and then he largely put watergate behind him. he was about to conclude a peace agreement in vietnam. he had various foreign-policy triumphs including the opening to china with russia and so on. was really feeling pretty confident. then within 100 days it all falls apart. and this very disciplined white house, the aides start fighting with each other. the watergate cover-up of watery gate the attempted cover up disintegrates and everybody is running for cover. the aides start trying to shift the blame onto each other. and finally they all start shifting the blame onto the president himself. it's a very traumatic. all of which is captured or most of it is captured on tape. if you focus on that. , i bring in a lot of background. but the narrative of the story has about that 100 days. it really allows me to it do something that is not been done before which is to tell the story in a very intimate way. now, why did i called about king richard? of course king richard is an allusion to shakespearean tragedy. i see nixon as a tragic figu

standard freeman said that roswell is a cosmic watergate. other rivalry research is like don schmidt described the kennedy assassination as a experience and compare the government statements on roswell to the warren commission report and in neither case can this official document be trusted. philip courso who writes the really popular the day after roswell is a firm advocate of the two oswalds theory of the kennedy assassination and goes further than that to say that the entire cold war was really just a cover to help develop anti-alien defense mechanisms. and you see this flood of roswell literature, through the '80s, through the '90s, that said, yes, the government covered it up and they didn't do it for our own good. donald keiaho was wrong. instead. it is a litany of misinformation and miss deeds. no longer is the air force this benign body trying to protect the public from national hysteria. now president truman sets up magic 12 in 1947 as a special government body to cover up the truth about ufos, presumably also in charge of those men

watergate is also seen as the mother of all political scandals.ut the bombshell revelations of what the trump department of justice was collecting in terms of democrats, now we know, and reporters, phone records, et cetera, and gag orders, how does this compare to watergate? >> there is a slight comparison with reporters. there is no comparison at all with members of congress. i can recall no instance where nixon went after a member of congress using anything improper or even in the slightest bit devious. with reporters, he did. he wiretapped reporters at one point. when it was legal, he had the director of the fbi, j. edgar hoover, tap reporters and white house staff as well, trying to track down leaks. when that became illegal by a ruling of the supreme court, he pulled the taps. so he did stay within the law on that, but he was aggressive in going after leaks, no question. >> gloria, i know i revisited this a few times, but republicans abandoned nixon, right? we've got now republicans who are sticking with president trump it. two impeachments a

some refer to it as watergate 2.0.rump doj went after reporters and multiple sitting members of congress. you obviously have firsthand knowledge of what happened under nixon. is this worse than that? >> it's a little bit different. there are some parallels with reporters. nixon did wiretap reporters at that time it was legal to do it. he had the director of the fbi do it. when the taps became illegal, they did pull them. but he did reporters and white house staff. on congress there's nothing comparable to what we're seeing here. i can recall no action by nixon where he ever tried to use the grand jury subpoena process to go after members of congress and learn about what they might or might not know. in fact, he really got rebuffed every time he tried to bring a legal action in the area of leaks. that statute was not used owner with daniel ellsburg, who was the massive leaker of the nixon presidency. it's not a pretty story at all what he did with ellsburg. >> tim, you say nixon created a ram shackle system that allowed

fifty years later, he focuses on that time in our history and event that is well known today as watergate. listen wherever you get your podcasts.

and nixon, eventually, resigned, in disgrace over the watergate scandal.d cnn presidential historian and former director of the nixon presidential library, tim naftali. wow, what a dynamite duo to talk about this very issue and these comparisons. glad to see both of you. john, let me begin with you. i mean, this, as you know, is drawing comparison to richard nixon and some are referring to it even as watergate 2.0. but in this case, the trump doj went after reporters, and multiple-sitting members of congress. you, obviously, have firsthand knowledge of what happened under nixon. is this worse, than that? >> it's a little bit different. there are some parallels with reporters. nixon did wiretap reporters, at a time it was legal to do it. he had the director of the fbi do it. when the taps became illegal, they did pull them. but he did -- reporters and -- and white house staff. now, on congress, there is nothing comparable to what we are seeing here. i can recall no action by nixon where he ever tried to use the grand jury subpoena process to go after member

