Moore History - The Scandal That Was Watergate

We know the story ... or do we?

Dr Ed Moore, our resident historian, tackles the scandal known as Watergate.

Episode Transcript

(00:12):
Thankfully something else to spend some timeon this morning on the Morning Show with
Preston Scott, with my great redKazoo Grant Allen over there in Studio one
A. I'm here in Studio oneB, and I am joined live and
in person, and no one happierthan he to be both of those things.

(00:36):
Doctor head Moore joints us this morningon the Morning Show with Preston Scott.
He's our own version of David McCulloughgreen slid up the voice, the
voice that people recognize and go,I know that voice. I was walking
out of the Double Tree the otherday and the guy out front, the

(00:56):
head porter there, hollered at meand made me stop. He goes,
haven't heard you on the radio lately? When don't you back on, Preston,
I was gonna here you go.And I don't know how he recognized
me from my voice, but thatkind of stuff happens a lot. Yeah,
of course you have a very distinctivesound. I guess I do.
I don't know. Yeah, LikeI said, David mcculloughy narrated the movie

(01:17):
Seabiscuit and people people, what,Yeah, that's David McCullough he's been.
He was probably as popular of anarrator as he was inside the industry as
he wasn't an author on the restof us. My phone should start ringing
off, I would think, so, McAll and we need you to narrate.
Yeah, absolutely, new career.Yep, there you go. He's
our resident historian, hence the titlemore history here in the Morning Show.

(01:38):
And we've been talking about scandals,which is kind of appropriate in light of
the fact that, you know,whether we like or hate Donald Trump,
the fact of the matter is whathappened to him, set aside the personality,
but what happened to him was trulya scandal. Yeah, and not
much ado about it, which iswhat floors me. Typically in these kind

(02:00):
of circumstances, no matter who's inpower, you know, when when there's
corruption at any level, that shouldbe ferreted out and broadcast and people should
go no, no, no,we don't do that. Unfortunately, that's
not what it occurs in this divisiveworld we live in now. It's politicized
right away, but you know,it's literally criminal. Now what's happening in

(02:24):
these some of these attacks though,ed, Yeah, well it is and
it isn't I mean the Durham reportthat came out, he was very explicit
and stating that not everything that peopledo wrong is a crime, and that's
why he wasn't advocating for indictments.Is it a crime for collusion of sorts,
not criminal collusion, but just anykind of collusion to occur between media

(02:47):
sources, the FBI and a politicaloperation or a political candidate, you know,
if they're on the phone all theday, tipping each other off,
telling each other, giving false stories, feeding false stories. When his report
was replete with malintent, with badintent by the Clinton campaign and others,

(03:07):
And so if it's short of criminal, if it's short of criminal, there
are still other accountability standards, andI'm just going to pick on one.
And this is on topic and offtopic at the same time. Adam Schiff,
he should be kicked out of Congress. Absolutely, yeah, oh sure,
But it's the voters responsibility in that. I mean, you don't think
he should be removed by his peers. They'd all be removed, or not

(03:29):
all of them, but a significantnumber. I'm okay with that. If
we got down to a bad politicalax boil boy, Hello, Hello,
Hello, Hello, I'd be echoingdown the hallways of Congress. It's almost
a scarlet letter, you know,Nathaniel Hawthorne going way back, but it's
almost a scarlet letter that the publicneeds to place on these people. They

(03:52):
need to become pariah's when they misbehave. And yet, but that supports my
long standing contention we elect who weare. Yeah, well yeah, yeah,
you know, that's uh what Federalistsfifty one I think. Uh,
I'm not sure if it was Hamiltonor Madison wrote that one, but that
you know, if men were angels, no government would be necessary. Uh,

(04:15):
you know, we must have thisstructure around us or we'll run astray.
But the bottom line here is farfrom the only scandal in history.
No, that's that's true. Andsadly though, and I'm going to talk
the next two segments on the ona big one, but that occurred that
most people are aware of, butthey don't really understand the details of it.

