Episode 117: Watergate: Unseating a President

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This episode of the Sofa King Podcast looks at the conspiracy that helped start all conspiracy theories about the United States government—Watergate. Named after a break in at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC, this scandal proved President Richard Nixon to be a power-hungry, vengeful, paranoid mad man who abused every executive privilege to get re-elected and suppress the truth. This scandal came to light when five burglars were caught in July of 1972 breaking in to the Democratic National Committee office. They each had thousands of dollars in their pockets, wiretapping equipment, stolen folders containing information on Democratic presidential nominees, and phone numbers to the White House in their pockets.

From there, modern journalism did its ultimate job and unseated a president and revealed his corruption. Reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein wrote ground-breaking stories for the Washington Post, based upon anonymous tips they got in a parking garage from a government agent known only as Deepthroat. With these stories, the conspiracy came to light and eventually led to congressional investigations.

How did President Nixon abuse the power of the executive office? What was G. Gordon Liddy’s Operation Gemstone and why did it involve prostitutes on a yacht? What did Nixon’s hours of paranoid and self-incriminating taped phone calls reveal about his crimes? Listen, laugh, learn.