Short History Of... - The Watergate Scandal

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

When five men are caught inside a Washington DC office block in June 1972, it’s noted in police records simply as a ‘burglary’. So how does this bungled break-in go on to unravel a web of corruption and conspiracy, shatter America’s trust in its leadership, and topple President Richard Nixon, the most powerful man in the world? This is a Short History of the Watergate Scandal. Written by Jo Furniss. With thanks to Michael Dobbs, author of King Richard: Nixon and Watergate, an American Tragedy. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's June the 17th, 1972, just after midnight. The Howard Johnson Motel in Washington, D.C. lies in darkness. A weather warning has been issued for the entire eastern seaboard, so the streets are deserted. But Hurricane Agnes is not the biggest storm that is brewing tonight. A man called Alfred Baldwin sits in a motel room on the seventh floor. The air feels muggy and charged. His window has a clear view of an office block known as the Watergate Complex. Baldwin is a spotter, a lookout for a criminal gang.

But at this moment, he's not looking out. Channel 20 is showing one of Baldwin's favourite horror movies, Attack of the Puppet People. He puts down his two-way radio to turn up the volume and grab a soda. Across the street, inside the Watergate building, another man is doing his job rather more diligently. Frank Wills, a security guard, is patrolling the vacant corridors. Frank takes the stairwell to the basement. It's cavernous. The strip lights blink, shadows move, but something catches his eye.

He weaves through the parked cars to take a closer look. He finds that a door latch has been taped over so it cannot lock. Earlier that night, Frank removed a similar tape from this very door, but he didn't think much of it. Now, twenty minutes later, the tape is back. This time he knows something's wrong. He goes straight to the security office to call the police. His alert is picked up by three patrol officers. They are pulling an overnight shift known as the Bomb Squad. Dressed like hippies and driving an unmarked car, the bomb squad is hoping to pick up drug dealers. But a suspicious incident at Watergate is much more intriguing, so they divert to the scene.

Back in the Howard Johnson Motel, Alfred Baldwin, the so-called spotter, is transfixed by the horror movie. His walkie-talkie lies forgotten on the bed. The rest of his gang are inside Watergate. There are five of them. A man called James McCord, and four Cubans, one of whom is a locksmith. They carry a bag containing sophisticated listening devices, surgical gloves, and thousands of dollars in cash. They make their way to the office of the Democratic National Committee on the sixth floor,

break in, and start removing ceiling panels. When they hear a vehicle pull up outside, they keep working, safe in the knowledge that Baldwin has got their back. they keep working, safe in the knowledge that Baldwin has got their back. Their radio stays silent, so they assume that no news is good news. But the first time that Baldwin looks up from his movie is when the lights go on inside the DNC headquarters across the street. By now, the three armed police officers have slipped into the Watergate building undetected. It's too late to warn the burglars. Come out, hands raised.

All five men give themselves up without a fight. If the police had arrived that night with lights blazing and sirens blaring, perhaps Baldwin would have sounded the alarm. The five men might have fled the scene. Watergate might be just another nondescript building overlooking the Potomac River. Instead, the gang is caught red-handed, and the first in a long line of political dominoes falls. On that muggy night in Washington, D.C., with a hurricane brewing, the incident is listed in police records as simply, burglary, Democratic National Committee, sixth floor. So how does this bungled break-in go on to have national

and historical significance? How does it unravel a web of corruption and conspiracy, shatter America's trust in its leadership, and topple President Richard Nixon, the most powerful man in the world? I'm Paul McGann,

and this is a short history of the Watergate Scandal. It's June the 13th, 1971, almost exactly one year before the Watergate break-in. It's a Sunday morning. President Richard Nixon is weary after a night of festivities. His daughter, Tricia, was married the previous day in the Rose Garden of the White House, and the party continued late into the night. This morning, Nixon needs to catch up with the news.

