Watergate - Or: How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President

Who does not know the famous images of Richard Nixon raising both arms to give a double victory sign? The last time he made this gesture was after his resignation in 1974, which he justified with the words: "the interests of America first". This had been preceded by two years of tantalisingly slow revelations about a barely imaginable network of criminal machinations by the White House. The trigger was the break-in at Democratic Party headquarters in a building complex called "Watergate". The story of this disclosure, much of which took place in public, has been told many times, also on the big screen. Since then, however, some crucial audio documents previously classified as secret have now been declassified, giving Oscar winner Charles Ferguson cause to reconstruct the case in its entirety. This four-hour montage of TV excerpts, interviews with contemporaries and re-enactments of tape recordings from the Oval Office takes on the momentum of a thriller. What emerges is an almost Shakespearean web of intrigue, lies and betrayal, conducted for, against and not least by a man who was not prepared to lose and who deeply despised the establishment.