By Jill Wine-Banks
Memoir
February 2020
Henry Holt and Co.
ISBN: 978-1250244321
A young prosecutor in 1973 prepares for the most important questions she has ever presented in court. The witness is angry at being forced to testify. But her information is essential to the case, to try to make sense of what happened.
It's Rose Mary Woods, Richard Nixon's secretary, on the stand to testify about the infamous 18 1/2-minute gap in a crucial tape recorded by Nixon. Getting ready to question her is Jill Wine-Banks. Woods is even more unhappy when she is caught lying as she demonstrates what supposedly happened to create the gap in the tape.
As Wine-Banks recounts in her memoir, The Watergate Girl, the crowd in the courtroom was stunned. Even more stunning to her, when she proposed that Woods demonstrate how she said the gap was created in her office, because what she said did not happen in the courtroom demonstration, attorneys for Woods and Nixon did not object.
Wine-Banks was one of three trial lawyers, and the only woman, on the Watergate special prosecutor task force for obstruction of justice and cover-ups.
As she recounts how she got to this moment, and how complex her feelings were about dealing with Woods, Wine-Banks also describes what life was like for a professional woman in the early 1970s. She shows how being hard-working and smart could pay off, but also the drawbacks to outshining any man who couldn't handle it. Unfortunately, one of those men was her first husband.
Whether it's personal or professional, Wine-Banks demonstrates that her first love was writing. She went to law school to gain gravitas in what she would be considered as eligible in covering in journalism. When she stayed with the law, journalism lost a powerful voice. But her background does show that she is a natural for what she is doing now as a television commentator.
Although her memoir does touch on these other things, and she gives a quick rundown of what she has been doing in the corporate world since the Watergate era, it is that period that is the focus of this book. The larger-than-life characters in the prosecutor's office and the political world, the suspense in not knowing what was going to happen next -- especially after the Saturday Night Massacre -- the relentless work schedule and the pressure to make sure all i's were dotted and t's crossed are all recounted vividly.
Wine-Banks has written a timely memoir that brings back the Watergate days for those who lived through that time, and provides an elegant primer to those who don't know what all the fuss was about.
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