USA: Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal

From British daily The Morning Star:

A president’s fall

(Wednesday 30 August 2006)

Frost/Nixon
Donmar, London WC2

SHOWDOWN: Frost/Nixon plays at the Donmar until October 7.

ROBERT TANITCH witnesses the death throes of President Nixon’s credibility as he is interviewed by TV chat show host David Frost.

THIRTY years on and President Richard Nixon is still remembered mainly for the Watergate scandal.

His name is synonymous with political corruption.

He committed the biggest felony in US history and resigned before he could be impeached.

There was no admission of guilt, no apology and then, to the fury of the US public, he was pardoned unconditionally by President Ford.

Nixon has been the subject of a mocumentary called Millhouse: A White Comedy, a film starring Anthony Hopkins, a Shakespearian parody called Nixon as Richard III, an opera called Nixon in China and, of course, cartoons.

Gerald Scarfe drew Nixon many times and always with the utmost contempt and loathing.

One of his many unforgettable images had the President wiping his bum with the Stars and Stripes.

Russell Lees wrote a very funny and completely fictitious play, Nixon’s Nixon, set on the eve of his resignation on August 7 1974, in which the president, desperately trying to think of ways of hanging on to the presidency, came to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to pretend to be mad and threaten to bomb some country or other and start an international crisis.

Many journalists had tried to nail Nixon and failed. Could David Frost, a lightweight chat show host, get him to confess that he had been involved in a cover-up and had broken the law?