RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE The Epilogue. The Re-Rise (Part 1) The Pardon, The Illness, and the Grand Jury Testimony

The Richard Nixon Experience

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This episode opens with the new President Gerald R. Ford addressing a joint session of Congress. He is there laying out his agenda for his new administration. The problems that he felt needed immediate addressing and where he intended to continue the policies of the man he had just replaced as President. Unfortunately for Ford every question he got in his first press conference had to do with Richard Nixon. He was spending a disproportionate amount of his time dealing with the problems of his predecessor.
So Gerald Ford decided to put an end to the issues once and for all. He granted a full an absolute pardon on to Richard Nixon thusly clearing the deck and allowing the country to move forward and leave Watergate behind. It would however, stir up a hornets nest among the rabid Nixon haters, and much of the country who had no idea of the alleged massive misconduct of the Watergate Special Prosecution force.
Here in this episode we will hear from Representative Elizabeth Holtzman who would get a chance to question President Ford during his historic testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee. You will hear President Ford in an interview with NBC "Later" host Bob Costas discuss the decision to grant the Nixon pardon.
You will also hear about his visit with President Nixon when he was near death in California during the month of October 1974.
Then we switch gears to the attempt by the
Special Prosecutor's to get Grand Jury testimony from the former President despite his weakened condition. In hopes, many thought, of entrapping the former President in a perjury wrap, which would not have been covered by the Presidential Pardon. However, they never laid a glove on the former leader of the free world.
In this episode we cover these days during the time Richard Nixon was at his lowest.