The president of the United States.
The most powerful human being in the world.
No one could have foreseen the seismic shocks
America would suffer in the twentieth century.
The assassination of its youngest ever leader, John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
and the disgrace of its most successful election winner, Richard Milhouse Nixon.
One man destined to die, the other never to be forgiven.
This is a dramatic reconstruction of events
as they happened on two days that shook the world.
It is the 22nd November 1963.
In central Asia,
Soviet astronaut Valentina Teraskova is the first woman to be launched into space.
In England,
the hunt is still on for the perpetrators of the great train robbery.
In Washington DC,
Martin Luther King addresses the million man march,
in front of the Lincoln memorial.
And in Dallas, Texas, preparations are underway for a presidential visit.
Dallas. Texas.
Thursday November 22nd 1963.
It's a mild morning,
but there are ominous grey clouds in the distance threatening
an overcast day with a chance of rain.
In the Oak Cliff suburb of Dallas,
the Newman family are looking forward to this weekend's thanksgiving celebrations.
But today they have made plans for a family day out.
What's the matter, little buddy?
You not ready yet?
It's 7am,
and the Newman's are having breakfast.
Bill and Gayle Newman were high school sweethearts and now,
both aged 22, they have a young family.
Four year old Billy Newman loves Cartoons.
Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd are his favourites.
Two year old Clayton doesn't care what's on TV.
He's too excited to eat breakfast, either.
Billy - Billy!
Come in here and eat!
No, I'm watching TV.
Across town, Dr Malcolm perry is also having his breakfast.
The 34 year old surgeon has a routine day ahead of him,
lecturing, and doing his patient rounds
at parkland Memorial Hospital in central Dallas.
Perry trained as a doctor in Dallas,
and served in the US Airforce in Washington before returning
to Texas five years ago,
to work as a surgeon at parkland's hospital.
Meanwhile, thirty miles away in Fort Worth,
Texas, John F Kennedy, thirty first president of the United States,
is addressing a breakfast conference.
Years ago I... introduced myself in paris...
by saying that I was the man who had accompanied Mrs. Kennedy to paris...
I'm getting some of that same sensation as I travel around Texas...
Nobody wonders what Lyndon and I wear...
John Kennedy married fashion icon
thirty four year old Jacqueline Bouvier ten years ago.
They now have two young children.
Caroline, aged five, and John-John, aged two.
Jackie Kennedy is looking forward to celebrating
the children's birthdays next week,
well away from the hassles of this political trip.
20,000 feet up in the Texas skies, Air Force One,
the president's plane,
is making the short flight from Forth Worth to Love Field, Dallas.
On board with John and Jacky Kennedy.
Thirty five year old Malcolm Kilduff is anxious.
His boss is away in Japan,
so as assistant press secretary to JFK,
it has been Kilduff's responsibility to organise the president's tour of Texas,
shortly arriving at Dallas.
The Newman family set off to see the president arrive at Love field.
Come on Bill!
Yesterday, Bill bought a new roll of film for his 8mm cinecamera,
but in all the excitement,
he leaves the camera at home.
As Air Force One comes into land at Love Field,
Malcolm Kilduff is steeling himself for the worst.
Texas is a traditional republican stronghold.
Kennedy's progressive approach to domestic issues
like civil rights is unsettling the republican hard-core.
What's more,
his international ambition to act as peacemaker
to the world has angered local right wingers,
who believe that America is too heavily influenced by the United Nations.
Kilduff anticipates a hostile reception - but so far so good.
As the 46 year old president and first lady descend from the aircraft,
the Newman children find it hard to see anything among the mass of people.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
The youngest and the first Catholic president of the United States.
Over the past three years,
he has overseen the strongest economic upturn in American history,
and has energised the country.
Malcolm Kilduff steps into the press car,
three cars behind the president's Lincoln.
Part of a motorcade that will travel the five miles
through the city to the Dallas trademart.
Kilduff has helped plan the route.
This morning,
the president ordered the removal of the protective bubble on his car,
in order to be closer, and more visible to the crowds.
The journey will take approximately thirty five minutes
through down-town Dallas.
Crowds throng the pavements along the main streets of Kennedy's route.
