Watergate

May 30, 1994
Anyone who needs to be reminded that Watergate was more than a ``third-rate burglary'' should read Emery's retelling of the scandal that drove Nixon from office. Drawing on the memoirs of many of the Watergate figures as well as an examination of the most recently released Nixon tapes, Emery, former Washington bureau chief of the London Times , relates an engrossing story of how the Watergate break-in came to pass, and how the coverup spread like wildfire throughout Nixon's re-election committee and the White House. Describing one criminal act after another, beginning with the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, Emery makes it clear that, in the words of special prosecutor Leon Jaworski, the Oval Office had been transformed by Nixon ``into a mean den where perjury and low schemes became a way of life.'' Given the illegal activities Nixon condoned and/or conducted, as related by Emery, most readers will find it hard to feel much sympathy for him even as the author relates the agony of the late president and his family during his final days in the White House as resignation became inevitable. This devastating account of presidential disgrace will give pause especially to those feeling bereaved by Nixon's death.

Starred review from June 1, 1994
As the 20th anniversary of Richard Nixon's fall and tarnishing of the presidential image approaches, Emery provides an intricate, meticulously researched narrative that draws heavily on interviews with the principals to explain how and why the Watergate break-in occurred. A former Washington correspondent of The Times of London who is now with the BBC, Emery is also the author of a five-part TV series on Watergate to be aired this August on the Discovery Channel. In addition to an introductory section on the cast of characters involved, Emery provides a detailed examination of the Committee To Re-elect the President (CRP) and its dirty tricks: wiretapping, money laundering campaigns, and the infamous burglary of Democratic National Committee headquarters. Unlike much of the psychopersonal material that has come out on Nixon, Emery's book focuses on the tough political problems, documenting the need for impeachment and ultimately endorsing it. Riveting reading that is based on an unprecedented combing of the primary sources, this work will be especially helpful to the generations for whom Watergate is a nebulous historical event and will provide an excellent corrective to the whitewashing that ocurred on Nixon's recent death. [See also Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life, LJ 5/1/94.-Ed.]-Frank Kessler, Missouri Western State Coll., St. Joseph

Starred review from June 1, 1994
The infamous tapes that sank Nixon are only 60 hours' worth of deleted expletives and cover-up conspiring; with more than 5,000 hours still secret, the cascade of books about his presidency will not soon run dry. However, given Emery's spare, meticulously fair, and thoroughly engrossing account, it will be a long time before the bugging scandal is better told. Far from dance-on-the-grave vindictiveness (though Nixon looks worse than ever), the ex-president at least receives from Emery, a British journalist, a worldly appreciation of his dilemmas in trying to escape the tightening political and criminal net. Each fateful event in the saga--the setup of Gordon Liddy's spy unit, his men's arrest at the Democratic Party offices, the panicky destruction of documents that began the cover-up, Judge "Maximum John" Sirica's draconian sentences of the burglars, and thence the accelerating slide toward impeachment, with each revelation more astonishing than the last--has since become part of the national folklore. Emery takes us back with forensic caution and a signal lack of hyperbole and proves once more that facts are stranger than fiction. The other Watergate books, by principals or scalp-waving journalists, repose in libraries; count this as a fascinating, objective synthesis of them that also plumbs news archives (such as that of the late H. R. Haldeman). Popularity is certain. ((Reviewed June 1994))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1994, American Library Association.)