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Series Code: TIJ
Program Code: TIJ001115A
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00:02 I can think of a plot for a great movie. Imagine a movie set
00:06 in the background of Washington D.C. Imagine the plot unfolds 00:10 in the context of a nasty campaign for president of the 00:16 United States. Imagine though criminal activities coming 00:21 directly from the Whitehouse itself, all in order to help the 00:25 incumbent president win the election. Imagine top Whitehouse 00:29 staffers involved break-ins, acts of sabotage, theft, and illegal 00:34 slush funds worth millions of dollars. Imagine secret tape 00:39 recordings along with arrests and perjury and corruption 00:45 reaching to the office of the president himself. Sounds like 00:48 it could be a good movie couldn't it. Well the fact is 00:52 this eventually was made into a movie but it was a movie based 00:57 on a true story. The Watergate scandal that rocked the United 01:01 states in the early 1970s and led to the only time in history 01:06 a United States president was forced to resign. In this 01:12 program called The Downfall of the President we're going to 01:16 look at the scandal. Why? Because I think there's a bit of 01:21 the president in all of us. 01:22 ♪ ♪ 01:42 Those old enough will remember the 1960s as one of the most 01:47 incredible decades. J.F. Kennedy was elected president of the 01:52 United States only to be taken out by a snipers bullet three 01:56 years later. The Soviets put the first man into space, Uri 02:01 Gagaran. The Beetles exploded into popular culture in a big 02:08 way. Riots and strife all but shut down France. Famine hit 02:14 Biafra now known as Nigeria. About one million people died 02:19 between famine and war. The Russians invaded Czechoslovakia. 02:23 The Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappeared and has 02:27 never been heard from again. ApprenNet, the precursor of the 02:32 internet was created. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 02:37 Hundreds of thousands of concert goers converged in a rural New 02:41 York area known as Woodstock. Nelson Mandela was sentenced to 02:46 life in prison. The Russians test a 50 megaton hydrogen 02:51 bomb, the biggest manmade explosion in history and 02:55 Americans landed on the moon. (Radio - The Eagle has landed) 03:00 Yes a lot happened in the 1960s but amid it all one event 03:06 started to dominate the decade. That was the Viet Nam war. What 03:11 began with 600 United States military advisors in the early 03:15 1960s had swelled to 536,000 U.S. troops by 1968. And as the 03:24 war dragged on people began to turn against it. The results 03:28 were progests, riots and violence in the streets of 03:31 America and elsewhere. Probably no one in America hated the war 03:37 more than the one who kept committing troops to it and that 03:41 was President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Worn out, bedraggled 03:46 and personally defeated by the conflict Johnson stunned the 03:50 world with his announcement that he would not run for president 03:54 in 1968. Instead Richard M Nixon a man many thought was done 04:01 politically succeeded Johnson into the Whitehouse. Now when 04:06 we hear the name, Richard Nixon most people conjure up images of 04:11 corruption, scandal, evil and deceit. He was even known as 04:16 Tricky Dick. And yet here's the thing about Richard Nixon. In 04:20 many ways he'd been a very good successful president. He founded 04:25 the Environmental Protection Agency whose job is to protect 04:30 the environment. Nixon ended the draft in America. Nixon poured 04:34 money into the war on cancer that still has a positive impact 04:38 around the world. He signed legislation that greatly reduced 04:43 gender discrimination in America Nixon was the president who 04:48 opened the door to good relations with Communist China, 04:51 an event that has radically changed the world. Nixon saved 04:55 the nation of Israel from sure destruction in the 1973 Yom 05:00 Kippur war when a host of Arab nations attacked. And yes, lest 05:04 we forget Richard Nixon ended the war in Viet Nam. However, as 05:12 I just said when most people think of Richard Nixon they 05:14 don't think of these good and positive things. Rather they 05:19 associate him with corruption, deception and evil. Now I would 05:24 like to argue though that Richard Nixon is a bit like all 05:28 of us. What do I mean. I mean that we're all a mixture of good 05:33 and bad aren't we Richard Nixon, like you, like me, had some very 05:39 good traits, some very good qualities and they served him 05:42 well. But he also had some bad traits too. I mean who among us 05:47 doesn't have a bad side. Who doesn't have thoughts, feelings 05:55 and maybe even habits that we would just as soon others didn't 05:57 see or even know about. Thoughts feelings and habits that we 06:02 really wish we didn't have to begin with. Well, as with us, 06:08 so is Richard Nixon. And I want to talk about the story of his 06:12 fall because however dramatic and however consequential the 06:17 downfall of Richard Nixon was there is a lesson here. Not just 06:22 a history lesson but a moral one A lesson about how we need to 06:27 be careful because no matter all the good we might do or want to 06:32 do, only a little bit of unrestrained