User Reviews

This one hour show could never possibly cover the lengthy Watergate scandal which covered two years of Nixon's presidency and most of the two and a half years of Gerald Ford's time as President. However, it does provide a trip back to that scandal through a series of interview clips spiced with a few recordings from Ricard Nixon himself thinking out loud about Cavett. Dick Cavett said he was both amused and chilled by the President of the United States thinking of him as another possible name on his enemies list, although he never actually seemed to be on a list. We also see Cavett introducing a television audience from the Senate room where the Special Senate Committee conducted the hearings. We get a sense of the attitude of the nation as Gore Vidal, the writer of historical fiction, talked about getting his daily fix from the Watergate hearings. Sam Ervin, the folksy senator from South Carolina, was the chair who had a masterful legal mind. He told Cavett that he felt it was the most serious constitutional crisis involving a President. Carl Bernstein, one of the reporters who slogged through it, said how important these hearings wee for the nation by asking the questions that had to be asked. We also get a few glimpses of John Dean, the self-confessed fall guy whose encyclopedic memory provided a narrative for the events in interviews then and now. It was interesting at the end that Carl Bernstein supported the pardon of Richard Nixon by his successor Gerald Ford after initially opposing it. He called Ford a great President. Both Bernstein and Bob Woodward are interviewed during the show, saying how they were young reporters without the contacts of the seasoned veterans. It took a three show special by Walter Cronkite on the CBS network to give them credibility. All in all, an interesting retrospective from over 40 years ago on one of the most riveting scandals in US history.