At the height of the Watergate scandal it was apparent to me that the war on Nixon was nearing the end of a decade plus war between two large economic and political organizations. One based in Acapulco, the other in Winchester MA. I.F. Stone's 1973 essay in The New York Review of Books, about that war provided a structure. Victor Lasky's It Didn't Start with Watergate; and Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin's Silent Coup revealed even more. It was obvious that Woodward and Bernstein were simply stenographers, as per Max Holland's Leak. I asked Bernstein at a Harvard University award ceremony why he denied he was a briefer for Alexander Haig at the JCS before he was a journalist. Woodward's reply was, "That's garbage." There's more like cooperating journalists, who covered for the lawyers and politicians as they still do today.
[From article]
Geoff Shepard has written an important book, The Real Watergate Scandal: Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot that Brought Nixon Down. It will probably go a long way to restore President Nixon's a
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Finally, in Part V, covering Chapter 10, Shepard asks, "So What?" Why worry about Watergate today? Nixon and the others were guilty, and that's the end of it. But Nixon and his team were "guilty" only if you ignore all the counter-evidence that Shepard brings out so effectively.
Another one of the so-whats is that since Judge Sirica did not allow a fair trial, Shepard suggests that the descendants should petition the original trial court, the federal district court for the District of Columbia, for a writ of error coram nobis, "a writ for a judgment that rests on an error of fact which was not know at the time of the judgment and which, if known, would have prevented judgment" (p. 234).
In layman's terms, they should reopen the books and look into errors of fact and violations of due process, to restore Nixon's reputation and that of his team. It would be expensive, Shepard forewarns, but worth it.
Apart from any legal reopening of the case, does any court TV channel wish to take up the challenge and incorporate Shepard's new evidence of flagrant misconduct and gross and widespread denial of due process, with a bipartisan team of legal analysts?
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