Today, the Two Mikes welcomed back Geoff Shepard, who is a distinguished lawyer and, a half-century ago, was the youngest lawyer working in President Nixon’s White House. In that position, he had a birds-eye view of the then unfolding “Water Gate” issue, which was capped with Nixon’s resignation on 8 August 1974. Recently, Mr. Shepard has been part of a team which has produced a new documentary that is primarily based on the three books about Nixon’s fall that Mr. Shepard has written, each of which is based on the government papers, personal diaries, and court documents that he discovered via research and FOIA requests – most of which have not previously seen the light of day. Mr. Shepard and his team have now taken all of that work and information and produced a documentary – running a bit more than an hour -- called “Watergate’s Secrets and Betrayals Orchestrating Nixon’s Demise”. It is now available on its own website, https://www.watergatesecrets.com and can be watched for free. The film details a process by which the U.S. Department of Justice, several federal judges, and many anti-Nixon lawyers and mainstream media did indeed cooperate and conspire to overthrow Nixon. There surely was a Watergate crime, this film is not denial of that fact. But the U.S. legal authorities, the NY Times, and the Newsweek and Time magazines were all virulently anti-Nixon. The DOJ hired a force of 92 people to set-up Nixon – 60 of them lawyers, 17 of whom had been DOJ lawyers under John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson -- and they engaged in a prolonged and surreptitious anti-Nixon campaign that today would be called “lawfare”, similar to the torturous and illegal process that Trump has experienced. For example, prosecutors in the case against Nixon met secretly with judges overseeing the case and discussed how the trial should be planned and conducted. The prosecutors, for example, met ten times with Judge Sirica, the lead judge in the case. Another revealing example is the Senate’s agreement that the investigation would focus solely on Nixon’s 1972 election campaign, and would not touch anything that dealt with the 1968, 1964, and 1960 elections, the latter, of course, has long been said to have been corrupted in favor of Kennedy. In sum, these illegal activities can only be seen as a conspiracy against Nixon, and, for the first time, the American people can now see how that attack and overthrow on the president occurred, and the story is told on the basis of unimpeachable evidence that shows how Nixon’s presidency was scuttled after an illegal campaign that we know is a process called lawfare.
--Mr. Shepard's website is https://www.shepardonwatergate.com
--Mr. Shepard's Trilogy on Nixon and the Watergate affair follow; each book can be purchased at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
--1.) The Secret Plot to Make Ted Kennedy President: The Real Watergate Conspiracy (2008)
--2.) The Real Watergate Scandal. Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot that Brought Down Nixon (2019)
--3.) The Nixon Conspiracy: Watergate and the Plot to Remove the President (2021)
Follow Freedom First Network on Pickax at https://pickax.com/freedomfirstnet
Elevate your meals with Freedom First Beef… even if you find yourself in the middle of the apocalypse! Use code TWOMIKES for 15% off and enjoy high-quality beef whenever you crave it today or tomorrow! https://freedomfirstbeef.com
Be ready for anything life throws your way with The Wellness Company's Medical Emergency Kit. Order today using code TWOMIKES for a 10% discount at https://twc.health/ffn.
Protect your financial future with precious metals! Get your FREE Gold and Silver Guide from Genesis Gold today and take control of your financial destiny! https://pickaxgold.com
Unleash the spirit of liberty in every cup with Freedom First Coffee's Founders Blend. Order now using code TWOMIKES and savor the unparalleled taste of freedom in every patriotic sip. https://freedomfirstcoffee.com
--Mr. Shepard's website is https://www.shepardonwatergate.com
--Mr. Shepard's Trilogy on Nixon and the Watergate affair follow; each book can be purchased at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
--1.) The Secret Plot to Make Ted Kennedy President: The Real Watergate Conspiracy (2008)
--2.) The Real Watergate Scandal. Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot that Brought Down Nixon (2019)
--3.) The Nixon Conspiracy: Watergate and the Plot to Remove the President (2021)
Follow Freedom First Network on Pickax at https://pickax.com/freedomfirstnet
Elevate your meals with Freedom First Beef… even if you find yourself in the middle of the apocalypse! Use code TWOMIKES for 15% off and enjoy high-quality beef whenever you crave it today or tomorrow! https://freedomfirstbeef.com
Be ready for anything life throws your way with The Wellness Company's Medical Emergency Kit. Order today using code TWOMIKES for a 10% discount at https://twc.health/ffn.
Protect your financial future with precious metals! Get your FREE Gold and Silver Guide from Genesis Gold today and take control of your financial destiny! https://pickaxgold.com
Unleash the spirit of liberty in every cup with Freedom First Coffee's Founders Blend. Order now using code TWOMIKES and savor the unparalleled taste of freedom in every patriotic sip. https://freedomfirstcoffee.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, welcome back to two mics. You're run with Colonel
Mike and doctor Michael Shore. You don't forget go to
two mics dot us and then go to Network Radio
dot us to subscribe. If you go to Apple on
two mics dot us, there's no commercials okay, And for
you who like rumble, you can click it there. Hello
around the globe, Thank you for tuning in. We appreciate
(00:25):
the comments, we appreciate the suggestions, and we want to
thank everybody for listening. Thanks for being a listener, and subscribe.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
By four three two one, Hey, welcome back. You're on
with two Mike's, Doctor Michael Schuyer and Colonel Mike. You
know who.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Michael Schuyer is New York Times best selling author, and
today we have with us again. I don't know how
many times he's been on now, but he has great
news coming up.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
We have another Is it a New York Times best
selling author? I believe it is. It's Jeff Shepherd, who
has the Watergate trilogy series out youngest Attorney in the
Richard Nixon administration and now we're on fifty years of Watergate.
Welcome back, Jeff Shephard.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Mike it's good to be with you. Thank you.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
I feel like an old familiar friend and talking to
you and your listeners.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
This is great.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
All right, thank you sir, Thank you for coming back.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
We know you were just on a.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Popular show recently and we're happy to get you back on.
So tell us there's a lot of things going on
with Jeff Sheper and Watergate, and there's the documentary, so
we'd like to speak about that.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
Sure, we'll start with the idea that August eighth is
the fiftieth anniversary of Nixon's announced resignation. What he said
in a address to the nation from the Oval Office
was that he would resign effective at noon tomorrow, which
(02:26):
was the ninth. But we count the anniversary from his
announcement because on the ninth he says goodbye to the staff,
gets on the helicopter, goes to Andrews Air Force Base,
gets on Air Force one, and halfway across the country,
roughly Wichita, Kansas, his resignation becomes effective and he lands
(02:51):
at Ottaora Marine Base in Orange County, a private citizen,
and Air Force one is no longer Air Force one,
it's just a government airplane. So fifty years later, lots
of essays, lots of reminiscences people who were around, and
(03:11):
there are there are a number of people who are
still alive telling and retelling their stories, and I'm amongst them.
The time I spent on the Nixon White House staff
was the high point of my life. It ended badly.
I served as deputy counsel on his Watergate defense team.
(03:33):
I saw everything from the inside, and then beginning about
two thousand and three, I started doing research. I learned
that the internal documents of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force
were available at National Archives, and I started doing research.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
And I've been down there a lot.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
I calculated recently I'd probably spent twenty seven thousand hours
since two thousand and three researching these documents. My friends,
my friends from the White House, have gone on to
other things, and my wife, who was on the White
House staff with me, and this very tolerant lady, has
(04:22):
pointed out maybe I could move on, But I keep
finding things, discovering new connections, realizing what was going on
behind the scenes. And I'm devoting a lot of time
to telling that story. So if I could let me
recount Watergate, recount what the conventional wisdom was and then
(04:46):
tell you what I think really happened. Oh, it been
burst into public view on June seventeenth, nineteen seventy two,
when five people were caught red handed in the offices
of the Watergate off building rented by the Democratic National
Committee for Cubans and a retired CIA wireman. That burglary
(05:15):
was connected to the President's reelection committee. The Committee for
the Reelection of the President called CREEP CRP. I know,
I'll be careful of your name.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Yes exactly, yes, you do.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
Now we call it CRP. Other people call it CREEP.
And then it turned out there's a big investigation, long investigation.
It turned out there were two other people at CREEP
who were indicted on September fifteenth, nineteen seventy two, along
with the five burglars. So there's one fact that is irrefutable.
(05:56):
There really was a burglary. They were caught red handed.
The trouble was, they wondered who wilse knew, who knew
this was going to occur, and some pretty senior people
might have known it was going to occur, So there
was a cover up, and the cover up was protecting
(06:18):
the higher ups at the committee to re elect the president. Now,
the cover up was run by the president's lawyer, a
young man named John Dene and when the and he
was heavily involved, he was assigned the responsibility for handling
(06:40):
the affairs connected to the break in and the investigation.
But he first assured the people on the White House
staff that nobody then on the White House staff was
involved in the burglary. People at Creep were heavily involved,
but people were caught and there was an investigation. But
(07:04):
it turned out that he interpreted his assignment to protect
the people at CREEP as well as the people on
the White House staff. So in the course of his
cover up, he infected people on the White House staff.
And then when the cover up collapsed, and it should
have collapsed it was wrong, he turned on his former
(07:27):
colleagues on the White House staff and said, wait a second,
there really was a cover up. I know Iran it
and these more senior people that worked directly for President Nixon,
they were in on it too. My word against theirs.
This isn't dantepe but I'm telling you they were in it,
and the only way you can prosecute them is with
(07:51):
me as the primary witness. Okay, so there really was
a cover up. But the difficulty is who was responsible.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Now.
Speaker 5 (08:02):
I ran across an oral history taken by the National
Archives in two thousand and seven of Angelo Leno, the
lead FBI agent throughout the entire Watergate investigation, and he
was asked about the cover up and he said ninety
(08:23):
to ninety five percent of the cover up actions were
taken by John Dene. So here's the lead investigator. It
was all Dean. Now, the prosecutors wouldn't give Dean immunity
because they said he was too involved, but the Irvin
Committee did. The Urban Committee was the Senate select committee
(08:45):
to investigate the break in, and they were looking for
witnesses and drama, and John Dene's democratically connected lawyer worked
out a deal where they gave him immunity and the
Irvan Committee made John their star witness. So your listeners
(09:05):
and your viewers who know anything about Watergate know it
from the televised hearings of the Senate Irvin Committee, which
was about as one sided as the J six Committee.
There was a Democrat majority. They voted along party lines
not to investigate any other presidential election sixty eight or
(09:28):
sixty four or back in nineteen sixty when many people
think Nixon was robbed of the presidency, they'd only look
at the seventy two reelection and they would feature John
dene as their star witness because he was going to
testify against the higher ups. That's where we get to
(09:52):
really was a break in, Really was the cover up?
Nixon really did resign. He resigned August eighth, nineteen seventy four.
The importance of the anniversary is that we've prepared a
documentary to publicize and contain commentary on these documents that
(10:20):
I have uncovered.
Speaker 6 (10:22):
Where would Jeff, where is that going to be seen?
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Is that just going to be online on cable TV?
How would people get to see it?