Noon in Dallas.
Assistant professor of Surgery, Malcolm perry,
delivers his last lecture of the morning at the Southwestern Medical school.
Perry is keen to finish on time.
He has a lunch appointment with a friend over at parthons Hospital.
Meanwhile, Malcolm Kilduff is following the president.
Lemon Avenue, Turtle Creek Boulevard, Cedar Springs Road,
right onto main, round Ely plaza and onto Stemmens freeway north.
Kilduff knows the route well.
And so he should, since he helped plan it.
The crowds are out in force.
Press interest in the Kennedy family is as intense in Dallas as it is across America.
A thousand days into his presidency,
JFK is a celebrity.
Camelot, as the White House is now nicknamed,
enjoys a constant influx of glamorous intellectuals.
After the old-world flavour of president's Truman and Eisenhower,
JFK is the herald of a new age.
Let the word go forth from this time and place to friend and foe alike,
that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans...
The Newmans arrive at Dealey plaza,
only five minutes from JFK's destination, the Dallas Trademart.
They find a prime position near the corner of Houston Street and Elm Street,
on a grass bank,
only four yards back from the road.
The crowd has thinned out on the plaza next to the underpass.
Bill Newman is reminded that he left his own camera at home.
Malcolm perry is having lunch with Dr Jones at parkland Memorial hospital,
before his afternoon surgical rounds begin at one o'clock.
The Kennedy motorcade moved through central Dallas, Main Street,
onto Deeley plaza -towards Houston Street.
The crowds on the main part of the route are surprisingly large -enthusiastic-
and the weather has stayed bright.
The motorcade begins the drive around the plaza's north corner,
by the old school book depository.
The president is relieved by the positive reaction to his visit.
As the motorcade turns into Elm Street,
Billy Newman glimpses the president.
Misreading the sign behind him,
press secretary Malcolm Kilduff asks 'What the hell is a book responsitory? '
Three shots have been fired.
After the first,
Bill and Gail think someone is letting off fire crackers.
Billy Newman sees a spurt of blood across the car.
The third and final shot brings a spray of blood from the president's head.
Billy is pulled to the ground beneath his father,
who is now terrified of further random shooting.
'Some son of a bitch just shot the president,'
he screams, pounding the ground with his fists.
Billy hears Jackie shout 'oh no! ' As the crowd panics
and her husband slumps into her lap.
Immediately, an agentjumps onto the Kennedy car
to protect the president and first lady.
Special Agent William Greer driving the Kennedy car, accelerates.
Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff is uncertain what's happened,
or where the motorcade is heading.
Nearby a twenty four year old man called Lee Harvey Oswald is seen
running away from the book depository.
In Deeley plaza there is chaos and confusion.
People rush towards the prone Newman family.
Some of them take pictures,
wondering why they have hit the ground,
or if they have been caught in the cross-fire.
There is no communication with the press car,
only 25 metres behind the president's car,
as they speed through the streets.
In the parkland's cafe,
Dr perry hears a pager message for the head of emergency services,
Dr Tom Shires.
Perry knows his boss is away in Galvaston,
so he responds to the emergency call.
Journalists begin filing stories as soon as
they realise the firecrackers were actually gun shots.
But still they have no idea what's really happened.
There was nothing in those bulletins that will indicate
that anyone had the slightest idea
that anyone had been shot until after we got to parkland's hospital.
Immediately pursued by TVjournalists following the shooting,
the Newman family are quickly picked up by policemen
and taken to the Sheriff's office to make a witness statement.
They are shocked, and very scared.
Dr perry discovers the emergency patient is the president.
He rushes into trauma room 1, where JFK has been taken.
Case number: 24740.
I did not detect a heartbeat,
there was no blood pressure obtainable.
The president's clothing is removed as part of emergency procedure.
The trauma team notice an amateur bandage around president Kennedy's thigh.
They have no idea to this day what it was for.
Now operating on auto-pilot,
Malcolm Kilduff is on the phone to Southern Bell,
ordering more phone lines for the press and government agents.
Southern Bell are quickly onto the case.
Kennedy's body is making what doctor's call
'ineffective spaspodic respiratory efforts'
- he is trying to breath.