In the Oval Office, he turns first to the New York Times, expecting to see photos from Trish's lavish celebration. Some 500 reporters attended the wedding. Even Nixon's chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, got into the spirit, recording the event on his new home cine camera. It was a beautiful ceremony, a chance to hit pause on political events for just one day. But before he gets to the society pages,

Nixon is distracted by a headline about the war in Vietnam. As he scans the article, confusion turns to alarm. Before he's even finished reading, he's convinced that the report is based on classified documents. And there's only one way that can have happened. They've been leaked from the Pentagon, the United States Department of Defense. The expose is enormous and comprehensive. The expose is enormous and comprehensive. Some 7,000 pages of top-secret files that reveal how successive American administrations were more deeply committed to the war in Vietnam than they have ever made public.

The scandal becomes known as the Pentagon Papers, a secret history of the Vietnam War. The leak is a huge embarrassment to Johnson and Kennedy, Nixon's predecessors, as well as the current president. There are wider implications, though, about official secrets and the reputation of the White House. And that's not something a man like Nixon is going to stand for. He immediately demands answers. But when the FBI fails to identify

which official at the Pentagon is responsible, the president takes matters into his own hands. Nixon establishes a clandestine special investigations unit based in the West Wing. It's not unlike the formation of a personal secret police force. Writer and politician Michael Dobbs is the author of the book King Richard, Nixon and Watergate, an American Tragedy. He says the remit of this secret organization at first is to find the source of the Pentagon Papers leak. And it turned out to be a man called Daniel Ellsberg,

a former Pentagon official who'd been responsible for, in part, for writing the secret history. So the White House sent burglars, actually the same team that later went into the Watergate, into the offices of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist out in California with the intention of gathering dirt on Daniel Ellsberg. They were precisely the same people who broke into the offices of Ellsberg's psychiatrist and then subsequently broke into the Watergate. Ellsberg now faces charges under the Espionage Act, which could see him jailed for up to 115 years.

But Nixon's men don't want to leave anything to chance. By breaking into his psychiatrist's office, the plan is to find enough dirt on Ellsberg to discredit him. They might not be able to undo the leak, but undermining the motives of a man who'd shone an unforgiving light on the presidency is the next best thing. They don't find what they're looking for, but the attempt will come back to haunt them when they least need the bad publicity. Later that same year, in November 1971, a man called David Young travels from Washington, D.C. to New Jersey to visit his family for Thanksgiving. His grandmother cooks a turkey with all the trimmings.

It's a festive evening. Finally, Young can relax. He has a stressful job at the White House. A lawyer by training, Young ostensibly works as a special assistant in the Nixon administration. But the whole truth is that he's been assigned to the shady Special Investigations Unit. Of course, this is top secret. After dinner, his grandmother asks what Young has been doing at the White House. He modestly tells her that he's helping the President to plug some leaks. His grandmother is delighted and tells him that his grandfather would have been proud. He used to fix leaks too, because he was a plumber.

The misunderstanding tickles David Young, and when he returns to the White House after Thanksgiving he tells the joke to his co-conspirators. One of them adopts the name. He even puts a sign on the door of Room 16 in the West Wing, where the team is based, and officially dubs them the Plumbers. The team who make up the Plumbers includes several former CIA and FBI operatives. up the plumbers include several former CIA and FBI operatives. The president is increasingly paranoid and wants only the best and most trustworthy people.

Compounding his anger over the leaked Pentagon Papers is Nixon's memory of his experience during the 1960 election. He lost to the Kennedys and suspected them of sabotaging his campaign. Nixon ran against Chuck Kennedy, and it was a very narrow victory for Kennedy. And Nixon thought that he had been robbed of victory in that election, that the Democrats had pulled dirty tricks on him, particularly in Chicago, in Illinois. And he sort of bore a grudge about that. He didn't contest the election publicly, but he certainly thought that he had been cheated, and he was determined to make sure that the Democrats would never pull that kind of trick again on him. So one of the things he wanted was to accumulate as much political intelligence on his opponents as

possible. And it was that drive for political intelligence that really led Nixon's aides, or some of Nixon's aides, to draw up this plan for breaking into the Watergate, which was the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, and planting eavesdropping devices. At the time of the Watergate break-in in 1972, Nixon is reaching the end of his first term as president and coming up for re-election. He's had a successful four years, but remains fearful of Kennedy-style dirty tricks. successful four years, but remains fearful of Kennedy-style dirty tricks. So he establishes an organization called the Committee for the Re-election of the President, which raises funds for his campaign. Its official acronym is the CRP, but many people call it CREEP.

