Watergate: Washington DC on 17th June 1972, the Watergate office building. Five burglars broke in that night to photograph documents and plant listening devices at the Democratic National Committee headquarters based in the building ... The burglars were caught redhanded ... The White House Plumbers were working on behalf of President Richard Nixon’s election campaign. America’s Book of Secrets: Presidential Cover-Ups s2e7, H2 2014
‘What did the president know and when did he know it?’ ibid. Democrats in Senate
Had he orchestrated a cover-up? ibid.
The truth about the Watergate break-ins started to become known. It became a national scandal of historic proportions. Alan Hart, Media Morphs II: Conspiracy, producer Hossein Setareh, Edge Media 2012
What was at stake in Watergate was not merely as it were the right of those at the top or in power to line their pockets or appoint their friends … High corruption of police and other federal properties as if they were private property … There was an attempt to institutionalise the use of agencies of the state as a private and political police force. Christopher Hitchens vs William Buckley, Firing Line interview December 1984, ‘Is There a Liberal Crack-Up?’
So many of the professional foreign policy establishment, and so many of their hangers-on among the lumpen academics and journalists, had become worried by the frenzy and paranoia of the Nixonian Vietnam policy that consensus itself was threatened. Ordinary intra-mural and extra-mural leaking, to such duly constituted bodies as Congress, was getting out of hand. It was Kissinger who inaugurated the second front or home front of the war; illegally wire-tapping the telephones even of his own staff and of his journalistic clientele. (I still love to picture the face of Henry Brandon when he found out what his hero had done to his telephone.) This war against the enemy within was the genesis of Watergate; a nexus of high crime and misdemeanour for which Kissinger himself, as Isaacson wittily points out, largely evaded blame by taking to his ‘shuttle’ and staying airborne. Incredibly, he contrived to argue in public with some success that if it were not for democratic distempers like the impeachment process his own selfless, necessary statesmanship would have been easier to carry out. This is true, but not in the way that he got newspapers like Rees-Mogg’s Times to accept. Christopher Hitchens
The James Bond plot that took place in Washington – they found these people sneaking in with eavesdropping devices and one of them is a CIA man. Dick Cavett’s Watergate, Dick interviewing Ted Kennedy
‘There’s nothing new about this – and in frankly, what can be gained – nothing. We know every caper they can put; they know everything we can pull.’ ibid. Barry Goldwater
‘He invited crises and that he couldn’t stand normalcy.’ ibid. Kissinger
They still don’t get it. They don’t realise that there was some larger questions at issue. ibid. Cavett
Watergate, the worst political scandal in American history, finally destroys Richard Nixon. The president who opened new doors to Russia and China, quits the White House in disgrace. He resigned rather than face impeachment for ordering illegal acts. Two years before he resigned, the president’s re-election committee had broken into his opponents’ headquarters in search of damaging intelligence. The break-in team were caught, and the White House launched the cover-up that ruined Nixon. Nixon’s closest advisors now give evidence that the Watergate break-in was just one in a series of crimes instigated by the president himself. Watergate I: Break-In, BBC 1994
‘When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.’ ibid. Nixon
In May 1970 President Nixon’s America was in uproar. He had won the election, pledged to end the war in Vietnam but now he escalated it. Thousands of demonstrators lay siege to the White House. ibid.
These new powers to spy on Americans at home were in fact outside the law. ibid.
Nixon decided the White House would have to do its own dirty work. ibid.
The New York Times [Sunday June 13th 1971] led with the Pentagon Papers, a massive leak of top-secret documents tracing three decades of growing US involvement in Vietnam. These were the secrets of earlier administrations. ibid.
Two years later Dean would bring down the Nixon administration by exposing its conspiracies, including the one that was now brought to him. ibid.
The man Nixon wanted punished was Daniel Ellsberg who he feared had opened the floodgates. ibid.
Instead of a few ex-cops, he [Nixon] now set up a full-time unit within the White House. Their first task was to deal with Elsberg. ibid.
Gordon Liddy set up a double-act with Howard Hunt that President Nixon would come to regret. ibid.