evil could ruin 06:37 everything. Now I want to pick up the story in the middle of 06:44 1972 and a month before the presidential election. This 06:47 should have been a great time for Richard Nixon. Yes, the 06:51 first four years of his term were tumultuous for sure. But 06:55 the Democrats had nominated a very liberal candidate, George 06:59 McGovern, who was running on an antiwar platform. Only one 07:05 problem though. True to his word Nixon was already ending the war 07:09 Peace talks were going on in Paris and American troop levels 07:14 were at only 24,000 and dropping fast. And so Nixon was way ahead 07:20 in the poles and heading into an election that he would win by 07:27 a landslide. However, in a recent biography of Nixon called 07:29 Being Nixon - A Man Divided author Evan Thomas told about 07:35 Nixon cronies sitting around a pool at the Doral Hotel in 07:39 Miami Beach in August 1972. This was during the Republican 07:45 National Convention. The eye witness described what he saw 07:49 like this: 08:14 Well, a lot as it turns out. Two months earlier just after the 08:22 night on July the 17th 1972 at the Watergate Complex in 08:28 Washington D.C. a security guard noticed tape placed on door 08:33 latches leading from the underground parking lot to 08:36 offices in the Watergate. He removed the tape and left 08:40 thinking little of it. When he returned an hour later he saw 08:46 saw that someone had re-taped the latches. He called the 08:48 police. They arrested five men who had broken into the 08:52 Democratic National Committee main office. They were 08:56 were attempting to wire top phones and steal documents. 09:00 Why did these men break into and try to steal documents and wire 09:04 tap phones? Well it was the headquarters of Richard Nixon's 09:09 political rivals in the upcoming election. Now if that 09:13 wasn't bad enough, FBI investigations soon linked money 09:19 found on the burglars to a slush fund from an organization called 09:23 The Committee for the Re-election of the president. 09:27 This was the official organization of Richard Nixon's 09:31 election campaign. So money from Nixon's re-election campaign was 09:37 tied to men who had broken into the Headquarters of Nixon's 09:40 campaign rivals in order to steal documents and wire tap 09:45 phones. Sound suspicious? Now historians still question if 09:52 Richard Nixon had any advance knowledge of or if he had even 09:56 authorized the burglary itself. Most think not. But it was 10:01 certainly possible. In fact Nixon had been recorded on tape 10:06 ordering the break in of a local think tank called the Brookings 10:10 Institute. Because he believed that Brookings had papers that 10:14 Nixon wanted, he ordered his own people to break in and steal 10:20 those papers. Nixon said verbatim on tape: 10:26 Blow the safe and get it? The President of the United States 10:31 ordering people to break into a building, blow a safe and steal 10:36 documents? Now this hardly proves that Nixon knew about the 10:41 Watergate break-in or even approved of it in advance. But 10:45 certainly shows that it would not have been past him. Anyway 10:50 the burglary was in June of 1972 months before the election. 10:55 Nixon had made a critical decision. He decided on a 11:00 cover-up and though more evidence pointed to the Whitehouse 11:03 Richard Nixon 11:04 openly lied to the American people saying that no 11:08 one in the Whitehouse was involved in Watergate. The 11:12 American people believed him and he easily won a second term. He 11:17 was confident that he could get away with it and at first all 11:25 went well. For months and months after the break-in most Americans 11:29 didn't care about it. However, as with most cover-ups one sin 11:33 leads to another. And so over the next two years the scandal 11:39 came to dominate the country and the president had to keep lying. 11:43 But despite Nixon's assurance to the contrary more and more 11:51 evidence pointed directly to his Whitehouse and those questions 11:54 remained. What is certain was that Richard Nixon violated the 12:00 law in an attempt to thwart the criminal investigation and cover 12:04 up the crime. But the more he lied the deeper he got sucked 12:09 into the quick sand of deceit. He was on a slippery downward 12:14 slope. One dishonest act led to another. It was like a domino 12:19 effect. Indeed not to long after the break in Nixon was 12:24 recorded agreeing to pay money to keep the burglars quiet. In 12:28 the tape Nixon was talking to John Dean his top Whitehouse 12:32 lawyer: 12:49 Can you believe that? Here is the President of the United 12:53 States agreeing to bribe people in order to obstruct the 12:57 criminal investigation. Another time, again in the context of 13:02 stopping the investigation Richard Nixon said he didn't 13:06 care about what happened: 13:18 Nixon and his cronies might actually have succeeded in 13:22 getting away with everything were it not for the work of 13:25 Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. 