Dr perry makes a quick diagnosis.
I noted the presence of lascerated brain tissue.
In the lower part of the neck, below the adam's apple,
was a small circular wound from which blood was exuding slowly.
Malcolm perry attempts to ease the president's breathing.
He performs an emergency tracheotomy
by inserting a tube through the wound in Kennedy's neck.
Meanwhile, the neuro surgeons prepare to take a reading
of electrical activity in the president's brain.
Kilduff waits for news in the corridor.
He already fears the worst.
There is a five inch hole in the back of Kennedy's skull.
From his vantage point of the president's head,
Dr McLarren sees that half the right side of his brain has been destroyed.
Fearing a coup d'etat,
the security services decided
it was too dangerous to allow vice president Johnston to remain so close.
He is moved away from parkland's Hospital.
Dr Malcolm perry already fears it is a hopeless situation.
The president's eyes were dim and dilated and he was unresponsive.
We were breathing for him.
I had begun external cardiac massage.
We had been unable to detect a heartbeat, blood pressure, or a pulse.
Kilduff has set up an emergency press office
in a nearby classroom to cope with the growing media interest.
News of the shooting is starting to hit the airwaves.
This is a bulletin from CBS News.
In Dallas, Texas,
three shots were fired at president Kennedy's motorcade
in down-town Dallas.
The first reports say that president Kennedy has been seriously
wounded by this shooting.
Stay tuned to CBS News for further detail.
Malcolm Kilduff realises the Kennedy's blood spattered
Lincoln is now vulnerable to prying eyes,
and immediately orders agents to replace
the bubble fixture previously removed from the car.
At some point before one o'clock,
the Lincoln is also cleaned of all forensic material.
Apparently on the orders of the FBI.
At 12:58, Dr perry leaves trauma room one to wash up.
There is nothing more he can do.
Perry remembers he has left his jacket behind,
and slips back into the trauma room to retrieve it.
One pM -thirty minutes after the shooting-
John F Kennedy is pronounced dead.
He is the youngest president ever elected.
And the youngest to die.
Exactly one hundred years to the week since the battle of Gettysburg,
Abraham Lincoln's finest moment.
Only Dr McLennon remained as Father Oscar Huber arrives to administer
the last rites to America's first catholic president.
His first words are 'if thou livest'.
In accordance with strict catholic protocol,
he is only able to grant conditional salvation to a dead man.
Latest information just in:
Acting white House Secretary Malcolm Kilduff was asked
whether the president was dead,
and he said 'I have no word now'.
The president... '
In the temporary press centre at parkland's hospital,
Malcolm Kilduff has been told to wait until president Johnston is
back on Airforce One before he formally announces the president's death.
Jackie Kennedy enters the trauma room.
Her husband has been dead forjust over ten minutes.
The last remaining doctor watches at a distance as she removes her wedding ring
and places it next to her husband.
Only three months ago,
Jackie gave birth to their fourth child, patrick.
The boy died after only three days.
The trauma now means nothing, except silence.
The Vice president boards Air Force One and Malcolm Kilduff is finally allowed
to make the most important press statement of his life.
President John F Kennedy died at approximately
one pm central standard time here in Dallas.
He died from a gunshot wound to the brain.
I have no further details at this time.
The American people are stunned by this announcement.
No one is left unaffected by this shook news.
From Dallas. Texas. The CApTION, apparently official,
president Kennedy died at one pm central standard time,
two o'clock eastern standard time - some thirty eight minutes ago.
Vice president Johnson has left the hospital in Dallas,
but we do not know to where he proceeded.
Former teacher and Texas senator Lyndon Banes Johnston has served
under Kennedy as vice president for three years.
Now, in tragic circumstances,
the 55 year old will succeed JFK as president.
Ten miles away, twenty four year old Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested
in a cinema following of a shooting to a police officer.
He is later charged with the murder of president Kennedy.
As Malcolm Kilduff reaches Air Force One,
Vice president Johnston phones the attorney general
and is instructed to take the oval office immediately.
He reluctantly calls the only local judge available - Sarah Hughes.