Not Traceable meant that others would have to do the break-in [Ellsberg’s psychotherapist). Howard Hunt knew where to recruit them. It was the tenth anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA’s attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. In Miami a group of Cuban exiles were sought out by their former CIA commander, Howard Hunt. ibid.
Liddy was impatient to get on with his intelligence operation … Liddy promptly produced a million dollar plan … Liddy presented his plan codenamed Gemstone. ibid.
Larry O’Brien’s offices as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee now became the key target of the bugging operation. It was located in the huge luxury complex called The Watergate. ibid.
To photograph the documents Liddy rehired the Cubans who had handled the Ellsberg job. ibid.
Three plainclothes policemen discovered the break-in team crouching under some desks and ordered them to come out with their hands up. ibid.
While Nixon was away, five of his men were arrested in Washington. They were caught red-handed inside Democracy Party headquarters in a building called The Watergate. The same team had already committed a succession of crimes for the White House. The President and his inner circle saw no option but to organise a cover-up. Watergate II: Cover-Up
The Watergate break-in had been planned, paid for and executed by Nixon’s election campaign committee. ibid.
The newly sworn-in attorney general ordered that Watergate should proceed like any other case. Yet he sat on the information that could have cracked it open on the first day. The chief law enforcement officer of the United States was turning a blind eye to the cover-up. ibid.
For Nixon’s men keeping Watergate away from the president was going to be a nightmare. ibid.
‘It was the most foolish, useless political caper of all time.’ ibid. Nixon, interview Frost
When Dean got back to his office he discovered the crime he would have to cover up didn’t end with the campaign committee. The guilt extended far into the White House. ibid.
On Day 3 of Watergate the White House was already up to its neck in the obstruction of justice. There would be no going back. ibid.
To keep her from talking about Watergate, Martha Mitchell was forcibly sedated and held incommunicado. ibid.
The President’s conversations with his aides which were automatically captured by his secret taping system proved that he devoted hour after hour to Watergate. ibid.
Someone else who could lead the FBI to those ‘other involvements’ was Gordon Liddy. He laid out for Nixon’s campaign managers just what could come out … Liddy told the tale of the White House ‘plumbers unit’ and the crimes he and the Watergate team had carried out for the President. ibid.
Those problems could be contained only if the break-in team kept their mouths shut. Liddy explained what had to be done. Ibid
While their boss was burning evidence, FBI agents were uncovering more. ibid.
Howard Hunt and his wife began taking delivery of the hush money to distribute to the burglars. Nixon’s men paid out over a quarter of a million dollars in hush money that summer. It did the trick. The burglars stayed silent. ibid.
The biggest margin in history: it looked like he had got away with it. ibid.
The 1973 presidential inauguration. A re-election triumph for Richard Nixon. In the VIP enclosure the White House chief of staff, Bob Halderman, shot a home movie of his colleagues celebrating. But behind the victory smiles the President was entangled in a criminal conspiracy. The chairman of his campaign committee, John Mitchell, had sent a team to break into The Watergate to bug the Democrats’ headquarters. When they were caught red-handed, Nixon had launched a cover-up of his links to them. Watergate III: Scapegoat
Envelopes stuffed with cash had been dispatched to Howard Hunt and his men to keep them quiet during the Watergate trial. Now on the eve of sentencing he asked for a lot more money. ibid.
‘We have a cancer within close to the presidency. It’s growing daily. It’s compounding. It grows geometrically now. And there’s no assurance it won’t bust.’ ibid. Dean to Nixon
Dean tried to persuade the president that Hunt’s blackmail threatened all the inner circle, especially Nixon’s close friend John Mitchell who had organised the Watergate break-in. ibid.
Dean knew the president needed a scapegoat before the senate hearing started and he began to fear he was it. ibid.
To get immunity from prosecution Dean would have to shop Nixon’s closest associates. ibid.
Their fate was sealed when the secrets Nixon had been prepared to pay a million dollars to protect came out. John Dean’s lawyers led the prosecutors to the evidence. ibid.
Nixon had been going to extraordinary lengths to get Ellsberg convicted. ibid.