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watergate was exactly that. the smoking gun tape was a conversation between the president and the chief of staff in which they said, let's use the cia to stop the fbi from finding out that the money on the burglars came from campaign donations. that's clearly a political use of the authority of the department of justice, the cia, the fbi, and that's what's happening here, too. it seems to be -- and we don't know enough. i don't know all the facts, no one does right now, but it does seem clear that the reason for this investigation was completely political. so far it looks like, except for don mcgahn, it's not republicans who have been subpoenaed, it was democrats. why only democrats? well, we don't know. why was a minor and the family of people investigated? was there any real evidence that someone's family member was making these calls or that the member of congress was using a family member's phone to avoid detection? these are all possible. the gag order is not unusual in a case like this, but it should have

watergate feels like an appropriate back story and we can get backac to that but four years ago i felt like as a journalist i had to do something differently. i felt it so easy as a journalist to make our political -- work. some intend to and most don't and it just felt like there was something i really didn't understand about what was going on in the country and that is a problem. i spend a lot of time with people who have studied conflict of all kinds, personal political professional individual and study a conflict as the system particularly the intractable conflict that? everything else in thein place. that as an overlay made everything makes sense. then the question became all right what can we learn from people who have been through conflict and gotten to a better place so i followed a politician in california former gang leader in chicago and environmental activist in england regular frustrated democrats in new york city a regular frustrated republican init rural michigan d the whole goal was to see how did they get beyond conflict which is in unpleasant conflict because the prob

-- in the aftermath of richard nixon and watergate.he only meant to be defense secretary twice. also held the record as the youngest person to do it and the oldest. he was a well-known figure in washington. i think republicans will unite in paying tribute to rumsfeld for his long service. which after he left george w. bush's cabinet, he set up a foundation. more moderate and more seasoned democrat joe will also pay tribute. some on the left say, look, this man was a villain, he was reviled in some circles for listening to the advice of neoconservatives and the buildup to the iraq war, for pushing what was weapons of mass destruction and iraq and the rest of the world are still dealing with the consequences today. >> what will his legacy be, david? >> he wrote an autobiography a few years ago where he tried to repair that legacy. he accepted very little blame for iraq and tried to hold others responsible. but i think it is inescapable that the first line of his obituaries that will be published now and the next tune of four hours -- the

every important investigation of the modern times from watergate on down, they've brought in outside help organie the work and that's what's going to be needed. i agree with andy, i think congress needs to look at this and they need to do a serious inquiry either with capable counsel from the outside or staff counsel can also very ably ask questions. leave the inquiry. let's figure out what happened. let's pass a law so that it's not just a matter of, oh, you violated ethics rules. doj internal ethics rules say you can't pursue investigations for political reasons or to curry favor with the president. but that's not enough. we need tougher restrictions here. frankly, for the really outrageous abuses, we may need not only civil remedies, but also criminal ones. we can't let this happen again. it's too dangerous. >> dana, last word to you. and any feel for the stomach of the biden administration to go after this? >> it depends on how you define "going after this." right? it seems to me that these two notions of doj doing an internal investigation in congress doing its own investigation

all of these people were prosecuted and served time in the wake of the watergate scandal. look at that. the listing kloots at a water kate burglar, nixon's white house counsel, personal attorney, chief of staff. his attorney general, john mitchell. >> given the circumstances, mitchell was in relatively good mood as he arrived at the -- >> all mitchell said was, it's nice to be back in alabama. he is assured of staying in alabama, at least 20 months. that's how long it will be before he's eligible for parole from his sentence. so from two and a half to years. during the time he is here in this minimum security prison, officials say mitchell will be treated the same as any other person or. so, john mitchell, former u.s. attorney general, a swearing prison close now. >> the reckoning in the accountability didn't stop there. across the nature nation, legislatures, to the media, to regular everyday citizens, the civic spirit of the time with that what happened in the nixon presidency little horror firing and our brand, it must be a symptom of a broken system. and that system ha

