You might believe in destiny.
But if you ask me, and I'm glad you did,
there is one powerful force that drives human behavior
and changes the world.
Money.
(dramatic music playing)
This is room 214, in Watergate hotel, in Washington, D.C.
It was in this very room, that back in 1972,
White House aides G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt
oversaw the break-in to democratic headquarters
that led to the Watergate scandal.
One of the most famous phrases from that scandal
is of course, "Follow the money."
Which Deep Throat said to Bob Woodward
in that parking garage.
But he never really said it and Woodward and Bernstein
never really wrote it,
the line comes from the movie, All the Presidents' Men
But we remember that line because it captures an essential
truth.
If you really want to know what happened at Watergate
as well as a lot of other things in our history,
you got to follow the money.
But in all of my years of public life
I have never profited,
never profited
from public service.
I've earned every cent.
Even as he was consumed by the
Watergate scandal
President Nixon took the time to lie about his income tax
evasion.
That in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind
of examination, because people have got to know
whether or not their presidents a crook.
Well I'm not a crook.
(music playing) (drink pouring)
One of the things that Nixon always insisted is that he
was never in it for the money.
Right
As if that's, makes it okay
Right
But he kind of was
He kind of was, he always wanted to be seated at the cool
kids table.
And he never got there, and so he wanted money, he wanted
the things that money, you know could buy, like beautiful
houses and such, so he really did like money, and really
wanted money personal money, not just money for his campaign
Nixon left to national fame in 1952,
when Dwight Eisenhower chose him as his Vice presidential
running mate.
But just 2 months later Nixon endured his first major
scandal.
His political backers had established a fund to cover
expenses, or as the New York Post put it,
Secret Rich Mans trust fund keeps Nixon in style, far beyond
his salary.
And that's why we need tabloids.
(music)
[Narrator] On September 23rd 1952,
NBC broadcast a brand new soap opera
There was just one episode.
The following program is sponsored by the Republican
National committee.
Not one cent of the $18,000.00 or any other money of that
type, ever went to me for my personal use.
60 Million Americans,
the largest TV audience to
that time, heard or saw that speech, and what they saw,
the nation decided was an honest man.
(applaud)
It worked, Nixon was now down the hall from ultimate power
but he had a little problem.
Specifically a little brother
I didn't realize that Nixon liked Jimmy Carter like certain
other
Teddy Roosevelt, like Billy
They all had like crazy brothers
Yeah
And his brother Don Nixon,
Yeah
ran a hamburger stand?
An aspiring chain of drive, drive-thru burger joints,
and uh was never good at it, and it wasn't doing
particularly well, and lo and behold he gets a big loan
from a guy named Howard Hughes.
(dramatic music plays)
Yup, that Howard Hughes,
(music playing) famed film producer, lover of leading ladies
aerospace and casino mogul and charter member of the
billionaire recluse hall of fame.
Howard Hughes testifies regarding his 40 million dollar
plane contract before Senate Warren investigating committee.
(crowd)
I'll ask you again. Will you bring Mr. Myers
in at the 2:00 session?
Uh, I, no, I don't think I will.
Will you try to bring him in?
No I don't think I'll try
(upbeat music)
[Narrator] In 1957, Hughes loaned $205,000.00 to
Donald Nixon to prop up his chain of fast food joints named
imaginatively, Nixon's, perhaps Hughes just really loved the
Nixon burger, and since it was only $0.20 with cheese,
he could afford about a billion of them.
(music playing; plane engine running)
By sheer coincidence, the thoughtful leg up
to Donald Nixon was followed by the feds granting lucrative
new routes to Hughes own Trans World Airlines.
Nixon continued his relentless climb to the top.
Until the story broke days before the 1960 election.
Nixon insisted the loan had nothing to do with him, it was
for Donald and guaranteed by their mother, Hannah Nixon.
I want all of you to know.
Was it that famous televised debate that cost
Nixon the election?
Just as likely, it was the Nixon burger scandal.
I want Senator Kennedy to know, and I want all of you to
know, that uh, certainly if this trend does continue, and he
does become our next president, that he will have my whole
hearted support and yours too.
(music playing)
Fast forward to 1968, Nixon and Hughes are
back in the swamp, they craved power and influence.
Hughes brags that there is no man on earth he can't buy or
destroy.
For Nixon, that's an easy choice.
In 1968, He, His industries Are Facing Tough,
you know scrutiny from Washington and regulations and you
want some relief and he decides that Nixon a Republican has
to be elected, so he ends up giving $100,000.00,
not directly to Nixon, but to one of Nixon's friends, uh,
a guy named Bebe Rebozo which is..
God bless Bebe Rebozo
In hall of fame of American names,
you know Kiki VanDeWeghe
and Zsa Zsa Gabor, is is Bebe Rebozo, and he's this buddy of
Nixon's and a fixer kind of a guy and he takes the money and
it is believed that all of that money went right into
Nixon's pocket, not just into the election.
The cash, in one hundred dollar bills, passed
from Bebe the bag man to Nixon's pocket.
And from there to improvements in Nixon's estate in
Key Biscayne, Florida.
Some remodeling, a new swimming pool, Arnold Palmer putting
green. It was very nice.
(typewriter typing)
Oh Hi, you've caught me indulging my inner Woodward and
Bernstein. So the current owners of the Watergate hotel have
created this scandal room.
