RICHARD NIXON Watergate 1974 (Part 9) Things aren't always what they seem

The Richard Nixon Experience

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This episode begins with a simple statement that says it all about the Watergate Scandal from Nixon Speech Writer Ray Price "We screwed up so badly because we really never knew what we were being accused of"
And that was by design.
In this episode we look at the radicalization of Leon Jaworski, made largely possible by a tape of President Nixon giving advice to Bob Haldeman and John Dean on how to answer questions in a way that would not allow them to be charged with perjury. Now as bad as that may sound on face value it is routine advice that every lawyer in America gives to clients. You see you have to be able to recall things precisely and if you can't it can be used against you later. You need only ask Dwight Chapin the price of not recalling details of events when asked (he was convicted of giving misleading statements to the Grand Jury for statements that may not have been precisely correct)
What we also learn, and was hidden from the public for nearly a half century, is that Leon Jaworski was having issues controlling his rabid staff even as he came to believe in the President's guilt. After a press conference in which Press Secretary Ron Ziegler expressed his view that the Prosecutor's Staff was out of control, and out to get the President, a rebuttal came flying out of the office now headed by Leon Jaworski.
Jaworski in an open letter to Ron Ziegler professed his total faith in the honesty , integrity, and fairness of his new found colleagues, all of whom he had inherited from his predecessor, Archibald Cox. But newly uncovered memos show a totally different story brewing in the background that begs the question did Leon Jaworski even write the very letter that glossed over the growing belief that Richard Nixon had, that the staff of that office intended to do whatever it took to get him.
The media embraced Jaworski and touted to an interested public that he had vouched for the Special Prosecutor's staff as honest and ethical investigators of the truth. They pounded the wounded President every day driving his once lofty approval numbers down to record lows. All setting the stage to undo an unprecedented mandate of the people the previous November.
All of this as Jaworski in private did battle with his own lead staffers about inventive ways to stack the deck on Richard Nixon, using secret meetings with the trial Judge, John Sirica, sleight of hand to the Grand Jury, and taking advantage of a long friendship between John Doar, now the lead staffer on the House Judiciary Committee looking into impeachment, and Henry Ruth that stretched back to the days they were neighbors in New York. They did it all with one goal in mind;
How do we nail Richard Nixon.
It appears very early on in the tenure of Leon Jaworski, that things are not always what they seem.....