The authors present an interesting theory but are we really ready to believe that John Dean led people like Haldeman, Mitchell and Nixon around by the nose? Come on! The burglars were definitely looking for something in O'Brien's office but it certainly wasn't focused on prostitutes. And where are the footnotes? How can a serious historian check the accuracy of the authors' claims if we can't check what people really said?

There are much more interesting and plausible theories as to what the burglars were looking for--but we'll have to wait for more of the White House tapes to be released.

I truly believe that SILENT COUP is one of the most important books of the 20th Century. It shows what the Watergate affair was really all about (something far different from official conclusions), and is backed by firm evidence. If you don't read this book, you are denying yourself the truth about an important chapter in U.S. History.

We've all been wondering for years what the Watergate burglers were looking for. Here's the most plausible motive yet deduced. There's some digression in Colodny and Gettlin's filler material regarding the Moorer-Radford affair, and their attempt to identify "Deep Throat," which is irrelevant. Prior to and during the "cover up" phase of the scandal, the fox was permitted to stay in the hen house, and nobody thought to ask why. Having followed the inquest, and read most of the books published by the principals involved in the breakin and the coverup, I enjoyed SILENT COUP more than most books on the subject. A must read for conspiracy buffs such as myself. I have a mint condition copy I'll trade for Schopenhauer THE WORLD AS WILL AND REPRESENTATION in paperback.

The only review I ever read on Silent Coup was in the Los Angeles Times when the book was first published, and the review took up an entire page in the book review section. The best version of the book is the paperback, where the authors tell of what happened after the hardback version was published. As an example, Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes read the book and wanted to do a report, but the higher-ups at CBS told him he couldn't do it. Wallace tried several times afterward to do a 60 Minutes story, but was stopped each time. Because of the author's statements in the book, John Dean launched a 50 million dollar lawsuit, but his lawyer, after reviewing the book and the author's notes and interviews, dropped the lawsuit. Why? In the view of the two authors, John Dean was the total insider (and more) of the Watergate scandal, because he was the only one granted full access to the investigation, and this was under Nixon's direct order. The author's premise of taking all the books, all the magazine articles, all the newspaper stories and putting them in chronological order is the basis for the book and tells the reader that out of all the people involved in Watergate, there are two individules whose stories do not match the overall timeline established by the author's investigation. Nixon was not one of them. There are many conclusions to be drawn from the book, but the one that stands out to me the most is this one. Why did the Democratic-controlled congressional committee running the investigation seal certain evidence in the national archives FOREVER (and is it still there?)! You'll have to read the book (the paperback version is the better choice for the entire story) to find out. The liberal media has never given this book any credence, and possibly for good reason. They just might have got it all wrong! I believe so.

I have never liked John Dean and this book gave me 450 more pages of reasons to dislike him. Ok that might be a bit much, but the authors basically blame Dean and Haig for most of Nixon's problems. The book gives the reader a great overview of the Watergate scandal and what took place behind the scenes. If you have read a number of books on this topic then this one has a new and interesting look at what really happened. Not to give too much away but the authors make a claim that it was actually a few people that were on the Presidents staff that pushed, tricked and caused Nixon to make the mistakes he did which resulted in him resigning. We also get their guess at who good old Deep Throat was.

The authors do a very good job in detailing out all of the research they did to come to their conclusions. It looks like they read every book on the subject and talked to about 90% of the key players in the event. They give us all the instances where the statements that Dean made were just not completely correct and detail the many instances where Dean was completely wrong in many of his statements. They also have an interesting dup in the form of Woodward, which was an interesting tidbit. Overall it is hard to completely take all responsibility away from Nixon. The statements he made on tape and the full range of dirty tricks and abuse of power items that Nixon did just went too far to think that the issues around a Watergate cover up would be beyond him. The book is very interesting and is full of great insight into the administration. If you are interested at all in Watergate then you will really enjoy this book

"Silent Coup" is the result of one of the most important journalistic research efforts of the modern era. It details an alternative view of the Watergate Affair, and blows a mile-wide hole in the commonly-accepted account of Woodward & Bernstein.

