At that point in time: The inside story of the Senate Watergate Committee

by Fred Thompson

Book by Thompson, Fred D

Genres: Nonfiction, History

275 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Fred Thompson was an American politician, actor, attorney, lobbyist, columnist, 2008 presidential candidate and radio host. As an attorney, he helped lead the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Thompson, a Republican, served in the United States Senate representing Tennessee from 1994 to 2003.

As an actor, Thompson appeared in a number of movies and television shows as well as in commercials. In 2002 Thompson joined the cast of the long-running NBC television series Law & Order for a five-year run.

Thompson died after a recurrence of lymphoma. He was married to Jeri Kehn, with whom he has two children. Thompson and his first wife had three children: Fred "Tony" Thompson Jr., Daniel and Elizabeth. Elizabeth died in 2002.

Reviews

[Robert A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boring. It read like a text book. Luckily I didn't pay much for it. It was also filled with mundane facts that no one really needed to read unless you have insomnia

[Jonathan Mandell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Granted this is an obscure book about the Watergate scandal -- the last time somebody took out the copy I got from the library was in 1978 -- but it is surely the only book about the Watergate scandal written by a current candidate for president of the United States. Fred Dalton Thompson, who had been a campaign manager for Senator Howard Baker, was an unknown, 30-year-old former assistant district attorney for Nashville when Baker picked him to be the minority counsel for the Senate Watergate committee. This book, written in 1975, is nowhere near as tedious as I expected it to be, largely because the man has a good ear for dialogue, and clearly had kept a detailed journal of the backstage maneuverings in the committee.
There are some little-known gems here -- did you know that George Steinbrenner was investigated by the Watergate committee?! (Thompson doesn't give details). Thompson admits that the Republicans on the committee "were trying to dredge up whatever we could about Democratic presidential candidates" (page 255), and there are arcane chapters attempting to present evidence that both the CIA and the Democrats were somehow implicated in the Watergate scandal, though neither case is made very convincingly.
Given what he's doing 32 years later, there is an interesting passage near the end about Nixon. "To me, Nixon's career and his policies seemed to evidence an all-too-familiar American political phenomenon -- a man consumed by the desire, the need, for elective office, and the willingness to adopt the tactic and position to win. In him, as with so many others, I could find no underlying philosophy by which all things could be measured."
One caveat -- recent news reports have questioned Thompson's account of his Watergate days, claiming that he was keeping the Nixon administration informed of the backstage doings of the committee more than he lets on...Nixon reportedly referred to him as "dumb as hell...but he's friendly." None of this, of course, is in the book.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fred Dalton Thompson's At That Point in Time is pretty much your textbook Watergate memoir, despite Thompson's peripheral involvement. The future actor, Senator and presidential candidate first came to public attention as the Ervin Committee's minority counsel, notably asking Alexander Butterfield to confirm Nixon's taping system. Let Thompson's book stand for an entire risible genre: in stiff, workmanlike prose he burnishes dubious actions with misplaced righteousness. Leaking files to Pat Buchanan and other Nixon aides isn't deceit but a noble leveling of the playing field. Sam Ervin, Samuel Dash and Howard Baker are nice guys, but Senators Inouye and Weickler are liberal assholes. Echoing Bob Haldeman's The Ends of Power, he posits an FBI-CIA plot to frame Nixon, because they were jealous of the Plumbers. A self-serving curio with fleeting interest, as you'd expect.