I Don't Know About That - Watergate

Episode Date: March 22, 2022

In this episode, the team discusses the Watergate scandal with distinguished journalist, best-selling historian, and author of the new book, "Watergate: A New History", Garrett M. Graff. Go to GarrettGraff.com to find links to his books, podcast episodes, and much more! Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/IDKAT for ad free episodes, bonus episodes, and more exclusive perks! Tiers start at just $2! Go to JimJefferies.com to buy tickets to Jim's upcoming tour, The Moist Tour.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

computers computers sperm puters i don't know i was just looking at the computer you might learn nothing but i don't know about that with jim jeffries all right seamless i think that's the first one you ever gave up and explained what you were doing in the middle I don't know, I'm just like, I think it's you Alright, Kelly's with us, but Kelly's not in the studio because Kelly's had her molars removed Wisdom teeth

They call them 12 year old molars, I know 12 year old molars are the ones that grow on the wisdom teeth the other ones. I was telling Kelly that I was born without wisdom teeth Wow, you were? He told me he's the most evolved person i'm the next step in evolution this is actually happening with more and more people but they they do an x-ray on your teeth when you're a child and they can tell

whether you have them and i was born with zero wisdom teeth people are born with like one to four of the things and i i had i had none of them so i've done your wikipedia yeah it's a little bit fun fact fun fact I was born without wisdom so I'll never have to have those removed but my brothers are the

uninvolved bastards that they are he still has us they still had them yeah they had to have them removed and everything but I was born without

them my mother always complimented me on such a thing oh Jeffrey never had wisdom I had mine out when I was I want to say like 17 16 or something I was young I had mine out when I was, I want to say like 17, 16 or something. I was young.

I think I got mine out at like 15 or something. Yeah, I wasn't that young back then. Before that, Forrest had a real silky smooth speaking voice. Something happens. What are you doing to me, Doc? Hey, thanks, Doc. That'll be a lot better. Hey, Mark.

I got no wisdom teeth. How are you doing Kelly? My camera's off right now Because laughing made me Be in a lot of pain And how does the camera stop that? Oh you don't want people seeing you wince Yeah Because I'm just like holding my face

I'm putting pressure on my face So that it doesn't Is your face all puffed up? I'll turn my camera on for you I'm just like holding my face. I'm putting pressure on my face so that it doesn't. Is your face all puffed up? I'll turn my camera on for you. I'm not going to. I'm not going to. Oh, it definitely is. Oh, my God.

You look the same. You look better than when you were swollen. Yeah, it was so swollen last week. You look fine. No, I tell you who always looks like their wisdom teeth have just been taken out. Kanye West. Holy hell, that man looks post-wisdom teeth.

He looks post-wisdom teeth. You start new beef. You and Pete on one team. Yeah, yeah. I'll call up Pete. I know Pete Davidson. I'll ring him up and go, I said something that you could say to Kanye.

It'd be very funny. I'm going to say he looks post-wisdom teeth. Get it past Kim. See what she says first. I like that the Kardashians are advertising on Hulu. They've got a new show and their last show was like this. Oh, it's going to be so good to get rid of cameras out of our lives.

They lasted six months. Jeez. You got some shows coming up. Texas, baby. I'm in Sugarland. We're the land of sugar. San Antonio. Kick in. I'm in Sugar Land. We're the land of sugar. San Antonio. San Antonio the 25th. Can't get in the bush. It ain't Sugar Land. Also San Antonio the 25th.

Sugar Land the 26th. I remember the Alamo because I'm right next to that. So if you get to there, you can walk to it. Have you ever been to Alamo? I've been to San Antonio. I was in a hotel that I think was called the Alamo or some shit. I could see it. It was like a 100 meter walk and I didn't go. It's right was in a hotel that I think was called the Alamo or some shit. I was like, I could see it. It was like a hundred meter walk and I didn't go.

It's right there in the middle of the city. Yeah. I might go this time. So if you want to see me, I'll be at the Alamo. And then two weeks after that, you're in Grand Rapids, Michigan on April 8th. Grand Rapids, Michigan. I'm in Green Bay or as I like to call it. No, I'm in, where else am I? That's April 8th and April 9th. Grand Rapids, Michigan and Green Bay or as I like to call it I'm in where else am I

that's April 8th and April 9th Grand Rapids Michigan and Green Bay Wisconsin and after that Canada and then off to the sunny Australia I only seem to go to Australia in the winter so my son's all excited because it's his summer break but I'm like the beaches won't be very good I don't know what to do

in Australia when it's not nice weather what do you do? Just go to the movies. I don't know. You're from there. I've never been there in the winter. The last time I was in Australia, I left when I was about 20. So most of my people go, what do you do in Australia?

Oh, most of my time, you drink alcohol in a park and finger a trick against a tree. Because that's what you do as a teenager, you know. Against a tree. Not against it. No, she's consented. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The tree has it, though. I just thought you'd be in a more comfortable setting, you know.

No, because you can't go out, you know. Your parents. Did your mother let you shag in the house? I didn't. It wasn't like something she said I could do. Yeah, I guess it was a car. I was in a car. Yeah, I did car sex.

Everyone did car sex. Very comfortable. And yeah, I guess it was a car. I was in a car. Yeah, I did car sex. Everyone did car sex. Yeah, very comfortable. But before that, you had to go. Yeah, there was a tennis court at the end of my street and that parking lot was always filled with people fucking. And my dad would always walk the dog at that hour. Just walk around, have a little perv through the window. So all those dates are available at jimjeffries.com.

And I'll be at SideSplitters in Tampa April 7th through 9th You can go to foreshaw.net I'm also in Sacramento in May I don't have the date on there I believe it's May 19th And if you haven't signed up for the Patreon yet Join the Patreon and join the fun

It's building Patreon.com slash IDCAT And also I think by the time this episode drops Our merch store will be live So that's going to be I I don't know about that.com. What's on the merch. We got hats, we got mugs, we got shirts, we got sweatshirts. I got an idea. So a t-shirt that says, I don't know about that.

And then there's just cum stains on the shirt. Like cause we always do a cum joke. Well, we can add that after the shirts are printed. Yeah. Instead of signing autographs, you can just come on. We can only do two shirts a day. Well, I can. Jack can probably.

I'll step in. I've learned your signature. Yeah, Jack can do about 10 different fucking shirts a day. I can do one. I don't produce. I'm the opposite of you. I don't think I produce a lot of cum, so I can do one shirt a day. If you guys buy shirts, and you come to Jim's show and you get meet and

greets, he will come on your shirt. Wow. Big promise. All right. I'm going to get some money from that. I don't like those April 18th shirts that I've never seen a dime. Yeah.

So subscribe to our Patreon. I think last, the one that just came out was we had bonus right from last week was a bonus Lexi Luna. Yeah. And maybe the, what else was on that one? She came out was we had bonus from last week was a bonus Lexi Luna photo chat. What else was on that one? She came out to our show in Vegas. That was a fun episode. People are enjoying it. So subscribe to that.

Also our IDCAT Instagram. Let's start the podcast. Now let's welcome our guest Garrett Graff. Now it's time to play. Yes, no. Yes, no.

