Watergate Plus 30

Last night, the local PBS affiliate in my area showed the new PBS special Watergate Plus 30: The Shadow of History. If it comes on in your area, you really should take a chance to watch it. The only really "new" bit in the story is Jeb Magruder's revelation that he witnessed the phone conversation in which President Nixon gave the authorization for the Watergate burglery and attempted bugging of the DNC headquarters to be done - the first time anyone's claimed that they knew Nixon was personally involved and aware of the operation. This comes in the very last few minutes of the program, and, while an interesting bit of news, it's not, by far, the heart of the program (something I'd been a bit concerned about when I read news stories announcing the claim in the days before the show debuted).

The program itself is very well done. They provide a good bit of background information on the atmosphere in America at the time, and looked beyond just the Watergate incident itself to things such as the attempt to break into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in hopes of stealing information from the psychiatrist's files that could be used to discredit Ellsbert, who had angered Nixon greatly by leaking the Pentagon Papers to the press.

There are interviews with several of the key players who are still alive, and quite a bit of footage from the Congressional hearings on the entire incident.

One aspect of the show that was almost creepily eerie was how similar Bush II and Nixon are in the way they regard people who oppose them or disagree with their plans, policies or actions. They both tend to see opponents as "unpatriotic" and dissent as "unAmerican". They're both highly secretive and ego-driven, and they both seem to think that anything is justifiable in the furtherance of their agendas.

All in all, it was a very impressive show, and I highly recommend it to anyone who needs a reminder of just how bad it can get when a president considers himself to be beyond the law.