>> it has the potential for being worse than watergate.ut i do think it's important to set this in context. it's quite legitimate for an administration, for a president, for a justice department to pursue leaks of national security information. that's well within bounds. but for decades now it has been illegitimate to weaponize the powers that you have at the justice department to go after your enemies. we went through decades of abuse like this, especially when jay edgar hoover was running the fbi and presidents would call hoover and get dirt on their opponents to use. they would get into the tax returns of one of their opponents. they would find other ways, they would listen in on -- they would tap their phones. they would do a number of things that over time we came to see as totally illegitimate and threatening to democracy. and it's coming on the heels of the assault on june 6th, this is a different kind of assault but it's of the same family, that is to use the powers of an institution, the presidency and the justice department to go

this is far worse than watergate. there wasn't an insurrection at the capitol during watergate. mccarthy put some really tough positions on the table and we met every single one of them that a couple dozen republicans in the house voted for because it is the right thing to do for the country. and then republicans in the senate threw it out. so we've done what we need to do to make this bipartisan. it should be voted through the senate. it's the right thing to do for our country. >> congressman seth moulton, all true what you said there. thank you so much. good to see you. >>> so if you've never heard of a reverse trump turnout event see it right there. some democrats are saying they saw it in action this past week. where does it happen and what does it mean, next. e does it ha does it mean, next ... is what business is all about. it's what the united states postal service has always been about. so as your business changes, we're changing with it. with e-commerce that runs at the speed of now. next day and two-day shipping nationwide. same day shipping across town. returns right

we think of watergate as being this separate thing.968 in paris peace talks in or to get elected, his crimes, his vietnam war crimes and that instance had been done well before he was elected and continued, and was more than anything -- well, it led to watergate in his downfall. even though it was going pretty well for him. you know, he's bringing people out, stopping the draft, all the rest. so he really grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory by. it's craziness about the press, led him to commit all these crimes. >> okay so the worst president in history is? >> well, he's really up there, more than i thought he was. i mean, he and henry kissinger have not only tens of thousands of american lives on their hands, that people don't need to -- hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. cambodia modes on their hands, as terrible as donald trump and trumpism is, he didn't do that. so, i would say... in the finals... it's maybe, trump, nixon, buchanan runoff, you know? >> yeah. the trump difference really is vietnam. that's the one that is inco

and you know we brought about these new norms after watergate to prevent exactly this kind of abuse.urvive this presidency and -- but it is shocking. at the same time, look, bill barr lied to the country about the mueller report. he lied to congress about what he was aware of, mueller's objections to. his false summary. he had a long pattern of duplicity as well as intervening in specific cases of roger stone and mike flynn to try to protect those who were lying to cover up for the president and to authorize investigations of his opponents. and so, you know, i view bill barr as the second most dangerous person in the country after donald trump and this is just further proof of that point. >> without revealing their identities, to your knowledge, how many people were swept up in this effort in terms of looking at people's records? >> you know, a lot. and the reality is, i don't fully know how many -- i think we'll find out about more now that the story has broken. people got these notices, these emails from apple and thought they were spam or that they were, you know, some kind of a s

i imagine he does. >> i'm joined by former watergate prosecutor nick ackerman.e to go to jail? >> i think we have to see what the evidence comes out here, but certainly based on what we know at this point, the fact that his chief financial officer is about to be indicted for tax fraud, we know just from what we read in the papers and what we've heard from michael cohen, his former attorney, and others that everybody who does anything in the trump organization does it at the behest of donald trump. so i think the bottom line is we all expect that donald trump is up to his eyeballs in tax fraud. we know that his father was in terms of moving the family wealth over to donald and his siblings in terms of a phony company that was set unp to funnel money to them without having to pay gift tax. it seems to me based on what we know it's just a question of whether or not the d.a.'s office can come up with admissible evidence squarely putting the knowledge in donald trump's head and the direction with donald trump. >> you were part of the watergate case. how does trump co

