Government's Office of Evil - Special Prosecutors and Special Counsels (Special Edition)

Few offices in the history of our government have produced more harm, to more people, more often, and more efficiently that the office created in 1973 to investigate the Watergate Scandal. The Special Prosecutor's statute stayed on the books the rest of the 20th century and was used to wound the reelection campaign of George H. W. Bush, and then cripple the final years of the Presidency of Bill Clinton. It has horribly damaged the historical legacies of four United States Presidents: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. 

Ironically, the very party who dreamed this evil institution up, the Democratic Party,  was the same one to end it when the statue expired in 1999, but only after it had been effectively used to demolish a President of their own party, even as the Impeachment attempt failed to remove Bill Clinton from office.  Then congress invented its bastardized cousin, the Special Counsel statue. While it does have some modest restraints compared to the absolute total powers of the Special Prosecutor's statute, the record of abuse there may not be fully known until our current era, centered around Donald Trump, is over. 

As we look back at the 1992 Presidential Election and its controversial end. We thought this the perfect opportunity to show to our listeners the full impact of the 30 years of dishonesty that has been used to devastatingly wound four American Presidencies. But even worse than the damage done to the institution of the Presidency is the personal destruction it has wrought on the innocent aids to these Presidents. Often young men and women, whose only real crime was earnestly wanting to play role in the history of the nation and seize the opportunity so few people get in life, the chance to work for the President of the United States. 

Instead, many faced prison time, and were financially wiped out, while the most dastardly, horrible , unethical people you could have ever dreamed up paraded themselves on television and in books as lawyers who champion justice while playing on the trusting nature of a naive public that still believes that our Justice System is the one uncorrupted branch of government left in the land. Here we lay everything out, the abuses of power, and the intentionally corrupt birth of the most evil office our government has ever created. We hope it will serve as a warning for what we have seen in our more modern times, so that perhaps wise heads will see to it that this institution dies, with a stake through its heart. Like this bloodsucking vampire of an institution of division and destruction  truly deserves. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 President Clinton to Peter Jennings "Don't go there" - ABC News Special
• 4:01 1973 phone call between John Dean, Counsel to the President Nixon, and John Ehrlichman, Domestic Affairs Advisor to President Nixon
• 4:52 Music Intro
• 5:16 CBS Evening News with Dan Rather - The night the Special Prosecutor released the materials in the Casper Weinberger indictment, 4 days before the General Election
• 8:20 Voice over of Randal Wallace, our host, introducing the episode while the second CBS Report is running underneath
• 9:42 PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer panel discussion segment with David Gergen and Mark Shields on the Special Prosecutor's document dump in the final days of the 1992 election
• 10:52 President Bush pardons six Iran Contra figures - NBC News
• 12:25 segment from the oral history of Jill Wine Banks from the Nixon Presidential Library
• 13:21 Host Randal Wallace discusses the Special Prosecutor's Office and its abuses
• 19:08 oral history of Bernard Nussbaum from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
• 26:02 Host Randal Wallace talks about the Special Prosecutor's Office and its track record
• 26:49 Segment from the documentary "How it really happened" - CNN Headline News on "The Monica Lewinsky Case"
• 37:13 Host Randal Wallace expresses his outrage at the situation with Bill Clinton and problems with designing a law with only one goal, putting the screws to Richard Nixon
• 39:17 Extended segment from our earleir podcast "Two Roads, the Special Prosecutor and the Ervin Committee" episode 112, featuring commentary from Geoff Shepard on "Known Unknowns" with Hugh Hewitt
• 45:37 oral history of George Shultz, Secretary of the Treasury under Richard Nixon
• 46:59 Extended segment from our earleir podcast "Two Roads, the Special Prosecutor and the Ervin Committee" episode 112, featuring commentary from Geoff Shepard on "Known Unknowns" with Hugh Hewitt
• 47:50 segment from the BBC documentary on Watergate featuring John Dean's attorney Charlie Shaffer, and the career prosecutors who originally were investigating the Watergate case, plus Senate footage with Sam Ervin and Howard Baker
• 49:40 Extended segment from our earlier podcast "Two Roads, the Special Prosecutor and the Ervin Committee" episode 112, featuring commentary from Geoff Shepard on "Known Unknowns" with Hugh Hewitt
• 57:33 Segment from the BBC Documentary on Watergate featuring Senator Howard Baker and his decision to vote to give John Dean immunity - This is part of the extended clip from our earlier episode 112
• 58:26 Host Randal Wallace lays out the chronology of events
• 1:00:01 Temple University lecture by Geoff Shepard on the creation of the Special Prosecutor's Office, the make up of the staff, and the hiding of exculpatory evidence concerning John Dean's earlier interviews with career prosecutors
• 1:06:32 Host Randal Wallace addresses the question many may have "would they really do this?"
• 1:10:07 Known Unknowns with Hugh Hewitt and Geoff Shepard discussing the hole in the timeline presented to the House Judiciary Committee by the Watergate Special Prosecutors Office
• 1:11:44 oral history of Jill Wine Banks from the collection at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library - this segment was used in our podcast episode "If You can't find it make it up and put it there"- segment titled "She can't answer the question"
• 1:15:28 oral history of Richard Ben Veniste from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
• 1:16:54 Host Randal Wallace gives his opinion of Richard Ben Veniste and introduces the Peter Reint Memo from 1974 "Let's play how many times can you count the word uncorroborated in this memo"
• 1:17:32 Host Randal Wallace reads i its entirety the 3 - page Peter Reint Memo with a list of uncorroborated statements made by John Dean in his testimony
• 1:23:20 CNN panel discussion after airing the documentary "Tricky Dick" in which Richard Ben Veniste says JOhn Dean was the most corroborated witness he had had in 50 years of practicing law
• 1:24:11 Host Randal Wallace introduces the most despicable act of them all
• 1:24:33 National Public Radio episode on the 1944 Fort Lawton Riot case an interview with Jack Hamman the author of "On American Soil" concerning prosecutorial misconduct of Leon Jawaorski in this case, overturned 60 years after the fact with a full apology
• 1:28:51 Host Randal Wallace sums up the episode and introduces the Nixon tape hidden for 30 years
• 1:30:48 Phone call between President Richard Nixon and Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen in April 1974, hidden for decades
• 1:32:19 Closing music