1. Author Profile on Geoff Shepard
Geoff spent the three summers of law school working in Litton Industries’
corporate law department and very much looked forward to a career as a
corporate lawyer.
Fate, however, intervened and he was selected a White House Fellow upon
graduation from Harvard Law School. He spent his Fellowship year as an
aide to Paul Volcker, who was then undersecretary for monetary affairs at
the Treasury Department. Shepard then joined the White House Domestic
Council under its founding director, John Ehrlichman. He stayed for almost
five years, ultimately becoming one of four associate directors. His scope of
responsibility focused on domestic issues for the four core cabinet
departments: State, Justice, Treasury and Defense.
Fate’s smile turned into a frown, Watergate intervened, and Shepard
demanded a place on President Nixon’s Watergate defense team. He quickly
became principal deputy to J. Fred Buzhardt, Nixon’s chief defense lawyer.
In that position, Shepard helped to transcribe the White House tapes, ran
the document rooms holding the seized files of Bob Haldeman, John
Ehrlichman and John Dean, and staffed Presidential counselors Bryce Harlow
and Dean Birch on Watergate-related issues.
It all ended rather badly, and Geoff and his family soon left Washington to
pursue his original career goal of becoming a corporate lawyer. He spent
over thirty years in the insurance industry, first with the Insurance Company
of North America (which merged with Connecticut General in 1981 to form
CIGNA Corporation), then with Reliance Insurance Company, and finally with
AXA-Equitable.
But Shepard’s personal interests never strayed far from those initial
experiences in the Nation’s capital. Beginning in 1977, he began arranging
and hosting annual reunions of the Nixon/Ford White House policy planning
staffs (principally members of the Domestic Council, the National Security
Council and the Office of Management and Budget). Beginning in 2010,
Geoff began producing a series of documentaries, called Nixon Legacy
Forums, that focus on various public policy initiatives of the Nixon
Administration. The programs are co-sponsored by the Richard Nixon
Foundation and the National Archives – and are usually broadcast on C-
Span’s American History channel.
Interestingly, the Nixon White House is the only one that holds regularly
scheduled annual reunions – and the only one that has produced
documentaries about its public policy initiatives.

2. Finally, there’s Watergate – Shepard’s life-long passion. He has always been
troubled by the manner in which President Nixon was driven from office and
his senior aides were imprisoned. Beginning in 2002, when he discovered
that the surviving records of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force could
become available for review at the National Archives, he has spent hundreds
of hours researching and documenting how the Nixon administration was
taken down by highly partisan prosecutions of President Nixon and his senior
aides. Shepard’s investigations have led to the three books described below.
Much more about Shepard’s research and writings can be found on his
website at www.geoffshepard.com