Certainly some of its officials are guilty of creeping or skulking around, especially those who overlap with the clandestine plumbers. Soon money from the Creep campaign fund is siphoned into illegal criminal surveillance of political rivals. Most notably, the bugging of the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate building. But while the top-secret operation at the White House is professional and tightly coordinated, the men who go into the field are distinctly amateur. The team of plumbers who break into Watergate turn out to be decidedly unreliable tradesmen.

They were led by a very colorful character called G. Gordon Liddy, who'd worked for the FBI. And Gordon Liddy felt that the United States was under threat from within and that he had a responsibility and a duty to protect the country from all these left-wing hippies who were trying to bring the government down. who were trying to bring the government down. But it's true that the way he behaved and the burglars behaved stood as reminiscence of a Keystone Cops operation. They left plenty of evidence behind. They acted with impunity. And G. Gordon Liddy, who sort of imagined himself to be a master spy, turned out to be a bungler and ignored basic rules of tradecraft.

If the supposedly stealthy plumbers intend to draw attention to themselves, then they go about it in the right way. They turn up to burgle Watergate dressed in business suits. This is the first detail that strikes the arresting officers as odd. The plumbers' spotter inside the Howard Johnson Motel lets them get caught red-handed. And finally they leave a trail of evidence, which eventually leads the police and the media straight to the door of the White House. It's 9am on a Saturday morning, the 17th of June, 1972.

The newsroom of the Washington Post is still sleepy. A few reporters are laughing about a news story that happened overnight. A young couple were enjoying an intimate moment on the couch at home when a car crashed through the wall of their house and carried on right out the other side. Two young crime reporters are listening to the banter, through the wall of their house and carried on right out the other side. Two young crime reporters are listening to the banter, feet up and cigarettes in hand, when they're handed a slip of paper from the news desk. Bob Woodward reads the note and swings his feet onto the floor.

He signals to his colleague, Carl Bernstein, to listen up. Earlier that morning, five men were arrested after breaking into the Watergate building. Specifically, the offices of the Democratic National Committee. The men, who included a middle-aged guy in a business suit and four Cubans, have been charged with burglary. Bernstein frowns. There's nothing particularly newsworthy in that. But Woodward hasn't got to the interesting part yet. The gang's leader is a former CIA operative. Plus, the intruders were carrying expensive surveillance equipment,

and one of them had a notepad containing the phone number of an office at the White House. Little do they know that this one lead will take them on a two-year journey to the highest office in the land. They were very young police reporters. Their job was to cover the courthouse, So they covered this as a crime story, basically. They weren't covering it as a big political story.

And they certainly didn't know right at the beginning what they would let themselves in for. And during that original period leading up to the election in November, the Washington Post is pretty much alone in pushing the story forward. They're getting leads from other investigators. They're tracking down leads themselves. But they know that there's some connection with the White House. But the White House, of course, is denying everything. And it's difficult to establish what kind of connection this is. Woodward and Bernstein are good reporters. but their specialism is in crime reporting,

and this story needs careful handling. They need help with its political ramifications. Luckily, Bob Woodward has a mentor. Back in 1970, he was a lieutenant in the US Navy. It often fell to him to deliver secure packages to the Situation Room inside the West Wing. During one assignment, Woodward found himself in a waiting room, sitting beside an older man whose dress and demeanour suggested he worked for the FBI. In fact, he was a special agent.

Though he wasn't yet a reporter, Woodward already had the journalist's instinct for networking, establishing rapport, exploiting connections. So he struck up a conversation. Although he could get the man to reveal almost nothing about himself and his work, he did get some career advice. By the end of the conversation, Woodward managed to get his direct line at the FBI, and his name, Mark Felt. Over the next two years, Woodward spoke regularly to his FBI contact.

When he left the Navy and went to work at the Washington Post, he consulted him on various news stories. Mark Felt became his mentor, and provided sensitive information on the strict understanding that Woodward never revealed his source. The young reporter was true to his word. Now, the two men trust each other implicitly. The two men trust each other implicitly. When the news about the Watergate break-in lands on Woodward's desk, he has no idea it will become one of the most famous pieces of investigative journalism in history. But he senses it could be incendiary.

