A new book from a former Nixon campaign aide suggests prosecutorial misconduct and a "deep state" conspiracy to take down the former president.
“Nobody cares. Every Republican you know has made their peace with the Nixon situation decades ago,” said Geoff Shepard, the author of three books on Watergate, the latest of which, The Nixon Conspiracy: Watergate and the Plot to Remove the President , will be released Tuesday.
“It’s so obvious that it's undeniable. But the public doesn't want to hear it. The politicians don't want to hear it. The news media doesn’t want to print it,” he said in an interview to discuss his gripping history of the affair and the effort to force Nixon to resign.
Shepard’s credibility is hard to challenge. He was an insider who turned on Nixon after hearing one of the most critical secret tape recordings in the Watergate case. In fact, he is credited with dubbing the tape the “smoking gun” because he believed it tied Nixon to the Watergate cover-up.
Only later did Shepard change his mind when he realized that Nixon was running through options in the scandal, not approving a hush payment in the case.
And more recently, he forced the release of the secret prosecutor’s “road map” used to convince a grand jury to indict key Watergate figures and egg on the impeachment inquiry that turned out to be a hoax, somewhat similar to the “dossier” used to spark the FBI investigation of former President Donald Trump.
(Featured Image: President Richard M. Nixon points to the transcripts of the White House tapes in Washington, after he announced on television that he would turn over the transcripts to House impeachment investigators. Credit: AP).