Yes, no. Yes, no. Judging a book by its cover. I underestimate how good Jack is at his job. Yeah, yeah. It was the one time we got Louise to do it and Jack wouldn't have fucked that up. He full screened it. Yeah, now you've got to full screen it, idiot.

Yeah, geez. We're having tactical difficulties already here. Louise. You wouldn't have fucked that up. Are you full screen? Yeah. Now you've got to full screen, you idiot. Yeah, geez. We're having technical difficulties already here. Please. Geez. Get in there. Even I know how to full screen. Okay.

Aren't you the technical guy? Okay. Well, there you can see Garrett. There we are. Full screen. There we are. G'day, Garrett. We're going to be talking about politics.

Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes our guests are like, doesn't matter what's on in the background. I'm like, nah, but you really, you really gave it away here, Garrett, in the background. Well, it might be, it might be a particular brand. Politics isn't the topic. Yeah, it's not the topic of politics, but it's in the world of politics. Gerrymandering.

All right. Okay. That's a pretty, I mean, we're not doing that, but I don't know why you would even say gerrymandering i was like but that's that's a deep cut but um okay so there's a lot of clues behind so garrett uh hey have you written books on nixon yes i have yeah there you go hey uh did you sell them at a reasonable price or are you a crook? That was a Nixon deep dive. There you go. Okay, Goldwater. Now I'm going to I don't know what that is. Should I know what Goldwater is? You should for this episode, yeah. Fuck, I don't know what that is. That's a clue.

You have Nixon and Goldwater. And Hamilton. Hamilton's not helping you at all. Nixon and Goldwater will help you with what? We're going to talk about Watergate. The Watergate scandal. you at all nixon and goldwater will help you with what okay so we're going to talk about uh watergate yeah yes the watergate scandal all right let me introduce garrett m graph he is a distinguished journalist and best-selling historian the former editor of political politico magazine

and a current contributor to wired and cnn graph is the author of multiple books including the threat matrix inside robert muller's fbi the national bestseller raven rock about the Wired and CNN. Graff is the author of multiple books, including The Threat Matrix, Inside Robert Mueller's FBI, the national bestseller Raven Rock about the government's Cold War doomsday plans, and the number one national bestseller, The Only Plane in the Sky, an oral history of 9-11, compiling the voices of 500 Americans as they experienced that tragic day, which was named the industry's 2020 audio book of the year. He's also the host of Long Shadow, an eight episode podcast series about the lingering questions of 9-11 and the executive producer of While the Rest of Us Die,

a Vice TV series based on his book, Raven Rock. His most recent book, Watergate, A New History, was published last month, became an instant bestseller on the New York Times list. You can go to garrettgraff.com and see all of his books and podcast links. Everything's on there. And thanks for being on the show, Garrett.

Yeah, I'm not going to do well here. I thought you watched all the CNN history. I watched the CNN thing, and I've seen the Nixon interviews. Have you seen all the presidents, man? I haven't seen all the presidents, man. I saw some of them. How did you get, like, how did you, I mean, did you study politics in college and got into this?

Studied journalism and then have spent most of my career covering politics and national security. And Watergate is, of course, one of the great stories of politics and national security. So you're an actual journalist. You don't just put up that what's the 10 hottest stars of the time or see how this person got fat clickbait stuff. Because I'm a bit mean about journalists now because I think that they've lost a lot of

credibility over the years because of the internet and how the articles are written and stuff like that. But it's like saying all restaurants are McDonald's. Yeah. You know, there are different ones. So you're an actual journalist, Garrett, who does deep dive stuff. Although you were number one

on my list of the 10 hottest celebrities that I've been interviewed by. I thought you'd been interviewed by. Yes, that makes sense. Yes. Yeah, I mean, just reading some of your... I would like to read this oral history of 9-11. That looks really good. And I mean, obviously, the Watergate book is a new one.

So check all that stuff out. But I just reading your bio when you sent it to me, I was like, this all look really cool. So, OK, I'm going to ask Jim a series questions about the Watergate scandal. And you're going to listen along while we're doing that, Garrett. And at the end of it, you're going to grade them zero through ten, ten being the best on accuracy. Kelly's going to grade them on confidence. I'm going to grade them on etc. 0 through 10, pizza gate. We're going to combine them all together.

11 through 20, sandpaper gate. I don't know what that is. 21 through 30, nipple gate. I don't know what that is. That was the Janet Jackson. Was that nipple gate? Yeah. I know Americans like to slap the word gate on the end of things. A lot of gates. A lot of gates. No, but Sandpaper Gate is an Australian.

Oh, that's when they scuffed up the ball. Yeah, cricket. Yeah, the ball tampering. Against South Africa, I think. Yeah, but fuck South Africa. There was a lot of other ones like Sandwich Gate, Fart Gate, Penis Gate, Sticky Gate. There's a lot of gates. Okay, let's start.

What was the Watergate scandal? Like what happened? Okay, so Watergate is named after the hotel that it happened in. And I believe, now I might be completely wrong here, I believe that Nixon ordered to have the Democratic Party, what's that thing where you put mic, bugged? Wiretap. Yeah, wiretap, all that type of things.

And he sent some people in there. And maybe when they actually got caught, he sent some people in there to destroy the evidence was when they actually got caught. But when did it happen? You know? Oh, during Nixon's administration. Just a year.

You don't have to do exact date. We'll get the exact date. Hang on, hang on. I'll get this. 1973. Close. we'll get the exact date hang on hang on I'll get this 1973 close why was it why was it called Watergate you said

because it was the name of the hotel Watergate Hotel in Washington DC okay what was the biggest part of the scandal that people don't know about

what's the biggest why would I know about it you just said you just said what's the what's the biggest thing that no one knows and I say I know very little about the things that everyone knows about did you just say what's the what's the biggest thing that no one knows and i say i know

very little about the things that everyone knows about did you ask me something okay if you don't know i'm sure one of the one of the microphone bugs was inside marilyn monroe oh the corpse do you know who g gordon liddy is Oh, the corpse. Do you know who G. Gordon Liddy is? Sounds familiar? It does sound familiar. His name's actually Gordon Liddy, but he's really tall.

So people used to say G. Gordon Liddy to him. So I'm assuming you're not going to know who John Mitchell is or E. Howard Hunt. I don't know. James McGregor. I don't know. I'll learn with the rest of you. How many times did they break in? It's the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

Right, right. How many times did they break in there? How many break-ins were there? Well, there had to be one break-in to bug the place and one break-in to remove the bugs. I'm going to say twice. Okay, so they went back a second time to remove them. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

How did the burglars... Which removed files or something. They were removing something. How did the burglars... Which removed files or something. They were removing something. How did the burglars get caught the second time then? They left their key in the room. They had to go back down to reception. That's because what they did was they put their key next to their phone. That'll wipe those puppies out.

In the 70s. Yeah. It was new technology. The police officers that responded to the scene were dressed a certain way. Oh, I know how it happened. Forrest Gump recorded them from over another building. It was keeping them awake with their flashlights. Yeah, he called it in.

