Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 so he wouldn't be impeached and put on trial in the Senate. Three years later David Frost asked him whether a president can break the law, and he answered in one line: "When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." It was May 1977. Nixon had been paid $600,000 plus a share of the profits to sit down with a British talk show host, the big networks wouldn't buy it, so Frost sold it station by station. More than 45 million Americans watched the first night, a record for a political interview. In the video below Frost asks about the Huston Plan, Nixon's 1970 program of break-ins and mail opening aimed at American citizens. Nixon sits with his chin on his hand for almost two seconds before he says it. Frost asks, "By definition?" Nixon says "Exactly, exactly," then explains that anyone who carries out a president's order can't be breaking the law, because otherwise "they're in an impossible position." His chief of staff, his top domestic adviser and his attorney general all went to prison over Watergate. Nixon never stood trial, because Gerald Ford had pardoned him on September 8, 1974, a month after he left the White House. Thirty years later Hollywood turned this exchange into Frost/Nixon, and it got five Oscar nominations. Was he wrong, or just 50 years early?