the fec was created in the wake of watergate to protect integrity and elections. it was from the beginning, designed to be bipartisan. three republicans, three democrats. because congress recognized a partisan federal elections commission would be deeply injurious to our democracy. to have the fec with any integrity it needed to be bipartisan which means you need a bipartisan majority to act in order to ensure neither party weaponize's federal election laws what does the corrupt politicians act do? turns the fec intohr a partisan body. shifted from three republicans and three democrats to three democrats and two republicans. that turns into an arm of the democratic senate committee. nothing in the bill is as cynical as that provision we have close elections in this race with a 50/50 senate as a sophisticated political player asking a close election, in the weeks before the election of the senate majority leader has the ability to launch investigation fromal the fec to bring prosecution from the federal elections commission to sue the political opponent of the majo

and later watergate.ifically the pentagon papers released turned him into the gangster he was always ready to be. >> let's listen to the tape that's in your podcast where nixon basically makes the decision that ends his presidency. >> huston swears to god that there's a file on it at brookings. >> i wouldn't be surprised. in the hands of the same kind of -- >> bob -- >> the same people. >> but couldn't we go over? now, brookings has no right to have classified documents. >> i mean, i want it implemented on a thievery basis. [ bleep ], get in and get those files. blow the safe and get it. >> when they got caught is when he told him to go break into the democratic party headquarters, and that's when these people working for the nixon white house got caught. >> yeah, and the brookings thing, which got kind of -- because it never actually happened. they cased the joint, they went there, they tried to get in. chuck colson and one of the former nypd cops he had working for him had a plan to set a fire as a dist

the federal elections commission was created in the wake of watergate designed to protect integrity in our elections. it was from the beginning designed to be bipartisan. three republican, three democrats because congress recognized that a partisan federal elections commission would be deanly -- deeply injurious to our democracy. that to have a federal election commission with any integrity, it needed to be bipartisan which means you needed a bipartisan majority to act in order to ensure that neither party weaponizes the federal election laws. what does the corrupt politicians act do? turns the federal election commission into a partisan body. shifts it from three republicans and three democrats to three democrats and two republicans. it turns it into an arm of the democratic senate committee in effect. nothing in this bill is as cynical as that provision. we're in a 50-50 senate. we have close elections in this race. mr. president, you're a sophisticated political player. i want you to ask for a second in a close election, in the weeks before the election, if the senate majority leade

to become the watergate gangster.s institution, the liberal think tank in washington. order it on tape and order it again, as the supreme court was about to hear the pentagon papers case. this is the moment, and then this summer of 71, when he wept went off the rails. and part of it was that he was hiding his own secrets, that we talk about in nixon at war of how he, as he was running for president, did all of these illegal shenanigans to mess up lyndon johnson's peace talkses and not let hubert humphrey have a win. i didn't fully realize how deeply intertwined vietnam and watergate were. and it's all of a piece. and it's just a part of the american tragedy, as john and you have been saying, about the undermining of american solidarity and faith in government and all the rest. but it was -- it wasn't two things. vietnam's nixon's handling of it. and we're still living with the consequences. donald trump. the silent majority -- the way that nixon pitched himself as the man of the regular people against the -- >> i thin

as we solve during watergate, -- as we saw during watergate, there is an incredible danger to private citizens and the credibility of the federal government if information is used for political or other purposes. anything short of the highest degree of privacy protection for taxpayers information could cost them -- could cause them to be far less willing to provide the information that is required by the irs for full compliance. does the department of justice have any information about the origin of this breach and what steps is the department taking to investigate, identify and apprehend those responsible? gen. garland: i take this as seriously as you do. i very well remember what president nixon did in the watergate period, the creation of enemies lists and punishment of people after reviewing their tax returns. this is an extremely serious matter. people are entitled to great privacy with respect to their tax returns. to be honest, i know nothing more about this than what i read in the propublica peace. what i did read was the director of the irs is on it did -- is on it. he said t