The police officers that responded to the scene were dressed. How is that the only thing I know about Watergate? Is that Forrest Gump referenced it? I got to be honest. I was like reading that when I was doing this talk and stuff, I was reading it. I didn't really, you think you know it because it's such a, it's like in the zeitgeist.

It's one of those things that I'm sure that you would have got taught it somewhat in the history classes. I didn't get taught most of this stuff, like the details. But I got told none of this. And we didn't have it on documentaries on Australian TV where we harped on about Watergate. All I know is like Nixon going,

I'm not a crook. And then when he gets in the helicopter to go away and he does the two piece signs and all that type of stuff and all that crap. Okay. So the police officers that responded to the scene were dressed in a certain way. What was it? Sexy police officers.

They were moonlighting strippers. Okay. Um, they were going, they knocked on the door. I hear somebody bugged this office. Everyone's in fuzzy cuffs. What were some of the items that the apprehended men had on them?

There'll be a tape recorder. There would have been documents. There would have been, one of them had a packet of Wrigley gum. What flavor? Just the normal mint. Okay. No, no. These are serious guys

there's no fucking juicy fruit happening I don't even know if juicy fruit was happening yet they had the digital keys but no juicy fruit how did the White House initially try to cover up any connection to them and the burglars lie lie lie deny deny deny

just keep on saying you didn't do it okay but Shaggy it wasn't me okay it wasn't me that's what that's talking about i see you in the bedroom window uh what does the white what does the white house plumbers refer to quote the white house plumbers um the white house would have been the people who put the bugs in there because they might have put it under sinks and stuff like that. And maybe that was the code word for the dodgy guys who did it. Okay.

What role did Martha Mitchell play in Watergate? And I said John Mitchell before so that I can tell you that. I believe that's his wife, right? I'll give that away to you. Um, she might've been the whistleblower in the whole situation. Okay. Who are Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein? Oh, you know what? Goldwater doesn't even, I gave you a wrong clue. I was thinking it was one of

these guys and it's the wrong word, wrong name. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Who were they? They were the investigative journalists that uncovered Watergate. And what does Deep Throat refer to? Deep Throat was a movie in the 70s. That's something different. Where the whole idea was that she had a clitoris at the back of her throat and the only way she could come was by deep throating. I know everything about that movie. No, this is something different. This is something different.

Linda Lovelace. I have always wondered why it was called that. I don't know why it's called Deep Throat either, but it always made me think of pornography. All right. How were the connections made between men arrested and President Nixon and others? How did they finally connect them?

I think there would have been a paper trial. Also, Nixon stupidly. Oh, I know this one. Nixon not only bugged over there, but he bugged his entire office so that he would have a recording of everything that's said in the Oval Office. And they found those recordings and they found the actual conversations that he had. Yeah. So the Watergate tapes, and then there was one called the Smoking Gun Tape.

Do you know what was on that one and why it was called the Smoking Gun Tape? I'm not sure. The Smoking Gun. Oh, it was originally an episode of Bonanza and then he taped over it. He's like, I taped over my episode. Yeah, yeah. It's my favorite one. I was like, why'd you tape over that one?

What was the Saturday Night Mass massacre in relation to watergate um that would have been not an actual massacre where people died but that would have been where everyone was getting fired and people were being let out of their offices and put into cuffs or whatever whenever when all the arrests or accusations were made that that night okay a couple more questions there how many government officials were charged in relation to Watergate scandal? How many were convicted and like how much time did they spend in prison? So how many were charged? 15 charged,

two convicted, two went to prison. I know that Nixon, he never got charged because Ford came in afterwards and he pardoned Nixon because he believed that the country had to move on. And a lot of people say that was a bad thing he did, but in hindsight, like the trial would have gone on for years and years and years. And that's all that would have happened in sort of Ford's administration is hearing about the Nixon trial. So yeah,

that was my last question. What happened to Nixon? Was he pardoned? Answer that. When did he resign? So what year you said this happened in 73 when was his resignation 74 okay all right uh garrett graff how did jim do zero through 10 10 is the best and his knowledge of the watergate scandal uh i give uh him a 6.5 it was actually a relatively strong performance. He gets partial credit for many of the answers and, in fact, is much closer with his detailed knowledge of Deep Throat, the porn movie, than he probably realized. Have you seen that movie, Garrett? It's not good.

How did that become the biggest hit in the porn industry? And Linda Lovelace, she's all right. It was the direct reason that Deep Throat, the source ended up getting the name Deep Throat, the source. Oh, really? Yeah. I thought that was not connected. That's the real.

It's a real thing. Deep Throat, the movie was out in theaters at the time and uh the idea of the source who liked to use his mouth um was uh was how they got deep throat they were gonna call the source titty fuck four uh there was a big debate because that was the other popular movie at the time close Close Encounters was the third kind. It was a little long. Wow, it was in theaters too. Nice. It was in the porn theaters.

It wasn't in regular theaters. I was making fun of you. I didn't think that was right. You got points there. Alright, how do you do on confidence, Kelly? Honestly, his confidence score is low. It's a three, but you impressed me, Jim. You did a lot better than I was expecting. Well, at least I don't actually know if any of your answers are true because i don't know anything about this but um they sounded good i guess is what i'm saying okay so we're up to 9.5

uh and we're over 10.5 i'm gonna give jim five minutes et cetera just so you're in the sandpaper gate because you know south South Africa, Australia. OK, so what was Watergate scandal? What happened? Jim said it was named after the hotel it happened in. Nixon ordered the Democratic Party wiretapped. Can you just talk, I guess, a general description of the Watergate scandal before we get into the details? Yeah. So this was really the purpose of trying to write this book in the first place was that America misunderstands what Watergate really was and that we have this idea that it was this burglary on June 17th, 1972. So close.

men, although it's worth saying that there's actually no proof that Nixon ordered the burglary himself, that these five burglars were arrested in the Democratic National Committee officers at the Watergate condo complex in Washington, D.C. But the reality of the Watergate scandal is actually much larger and weirder and zanier than than people really remember. And part of what I was trying to do in this book is trace the Watergate as a mindset and less as an event. And it was this dark, paranoid, conspiratorial mindset that Nixon brought to the White House beginning in 1968 and Watergate itself by the time he resigns in 1974, which Jim got right. interrelated but distinct scandals, some of which on their own would have actually been among the largest political scandals in modern American political history, including the resignation of his Vice President Spiro Agnew, who was taking bribes inside the White House as part of a construction kickback scheme that he had been a part of earlier. And then there were a bunch of other sort of very weird plots that were part of this, including some of the only active or not active, only credible treason allegations against a

only credible treason allegations against a modern political figure in American history. Um, when Nixon in 1968, uh, began actually an attempt to stall the peace talks of the Vietnam war and keep the Vietnam war going, uh, in order to help him win the presidency in the fall of 1968. And it's that scandal that Nixon knew about and that Lyndon Johnson knew about that really in many ways drives Nixon sort of ever more crazy and ever more paranoid over the course of the rest of his presidency as he tries to cover up that original sin. So Nixon was already into his first year of his second term, was he?