As distasteful as it may be to some readers, the work generally supports the long-held claims of the G. Gordon Liddy camp, i.e. that Woodward & Bernstein's accounts in "The Washington Post" and their following books were merely an extension of John Dean's version of Watergate, wherein Dean is innocent and everyone else is guilty. However, while the book vindicates Liddy's testimony as to fact, it does not paint much of a flattering picture of the convicted felon otherwise.

Colodny & Gettlin expose Dean's supposed role of "fall guy" for what it is: self-serving lies, and lies that were (or should have been) known to the Watergate prosecutors who used his perjured testimony, given in exchange for leniency, to bring down the Nixon Administration. A carefully researched and meticulously documented thesis is posited by the authors, namely that Dean essentially sent the White House up the river in order to save his own neck and conceal his own critical involvement in literally every aspect of the Watergate crimes and cover-ups.

Specifically, an overwhelming case is made that Dean, in order to squash his own involvement in a seperate legal matter pertaining to the surreptitious use of DNC headquarters in Washington as a front for a high-class call-girl service, and in which his own future wife Mo was complicit, instigated the burglaries at the DNC in hopes of removing evidence belying his association therein. The DNC burglaries were conveniently tucked into the overall dirty tricks program against the advice of most of the operative conspirators, who, as Liddy has stated, saw no value in hitting the DNC. The value of the break-in, the authors show, was to Dean and Dean alone.

The other primary bombshell dropped in "Silent Coup" is the very under-reported fact that journalist Bob Woodward was, astonishingly, a former Naval Officer involved in extremely sensitive communications intelligence, and that Woodward almost certainly briefed Alexander Haig and others in the Nixon White House in an official capacity prior to his departure from the Navy and rapid rise to the unlikely position of star reporter for the Post, and, conveniently, the lead newsbreaker in the Watergate matter! This direct link between Woodward and the Nixon White House should have disqualified Woodward from reporting on the matter. It did not disqualify him, because those who should have known about the link apparently either didn't know, or didn't care.

This fine history of the Watergate era covers many other pertinent related topics, including the establishment of a top-secret communications "back channel", which Nixon instituted in order to sidestep the State Department and Pentagon in sensitive dealings with the former USSR, Red China, and in the prosecution and settlement of the Vietnam War. The evidence shows that the back channel was illegally compromised by Haig and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The implications with respect to the larger Watergate scandal are addressed in detail by the authors.

The work also touches many historical issues exposed by the Watergate investigations, not the least of which is the implication that Nixon may have known the truth behind the Kennedy Assassination, and that some those connected to Watergate may have been directly involved, namely E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, and perhaps some of the Cuban "Plumbers". Again, this history encompasses more than just Watergate by virtue of the enormous amount of studious research that was necessary to document the central arguments contained within.

The importance of this book is further magnified by the fact that a large number of the players in the Watergate affair are deceased; fortunately for history, the authors had the opportunity to interview most of the now-dead key players prior to their passing.

This book is must reading for anyone interested in Watergate. The book's radical rethinking of the common wisdom of Watergate is both refreshing and disturbing, not only in its treatment of the facts of the case, but as an expose' of the secret agenda of Bob Woodward.

"All The President's Men" & "The Final Days" are an essential part of political history: They are also an essential part of journalism history. Watergate & the revealed power of the media to topple a president changed journalism -- and inspired a generation to enter the profession. ... Read "All The President's Men" first ... &, as you read it, know that the better book is still to come. "All ..." is vital to understanding what happened; "Final Days" is a far superior book. ... "All ..." reads as though the authors were still shell-shocked from what had happened & what they -- in their 20s -- had participated in. "Final Days" is a much more mature & calmer book. It offers a better understanding of what Nixon did wrong than the first book. Its portrait of Nixon is far superior ... even empathetic. ... I am a Republican (& a journalist) & someone who finds much to redeem Nixon ... & I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which is remarkably unbiased & deft at presenting even the least likeable participants as human. I also was jolted at some of Nixon's extremes, which I had prefered to forget because in some ways (i.e. foreign policy) he was a great president. ... Aspects of this story are remarkably dated ... would Nixon have fallen now? (Reagan didn't. Clinton didn't.) Are we as easily shocked? As naive about power? Do we even fantasize anymore that our leaders will be flawless? ... The comparisons with Bill Clinton are striking & obvious. Would Clinton's story have ended differently if he had been president 25 years earlier & before Watergate & Iran-Contra? ... For a real immersion in the story through popular culture, read the two books in order & see the movie of "All The President's Men" & see Sir Anthony Hopkins' brilliant performance in "Nixon." ... "Tragedy" is an abused word, but Nixon's story WAS a classic tragedy: Hero undone by fatal flaw.

