investigation by federal authorities in his home state of Maryland. ibid.
For the first time in over a century Congress started thinking about impeachment. ibid.
Richard Nixon came to power because he had harnessed a new force: he called it the silent majority … It was a fragile power-base … Nixon promised to represent the silent majority … his feelings of dread … suspicious and paranoid … He told his aides to start the enemies’ list … Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head III: Money Changes Everything
Suddenly there was no fixed value for any currency anywhere in the world. There was immediate confusion … He [Nixon] went to China … a giant mysterious country that had been cut off from the world for decades. But he was going to bring it into the modern global system. ibid.
He [Nixon] had set up a conspiracy based in the White House. It was run by a group of ex-intelligence agents, and they already planning to bug, burgle, and blackmail Nixon’s opponents. ibid.
The fog of war. A backroom within a backroom. Whatever’s being plotted in there I can tell you is no good for me. You know it’s at times like this I wish I was Nixon and have every nook and cranny bugged. House of Cards US s4e9: Chapter 48, Netflix 2016
On June 17 1972 five burglars were arrested at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate office building in Washington DC. By spring of 1973, a widening investigation pointed to the possibility of a cover-up by key aides to President Nixon. The Final Days 1989 starring Lane Smith & David Ogden Stiers & Graham Beckel & Diana Bellamy & Ramon Bieri & Theodore Bikel & Susan Brown & Alan Fudge & Gregg Henry & George D Wallace et al, director Richard Pearce
It’s going to be a long and bloody struggle. But we have got to put Watergate behind us so we can get back to the things that really matter. ibid. Al
No modern president could have been less equipped by nature for political life. Painfully shy, Nixon dreaded meeting new people. ibid. Kissinger
They’re not interested in logical explanations. They are out for his blood. ibid. lawyer Fred
Things are deteriorating. The whole ball game may be over. ibid. Al to Gerald Ford
Well, Rose, there goes the presidency. ibid. Nixon