Abuse of Power [DOWNLOAD: ADOBE READER]

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More than 20 years after the Watergate scandal that brought down his presidency, the character of Richard M. Nixon continues to fascinate us. Many books have been written about Nixon, and about Watergate, but perhaps none sheds so revealing a light on the late president as Stanley I. Kutler's Abuse of Power. In the years following Watergate, as Nixon fought to rebuild his reputation from the ruins of his shattered presidency, he fought fiercely to suppress publication of most of the secret tapes that led to his downfall. During his lifetime, only about 60 hours of the almost 4,000 that exist were ever made public, and even after his death his estate continued to obstruct further releases. Then, in 1996, Kutler, along with the advocacy group Public Citizen, won a landmark decision to release the tapes. Among other things, Abuse of Power definitively answers the question of whether Nixon was directly involved in raising hush money (he was) and suggests a reason for the burglary attempt at the Watergate Hotel (financial documents that might have linked the Democratic Party chairman to Howard Hughes). The tapes also reveal the vindictive and bigoted side to Nixon's personality, particularly as he discusses "killing" the Washington Post, and blames rich Jews for Billy Graham's tax problems. Abuse of Power only covers an additional 201 hours of tape of the near 4,000 that remain unreleased. It seems that the final chapter on Watergate has yet to be written.


From Library Journal
Nixon: "I can't believe that they can tie [Watergate] to me. What's your feeling?" H.R. Haldeman: "It'll be messy." Right. Twenty-five years after the existence of Nixon's secret White House tape recordings became known, Kutler sued for and won their release. The excerpts provided in this excellent production are a fine example of oral history at its most dramatic (see also Michael Beschloss's Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, Audio Reviews LJ 2/1/98). Actor William Windom captures the vocal expressions listeners associate with Nixon. The voices of Haldeman, John Erlichman, Henry Kissinger, John Dean, Alexander Haig, and Rose Mary Woods are rendered realistically by an ensemble company. The effect is riveting and brings the listener into the Oval Office with Nixon and the White House staff as they try to distance themselves from the firestorm of allegation being leveled at them from outside. By the end, even Nixon is referring to himself in the third person to separate himself from the inevitability of the official investigation. All libraries will want at least one copy of this production, especially those with a focus on 20th-century political history.?Barbara Valle, El Paso P.L., Tex.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Wall Street Journal, Daniel Casse
This book remains fascinating, however, because, coupled with Haldeman's posthumously published diaries, it provides a full portrait of what was actually going on inside the White House during a tumultuous era. Although Abuse of Power represents but a fraction of Nixon material in the National Archives, readers will be awed by the sheer amount of time Nixon and his aides spend chattering about Watergate and the adversary culture that surrounded them. When did they have time to run the country?


The New York Times Book Review, Joseph Finder
After a quarter-century of Watergate interpretation, it's oddly refreshing to get the undiluted, unmediated sense of huggermugger that this new cache of transcripts gives us. It makes for spellbinding reading, and plunges us back into that sordid, astonishing world like nothing else.... Kutler has done a skilled job of annotation.… As is perhaps inevitable in transcribing such poor-quality tapes, a number of errors have crept in--though turning a "wire service reporter" into a "water service" reporter is hardly significant....


Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Robert Sheer
Richard Milhous Nixon has been the subject of countless portraits, but none is more compelling than the one that emerges from these grotesque and riveting pages: Nixon raw, in his own words, a president unmasked. Here is a man who was popular as a leader, successful in his politics, facing only imagined enemies, with no objective basis for his fears and mistrusts, no real justification for the pornography of his words and deeds. You are forced to conclude that what we are confronted with is a fundamentally flawed human being whose obsessions began to eat away at all that was decent and responsible. Unfortunately, his tragedy was not merely personal. It was ours as well.


From AudioFile
A journalist who worked for many years to gain access to the Nixon White House tapes, Kutler has chosen selections from the famed tapes that help one know what Nixon knew about Watergate and when he knew it. Kutler also provides excellent commentary by explaining the context and the importance of the selections. Unlike the recordings of the Johnson presidency that were recently released, this audio program has seasoned actors performing the roles of Nixon, Haldeman, Mitchell and the others involved in the Watergate scandal. The actors clearly communicate the emotions of the central players in this political drama. Windom's performance of Nixon is so good that, by the end, the listener believes that this is how the real Nixon sounded. M.L.C. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


The New York Review of Books, Russell Baker
This fresh group of tapes may be of more interest to historians and law students than to the general reader, but it contains hundreds of entertaining glimpses of life in the Oval Office as a president feels his power crumbling away.


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