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Nixon By Nixon


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For another (and pretty entertaining) version of indicting Nixon with his own words, see if you can find the UK produced "Nixon's The One", where Harry Shearer played Nixon and they recreated scenes straight off the tapes.

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For another (and pretty entertaining) version of indicting Nixon with his own words, see if you can find the UK produced "Nixon's The One", where Harry Shearer played Nixon and they recreated scenes straight off the tapes.

A couple of decades ago, Nightline did a weeklong series of "dramatic readings" of some of the taped material, with Lane Smith playing Nixon. It was pretty interesting stuff, particularly where Nixon told Haldeman to order the IRS Commissioner to audit all the top Democratic contributors, but leave the Republican ones alone.

And I take issue with one sentence of the review:

Richard Nixon, the only president to date to have resigned the office, left the White House in 1974 when it became clear the Watergate investigation would force him one way or the other to make his secret tapes available.

That's not why Nixon resigned. Nixon resigned because the release of the infamous "Smoking Gun" tape (wherein, just days after the break-in, he tells Haldeman to tell the CIA to order the FBI to drop the Watergate investigation, simultaneously ordering the CIA to commit an illegal act and blatantly abusing his power) had so enraged his supporters that his impeachment and conviction was virtually assured: all of the members of the House Judiciary committee who had voted against his impeachment publicly said they would vote for his impeachment on the House floor, and Nixon had nowhere near enough Senators (maybe a dozen out of the needed 34) to survive a Senate trial. Resignation was the only way to keep his pension, Secret Service protection, etc.
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