The Lawfare Podcast: Watergate Revisited with Garrett Graff

Wednesday, March 9, 2022, 12:00 PM

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With

You may think you know all that you need to about the Watergate scandal, its origins, its evolution and its implications. But there has been a lot of new information in the last couple of decades that is simply not in earlier full histories of the scandal. Journalist and popular historian Garrett Graff has written a new history of Watergate called, “Watergate: A New History,” the first overall picture of Watergate in quite some time.

David Priess sat down with Garrett to talk about the contours of the Watergate scandal, and in particular, about some of its national security and foreign policy episodes. They discussed the evolution of Nixon's thinking involving the tapes that he recorded of his White House conversations, the extraordinary order that the Secretary of Defense gave during the height of the scandal to warn soldiers about following the commander-in-chief's orders, and more.

Jen Patja

Jen Patja is the editor and producer of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.

David Priess

davidpriess

David Priess is Director of Intelligence at Bedrock Learning, Inc. and a Senior Fellow at the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security. He served during the Clinton and Bush 43 administrations as a CIA officer and has written two books: “The President’s Book of Secrets,” about the top-secret President’s Daily Brief, and "How To Get Rid of a President," describing the ways American presidents have left office.