Two years later Dean would bring down the Nixon administration by exposing its conspiracies. ibid.
The man Nixon wanted punished was Daniel Ellsberg who he feared had opened the floodgates. ibid.
He [Nixon] now set up a full-time unit within the White House. ibid.
Howard Hunt knew where to recruit them. It was the tenth anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion. ibid.
Despite the fiasco no-one got the sack. ibid.
Liddy promptly produced a million-dollar plan … codenamed Gemstone. ibid.
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. ibid.
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.
Martha Mitchell was forcibly sedated and held incommunicado. ibid.
Haldeman presented the president with the plan. ibid.
‘I wanted to stop the investigation if possible.’ ibid. Nixon, interview David Frost
While their boss was burning evidence, FBI agents were uncovering more. ibid.
Nixon’s men paid out over a quarter of a million dollars in hush money that summer. ibid.
The biggest margin in history: it looked like he had got away with it. ibid.
Envelopes stuffed with cash had been dispatched to Howard Hunt and his men. ibid.
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.
‘I had no prior knowledge of the Watergate break in. ibid. Nixon on the box
‘I felt it would be an admission of guilt to destroy them [tapes].’ ibid. Nixon’s Frost interview
‘I am innocent of the charges against me.’ ibid. Agnew
At Cox’s [special prosecutor] public show of defiance, Nixon resolved to sack him at once. ibid.
The media reported it [Cox’s sacking] as a naked attempt to overthrow the rule of law. ibid.
The rump force of special prosecutors sat tight. ibid.
Congress now began talking impeachment. ibid.
Miss Woods [secretary]: Tape Erased By Accident. ibid. newspaper headline
The decision about Nixon could no longer be avoided. ibid.
‘I do not expect to be impeached.’ ibid. Nixon press conference
The public were appalled by the language and fascinated by the number of expletives deleted. ibid.
Richard Nixon: here being congratulated on his success by his new master Prescott Bush … In 1947 Nixon engaged the services of a Jewish gangster who was working for Sam Giancana called Jacob Rubenstein, a man who the world would one day come to know as Jack Ruby. Everything is a Rich Man’s Trick, 2014
1972: Washington DC police arrest five burglars with political connections at the highest levels. The president is under fire. The Final Report: Watergate, National Geographic 2007
What does the Nixon campaign hope to learn? ibid.
The next morning the story of the break-in falls to two low-ranking reporters at the Washington Post. ibid.
‘I could not muster much moral outrage over a political bugging’. ibid. Nixon’s memoires
A federal grand jury indicts the five Watergate burglars along with Liddy and Hunt. ibid.
Nixon is now facing both a criminal probe from the Justice Department and a political inquiry in the Senate. ibid.
Nixon releases edited transcripts of the White House tapes. ibid.
The House Judiciary Committee passes an article of impeachment. ibid.
He [Nixon] created the Plumbers Unit. ibid.
Nixon’s crime was the Watergate cover-up which he instigated. ibid.
‘This was much worse than we thought. Nixon was worse than we thought. What happened was worse then we thought.’ All the President’s Men Revisited, Carl Bernstein, Discovery 2013
Because the American people had learned the truth about Richard Nixon … Nixon’s downfall had begun two years earlier when five men were caught spying and wiretapping at the Democratic National Headquarters at an office complex called Watergate. ibid.
Nixon’s Law and Order platform was very popular. ibid.
There was something just as odd about the White House response: ‘A third rate burglary’. ibid.
It was a Haldeman operation; it was driven by Nixon. ibid.
‘We are going to use any means; is that clear? ibid.
Woodward met with a highly placed government official … Deep Throat. ibid.
[Mark] Felt was Deep Throat … The number two guy at the FBI. ibid.
Congress: What did the president know and when did he know it? ibid.
‘John Dean’s testimony was on for four days. It was mesmerizing.’ ibid. Alexander Butterfield
Watergate was becoming a bloody mess. Nixon was a wounded president. ibid.
Some 40 people pleaded guilty to Watergate-related crimes. ibid.
‘His dislocated relationship with truth.’ ibid. David Frost
‘I don’t think the public ever really understood the real sin, the crime, the import, of Watergate.’ Watergate: The Secret Story, Walter Cronkite, CBS 1992
‘This was third-world dictatorship. This was lawlessness. This was above the law and beyond reproach. These were people who had satisfied themselves they could not be touched.’ ibid. Berl Bernhard
20 years ago on June 17th 1972 in the dead of night a group of men working for the Committee to Re-Elect Richard Nixon President broke in to the offices of the Democratic National Committee here at the Watergate office complex. ibid.
There were two break-ins: the first was actually undetected, but when the burglars discovered one of the wire-taps they planted wasn’t working they went in a second time. ibid.
The president was unaware his own phone had been bugged. ibid.
The money trail was leading to a slush fund. ibid.
Nixon refused to give up the tape, and Archibald Cox was about to have him held in contempt. ibid.
Three days after the Saturday Massacre, 22 bills of impeachment were introduced in Congress, and the president released the subpoenaed tapes. ibid.
In the fall of 1968, an election year, candidate Richard Nixon and three of his senior associates evolved a plan to win the election by sabotaging the official US government negotiating position in Paris … by the simple method of opening an illegal back channel … to the South Vietnamese military junta. Christopher Hitchens, interview TVO April 2001
The subversion and tainting of an American presidential election and the extension of a war for four years and this extension of two neutral countries which can be described as one single action would count as the wickedest thing I know of in American history. ibid.
The bombing of Cambodia was likewise concealed from Congress. ibid.
The most powerful individual on Earth is the president of the United States. During President Nixon’s final year in office long-standing concerns about his mental balance became widespread in Washington. Reputations: The Secret World of Richard Nixon I, BBC 2000
His wife Pat bore the brunt of his disappointment. ibid.
Dilantin … Nixon was already taking sleeping tablets. ibid.
Day by day revelation followed revelation. ibid.
He promised the American people peace in Vietnam. It is now clear that Richard Nixon and close aides conspired to sabotage peace talks to get him elected in 1968. Reputations: The Secret World of Richard Nixon II
Nixon favoured the use of tactical nuclear weapons. ibid.