Obstruction of justice, the specter of impeachment, sexism at work, shocking revelations: Jill Wine-Banks takes us inside her trial by fire as a Watergate prosecutor. It was a time, much like today, when Americans feared for the future of their democracy, and women stood up for equal treatment. At the crossroads of the Watergate scandal and the women’s movement was a young lawyer named Jill Wine … lawyer named Jill Wine Volner (as she was then known), barely thirty years old and the only woman on the team that prosecuted the highest-ranking White House officials. Called “the mini-skirted lawyer” by the press, she fought to receive the respect accorded her male counterparts–and prevailed.
In The Watergate Girl, Jill Wine-Banks opens a window on this troubled time in American history. It is impossible to read about the crimes of Richard Nixon and the people around him without drawing parallels to today’s headlines. The book is also the story of a young woman who sought to make her professional mark while trapped in a failing marriage, buffeted by sexist preconceptions, and harboring secrets of her own. Her house was burgled, her phones were tapped, and even her office garbage was rifled through.
At once a cautionary tale and an inspiration for those who believe in the power of justice and the rule of law, The Watergate Girl is a revelation about our country, our politics, and who we are as a society.
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The chronicling of history is almost always fascinating, but never more so than when the chronicler was a participant, fully engaged at the time and in the unfolding story.
For many of us, Watergate was viewed from a distance, as, deeply immersed in our own young lives, we paid selective attention and without the benefit of social media and the Internet’s ubiquitous news coverage. Still, it was a profound moment of political revelation, igniting national awareness that even the vaunted halls of the White House could be corrupted by corrupt people, a corrupt president.
I have always enjoyed watching Jill Wine-Banks’ segments on cable news discussing past and current political events, and, knowing her history as a young prosecutor during the Watergate trials, was thrilled to hear she had a book coming out on the topic. I was not disappointed.
In looking back at that more overtly patriarchal time, it’s clear that the inclusion of a young female attorney at the prosecutor’s table was both astonishing and brilliant, and I found Wine-Banks’ perspective from that unique point of view to be enlivening. Her detailed but often breezy style of writing brings the gravitas and seriousness of the events into very human terms.
Whether discussing the complications and controversies of her personal life and how they impacted both her advancing career and her emotional well-being, or detailing the minutia of balancing her youth and attractiveness against entrenched sexism and political pushback in the arena of a White House trial for corruption, she makes the events and sometimes arcane legal challenges of the moment tangible and understood. I particularly enjoyed the comprehensive descriptions of her dealings with the notorious Rose Mary Woods, digging into specifics of both the woman’s personality and relationships, as well as her many years as a defender and protector of Nixon, right down to the infamous “18-minute gap” in his iconic tapes.
Seeing this historical moment through the eyes of a woman who had a unique and clearly respected seat at the table offers refreshing and fascinating perspective to a story that’s been covered by countless writers, mostly men. Seeing it in the context of that particular era, both culturally and in Wine-Banks’ life, not only gives it rich, colorful perspective, but brings home, as we view it from here and now, just how repetitive history can be.
Jill Wine-Banks, the MCNBC legal analyst, has written a memoir about her role as the only woman prosecutor on the Watergate legal team, a story that offers a different lens on the familiar tale, as well as how she was able to soar in a once-in-a-lifetime career spotlight, despite being routinely undermined in 1973 as a “lady lawyer.”
Watergate is still catnip to everyone from political junkies to casual observers, who all may feel they they’ve heard the story, but they don’t know the half of it. This page-turning book is both fascinating and revelatory. All the Presidents Men may have been the story of the journalists who found out what happened; The Watergate Girl is the story of the legal team who had to figure out how to prove it. Both stories are equally absorbing: Woodward and Bernstein may have had Deep Throat, but The Watergate Girl has Nixon’s secret tapes. And, the Perry Mason moment of Rose Mary Wood’s stretch, when, in an audacious move, Jill catches Nixon’s secretary in an elaborate lie about the missing eighteen and a half minutes of tape.
Coming out so close to Trump’s recent impeachment trial, The Watergate Girl also makes it easy to compare and contrast how history has repeated itself.
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An intimate, powerful personal story. Jill Wine-Banks is not afraid to share and tell all her experiences and opinions. And I promise you she does.
Such a wonderful book! Jill Wine-Banks makes the Watergate scandal seem as current as today. She has written a fascinating, intimate account of her role as a young assistant special prosecutor ― and also her #MeToo experiences in a series of groundbreaking jobs.
Come with Jill Wine-Banks back to a time when women were ‘girls,’ accomplished professionals were mistaken for prostitutes, and a determined figure that one headline identified as ‘The Leggiest Watergate Lawyer’ rose above it all do something heroic: bring down a criminal president. A riveting and wonderfully crafted memoir for our time.
What Jill Wine-Banks did in the early 1970s is the stuff of legend: She got the goods on a corrupt president and used the power of the law to call him and his henchmen to account. The Watergate Girl tells an inspiring story for our troubled times ― bravely, wittily, and wisely, with piercing insight and bracing literary verve.