13:30 Both were young and not very high up the ladder in the 13:34 organization. In fact the editor of the newspaper was getting 13:39 ready to fire Bernstein. Nevertheless over the next two 13:44 years the two journalists pursued the story. Their work 13:47 was immortalized in the movie All the President's Men starring 13:52 Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. Also someone in the 13:58 government known as Deep Throat had been secretly feeding them 14:01 information. About 31 years later it was revealed that Deep 14:06 Throat had been Mark Felt the second highest in command at the 14:11 FBI at that time. Anyway the work of Woodward and Bernstein 14:16 following up the Watergate breaking revealed an extensive 14:21 program of political espionage and sabotage run by Nixon's 14:26 subordinates at the Whitehouse many ending up in jail for what 14:31 they did. For instance, G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent 14:35 along with E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA agent had organized 14:41 the Watergate break-in. In his autobiography, Liddy said that 14:46 they had talked about killing journalist Jack Anderson because 14:50 of the things he'd been writing against Nixon. Nothing ever came 14:55 of that plot but after the Watergate scandal started to 14:59 unfold Liddy wrote that he told John Dean that he, Liddy, should 15:04 take the heat for the botched job: 15:36 Wow! This was the chief lawyer for the President speaking. Now 15:41 no one is saying that Nixon knew about these specific events but 15:45 it accounts likely show just how corrupted the Whitehouse had 15:50 become under President Nixon. The web of deceit spread 15:55 wider and wider more and more people became ensnared in it and 15:59 the President was becoming more and more entangled. During 16:04 senate Watergate hearings it came out that Nixon had been 16:08 secretly taping all conversations in the oval office 16:12 When investigators realized what great potential these tapes 16:16 had they subpoenaed them. Nixon, claiming executive privilege, 16:21 fought the release all the way here to the United States 16:25 Supreme Court. On the 24th of July 1974 the Supreme Court 16:32 voted 8 to 0 in the United States vs. Nixon that he must 16:37 turn over the tapes. Even with the mysterious 18-1/2 minute gap 16:42 in the tapes, they revealed more evidence of lies, cover-up and 16:49 criminal activity by the President of the United States. 16:51 And so on the 9th of August 1974 just a little over two years 16:57 after the Watergate break-in, facing certain impeachment, 17:01 Richard Nixon became the first United States President to 17:07 resign the office. 17:09 Therefore I shall resign the presidency effective at noon 17:13 tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as president 17:19 at that hour in this office. 17:24 What started out initially as a small cover-up spread like a 17:28 cancer to infect and taint the highest office in the land and 17:32 those associated with it. It brought about the downfall of 17:37 the President. And it was such a tragedy because Nixon had some 17:42 very good characteristics and in many ways had been a very good 17:46 president. Some who knew him talked about how kind, 17:50 caring and 17:52 ethical he could be. Just one story from even before he was 17:57 president captured this side of the man. Nixon became friendly 18:02 with Martin Luther King, Jr. after a trip to Africa in 1957 18:07 and was close to Jackie Robinson the baseball player who broke 18:11 the color barrier when he became the first African American to 18:16 play in major league baseball. On the campaign trail, Nixon 18:21 practiced what he preached. In Springfield, Missouri when a 18:26 hotel refused to rent rooms to some black reporters covering 18:30 the campaign, Nixon moved his whole entourage out. I said in 18:39 the beginning of this program we're all not that different 18:43 from Richard Nixon in the sense that we all have good and bad 18:47 points. The problem, however, is you ascend so high, as did Nixon 18:52 your bad side if not contained can lead to a very big fall. 18:58 Most of us, even if we do fall, don't fall from such a big 19:03 height do we? But who amongst us hasn't suffered at least 19:07 somewhat from some of the character defects that we have? 19:10 Who among us hasn't fallen maybe not from the heights that 19:14 Richard Nixon did, but fallen nonetheless. I want to read you 19:19 a few verses from the New Testament, from the writings of 19:23 the Apostle Paul. He was quoting the Old Testament when he wrote 19:28 this in Romans chapter 3 verses 10-12: 19:47 Kind of strong words aren't they? But look at our world. I 19:51 don't think those words are too exaggerated are they? You have 19:54 to be blind not to sense a big disconnect with the way things 19:59 are in contrast to the way things should be. And I don't 20:04 just mean the world picture, global warming, ISUS, income 20:10 equality, terrorism and many others. I mean even in our own 20:15 individual lives who doesn't sense that things are just wrong 20:19 that things are not the way they should be even in our own 20:23 personal lives. And sometimes it's not our fault but sometimes 20:28 it totally is our own fault. In Nixon and Watergate I see an 20:34 image of our own lives, a mixture of good and bad and 20:39 unless we are careful the bad can do us in, just as it did the 20:45 president. There's a story in the Bible about Jesus and how 20:49 early on because of his words and deeds people started 20:53 believing in him. But according to the Bible Jesus was still 20:58 very careful with them: 21:12 Now did you notice what it says, For he knew what was