"Had he destroyed the tapes, I'm convinced he would have finished his second term" A Conversation About Watergate With Tim Naftali

With the Bark Off: Conversations on the American Presidency

Tim Naftali, who teaches history at New York University, is one of the nation’s most accomplished scholars of American foreign policy and the Cold War. His numerous books include studies of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet foreign policy, and U.S. counterterrorism policy. He’s held teaching positions over the years at Yale University, the University of Hawaii and the University of Virginia.

But Tim Naftali is also one of the nation’s leading experts on the Watergate scandal, which erupted in 1972 with the attempted burglary of the Democratic National Committee Office in Washington’s Watergate complex. As Director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum from 2007 to 2011, Tim was responsible for conducting numerous interviews with key players in the Watergate affair, redesigning the Library’s exhibit on the topic, and opening new archival materials connected to the scandal. Tim joined us to talk about Watergate and its meanings half a century later.