This volume brings together a group of scholars, journalists and former Nixon Administration officials to examine the Watergate controversy and its legacy. Particular attention is paid to Nixon’s misuse of government power for political ends, his administration’s obsession with secrecy and the control of information, and the impeachment proceedings in Congress. This is the second in a trilogy of titles based on the Hofstra Presidential Conference on Richard M. Nixon (the first, Richard M.Nixon: Politician, President, Administrator Greenwood 1991), was also edited by Friedman and Levantrosser). Watergate and Afterward includes a final assessment of the Nixon presidency by a group of biographers who have written extensively about the man and his politics, as well as appraisals of Nixon’s accomplishments and failures by both administration figures and outside historians. Special effort has been ade throughout to incorporate opposing points of view on the various issues under discussion. The book begins with essays that describe the political reactions to Watergate and Nixon’s attempt to remove the first special prosecutor on the case. In the discussion section that follows, new insight into what the break-in was supposed to accomplish is provided by Reverend Jeb Stuart Magruder, speaking for the first time in a public forum. Subsequent papers discuss the different efforts by the Nixon administration to uncover information about political opponents, the politicisation of the Justice Department, the constitutional confrontation in the Supreme Court over the Nixon tapes, and the Pentagon papers case. Contributors to the discussion include Charles Colson, who was in the White House at the time, Tom Brokaw of NBC, and Ron Ziegler and Gerald Warren of the White House press office. Finally, the impeachment proceedings are re-examined in chapters that explore the specific charges against the president and the political coalitions that formed in Congress around them. The work is intended to be useful as supplementary reading for courses on the presidency and modern American politics.
