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In this episode of Great American Authors, we take an unforgettable look at two astonishing works born from the tumultuous aftermath of Nixon-era Washington — The Canfield Decision by Spiro T. Agnew and The Company by John Ehrlichman.

Today, The Canfield Decision enjoys a surprisingly warm reception online, with roughly 87% of readers awarding it three to five stars on Goodreads and similar platforms. But that wasn’t always the case. Upon its release, critics and much of the media savaged the book, dismissing it as thinly veiled political wish-fulfillment from a disgraced Vice President. We unpack the striking discrepancy between that early panning and the thoughtful, often affectionate audience it’s gained in recent years — readers who find nuance, ambition, or just plain fun in a novel penned by a man few expected to ever write fiction.

We place the book in the context of Agnew’s political fall from grace. Once the second-in-command in the nation, Agnew’s public resignation and subsequent legal troubles left him a pariah. Remarkably, The Canfield Decision became his first major step back onto the national stage — a work that speaks volumes about ambition, image, and reinvention. What did Agnew hope to say with this book? And why do modern readers connect with it in ways early reviewers didn’t anticipate?

From there, we pivot to another Nixon-era insider turned novelist: John Ehrlichman, author of The Company. A former aide to Richard Nixon and one of the central figures of Watergate, Ehrlichman wrote a sprawling fictional chronicle of power, corruption, and betrayal in America’s secretive intelligence community. Unlike Agnew’s quietly redemptive tone, Ehrlichman’s The Companybristles with bitterness toward the very system he once served — especially toward Nixon himself.

We explore the reviews then and now for The Company, and how Ehrlichman’s own disillusionment shaped a narrative that many readers and critics call prophetic, sprawling, and ethically complex. As we compare and contrast these two presidential novels, we also ask: what happens when real political trauma is transmuted into fiction? What does each author reveal about themselves — and about American power — in the act of storytelling?

Join us for a deep, insightful, and sometimes surprising conversation about politics, prose, reputation, and the curious afterlives of The Canfield Decision and The Company — two books that defy expectations and challenge how we think about presidential literature.

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We stumbled on this interview while researching materials for a tribute to former Vice President Dick Cheney. We had not been aware that this interview existed if we had known it we would have used it during our original broadcast.

The interview is hard hitting, Barbara Walters pulls no punches through out. It is very much worth listening to and Agnew holds his own pretty well,

Enjoy this special edition.

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In this episode we look back at the other man who alongside, Bob Dole and Pete Wilson, spoke at both funerals for Pat and Richard Nixon. The Reverend Billy Graham was a giant figure in the second half of the 20th Century. His influence on the spiritual lives of people around the globe is rivaled only by the various Pope's who served during his lifetime.

He was a major figure in the American Civil Rights movement, and he was an advisor to every President from Harry Truman to Barak Obama. He played an enormous role in 1968 in the election of Richard Nixon to the Presidency. This was learned in a recent blockbuster book by Dr. Luke Nichter who became the first author and historian to gain access to the VIP Notebooks that Billy Graham kept for over 70 years as his ministry grew and he became more and more involved in advising the major public figures of the era.

In this episode we will hear from him, as we also say goodby to President and Mrs. Nixon, listening in on both eulogies, and we will examine the role Billy Graham played, through the Billy Graham Evangelical Association videos, in the the civil rights movement and with the various Presidents. Plus we will hear a segment of an interview with Historian Luke Nichter about the role Graham played in politics especially during the crucial year of 1968.

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In this episode we cover the deaths of both Former First Lady Pat Nixon and former President Richard Nixon who both passed away within 10 months of one another in 1993 and 1994.

As anyone who has been listening to our podcast on a long term basis knows, the life and career of Richard Nixon is a central focus of our show. We even have a sister podcast titled "The Richard Nixon Experience" that is a second avenue to listening to the many episodes we have produced on the President and his life.

This episode adds some additional materials we have not used before mixed in with some of the material from our Nixon series that ran a couple of years ago. We have the newly released video of President Clinton meeting President Nixon for the first time in 1992. We also feature for the first time the eulogy given for Mrs. Nixon by Bob Dole, and several portions of oral histories about President and Mrs. Nixon from the Bob Dole oral history project, with Dole, George McGovern, and Sheila Burke, Bob Dole's Senate Chief of Staff.

We think this is an excellent addition to materials we have already produced on Nixon. It should add to the already growing materials that have been brought to the forefront of Nixon scholarship in recent years. It seems a growing appreciation has been happening for the Presidency of Richard Nixon, and we here at this podcast are proud to have played a small, and very early role, in that new appreciation for the 37th President and his many accomplishments.

As we have said and written repeatedly we believe he deserves to be ranked among the 4 Greatest American Presidents, and it appears our podcast tag line is truly now at hand. The Renaissance of Richard Nixon is finally happening at last.

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In this special edition of our podcast we will be looking at the highly acclaimed best selling book written by former Ronald Reagan Speech writer Ken Khachigian.

The book offers an insiders view of not one President but two Presidents, both giants in our long long struggle against the forces of Communism in the Cold War. The two Presidents were two of history's giants, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Few people have had as close an insiders look as Ken Khachigian has had with the inner workings of any White House, much less two of them. Plus, he was with Richard Nixon in San Clemente after Nixon was forced from office in the wake of the horribly unfair Watergate Scandal. Khachigian was one of the five staffers Nixon had who would help him prepare his Memoirs and rebuild his life and career.

From there Khachigian would move on to the 1980 campaign of Ronald Reagan becoming his chief Speech writer and the man who would pen some of his most memorable moments, from his 1980 Inaugural Address, to the address at the Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp in Germany as the President dug himself out of a controversy that had its origins in the war 40 years before.

This book offers intimate portraits of Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, and mentions several lesser known figures we have talked about throughout our many seasons on the air such as Earl Butz, and most recently Stu Spencer who just passed away at age 97.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS by Ken Khachigian is a must read and we are very thankful for the opportunity to showcase it here on our broadcast.

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Welcome to

• Prof. Stephen Saltzburg, Wallace and Beverley Woodbury University Professor of Law; Co-director of the Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program, The George Washington University Law School
• Geoff Shepard, Author of The Nixon Conspiracy (2021) and The Real Watergate Scandal (2015)
• Hon. Laurence Silberman, United States Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
• Moderator: Hon. Paul S. Diamond, United States District Judge, Eastern District of Pennsylvania

If you would like to watch the entire symposium on You Tube it is available at the following link :
https://youtu.be/_x8_xnwZxow

We are very appreciative and want to say thank you to The Federalist Society for allowing us to use the symposium in its entirety and again we want to thank Geoff Shepard for the use of all of his materials from his three books which are available at his website ShepardonWatergate.com

This episode is the fourth 45 minutes of the event and it will cover the partisan choice of defendants where they indicted prominent Republicans , Chuck Colson, who were arguably not that involved and decided not to indict prominent Democrats, like Howard Hunt's Lawyer William Bittman. This will also be the final episode in our long series on the tumultuous era of the 1960's including the assassination of a President, the Civil Rights Movement, The Vietnam War, the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson, the Presidency of Richard Nixon and the Watergate Scandal.

This is a great companion to and a much more succinct presentation of the materials we covered throughout our podcast documentary.

Just an FYI there are moments when a CLE code is played and it sounds like an Emergency broadcast test.

We appreciate all of you who have tuned in throughout the past five seasons and we especially want to thank Geoff Shepard for all of his help in putting this entire series on Watergate together. It has been a pleasure and an honor to have played a small part in teaching the public the true facts about a great man who served as our 37th President of the United States, Richard Nixon.