So, with excitement growing, he immediately picks up the phone to his mentor. But though no one yet knows quite how combustible the story will be, the reporters know they're going to have to tread very carefully. The decision is made to protect Felt's identity even further. Already a shadowy figure, he'll be known for the next 30 years by the nickname Deep Throat. Deep Throat was actually, that phrase was invented by a Washington Post editor to describe Bob Woodward's source, Mark Felt. At the time, nobody knew who Woodward's secret source was, including most of his editors at the Washington Post. They just called him Deep Throat.

Washington Post. They just called him Deep Throat. And the reason they called him Deep Throat was there was a pornographic movie that had just come out at the time with an actress called Linda Lovelace, and it was called Deep Throat. So they stole the title of that movie and dubbed their secret sauce Deep Throat, which was another thing that really caught on, caught people's imagination. The first Watergate report appears on the front page of the Washington Post on the 18th of June 1972, the day after the arrests. It's a short piece, just a couple of paragraphs long. Though the former CIA connection to one of the gang members is mentioned, the Post is cautious not to jump to conclusions.

There was no explanation as to why the five suspects would want to bug the DNC offices, it says, or whether or not they were working for any other individuals or organizations. It does go on to document how the men were found with three pen-sized tear gas guns and $2,300 in cash, the equivalent of more than $15,000 today. Still amid the sea of political intrigue and gossip that floods Washington, it could easily have sunk without trace. But the two journalists sense an iceberg beneath the tip of this strange story. It's the 20th of June 1972, three days after the break-in and arrest at Watergate. At two o'clock in the morning, Bob Woodward drives across town to the Rosslyn district, Bob Woodward drives across towns of the Rosslyn district, parks his car, and walks another few blocks. The street is desolate. The only light comes from his cigarette.

He smokes quickly as he walks, then lights another. His destination lies ahead, a dingy underground parking lot with low ceilings. He glances over his shoulder before he enters. It would be difficult for an assailant to follow him on an empty street, but he has to be careful to protect his contact. If he loses his trust, he also sacrifices the vital information he provides. Inside the parking lot, Woodward approaches a lone vehicle, but before he reaches it, he hears footsteps behind him. He spins around, hard hammering. A tall man loiters in the shadows, the red tip of his cigarette giving him away. Woodward knows the man's

name but doesn't use it. He won't use it publicly for another three decades. In the privacy of the parking lot, Deep Throat tells Woodward where to look for the next lead. Mark Felt had famously told them to follow the money because if they succeeded in finding out who had funded the break-in and who had funded the Watergate operation, then the whole conspiracy would become clear. And so that's what they did. They found out where had the money come from that paid these burglars, and it led back into the president's re-election campaign, the creep.

All of Woodward's meetings with Deep Throat are characterized by cloak-and-dagger arrangements. The whistleblower gives the journalist precise instructions on how to conduct their business. If Woodward needs to speak to his contact, he must not use the telephone. Instead, he leaves a red flag in a flowerpot on the balcony of his apartment. Woodward doesn't know how the FBI man spots the flag, but reliably he responds. Next, Woodward receives a signal in return. The reporter has the Washington Post delivered to his apartment block each morning, and his copy has his name written on the front. If Deep Throat wishes to meet, he intercepts this newspaper and leaves a message on page 20,

a scribbled set of clock hands to indicate the time. The meetings are always late at night and in an isolated location like a parking lot. Things are always late at night and in an isolated location like a parking lot. Mark Felt knows his spy craft, and Woodward quickly catches on. When the two men met first by accident at the White House, Felt was a special agent. By now, in late 1972, he is associate director, the second highest post of the FBI. As well as his disapproval of Nixon's dirty tricks, Deep Throat is also motivated by personal ambition. Mark Felt was maneuvering within the FBI to succeed J. Edgar Hoover as director to become the boss of the entire operation. So that gave him a kind of motivation to leak damaging information from the FBI.

And so Woodward held a series of secret meetings with Mark Felt during this period. And Felt spoke to him off the record. Felt during this period. And Felt spoke to him off the record. Woodward couldn't use this for publication, but Felt gave him the sense that this was a much bigger web of crimes and dirty tricks than just the Watergate. And so that in part gave Woodward and the Washington Post the confidence to keep on pursuing this and try to untangle the whole mess. Woodward and Bernstein's first breakthrough comes a month later. They manage to connect the burglars to the committee to re-elect the president, the group known mockingly as Creep.