Yes. So the Watergate burglary happened in the summer of the re-election campaign. And the scandal really only bursts into public view right after his inauguration in the second term in january 1973 um so so it worked arguably it worked yeah because i didn't realize that it was after because i remember the one thing i always remember them people saying i was like he didn't need to do this he was going to win the election anyways but he did win the election so he clearly was going to probably win it anyways because he's already mired in the scandal and still got re-elected yes and that was exactly it was he was already on his way to a runaway victory in 72 when this burglary happened but uh it didn't it didn't really break uh into the ranks of his

administration until after the election itself, which 72 election largest landslide in American political history. And, you know, just 18 months later, Richard Nixon driven from office and impeached. Now, coming from another country and just watching movies, Nixon's always depicted as this sort of shonky sort of car salesman-like guy who was just corruption on top of corruption. Were there good things he did? Like, he seemed to be pretty popular because it seems like history, he's just marred because of the Watergate scandal. But before that, he seems like he was quite liked. If so, why?

Yeah. And this is actually one of the great tragic aspects of this entire scandal is that Nixon, by almost any stretch or measurement, would be seen as one of the great presidents in the 20th century in the United States. He helped usher in the era of detente in the arms race in the Cold War, reopened diplomatic relations with China. He was the first president to visit Moscow, the first president to visit Peking, first president to visit a communist country. Environmental, too. He started the EPA. He started the Environmental Protection Agency. He started the OSHA, the sort of Workplace Protection Agency. Clean Water Act, I think, too. Clean Water Act, because I used to be a biologist,

so I remember reading that and I'm like, wow, Nixon started all these organizations. How was he on civil rights? Was he pretty good on that? Well, so what's interesting about Nixon in the arc of the way that the 20th century unfolds is he is really the hinge upon which the

20th century turns. And you sort of see the end of the New Deal and the Great Society, the sort of liberal consensus of the FDR and LBJ years give way to Nixon and what was then called the Southern strategy to appeal to basically white voters in the South on behalf of the Republican Party. And ushers in Richard Nixon ushers in this era of a much more racialized, polarized, nativist politics that unfolds through the the reagan years and then you know in many ways finds its natural conclusion with the election of donald trump in 2016 right and he met elvis and he met elvis the most requested photo in the history of the national archives yeah that's the picture of him with Elvis. That's where he wore drugs.

He started to wear drugs. Yeah, and he was played by Kevin Spacey, so that's good. That's good for his look. He was played by so many people though. Kevin Spacey did a good job. You can tell me what, he's a good actor man. What's his name? Michael Sheen, not Michael Sheen.

Who's Michael Sheen? Yeah, Michael Sheen. Michael Sheen played Elvis. I didn't buy him as Elvis. I think he's a fine actor, but I don't remember Elvis being scary looking. At that point in his life, maybe. Why was it called Watergate? We went over that.

What was the biggest part of the scandal that people don't know about? And then Jim said one of the microphone bugs was inside of Marilyn Monroe. Yeah, it was planted there to hear on Kennedy back in the day. He shoved it up her so that when he was with Kennedy, you could win that election. But then the famous sweat on the lip, right?

He had a sweaty lip. And that was the first televised debate. And America went like this. They went, I just can't trust this guy. He's got a sweaty lip. They were lip. And then you have Donald Trump just going and just talking about grabbing pussies and we're like, that's the man. So you definitely get confidence points for the Marilyn Monroe bug.

I will say history has not yet shown much truth to the rumor of a bug buried in Marilyn Monroe. You know, we can still wait to have a documentation. Don't go too far. So what was the biggest part of the scandal that people don't know about? So this is the weirdness of this Chenault affair, which I mentioned before, which is this effort in the 1968 presidential race where Nixon, working with the South Vietnamese, tries to stall the Paris peace talks. And when the release of the Pentagon Papers comes out in 1971, which were these documents that showed how the American people had been lied to by the Johnson administration and the Kennedy administration about the truth of the Vietnam War, that sort of the administration knew that America was losing and kept sending men over there to die. Nixon becomes afraid that this Chenault affair, named after this woman, Anna Chenault, that was a sort of go-between between Nixon's campaign manager, John Mitchell,

and the South Vietnamese government, was going to come out. And so this is where Nixon actually orders the only burglary that we know that Nixon actually ordered, which is not the Watergate burglary, but an attempt to burglarize the Brookings Institution, which is the think tank in Washington that they imagine incorrectly has this secret file on the Nixon's campaign shenanigans and betrayals in 1968. And so the Nixon White House cooks up this crazy scheme where they want to fire bomb the Brookings Institution and then hire this group of Cuban burglars, the same people who go on to become the burglars at the Watergate

complex the year later, and dress them up as firefighters and buy them a used fire truck that they would respond, dressed as firefighters, to the burning Brookings building, break in, firefighters to the burning Brookings building, break in, steal the papers from the Brookings institution and escape amid the, uh, the chaos of the fire. Wait, wait, wait a minute. Where is that? Is that, I can see some, some holes in this plan. A lot of holes. So what happens when the real firemen show up they're not gonna they're not gonna show up there's another truck already here

from station 12 yeah what's this truck with a pump hose doing here why does it say a water brothers prop department that's exactly uh that was exactly their plan was that there would be so many fire trucks that no one would notice an additional one. But then the burglary falls apart, not because it is one of the craziest, most criminal schemes anyone could have possibly imagined, but because the White House turns out to be too cheap to buy the fire truck. And they show up in a Honda Accord the bus just as clowns. truck. They show up at a Honda Accord. The bus.

Dressed as clowns. Yeah, I always like that they're still paper because that is a good ruse because you walk out of a fire holding a whole wad of paper and you go, I got this out of here. This stuff goes right up. The fly moving gets near it. We're saving lives here.

It'd be funny if they got the truck and it just said, Nixon Firefighters. I'm on this air. I'm going to go back in there and get a hay bale next. Stop taking it. You know what's interesting about this podcast? As you said, the Pentagon Papers, and we did an episode on the Vietnam War,

but eventually I'll learn everything because I'd forgotten exactly what the Pentagon Papers were. We talked about it. Eventually I'll learn everything. Well, no, because I don't remember. What if I can say, eventually, I'll know everything. No, I mean, it'll get hammered in my head enough. I still didn't remember what the Pentagon Papers, and now this is the second time, and maybe it'll retain the information.

That's what I was saying. You're only like eight podcasts away from knowing everything. We've got to do some on the Pentagon next. So Nixon wanted the Vietnam War to extend so that he would get voted back in. Wouldn't he want it like the war's over and everyone would rejoice him? Or is it the old idea that you don't get rid of a president during wartime? No. So this was 68 when Nixon was running for the first time.