This is an amazing account of the last few months of the Nixon presidency leading up to his eventual resignation. The first half of the book deals in larger chunks of time, but by the time the second half begins, each chapter encompasses a single day. As in ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN by the same authors, the reader may find the onslaught of different names to be intimidating; fortunately, the cast of characters list at the beginning of the book helps a lot. All the people involved are treated with a lot of respect, and their motivations are made very clear throughout with only a few exceptions.

Unlike ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, this is not told from the viewpoint of the two authors. Through interviews and other methods, the two journalists have reconstructed what they believe those last few months to have been like. The result is an amazing and richly detailed look at the aftermath of one of the most important scandals in recent US history.

One of the real strengths of this book is that it allows the reader to see how the scandal affected many of the different people that were close to the President -- his aides, his family, the lawyers defending him, congressmen, fellow Republican leaders, etc. We see how his team tried (and eventually failed) to fight the accusations made at President and how his staff continued to get the work done even as he retreated farther and farther into himself.

Before I read ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and THE FINAL DAYS, I really didn't know too many particulars about the whole Watergate scandal. I highly recommend this pair of books to anyone looking for detailed, yet highly readable sources of information.

Well, Bob Woodward has a bestseller again -- "Bush at War" debuted at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list today. What's Carl Bernstein up to? Never mind about that. "The Final Days" is still not to be missed, over 25 years since it, too, became a best-seller. The country has moved on to other pressing political matters, but interest in the unravelling of the Nixon Administration remains high. Books speculating about the identity of Deep Throat seem to come out annually.

"The Final Days" is marked departure from "All the President's Men", the first Woodward/Bernstein book and obviously the one that put them on the map. Whereas "President's" was the inside story of two journalists chasing down a story that led higher into the U.S. government than they ever dreamed imaginable, "Final Days" is a step back, since neither Woodward nor Bernstein (nor Deep Throat, for that matter) appear as characters. The focus turns to Nixon's family and close political advisers. Many of the oft-mentioned names remain relevant today: Pat Buchanan, Diane Sawyer, Henry Kissinger. It's also about twice as long as the earlier book, but reads just as quickly.

"Final Days" is divided into two parts. First is a general overview of the first two years of the Watergate Crisis, this time told from the view of all the President's men rather than from the Washington Post. Next is a dizzying chapter-a-day sequence of the final 17 days of the Nixon administration.

In the midst of the research are some surprisingly interesting detours. Nixon's final foreign journey as President is to the Middle East. A funny aside details how the White House press office had to avoid mentioning Israel on the same page of press releases naming other countries in the region, to avoid offending Islamic governments. Also amusing is the lengthy description of Nixon son-in-law David Eisenhower's obsession with fantasy baseball.

25 years, numerous Presidential scandals, and a war or two later, the undoing of Richard Nixon remains riveting and required reading. The Woodward/Bernstein books blaze with a you-are-there immediacy, and even the overuse of passive voice doesn't slow down the narrative. Every hour of mind-numbing research underpinning the book has paid off, because the story told is seamless. There's dramatic tension to every decision Nixon makes in his final month in office: to resign or stay in office? To surrender his private tapes, or continue the legal battle? Nixon himself even becomes a sympathetic figure, as the debilitating nature of his phlebitis is explored.

Perhaps you're busying reading Woodward's latest effort now. Perhaps you're numbed by his almost annual hardcover tomes about the private lives of American presidents, each less relevant than the last. At any rate, "The Final Days" is a detour well worth your time, whether you're on the left, the right, or above all that. It's surely no coincidence that Barbara Olson's excoriation of the Clinton White House bears the same title.

If you needed more proof that Richard Nixon was a crook and a crumb, this books lays it out. Mitchell spins a great tale of campaign anecdotes and informative history about California politics that tells it like it is, and keeps you turning pages. Also some great background on how the anti-communist paranoids destroyed lives in Hollywood and elsewhere. If this had been published before 1968, Nixon would have never been elected.

