The Secret Plot to Make Ted Kennedy President: Inside the Real Watergate Conspiracy Hardcover – June 17, 2008

Interesting look at Watergate. I certainly find Ted Kennedy to be one of history's detestable figures. However, I don't think that warrants a whitewashing of Nixon. Sure, Kennedy should have been finished, and true, nobody drowned and died in Watergate. The expert handling of the Kennedy scandal compared to the amateur bungling of Watergate. The author also convincingly points to Kennedy family loyalists and Democratic operatives who sought to rehabilitate Ted through Nixon's downfall. But, beyond that, it's a rather unconvincing case. But then it goes into how the congressional committee and the media were just out to nail Nixon. It's not as if he broke new ground about WaPo Editor Ben Bradlee's relationship with the Kennedy family. Much was the same redundant revisionist points you can find elsewhere.

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This is an essential book for those who wish to fully understand the Watergate scandal.Shepard takes a different tack to most books on Watergate. Instead of focusing on the burglary, he focuses on its political aftermath. He persuaded me of a number of key insights:1. the centrality of John Dean to the entire scandal - Dean was involved in both the direction of the Plumbers before the burglary and in the efforts to clean up the mess after the burglary. Nixon appears to have been unaware of Dean's prior role as he used him as "case officer" to clean up the mess afterwards. But Dean's earlier role made him vulnerable to criminal charges. And Dean's vulnerability and desire for immunity thus made Nixon, Haldeman and Ehrlichman vulnerable to Dean turning state's evidence.2. the partisan nature of the post-Watergate investigations - it is clear that both prosecution and congressional inquiries into Watergate were controlled by Kennedy Democrats and that they used their powers in a highly partisan manner.3. how legal priorities were sidelined by political priorities in this process - by the time the Watergate Prosecution Force was established, regular prosecutors were on the point of issuing indictments. But, to serve a political timeline, the indictments were postponed several months so that the American people could be publicly informed of Nixon WH wrongdoing.4. how journalistic priorities were subordinated to political priorities - in the immediate aftermath of Ben Bradlee's death, it is interesting to read about him in this book. Shepard reveals how, during the campaign for the 1960 Democratic nomination, Bradlee sent a secret memo to JFK with inside information he gathered on LBJ. While JFK was president, Bradlee continued to pass on information to him. In one memo he even wrote "The boss asked for the enclose last night". Boss???The book concludes that the Nixon White House engaged in criminality to advance its political cause but that the scale of its criminality differed little from the Johnson White House or the Kennedy White House. This is not to justify Nixon WH wrongdoing - two wrongs don't make a right. But it does call into question the scale of the political reaction to Watergate.Shepard has taken a mountain of complex material and presented it in a succinct and coherent manner to overturn much of the conventional wisdom on Watergate. The book is written by a former Nixon aide - so it is partisan. But the author writes concisely and in a strikingly clear style - so it is an excellent read.

This is a valuable book for revealing the actual story of the Watergate break-in and the media witch hunt to destroy Richard Nixon. I also recommend the book "Senatorial Privilege", the story of Ted Kennedy and the drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquidick. Reading these two books are valuable for showing how the American media covered up the truly bad and negligent acts of Ted Kennedy, and brainwashed the American people into believing that Richard Nixon was a monster.

I have been meditating on the Vietnam War, and Watergate, for a long, long time.As a very young man, I was opposed to the war, and I did my share of "wallowing in Watergate" as the Erwin trial proceeded. I actively disliked Nixon (although he had shaken my hand), just as I later actively disliked Ronald Reagan. (I saw him once, at U.C. Santa Barbara, emerging from an elevator, and noted that he had dyed hair. Reagan even signed my diploma!)It was only later that I began to understand the horror of Stalin. I can date this precisely to an article in "The New Republic" which undermined all of my assumptions. The late author of "The Gulag Archipelago" played an important role as well. In short, I began to grow up. Are the "starry-eyed illusions of youth" a good thing? I don't think so.And then the real implications of Watergate began to hit home. Nixon, for all his faults, had left Vietnam with the clear diplomatic understanding that invasion of South Vietnam would bring disaster for Hanoi. You can laugh and chuckle, but Nixon brought "peace with honor," having obtained nothing more than the "status quo ante."And then Watergate struck. Nixon was forced to resign, Ford became President, and a wave of McGovernites were elected to office. They actually cut off ALL funding to South Vietnam, and so invited Hanoi to invade. Which happened.Note that they didn't just cut off military funding to Saigon. They cut it ALL off. Imagine what would happen if we did that to Egypt right now, in 2008!The result was a bloodbath in SE Asia.Why?And this brings me to the point of this review. Anyone who thinks that Watergate was some sort of non-partisan political action needs to have their head examined. It was obviously an effort to get rid of Nixon and bring in a Democratic majority. It worked. Kind of. Because, after Ford had been disposed of, the next presidential candidate was NOT Teddy Kennedy -- which was the idea -- but some peanut-chomping nincompoop named Carter.And we abandoned SE Asia for this? We surrendered to the enemy (some really vicious thugs) just because the Democrats wanted the White House?Well, thank goodness, that was A Long Time Ago.Other good points of this book: John F. Kennedy (for a long time,a liberal icon) was in fact the son of Joseph Kennedy, one of the richest men in America, and he bought his way into the White House with amounts of money which had never been seen before. I guess everyone knows that Kennedy was much "worse" than Clinton in the marital fidelity sweepstakes, but somehow nobody in the press thought that this was worth mentioning.

An informative insight to Nixon, Watergate, and Ted Kennedy from an insider White House staff member. Learn the truth. Learn the truth!