SHORT THREAD: As you've probably seen me mention, my next book WATERGATE: A NEW HISTORY comes out next week. I've been asked a lot why tackle such a seemingly well-known subject—but the truth is you only *think* you know the Watergate story.... amazon.com/Watergate-Hist…
1) I've spent the last few years diving into this chapter, the full story of Watergate is much wilder, weirder, and zany than the gauzy Technicolor version of "All The President's Men" that we're used to—the heroes aren't who you think they are, and neither are the villains....
2) The full Watergate story feels similar in some ways to this Trump era—it's a shorthand umbrella actually encompassing a dozen distinct scandals, with vaguely overlapping players and motives. Some of the scandals on their own would rank as the worst in modern politics...:
3) There's the Chennault Affair, the Huston plan, the Kissinger wiretaps and Cambodia bombing, the Pentagon Papers, the Dita Beard memo, the Vesco donation, milk-price fixing, campaign “rat-fucking,” Spiro Agnew’s bribery, the FBI’s COINTELPRO ops, & some presidential tax fraud.
4) Despite all written on Watergate over decades, new revelations have changed the story dramatically. My book is the first soup-to-nuts narrative in a quarter-century, the first since the revelation of Deep Throat's identity (a fact alone that changes much of the story!)...
... the first with access to the full Nixon tapes, the first with full knowledge of Nixon and Johnson's role in the Chennault Affair, and the first written since @benjaminwittes and others helped force the release of the Nixon "Impeachment Road Map." ...
5) Taken all together, it's much weirder and wilder tale than the popular history of Watergate we all think we know. You're going to be blown away by how strange—and how criminal—the whole thing actually was. But don't just take my word for it... bookshop.org/books/watergat…
6) @KirkusReviews (starred): "A half-century after the Watergate break-in, this anniversary history becomes the standard-setting base line for all future ones... [a] brisk, riveting, compulsively readable, comprehensive, up-to-date narrative of the entire tangled affair" ....
7) @rickperlstein, inimitable author of Nixonland: "Garrett Graff aptly calls Watergate a 'Gordian knot of scandal.' This comprehensive, searching, yet elegant book untangles it more completely than any attempt so far. I learned a lot!" ....
8) @KBAndersen, host of "Nixon at War": "Garrett Graff's fresh chronicle of [Watergate] inflection point is lucid, enlightening and indispensable."
9) If you want to preorder a signed copy of WATERGATE from @phoenixbooksvt, we have some special button packets—original Nixon campaign buttons and custom, fun WATERGATE ones. Order here: phoenixbooks.biz/garrettgraff

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More from @vermontgmg

Jan 2
2021 READING THREAD: Before this holiday weekend ends, here's my list of my favorite #GMGReads from the past year. This was one of the worst years of reading, with most of my reading time going to "work" books & research, but I managed to squeeze at least 12 excellent books....
I read almost no fiction this year, beyond a few Gerald Seymour thrillers and Rex Stout mysteries, and so my list is all nonfiction—the common theme ends up being history and reportage that surprised and impressed me. In no particular order, here they are:
1) THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED, by Philip Zelikow — this story of trying to make peace in World War I was just the best kind of history, something that felt totally fresh and interesting and where I kept turning the pages not knowing the twists and turns ahead.
Read 19 tweets
Dec 1, 2021
THREAD: Excited to launch this new @Scribd Original out into the world today. It's is my first foray as a writer into fiction—or, really, what we're calling "speculative nonfiction." DRAGONFIRE is based on a real-life terror threat in the tense days after 9/11....
1) I reported on this incident in my FBI history THE THREAT MATRIX and have always been fascinated by it, partly because we still don't really know what happened. Here's what we do know:
2) In October 2001, the US government received intel from a secret CIA source known as "Dragonfire" that al-Qaeda had smuggled a Hiroshima-size nuclear device into New York City. The plot seemed a worst-case scenario just weeks after 9/11....
Read 11 tweets
Sep 27, 2021
I can’t believe how bad the media’s coverage of this week’s legislative agenda is. Total, contextless focus on cost without any meaningful coverage of what the bills would do and what policies are included. Let’s debate the policy, not the dollars.
There are dumbs ways to spend $3T (hi Pentagon budget!) and ways that will transform lives, enable innovation, and unlock economic success and equity. So which America do we want to be? Focus the debate on that question, not some random meaningless dollar amount.
I mean it’s not that anyone even bothers to ask how we pay for this:
Read 4 tweets
Sep 11, 2021
THREAD: Today marks the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Throughout the day, I’ll be chronologically tweeting quotes from my book THE ONLY PLANE IN THE SKY: An Oral History of 9/11, following Americans as they experience that day.... garrettgraff.com/books/the-only…
We’re also collecting stories from the #my911story hashtag, as people share their own experiences of that day. I’ll be sharing selected tweets and others’ stories throughout the day.
(If you don’t want to see these quotes all day, just mute this thread.)
Read 95 tweets
Aug 28, 2021
THREAD: The first episodes of my 9/11 podcast LONG SHADOW are out now. My goal with this eight-episode series is to try to tell the story of that day for a new generation as well as make sense of some of the questions that linger: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lon…
In some ways, this podcast from @longlead and @goatrodeo, is the culmination of all the reporting and writing I've done on 9/11 and its aftermath over two decades—including five books where that tragic day serves as the hinge of modern history.
The first episode deals with the rescue and collapse of the World Trade Center—an unprecedented and unimagined catastrophe, the scene of some of that day's bravest heroism and greatest tragedy: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why…
Read 5 tweets

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