So he wanted the war to keep going. So that he could be the solution. So that he could be the solution. Right he could be the solution right okay that makes sense okay um no no we crafty fucker that nixon yeah yeah we're back uh so i asked you g gordon liddy was um john mitchell e howard i mean i just wrote these names down as players and watergate i mean how, how important or not? I mean, maybe you can talk about those names. Yeah. So and I'll answer one of the later questions that you touch on, too, is that in the the Pentagon Papers are this signal event for the Nixon administration where they wildly overreact, you know, plot this Brookings bombing, even though the Pentagon Papers really have nothing to do with the Nixon administration. There are two million words, none of them being Richard Nixon in the Pentagon Papers. Instead, what they do is they create this team and the White House.

And they create this unit that is known eventually by the name of the White House plumbers And the plumbers as a reference to their job to stop leaks. Right. That they end up in this very weird and bizarre, ever more bizarre cascading series of events and then are put in charge. And then sort of after having failed miserably at their attempts to stop leaks, they are put in charge of the dirty tricks for the 72 reelection campaign. And G. Gordon Liddy comes up with this incredible plan known as Operation Gemstone, which was

his campaign of dirty tricks that he had the CIA draw up the charts for and then went to present to John Mitchell, who was simultaneously the campaign manager and the U.S. Attorney General, the man, obviously, you know, the head law enforcement official for the United States. And G. Gordon Liddy lays out this Operation Gemstone, which is this crazy series of plans. It is kidnapping anti-war activists, drugging them and taking them to Mexico and where they would be held hostage during the conventions. It is a it is recruiting a team of prostitutes who would lure Democratic officials to a houseboat in the Miami harbor that had been rigged for sound and photographs. It's this a spy plane that would follow the Democratic campaign planes around to harass them and surveil them as they travel around on the campaign plane. again, chief law enforcement officer for the United States, doesn't say to Gordon Liddy,

this is a awful criminal conspiracy that should have nothing to do with the president of the United States, and I'm going to have the FBI arrest you as you leave my office. He instead says, why don't you come back in a couple of weeks with something that's about half this budget, and we'll talk about it again. It's always a budget, huh? It's always a budget thing. We want to do these crazy things. Yeah, like you can – I can make that budget small.

Yeah. Just bugger a hotel room. Why do the prostitutes have to be on a yacht? Yeah. Just put a tent in someone's backyard. Like you don't have to put in that much fucking effort. A prostitute tent? Yeah, what's this prostitute boat?

That's why when I see prostitutes, never say anything i tell them i'm a mute so that nothing's recorded no one knows uh yeah and then also like nowadays you don't even have to kidnap people to take them to mexico to do drugs you just tell them that they would get in there and who found these plumbers i might have missed that in your answer how because you said they were both retired fbi cia guys How did they get recruited or did they just hatch this idea by themselves? No. So they were brought into the white house. Um, the, they were sort of known G Gordon Liddy was in the Nixon administration, um, working at the treasury department. Uh, Howard Hunt was working for a public relations firm in D.C.

that was a CIA front and had been recruited into the White House by Chuck Colson, who's another one of the Nixon counselors who ends up being sort of mixed up in this. And they are, shall we say, poorly supervised in their office roles. And everything goes wild. And they're also called the plumbers because they're old blokes and their ass cracks hang down at the top of their pants. They're doing that thing where they're trying to hitch it back up until they're identified.

You know what I want to do an episode on? Fucking unders t-shirts, singlets or whatever. Who the fuck wears those? A whole episode on that? Yeah, sure. You know those things, those white, like the wife beaters? Just the tank top kind of thing. Who wears an undershirt?

I don't know. What's all that about? Do you have one on, Garrett? I do, but you know, I'm a preppy guy. I don't know the benefits of it because if it could stop the pits from staining, so sometimes I wear a t-shirt. You gotta wear a t-shirt, yeah. No, but just the one that goes over your shoulders. You've got a shirt or a tank top one?

A shirt. Yeah, a shirt. Shirt's all right. Who wears the tank top one? What's the fucking... This t-shirt stops a bit of sweating, keeps you warm. Chest sweating. No, it's a meshy material.

If that would cause nipple chafing more than anything. No, I'm with you. The t-shirt I get, because if you want to, but yeah. I got a friend who wears one. I'll ask him. Yeah, get to the bottom of that. Alright, get him on as a specialist. I wear them every now and then. You do? Yeah, every now and then. Oh, he's my friend, I guess.

He's wearing a baseball jersey. It compresses the man boobs a little bit sometimes. Oh, just get lipo in your tits like everybody else. Everybody else. How many break-ins to the DNC headquarters were there? Jim said twice. Why did they go back a second time? And then how did they get caught?

Someone left the keys. Yeah, Jim said the key. So Jim was right in totality and wrong on the details, which was... And this is one of the things that most people actually don't know about the Watergate scandal, is that the time that they were arrested was actually the second burglary. I did not know that when I read this. I did not know that at all.

They had been in a couple of weeks earlier to try to bug and wiretap the DNC offices and had screwed it up. And they were coming back that night on Juneune 17th to try to uh fix the problems of the first burglary um and they were caught uh because they had taped the door uh uh one of the stairwell doors open and the tape was discovered by a security guard who called the police. And they were arrested by undercover police officers who responded. And because the police officers were undercover, they were in plain clothes. And so the lookout did not spot the police officers entering the building and give them time to actually evacuate from the DNC offices before they were found.

Now, so they went in, they, they bugged the place and they didn't do it right. And then they had to come back again and fix the shonky job. It sounds like they're complete out of morons, but in their defense, I'll watch Luis and Jack set up this podcast every week

and they're not hiding anything the wires are all open and it's very rare that it works and that's with modern day technology where where did they where did that because because the recording equipment needed big reel to reel stuff it wasn't digital or anything like that where did they hide the bugs it's not like now where you have like a little thing you put on a hat or something like where did they go so the the bugs were actually supposed to broadcast wirelessly to the howard johnson hotel across the street where they had set up a lookout post and listening post um that was manned by another former fbi agent there who was the one who the who was the lookout who missed the plainclothes officers.

Now one of the sort of fun wrinkles of this is that there's actually some pretty credible evidence that the CIA knew of the burglary that night. That you had, as I mentioned, Howard Hunt uh former cia officer james mccord another one of the burglars um a former cia officer because they wanted to catch him they wanted to catch him is that why they well so this is where it this is where it sort of gets interesting is that one of one of the burglars one of the cuban burglars um the the the other five burglars were all Cuban Bay of Pigs veterans recruited from Miami to come up and be part of this burglary gang. And one of them was an active CIA asset. He was actually on the CIA payroll at the time and had

been reporting all of his activities with Howard Hunt and G Gordon Liddy to the CIA. And so there's some speculation that the CIA knew about the burglary and tried to sabotage it that night. And that they were involved in summoning the police that night to arrest the burglars and try to bring down the Nixon administration. Now, I know you said that they were all Cubans and were from the Bay of Pigs. Why Cubans besides that? Like, couldn't you just gotten any old Joe to do it?

They used them in the other stuff, remember? The fire truck thing. I know, but why Cubans the whole time? Oh, I don't know. Well, so Howard Hunt, sort of one of those White House plumbers, he had been involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion as a CIA officer. And so he'd sort of gotten to know all of these men through his previous work with the CIA

and knew them as dodgy characters. You know, G. Gordon Liddy bragged to John Mitchell that sort of between all of the men he'd recruited, they'd killed something like 24 men. Right. So they're just badasses is the answer. But also when you show up to a fire and one of the firemen's come out smoking a cigar, you have to go, there's something going on here. Those aren't legal here. Got a stick accent.

