RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE, 1974 THE FALL ( Part 4 ) The House Judiciary Committee Begins the Impeachment Hearings

The Richard Nixon Experience

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In this episode we cover the opening day of the Impeachment Hearing of the House Judiciary Committee. We listen to staffers of the committee and a couple of the committee members as they discuss the way the committee operated and the issues they faced as they moved forward to really look at the events. You will also hear from the members of a quiet coalition of southern Democrats all of whom are struggling between their feelings of loyalty to both a President and a constituency that is counting on them to do the right thing, and the overwhelming nature of the evidence that is in front of them. This evidence totally coming from two sources, the Senate Watergate Committee staffed with partisan Democrats put together by Senator Ted Kennedy's office, and the Rabid Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office.
None of those facts was known at the time this debate raged by this set of politicians tasked with making the final judgement as to whether to impeach the President
As all of this pressure continues to build we will look into the toll it is taking on the President's mental health. Just how well was Richard Nixon coping with the disintegration of his Administration. There are various rumors circulating that it was not to well. Yet, other staffers such as Alexander Haig and Ray Price take issue with those reports. We will hear from various people who witnessed the President up-close as all of this was unfolding.
Then we close out the episode hearing from the man himself, President Richard Nixon. In 1983, just nine years after these events transpired, then Former President Richard Nixon sat down with his former staffer Frank Gannon for an in-depth, non adversarial, much more relaxed, set of interviews. We will be sharing portions from those interviews in our remaining broadcasts. They will provide you with some extraordinary insights from what the President was thinking in these final months of his administration.