(04:40):
We're we want things to happen instantaneously. Now we're in this you know,
pop tart society that we live in. This stuff with Biden and you
know, I'm going to talk aboutthe Nixon scandals. It took twenty seven
months from the first water great breakinto him resigning. I mean it took

(05:02):
time. Yeah, and in betweenthat he won an election where he won
forty nine states when people were awarethat there was something, you know,
something rotten in Denmark. Here,I think I'm gonna cry and suck my
thumb at the same time because Ithe possibilities that you're bringing me to are
just not good. Thanks for joiningus. It's the Morning Show with Preston

(05:25):
Scott's on News Radio one hundred pointseven FLA or on News RADIOFLA Danama City
dot Com. It is eleven minutesafter the hour. Doctor Ed Moore joins
us. More history. Nixon gotboy, you could talk for days on

(05:46):
this guy. Here's a guy nota cork. Yeah. Yeah, he
said that in Florida. Actually,here's a guy that was heading into reelection
with an overwhelming lead and still gotin Gay first with the plumbers group that
they had to break in tried tobreak into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office to try

(06:08):
to get tidbits on to smear Ellsberg. That was the intent there, because
he was coming out with the Pentagonpapers that made Nixon look bad and they
were worried about this election coming up. Well, the election was nineteen seventy
two. Nixon won forty nine states, George McGovern won Massachusetts and the district

(06:28):
of Columbia. That was it.So he was so paranoid about, oh,
my goodness, what might happen here, that he put into operation this
group that were to do bad things, and they were relatively incompetent. One
of two of them were Cuban Americansfrom South Florida, one of whom was

(06:51):
a locksmith. They broke into thewater Great Complex and the DNC headquarters in
May and to put bugs in andbugs around. And when they first tried
it, they realized he had thewrong locksmith lockpicking tools, and they left
and they actually went in, gotall set up, it didn't work.

(07:14):
They left, sent him back toMiami to get the right tools. This
is, you know, it's likea three stooges routine. They went back
in and May, they broke in, put bugs in. Then they wanted
more information, They wanted pictures ofdocuments and all this. So they went
back a month later and they brokeinto the Watergate again and put tape keeping
all the doors from locking behind themas they went in. Security security guards

(07:38):
saw found that called the police.Police came in and arrested all these guys
that were taking pictures. When theywent in, they realized some of the
bugs were missing, so they hadalready been discovered. But and didn't go,
oh, hey, maybe we'd betterget out of here, or maybe
we were being rebugged or watched now. They didn't they so they all get
arrested. Well, it turns outin their bag of stuff was a phone.

(08:00):
The phone number was from what wereferred to as creep the committee to
re elect the President. It wasthe phone number of Creepy. That's you're
giving me this look. But thisis you know, this is the highest
levels of the sophisticated surveillance going on. Yeah, absolutely, and being directed,

(08:22):
as it turned out later, beingdirected basically out of the White House,
you know, denials notwithstanding it wasbeing directed from the White House.
These guys got all arrested, anda couple of young cub reporters for the
Washington Post, one of them wasassigned to go and see the hearings on

(08:43):
these guys. These five guys,when did they break into the Democratic headquarters
for the bond hearings and stuff.So he sat in there and that was
Bob Woodward. Wow. But hewasn't just a cub reporter. It was
pretty new at that point in time. He was an intelligence officer for the
Navy. Yeah, there's a littlebit of a background there. Oh yeah,
very great guy. And then theother guy, Uh, Carl what's

(09:07):
his name, I'm losing trucks Bernstein. Uh. He goes say, oh,
y'all make some phone calls. Imean, this is how it started.
You know, if you watch themovie. The movie in that sense
was pretty accurate about Watergate. Uh. And it built and built, but
it still took twenty seven months fromthat first break in and the arrest to

(09:28):
Nixon resigning. It was and inbetween that was an election that was the
landslide proportions. It was one ofthe biggest landslides ever in the history of
the country. Why. I mean, you ask, why do these people
do these things? Who knows?I mean, what went on in the

(09:48):
minds of Haldeman and Erlikman and Mitchelland Mitchell and Dean. I mean,
the list is long. Forty fourpeople were investigated and twenty two of them
actually convicted. Out of that,at the highest levels in our country,
and yet and one of them becamea popular talk show host. Go figure,

(10:09):
Well, you know you got agun earn a living w FLA on
your phone with the iHeart Radio appand on hundreds of devices like Alexa,
Google Home, Xbox and Sonos.Yes, and i Heearts Radio season twenty
one past the r I think Grantand I would both come to the conclusion
that time flies when you're talking history, but time really flies when you're talking

(10:35):
more history. You see how Idid that? Well, you're so smooth.
Boy? Am I a broadcast professional? Doctor edmore with us? I'm
surprised you don't have on shade.You're so smooth. Yeah, smooth,
and I will never be mixed inthe dictionary. There you go. M

(10:56):
My contention is and has been,that we choose relatively poorly. The structure
of how we pick who ends upin the White House is flawed, and
it's getting more flawed as time goesby. We had the closest, really
the closest election in history in twothousand based a large part of what was