Speaker 5 (10:29):
Well, we want them to see it.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
It's going to be on its own website.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (10:36):
The name of the documentary is Watergate Secrets, No Watergates
Secrets and Betrayals Orchestrating Nixon's Demise. Watergate Secrets and Betrayals
Orchestrating Nixon's Demise. It's available and will be on the eighth.
It will be it will be on that website, Watergatesecrets
(10:58):
dot com. On the website, there'll be some background and
a link to the full documentary and.
Speaker 7 (11:05):
How long would be How long is it?
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Don't arry how many hours? Is it an hour or two?
Speaker 5 (11:09):
It's just a little bit over an hour. As you
mentioned in my introduction, I've written three books, I've given
dozens of presentations, I've written all kinds of essays, and
water gets complicated. It's hard to go through. But what
we've done in the documentaries is do our dead level
(11:30):
of us to simplify and to focus on these documents
I've uncovered that show secret meetings, secret memos, and secret
coordination between the prosecutors, the judges, and the Congressional Democrats.
So that's what we're trying to illustrate for your party.
(11:53):
Let me go through that just for a second for
the benefit of your listeners, and war getting went on
for two and a half years.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
Picture a triangle.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
At each of the corners of the triangle, each of
the angles is one of the branches of government, executive, legislative,
and judicial. For the executive branch, there are the two
original special prosecutors and all of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force,
(12:23):
and they were I've uncovered documents that show they were
secretly meeting with Watergate judges and secretly meeting with members
of the House Impeachment, with the Senator Van Committee, and
with the Senate Judiciary Committee. Then go down to one
(12:44):
of the angles, go down to the angle on the
on the right side, and that's the judicial branch. And
there are three judges. Judge John Sirica who presided over
the Watergate trials. There were two of them, Judge Gerhard
Gazelle who presided.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Over the Armers trials.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
That was the break in by the same team that
got caught in the Watergate hotel much much earlier. Because
of the Pentagon papers, they were prosecuted, but they met
secretly with that judge, and they met secretly. Archibald Cox
met secretly with the Chief Judge of the DC Circuit Court,
(13:22):
David Basilon. And we have proof. We put it in
the documentary. You can see it. So you had secret communications.
I can show you written proof documents at the National
Archives that detail at least ten meetings with the special
(13:42):
prosecutors and Judge Serrica, and three or four with Gerhard Gazelle.
And just so you make this clear, judges aren't supposed
to meet in secret with one side without the other
side being present.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
But it was going on all time.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
Judge Serrica would call the prosecutors down and have a
grand old time talking about developments.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
They'd go.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
So, let me ask you a question, sir.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Don't you think that that's probably going on with what
mister Trump has gone through in the past couple of years.
Speaker 6 (14:16):
I'm sure there's no secrets.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Yes, but I want you to I want you to
bring that up after I finish my other angle.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
I got to do the legislative branch, and then go
ahead and we'll go today. The Senate Judiciary was in
touch with the prosecutors in secret.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
The Irvin Committee.
Speaker 5 (14:36):
Was in touch with the prosecutors, the Urban Committee, the
Chief of Staff, Chief Counsel Sam Dash one of his
best friends was John Sirica. He'd go down see John
Sirika all the time. Again, totally improper. Absolutely if it
were known, If these meetings were known, these judges couldn't
have tried the cases. These prosecutors would be taken off
(14:59):
the cases, and the legislatures would have the legislators would
have to explain what on earth they were doing messing
with legal process. So what I have uncovered fifty years
later is an irrefutable pay per trail of documents written
(15:20):
by the prosecutors themselves come to today. There's stuff going
on that we suspect is improper their indications, but we
don't have the kind of irrefutable proof that I uncovered
in Watergate. So what I say is, look, there are
(15:43):
four terms popular today, deep state, balts, news, bacon, narrative,
and lawfair. Most important is lawfair, new word, never heard
it before, the use of the criminal prosecutution to wipe
out your political enemy. That certainly is what's going on today.
(16:05):
That's why those words are popular. What I've shown and
what the documents I've uncovered show is that law fair's
big bang, its creation, Its first use to ruin a president,
to void an election was in Watergate. We just didn't
have the term. So maybe someday, maybe maybe five years,
(16:31):
maybe ten years, documents or books will start to surface
that describe what's going on today that we suspect may
be coordinated. You know, if Trump warn't a billionaire, he'd
be bankrupt. Absolutely, that's the only thing that's saving him
and different press. Go back to Watergate, there were only
(16:57):
three networks, NBCABC and CBS. There were two very powerful
weekly news magazines, Time and Newsweek, and there was one
dominant newspaper, the New York Times. All five of those
organizations six were headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, within six blocks
(17:21):
of each other, so you not and there was no
Fox News, there was no.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
Talk radio.
Speaker 5 (17:29):
There was no alternative, no podcasts, nothing, no alternative. There
was one narrative, and the narrative came to you from
New York City. So we don't happen alike. There's these
lots of us don't happen alike the New York point
of view today, but it was the only point of
(17:51):
view back then. Now, as we warm up to this
fiftieth anniversary, there are lots of groups, you know, celebrating
Nixon's demise and how famous they were and how wonderfully
they They never addressed my documents then, never. I'm never
included in those panels. But I've heard them grouse about
the idea that if social media existed, if there was
(18:15):
a diversity of views in the media back then, Nixon
would have survived. And they don't say it fondly. They
say it because they're so resentful today that Trump is surviving.
It's there's this famous quote from Mark Twain that history
(18:37):
doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. And what's going on
today has parallels to what was going on fifty years ago,
but we didn't know it. There was no news covering it.
The Salem Network didn't exist, you didn't get talk radio,
(18:58):
you didn't have alternate points of view, and if there
had been those, it's possible now the other thing that's happened,
and this is.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
What drives me on.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
Caches of documents, internal secret prosecution documents have surfaced in
just the past ten years. The three top prosecutors left
early before the Watergate convictions of the cover up trial,
which come at the end of the year. They left
before that, and they took their internal memos with them.
(19:35):
Now today we're pretty sensitive about that. We investigate and
we indict people who we think wrongly took records from
the National Archives. But in that era, they just took them,
didn't ask anybody, and they didn't start to surface till
those folks died. So leon Juworski left first. He took
(19:57):
all of his records back to Texas with him. When
he he gave them to Baylor, along with a prominent
career in his law firm Fulbrighton Jeorski. He was one
of the young prosecutors at Nuremberg. Guy had a full career.
He gave his papers to Baylor Law School, his alma mater.
(20:18):
Baylor took their sweet time sorting them out and put
them on display for researchers. And then it turned out
there were grand jury minutes and there were other internal
documents that shouldn't be public. So they were sent up
to the National Archives, and the archivist told me they
went on a six month all hands on deck, and
(20:39):
they went through and they redacted names that shouldn't become public,
and they sorted them out and they were ready to
make them public. And he said, you know, you have
a Foyer request Ritdom Information Act requests and it's not
precisely on point because nobody knew these documents existed, but
we're going to produce them in response to your Foyer requests.
(21:01):
So I was the first person to go through the documents.
And they described these secret meetings with the judges. They
described the suppression of evidence that would have been helpful
to the defense. They detail their decisions on who to
indict and who not to indict, that somehow followed party lines,
(21:22):
and it's there in great detail. So my second book
came out in twenty fifteen, and it's based on these
Jeworsky documents. One of my footnotes said, you know the
number two guy, James Voorrenberg. He volunteered to write the
report when they were through the special prosecutors. He hired
(21:44):
all staff, and he took detailed notes at each staff
meeting so later he could look back and write the reports.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
Well.
Speaker 5 (21:54):
He took his staff meeting notes with him back to
Harvard Law School when he returned earned and ultimately he
became dean of Harvard Law School.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
And he died, and I'd go up to the law school.
I graduated from there.
Speaker 5 (22:07):
I'd go to where the papers were and I would say, well,
I want to see his papers. Well, they aren't ready.
You can't see him yet. Shot a footnote in my
manuscript that said Harvard refuses to open Vornberg's papers. And
I called him just to be sure the footnote was
still accurate. Oh, we've opened them, Come on up. So
I went up and I went through, for the first
(22:29):
time anybody went through James Voorrenberg's staff meeting notes, and
he describes these decisions and why they were made, and
the internal fights between the people who wanted to indict
everybody and the people who said, you don't have enough
proof to do that, which case would be brought first,
(22:49):
why Democrats didn't get indicted and why Republicans did on
much weaker evidence. And here are these unbelievable memos in
Vornberg's own handwritten notes, So that figured into my book.
And then there's a third guy, and his name is
Phil Locavara. Now he's still alive, but in twenty twenty
(23:13):
he took his papers with him fox loads and he
gave them to archives in twenty twenty, and I sorted
through them, and Phil wrote interesting demos. One regrets they
let Sireka appoint himself to do the second trial. One
regrets that Gordon Letty wasn't told that Nixon wanted him
(23:37):
to tell the truth and come out and was willing
to meet with his lawyer to emphasize it, and they
didn't tell Letty that. Another has to do with the
indictment of Chuck Coulson. Chuck was Nixon's greatest public defender,
controversial god, but he wasn't that involved in the cover up.
(24:00):
But In phil Lockovar's notes, he says, but Jeworski was
bound and determined to indict Coulson, and Lakafar went so
far as to write a memo afterwards saying, you can't
do this, that this does not meet our standard. Everybody
(24:21):
in that room didn't want Colson to be indicted, except Jeworski.
And the quote in the notes is Jeorkshy said, I
know the evidence is weak, but I'd really like to
nail the guy. You can't do You talk about being
above the law, you talk about denials of due process.
It's all in these papers, all black and white. Now
(24:42):
someday same thing may develop from the J six committee.
Remember they would not look into why there was no
security on Capitol Hill that day. They would not They
lost their records on some people. They that there were
two nominal Republicans, but they weren't Trump supporters. Trump and
(25:05):
nobody on the committee, and Nixon had nobody on the
Urban Committee. I mean it was a it was a
one sided deal. Four Democrats, three Republicans. But low Wiker,
who was nominally a Republican, announced publicly he went on
the committee with the intent of sinking Nixon so well.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
He was from Connecticut, wasn't he low walker? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (25:29):
And he lost the Republican primary because he was so
liberal and ultimately ran as a independent.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Could I ask one question, jet sure did know?
Speaker 6 (25:42):
Did Colson know about this before he passed away?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Did he find out about this?
Speaker 5 (25:50):
Full disclosure requires that I say. Colson wasn't my favorite guy. Okay,
he was too rambunctious. He was going for red meat
in building Nixon up. And I remember I lived a
charmed life. I was in law school during the campaign,
(26:10):
so I only was involved in governance issues, law and
order after you've been elected. I was always hatched, so
I never participated in a campaign, and Chuck was almost
always in campaign mode. And I thought when he converted,
you remember that day when he went and announced he
(26:30):
was embracing Jesus Christ. He was going to plead guilty.
I thought I was a fraud. I thought it was
another Colson fraud. And then years later he found prison Fellowship.