In August 1972, the reporters find a paper trail proving that Creep paid one of the Watergate burglars $25,000 in hush money. The story escalates from curiosity to conspiracy. Slowly, the journalists prove that there is corruption in the White House. But now, they need to show that this rottenness goes not only to the core, but to the very top. How can they prove that the illegal criminal activities, break-ins, bugging and bribery were authorized by Richard Nixon himself?

For his part, the President is determined to bury the story. In a press conference in August 1972, he goes on record about the allegations building in the press. I can say categorically, he tells reporters, no one in the White House staff, no one in this administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident. He goes on to expand on the importance of truth. What really hurts in matters of this sort is not the fact that they occur because overzealous people in campaigns

do things that are wrong. What really hurts is if you try to cover it up. It'll turn out to be more prophetic than anyone could have guessed. Well, Nixon could certainly have blamed the break-in on other people, overzealous aides, including Gordon Liddy. But there was a reason why he ordered the cover-up, and that was that Watergate was not an isolated event. There was a pattern of crimes and dirty tricks that had been carried out at his behest,

some of which he knew a lot more about than he knew about the Watergate. And frequently, you know, these crimes had been carried out by the very same people that broke into the Watergate. So Nixon had reason to fear that if he allowed an unfettered, honest investigation of the Watergate, then all these other crimes would come to light during the period leading up to the election. And he couldn't risk that. In the run-up to the presidential election in November 1972,

Nixon knows that he's all set for a second term. He's basking in a high approval rating, a statesman-like figure whose authority is established at home and abroad. Even the endless drip-drip of press coverage about Watergate hasn't diluted his appeal. The American public have tired of the story. It's so complicated, it sounds like a crazy plot in a thriller novel, and the details are too sketchy for people to see the big picture. But the five men who were arrested at Watergate are about to come to trial.

If they are allowed to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, then the full story will come out in court. This would put Nixon squarely in the frame. And this president will not allow that to happen. It's the spring of 1973. President Richard Nixon has won a landslide election. The newspapers compare the scale of his victory to that of America's founding father, George

Washington. But in private, Nixon's closest aides are less buoyant. On March 21, the president is joined in the Oval Office by the White House Counsel John Dean and his Chief of Staff, Bob Haldeman. Their meeting begins at 9.15 a.m. About a minute into the conversation, John Dean struggles to find the right words to express his growing concern about Watergate. The problem is serious, he says. It's compounding.

It grows geometrically. As if Nixon could be in any doubt about his meaning, Dean sums it up by comparing it to a cancer close to the presidency. When Nixon is inaugurated into office for the second time in January 1973, he is pretty much at the peak of his popularity, his authority. He's just negotiated an end to, as he thinks, to the Vietnam War, or at least an end to the American part in the Vietnam War. He's largely got Watergate behind him, and he has this huge popular vote mandate. But it then unravels extremely quickly over the

next few weeks and months. The problems begin in early 1973, after the five men arrested at Watergate go to court. The group's leader is James McCord, a former CIA officer and an electronics expert. He is a key member of the Creep Group, with links to both the White House and other illegal surveillance activities organized by the plumbers. The four Cuban burglars appear in court under pseudonyms. They appear before a judge called John Chirica, who was known actually as a very conservative judge with a tough

law and order reputation. He was called Maximum John by journalists covering his courthouse. And although Sherricka was a Republican himself, he was determined to get to the bottom of this. And he didn't believe the burglars' claims that they'd just been handed wads of $100 bills, had arrived through the mail. They didn't know who sent them into the Watergate. You know, he was suspicious of that. And in the meantime, among the burglars, cracks were developing. James McCord is convicted of eight counts of burglary,

conspiracy and wiretapping. He knows he faces a lengthy prison sentence. So on the 21st of March, McCord writes a letter to the judge. He points the finger at the perjury of his co-conspirators. Damningly, he specifically notes that there was