Johnson vetoed her appointment to the federal bench,
but now he must ask her to swear him in - as president.
Johnson personally phones three lawyers in Dallas.
No one has the text of the presidential oath to hand.
There are also no sound and motion cameras to record the moment.
One of Kilduff's press agents finds a Dictaphone
with one spare recording belt.
A professional stills camera is also brought on board.
Two very basic machines will immortalise one of the most important events
in American history.
Lyndon Johnson begins the ceremony that will make him president.
Malcolm Kilduff, crouched at Johnston's feet, operate the dictaphone.
Still -silent- and in shock,
Jackie Kennedy acts as witness to the event.
...I do solemnly swear... president of the united states... to the best of...
With the new president Johnson on board,
Air Force one takes off from Love Field, Dallas.
Two and a half hours later,
the plane lands at Andrews Airforce Base in Washington,
where president Kennedy set off for Texas yesterday morning.
The casket is removed from the plane and Jackie rides with it into Washington.
She is still wearing the pink, blood soaked dress and stockings,
caked in her husband's blood.
At 6:15pm, president Lyndon Johnson addresses the world for the first time.
This is a sad time for all people.
We have suffered a loss that cannot be waived.
For me, it is a deep, personal tragedy.
I know that the world will share the sorrow that
Mrs Kennedy and her family bear.
I will do my best, that is all I can do.
On Monday next week,
John Kennedy Junior will mark his third birthday,
and on Wednesday,
his sister Caroline, will be six.
Deeply shaken by the experience of the day,
the Newman brothers will sleep on the floor
of their parents room for days afterwards.
The family will never return to Deeley plaza.
Dr Malcolm perry will later move to Washington DC as professor of Surgery.
He returned to Southwestern Medical school in 1996.
Two years after president Kennedy's death,
Malcolm Kilduff left the White House to set up his own news agency.
He later edited a local newspaper, and died in March 2003.
Two days after Kennedy's death, the accused assassin,
Lee Harvey Oswald, is himself gunned down, in a Dallas City Jail.
He dies the day before JFK's funeral.
If a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion,
let both sides join in creating a new endeavour,
where the strong are just and the weak secure,
and the peace preserved.
All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days,
nor in the lives of this administration,
nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet.
But let us begin.
It is 8th August 1974.
At the Geneva peace conference,
negotiations continue on the future of Cyprus.
In Belfast, Northern Ireland,
vehicles are set alight in protest
over the British Government's internment policy.
In Buenos Aries,
Eva peron is sworn in as interim leader of Argentina.
And in Washington DC,
president Richard Nixon is to be impeached
following his role in the Watergate break in.
Ten forty five am.
The White House. Washington.
51 year old Ollie Atkins loads his camera with two rolls of Black and White film.
Ollie has been ordered to get over to the Oval office as soon as possible.
A meeting will take place at eleven o'clock between the president
and the vice president.
Richard Milhouse Nixon.
Thirty seventh president of the United States.
Ollie is the White House's chief photographer.
Today will be the biggest day of his career.
This morning, the White House is under siege.
Political aids and party workers face a major crisis.
The press are camped out everywhere.
Yesterday it was announced that president Nixon is to be impeached.
He would be tried by US senate for high crimes into Richard Nixon
The charges stem from his involvement in a political scandal known as Watergate.
At stake, the presidency itself
- his political career- and even his freedom.
Meanwhile, in the other side of the White House,
in the Nixon Family residence,
Manolo Sanchez is emptying drawers.
He has been valet to Richard Nixon for thirteen years.
His wife Fina is a personal maid to First Lady pat Nixon.
Vice president Gerald Ford arrives,
and Ollie waits with him outside the oval office.
He follows him in a minute later, and the president turns to him.
'How do you want us? ' He asked.
The president is smiling.
Ollie asks him to be more serious.
Nixon and Ford discuss how to respond to the current impeachment crisis.
The president's career has been something of a roller coaster ride,
but right now, it's prospect look bleak,
it seems as if his luck has run out.
He had been a president with a knack of being in the right place
at the right time.
In 1969 he welcomed home America's first men on the moon,
though it was president's Kennedy and Johnston
who had put them there.