Is that what they got them for cigars they locked them up say hello to my little not even a good cue so blah blah blah they got caught the second the police officer responded to the scene we discussed that what were some of the items that the apprehended men

had on them like obviously recorders it would be cigars a really old car a sandwich with ham in it a Cuban sandwich see recorders, I guess, but what else? It'd be cigars, a really old car, a sandwich with ham in it. A Cuban sandwich? Yeah, that's all I know. Big chunks of ham. It's a good sandwich. All those type of things, yeah. Well, this is what ends up

really tipping off the police that this is a weird burglary, is all of the burglars were dressed in suits and they were carrying sequential $100 bills. and the arresting police officers said that they had never seen burglars who carried cash into a burglary before right why did they have cash well their uh their working theory as burglars um you know was that

if a security guard intercepted them they would be able to bribe the security guard with the cash. The security guard, of course, never confronted them and just called the police directly. So they never got the chance to do that. Also, there's another theory that they were going to the strip club afterwards. Because if you do a burglary or something, you don't go home. You go out afterwards and you go, we did it. You have that Ocean's Eleven moment where you all look at the fountain. Jazz players.

So Forrest Gump was not involved in any way. Yeah, Forrest Gump. Was he real? Because he seems, or was he loosely based on someone? He was less involved in the Watergate burglary than the movie makes him out to be. Forrest Gump also Cuban, did you know that? Forrest Gump taught me everything I know about American history.

Well, you learned a little about Watergate. At least you know it was a break-in. I've seen the Frost versus Nixon interview movie. That was all right. Let's see. How did the White House initially try to cover up any connection to them and the burglars? They said, lie, lie, lie. Deny Shaggy. It wasn't me.

Yeah, which is effectively true. And where they had tried to cover it up first was to, again, we come to the CIA. The Nixon White House went to the CIA and asked the agency to intervene with the FBI and tell them that it was a national security operation at the Watergate and that the FBI should drop their investigation.

That didn't hold. FBI proceeds. The CIA basically wouldn't do that. And at that point, Nixon then just denies, denies, denies for two years until the Nixon tapes begin to come out. until the Nixon tapes begin to come out and you get to that smoking gun tape that you referenced in a different question where... We can drop a head to that anytime you want, yeah. Yeah, where you hear Richard Nixon

actually basically order the cover-up on the tapes and show that he was involved in the cover-up on the tapes and show that he was involved in the cover-up much earlier than he had said that he was. Why would he bloody tape his own office? I know that we record meetings and then I can play them back. It's the same reason I don't tape my stand-up anymore. I used to tape it all the time and I never listened to it. I never went home and listened to the set afterwards, so I stopped doing it. But I mean, so he would record meetings. But every now and again, we've all had a wank

in our office. Everyone just in the middle of the day. Nixon just... I met Elvis. That's what he... You're telling me that no president's ever had a wank in the Oval Office. The only thing that's happened You're telling me that no president's ever had a wank in the Oval Office.

The only thing that's happened is Monica Lewinsky had a cigar shoved up her. Is that what you're telling me? There's so many windows and secret servicemen and stuff. The secret servicemen, that's the safest wank you're ever going to have. You tell the bloke at the door, don't come in. Whatever you hear. Don't come in for the next two minutes. I'll do a quick one this time.

Whatever you hear going on in here, do not come. I'm fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. People are allowed to come in and out. They're not allowed to come in and out. Yeah, that's true. Okay, I'll talk about this. I always felt weird about, like, so when Matt Lauer went

down, right, for what happened to him, right, and I'm not justifying the button under the desk the button under the desk the button under the desk that locks the door yeah i was working the jim jeffrey show at that stage and i was like fuck i want a button under the desk not for anything dodgy you know what now that you say it they made it sound like it was to lock people in the room and maybe it was no no it's to let people in and then when they leave your office you lock the door again yeah otherwise you're getting up the door again. Otherwise, you're getting up and you're going back and you're getting up and you're going back. As soon as I heard that, I was sitting in my office,

it was on TV, and we were about to do a piece on it, and I was like, I'm not talking about that because I want a button under my desk. It's just convenient. It makes perfect sense. Come in. All right, goodbye. You lock the door again.

It's not to keep people in. They can still go up and turn the fucking handle. Back to your original question, why did Nixon tape himself i think it's actually one of the weirder moments in this whole weird story which is uh richard nixon knew at the start of his presidency he wanted nothing to do with the with taping systems in the oval office the kennedy administration the johnson administration had both taped themselves um you know you may have actually heard at some point the the tapes of the cuban missile crisis as kennedy deals with that um but the what ends up happening with nixon is so he has that taping system torn out at the start of his presidency. And then as his presidency unfolds, Nixon actually thinks his presidency is going really well. And what he's afraid is that he's not going to get the credit for his own genius that he feels that he should be getting.

And that he's got aides like Henry Kissinger out there who are taking credit for his successes and blaming him for the failures and that he thinks these aides are being duplicitous and sort of saying one thing in the closed door of the Oval Office and then saying something else at the fancy Georgetown cocktail parties where they're hanging out with journalists. And so Nixon installs this secret taping system basically to secure his own place in history so that he can go back when he writes his memoirs and get the actual things that he said and sort of point out where other people failed him. But the big difference between Kennedy and Johnson is that they had a taping system that they could turn on and off.

He needed to turn it off every now and again. Nixon installs something that is actually just voice activated. And so it runs for two years of Dixon's presidency with no one ever the wiser I would I would say things one by myself to make me seem like I was a better in president right so I'd act like there's someone in the room and I'd be like ah you know what I've just thought how about because this is the the wheels wheels were only put on suitcases in 1971 was the pattern, right?

But if you got in earlier and then just went, just log dated at 1970, if he went, you know what, Betsy, my assistant, I reckon there should be wheels and suitcases. And then I go, that's a good idea, Mr. Nixon. And then all of a sudden, I invented that, right? You can fucking do all that stuff. Hey, we have no record of Betsy existing. Also, all this talk of, we mentioned Bay of Pigs, and it's been rattling around in my brain the whole time. I've got a great idea for a reality show.

Like, you know Love Island? Yeah. Where it's all just hot people fucking each other. Don't get ahead of yourselves. Don't get ahead of yourself. I think I know where you're going. But I have a show. It's called Bay of Pigs.

It's just friendly people. Yeah. I got ahead of yourselves. Don't get ahead of yourself. I think I know where you're going. But I have a show. It's called Bay of Pigs. It's just friendly people. Yeah. I got ahead of yourself. And the logline is they deserve love too. Yeah. That is a good slogan. It's not a bad idea. Like me and Jack have pitched a lot of TV shows,

got into a lot of meetings, right? And I tell you, Bay of Pigs is right up there. You're going to have to change the name probably. I don't think people are going to want to be on a show called pigs yeah we'll find a network oh no we're not look these people are really ugly these people are very well described yes yeah they know they're pigs right there's an all-you-can-eat buffet every episode we're going to expect half the contestants not to show up because they won't get off their couch these people are fucking pigs on bay of pigs hosted by by Jim Jeffries. And I'll gain weight.