Two weeks before election day in 1950, the Republican Senatorial candidate in California--Richard M. Nixon--accused the Democratic Senatorial candidate in California--Helen Gahagan Douglas--of being the conduit through which the decisions made by Josef Stalin in the Kremlin flowed to the United States Congress:

"This action by Mrs. Douglas," Nixon explained, "... came just two weeks after [U.S. Communist Party leader] William Z. Foster transmitted his instructions from the Kremlin to the Communist national committee.... [Thus] this [Communist] demand found its way into the Congress" (Mitchell (1998), p. 209).

Later on Nixon campaign manager Murray Chotiner would try to erase--or perhaps forget his role in?--history, claiming that the Nixon campaign of 1950 "had never accused Douglas of 'sympathizing' or 'being in league with' the Communists." Nixon himself claimed that he "never questioned her patriotism" and that he had been smeared by her. Nixon biographers like Jonathan Aitken would refer to Nixon's relatively clean hands in the 1950 Senate campaign.

But the most important thing was that Nixon won the 1950 California Senate race. Because he won the 1950 California Senate race he went on to become Vice President in 1953, and President in 1969. But perhaps more important, the way he won the 1950 Senate race--the fact that his tactics then worked--warped American politics for nearly half a century.

How was it warped? Into a pattern of "lie whenever you can" and "demonize your political opponents." Thus later on Nixon speechwriter William Safire would paint a picture of a President Nixon threatened by:

...a lynch mob, no cause or ideology involved, only an orgy of generalized hate.... The hall [where Nixon was speaking] was actually, not figuratively, besieged.... The Secret Servicemen, who always had seemed too numerous and too officious before, now seemed to us like a too-small band of too-mortal men... (William Safire, Before the Fall).

But Nixon's chief of staff would have a different view of the same situation. As H.R. Haldeman expressed it in his diary:

...we wanted some confrontation and there were no hecklers in the hall, so we stalled departure a little so they could zero in.... Before getting in car, P[resident Nixon] stood up and gave the V signs, which made them mad. They threw rocks, flags, candles, etc. as we drove out.... Bus windows smashed, etc. Made a huge incident and we worked hard to crank it up, should make really major story and might be effective. (H.R. Haldeman)

And Nixon would demand that his top aides--H.R. Haldeman, Henry Kissinger--"use any means" to defeat the "enemy... conspiracy" of his domestic political adversaries. What did Nixon think of as "any means"? We know from his immediate subsequent demand:

Was the Brookings Institute raided last night? No? Get it done. I want the Brookings Institute's safe cleaned out and have it cleaned out in a way that makes somebody else responsible... (Stanley Kutler)

that in 1971 the "any means" included burglary, theft, the planting of false evidence, conspiracy to frame innocent parties. We don't know how much further "any means" went, or would have gone.

Thus there is a sense in which the Nixon-Douglas campaign of 1950 was key to shaping America not just because of the character of the politician (Nixon) whom it elevated to prominence, but because, as Greg Mitchell writes in his preface:

[The race] set a divisive and rigid agenda for forty years of election campaigns. Until 1950, candidates [who]... campaigned primarily on an anti-Communist platform... usually lost.... [Republican presidential candidate] in 1948 Thomas E. Dewey... criticized fellow Republicans who called for repressive new measures to control subversives.... Republican and Democratic leaders alike interpreted the outcome [of the 1950 election] as a victory for McCarthyisam and a call for a dramatic surge in military spending.... Red-baiting would haunt America for years, the so-called national security state would evolve and endure, and candidates would run and win on anti-Sovietism for decades..." (p. xix).

Now Greg Mitchell has done an excellent job of taking us back to the campaign of 1950--legitimate fears, the backdrop of American apparent defeat in the Korean War, blacklists, loyalty oaths, and the general belief that a woman's place was in the kitchen, not in the Senate. It is a very, very readable book, and very much worth reading--for what happened in the 1950 Senate race played a remarkably large part in determining what America was to be in the second half of the twentieth century.

I enjoyed this book enormously, extremely well-researched, clear and well-written, entertaining, scrupulous in detail and true to the mark. There's a lot of new "dirt" on Nixon but what is perhaps most valuable is the portrait of Helen Douglas as one of the most remarkable (though flawed) women of the century. Also a powerful depiction of the Red Scare in Hollywood....Really, a must read!