He devotes full time to advocating rights for prisoners. And
I wrote him a letter and said, Chuck, I owe
you an apology. Here's one thousand dollars. I doubted you,
(26:52):
and I'm sorry for it. And I got a note
back and said, Jeff, You're not the only one.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
You know.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
My thinking is sincere we sent him my first book
came out in two thousand and eight, and this is
before ncovered this really bad stuff in twenty thirteen. So
I sent him my first book, The Secret Plot to
Make Ted Kennedy President, and it got a note back
and he says, you know, Jeff, the last thing in
(27:20):
the world I wanted to do was read about Watergate.
But I started reading your book over the fourth of
July and I couldn't put it down. And it reminded
me of what they did to us, you know, it
just how sour it was and how one sided it was.
And he didn't know the half of it. He President Nixon,
(27:44):
Bob Bob Holdeman, and John Erlickman, and half of Nixon's
White House stamp went to their graves Nixon died in
nineteen ninety four, went to their graves without knowing or
really having any inklean of this paper trail that I've uncovered.
Let me give you another another example, and then what
(28:08):
we'll go to what I call the call to action,
and then I'll take your questions, Okay, sir. The special
prosecution force, one sided, heavily political, recruited because they hated
Nixon that the Table of Organization and Employment envisioned ninety
(28:29):
two hires from scratch. Sixty of them turned out to
be lawyers, the top seventeen of which had worked together
in Robert Kennedy's Department of Justice under Jack Kennedy or
Lyndon Johnson. So you had what I characterized as a
constitutional inversion. The people who lost power when Nixon was
(28:54):
elected in nineteen sixty eight were now in full charge
of the investigation and prosecution resources of the federal government,
even though Nixon was president, and they were operating with
total independence from within the Department of Justice, no supervision.
And that came about because Elliott Richardson, the replaced Attorney General,
(29:19):
was such a weak man and wouldn't defend next and
he didn't want to be Attorney general anyway. Then he
happily gave Way all the power. So he ends up
being a great hero to the Democrats. The prosecutors end
up being great heroes to the Democrats. Time magazine makes
Judge Sirica It's Man of the Year. I mean, unbelievable.
(29:41):
This is the most reversed judge in the DC Circuit.
His's massive violation of due process, a petty tyrant. Every
ruling is against the Nixon White House. It got sabad
that Archibald Cox was worried in these cases that they'd
(30:03):
win a trial because Sirrica was so one sided, but
lose on appeal because the appellate court was pretty liberal,
and they overruled Sirica a lot of times because of
his denial of rights, due process rights to defendants. So
Archibaldcox took it upon himself to call secretly on Judge
(30:26):
David Basilon and urge Basilon to hear the case in
a peculiar way so he could stack the deck of
the judges on appeal and be sure Sirrica would never
be overturned on appeal. And he did that, and in
all twelve appeals from criminal processes from Syrica's cases, they're
(30:51):
heard by the full nine panel of judges, which featured
a liberal majority. So Sirrica's upheld outrageous conduct. He's upheld
in every instant and the only problem for Basilona and
the only reason we know this, aside from the obvious
fact that the cases were all heard in this very
(31:13):
unique way is there was a law clerk in the room,
a guy named Ronald Carr, and he told one person
happened to be a judge about to be sworn into
the same DC courts years later, and he said, you know,
there was this one ugly incident where Cox came to
(31:36):
see Basilon and the judge he told was DC Circuit
Judge Larry Silverman. And Larry told me, and I got
to tell you, I was on that like ticks on
a dog. But Larry didn't want to come out in
public and be the one that got blamed. So it
wasn't until September about a year ago, almost two years
(32:00):
ago now, that we did a Federalist Society symposium that
Larry wanted to do, and he came out and retold
that story. It's on tape from Larry, and he's elderly,
and he's crotchety, and he's very weak, but he told
his story and he died three weeks later. So we've
(32:24):
got that fastened down. The chief judge of the DC
Circuit was involved in stacking the decks on appeal. You
talk about being above the law, so if I may,
and then we'll go to questions. We've got this documentary,
Watergate Secrets and Betrayals Orchestrating Nixon's Demise. It's on that website,
(32:50):
Watergatesecrets dot com and it'll be posted on the eighth.
So you got to see the full documentary. Can rent
it or you can buy it, whatever you want to do.
And what we want is people to be as upset
as we are in light of all these events, and
we have a call to action. We want two things
(33:10):
where these are non negotiable demands. One, we've never learned
in fifty years what the prosecutors told the Grandeurs in
secret to convince them to name Nixon a co conspirator
in the Watergate cover up? What did they tell them?
(33:34):
I got the roadmap unsealed. That was their secret report
to the Hill that was unsealed in twenty eighteen. My
court petition won, but the judge that unsealed the roadmap
declined to unseal the transcript of what the special prosecutor
told the Grandeurs. Now, when he did it, we went
(33:58):
crazy and said, look that the Grandeury has no right
to name a sitting president an unindicted co conspirator. We
want to know what he told them, and they said, well, oh,
that's secret. You can't you can't know that. And we said, well,
how can we protect the president from what he's been
accused of? When you sent material to the heel that's
(34:24):
still sealed until the roadmap was unsealed in twenty eighteen,
Nixon's defense team didn't know what the specific allegations were,
just like the prosecution in New York where Bragg's lawyers
didn't name the statutes Trump was alleged to a violated
(34:49):
until their summation. Unbelievable, but that's what they did to Nixon. Well,
we're asking now, fifty years later, unsealed that transcript. We
don't think you gave them any specifics. We've seen the
draft of the remarks. We think Jaworsky went into in
front of that grand jury and said, we've shown you
(35:11):
stuff for the last ten months. It's time for action.
We think you should name him an unindicted co conspirator
without any specificity. Second thing we want. Second thing in
light of all this wrongdoing, I've uncovered dozens and dozens
and dozens of documents. They're all on my website. Some
of them are in detail in the documentary, but they're
(35:34):
all posted on my websit all publicly available at the
National Archives. We want a Department of Justice investigation of
the wrongdoing that their attorneys did in securing those convictions,
because we think a fair review will say these convictions
in the cover up trial, and many of the convictions
(35:54):
in the burglary trial were obtained in outright violation of
the guarantees of our fifth and sixth Amendments, and they
cannot stand now. I've tried to do that with this
Department of Justice. I put in complaints, I've written letters.
I begged them to let me come and explain my
documents and tell them what I found. And after a year,
(36:18):
this special unit at the Department of Justice, the Office
of Professional Responsibility, whose only job is to investigate allegations
of wrongdoing by Justice Department lawyers, they said, this is
too long ago. We're busier with more wow, and we
don't take responsibility for the special prosecutors because after Watergate
(36:43):
there was a new statute that set independent counsel up independently,
so we deem we deemed them to have been operating
independently when they did what you say they did.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
We won't look into it.
Speaker 5 (36:57):
And I sent them and it's on my website a
letter back, and I said, you know, here's their letter
head and here's their internal memo letter head, and they
both say Department of Justice. These people were enforcing Department
of Justice laws with Department of Justice authority. You can't
deny they were there. The only reason we could challenge
(37:22):
them was extraordinary impropriety that was in the regulations that
set them up. So our hope is to demand a
justice review and look at all these outrageous documents. We
didn't get it under this administration, this Department of Justice.
We sure hope we get it in a new administration.
(37:46):
Lady one last then, yet now, Larry Sibman, this very
very prominent judge, was Deputy Attorney General at toward the Enderwallgate,
and I was the liaison from the White House. We
talked every say, the Department of Justice in the White
House have to be in touch. Doesn't matter how much
they hate each other, doesn't matter how much stinching there is,
(38:07):
They've got to talk. Larry and I talked every day.
So when I came out with my third book, The
Nixon Conspiracy, in twenty twenty, one I went to see Larry,
who's now on the DC circuit elderly Crotchety, and he says,
what do you want, Jeff? I mean, he's a good friend.
(38:28):
What do you want? And I said, I want you
to tell Merrick Garland, who served on the court with you.
Then I know what I'm talking about and people should
hear me out because of what I've uncovered. And Larry said,
I'm not talking to Marek. I don't like what he's doing.
I'm ashamed of him, and I refuse to talk to him.
(38:50):
What else do you want, Jeff? He says, you know
what y'all to do is get the Federalist Society put
on a symposium. You know, I'm on the board. I'll
talk to him. And I said, well, will you participate?
This all happened the exact same conversation and he looks
off and he knows what I'm talking about. I'm talking
(39:12):
about that story he's told me about Judge Baslon. And
he looks off and he says, yes, I'll participate in
that symposium. You go get it set up.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
So we do it.
Speaker 5 (39:25):
And he said, before we went, you know, here's all
the material, here's what we're going to discuss everybody's ready.
And he says, now, what do you want me to
say other than tell that story? And I said that Larry,
that that will be more than enough. So on film
we have him telling him the Judge Basilon story. Let
me stop there. We got a documentary. It's coming out
(39:48):
on the eighth. We want people to sign up for
to be kept informed. Come on, look at that documentary.
Decide if you want to pitch in and give your
name to our effort to call on the Department of
Justice to unseal these remarks to the grandeurs from fifty
years ago and to launch an independent investigation of the
(40:10):
conduct of their lawyers in securing improperly securing these convictions.
What you guys got to say?
Speaker 3 (40:18):
Mike, let me just ask this real quick, because I
know you probably have a few What was the exception
to get this documentary?
Speaker 2 (40:25):
How did you get it financed to put it together
for you?
Speaker 3 (40:29):
I just looked it up and I saw the narrator
as someone from a TV.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
John great guy, John Hurley, It'll be great.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:40):
I was contacted about twenty seventeen by a gentleman named
George Bugatti and George said, I want to do a
stage play based on your book.
Speaker 4 (40:53):
And I'm no connection with Broadway or anything like that.
Speaker 5 (40:57):
You know, he's a he's an entertainer, he's a concert pianist,
he's a playwright. So I agree, and we've got kind
of an informal partnership. He's the creative guy, the talented guy,
and I'm the researcher. I'm the basis for what we're
going to do. So the way the stage play evolved
(41:18):
was an imaginary impeachment trial that Nixon might have gotten
if he hadn't resigned. It's called Trial on the Potomac.
It played with Rich Little playing Nixon in the play.
The audience was treated as senators. They got to vote
after the play. The only difference in our play was
(41:41):
the documents I've uncovered came out during the trial. That's
what made it so much fun. If we knew then
what we know now, would Nixon have been convicted. We
let the audience vote. We put on twenty eight performances.
Only one got a two thirds majority to remove him
(42:05):
from office, but several of the performances a majority thought
Nexon should still be convicted. Well, to go from a book.
In all these secret documents down to a stage play.
You've got to pick your words very carefully. You've got
to be able to summarize what went on and very
(42:26):
very carefully construed dialogue. And that's where George's genius came
into effect. Well, having done that, facing the fiftieth anniversary coming,
we decided to do a serious documentary and we were
able to get John O'Hurley, who's a prominent spokesperson. He
was un Seinfeld and he does this dog show on Thanksgivings.
(42:50):
He's a very thoughtful guy. He's our narrator. And then
we got judges Andrew Nipolitano and Larry's and Paul Diamond
judges to comment on these documents, and law professors to
comment on the documents, and we extracted materials in a
(43:12):
serious way, and we contrast what was going on behind
the scenes with what.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
Was going on in public.