But Nixon was also the architect of significant milestones
in cold war diplomacy.
In 1972 he was the first American president to visit China and Moscow.
At the very moment Nixon was enjoying his greatest political achievement,
the seeds of his eventual downfall were being sown.
Reports were emerging of a seemingly insignificant
break-in at the Watergate building in Washington.
On June 17th 1972,
five men were caught installing bugging devices in the offices
of the democratic party in the Watergate complex.
Two of the men had CIA connections.
Another was James McCord, Nixon's republican security chief.
Justice will be pursued fairly, fully, and impartially.
No matter who is involved.
11:45am, and Vice president Ford leaves the Oval office.
He has a momentous day ahead of him.
If Nixon is forced out of power,
then Ford will assume the presidency.
But Nixon has proved his ability to fight his way back
when the political odds stand stacked against him.
Twenty two years ago,
he fought a charge of embezzlement while standing for election.
I don't believe that I ought to quit.
Because I'm not a quitter.
Encouraged by intense coverage by the Washington post,
the FBI began to investigate following the Watergate burglary in 1972.
But Nixon himself seemed untouched by it.
He was re-elected that same year with the biggest landslide in US history.
Just days after Nixon celebrated his re-election,
the five Watergate burglars and two accomplices went to trial
and to prison in January 1973.
Nixon was still at a safe distance
- the hero of the hour for negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam.
Twelve fifteen pM.
Ollie Atkins races ahead of the president, to the executive office building.
Nixon walks across five minutes later.
He's due to meet with his personal lawyer, to discuss his options.
The crowd is building up outside the White House.
Following yesterday's impeachment announcement,
the media are campaigning for, and anticipating, Nixon's resignation.
The political climate remains tense.
Last October,
Vice president Spiro Agnew resigned over charges of tax evasion.
His was not the only resignation of 1973.
Domestic Affairs assistant, John Erlichman,
resigned pending trial for obstruction ofjustice.
And perhaps most damaging of all,
the Attorney General John Mitchell,
apparently the ring leader of the Watergate bugging scandal,
was forced to quit.
We have faced other crises in our history and we have become stronger
by rejecting the easy way out and taking the right way and meeting our challenges.
Our greatness as a nation has been our capacity to do what had to be done.
And we knew our course was right.
For two years,
Nixon has claimed there had been no attempt to prevent the FBI's investigation
into the Watergate break in.
We must maintain the integrity of the White House.
And that integrity must be real, not transparent.
There can be no white wash at the White House.
But a taped conversation has revealed that there was a white wash.
Only a week after the break in,
Nixon and Chief of Staff Bob Holderman,
colluded to block the FBI investigation of Watergate.
This taped conversation is the smoking gun
that finally proves Nixon's involvement in the Watergate cover up.
Richard Nixon is now considering his position.
The president leaves the executive building.
Already facing impeachment and the threat of legal action,
Richard Nixon has decided to resign.
He will be the first American president to resign from office.
The president walks through the corridors of the White House.
The West Wing was strangely quiet.
Desks that had never bee uncluttered were cleared.
Only the steady ring of the phones gave the place a sense of purpose,
a sense of life.
Everything else seemed frozen.
Manolo Sanchez is preparing the president's lunch.
He takes a special pride in it today.
Cottage cheese and pineapple and a glass of milk.
He insists on taking it across to the president personally.
The president is taking a nap.
He skips Manolo's lunch.
Ollie takes a snap of it, feeling that every moment,
every detail, is now historic.
Richard Nixon's last White House meal.
Nixon spends the afternoon locked away - writing his speech.
The resignation speech.
He will broadcast live to the nation at nine this evening.
Raymond Kay-price Jnr is also working on the president's speech.
He's been on the president's staff for seven years
and wrote Nixon's inaugural speech in 1969.
Tonight's address will be typed in large print letters
so the president can read it on television without glasses.
Half an hour later, an hour before air time,
Nixon meets forty six friends and supporters in the cabinet room.
Nixon mentions that he will fly home to California tomorrow,
and he will have the black brief case with the presidential nuclear launch codes
with him until Air Force One lands in California.
The president is unaware that defense secretary James R Slessenger,
a so-called supporter, will have removed the brief case from the air craft.