To commemorate the history and also to make a little money,
you can rent it out.
That's appropriate because it was Richard Nixon's obsessions
with history and money that led to his downfall,
he installed the White House taping system so that he could
control how history would remember him.
And it worked, sort of.
And that money from Howard Hughes, he was an intelligent man
he must of known, he should not take it,
but there it was.
(music playing)
A Senate investigation later concluded,
that the $100,000.00 was just one of several pay offs Hughes
made to Nixon.
On the White House tapes, those bribes are politely referred
to as, Florida dealings.
Having lost a close one 8 years ago, and having won
a close one this year I can say this winnings a lot more fun
(crowd laughs)
Preserve, protect and defend..
The constitution of the United states
Nixon lived in dread that Hughes would expose
their secret,
So help me God
(applause)
Nixon's paranoia hit the boiling point when
Kennedy confidant, Lawrence O'Brien took on 2 jobs.
Washington lobbyist for Howard Hughes, and chairmen of the
Democratic National Committee.
The White House went on high alert, Did O'Brien know about
the huge payments to Nixon? Would he reveal them before the
1972 election?
Nixon had to know.
(recorded audio)
O'Brien's taxes were audited, his home burgled.
Then on June 17, 1972, 5 men were caught breaking into his
office, at the Watergate complex.
In his audio diary, Nixon chief of staff H. R. Haldeman
connects the dots from the Hughes bribe to the Watergate
break-in.
(recorded audio)
And of course, after the initial break-in that was caught
at Watergate, they had to pony up what they thought might be
as much as a million dollars to pay, to silence the five
guys that broke into the Watergate hotel.
That in fact, that was one of the famous Watergate tapes
Yeah
Were Nixon says, "What would it take,"
Yeah yeah, that's John Dean
Right, "what would it take to keep these guys quiet?"
and Dean says, "It would take about a million dollars"
and Nixon says, "we could do that" and then the story
they came out with was the tape didn't pick him up saying
but that would be wrong
(laughs) yeah
Which is truly one of the great dumb excuses in all of
American history.
(recorded audio)
(dramatic music)
Nixon's team paid $400,000.00 in black mail
to the Watergate defendants. Two and a half million dollars
in today's money.
Like their boss, his henchman saw themselves as tough guys
and like him the had seen too many heist movies.
Cash was dropped in phone booths, under park benches, and
in airport lockers.
As a child I remember hearing the phrase slush-fund and
thinking oh, that sounds really messy.
Well Nixon's re-election campaign was one big pile of slush
millions in illegal contributions went for political dirty
tricks as Nixon used the FBI, CIA and IRS to persecute his
enemies and secure his re-election.
One of the things of course that we forget about
Watergate is to the extent that they had this sort of
gorilla operation to sabotage the Democrats, it worked.
Yeah
You know, I mean we don't talk about that enough,
you think of a two-bit robbery, you think of these
incompetent fools running around but they actually,
well I won't say stole, but certainly influenced an election
through illicit means.
Right, they did, I mean in fact you know going into that
election, Ed Muskie, was the leading candidate,
and that was the candidate that Nixon really feared and
the dirty tricks squad planted this story that he had
slurred you know Canadian, Canadian-Americans by using the
word Canuck, and uh Muskie then
He was so quaint
(laughs)
(chuckling) He said Canuck, he can't be president
Merciful heavens he said it in public no less
yeah and then you know, Muskie gives this very emotional
press conference and kind of clearly starts to cry a little
bit and it you know seems like a shaken man and he just
plummets.
Nixon got the opponent he wanted.
Crushing George McGovern.
(music)
but Woodward and Bernstein followed the money
and the scandal finally broke wide open.
In full cover-up mode, Nixon fought back with delicious
unintended irony
I want the American people, I want you
to know beyond the shadow of a doubt
that during my term as president
justice will be pursued fairly, fully, and impartially,
No matter who is involved.
(music)
Did he ever express at anytime, any regret for
any of this? Did he ever say, "Ah, I made a mistake,
I shouldn't have done that,
I shouldn't have been so interested in money
I shouldn't have been so interested in whatever"
No Nixon, I think ah, believed that he was a victim of
his enemies and really felt that he hadn't done
much of anything wrong at all,
and that he was simply the you know victim of circumstance
victim of this coalescence of his enemies
Wow, that's crazy
Hmm, but it fits his character,
you know it's the way he operated,
he really felt like it was him against the world
and he felt that even when he was on top
so he wins by this unprecedented landslide
and of course in the months leading up to that
commits all these crimes and then begins the cover up
so its a scam he's a one man Greek tragedy, it's amazing.
Always give your best
never get discouraged
never be petty
always remember
others may hate you
those who hate you don't win
unless you hate them
and then you destroy yourself
(dramatic music)
Today you can see Nixon's obsessions in two
adjacent buildings in Washington, D.C.
The John F. Kennedy Center for the performing arts
and the Watergate complex.
To his dying day Richard Nixon believed that the
Kennedy's had used their family fortune to steal the 1960
election away from him.
But his resentment of the money to lead went back much
further than that.
When he was a teenager growing up in Whittier, California
working class he actually got accepted to Harvard,
with free tuition,
but he couldn't go cause his family couldn't afford even the
travel or the board.
He went to a local school instead.
So for the rest of his life,
Richard Nixon was determined to follow the money.
(dramatic music) (clock ticking)