Speaker 5 (43:24):
And we raised private capital to be able to put
it on. But you know, we're not wealthy, we're not Trump,
and we did it on a shoe string. And most
people involved, Nixon, Willums, the playwright, the camera people, they're
they're doing it on their own time. I mean, this
(43:44):
is I think the the budget was two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars for the documentary. You're talking You're cheap,
and you look at it and it's beautifully it's professionally done.
Speaker 4 (43:57):
It makes sense.
Speaker 5 (43:58):
There's there's musical themes, there's outtakes. I think your listeners
will be moved, and it makes the case in an
hour and ten minutes of what was done fifty years ago.
Now we hope to go further. We want to be
given interviews like yours all over the place to sound
(44:19):
the alarm of what we've uncovered. That's more credible because
of what seems to be going on today, people's minds
have opened up and they're particularly with lawfare. They're willing
to consider maybe prosecutors cheap, Maybe judges aren't as objective
as you've been told. Maybe there's a different reality today,
(44:45):
and that raises the possibility there was a different reality
back then, especially with Shepherd on the side. Extra extra
read all about it. Internal documents now exposed screaming from
the rooftops.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Excellent, Mike, go ahead.
Speaker 7 (45:06):
Previously when we spoke, sir, wasn't there an angle of
getting Ted Kennedy into the presidency?
Speaker 5 (45:14):
Also yes, And that's the theme of my first book,
back from two thousand and eight, and that's before I
discovered all these internal documents. My pitch is that the
Kennedy supporters, loyal, longtime supporters of the Kennedy political dynasty,
(45:39):
wanted back into power, a restoration of Camelot.
Speaker 4 (45:43):
You know.
Speaker 5 (45:44):
They came to Washington, bright eyed and bushy tailed in
nineteen sixty one to join Jack's administration and it was fun.
You didn't have to go to Wall Street and make money.
Came to Washington and you exercised power, and it was
addicted Potomac fever. And then he gets taken from them
illegitimately by assassination, and then they make Lyndon Johnson president.
(46:10):
And in these people's view, it should have been Bobby Kennedy.
He was the second most powerful guy in Washington. He
was the president's brother, he was attorney general. But Lyndon
becomes president. But he could have fixed it if he
picked Bobby to be his vice president, then we'd be
back in the right set of rails.
Speaker 4 (46:33):
But he didn't.
Speaker 5 (46:34):
He picked Hubert Humphrey. So Johnson is going to run
for election in nineteen sixty four and I'm sorry. Re
election in nineteen sixty eight, and he's challenged by Gene McCarthy,
and Bobby jumps into the race. He'd gone off to
(46:56):
New York become a senator, but he jumps into the race.
He's going to challenge Lyndon Johnson. Restoration of Camelot is
at hand. Bobby gets assassinated in Los Angeles right after
winning the California primary. In the run up to the
sixty eight election, there isn't time to substitute. Bobby's the
(47:19):
last of the four Kennedy brothers. He's much younger than
his brothers. He's not the man his brothers were, but
he's a Kennedy. And if you're going to have a
restoration of Camelot with all these people who want back
into power, you gotta have a Kennedy in the Oval office.
Speaker 4 (47:39):
Now.
Speaker 5 (47:39):
Because of Chapiquittic, well one, he couldn't be substance sixty eight,
it was too late, and he couldn't run in seventy
two because of Chapiquittick. When Mary Joe Kopetney drowned in
the pond, Okay, so he had to sit that one out.
But the theory was he could run in nineteen seventy six,
and they set out out, the Special Prosecution Force and
(48:02):
all their Democrat friends set out to pave the way
for Teddy Kennedy. And my first book goes at it
from three different points of view. One, they ruined Nixon
and his people wiped out. Now Nixon resigns in disgrace.
Two dozen members of his administration are convicted, go to jail.
They're wiped out. Second thing they did was they sought
(48:26):
to cripple the Republican money machine. Now, there was an
effort in the off year election nineteen seventy where the
Nixon White House channeled money to conservatives. Remember, there are
a lot of Southern Democrats, and we liked them. There
was an ideological majority. They sent irs, this is the
(48:48):
Special Prosecution Force, sent IRS and FBI agents to interview
one hundred and fifty Republican donors to the nineteen seventy effort.
It was called the Townhouse Project. Now, I got to
tell you, if you're a big money guy and you're
used to giving money for campaigns and the IRS comes
(49:11):
to see you to ask you about that money, you're
not going to be given again. In nineteen seventy six,
so they outraised us in seventy six. And the final
thing was, this is a special prosecution force. Somehow they
launched investigations into every potential Republican candidate who would oppose Teddy.
(49:34):
In nineteen seventy six, Jerry Ford's president had a huge
investigation because he had to be confirmed by both houses
to be substitute president. The prosecutors got a hold of
that and started leaking stuff. His vice president was Nelson Rockefeller.
They launched investigations of Nelson Rockefeller, nothing to do with Watergate.
(49:56):
And then Ford decides, you have a better vice president,
Bob Dole, Senator Bob bil Kansas. They launched an investigation
of Bob Dole of Kansas and John Connolly, he was
thought to be a possible contender. They actually indicted John Connelly.
But the most significant was Ronald Reagan, three thousand miles away,
(50:18):
governor of California. And there's a letter I uncovered. It's
in my first book, where the prosecutor says to the
special prosecutor, just to follow up our conversation, we're proceeding
with our investigation of Ronald Reagan. And the theory was
(50:40):
Reagan may have improperly influenced the government in his effort
to get to in Ross Perrot's effort to get government
contracts for EDS on medicare computing. And they thought that
(51:00):
he may have improperly lobbied the Reagan administration. But by god,
having nothing to do with Watergate, nothing to do with Washington, DC,
but by god, they were going to ruin them. Well,
the whole effort was to bag Tednedy and then Teddy
doesn't run. Remember Teddy's not the man his brothers were.
(51:21):
And it wasn't so much he wanted to be president
as it was hundreds and hundreds of alumni from the
original Jack Kennedy administration who wanted back into power. Power
and Potomac fever. They drive you to do crazy things.
(51:43):
And if it's a tie, you know, we've had times
when one side had two thirds of the House or
two thirds of the Senate and the votes weren't close.
But if it's a tie, you fight harder, and you're
willing to do things both sides, things you shouldn't do
because you want so badly to win and be back
(52:06):
into or to preserve today it's to preserve your power,
and you're afraid you're gonna lose it. Now, Nixon had
already been reelected landslide reelection, and they voided that to
get back into power. They crippled Nixon's re election biggest
(52:27):
margin in US history, and two years later the guy
resigns in discretion.
Speaker 4 (52:32):
Now we learn why.
Speaker 5 (52:34):
We learned what they did to him in secret abuse,
massive abuse of due process guarantees in our fifth and
sixth amendments.
Speaker 6 (52:45):
You know what I see that's really good, Jeff, And
it's popping up a lot on the YouTube is they
have these shorts, these YouTube shorts which are like a
minute or so, and there are a lot of Nixon shorts.
Now you know, we other into viewers. They're really really good.
Speaker 5 (53:01):
You're seeing social media effort. That's what that's called. It's
a foundation and a little bit on us teasers about
the documentary. But after the documentary is released on the eighth,
you know, it's kind of ebar good up until then,
(53:22):
you'll see ours and we're going to be putting just
exactly what you're saying. We're going to extract things from
the documentary that entice people to want to learn more.
The only the thing that can be said about me,
which is only fair is I'm a great researcher, may
(53:43):
and I have found stuff that will hurl your hair,
but it turns out on me very poor salesman. I
think there's documents for a long time, but I haven't
been real good at convincing other people to read them,
particularly because people don't want to learn more about Richard
Nixon fifty years later. There's a quote in my first
(54:05):
book from Carl Seger, and he says, one of the
sad lessons of history is that once people have been bamboozled,
they don't want it corrected. It makes them uncomfortable and
embarrassed that they were taking advantage of and that's kind
of what's happened to Watergate. I've put these books out,
(54:26):
I've got these documents, and it's very hard to get attention.
But what we learned from the stage play and what
we've learned from doing this documentary is if you can
put it into more manageable bites. Now, the public's willing
to spend an hour watching something, particularly if it's entertaining.
(54:49):
They aren't willing to weighe through hundreds of pages. I
have not on the screen, but I have in my office,
these lateral file drawers, sixteen linear feet of Watergate files,
and every book back over my right shoulder, every book
(55:10):
that's ever been written by somebody who was really there.
Speaker 4 (55:14):
I don't care what they write today.
Speaker 5 (55:15):
I don't care if they're using secondary sources and they've
got a new interpretation. I want to know what the
people said who were really players during Watergate. You look
at them and you read what they say, and it's
not what they're telling you. It's not what the news
(55:36):
is telling you. That take the tapes. You know, I
transcribe the tapes hundreds of hours back when I was
on the White House staff, transcribing the White House tapes. Well,
people talk about what's on them without ever having listened
to them, without ever having read the transcripts. They don't
(55:56):
know what they're talking about. They just pick up what
somebody else said. For example, it said on March twenty first,
when John Dene goes in and says there's a cancer
on the presidency, that Nixon approved the payment of blackmail.
Except he doesn't. John Dene never said he did. He
(56:17):
came out of that meeting, never said to the prosecutors,
you know, Nixon ordered that done, I grant you. Nixon
flirts with the idea. He says, well, if it's a
million dollars, I know where we can get it, But
he doesn't order that money apart, he doesn't order a
(56:38):
payoff of Hunt's blackmail. The decision they go around. It's
an hour and a half. They go round and round.
Do we got this thing out and hunker down? Or
do we call for a renewed investigation and toss the
people that creep to the wolves because they're at real risk.
(56:59):
And the only conclusion from that meeting is get Mitchell,
John Mitchell, who's gone back to New York, get him
down here. We'll all get in the same room, Pauloman Erlikman,
Dean Mitchell, and Nixon, and we'll decide what the heck
to do. And that later afternoon because it's also on tape,
(57:20):
and the next morning Nixon's decision is clear. I'm calling
for a renewed investigation. I will send everybody either to
the Urban Committee in public or to the Grand Jury
in private without claim of executive privilege. Now, John John Dene,
my lawyer, you go to Camp David, and you write
(57:43):
up a report that reduces to writing what you told
me on March twenty first, and I'll use that report
to call for a new investigation. Very presidential, the right answer,
and what happened. Well, Dean goes to Camp David and
realizes any report he writes will will incriminate himself, so
(58:08):
instead he spends five days at Camp David, wandering amongst
the woods, hoping for an answer, and instead he retains
criminal defense counsel and goes to the Department of Justice
seeking immunity. Unbelievable and nobody, nobody understands that sequence of events.
Speaker 4 (58:28):
And I mean, I got into.
Speaker 5 (58:30):
An argument with with Bill O'Reilly and I told him
Nixon didn't approve the payment.
Speaker 4 (58:36):
And he says, oh, nonsense.
Speaker 5 (58:37):
I heard him. I heard the words. I've heard it
on the tape. He says, I can raise a million dollars.
And I said, but that's not the decision to do
it as well. The public can decide for themselves. You're
just wrong. It probably has worst.