He has also instructed the joint chiefs of staff
that any order for military movement
from the white house must be counter-signed by him.
The Slessenger protectorate is intended to impede any last minute
military coup by president Nixon.
Ollie Atkins is preparing to photograph the president's speech.
Two rolls, one colour, one black and white.
He is standing in the corridor as Nixon leaves the cabinet room,
saying to his friends 'I just hope I haven't let you down.'
Outside the White House,
the public are anticipating the president's address.
Inside the White House,
the staff gather around television sets,
as they await the president's speech.
The president is taken to a room adjacent to the Oval office
for make up prior to the broadcast at nine.
He remembers refusing makeup for the presidential candidacy debate
with Kennedy back in 1960.
He looked terrible.
Some still say that is why he lost that year.
We know what peace demands.
We will keep America the strongest nation in the world.
And we will couple that strength with firm diplomacy.
The president knows he has destroyed himself.
He installed the secret White House taping system
that revealed his complicity in the Watergate cover-up.
He recorded himself planning it with his chief of staff a week
after the 1972 break in.
The president was forced to release the tape of this only two weeks ago.
It's evidence that he lied and it could yet send him to prison.
Those acts could not be defended.
Those who are guilty of abuse must be punished.
Chief of Staff Bob Holderman resigned last autumn over Watergate
and now stands to go to jail for obstruction ofjustice and perjury.
Nixon could face the same fate at the hands of
special prosecutor James Schwarsky.
'Some of the best writing has been done in jail,'
Nixon quips to his lawyer, masking a real fear of prison.
To most of us,
Watergate has come to mean notjust a burglary
and a bugging of party headquarters,
but a whole series of acts that seem to represent an abuse of trust.
Nixon is overwrought.
The makeup girl is asked to leave while he regains his composure.
8:58pM.
The president sits down behind the desk in the Oval office.
Ollie usually takes snaps before or after a speech,
but wants it real and live this time.
Nixon reluctantly agrees.
As the shutter clicks repeatedly,
Nixon is very nervous,
and makes jokes and comments that no one reacts to.
Without realising it,
he is wearing the same suit and tie that he was wearing
when the Watergate burglary took place in 1972.
Manolo is in the kitchen with the staff watching television.
All over the White House staff gather around the television
to witness the president's historic address.
AT exactly 9:01 pM president Nixon addresses the nation for the last time.
In all the decisions I have made in my public life I have always tried to do
what was best for the nation.
A hundred and ten million people across America are watching.
Forty million are listening to the radio.
Throughout the speech I looked down at the pages of the text
but I did not really read it.
That speech was truly in my heart.
I have never been a quitter.
To leave office before my term is completed
is abhorrent to every instinct in my body.
Ollie shifts onto the porch
and photographs the president through the window,
in the middle of his speech.
Nixon does not acknowledge any guilt over Watergate,
but says he would be too distracted by the scandal to be an effective leader.
...therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
Vice president Ford shall be sworn in as president...
9:16pm.
Nixon finishes the speech without breaking down.
He is sweating profusely,
so much so that his suit is wringing wet.
He jokes with the TV crew who stand respectfully silent around him.
The president hands out old election souvenirs to the camera operators.
Well, that's what's left boys, he says.
The president heads back over to the family residence to be with his family.
There were pictures yesterday evening of a similar gathering.
Tonight Ollie has not been invited.
Outside, the crowd shout 'jail to the cheat'.
The family departs,
and Manolo brings the president bacon and eggs in the Lincoln sitting room.
He leaves the room,
but hovers near in case the president needs him.
Nixon starts making phone calls.
Meanwhile, two of the Watergate prosecution team are preparing
a formal recommendation for Nixon's arrest following his departure tomorrow.
In any organisation,
the man at the top must bear the responsibility.
That responsibility therefore belongs here, in this office.
I accept it.
Nixon awakes thinking it's 4:30.
Two hours early,
he gets up anyway to fix himself a snack.
He is surprised to find Manolo already up,
and the two men quickly discover
that the president's watch must have stopped during the night.
Time is still ticking for Richard Nixon.