political pressure applied to the defendants to plead guilty and remain silent. Counsel John Dean has only just diagnosed the cancer, but it's already started to metastasize. And it's really that act that leads to the unraveling of this entire conspiracy and eventually to the unraveling of the Nixon presidency. It's also now that Daniel Ellsberg,

the originator of the Pentagon Papers that ignited the entire Watergate saga, is standing trial. But as evidence of gross governmental misconduct and wiretapping in this case comes to light, the charges are dismissed by the judge. Ellsberg walks free and commits the rest of his career to political activism, a field he still works in today. The cracks are beginning to show in Nixon's complicated cover-ups. The media, or at least those on what Nixon calls the other side, are dogged in their pursuit of the truth. Later in 1973, a year into his second term, he addresses a televised press conference and appeals directly to the electorate.

I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. In my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I can say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. But while he continues to have enemies in the Washington Post and beyond, the final hammer blow comes from his own hand.

The President of the United States always lives under the spotlight. His every move is documented, filmed, photographed. It's not unusual for a President to record his own meetings, especially on matters of national importance or with fellow heads of state. President John F. Kennedy had a tape recorder in the Oval Office that he switched on or off with a button under the desk. President Lyndon B. Johnson could record telephone conversations whenever he wanted. Like his predecessors, Nixon wants to document his achievements and and to this end, he records everything, every word. He's obsessed with his legacy, already looking ahead to the lucrative memoirs that he'll write in retirement.

Nixon is also inspired by Winston Churchill, who famously said that history will remember him kindly, for he intends to write it himself nixon in the end was brought down by the existence of his taping system the revelation of the taping system a number of american presidents had taped themselves in the past but the difference with nixon was that he had the system that turned itself on automatically whenever he walked into a room or whenever he picked up the phone. So it had no on-off switch. It just recorded everything, the good, the bad, the ugly, the criminal. And Nixon thought that this was for his private purposes, writing memoirs to burnish his reputation once he left office.

But in the end, it was this taping system that became the Achilles heel. Richard Nixon is known to be a clumsy man and a technophobe. That tendency is aggravated by whiskey and sleeping pills that often leave him shaking and slurring. His aides think he won't be able to work a manual recorder in the way that Kennedy and Johnson did. So they devise an ingenious system that is linked to the Secret Service surveillance network, which tracks the President as he moves around the White House.

Whenever a red flag is raised to show that Nixon has entered an office, the recording system is automatically primed. After that, it's voice activated. A cabinet of huge reels records everything that is said in the Oval Office, in Nixon's study, even at his country retreat at Camp David. Nixon's recordings are top secret, known only to a dozen people, most of whom are Secret Service. But even though Nixon himself knows about these tapes,

he seems to forget that all his conversations are being recorded for posterity. He speaks freely, discussing the cover-up, swearing copiously, even making racially charged statements that will come back to haunt him. One of the few people in the know is his deputy assistant, Alexander Butterfield, who oversaw the installation of the system. In July 1973, Butterfield is called before the Senate Watergate Committee, and he reveals the explosive truth. There is, in existence, a record of almost everything

that President Richard Nixon has ever said inside the Oval Office. Nixon then had to make the decision whether to destroy the tapes or whether not to. This is in July of 1973. And at the time he has to make that decision, he's very ill in hospital with pneumonia. So he's filled up with drugs. He's not thinking very clearly. And he thinks that some of his advisors are divided. Some are saying that he should organize a bonfire on the White House lawn and burn all the tapes. Others saying that Congress is already demanding the tapes, this would lead

to a huge scandal. Nixon himself still thinks that he can keep those tapes private and that they can be useful to him. I mean, he thinks that there are conversations on the tapes that can be used to bolster his version of events as long as he can control the tapes. And that is obviously a huge political miscalculation on Nixon's part and one that he later comes to regret. What follows is a constitutional legal battle that goes on for a year, focused on who owns the archive. Eventually in August 1974, the Supreme Court decides unanimously that the tapes are not private documents. They are evidence in the investigation of a crime and must be released.