Speaker 3 (58:51):
Bill O'Reilly writes books, goes thritten that every everybody.
Speaker 6 (58:55):
Gets killed, this one gets killed, that one gets killed.
Speaker 4 (58:59):
Everybody.
Speaker 5 (59:00):
We wanted them to do a book. When my second
book come out, Killing Richard Nixon, you know we have
all these documents, right, documents speak for themselves. Nobody's ever
challenged the authenticity. They're written by the special prosecutors, they're
app and national archives.
Speaker 4 (59:21):
What more could you ask for?
Speaker 3 (59:24):
This is great, Jeff, Hey, we wish you a lot
of luck, and we're going to be tuning in and
we'll have this up. I guess after its released, we'll
put it up. We wish you much much luck and
you'll come back and talk about it as we won't.
Speaker 5 (59:38):
Come back and talk again, my friends, particularly if there's
a change in management at the top of the Department
of Justice.
Speaker 2 (59:45):
Absolutely, oh, we'd love to see that.
Speaker 4 (59:47):
That would be oh, absolute. This might prevail fifty years later,
justice might prevail.
Speaker 3 (59:54):
Well, let me tell all our young audience, you're going
to want to watch this because we lived it.
Speaker 6 (59:59):
All of us are older. If we lived there, we
were young then, and we had all black hair, brown hair,
and all of our.
Speaker 4 (01:00:05):
Hair time, and you were sad you were fed a
false narrative.
Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
Yes, sir, thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (01:00:12):
It turns out.
Speaker 5 (01:00:13):
These people who were bitching and moaning about no man
is above the law were all taking unto themselves deliberate
misuse of the rule of law, doctor Mike.
Speaker 7 (01:00:27):
Great job, great job, and it's very interesting. From the
start of Watergate till you said seventy six, the Democrats
really honed this kind of thing, but they just didn't
call it law fair.
Speaker 4 (01:00:41):
That's exactly correct. It was going on.
Speaker 5 (01:00:44):
I mean these, as I said, these documents are just
curl your hair. But we didn't know, and the term
wasn't popular. Even if it had been popular, we wouldn't
have known what they were doing. It was all done
in secret.
Speaker 7 (01:01:00):
Unbelievable. Thank you, Jeff, You a treasure in the United States.
Speaker 4 (01:01:04):
Thank you for having on your show Man. We'll talk again.
Hey, welcome back to two mics. You're run with Colonel
Mike and doctor Michael Shore. You don't forget go to
two mics dot us and then go to Network Radio
dot us to subscribe. If you go to Apple on
two mics dot us, there's no commercials okay, And for
you who like rumble, you can click it there. Hello
around the globe, Thank you for tuning in. We appreciate
(00:25):
the comments, we appreciate the suggestions, and we want to
thank everybody for listening. Thanks for being a listener, and subscribe.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
By four three two one, Hey, welcome back. You're on
with two Mike's, Doctor Michael Schuyer and Colonel Mike. You
know who.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Michael Schuyer is New York Times best selling author, and
today we have with us again. I don't know how
many times he's been on now, but he has great
news coming up.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
We have another Is it a New York Times best
selling author? I believe it is. It's Jeff Shepherd, who
has the Watergate trilogy series out youngest Attorney in the
Richard Nixon administration and now we're on fifty years of Watergate.
Welcome back, Jeff Shephard.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Mike it's good to be with you. Thank you.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
I feel like an old familiar friend and talking to
you and your listeners.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
This is great.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
All right, thank you sir, Thank you for coming back.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
We know you were just on a.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Popular show recently and we're happy to get you back on.
So tell us there's a lot of things going on
with Jeff Sheper and Watergate, and there's the documentary, so
we'd like to speak about that.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
Sure, we'll start with the idea that August eighth is
the fiftieth anniversary of Nixon's announced resignation. What he said
in a address to the nation from the Oval Office
was that he would resign effective at noon tomorrow, which
(02:26):
was the ninth. But we count the anniversary from his
announcement because on the ninth he says goodbye to the staff,
gets on the helicopter, goes to Andrews Air Force Base,
gets on Air Force one, and halfway across the country,
roughly Wichita, Kansas, his resignation becomes effective and he lands
(02:51):
at Ottaora Marine Base in Orange County, a private citizen,
and Air Force one is no longer Air Force one,
it's just a government airplane. So fifty years later, lots
of essays, lots of reminiscences people who were around, and
(03:11):
there are there are a number of people who are
still alive telling and retelling their stories, and I'm amongst them.
The time I spent on the Nixon White House staff
was the high point of my life. It ended badly.
I served as deputy counsel on his Watergate defense team.
(03:33):
I saw everything from the inside, and then beginning about
two thousand and three, I started doing research. I learned
that the internal documents of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force
were available at National Archives, and I started doing research.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
And I've been down there a lot.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
I calculated recently I'd probably spent twenty seven thousand hours
since two thousand and three researching these documents. My friends,
my friends from the White House, have gone on to
other things, and my wife, who was on the White
House staff with me, and this very tolerant lady, has
(04:22):
pointed out maybe I could move on, But I keep
finding things, discovering new connections, realizing what was going on
behind the scenes. And I'm devoting a lot of time
to telling that story. So if I could let me
recount Watergate, recount what the conventional wisdom was and then
(04:46):
tell you what I think really happened. Oh, it been
burst into public view on June seventeenth, nineteen seventy two,
when five people were caught red handed in the offices
of the Watergate off building rented by the Democratic National
Committee for Cubans and a retired CIA wireman. That burglary
(05:15):
was connected to the President's reelection committee. The Committee for
the Reelection of the President called CREEP CRP. I know,
I'll be careful of your name.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Yes exactly, yes, you do.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
Now we call it CRP. Other people call it CREEP.
And then it turned out there's a big investigation, long investigation.
It turned out there were two other people at CREEP
who were indicted on September fifteenth, nineteen seventy two, along
with the five burglars. So there's one fact that is irrefutable.
(05:56):
There really was a burglary. They were caught red handed.
The trouble was, they wondered who wilse knew, who knew
this was going to occur, and some pretty senior people
might have known it was going to occur, So there
was a cover up, and the cover up was protecting
(06:18):
the higher ups at the committee to re elect the president. Now,
the cover up was run by the president's lawyer, a
young man named John Dene and when the and he
was heavily involved, he was assigned the responsibility for handling
(06:40):
the affairs connected to the break in and the investigation.
But he first assured the people on the White House
staff that nobody then on the White House staff was
involved in the burglary. People at Creep were heavily involved,
but people were caught and there was an investigation. But
(07:04):
it turned out that he interpreted his assignment to protect
the people at CREEP as well as the people on
the White House staff. So in the course of his
cover up, he infected people on the White House staff.
And then when the cover up collapsed, and it should
have collapsed it was wrong, he turned on his former
(07:27):
colleagues on the White House staff and said, wait a second,
there really was a cover up. I know Iran it
and these more senior people that worked directly for President Nixon,
they were in on it too. My word against theirs.
This isn't dantepe but I'm telling you they were in it,
and the only way you can prosecute them is with
(07:51):
me as the primary witness. Okay, so there really was
a cover up. But the difficulty is who was responsible.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Now.
Speaker 5 (08:02):
I ran across an oral history taken by the National
Archives in two thousand and seven of Angelo Leno, the
lead FBI agent throughout the entire Watergate investigation, and he
was asked about the cover up and he said ninety
(08:23):
to ninety five percent of the cover up actions were
taken by John Dene. So here's the lead investigator. It
was all Dean. Now, the prosecutors wouldn't give Dean immunity
because they said he was too involved, but the Irvin
Committee did. The Urban Committee was the Senate select committee
(08:45):
to investigate the break in, and they were looking for
witnesses and drama, and John Dene's democratically connected lawyer worked
out a deal where they gave him immunity and the
Irvan Committee made John their star witness. So your listeners
(09:05):
and your viewers who know anything about Watergate know it
from the televised hearings of the Senate Irvin Committee, which
was about as one sided as the J six Committee.
There was a Democrat majority. They voted along party lines
not to investigate any other presidential election sixty eight or
(09:28):
sixty four or back in nineteen sixty when many people
think Nixon was robbed of the presidency, they'd only look
at the seventy two reelection and they would feature John
dene as their star witness because he was going to
testify against the higher ups. That's where we get to
(09:52):
really was a break in, Really was the cover up?
Nixon really did resign. He resigned August eighth, nineteen seventy four.
The importance of the anniversary is that we've prepared a
documentary to publicize and contain commentary on these documents that
(10:20):
I have uncovered.
Speaker 6 (10:22):
Where would Jeff, where is that going to be seen?
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Is that just going to be online on cable TV?
How would people get to see it?
Speaker 5 (10:29):
Well, we want them to see it.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
It's going to be on its own website.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (10:36):
The name of the documentary is Watergate Secrets, No Watergates
Secrets and Betrayals Orchestrating Nixon's Demise. Watergate Secrets and Betrayals
Orchestrating Nixon's Demise. It's available and will be on the eighth.
It will be it will be on that website, Watergatesecrets
(10:58):
dot com. On the website, there'll be some background and
a link to the full documentary and.
Speaker 7 (11:05):
How long would be How long is it?
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Don't arry how many hours? Is it an hour or two?
Speaker 5 (11:09):
It's just a little bit over an hour. As you
mentioned in my introduction, I've written three books, I've given
dozens of presentations, I've written all kinds of essays, and
water gets complicated. It's hard to go through. But what
we've done in the documentaries is do our dead level
(11:30):
of us to simplify and to focus on these documents
I've uncovered that show secret meetings, secret memos, and secret
coordination between the prosecutors, the judges, and the Congressional Democrats.
So that's what we're trying to illustrate for your party.
(11:53):
Let me go through that just for a second for
the benefit of your listeners, and war getting went on
for two and a half years.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
Picture a triangle.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
At each of the corners of the triangle, each of
the angles is one of the branches of government, executive, legislative,
and judicial. For the executive branch, there are the two
original special prosecutors and all of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force,
(12:23):
and they were I've uncovered documents that show they were
secretly meeting with Watergate judges and secretly meeting with members
of the House Impeachment, with the Senator Van Committee, and
with the Senate Judiciary Committee. Then go down to one
(12:44):
of the angles, go down to the angle on the
on the right side, and that's the judicial branch. And
there are three judges. Judge John Sirica who presided over
the Watergate trials. There were two of them, Judge Gerhard
Gazelle who presided.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Over the Armers trials.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
That was the break in by the same team that
got caught in the Watergate hotel much much earlier. Because
of the Pentagon papers, they were prosecuted, but they met
secretly with that judge, and they met secretly. Archibald Cox
met secretly with the Chief Judge of the DC Circuit Court,
(13:22):
David Basilon. And we have proof. We put it in
the documentary. You can see it. So you had secret communications.
I can show you written proof documents at the National
Archives that detail at least ten meetings with the special
(13:42):
prosecutors and Judge Serrica, and three or four with Gerhard Gazelle.