(11:16):
going on in Florida, and noneof those problems got resolved in that That's
how two thousand ended up with SupremeCourt of the United States punting, and
it is what it is because thecalendar was moving and we got to be
done by this date, and wecouldn't get into all of that stuff still
unresolved. So we could have potentiallyanother two thousand election anytime now because we

(11:39):
are so relatively evenly divided in ourphilosophies. It's where we are. But
in nineteen seventy two, like Isaid, Nixon overwhelming. He got sixty
almost sixty one percent of the vote. Okay, sixty one percent of the
vote, and forty nine states hewon. Why Why do people in positions

(12:03):
of power do foolish things? Itfloors me. I'll never did they just
not have any accurate polling because therewas no need to do the stupid thing
he did. No, No,there wasn't none at all. But there
was there was a paranoia that occupiedand later John dene in the famous presentation
he made, but he talked abouta meeting he was general counsel in the

(12:24):
White House and he went to Nixonand told Nixon that there's a cancer growing
in the White House. It wasn'ta cancer, it was this mental paranoia
that was bleeding through his top levelof staff people and the highest levels were
involved and got got corrupt, corrupted, but then got convicted. John Mitchell,

(12:45):
Attorney General, went to jail.Maurice Stands as Secretaria Commerce, you
know, went to jail, Chiefof Staff, General counsel. I mean,
right all the way down the line, right, everybody did, but
Richard Nixon. Yeah, because RichardNixon. A month after he resigned,
gerald Ford pardoned him one almost tothe day. A month gerald Ford pardoned

(13:07):
him, and a lot of peoplewere highly critical. I think had probably
cost Ford the election in doing that, Ford had I think a sense of
history and wanted to do what hethought was best in the healing that needed
to be done at that point intime, and so he took that bold
action. He was the only oneat that point to get pardoned. There
were only two people involved in allof Watergate, two people that got pardoned,

(13:31):
the President and the locksmith from CubanAmerican locksmith from Miami. He got
pardoned by Ronald Reagan and then laterit found out that he was a CIA
asset and had been involved in workingfor the CIA prior to the Watergate break
and had connections with G. GordonLyddy and others. But he did we

(13:54):
ever ask him if the mistake withthe pick locks. He never said much.
And I think the fellow lived Ithink to be ninety eight or I
mean he lived a very long time, moved back to Florida and lived in
some small town with his daughter inFlorida. But those are the only two
people out of all these people toget a pardon. It's kind of an

(14:15):
interesting little tidbit. But when Irediscovered that, I knew that way back.
And then when I rediscovered that,I thought, that's really odd.
Why did he get a pardon?When I saw that he was one that
got the pardon? It yea,he worked for the CIA and part of
the deal. Back then, youknow, they inadvertently discovered the fact that

(14:35):
Richard Nixon was taping himself. Nobodyelse had ever done that to that extent.
In the White House. They wereover three thousand hours of tape that
got turned over, some missing segments, the famous, famously famous gap that
oh I must have leaned way overand shut it off, you know.
But John Dene in his testimony revealedthat. And how did John Dene know?

(14:56):
He didn't know he was being taped. He he might be being taped
because when he was making a presentationto Richard Nixon in the Oval office,
Nixon said, hey, went justsecond, walked over with him to the
corner of the room and very quietlytold him some things, and then went
back and sat down and they continuedtheir conversation. And John Deane, very

(15:18):
being very astute, said why didhe do that? It wasn't for a
photo op. Yeah, And thenan aid called Butterfield was testifying and got
asked the question are their tapes?And his immediate response to Congress when they
asked him about was there a tapingsystem in the White House? His immediate

(15:39):
response was, oh, I wishyou hadn't asked me that question, and
then proceeded to tell them, yeah, we have this comprehensive taping system.
Oh boy. But my main point, though, is there's corruption. There's
been corruption. I've been alive forfourteen presents since I was a baby.
Only three of them really had relativelyscandal free administrations. The eleven of the

(16:04):
fourteen, can I ask you aquestion, Yeah, could you say Trump
was scandal free? Now? Why? Well, because of just we're all
kinds of things going on We talkedabout that the next time. What's occurred
probably since Bush forty three to now, which kinds of levels of disruption,
And it's not necessarily the guy himself, the president himself, that's the one

(16:27):
that's corrupt. But then it's thepeople around him that are getting paid off
and things happening, get the Pentagonand government contracts. It's scandals. It's
where the leadership comes from. Youhave to say it that way. Scandals,
scandals, all right, So we'lltalk about that next month. Yeah,
well, where no government would benecessary. I always keep that in

(16:48):
mind. Doctor Ed Moore with us. Thanks, But it's twenty eight after the hour