Nixon is working on the morning address to the White House staff.
Chief of Staff General Hal Haig enters the Lincoln room
with the president's resignation letter.
Surrounded by the memoirs of past presidents,
Nixon signs his name.
He has been president for just over two thousand days.
While Nixon completes his final duties,
his fate is about to be determined.
Special prosecutor Leon Jaworski receives a memo detailing
the reasons to prosecute the president.
To preserve the integrity of the criminal justice system,
a person should not be allowed to trade in the abused office in return for immunity.
Mr Nixon's aides are to be prosecuted for the same offences.
Mr Jaworski agrees to consider prosecuting Nixon.
Manolo fights back the tears as the first family arrive in the lift
where the president will speak.
When the marine band strikes up in the main hall,
pat Nixon is upset to learn that TV cameras are present.
Her husband says he authorized it.
Manolo remains at the back of the room.
Ollie Atkins and his team photograph
the president's final remarks to the white house staff.
The emotion in the room was overpowering.
For several minutes I cannot quiet the applause.
After I started to talk I began to look around.
I think the record should show that
this is one of those spontaneous things that
we always arrange whenever the president comes into speak.
By now I am fighting back a flood tide of emotion
Last night it had been the formal speech for history.
But now I had the chance to speak personally and intimately to these people
who had worked so hard for me,
and who I had let down so badly.
There was no mention of Watergate.
For the first time,
Nixon wears his glasses in front of the public.
He quotes his hero Theodore Roosevelt directly from the page.
Nixon uses the example of Roosevelt's resilience
after losing his wife as an encouragement to his own followers.
This is in his diary, he said
...when my heart's dearest died,
the light went from my life forever.
Always remember - others may hate you.
But those who hate you don't win, until you hate them.
And then you destroy yourself.
I want to say to each one of you that not only will we remember you
and be grateful to you,
but always you will be in our hearts,
and you will be in our prayers.
Thank you very much.
Everybody else was fighting back tears and trying to keep from breaking down.
But at the end of it?
When he made the thumbs up signal?
He looked remarkably like he did when he was on the campaign trail.
Ollie hurries to where the helicopter is waiting in front of the crowds.
When he takes off with the president his staff will take pictures on the ground.
Richard and pat Nixon are escorted to the helicopter, Marine One,
by Gerald and Betty Ford.
The memory of that scene for me is like a frame of film,
forever frozen at that moment.
The red carpet, the green lawn, the White House, the leaden sky,
the starched uniforms and polished shoes of the honour guard.
Nixon gives his characteristic victory salute to the press and staff
and the helicopter takes them to Andrews Air Force base,
where the president boards air force one for the last time.
The one line resignation letter is presented to Henry Kissinger,
who formally counter-signs it.
Noon.
Nixon is in Air Force One sipping a martini.
His resignation is now effective.
He is no longer president.
Back in Washington,
his chair is removed from the Oval office as all traces
of president Nixon are erased.
The office is prepared for the new president.
Exactly three minutes later,
Gerald Ford takes the oath in the White House
and becomes the thirty eighth president of the United States.
Simultaneously,
Air Force One loses its official name and becomes simply 'Spirit of 76'.
Richard Nixon's plane heads for California and exile.
Awaiting him is a roomful of flowers - sent by well wishers.
Ollie Atkins takes a picture - his last as official photographer.
Almost immediately,
Gerald Ford replaced Ollie Atkins with his own photographer to Richard Nixon.
Ollie left the White House a few weeks later,
to become vice president of a publishing company.
Manolo Sanchez remained with the Nixon's until they left California in 1980.
Soon after, he returned to Spain.
In February 1975,
Bob Holderman went to prison.
In total, almost thirty people were imprisoned in connection with Watergate.
Richard Nixon remained in California with his family.
Jaworski did not act on the prosecution memo,
but many still demanded that Richard Nixon should be jailed.
In September 1974,
president Ford used his position to publically pardon
the former president for all offences against the United States.
In accepting his pardon, Nixon finally accepted his guilt.
To have served in this office,
is to have held a very personal sense of friendship with each and every American.
And leaving it, I do so with this prayer.
May Gods grace be with you in all the days ahead.