Having read this book, I can finally say that I am historically informed as to the time in question. I myself was born long after the events told here. A major portion of the book's interest is based upon hearing an exhaustive detailed report on the day to day functions of the Presidency. The fact that Nixon actually wrote his book, unlike Kennedy, whose Pulitzer Prize winner was ghost-written, makes it all the more enjoyable. Nixon's side of the story is finally told in a skillful manner that cannot be interrupted by the harrangue of some foolishly inept liberal intent on forcing their own opinion of a complicated era. Finally, Nixon's mistakes do not qualify him as the greatest criminal of the twentieth century, as one reviewer so eloquently wrote. If Nixon did in fact have knowledge of the Watergate break-in, (and it is hard to believe he did not) then he is still no worse than Truman, LBJ, or even the greatly beloved John F. Kennedy. It is a singular characteristic of liberal thinking to declare that a "third rate burglary," is worthy above mass murder etc, for the title of worst crime and the person by whom the burglary was ostensibly commited the worst criminal. Nixon's greatest asset to the common man was that he did not shrink from the political arena that was from the beginning tilted against him. The elitist minority of this country remains, sadly, under the delusion that the disappearance of Nixon from the national scene put to death the existence of the great silent majority. America still more closely resembles the rough edges and imperfection of Nixon that it does to the unrealistic and contrived memory of Kennedy as a lust and corruption tainted savior.

Nixon's book is excellent reading and a must for all those who appreciate history. He's a good writer, and easy to pick up for the average reader. Scholars will also enjoy it. There's a good chunk of the American Century covered in this tome: he becomes a Congressman in the late 1940s, and you get to learn about HUAC and the Alger Hiss case which made him famous. Then he is quickly a Senator until he's tapped by Ike to be Vice-President. Next his failed presidential bid and governor bid of the '60s. Then the comeback that no one thought was possible. Nixon is really insightful in this book. He spends the most time on his presidency and it's really interesting. It ends after his presidency in the '70s, so you have over 25 years of political history plus his personal life before that. It's a very long book (1000+ pages) but well worth it.

From his childhood in Whittier, CA, to his fall from grace with the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon relays his thoughts and ideas to the reader with excellent fluency and non-pretentious language and style. Nixon does not over-glorify himself, but he manages to show us both his good intentions and inevitable flaws. Recommended for anyone with the slightest interest in Nixon or US politics...it's far more readable and far more personal than any other book on Nixon.

Nixion blows

This smart, incisive, and telling book neatly unzips the clever reconstruction that many neo-conservative authors have bought into regarding the conduct of the Vietnam War by the Nixon administration. While few of us would quarrel with the idea that Nixon accomplished much on the world scene, we still must protest the idea held by many that he was so severely hampered in his prosecution of the war by a combination of internal and external constraints that he was unable to execute the compassionate, intelligent, and objective policies toward southeast Asia that he and Henry Kissinger had so painstakingly devised. Rather, we learn here that his Vietnam policies were as full of the 'sturm und drang' contradictions seen elsewhere in his administration. For Nixon, prosecution of the Vietnam War was just another case of "politics as usual", another opportunity to pit conservative against liberal, hawk against dove, for personal aggrandizement and short-term political gain.

Far from flying with the angels, both Nixon and Kissinger bloodied their hands by instituting policies that resulted a dramatic increase in both American and Vietnamese casualties, instituting policies that continued the escalation of the war and its extension to new areas such as Laos and Cambodia. Using the conflict in Vietnam as a key element to engage both the Soviet Union and Communist China, Nixon seemed to lose sight of the need to deal with the specific factors propelling the war even as he became increasingly engaged with it, thinking he could simply "bomb" the North Vietnamese into capitulating regardless of the mounting evidence to the contrary. At times his conduct of the war was not only irrational and extremely counter-productive, but also criminal and unnecessary, as with the incursions into Cambodia in 1970, which spurred an avalanche of student protest and increasing political resistance at home.

