RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE, 1974 The Fall ( Part 5) The Battle Lines are Drawn

The Richard Nixon Experience

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In this episode we examine the events that led to the Supreme Court Case of The United States of America vs Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America.
We examine the wrangling over just how many tapes the Special Prosecutor would ask for and his attempt to blackmail the President into backing off of his claim of Executive Privilege. We will take both a scholarly look at the actual doctrine of Executive Privilege with Dr Noah Zerbe , and listen to those who were involved on both sides of the issue in 1974, we will look at what the settled law had been up to the point the case went to the Supreme Court, and a look at the timeline in which the leadership of the House Judiciary staff, mainly John Doar, had been secretly working with Hank Ruth to design a pathway for the Special Prosecutor's case to be made by his staff to the House Committee.
In fact, the word "secret" is one you will see a lot over these final days of the legal case mounting against the President of the United States. Secret meetings, secret files, secret namings of people as conspirators, secret files being taken with Special Prosecutors and then sealed for years after the case was closed, files secretly sealed, it is secret, secret, secret, and when this much stuff is kept secret there must be a secret nobody wants the public to ever actually see and hear.
Well it is all not a secret any longer, as we will hear in this episode.
We will also hear from a Special Prosecutor we have not heard from until now, Phil Lacavara. We have read several of his memos but this is the first time we will hear from him as he addresses the case of the United States vs Richard Nixon in "An Evening with Phil Lacavara" at Rutgers University. These segments will set the stage for the oral arguments in front of the United States Supreme Court we are about to replay for you in their entirety.