Jill Wine-Banks

At the time that Jill Wine-Banks was starting to serve as a specisal prosecutor in the Watergate scandal, I had a one year son and was in graduate school. I have memories of watching the unfolding of the White House, starting from news the break-in of the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. I remember wondering about the motive was! The nation watched the hearings in the Senate like they did the Roots serial in 1977. I felt lucky that I could watch most of the hearings due to my class schedule, but there were always questions that remained unanswered. But now I know the answers from The Watergate Girl. One of them was "Why wasn't President Richard Nixon indicted?" Now I know who was responsible for that decision.

I enjoyed learning more about the author, particularly that she had wanted to be a journalist originally and did not adjust to being in law school at the start. At the same time that she was trying to decide on whether to be an attorney or a journalist, I was sitting in on a few law schppl classes and I decide not to enroll. I was accepted but I thought I was not for me. The author left for a while and later returned and in a way found herself in the trial proceedings part of law. It turned out that she was good thinking on her feet. It was her skillful questionin g of Rose Mary Wood, President Nixon's secretary that made it evident that the missing 18 1/2 minutes of the Oval Office Conversation could not have been accidently erased hy her. Oddly enough, a couple years later I had to transcipt verbal notes by a psychiatrist and I found out how tedious it was to go hack and forth on the notes when the dialogue is clear.

I did like learning about the author's personal life during her work as a prosecutor. I was shocked that someone had broken into her home then and it must have been very stressful that her marriage which was off to a very bad start got worse. It was terrible that she had an abusive marriage. Her telling of it makes me trust that her telling of the story was honest and sometimes very painful.… (más)

Jill Wine-Banks has been back in the public eye lately. It is particularly valuable to have eyewitnesses to both previous events and current events, sharing their wisdom and comparisons with the rest of us, particularly when they are skilled professionals trained in the law and focused on facts. This is not to dismiss historians of any kind, political or otherwise, since hopefully they have studied the documents available to support their conclusions. When there are no documents, or when evidence has deliberately been destroyed, tampered with or altered, eye witness accounts are of particular value.
The book starts off slowly with detailed descriptions of the major characters (except for the largest elephant in the room, Richard Nixon). Those of us who were alive at the time remember the long grueling summer when there was nothing on the television except for coverage of the proceedings and nothing in the newspapers, either. We had no internet to distract us or offer relief from the relentless discomfort of watching a national spectacle of the worst kind. We remember the names, if not the faces, and Wine-Banks fleshes out their appearance and her assessment of their individual personalities and character. An entire series of books could be written about Rose Woods (I remember her as Rose Mary Woods), the villain/victim/disciple at the center of the storm. It is still inconclusive as to the actual role she played in history; she and President Nixon took this knowledge with them to the grave.
Of more interest to me were Wine-Banks’ personal battles. This very high profile member of the team had to walk the tightrope and do her job beneath a spotlight in a time when her adversaries, the judges, the press and even some of her colleagues were much more interested in the length of her skirt hems than in the considerable skills and invaluable insight she brought to the task of saving American democracy. She does include narratives of her own personal journey outside the courtroom. Though most young women do not know the names or even acknowledge those who pushed the doors open for them to have the careers they have today, many would find this book enlightening and an encouraging gauge of progress, given what these first pioneers had to endure on the road to the future.
I found this story well worth reading and my only issue is the breathy, romance-novel style which does not appeal to me personally. This said, it is a very timely book and I would encourage both women and men to take a trip in the time machine and take a front-row seat in Judge Sirica’s courtroom.… (más)