Nixon's presidency is a study in contrasts, a reflection of the internal contradictions propelling the President himself. Nixon is truly one of the most fascinating of our modern presidents, a remarkable amalgam of his genius, daring, and all-too human flaws, a man so haunted and tortured by his interior demons that he spent the balance of his post=presidency years attempting to reconstruct the truth about his conduct of the presidency and the war in Vietnam. Here is revealed a man so anxious to gain the presidency that he outrageously influenced the President of South Vietnam during the 1968 presidential campaign to disengage from an effort by sitting President Lyndon Johnson to end the war. How can we expect a man capable of such perverted motives to do "the right thing" to save life and treasure by bringing the war to an "honorable" conclusion?

Instead, we find the same irrational, pseduo-macho tendencies as led to the debacle of Watergate perpetrated onto the war in Vietnam, resulting in thousands of additional deaths and casualties. This is a wonderful book, one that lays bare the truth about the self-serving efforts by Nixon, Kissinger, and a number of over-eager neo-conservatives to reconstruct the truth about the conduct of the war in Vietnam in order to salve their structure of beliefs and also lay blame for the war at the doorsteps of sixties liberals. I found myself engaged and excited by the author's interesting approach, and was quite impressed by the interviews, documents, and research used to present the evidence included in the book. This is one I can heartily recommend, and enthusiastically give a full five star rating to. Enjoy!

This much needed Nixon's Vietnam War by Jeffrey Kimball is not only an account of the decisions but also of the illusions which informed Americans foreign policy. One of the most important and distinctive features of this study appears in Chapter "Dragons of Myth and Mind". For far too long, the remarkable part that presidential and leadership personality play in American policy has nmot been of adequate attention. The conduct of the war under Nixon and Kissinger cannot really be understood without the extent to which Nixon's personality governed most of his decisions. He had an unbelievable and overbearing belief in the unrelenting use of military force. Nixons's belief in the capacity of unrelenting forces was such a personal obsession that it made a rational assessment of the situation impossible. Time and again he invokes what he and Kissenger themselves call the 'Madman' theory of war.

The second virtue of this study is the evidence from the minutes of meetings and the deliberate exclusion of Cabinet opponents from meetings and from knowledge of military and diplomatic orders in their sphere of responsibility. In short, Kimball's well documented account explores two dimensions of American foreign policy that have long needed to be made known to the American public and understood by the American public for this terrible ordeal. One was that America's credibility was at stake in a war that was actually destroying our reputation. The other was the fact that Russia and China were bitter enemies, neither really stood to gain by a nationalist victory by Hanoi.

This excellelnt book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the Vietnam War.

Randolph tells the story of Richard Nixon,the only president to resign the office of the president.You get a rarely seen glimpse of the president whom history and the public tend to remember as the crook, instead of as the only president who could have gone to China , or ended Vietnam. It goes into detail from his childhood in Yorba Linda, California, to his return to the public life of the eighties.

I found this biography for young adult readers to be a thorough and in depth account. It was interesting and informative. I would highly reccommend it!

For hard-core Watergate freaks, this book provides perspective on The Downfall from one of Nixon's right-wing, law-n-order stalwarts - the chief of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice and director of the organized-crime Strike Force. The tone is of surprised disappointment and condemnation. Old Watergate buffs will lose patience with Wilson's rehash of known facts (he adds few new ones) but the book's worthwhile contribution is its analysis of the catastrophe through the eyes of an experienced criminal lawyer, and its judgment on what happened through the failure of the President to get and exercise proper legal advice, which failure Wilson contends reflects the core problem - Nixon's stubborn refusal to recognize that he was, in fact, behaving like a criminal.

Looking deeper into how Nixon and his White House staff could so seriously misjudge the situation, Wilson cites lack of executive experience among the critical decision makers - including and especially the President - who nevertheless were given extraordinary latitude in exercising public responsibilities. In this regard, Wilson reaffirms in spades what other commentators have noted - that Nixon's White House was utterly unable to make the distinction between public and private agendas, between political ends and public policy.

And no wonder. H. R. Haldeman, the "custodian of the body", vaulted to his position as chief gatekeeper from a career as an advertising executive. John Ehrlichman, the other corner of the "Berlin Wall", was promoted from 18 years of quiet law practice with his father, mostly limited to real estate condemnation. John Mitchell was a municipal bond lawyer. Each of them was impressively successful in his own speciality, but specialists they were, with no experience in trying to balance or mediate competing political interests of equal merit, which is the heart and soul of the process over which they were empowered with stewardship. Nixon chose them not for their statesmanship, but for their fanatical loyalty to Nixon.