this is -- this is very different from watergate. and worse. and worse.e of power by the president of the united states. i think that is the only way all of us who are reading this in "the new york times" can look at this and say, if all of this is accurate, why did the president of the united states think that he had the authority on a whim to say to the justice department, which works for the people, that i want you to investigate my enemies? you know, i mean, did he start look at people's tax returns? we have no idea what he was doing. again, i think there are layers of the onion that we are going to continue to peel here, as we should, and find out just what was going on that we did not know about. apple, of course, was under a gag order. and we need to continue for history, if nothing else, to find out what these abuses were. >> for everything you just said and more is why we love having you. the perfect person to discuss this. thank you, gloria, i appreciate it. >> thank you, don. >>> he says the go.o.p. is wagig a water on democracy and now it is a

>> no, and as some watergate figures say, this goes beyond nixon.turn of events by both an administration and the department of justice. i absolutely echo the calls -- the chairman of the judiciary committee, jerry nadler, has made, that we need to hear from jeff sessions and bill barr, and their decisionmaking and how that doesn't cross a line, frankly, in terms of separation of powers. congress is a separate, but coequal branch of government. >> before i get back to the summit, this investigation by the doj, how much do you think has to be transparent in order to reassure americans that their department of justice exists and operates without political bias? as it is expected and should. >> i think that's one of the challenges the new attorney general merrick garland has in front of him, and i have coached his's up to the task, but restoring transparency and justice across the board is a month momental challenge. so much damage was done by his two predecessors during the trump years. >>> so, the summit, what do you expect from the biden into putin

so imagine if i was in india during watergate and we all looked up to the united states because we thought it's facing up to its democratic flaws and fixing them. imagine if after watergate the republican party had doubled down on richard nixon rather than excommunicating him. and said we're going to write laws that now make it so that everything nixon did was actually legal. what if the party only excommunicated those people who criticize nixon, right? we're in a mode where not only have we exposed a lot of flaws in american democracy, we are going in the opposite direction rather than fixing them. we're doubling down and deepening those flaws. >> a lot of the world sees america as blowing it on democracy right now. fareed zakaria, thank you. obviously, you can catch fareed on sunday at 10:00 a.m. >>> just ahead -- republicans keep trying to kill the affordable care act. how is that working out? a "reality check" next. >>> and imagine matthew mcconaughey as governor of texas. we'll talk with another guy who says it would be perhaps a lot cooler if he did not. this is the sound of change.

her book is "watergate girl: my fight for truth and justice against a criminal president."probing, quote, possibly intensive and protracted criminal conduct at the trump organization. what does your experience tell you prosecutors are likely honing in on? >> well, i would take it broader than that and say that based on everything that i have read over the last year about possible crimes, you have bank fraud, insurance fraud. you have possible tax fraud both at the state and federal law. you have some violations in chicago of environmental laws. so there are a number of things that the corporation could be responsible for. and in new york, there is a little rico statute, which is something that is used to prosecute a corporation that continually does business in a corrupt way. it's normally at the federal level used against organized crime, but that's something that has been applied in new york against ordinary corporations. so there are a lot of opportunities here, and the reporting does seem to be that this week could be the week. >> ryan, reporting from "the new york time

>> congressman swalwell, we made these kinds of investigations more independent after watergate, when we saw richard nixon fire the first special counsel. and that is what don mcgahn was referring to when you talked about the saturday night massacre. that was a problem for richard nixon, because richard nixon cared about the reaction to the saturday night massacre. and donald trump, would it have happened if donald trump had fired robert mueller, andrew weissmann, and everybody were working there. donald trump wasn't wouldn't have cared what the reaction to that was. >> no. certainly donald trump was always going to do what was in the best interest of donald trump. and we were always scared by his corrupt instincts. we were spared though, by his incompetence. but just because donald trump is gone, does not mean that corruption and racism and the saudi and bigotry are gone. we still see it manifesting itself in many of the leaders in the republican party, today. and that is why we should take this opportunity to get rid of that doj policy that says no president can be indicted. we shou