And just so you make this clear, judges aren't supposed
to meet in secret with one side without the other
side being present.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
But it was going on all time.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
Judge Serrica would call the prosecutors down and have a
grand old time talking about developments.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
They'd go.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
So, let me ask you a question, sir.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Don't you think that that's probably going on with what
mister Trump has gone through in the past couple of years.
Speaker 6 (14:16):
I'm sure there's no secrets.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Yes, but I want you to I want you to
bring that up after I finish my other angle.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
I got to do the legislative branch, and then go
ahead and we'll go today. The Senate Judiciary was in
touch with the prosecutors in secret.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
The Irvin Committee.
Speaker 5 (14:36):
Was in touch with the prosecutors, the Urban Committee, the
Chief of Staff, Chief Counsel Sam Dash one of his
best friends was John Sirica. He'd go down see John
Sirika all the time. Again, totally improper. Absolutely if it
were known, If these meetings were known, these judges couldn't
have tried the cases. These prosecutors would be taken off
(14:59):
the cases, and the legislatures would have the legislators would
have to explain what on earth they were doing messing
with legal process. So what I have uncovered fifty years
later is an irrefutable pay per trail of documents written
(15:20):
by the prosecutors themselves come to today. There's stuff going
on that we suspect is improper their indications, but we
don't have the kind of irrefutable proof that I uncovered
in Watergate. So what I say is, look, there are
(15:43):
four terms popular today, deep state, balts, news, bacon, narrative,
and lawfair. Most important is lawfair, new word, never heard
it before, the use of the criminal prosecutution to wipe
out your political enemy. That certainly is what's going on today.
(16:05):
That's why those words are popular. What I've shown and
what the documents I've uncovered show is that law fair's
big bang, its creation, Its first use to ruin a president,
to void an election was in Watergate. We just didn't
have the term. So maybe someday, maybe maybe five years,
(16:31):
maybe ten years, documents or books will start to surface
that describe what's going on today that we suspect may
be coordinated. You know, if Trump warn't a billionaire, he'd
be bankrupt. Absolutely, that's the only thing that's saving him
and different press. Go back to Watergate, there were only
(16:57):
three networks, NBCABC and CBS. There were two very powerful
weekly news magazines, Time and Newsweek, and there was one
dominant newspaper, the New York Times. All five of those
organizations six were headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, within six blocks
(17:21):
of each other, so you not and there was no
Fox News, there was no.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
Talk radio.
Speaker 5 (17:29):
There was no alternative, no podcasts, nothing, no alternative. There
was one narrative, and the narrative came to you from
New York City. So we don't happen alike. There's these
lots of us don't happen alike the New York point
of view today, but it was the only point of
(17:51):
view back then. Now, as we warm up to this
fiftieth anniversary, there are lots of groups, you know, celebrating
Nixon's demise and how famous they were and how wonderfully
they They never addressed my documents then, never. I'm never
included in those panels. But I've heard them grouse about
the idea that if social media existed, if there was
(18:15):
a diversity of views in the media back then, Nixon
would have survived. And they don't say it fondly. They
say it because they're so resentful today that Trump is surviving.
It's there's this famous quote from Mark Twain that history
(18:37):
doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. And what's going on
today has parallels to what was going on fifty years ago,
but we didn't know it. There was no news covering it.
The Salem Network didn't exist, you didn't get talk radio,
(18:58):
you didn't have alternate points of view, and if there
had been those, it's possible now the other thing that's happened,
and this is.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
What drives me on.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
Caches of documents, internal secret prosecution documents have surfaced in
just the past ten years. The three top prosecutors left
early before the Watergate convictions of the cover up trial,
which come at the end of the year. They left
before that, and they took their internal memos with them.
(19:35):
Now today we're pretty sensitive about that. We investigate and
we indict people who we think wrongly took records from
the National Archives. But in that era, they just took them,
didn't ask anybody, and they didn't start to surface till
those folks died. So leon Juworski left first. He took
(19:57):
all of his records back to Texas with him. When
he he gave them to Baylor, along with a prominent
career in his law firm Fulbrighton Jeorski. He was one
of the young prosecutors at Nuremberg. Guy had a full career.
He gave his papers to Baylor Law School, his alma mater.
(20:18):
Baylor took their sweet time sorting them out and put
them on display for researchers. And then it turned out
there were grand jury minutes and there were other internal
documents that shouldn't be public. So they were sent up
to the National Archives, and the archivist told me they
went on a six month all hands on deck, and
(20:39):
they went through and they redacted names that shouldn't become public,
and they sorted them out and they were ready to
make them public. And he said, you know, you have
a Foyer request Ritdom Information Act requests and it's not
precisely on point because nobody knew these documents existed, but
we're going to produce them in response to your Foyer requests.
(21:01):
So I was the first person to go through the documents.
And they described these secret meetings with the judges. They
described the suppression of evidence that would have been helpful
to the defense. They detail their decisions on who to
indict and who not to indict, that somehow followed party lines,
(21:22):
and it's there in great detail. So my second book
came out in twenty fifteen, and it's based on these
Jeworsky documents. One of my footnotes said, you know the
number two guy, James Voorrenberg. He volunteered to write the
report when they were through the special prosecutors. He hired
(21:44):
all staff, and he took detailed notes at each staff
meeting so later he could look back and write the reports.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
Well.
Speaker 5 (21:54):
He took his staff meeting notes with him back to
Harvard Law School when he returned earned and ultimately he
became dean of Harvard Law School.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
And he died, and I'd go up to the law school.
I graduated from there.
Speaker 5 (22:07):
I'd go to where the papers were and I would say, well,
I want to see his papers. Well, they aren't ready.
You can't see him yet. Shot a footnote in my
manuscript that said Harvard refuses to open Vornberg's papers. And
I called him just to be sure the footnote was
still accurate. Oh, we've opened them, Come on up. So
I went up and I went through, for the first
(22:29):
time anybody went through James Voorrenberg's staff meeting notes, and
he describes these decisions and why they were made, and
the internal fights between the people who wanted to indict
everybody and the people who said, you don't have enough
proof to do that, which case would be brought first,
(22:49):
why Democrats didn't get indicted and why Republicans did on
much weaker evidence. And here are these unbelievable memos in
Vornberg's own handwritten notes, So that figured into my book.
And then there's a third guy, and his name is
Phil Locavara. Now he's still alive, but in twenty twenty
(23:13):
he took his papers with him fox loads and he
gave them to archives in twenty twenty, and I sorted
through them, and Phil wrote interesting demos. One regrets they
let Sireka appoint himself to do the second trial. One
regrets that Gordon Letty wasn't told that Nixon wanted him
(23:37):
to tell the truth and come out and was willing
to meet with his lawyer to emphasize it, and they
didn't tell Letty that. Another has to do with the
indictment of Chuck Coulson. Chuck was Nixon's greatest public defender,
controversial god, but he wasn't that involved in the cover up.
(24:00):
But In phil Lockovar's notes, he says, but Jeworski was
bound and determined to indict Coulson, and Lakafar went so
far as to write a memo afterwards saying, you can't
do this, that this does not meet our standard. Everybody
(24:21):
in that room didn't want Colson to be indicted, except Jeworski.
And the quote in the notes is Jeorkshy said, I
know the evidence is weak, but I'd really like to
nail the guy. You can't do You talk about being
above the law, you talk about denials of due process.
It's all in these papers, all black and white. Now
(24:42):
someday same thing may develop from the J six committee.
Remember they would not look into why there was no
security on Capitol Hill that day. They would not They
lost their records on some people. They that there were
two nominal Republicans, but they weren't Trump supporters. Trump and
(25:05):
nobody on the committee, and Nixon had nobody on the
Urban Committee. I mean it was a it was a
one sided deal. Four Democrats, three Republicans. But low Wiker,
who was nominally a Republican, announced publicly he went on
the committee with the intent of sinking Nixon so well.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
He was from Connecticut, wasn't he low walker? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (25:29):
And he lost the Republican primary because he was so
liberal and ultimately ran as a independent.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Could I ask one question, jet sure did know?
Speaker 6 (25:42):
Did Colson know about this before he passed away?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Did he find out about this?
Speaker 5 (25:50):
Full disclosure requires that I say. Colson wasn't my favorite guy. Okay,
he was too rambunctious. He was going for red meat
in building Nixon up. And I remember I lived a
charmed life. I was in law school during the campaign,
(26:10):
so I only was involved in governance issues, law and
order after you've been elected. I was always hatched, so
I never participated in a campaign, and Chuck was almost
always in campaign mode. And I thought when he converted,
you remember that day when he went and announced he
(26:30):
was embracing Jesus Christ. He was going to plead guilty.
I thought I was a fraud. I thought it was
another Colson fraud. And then years later he found prison Fellowship.
He devotes full time to advocating rights for prisoners. And
I wrote him a letter and said, Chuck, I owe
you an apology. Here's one thousand dollars. I doubted you,
(26:52):
and I'm sorry for it. And I got a note
back and said, Jeff, You're not the only one.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
You know.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
My thinking is sincere we sent him my first book
came out in two thousand and eight, and this is
before ncovered this really bad stuff in twenty thirteen. So
I sent him my first book, The Secret Plot to
Make Ted Kennedy President, and it got a note back
and he says, you know, Jeff, the last thing in
(27:20):
the world I wanted to do was read about Watergate.
But I started reading your book over the fourth of
July and I couldn't put it down. And it reminded
me of what they did to us, you know, it
just how sour it was and how one sided it was.
And he didn't know the half of it. He President Nixon,
(27:44):
Bob Bob Holdeman, and John Erlickman, and half of Nixon's
White House stamp went to their graves Nixon died in
nineteen ninety four, went to their graves without knowing or
really having any inklean of this paper trail that I've uncovered.
Let me give you another another example, and then what
(28:08):
we'll go to what I call the call to action,
and then I'll take your questions, Okay, sir. The special
prosecution force, one sided, heavily political, recruited because they hated
Nixon that the Table of Organization and Employment envisioned ninety
(28:29):
two hires from scratch. Sixty of them turned out to
be lawyers, the top seventeen of which had worked together
in Robert Kennedy's Department of Justice under Jack Kennedy or
Lyndon Johnson. So you had what I characterized as a
constitutional inversion. The people who lost power when Nixon was
(28:54):
elected in nineteen sixty eight were now in full charge
of the investigation and prosecution resources of the federal government,
even though Nixon was president, and they were operating with
total independence from within the Department of Justice, no supervision.
And that came about because Elliott Richardson, the replaced Attorney General,
(29:19):
was such a weak man and wouldn't defend next and
he didn't want to be Attorney general anyway. Then he
happily gave Way all the power. So he ends up
being a great hero to the Democrats. The prosecutors end
up being great heroes to the Democrats. Time magazine makes
Judge Sirica It's Man of the Year. I mean, unbelievable.
(29:41):
This is the most reversed judge in the DC Circuit.
