Product Description

The Watergate scandal began with a break-in at the office of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel on June 17, 1971, and ended when President Gerald Ford granted Richard M. Nixon a pardon on September 8, 1974, one month after Nixon resigned from office in disgrace. Effectively removed from the reach of prosecutors, Nixon returned to California, uncontrite and unconvicted, convinced that time would exonerate him of any wrongdoing and certain that history would remember his great accomplishments—the opening of China and the winding down of the Vietnam War—and forget his “mistake,” the “pipsqueak thing” called Watergate.

In 1977, three years after his resignation, Nixon agreed to a series of interviews with television personality David Frost. Conducted over twelve days, they resulted in twenty-eight hours of taped material, which were aired on prime-time television and watched by more than 50 million people worldwide. Nixon, a skilled lawyer by training, was paid $1 million for the interviews, confident that this exposure would launch him back into public life. Instead, they sealed his fate as a political pariah.

James Reston, Jr., was David Frost’s Watergate advisor for the interiews, and The Conviction of Richard Nixon is his intimate, behind-the-scenes account of his involvement. Originally written in 1977 and published now for the first time, this book helped inspire Peter Morgan’s hit play Frost/Nixon. Reston doggedly researched the voluminous Watergate record and worked closely with Frost to develop the interrogation strategy. Even at the time, Reston recognized the historical importance of the Frost/Nixon interviews; they would result either in Nixon’s de facto conviction and vindication for the American people, or in his exoneration and public rehabilitation in the hands of a lightweight. Focused, driven, and committed to exposing the truth, Reston worked tirelessly to arm Frost with the information he needed to force Nixon to admit his culpability.

In The Conviction of Richard Nixon, Reston provides a fascinating, fly-on-the-wall account of his involvement in the Nixon interviews as David Frost’s Watergate adviser. Written in 1977 immediately following these celebrated television interviews and published now for the first time, The Conviction of Richard Nixon explains how a British journalist of waning consequence drove the famously wily and formidable Richard Nixon to say, in an apparent personal epiphany, “I have impeached myself.”

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #684084 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-19
• Released on: 2007-06-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In 1977, three years after his resignation, Richard Nixon returned to the public eye in a series of interviews with British television journalist David Frost, for which Nixon received $1 million. Figuring his political and lawyerly skills were more than a match for Frost's interrogation, Nixon instead found himself doing exactly what his successor Gerald Ford had tried to prevent with a Presidential pardon: publicly admitting that he had broken the law. Reston, Jr. was one of the aides Frost hired to help him plan his line of attack; this book, written at the time of the interviews, is being published for the first time now (Reston has supplied a foreword and afterword), but it hardly reads like history. Instead, watching the comeuppance of a highly unpopular and divisive president will provide gratifying thrills for the politically disenchanted. Some references may fly by a modern audience's radar ("Ralph Abernathy pissing on the presidency"?), but Reston's passion for finding the chinks in Nixon's armor makes for fascinating reading.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
In 1976, former President Richard Nixon made an arrangement with the British celebrity David Frost: Frost would interview Nixon for more than 20 hours on camera and pay him $1 million. Nixon would make money, possibly build a reputation as a statesman and remind the American people of his presidential achievements. The stakes were just as high for Frost, who wanted to prove himself as a serious interviewer and burnish his celebrity credentials.

James Reston Jr. was teaching creative writing at the University of North Carolina when he was asked to join Frost's team as a Watergate adviser. Reston had served in the Army from 1965-68, but by 1976 he was a self-described "radical." He had waged a campaign to win amnesty for Americans who had avoided being drafted into the military. He abhorred Nixon's Vietnam War policy and viewed Nixon as a contemptible figure who, despite his 1974 resignation, "remained . . . uncontrite and unconvicted."

The Conviction of Richard Nixon is Reston's chronicle of his involvement in Frost's efforts to wrest an apology and an admission of wrongdoing from Nixon on national television. Written in 1977, the book was not published until this year. The unfinished manuscript helped inspire Peter Morgan's award-winning Broadway play, "Frost/Nixon."

Reston's memoir is a compact and gripping behind-the-scenes narrative focused on Frost's struggles to prepare for his encounter with the formidable Nixon. Reston captures Nixon's inner turmoil and myriad moods during the tapings. Nixon wiped his brow, touched his eye, and "his jawline seemed to elongate." He told anecdotes about lessons learned in politics that skated unevenly around Frost's questions. Vindictive and bewildered, angered and bemused, Nixon came across as an angst-ridden ex-president. Reston's portrait of Frost suggests an uninformed show business personality, who Reston initially felt was too lazy to confront a politician of Nixon's caliber.

Reston also conveys his own sense of himself as a partisan eager to impeach the president. Reston recounts how he scoured the archives in search of incriminating evidence and repeatedly urged Frost to go for the jugular. At one point during the taping, Reston yelled at the monitor on which he was watching the interview that Frost should take Nixon "back onto the coals!"