The Nixon tape recordings contain over 3,000 hours of material. Around 200 hours concern Watergate, and only a fraction is made public. Watergate, and only a fraction is made public. But the two transcripts that are released include clear evidence of the President and the White House Counsel John Dean plotting a conspiracy. Watergate may have been a cancer on the presidency, as John Dean says on the tape, but it's the recordings that actually kill it. The two extracts become known as the smoking gun tapes. There were a couple of tapes that really, I think, brought him down.

One was a tape that showed that he had ordered a cover-up, which the technical legal term is obstruction of justice. So that is a crime in the American system. And then there was another tape in early 1973 when John Dean comes to Nixon and says, look, some of these burglars are blackmailing us. They're saying we want to be paid $100,000 by the close of business. And Nixon, instead of saying we won't pay this money, he essentially says, we could raise that money. So that shows that Nixon is deeply personally implicated in the cover-up and even ordering it.

Three days later, Nixon appears on a national broadcast. Less than a year ago, he made his position unequivocal to a television audience On August the 8th, 1974 he once again looks deep into the camera From the discussions I have had with Congressional and other leaders, I have concluded that because of the Watergate matter I might not have the support of the Congress that I would consider necessary.

I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as president, I must put the interests of America first. I must put the interests of America first. Citing the need for the country to focus on peace abroad and prosperity at home, Nixon tells his citizens that they need a full-time president, not someone wrapped up in fighting for their own personal exoneration. He takes a deep breath and looks down at the desk.

Then he publicly commits to the decision that no President of the United States of America has repeated before or since. Effective from noon the next day, he resigns the presidency. As Richard Nixon once wrote in a note to himself, a man is not finished when he's defeated. He's finished when he quits. I tell the story as a Greek tragedy, and I think there are many parallels with Greek and Shakespearean tragedy. And one of the elements in Shakespearean tragedy or Greek tragedy

that brings the hero down is hubris, the idea that they are sort of invulnerable. And I think that certainly was the case in Nixon's case. Gerald Ford steps up to be inaugurated as president. He immediately pardons Nixon for any involvement in the Watergate cover-up. The investigation and the many prosecutions will continue for years. But the pardon means that Nixon himself goes into exile in California. He's disgraced and in bad health. But he's a free man.

Most of Nixon's aides, all the way down to the burglars themselves, and there's several dozen people who end up serving prison terms. Nixon is the one who doesn't, but he pays a different kind of price to his own reputation. So he's punished in a different way. He comes close to death in the year after leaving office. But he's a very resilient character. I mean, Nixon is the master of the political comeback. And that was how he made his career. He'd been written off a number of times.

And so he clawed back a measure of respectability. Actually, it was President Clinton who said at Nixon's funeral that, and Clinton was probably thinking about himself because Clinton was also involved in various scandals. But he said, you know, you have to judge everybody, including our political leaders on their whole life, not just one aspect of their lives. So I think Watergate had a historical significance in a number of aspects. Certainly in Nixon's case, it was deserved. I mean, he had committed these crimes, but that is not the entire story of aspects. Certainly in Nixon's case, it was deserved. I mean, he had committed these crimes, but that is not the entire story of Nixon. Nonetheless, the name of Nixon is synonymous

with conspiracy and corruption. The events of Watergate are lodged deep into the American psyche, and have taken root in our language. Even fifty years later, any political scandal is still given the suffix, gate, from Watergate. Phrases like, follow the money, or smoking gun, a part of modern parlance. Any shadowy figure or whistleblower in popular culture is still called Deep Throat. But what is the legacy of Watergate for American politics? Watergate had a historical significance in a number of aspects.

Woodward and Bernstein gave birth to a whole new breed of investigative reporter. So that's the media. The Watergate was the end of a sort of age of innocence in American politics, in which people, by and large, trusted their leaders to tell them the truth. And it sort of laid bare very deep-rooted political divisions in American society between what Nixon called the silent majority and the people on the other side, the people who had opposed the Vietnam War. And there's still a dividing line in American politics right up to this day.

Next time on Short History Of, we'll bring you a short history of prohibition. It was estimated by the New York Police Commissioner in the late 1920s that there were 32,000 speakeasies in New York City. That could mean table for two in the back of a tailor's shop, or it could mean a huge nightclub with hundreds of patrons. But that number, 32,000, gives you an idea. You could not reach a number like that without speakeasies being everywhere. That's next time on Short History Of.