Anderson Cooper gathers the key figures from the Watergate era to offer additional insights and analysis on a painful chapter in American history and the parallels to the current political climate. Guests: Carl Bernstein, journalist and author; Richard Ben-Veniste, former Watergate Special Prosecutor; John Dean, former Nixon White House Counsel; Tim Naftali, former Director of the Nixon Presidential Library and CNN Presidential Historian; and Leah Wright Rigueur, author of The Loneliness of the Black Republican.
To understand the dramatic rise and unprecedented fall of Richard Nixon, one must look to his beginnings. Raised by a family with modest means in a childhood beset by tragedy, Richard Nixon learns early to recognize opportunity where he can and, perhaps more importantly, how to seize it. His years as a serious student give way to a promising political career. But Nixon's meteoric rise is marked by aggressive political tactics, a resentment of the elite, and an unbridled will to win. His early political life climaxes with a dramatic showdown for the presidency against John F. Kennedy.
In a devastating defeat, Nixon loses one of the closest presidential elections in history to John F. Kennedy. Down but not out, Nixon soon runs for what should be an easily winnable governor's seat in California, only to be again defeated and profoundly humiliated. Nixon retreats from politics for the first time in his life and takes a back seat to the tumult of the 1960s. In 1968, witha country in turmoil at home and abroad, Nixon senses an opportunity for a comeback. Determined to shed his loser's image, he wages a calculated crusade for the presidency in one of the most dramatic and heart-wrenching elections to date.
In 1969, Richard Nixon enters office after navigating one of the most greatest political comebacks of all time only to find that his survival hinges on a key promise: to end the Vietnam War. As the conflict rages on and the anti-war movement gains strength, the president suspects a conspiracy against him, one he will use any means necessary to defeat.
In a historic landslide, Nixon is re-elected to the Oval Office. But shortly into his second term, the cover-up of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate complex starts to fall apart. As the President wages a battle in the press and in the courts, a desperate man becomes his own worst enemy, leaving the American public to pick up the pieces.