in man. 21:17 In other words, Jesus knew just how corrupt and unstable people 21:21 could be. And yet what, this same Jesus died for these people 21:28 This same Jesus gave his life for these people. This same 21:33 Jesus offered them a chance to change, to have new lives in him 21:39 As with those people as could have been with Richard Nixon 21:44 so it is with us. With you, with me. If we but choose to accept 21:49 Jesus and give our lives to him. But you might think, I'm not 21:54 not good enough for God and you're right, you're not. So you 21:58 might as well forget about making yourself good enough for 22:02 God. Trust me, you can't. We only deceive ourselves if we 22:06 think we can cover our mistakes, our sins and make ourselves good 22:11 good enough for God. Listen to what the Bible says in Proverbs 22:15 chapter 28 and verse 13: 22:22 So it's impossible to cover up our mistakes and deal with our 22:27 sin problem on our own. But the great news of the Bible is that 22:32 you don't have to. God's grace covers you. Please notice the 22:37 rest of Proverbs chapter 28 and verse 13: 22:50 Jesus has already paid the penalty for your mistakes, your 22:55 sins. He truly has covered your mistakes. It doesn't matter how 23:01 big, black, or bad your mistakes may be, if you accept Jesus as 23:06 your Savior, he will forgive you and cover them. Please notice 23:11 what the Bible says in 1 John chapter 1 and verse 9: 23:26 You are accepted and loved by God right now just as you are. 23:31 God will change you and make you into a new person. Just accept 23:36 Jesus as our Savior and follow him. President Richard Nixon 23:40 and the Watergate scandal remind us of four important spiritual 23:46 truths. Firstly, we all make mistakes. Secondly, trying to 23:51 cover up our mistakes, our sins, only makes matters worse. 23:57 Thirdly God promises that if we come to him and confess our sins 24:04 he will forgive us. And fourthly each one of us has a choice. 24:08 We can unsuccessfully try to cover our own mistakes ourselves 24:14 or we can ask God to forgive us and cover our sins. Really 24:19 there's only one sure way to deal with our mistakes, our sins 24:24 Confess them to God and he will cover us. But you and you alone 24:30 have to make the choice to accept Jesus and ask him to 24:35 forgive you. Why not do it now? Why not reach out to Jesus right 24:41 now as we pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we've all 24:46 made mistakes, we've all done things we regret. Like Richard 24:49 Nixon, we have our faults. But we thank you that despite our 24:55 weaknesses and mistakes you still love us You forgive us and 24:59 want to help us. Lord today we reach out to Jesus and commit 25:04 our lives to you. We commit our lives fully and unconditionally 25:09 to you. And now we invite you to come into our lives and 25:13 change us so that through the power of Jesus in our lives we 25:17 will not engage in behavior that will lead us in the wrong 25:21 direction and do things that we will later regret. We ask these 25:26 things in Jesus' name, Amen. 25:30 The story of Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal has 25:35 fascinated people around the world for decades. People 25:39 struggle to understand how someone in such a prominent and 25:43 trusted position could become involved in activities 25:46 that would 25:47 bring dishonor to his office and ultimately lead to the downfall 25:51 of the President of the United States of America. But this 25:55 story is relevant to all of us because in a sense there's a bit 26:00 of the president in all of us. It's a reminder that we all make 26:03 mistakes and do things that we regret. It tells us a lot 26:08 about human 26:09 nature. Many of us struggle with sin and issues for a long time. 26:13 But the best way to deal with them is to give them up to God. 26:18 Because despite our mistakes and weaknesses he still loves us and 26:23 wants to help us. If you would like to know more about God's 26:27 love and forgiveness then I'd like to recommend a gift we have 26:31 for all our viewers today. It's a booklet called Keeping Broken 26:36 Promises. This booklet is our gift to you and is absolutely 26:42 free. There are no costs or obligations whatsoever. This 26:48 booklet will bring you fresh courage and hope. In fact, it 26:51 could change your life forever. So please don't miss this 26:55 wonderful opportunity to receive the free gift we have for you 27:00 today. Here's the information you need: 27:04 Phone us now on 0481315101 or text us on 0491222999 or visit 27:17 our website theincrediblejourney.tv 27:21 to request today's free offer. So don't delay. Contact us right 27:27 now. If you've enjoyed today's journey, be sure to join us 27:33 again next week when we will share another of life's journeys 27:37 together and experience another new and thought provoking 27:40 perspective on the peace, insight, understanding and hope 27:45 that only the Bible can give us. The Incredible Journey truly is 27:51 television that changes lives. Until next week remember 27:56 the ultimate destination of life's journey. Now I saw a new 28:00 heaven and a new earth, and God will wipe away every tear from 28:04 their eyes. There shall be no more death nor sorrow nor crying 28:08 There shall be no more pain for the former things have passed 28:13 away. 28:14 ♪ ♪ |
Revised 2020-09-17