Tricky Dick: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Richard M. Nixon

Richard Nixon remains the most enduring and most misunderstood major figure in twentieth-century American politics, and Roger Stone, who knew him personally and has spent decades studying him, argues that the story most Americans know is not the real one. In Tricky Dick, Stone and co-author Michael Colapietro trace the full arc of Nixon's career: the meteoric rise from a 1947 House race to the vice presidency under Eisenhower, the agonizing razor-thin loss to Kennedy in 1960, the greatest comeback in American political history, and the presidency that ended in disgrace. But this is not the standard Watergate narrative. Stone draws on new documentation to argue that the CIA deliberately infiltrated and sabotaged the original Watergate burglary team, that White House Counsel John Dean lied to Nixon about the extent of his own involvement for nine months, and that the special prosecutor met secretly and illegally with the trial judge to ensure a predetermined outcome. Stone also makes the detailed case that the 1960 election was stolen from Nixon through documented voter fraud in Texas and Illinois. Whatever one thinks of the conclusions, the research is vast, the sourcing is extensive, and the result is the most thorough revisionist account of Nixon's career ever assembled.