The Watergate Caper: Richard Nixon and the Death of the American Dream poster

"Others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself" - President Richard Nixon

The Watergate Caper: Richard Nixon and the Death of the American Dream

0.0 / 10 0.0 2026 1h 45m
HistoryDocumentaryCrime

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.

Directed by Shane O'Sullivan

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VISUAL NOTES

Stills from The Watergate Caper: Richard Nixon and the Death of the American Dream

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CAST

The people behind the story

Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon(archive footage)
Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg(archive footage)
Richard Helms
Richard Helms(archive footage)
Harry Shearer
Harry Shearer(voice)
G. Gordon Liddy
G. Gordon Liddy(archive footage)
E. Howard Hunt
E. Howard Hunt(archive footage)
Robert Redford
Robert Redford(archive footage)
Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty(archive footage)
Curated collection

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