The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon torrent

The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon - Stanley I. Kutler [epub]

The Wars of Watergate is the first major work by a professional historian to focus on the scandal and the investigations that felled the Nixon Presidency. Stanley I. Kutler, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, clearly does not regard Watergate as a small thing. He treats it at 733-page length, and by and large he gives Mr. Nixon just what he deserves.

An able historian, Mr. Kutler has made his long march through the original sources, including materials in the Nixon papers, the records of the Watergate special prosecution force and those of the Senate Select Committee. Moreover, he has interviewed 63 people who had some connection with the Watergate events, among them former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, former Attorney General John Mitchell, the former White House counsel John Dean and Richard M. Helms, the former Director of Central Intelligence.

The major themes Mr. Kutler advances - that Watergate was rooted in Mr. Nixon's lifelong political personality, that he was at all times in full charge of his Administration - are scarcely fresh. But there is another, more surprising theme lurking here just beneath the ambling surface: in brief, that the system worked. Mr. Kutler contends that once the Watergate burglars were arrested, the men entrusted with uncovering the wrongdoing - notably the assistant United States attorney Earl J. Silbert and his staff - did their jobs well and deserve most of the credit for breaking the case