His's massive violation of due process, a petty tyrant. Every
ruling is against the Nixon White House. It got sabad
that Archibald Cox was worried in these cases that they'd
(30:03):
win a trial because Sirrica was so one sided, but
lose on appeal because the appellate court was pretty liberal,
and they overruled Sirica a lot of times because of
his denial of rights, due process rights to defendants. So
Archibaldcox took it upon himself to call secretly on Judge
(30:26):
David Basilon and urge Basilon to hear the case in
a peculiar way so he could stack the deck of
the judges on appeal and be sure Sirrica would never
be overturned on appeal. And he did that, and in
all twelve appeals from criminal processes from Syrica's cases, they're
(30:51):
heard by the full nine panel of judges, which featured
a liberal majority. So Sirrica's upheld outrageous conduct. He's upheld
in every instant and the only problem for Basilona and
the only reason we know this, aside from the obvious
fact that the cases were all heard in this very
(31:13):
unique way is there was a law clerk in the room,
a guy named Ronald Carr, and he told one person
happened to be a judge about to be sworn into
the same DC courts years later, and he said, you know,
there was this one ugly incident where Cox came to
(31:36):
see Basilon and the judge he told was DC Circuit
Judge Larry Silverman. And Larry told me, and I got
to tell you, I was on that like ticks on
a dog. But Larry didn't want to come out in
public and be the one that got blamed. So it
wasn't until September about a year ago, almost two years
(32:00):
ago now, that we did a Federalist Society symposium that
Larry wanted to do, and he came out and retold
that story. It's on tape from Larry, and he's elderly,
and he's crotchety, and he's very weak, but he told
his story and he died three weeks later. So we've
(32:24):
got that fastened down. The chief judge of the DC
Circuit was involved in stacking the decks on appeal. You
talk about being above the law, so if I may,
and then we'll go to questions. We've got this documentary,
Watergate Secrets and Betrayals Orchestrating Nixon's Demise. It's on that website,
(32:50):
Watergatesecrets dot com and it'll be posted on the eighth.
So you got to see the full documentary. Can rent
it or you can buy it, whatever you want to do.
And what we want is people to be as upset
as we are in light of all these events, and
we have a call to action. We want two things
(33:10):
where these are non negotiable demands. One, we've never learned
in fifty years what the prosecutors told the Grandeurs in
secret to convince them to name Nixon a co conspirator
in the Watergate cover up? What did they tell them?
(33:34):
I got the roadmap unsealed. That was their secret report
to the Hill that was unsealed in twenty eighteen. My
court petition won, but the judge that unsealed the roadmap
declined to unseal the transcript of what the special prosecutor
told the Grandeurs. Now, when he did it, we went
(33:58):
crazy and said, look that the Grandeury has no right
to name a sitting president an unindicted co conspirator. We
want to know what he told them, and they said, well, oh,
that's secret. You can't you can't know that. And we said, well,
how can we protect the president from what he's been
accused of? When you sent material to the heel that's
(34:24):
still sealed until the roadmap was unsealed in twenty eighteen,
Nixon's defense team didn't know what the specific allegations were,
just like the prosecution in New York where Bragg's lawyers
didn't name the statutes Trump was alleged to a violated
(34:49):
until their summation. Unbelievable, but that's what they did to Nixon. Well,
we're asking now, fifty years later, unsealed that transcript. We
don't think you gave them any specifics. We've seen the
draft of the remarks. We think Jaworsky went into in
front of that grand jury and said, we've shown you
(35:11):
stuff for the last ten months. It's time for action.
We think you should name him an unindicted co conspirator
without any specificity. Second thing we want. Second thing in
light of all this wrongdoing, I've uncovered dozens and dozens
and dozens of documents. They're all on my website. Some
of them are in detail in the documentary, but they're
(35:34):
all posted on my websit all publicly available at the
National Archives. We want a Department of Justice investigation of
the wrongdoing that their attorneys did in securing those convictions,
because we think a fair review will say these convictions
in the cover up trial, and many of the convictions
(35:54):
in the burglary trial were obtained in outright violation of
the guarantees of our fifth and sixth Amendments, and they
cannot stand now. I've tried to do that with this
Department of Justice. I put in complaints, I've written letters.
I begged them to let me come and explain my
documents and tell them what I found. And after a year,
(36:18):
this special unit at the Department of Justice, the Office
of Professional Responsibility, whose only job is to investigate allegations
of wrongdoing by Justice Department lawyers, they said, this is
too long ago. We're busier with more wow, and we
don't take responsibility for the special prosecutors because after Watergate
(36:43):
there was a new statute that set independent counsel up independently,
so we deem we deemed them to have been operating
independently when they did what you say they did.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
We won't look into it.
Speaker 5 (36:57):
And I sent them and it's on my website a
letter back, and I said, you know, here's their letter
head and here's their internal memo letter head, and they
both say Department of Justice. These people were enforcing Department
of Justice laws with Department of Justice authority. You can't
deny they were there. The only reason we could challenge
(37:22):
them was extraordinary impropriety that was in the regulations that
set them up. So our hope is to demand a
justice review and look at all these outrageous documents. We
didn't get it under this administration, this Department of Justice.
We sure hope we get it in a new administration.
(37:46):
Lady one last then, yet now, Larry Sibman, this very
very prominent judge, was Deputy Attorney General at toward the Enderwallgate,
and I was the liaison from the White House. We
talked every say, the Department of Justice in the White
House have to be in touch. Doesn't matter how much
they hate each other, doesn't matter how much stinching there is,
(38:07):
They've got to talk. Larry and I talked every day.
So when I came out with my third book, The
Nixon Conspiracy, in twenty twenty, one I went to see Larry,
who's now on the DC circuit elderly Crotchety, and he says,
what do you want, Jeff? I mean, he's a good friend.
(38:28):
What do you want? And I said, I want you
to tell Merrick Garland, who served on the court with you.
Then I know what I'm talking about and people should
hear me out because of what I've uncovered. And Larry said,
I'm not talking to Marek. I don't like what he's doing.
I'm ashamed of him, and I refuse to talk to him.
(38:50):
What else do you want, Jeff? He says, you know
what y'all to do is get the Federalist Society put
on a symposium. You know, I'm on the board. I'll
talk to him. And I said, well, will you participate?
This all happened the exact same conversation and he looks
off and he knows what I'm talking about. I'm talking
(39:12):
about that story he's told me about Judge Baslon. And
he looks off and he says, yes, I'll participate in
that symposium. You go get it set up.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
So we do it.
Speaker 5 (39:25):
And he said, before we went, you know, here's all
the material, here's what we're going to discuss everybody's ready.
And he says, now, what do you want me to
say other than tell that story? And I said that Larry,
that that will be more than enough. So on film
we have him telling him the Judge Basilon story. Let
me stop there. We got a documentary. It's coming out
(39:48):
on the eighth. We want people to sign up for
to be kept informed. Come on, look at that documentary.
Decide if you want to pitch in and give your
name to our effort to call on the Department of
Justice to unseal these remarks to the grandeurs from fifty
years ago and to launch an independent investigation of the
(40:10):
conduct of their lawyers in securing improperly securing these convictions.
What you guys got to say?
Speaker 3 (40:18):
Mike, let me just ask this real quick, because I
know you probably have a few What was the exception
to get this documentary?
Speaker 2 (40:25):
How did you get it financed to put it together
for you?
Speaker 3 (40:29):
I just looked it up and I saw the narrator
as someone from a TV.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
John great guy, John Hurley, It'll be great.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:40):
I was contacted about twenty seventeen by a gentleman named
George Bugatti and George said, I want to do a
stage play based on your book.
Speaker 4 (40:53):
And I'm no connection with Broadway or anything like that.
Speaker 5 (40:57):
You know, he's a he's an entertainer, he's a concert pianist,
he's a playwright. So I agree, and we've got kind
of an informal partnership. He's the creative guy, the talented guy,
and I'm the researcher. I'm the basis for what we're
going to do. So the way the stage play evolved
(41:18):
was an imaginary impeachment trial that Nixon might have gotten
if he hadn't resigned. It's called Trial on the Potomac.
It played with Rich Little playing Nixon in the play.
The audience was treated as senators. They got to vote
after the play. The only difference in our play was
(41:41):
the documents I've uncovered came out during the trial. That's
what made it so much fun. If we knew then
what we know now, would Nixon have been convicted. We
let the audience vote. We put on twenty eight performances.
Only one got a two thirds majority to remove him
(42:05):
from office, but several of the performances a majority thought
Nexon should still be convicted. Well, to go from a book.
In all these secret documents down to a stage play.
You've got to pick your words very carefully. You've got
to be able to summarize what went on and very
(42:26):
very carefully construed dialogue. And that's where George's genius came
into effect. Well, having done that, facing the fiftieth anniversary coming,
we decided to do a serious documentary and we were
able to get John O'Hurley, who's a prominent spokesperson. He
was un Seinfeld and he does this dog show on Thanksgivings.
(42:50):
He's a very thoughtful guy. He's our narrator. And then
we got judges Andrew Nipolitano and Larry's and Paul Diamond
judges to comment on these documents, and law professors to
comment on the documents, and we extracted materials in a
(43:12):
serious way, and we contrast what was going on behind
the scenes with what.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
Was going on in public.
Speaker 5 (43:24):
And we raised private capital to be able to put
it on. But you know, we're not wealthy, we're not Trump,
and we did it on a shoe string. And most
people involved, Nixon, Willums, the playwright, the camera people, they're
they're doing it on their own time. I mean, this
(43:44):
is I think the the budget was two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars for the documentary. You're talking You're cheap,
and you look at it and it's beautifully it's professionally done.
Speaker 4 (43:57):
It makes sense.
Speaker 5 (43:58):
There's there's musical themes, there's outtakes. I think your listeners
will be moved, and it makes the case in an
hour and ten minutes of what was done fifty years ago.
Now we hope to go further. We want to be
given interviews like yours all over the place to sound
(44:19):
the alarm of what we've uncovered. That's more credible because
of what seems to be going on today, people's minds
have opened up and they're particularly with lawfare. They're willing
to consider maybe prosecutors cheap, Maybe judges aren't as objective
as you've been told. Maybe there's a different reality today,
(44:45):
and that raises the possibility there was a different reality
back then, especially with Shepherd on the side. Extra extra
read all about it. Internal documents now exposed screaming from
the rooftops.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Excellent, Mike, go ahead.
Speaker 7 (45:06):
Previously when we spoke, sir, wasn't there an angle of
getting Ted Kennedy into the presidency?
Speaker 5 (45:14):
Also yes, And that's the theme of my first book,
back from two thousand and eight, and that's before I
discovered all these internal documents. My pitch is that the
Kennedy supporters, loyal, longtime supporters of the Kennedy political dynasty,
(45:39):
wanted back into power, a restoration of Camelot.
Speaker 4 (45:43):
You know.
Speaker 5 (45:44):
They came to Washington, bright eyed and bushy tailed in
nineteen sixty one to join Jack's administration and it was fun.
You didn't have to go to Wall Street and make money.
Came to Washington and you exercised power, and it was
addicted Potomac fever. And then he gets taken from them
illegitimately by assassination, and then they make Lyndon Johnson president.
(46:10):
And in these people's view, it should have been Bobby Kennedy.
He was the second most powerful guy in Washington. He
was the president's brother, he was attorney general. But Lyndon
becomes president. But he could have fixed it if he
picked Bobby to be his vice president, then we'd be
back in the right set of rails.
Speaker 4 (46:33):
But he didn't.