watergate veteran carl bernstein joins us when "360" continues. to the way things were. but what does that mean? does it mean getting back out here to feed the world? is it about getting back to this commute? this community? or this ingenuity? for folks who run with us, there is no going back. because they've never stopped working towards a better tomorrow. together, we run forward. tonight, i'll be eating a pork banh mi with extra jalapeños. [doorbell rings] thanks, baby. yeah, we 'bout to get spicy for this virtual date. spicy like them pajama pants? well, the top half of me looks good. no wonder we still single. hello lenny28. wait a minute, i know a lenny28. ooo...lenny is cute! can i get some privacy, please? you need an ecolab scientific clean here. and you need it here. and here. and here. which is why the scientific expertise that helps operating rooms stay clean is now helping the places you go every day too. seek a commitment to clean. look for the ecolab science certified seal. this is the epson ecotank color printer. no more buying cartridges. big ink tanks.

drew pearson served as a link between the muckrakers of the progressive era and they watergate investigative reporters his willingness to break secrets and reveal. what was really happening behind closed doors ruined countless days for members of congress and drove several presidents to apoplexy. going back to the recent talk about fake news my own research has sought to determine the accuracy of his expose for readers at the time and for researchers today. first i ought to answer the question. how is it that a senate historian comes to write a book about a newspaper columnist. well when the us senate first considered creating an historical office, it contemplated making us a public information office. then i thought twice and decided that every senator was going to be their own public information officer. but of course it was a 200 year old institution that operated unprecedented so many of the questions that came in were historical questions and when we historians were questioned, we tried to stick to the past and place current events into historical perspective. the media eventually deter

as mentioned, there is a reason why people go back to watergate and nixon.n you look at the efforts to take the enemy's list into action at doj, they didn't get this far. now i want to go through the facts with you. the context is what donald trump wanted, what he said in public, what he said in private. the demands to go after individual opponents, to go after the press, the leakers and adam schiff. we report that the justice department was investigating who was behind the leaks of classified information early in the trump administration and it took a highly unusual step. prosecutors subpoenaed apple from at least two democrats in the house, aids and family members and then this key part that's also so controversial. one was a minor. the times continues that in 2017 to '17, the trump administration surveyed the phone records of at least a dozen sources finding contacts between trump associates and russia. always goes back to that. the investigation didn't find enough evidence to go anywhere. the doj was looking at taking down the whole thing after these ext

have to and get to the bottom of that on behalf of the american people. >> which is why i think watergatetter sort of analogy to what we're seeing here. let's talk about one of the people who may have been involved. kevin mccarthy had a conversation with the former president, on donald trump on the day of the insurrection begging him to call off his people. he's now gone dark thinking he loves donald trump too much to talk about this. how do you expect him to respond if he's subpoenaed? >> that's a great question. i think kevin mccarthy at this point is in denial of reality. unfortunately, the ticket of admission for the republican party and success in the republican primary right now is to deny reality, deny that donald trump had any responsibility for this, as you know, some folks calling it what looked like a day of tourism at the capitol. and so it will be really interesting how kevin mccarthy responds. but i know what he should do. he should cooperate and he should work in the best interests of the american people in getting to the truth. >> yeah, if he fights it or takes the fifth,

i am joined, now, by a veteran of the watergate era.ournalist and author and cnn political analyst, carl bernstein. carl, there is a lot we, still, don't know about this. but look. you know, the parallels, between the nixon enemy list and what we are, now, seeing from the former-trump administration. how apt are they? >> well, they are apt to the extent that nixon wanted to screw his political enemies. no question. so did donald trump. but trump's actions go far -- much farther than nixon's. and they're much more egregious because trump is guilty of crimes against democracy. it is not just about screwing his enemies, it's about getting everything he wants for himself. for his own, political ends. for his own, financial gain. for his family. he would undermine the very basic premise of democracy, as would, now, a republican party. that is enthrall to donald trump and these kinds of activities. there's a conspiracy, an ongoing conspiracy, by trump and those around him. and the hierarchy of the republican party that is enthrall to undermin