I'll gain weight just to do it so that they won't feel bad about how good looking I am. You're on there too. I'm going to be the best looking person on Bay of Pigs. You're going to clean up and you're the host. Yeah, clean up. And now it's you know, you'll have different rounds called... Courses.

Yeah, they'll eat out of a trough. Alright, let's get back to Watergate they'll eat out of a trough. Alright, let's get back to Watergate. I think it's a good show. My mate used to have a friend, he started his friend and his nickname's Trough and they called him Trough the whole time because he only shagged ugly birds.

Oh no! So his name was Trough. That's so bad. That's a great Australian nickname. I think it's because he ate out of a trough. No, no, trough because he... Anyway. I think that's a great australian nickname because he ate out of trough no no trough because he yeah anyway um i think that's interesting though but because i always thought nixon was the only one that recorded himself so that makes more sense now when you refer back to that okay uh what role did martha mitchell play in watergate and said she might have been the whistleblower so she was

married to john mitchell the attorney general right yeah? Yeah. So Martha Mitchell is the effectively the first conservative pundit in American politics. She is this the wife of John Mitchell comes to Washington as the wife of the attorney general and becomes this loud, brash, outspoken woman from Arkansas. She was known as the mouth of the south and she uh becomes this national celebrity speaking to republicans uh uh clubs and fundraisers all around the country she's like a tommy lauren type person is she like exactly but not as good looking well she's rush limbaugh before rush limbaugh really arrives um and what she would do she had a terrible alcohol problem and she would spend her evening um part of what makes this story so

weird is there are all of these other chapters of the watergate saga that actually take place at the watergate condo complex so the the Mitchells live at the Watergate and she would spend all evening eavesdropping on her husband's telephone calls on the extension in the other room and then when John Mitchell would go to bed, she would be several drinks in and she would start phone banking reporters drinks in and she would start phone banking reporters at midnight, 2 a.m. to dish on all of the gossip that she had learned in the Nixon administration. So she becomes this key source of gossip and rumors and controversial hot

takes of the day, and then she actually in some ways does become one of the initial whistleblowers. But not on purpose. She's not on purpose. So she is her husband. The Mitchells are in California the night of the Watergate burglary. John Mitchell

flees back to Washington to deal with the burglary john mitchell uh flees back to washington to deal with the burglary leaves her there uh under guard because uh she will immediately recognize that one of the burglars who's been arrested is her former bodyguard and so she will know that these burglars are tied to the nixon. Right. And she she eventually finds a newspaper, reads about the burglary, tries to call a reporter to tell them that this is all a massive cover up. that was left with Richard Nixon, the guard that Mitchell had left with Martha, wrestles her away from the phone, tears the phone from the wall and pins her down to the ground and injects her with tranquilizers to knock her out. Oh, my God.

She was already half drunk anyway. That's why it's called Martha's Vineyard. She had all of it. That's why it's called Martha's Vineyard. She had all of it. And the whole and the Mitchell's marriage sort of understandably unwinds pretty quickly from there on

out. They end up separating and divorcing as John Mitchell is arrested and indicted for his role in the Watergate cover-up. And it becomes this very dark and tragic story buried in the larger Watergate saga. Did she ever sober up?

And if so, did she have to ironically go to the Betty Ford clinic? No, she actually quite the opposite. Probably not. Never. Her health deteriorates very quickly and she died sort of shortly after Nixon resigns. And she and John Mitchell never speak again after he walks out of there. Well, after she walks out of his the after he walks out of their Park Avenue apartment when they separate. And then but there's actually there's a big Sean Penn movie about Martha Mitchell coming,

I think, next month. So we will all learn a lot more about her pretty soon. I thought it was the sequel to Milk. Yeah. And Cookies. Yeah. The sequel's called And Cookies. Okay.

Just based on Magic Johnson's wife. The one time she went to San Francisco and saw he died. Who are Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein? Jim said investigative journalist and uncovered it, and then Deep Throat said refer to the movie, which I did not know, so maybe we'll talk about that

a little bit. Yeah, so this is where Jim was right on. Woodward and Bernstein, two of the investigative reporters assigned by The Washington Post to the story. They become famous in the movie All the President's Men with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. That becomes the iconic pop culture take on Watergate itself um and one of the things that i sort of try to trace out in the book is that uh uh woodward and bernstein matter but not quite in the way that they are uh portrayed in the movie that they they are sort of less central to the overall tale than than history has held um um woodward has this very famous source uh known as deep throat uh named after uh the the movie um

as we discussed and played by hal holbrook in the the uh redford uh movie and uh for 40 years, no one knew who who that was, who Deep Throat actually was. And the idea was that this was some crusading good government pro-democracy guy out to stop Nixon and his corrupt administration. And what we've actually learned just in the last 15 years is that it was Mark Felt, who was the deputy director of the FBI, and was not to sink the director of the FBI so that he, Mark Felt, the deep throat, could take over the FBI himself. You selfish bastard deep throat. There's so many players with different motives.

I didn't know it was as complex as it was. There seems to be so many different... I've got to read this book. This sounds awesome. Yeah. When I was getting the question, I was like, wow, I don't know anything about this, even though to be so many different i gotta read this book this sounds awesome yeah it's uh it's that's when i was like getting the question i was like well i don't know anything about this even though you think you do growing up in america because you hear watergate's going to arson but you don't know anything about it was there there must have been this seems ripe for uh rife rife right right

right right uh ripe for uh um um what's the conspiracy theories, right? And so we know now with the incident, like if they had the internet back then, this would have all been QAnon shit and the Democrats did it and they put the bugs in themselves. Was there a load of conspiracy theories just amongst the media and the public when it happened?

Yeah, so lots of conspiracy theories then, lots of conspiracy theories then lots of conspiracy theories now um there was a a big book that came out in the early 1990s actually that um said that one of the motives for the watergate burglary was uh a-sponsored call girl ring that was operating in Washington at the time that they were that the burglars were trying to find evidence of that ring or find whether the Democrats knew of that ring of call girls. And that

book provoked years of libel lawsuits and defamation lawsuits among the key players of the Watergate scandal as that all has unfolded. And the truth of the matter is, you know, here we are 50 years later, we're never going to know the truth of who ordered the Watergate burglary and why. Well, what do you think? This is what I suspect just from this brief conversation, but I suspect that maybe Nixon didn't know directly, but he told some people just get it done. Do what you have to do would have been the order.

You know what I mean? But I think he would have distanced himself from the nitty gritty and the finer details so he have a plausible deniability. But do you think that Nixon just actually said in words, you go do this, you go do this, you go do this, or do you think he didn't know? No. So I, I don't think actually Nixon knew at all. And in fact, the burglary seems so poorly planned and so bungled at every stage that it actually seems most likely that it was not approved at any high level in the administration at all.