Above all, the book sheds important light on Nixon's failure to rehabilitate his reputation after his 1974 resignation. In the course of his research, Reston discovered undisclosed transcripts of conversations between Nixon and Charles Colson -- one of the Watergate conspirators -- that revealed Nixon's role in the coverup. Frost asked Nixon why he told Colson that "the President's losses got to be cut" and why he ordered his aides to "turn over any cash we got" to buy the Watergate burglars' silence. At another point, Frost tossed his clipboard onto the coffee table and asked whether Nixon was ready to admit his "wrongdoing," acknowledge that "the power of the presidency [had been] abused" and "apologize" to the American people for having dragged them "through two years of agony."

Under this barrage, Nixon finally was forced to admit that he had skirted the law, participated in a coverup, misled the country and "let the American people down." "For all those things" he said he felt "a very deep regret."

Frost used what Reston calls a showman's sense of pitch-perfect timing to ambush Nixon -- causing Reston to conclude that Frost wasn't a lightweight at all but rather a model of journalistic excellence. Frost "knew how to read his lines" and understood that the camera would show Nixon evading Frost's questions. Reston also credits Frost with aggressively using Reston's research; Frost had the kind of "courage" that "no journalist in America" had because he went "far beyond the narrow American definition of 'objective journalism' " to serve as an advocate in zealous pursuit of Nixon. Although Frost later took a job interviewing celebrities on his own talk show, his place in history had been secured.

Even if these interviews had never taken place, it's likely that Nixon's reputation would have remained in poor shape. But as it happened, these sessions wrung from Nixon an admission of wrongdoing and the apology sought by Reston; 45 million viewers got a ringside seat at the spectacle of Nixon impeaching himself. Reston's intelligent, passionate memoir shows how "the most-watched public affairs program" in television history helped prevent a Nixon comeback, as he had most famously achieved in his 1952 Checkers speech. After the interviews aired in 1977, there would be no more comebacks.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review
“A treasure trove of invaluable insights from an unimpeachable source. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Frank Langella, Tony Award nominee for Frost/Nixon

“Political history that reads like a thriller. Passionate, intelligent, entertaining, and human.”
—Michael Sheen, Evening Standard and Laurence Olivier Award nominee for Frost/Nixon

“A riveting account.”
—Richard Ben-Veniste, former chief of the Watergate Task Force

"Reston's memoir is a compact and gripping behind-the-scenes narrative focused on Frost's struggles to prepare for his encounter with the formidable Nixon. Reston captures Nixon's inner turmoil and myriad moods during the tapings.
Above all, the book sheds important light on Nixon's failure to rehabilitate his reputation after his 1974 resignation."
—Matthew Dallek, Washington Post

Customer Reviews

30 Years Later....
This is a fast and entertaining read. Reston writes that people wondered whether David Frost was up to confronting President Nixon about his Watergate deceptions as Frost was seen as something of a charming lightweight. Frost bore down and did his homework and the result was a stunning success for Frost. Richard Nixon during these interviews came as close as he ever would to admitting his role. The book unpacks Nixon's patterns of defensiveness and sheds light on the psychological machinations behind those patterns. While this may seem like material that's been exhausted over the years, the insights are fresh and interesting.

I have one point of disagreement with the author. He says the interviews finished off any change of a Nixon rehabilitation. While it's true that Nixon never again held elected or appointed office, he wrote a number of foreign policy books, visited with world leaders and gave solicited advice to Bill Clinton, among others. Americans love a comeback and Nixon did live to enjoy some measure of restoration. I'm sure this exceeded what even he thought possible.

I watched the interviews in 1977 as I was in my last year of college. This book brings back the intrigue and the drama.

Gripping slice of history
I saw the wonderful play "Frost/Nixon," which is based on this book, and I loved it - very funny, totally compelling, with several great moments of pure theater. But the book is more satisfying, on many levels. For one, it's just a great story -- Reston knows how to keep your attention, and the quest to nail Nixon on camera is told like a courtroom thriller: will they or won't they convict him? And as well, Nixon is such a bizarre human being that even his throwaway comments are creepy and revealing (he seems to have been somewhat obsessed with "fornicating") - but he's a brilliant, wily strategist, which has its own fascinations. Beyond all that, THE CONVICTION OF RICHARD NIXON is a telling comment on how the boundaries of acceptable behavior have changed over the last few decades: Nixon's wrongdoings seem almost quaint compared to the kinds of things that are happening today. But it all began here (at least publicly), and Reston nails it - just like he helped nail Nixon the first time.

Highly recommended.

Mea Culpa
Reston's splendid little book is a behind the scenes tour de force of the Frost-Nixon interviews. Coming into the interview many thought that Frost was not up to the task of breaking down a President that was known for his tenacious survival instincts. After all, Nixon survived crisis after crisis before he came to the Presidency in 1969, and if Frost and his crew had not done their research, this interview could have provided a launching pad for any future Nixon ambitions. Reston recounts how the Frost team combed over tons of Watergate evidence, and newly discovered tapes detailing what the President knew and when he knew it. After reading this book however, the reader is understandably confused as to what drove Nixon to give his final mea culpa. Reston reveals here that this mea culpa was not spontaneous as some would believe, but took place right after a break in the taping. Was the apology really heartfelt after a withering cross examination by Frost, or was this just another cold calculating Nixonian maneuver? Did Nixon intend to do this when he signed up for the interview in the first place? Reston does not reach a conclusion as to what Nixon was thinking at the time, but with any book about Nixon the truth is always a slippery thing indeed.