capitalism as you see here oil companies, or they think that they're against the corrupt government watergate is at the moment of completely breaking out right now a year from this moment. richard nixon would leave office. and then rationing which is on its way. it's it will happen in a few days and you would have 55 and that's tyranny many people see that as the tyranny of government intervening in their lives. and finally that the government had been lying to them. about vietnam and this was becoming clear now that the war was lost. and now the government is taxing cars with high fuel consumption called the gas guzzler tax. and and the government is now setting standards for mileage on new cars. and so tell it is telling the american auto industry how to design cars they had already done that earlier in terms of safety and emissions now, it is in terms of fuel consumption. and here we see the the polling that was done by the akron beacon showing that 69% of people. cited with the truckers even though it was inconveniencing them in december. so how did this happen? how did the trucker become

direct link between this case and the reaction in the nixon administration to what happened here and watergatethe concern, the compulsive concern, some of it possibly justified, some of it not, about leaks. some people feel, and i think with justification, it led to the creation of president nixon of the plumbers to go into ellsberg's psychiatrists office and other places, and the compulsive concern about leaks and so forth led, inexorably, to what would happen to years later with watergate and the end of the nixon administration. susan: we're going to hear a little bit of that next with richard nixon on tape talking about how the administration should respond to daniel ellsberg. >> i just say that we have to keep our eye on ellsberg. we have got to get this son of a bitch. i was talking to someone over here yesterday. they were saying, well, maybe we ought to drop the case. i said, hell, no, you can't do that. you can't be in a position of ever allowing, just because some guy is going to be a martyr. of allowing the fellow to get away with this wholesale thievery, otherwise it is going to hap

you've got watergate. we've got the church committee all these revelations of cia misdeeds mkultra right lending even more credence to the idea of secret medical experimentation going on. and there is a very kind of explicit linkage being made in the late 70s between this post-water gate era and a boom in alien conspiracism and particularly abduction conspiracism. you see the establishment of citizens against ufo secrecy in 1977 an organization dedicated to using freedom of information act requests. to get the government to reveal the truth about ufos, which is almost. beautifully naive the fact that you think the government is planning this huge conspiracy, but that because the law is on your side. you can still get them to reveal those secrets. and so it's a really nice sentiment. i always find. but not only does citizens against ufo secrecy come along but a nuclear physicist turned ufologist called stanton friedman rediscovers roswell. and we don't want to draw kind of overly simplistic links between th

would it make more sense to do something like what the watergate commission was? do it in congress, don't worry about them. the speaker could do that. >> yeah, something like that i think is an option. again, i don't want to let the republicans off the hook or do their job for them. i think we have to give them the opportunity to do the right thing and do their job. if they don't, there are options. a commission that's bipartisan i think is important because i think it is important that we have some folks that try to help us restore confidence and faith around the country in this process. the speaker does have some options available to her to accomplish that. >> congressman jason crow from my state of colorado, you represent it well. thank you, sir. appreciate you giving me some time. >>> joining me now is matthew dowd, founders of country over party. you have been brilliant on this. you've been scared but scaring is caring so i appreciate that you've said about democracy. you have said that there should be a presidential commission on democracy. i don't disagree

>> it dates back to roughly around the 80s in the aftermath of watergate and other things that brought down the trust level of a lot of our institutions. and also i would say that it boosted the adversarial positions of the news media. many reporters still think they are so there's a kind of adversarial and then of course you find that there were media outlets and things like fox news they could not target the whole country. much of the time to get a niche on the coming back would grow and grow and other media outlets have figured that out and have social media platforms, so we have designed a lot of our institutions to incentivize the high conflict and the important thing about that is we can design the two incentivize good conflict and we see that. we've all worked at places where in a church or synagogue or neighborhood where there were cultures that dealt with conflict differently. maybe some places people avoided it and that's top-down how the leadership deals with it. but also it's very common and other places where conflict is combustible and destructive. it is possible to tap i

