Opinion

Richard Nixon, Fall Guy

Irwin F. Gellman Author, Roosevelt and Batista
Font Size:

President Gerard Ford dispatched his personal attorney, Benton Becker, to San Clemente, California, to meet with Richard Nixon and explain to the former president the significant provisions of the presidential pardon. Ford was granting the pardon, Becker emphatically highlighted, with the understanding that if Nixon accepted it, he was admitting guilt to criminal behavior. Once Nixon agreed to this condition, Becker had fulfilled his obligation to his client President Ford. Afterwards Becker and Jack Miller, Nixon’s counsel, had drinks where they speculated about a trial where Nixon was the defendant. If the former president, they both agreed, could have received a fair trial (which they both concurred was impossible), a jury would have found Nixon not guilty.

Nixon haters would vehemently disagree with the conclusions of these two distinguished lawyers, and probably found Geoff Shepard’s The Real Watergate Scandal even more disturbing. Shepard graduated from Harvard Law School and was chosen as a White House Fellow at twenty-four. After his fellowship ended, he worked at the Nixon White House and was attached to the Domestic Council staff for five years. During this time he also assisted with the presidential defense team. Shepard makes no secret that he is pro-Nixon and that this book is a defense of his president. The volume is not a traditional historical account; rather it is a legal brief designed to present the best possible argument on behalf of his client. If you are willing to entertain a spirited defense of Nixon and his close associates, then this is an essential read.

The argument is clearly defined. The defendants faced a “systematic denial of their constitutionally guaranteed right to due process of law.” The trial that Nixon’s chief counselors confronted was a media circus. They were denied a jury composed of their peers and were prevented from confronting and cross-examining their accusers in the true spirit of the adversarial system at trial. Their judge, John Sirica, played the roles of judge, prosecutor and jury. Impartial lawyers looking for justice did not staff the Watergate Special Prosecutor Force (WSPF), but instead a group of partisan Democrats determined to convict the defendants at almost any price. The prosecutors did not present their case in front of an unbiased jury, but a pool selected from Washington, D.C. that was eighty percent Democrats who voted against Republicans. Finally, once the defendants were convicted in the federal district circuit, their appeals were rejected in front of a liberal court of appeals that, too, was biased against the defendants.

Some of the charges in this web of judicial impropriety are troubling. Judge Sirica had little respect for defendants in general and treated the Nixon defendants in this matter. He held ex parte sessions with the prosecutors on numerous occasions that, at the very least, demonstrated bias.  He also was one of the most revered federal district court judges. In the case against Nixon’s associates, the liberal court of appeals refused to recuse Sirica or grant a change of venue.

The WSPF was not designed to insure justice. The first head of the force was Archibald Cox, a staunch Democrat who vigorously supported John Kennedy against Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. Lyndon Johnson hired Cox’s successor Leon Jaworski, also a committed Democrat, to prevent a recount in Texas during the same election. Those who worked under these two partisans were equally, if not more energetically, convinced that their Republican adversaries should serve time in prison.

The WSPF relied on two principal witnesses who served Nixon and his associates. One was John Dean, a convicted felon, who oftentimes changed his testimony to suit the prosecutors’ demands. The other was Jeb Magruder who altered his testimony so much that the prosecutors worried about using him as a witness. The WSPF never disclosed this exculpatory evidence that the defendants could have used to impeach Dean and Magruder’s testimony.     

No one denies that some government officials carried out criminal acts, but that does not excuse critics of the Nixon administration from committing their own excesses. To deflect attention from their own abuses, Shepard’s adversaries assert that his allegations have little merit. Judges often hold ex parte sessions; prosecutors are committed to send the guilty to prison; John Dean generally was consistent in his testimony; the defendants could get a fair trial in Washington, D.C., and the court of appeals decided correctly against the defendants.

Some of these criticisms are valid, but taken in their totality, Shepard’s theme rings true, and he should have gone further. The defendants in the Nixon White House could never have received unbiased consideration. Someone had to pay for the domestic turmoil in America. The anti-Vietnam war movement, the violent factions in the civil rights struggle, female liberation, unrest on college campus and a host of other disruptions created deep schisms in the United States psyche.  

Many in the Nixon administration firmly believed that they were facing a wartime mentality where they were being attacked, and they needed to defend themselves. Under such adverse circumstances, those who were placed on trial were paying for the upheavals across the nation. Shepard exposes the glaring example of the perversion in the justice system. He should have added that this was merely one example of the malaise that affected the entire country.

Irwin F. Gellman, author of The President and the Apprentice     

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel