Category:Watergate

A Confession

I need to confess something.

I've got a bit of an obsession with Watergate.

I know, I know, it's kind of weird.

The Books

First, there's the books. I read voraciously, about Watergate, about the 60s, the 70s, and just about every aspect of US domestic and foreign politics during the Nixon administration. It's a fascinating subject and I just can't help feeding the appetite.

First, books that are pretty much directly Watergate-related:

• Bob Woodward and Carl Berstein's All The President's Men - most popular, but least informative, book on Watergate
• Lamar Waldron's Watergate: The Hidden History - amazing book published in 2012, this book updates the Watergate story accounting for all of the material that has been released between 1974 and 2012
• Rick Perlstein's Nixonland - a biased but nevertheless fascinating book that gives a comprehensive summary of Nixon's entire career. It goes into greater detail about Nixon's early life and career than some other books, which give a summary treatment. This was the first book to really kindle my interest in Nixon in general, and Watergate specifically.
• Stanely Kutler's Wars of Watergate - a fascinating, excellent, and highly-detailed account of how Watergate unfolded, practically minute-to-minute

Next are some books that are not about Watergate or Nixon primarily, but cover important information about or dimensions of his Presidency:

• Stanley Karnow's Vietnam - this book covers some critical details of the Nixon administration's decisions around Vietnam and provides a much fuller context of the conflict, as well as covering how the Vietnam War played into the unfolding Watergate scandal
• Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes - sheds light on the Nixon administration's involvement with the CIA, Kissinger's decisions around covert activities, and the Nixon-Helms conflict, which became critical in the unfolding Watergate saga due to the role of the White House-CIA-FBI triangle in Watergate.

More recently,

• Tim Weiner's One Man Against The World - a meticulously researched book that lays out a strong and very unforgiving picture of Nixon.

Then there are the notes on Watergate timelines. This will be substantially improved once I incorporate My Kindle Clippings from Wars of Watergate (2014), which captured a WHOOOOLE lot of dates.

• Watergate/Timelines
• My Kindle Clippings

The Tapes

Then, there's the Nixon White House Tapes, with hours and hours of tapes that you can listen to online. Good gravy, these are eerie to listen to.

• http://nixonlibrary.gov/forresearchers/find/tapes/index.php

This is no longer available, as of December 2018. It is a bit worrying that Watergate history can be "disappeared" by burying valuable resources in hard-to-find corners of websites, or have databases and servers "mysteriously" go offline.

The website nixontapes.org is more, shall we say, unbiased, and has more digital resources available:

• http://www.nixontapes.org/

The Library of Congress also maintains a page of resources about President Nixon:

• https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/presidents/nixon/loc.html