>> it's another terrible abuse of the justice department, another shattering of the norms since watergateeporter: schiff had been a frequent target of the president. >> and shifty schiff, how about this guy? >> reporter: attorney general william barr continued the leak investigation, and stumbled when asked by then-senator kamala harris if the president or anyone at the white house had ordered him to open an investigation. >> i wouldn't-- i wouldn't-- >> yes or no. >> could you repeat that question? i don't know, i wouldn't say "suggest." >> hinted? >> i don't know. >> reporter: former republican attorney general alberto gonzalez says the phone record subpoenas are troubling. so, based on what you know, was-- was that contrary to d.o.j. policy? >> what is being reported is certainly-- if not contrary to policy, inconsistent with the traditions of the department. >> o'donnell: jeff joins us now. so, what will this independent investigator at the department of justice be looking for? >> reporter: well, the bottom line is, is that this inspector general will look into whether the trump admin

the dnc at the watergate hotel. operation mongoose. the church committee, the committee on assassinations and they come out with these things that the united states government was doing. operation mongoose, we'll talk about about, was to harass castro. working with gangsters, and the counterintelligence program monitoring people like martin luther king that was inserting government agents into leftist organizations like snik or the sds. there were jokes that at a time there would be some civil rights or leftist meetings in which half the group was informing on the other half because half were working for the nypd and the other half were working for the fbi. following and taking pictures of king. the house select committee on assassinations comes out in 1976 and raises doubts itself about the warren commission. we find out that the cia helped -- or aided the overthrow of iran in guatemala. tus keeg gee syphilis experiment. without telling them or their partners. iran contra in the 1980s, they're moving guns to nicara

so, and the fact is, conspiracy theory, i mean, some conspiracy theories are real, you know, a watergate in the united states. that was a conspiracy theory that turned out to be real. you know, president lincoln was assassinated by a conspiracy. the assassination of transferred 9 in san diego in 1914 that launched the 1st world war. that was a true conspiracy. they were conspiring to these a serbian nationalists were conspiring to assassinate a foreign leader. so there's enough of these things that happened in the real world . wall street traders that cheat the system and in your country, you know, oligarchs that, you know, hacked the heck the economic system after the fall of the soviet union. these are real so people can see that some conspiracy theories turn out to be true. so what's to say that they are all are true and therefore we need some kind of conspiracy theory detection device which i've, i've outlined, but also is it, could it be lack of agency that drives people into believing where things, you know, if an average person has no power control over the virus vaccination, pens

caught at 3 in the morning coming out, you know what that bark look, coming out, you know, during the watergate thing. but, but what this is going to show you though, is how ridiculous this is. and i do hope that is played out because let me just say somebody breaks seem to be clear. i am not countenance seen or agreeing, or dismissing or say it's no big deal. what i saw there was horrible. you don't do this, this is the capital, this is a tabernacle of liberty. but there are so many things that have happened that have been rude and dis courteous and subject to, to federal laws and specific laws pertaining to these, these institutions as well that do not rise to in surrendered to these people one to bring down the government or in the light most favorable to them as crude and is boorish and backwards. it is, do they want to maintain the government? do they think as crazy? this sounds that they're actually defending it. and also right. do you know how many people, steve are still being in jail right now that we have that are unaccounted for? that's to be discussed as well. yeah, absolutely. beca

n many reporters still think that they are breaking watergate every day or trying to. so there is this kind of adversarial adverse of the mindset that gets distilled from things like that and then of course you find that there are media outlets that figured out that they could reliably not targets the whole country but ue the grievances and anger but to come back and that niche would grow and grow and other media outlets have obviously figured that out. so, we design a lot of our institutions to incentivize high conflict a church or synagogue agor neighborhood where there we cultures that dealt with conflict differently. maybe some d places people avoid it ands that sort of top-down hw the leadership deals with others and that doesn't work great usually. but also it's very common. and other places were conflict is combustible, like it is out of control and destructive to the things the organization is supposed to be about and other places that have traditions and rituals and policies in place. so it is possible to tap into just as we are high-powered for conflict, huma