So why couldn't Nixon just go fire these people? I'm so sorry to the public. I knew nothing about this. He might have lost a lot of respect, but he may have still kept his job. It was a tape, right? Yeah, and there's a lot of reason to believe that that might have been possible relatively early on. What Nixon was afraid, though, was that this group of people had been involved in all of these other criminal schemes. schemes and that basically like if when you start pulling on this one burglary thread it will lead you all the way back through all of these other uh you know the the brookings fire

bomb plot the uh burglary um the previous fall um that we we haven't discussed of the the psychiatrist's office of the pentagon papers leaker, Daniel Ellsberg, which was another one of these plots carried out by the plumbers. And then all the way back eventually to that Chenault affair. And Nixon basically probably had nothing to do with the Watergate burglary itself. itself but he was engaged in so many other crimes and abuses of power by then that he was terrified that sort of anyone who turned over this rock about the burglary would stumble into these other crimes yeah and then and then he got caught saying but then i guess i always thought he got caught talking about the burglary but it was more about covering it up so that yes yeah okay so the saturday night massacre let's talk about that and then like how many people were charged convicted

in prison like that like kind of the the wrap-up of the whole scandal yeah so and this is where you get um you know uh most people just don't understand the full scope and scale of this is that it ends up being being 69 people are indicted and charged amid water and most of them convicted many of them actually head to prison um john mitchell uh ends up being the uh the highest ranking official in u.s government ever to be sentenced to prison uh two cabinet officials go on trial at one point. And even actually New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner ends up being charged and convicted in Watergate amid some of the illegal campaign finance donations that were

being funneled as part of the dirty tricks efforts. American Airlines pleads guilty to criminal charges. Goodyear tire, all manner of. What did the tire company get up to? They must've been contributing money, were they? Exactly. And there are sort of all of these other, as I said, you know, sub scandals and related scandals that unfold through all of this. And so the massacre was the arresting of all these people in the one night? No, the massacre

you had it right originally, which was the firing in October of 73 of the leadership of the Justice Department as Nixon tried to stop those tapes from becoming public. Yeah, that's what I said. You did pretty good. Well, sort of.

Yeah, he's giving you credit, but you said, yeah, it was pretty good. So then Nixon, of course, he was forced to resign. He was never impeached, right? He was forced to resign. He was impeached, but the impeachment never went away.

There were articles of impeachment that were passed in the House at the committee level, never actually passed the full House because Nixon resigned before he was actually formally impeached. No one ever gets bullied.

That's one of the things that used to bug me on the Jim Jefferies shows. And they're talking about Trump. And then we'd have writers in the room go, well, he needs to be impeached. Impeachment's a lot of bullshit. Nothing ever happens. It's a lot of hoo-ha. Like, say Clinton gets impeached.

Trump gets impeached. They were still there. Yeah. And then Ford pardons him. Exactly. So Ford pardons him in the fall of 74, right after Nixon is, resigns for exactly the reason that you guys discussed,

which is that he, he feels that he sort of will never, never going to be able to get on with his presidency. If the country is captivated and distracted by the trial of the former president. Yeah. Why? Cause I saw,

I saw, you know, it was one of those CNN documentaries, the sixties, the seventies, that type of stuff. I saw one of those ones. And that's where I learned that.

Why, why would the trial have to go on for a year or two years or something like that? Why couldn't they just back? I never understand this. Just get onto it, do it tomorrow. Am I more? Yeah. And, you know, so Nixon was probably on

a path to be impeached in, not impeached, sorry, indicted and charged in the fall of 74. And, you know, that it would have, as you said, probably taken about a year to bring that case to trial with all the evidence and witnesses that were necessary and then that would have been pretty close to the 76 election at that point when he resigned what was the public opinion of him was he still popular were there still Nixon apologists or was he just

like everyone was like we've been gypped? Can't use that term anymore. His support evaporated pretty quickly. And actually, the Goldwater that you had thought you were wrong about here behind me is actually related. uh republican presidential nominee um very respected senator at that point on capitol hill uh go goes down to the white house um in early august uh 1974 and says to nixon basically like you've lost all of your support if you uh if you don't resign now you will be impeached and you will be convicted and removed from office by the Senate. Goldwater.

I never even knew. I thought it was one of the reporters. His family's original name was Piss. Yeah, okay. They changed it. My name's Gary Piss. I'll never get voted in. Goldwater.

Okay, here's a part of the show called dinner party facts we ask our expert guests to give us a fact that's obscure interesting that if this topic comes up at a dinner party they can tell some lay some knowledge on some people so I think one of the really fun facts in this is that deep throat

actually didn't start out leaking to Bob Woodward I mean this is sort of the classic most famous source in all of American history. But Deep Throat, Mark Felt, actually starts leaking to The Washington Post's crosstown rival, The Washington Daily News, in July, early July 1972, two weeks after the burglary, the Washington Daily News ceases publication and goes out of business. And he goes across town and starts leaking to Bob Woodward in August. I was about to say that I've only ever heard of the Washington Post, New York Times, but I've never heard of the Washington Daily News.

So Woodward is very famous from this obviously, so it's all because they went out of business the other paper. How much credit do Bob Woodward and Bernstein get with uncovering Watergate versus how much government officials were

uncovering stuff? It's a really good question, and this was one of the things that surprised me in my research was the, you know, the popular history version of this is that Woodward and Bernstein basically like drive the story straight through to Nixon's resignation. And there's actually a pretty narrow window where Woodward and Bernstein matter in the first couple of months of the scandal. And they matter in a slightly different way than is widely understood. And there's actually this constellation of about a half dozen reporters who from the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post, and the Washington Post, who all really deserve credit for helping to keep the Watergate story alive long enough to let Congress start investigating and break the logjam of the FBI

investigation. Well, I tell you what, I've learned a lot on this podcast. I would have originally, if you said Woodward and Bernstein, I would have gone, they wrote a few musicals. That sounds like Woodward and Bernstein or their law firm that they fucking did say. I also learned I'll never trust a woman who says she can deep throat. They're untrusty sneaks, those bastards. I'll tell everyone. Yeah.

Garrett Graff, thank you for being here again. The website is garrettgraff.com. The book is Watergate, a new history. Go buy that book if you want to learn more about Watergate. Why don't you make sure you spell his name too? Okay. Yeah. GarrettGraff.com. G-A-R-R-E-T-T-G-R-A-F-F. So two T's, two F's.com. All the links to his books are in there. Watergate, A New History. Also the book on Robert Mueller. The 9-11 oral history book, The Only

Plane in the Sky, an oral history of 9-11. Links to your podcast, The Long Shadow, an eight-episode podcast. A lot of good stuff on there. Obviously, Garrett knows a lot about what he's talking about and really interesting. And thank you for being on the podcast. Thanks for being on the podcast, brother. I appreciate it, man. This was really fun, guys. Thanks.

Thanks. All right. if you ever had a party and someone comes up to you and says, you want to hear this musical by Woodward and Bernstein, you go, I don't know about that, and then go off into a cupboard and deep throat someone. Good night, Australia.