Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 6, 1994 TAG: 9408090067
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LEE WINFREY KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Civil War established America as a nation of freedom. Watergate marked out the limits of presidential power. Both are watershed events in our national history, deserving everlasting remembrance.
The five-hour "Watergate" premieres with its first two episodes on Discovery at 9 p.m. Sunday. The last three episodes will follow at 10 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The entire show will be repeated Aug. 14 from noon until 5 p.m. The narrator is Daniel Schorr, who covered the Watergate case for CBS two decades ago.
Increasingly compelling public attention and emotional involvement for two years and two months, the story began publicly when five burglars were arrested inside Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office building in Washington in the wee hours of June 17, 1972. It ended when Richard M. Nixon resigned as the 37th president of the United States on Aug. 9, 1974 - 20 years ago this week. Nobody has ever proven that Nixon knew about the burglary in advance, and this show doesn't, either. But these endlessly fascinating five hours emphatically establish that Nixon was guilty of obstructing justice and was properly evicted from office.
The most remarkable portions of "Watergate" are the invaluable interviews provided by a score of men who worked for Nixon, several of whom went to prison for their felonious labors on his behalf. With nothing left to lose, and with evident desire to contribute as fully as possible to the historical record, they speak out with amazing candor and in enlightening detail. In alphabetical order, they are:
Bernard Barker, Robert Bork, Alexander Butterfield, Charles Colson, John Dean, John Ehrlichman, Leonard Garment, Alexander Haig, H.R. Haldeman, E. Howard Hunt, Richard Kleindienst, Egil "Bud" Krogh, Fred LaRue, G. Gordon Liddy, Jeb Magruder, Robert Mardian, Rolando Martinez, James McCord, Bart Porter and Tony Ulasewicz.
From the other side of the battlements, numerous prosecutors and investigators tell how the case was solved, including Richard Ben-Veniste, Sam Dash, Carl Feldbaum, Seymour Glanzer, Leon Jaworski, Angelo Lano, James Neal, Henry Ruth, Donald Sanders, Earl Silbert and Jill Volner.
This show was produced by the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) and aired previously in England. During an interview with TV critics in Los Angeles last month, co-producers Brian Lapping and Norma Percy said the BBC's impeccable reputation was the key to gaining the cooperation of the president's men.
"The BBC is able to get people sometimes to agree to talk who otherwise would be reluctant," Lapping said. "It has quite a reputation ... for honest dealing and careful journalism."
"The networks [ABC, CBS, NBC] were seen as the enemy of the Nixon White House, PBS was lefty, but the BBC would be fair," Percy characterized the collective opinion of Nixon's operatives.
There are a few flaws in this powerful production, notably the reduction of Watergate judge John Sirica and Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to less than cameo roles. In reality, Sirica's relentless push for justice and Woodward and Bernstein's brilliant investigative reporting had as much to do with breaking the case as anything but Nixon's secret taping of his Oval Office conversations; the testimony of Dean, the most damaging witness against him, and the decision of McCord, the leader of the burglary team, to tell Sirica that others were involved in the case.
Nixon, who died April 29, is heard on this show in many mesmerizing spoken excerpts from his tapes, including the ones that were most crucial in his downfall; TV appearances during his presidency, and selections from a lengthy series of interviews he gave David Frost in 1977. Most revealing are two, the first and last words heard from him during "Watergate."
"When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal," he told Frost, expressing the wrongheaded opinion that led him into the excesses of Watergate.
On the day he resigned, Nixon told his staff in farewell, "Those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself." So at the end he finally recognized his most virulent character flaw.
Sunday's opening hour, subtitled "Break-In," tells why and how Nixon first recruited his private police force, called the "plumbers," who were headed by ex-FBI agent Liddy and former CIA agent Hunt. Ending with the plumbers' arrest, it egregiously omits the name of the greatest security guard of all time, Frank Wills, who called the police to Watergate after he discovered tape that McCord had put over door locks to keep them open.
by CNB