Speaker 5 (46:34):
He picked Hubert Humphrey. So Johnson is going to run
for election in nineteen sixty four and I'm sorry. Re
election in nineteen sixty eight, and he's challenged by Gene McCarthy,
and Bobby jumps into the race. He'd gone off to
(46:56):
New York become a senator, but he jumps into the race.
He's going to challenge Lyndon Johnson. Restoration of Camelot is
at hand. Bobby gets assassinated in Los Angeles right after
winning the California primary. In the run up to the
sixty eight election, there isn't time to substitute. Bobby's the
(47:19):
last of the four Kennedy brothers. He's much younger than
his brothers. He's not the man his brothers were, but
he's a Kennedy. And if you're going to have a
restoration of Camelot with all these people who want back
into power, you gotta have a Kennedy in the Oval office.
Speaker 4 (47:39):
Now.
Speaker 5 (47:39):
Because of Chapiquittic, well one, he couldn't be substance sixty eight,
it was too late, and he couldn't run in seventy
two because of Chapiquittick. When Mary Joe Kopetney drowned in
the pond, Okay, so he had to sit that one out.
But the theory was he could run in nineteen seventy six,
and they set out out, the Special Prosecution Force and
(48:02):
all their Democrat friends set out to pave the way
for Teddy Kennedy. And my first book goes at it
from three different points of view. One, they ruined Nixon
and his people wiped out. Now Nixon resigns in disgrace.
Two dozen members of his administration are convicted, go to jail.
They're wiped out. Second thing they did was they sought
(48:26):
to cripple the Republican money machine. Now, there was an
effort in the off year election nineteen seventy where the
Nixon White House channeled money to conservatives. Remember, there are
a lot of Southern Democrats, and we liked them. There
was an ideological majority. They sent irs, this is the
(48:48):
Special Prosecution Force, sent IRS and FBI agents to interview
one hundred and fifty Republican donors to the nineteen seventy effort.
It was called the Townhouse Project. Now, I got to
tell you, if you're a big money guy and you're
used to giving money for campaigns and the IRS comes
(49:11):
to see you to ask you about that money, you're
not going to be given again. In nineteen seventy six,
so they outraised us in seventy six. And the final
thing was, this is a special prosecution force. Somehow they
launched investigations into every potential Republican candidate who would oppose Teddy.
(49:34):
In nineteen seventy six, Jerry Ford's president had a huge
investigation because he had to be confirmed by both houses
to be substitute president. The prosecutors got a hold of
that and started leaking stuff. His vice president was Nelson Rockefeller.
They launched investigations of Nelson Rockefeller, nothing to do with Watergate.
(49:56):
And then Ford decides, you have a better vice president,
Bob Dole, Senator Bob bil Kansas. They launched an investigation
of Bob Dole of Kansas and John Connolly, he was
thought to be a possible contender. They actually indicted John Connelly.
But the most significant was Ronald Reagan, three thousand miles away,
(50:18):
governor of California. And there's a letter I uncovered. It's
in my first book, where the prosecutor says to the
special prosecutor, just to follow up our conversation, we're proceeding
with our investigation of Ronald Reagan. And the theory was
(50:40):
Reagan may have improperly influenced the government in his effort
to get to in Ross Perrot's effort to get government
contracts for EDS on medicare computing. And they thought that
(51:00):
he may have improperly lobbied the Reagan administration. But by god,
having nothing to do with Watergate, nothing to do with Washington, DC,
but by god, they were going to ruin them. Well,
the whole effort was to bag Tednedy and then Teddy
doesn't run. Remember Teddy's not the man his brothers were.
(51:21):
And it wasn't so much he wanted to be president
as it was hundreds and hundreds of alumni from the
original Jack Kennedy administration who wanted back into power. Power
and Potomac fever. They drive you to do crazy things.
(51:43):
And if it's a tie, you know, we've had times
when one side had two thirds of the House or
two thirds of the Senate and the votes weren't close.
But if it's a tie, you fight harder, and you're
willing to do things both sides, things you shouldn't do
because you want so badly to win and be back
(52:06):
into or to preserve today it's to preserve your power,
and you're afraid you're gonna lose it. Now, Nixon had
already been reelected landslide reelection, and they voided that to
get back into power. They crippled Nixon's re election biggest
(52:27):
margin in US history, and two years later the guy
resigns in discretion.
Speaker 4 (52:32):
Now we learn why.
Speaker 5 (52:34):
We learned what they did to him in secret abuse,
massive abuse of due process guarantees in our fifth and
sixth amendments.
Speaker 6 (52:45):
You know what I see that's really good, Jeff, And
it's popping up a lot on the YouTube is they
have these shorts, these YouTube shorts which are like a
minute or so, and there are a lot of Nixon shorts.
Now you know, we other into viewers. They're really really good.
Speaker 5 (53:01):
You're seeing social media effort. That's what that's called. It's
a foundation and a little bit on us teasers about
the documentary. But after the documentary is released on the eighth,
you know, it's kind of ebar good up until then,
(53:22):
you'll see ours and we're going to be putting just
exactly what you're saying. We're going to extract things from
the documentary that entice people to want to learn more.
The only the thing that can be said about me,
which is only fair is I'm a great researcher, may
(53:43):
and I have found stuff that will hurl your hair,
but it turns out on me very poor salesman. I
think there's documents for a long time, but I haven't
been real good at convincing other people to read them,
particularly because people don't want to learn more about Richard
Nixon fifty years later. There's a quote in my first
(54:05):
book from Carl Seger, and he says, one of the
sad lessons of history is that once people have been bamboozled,
they don't want it corrected. It makes them uncomfortable and
embarrassed that they were taking advantage of and that's kind
of what's happened to Watergate. I've put these books out,
(54:26):
I've got these documents, and it's very hard to get attention.
But what we learned from the stage play and what
we've learned from doing this documentary is if you can
put it into more manageable bites. Now, the public's willing
to spend an hour watching something, particularly if it's entertaining.
(54:49):
They aren't willing to weighe through hundreds of pages. I
have not on the screen, but I have in my office,
these lateral file drawers, sixteen linear feet of Watergate files,
and every book back over my right shoulder, every book
(55:10):
that's ever been written by somebody who was really there.
Speaker 4 (55:14):
I don't care what they write today.
Speaker 5 (55:15):
I don't care if they're using secondary sources and they've
got a new interpretation. I want to know what the
people said who were really players during Watergate. You look
at them and you read what they say, and it's
not what they're telling you. It's not what the news
(55:36):
is telling you. That take the tapes. You know, I
transcribe the tapes hundreds of hours back when I was
on the White House staff, transcribing the White House tapes. Well,
people talk about what's on them without ever having listened
to them, without ever having read the transcripts. They don't
(55:56):
know what they're talking about. They just pick up what
somebody else said. For example, it said on March twenty first,
when John Dene goes in and says there's a cancer
on the presidency, that Nixon approved the payment of blackmail.
Except he doesn't. John Dene never said he did. He
(56:17):
came out of that meeting, never said to the prosecutors,
you know, Nixon ordered that done, I grant you. Nixon
flirts with the idea. He says, well, if it's a
million dollars, I know where we can get it, But
he doesn't order that money apart, he doesn't order a
(56:38):
payoff of Hunt's blackmail. The decision they go around. It's
an hour and a half. They go round and round.
Do we got this thing out and hunker down? Or
do we call for a renewed investigation and toss the
people that creep to the wolves because they're at real risk.
(56:59):
And the only conclusion from that meeting is get Mitchell,
John Mitchell, who's gone back to New York, get him
down here. We'll all get in the same room, Pauloman Erlikman,
Dean Mitchell, and Nixon, and we'll decide what the heck
to do. And that later afternoon because it's also on tape,
(57:20):
and the next morning Nixon's decision is clear. I'm calling
for a renewed investigation. I will send everybody either to
the Urban Committee in public or to the Grand Jury
in private without claim of executive privilege. Now, John John Dene,
my lawyer, you go to Camp David, and you write
(57:43):
up a report that reduces to writing what you told
me on March twenty first, and I'll use that report
to call for a new investigation. Very presidential, the right answer,
and what happened. Well, Dean goes to Camp David and
realizes any report he writes will will incriminate himself, so
(58:08):
instead he spends five days at Camp David, wandering amongst
the woods, hoping for an answer, and instead he retains
criminal defense counsel and goes to the Department of Justice
seeking immunity. Unbelievable and nobody, nobody understands that sequence of events.
Speaker 4 (58:28):
And I mean, I got into.
Speaker 5 (58:30):
An argument with with Bill O'Reilly and I told him
Nixon didn't approve the payment.
Speaker 4 (58:36):
And he says, oh, nonsense.
Speaker 5 (58:37):
I heard him. I heard the words. I've heard it
on the tape. He says, I can raise a million dollars.
And I said, but that's not the decision to do
it as well. The public can decide for themselves. You're
just wrong. It probably has worst.
Speaker 3 (58:51):
Bill O'Reilly writes books, goes thritten that every everybody.
Speaker 6 (58:55):
Gets killed, this one gets killed, that one gets killed.
Speaker 4 (58:59):
Everybody.
Speaker 5 (59:00):
We wanted them to do a book. When my second
book come out, Killing Richard Nixon, you know we have
all these documents, right, documents speak for themselves. Nobody's ever
challenged the authenticity. They're written by the special prosecutors, they're
app and national archives.
Speaker 4 (59:21):
What more could you ask for?
Speaker 3 (59:24):
This is great, Jeff, Hey, we wish you a lot
of luck, and we're going to be tuning in and
we'll have this up. I guess after its released, we'll
put it up. We wish you much much luck and
you'll come back and talk about it as we won't.
Speaker 5 (59:38):
Come back and talk again, my friends, particularly if there's
a change in management at the top of the Department
of Justice.
Speaker 2 (59:45):
Absolutely, oh, we'd love to see that.
Speaker 4 (59:47):
That would be oh, absolute. This might prevail fifty years later,
justice might prevail.
Speaker 3 (59:54):
Well, let me tell all our young audience, you're going
to want to watch this because we lived it.
Speaker 6 (59:59):
All of us are older. If we lived there, we
were young then, and we had all black hair, brown hair,
and all of our.
Speaker 4 (01:00:05):
Hair time, and you were sad you were fed a
false narrative.
Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
Yes, sir, thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (01:00:12):
It turns out.
Speaker 5 (01:00:13):
These people who were bitching and moaning about no man
is above the law were all taking unto themselves deliberate
misuse of the rule of law, doctor Mike.
Speaker 7 (01:00:27):
Great job, great job, and it's very interesting. From the
start of Watergate till you said seventy six, the Democrats
really honed this kind of thing, but they just didn't
call it law fair.
Speaker 4 (01:00:41):
That's exactly correct. It was going on.
Speaker 5 (01:00:44):
I mean these, as I said, these documents are just
curl your hair. But we didn't know, and the term
wasn't popular. Even if it had been popular, we wouldn't
have known what they were doing. It was all done
in secret.
Speaker 7 (01:01:00):
Unbelievable. Thank you, Jeff, You a treasure in the United States.
Speaker 4 (01:01:04):
Thank you for having on your show Man. We'll talk again.
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