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The Watergate Caper is an archival documentary, narrated by Harry Shearer (This is Spinal Tap), tracing the rise and fall of Nixon from the presidential primaries of 1968 through the Watergate break-in of June 1972 to his resignation two years later, killing trust in the political process and the American presidency in the wake of the Vietnam War. The film draws on hundreds of hours of TV news taped off-air by the Nixon White House to tell the untold story of the Watergate burglars. How did tapping the wrong phone with a bug that didn't work lead to their arrests and Nixon's resignation? It also explores representations of the Nixon years in popular culture, using the music, commercials, and cinema of the era to evoke a fevered political landscape of culture wars, dirty tricks, paranoia and assassination.
Transcript
00:00How long was the decision made to go back in there after you knew someone knew that you'd been tampered
00:03with that door?
00:04All right, it's a good question because we had a lot of discussions on it later.
00:10We, um...
00:11Where?
00:11In jail.
00:16Good evening, my fellow Americans.
00:19At our convention, Miami FLA.
00:24A campaign across the USA.
00:26Let me make this perfectly clear.
00:28Let me stick it in your ear.
00:30They said, hey, babe, make a date with the Watergate.
00:33Did someone put up a lot of money to have the Democratic headquarters infiltrated?
00:37And if so, who and why?
00:39A bugger here, a bugger there.
00:42Washington's the place where they said, hey, babe, make a date with the Watergate.
00:46Let me make this perfectly clear, my fellow Americans.
00:48I said, hey, sugar, make a date with the Watergate.
00:51I said, hey, Spiro.
00:53Hey, all of you people, make a date with the Watergate.
00:55Call now.
00:56Make the Metropolitan Police Department your career.
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