Of the characters in this familiar drama, Wilson was closest personally to John Mitchell, Henry Petersen and Richard Kleindienst. Wilson provides a friend's sympathetic explanation, if not a defense, for Mitchell's series of mistakes in handling a matter outside his experience. God knows, Mitchell could use a friend in the historical record.

And Nixon's own executive experience? It is surprising to reflect on how little he actually had. Wilson notes that Nixon is best known even among his friends as a tireless political campaigner, not as a policy wonk or a project ramrod. He never really "ran" anything while in public office. Indeed, he hated bureaucracy and bureaucrats. Wilson reminds us that several times President Eisenhower expressed reservations about Nixon's ability to follow him as President, saying that he had "watched Dick a long time, and he just hasn't grown. So, I just haven't honestly been able to believe that he is Presidential timber."

Why didn't Ike say it louder?

I enjoyed reading this book because it talks about the Nixon presidency from Nixon's election to the White House in 1969 to his resignation in 1974. The people that discuss Nixon in this book are members of his cabinet, foreign diplomats and heads of state, his family, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This book also goes into detail about the Watergate incident, Nixon's life after his resignation and President Ford's attempts to heal the nation after the Watergate incident. That is what made this book interesting and exciting.

If you are interested in how the Nixon and his staff handled the Watergate issue then this is a wonderful look into the private conversations that took place. The author does a good job of setting most of the conversations up with comments as to what the conversation covers. There are also some explanations at the beginnings of the major areas of the book. I would have preferred a little bit more editing out of some of the conversations, but they do serve a point in the overall book.

What struck me the most was just how desperate Nixon kept getting. I almost started to think that maybe he even believed the lies he was telling. It was so fascinating to see how he would formulate a "cover" story and then keep presenting it to staff to see if they would replace their understanding of the events with his. What is sad is the amount of denial that Nixon was sliding into at the end. He was justifying his actions so hard, I started to think that he was trying to change reality with his force of will.

Many of the conversations are very revealing and interesting. I wonder if at times Nixon forgot he was being taped? Why would anyone think that what he was up to would stand the test of time and be thought of as acceptable behavior. You get a good understanding of why Nixon and his family fought so hard to keep the tapes private. In my opinion, these tapes have set back all the work Nixon did after leaving office to rebuild his reputation. My only warring would be that this should not be the first or only book on Watergate that you read. It will help you if have read something else to give you some back ground on the conversations. Overall the book is interesting and a good addition to your Nixon collection.

A fine addition to any Watergate library. Kutler is a dazzling professor who often turns fine logic and thinking to the wrong conclusions. As a litigation historian he can shed copius amounts of illumination onto America's law. However, the fine paths which are followed by Kutler often lead to the wrong conclusion. He has made brilliant arguments for the separation of church and state which in the end only elegantly confirm the opposite conclusion. Our high law not only encourages religous affiliations in civic life, but that government cannot in fact prohibit this free exercise of religion by not only any individual, state, judge or other federal official but by even the federal government itself. It is always a joy to consume a Kutler premise, but even more enjoyable to find the true conclusions.

If you are interested in how Nixon and his staff handled the Watergate issue, then the book Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes by, Stanley Kutler is a great one to read. Kutler does a great job of setting the private conversations up with comments as to what they cover. He also gives some explanations at the beginning of the major areas of the book. I was happy that they did not edit much of the conversations that took place because they serve a good point in the overall book.

What struck me the most about the book was just how desperate Nixon kept getting. I almost started to think that maybe he even believed the lies he was telling. It was so fascinating to see how he would come up with a "cover" story and then keep presenting it to his staff to see if they would replace their understanding of the events with his. What is sad is the amount of denial that Nixon encountered at the end. He was trying so hard to justify his actions; I started to think that he was trying to change reality with his force of will.

Many of the conversations are very revealing and interesting. It makes me wonder, if at times, Nixon forgot he was being taped? I got a good understanding of why Nixon and his family fought so hard to keep the tapes private. In my opinion, these tapes have set back all the work Nixon did after leaving office to rebuild his reputation. It will help you if have read something else to give you some background on the conversations. Hopefully, this will not be the only book on the Watergate scandal that you read. Overall, the book is interesting and well written.