Sunday, June 12, 2022

President Nixon, CIA Director Helms, and Watergate

 


Watergate took place fifty years. In light of the myriad scandals today, the burglary itself seems rather quaint. However, that wasn’t the whole story. Morley tells a much more complete story based on some documents that have recently been released.


Nixon and his CIA Director were men of large egos and both had things to hide. I hadn’t realized the extent of CIA involvement in planned assassination attempts in South America. There was also the Kennedy assassination and the problematic conclusion of the Warren Commission that found Oswald acted alone. Morley does and excellent job of laying out all this history. It reads almost like a spy novel.


The book also looked at the question of how far a president can go. How far above the law is he? I found his discussion on point with the problems politicians and ordinary citizens are grappling with today. This is an excellent book for people to read unless we understand the things that happened in the past we will be doomed to continue to recreate the crises.


The book was very well researched and easy to read. If you lived through the Watergate era, you may be surprised at how much you didn’t know. I was. It’s a book for people interested in the Kennedy assassination as well the actual Watergate crimes. I highly recommend this book.


I received this book from St. Martin’s Press for this review.


No comments:

Post a Comment