Watergate: A New History

by Garrett M. Graff

He was, as would become clear, the hinge upon which the entire American Century turned, the figure who ushered out the expansive liberal consensus of the New Deal and the Great Society and brought to the mainstream a darker, racialized, nativist, fearmongering strain of the Republican Party and American politics that would a half century later find its natural conclusion in Donald Trump.

At its simplest, Watergate is the story of two separate criminal conspiracies: the Nixon world’s “dirty tricks” that led to the burglary on June 17, 1972, and then the subsequent wider cover-up.

“Watergate” was less an event than a way of life for the Nixon administration—a mindset that evolved into a multiyear, multifaceted corruption and erosion of ethics within the office of the president.

What would be later summarized as “dirty tricks” really was the story of how Nixon’s team, ironically blinded by the desire for law and order and national security, violated the constitutional rights of politicians, journalists, and American citizens.

“His rise to the presidency was an amazing triumph of will and intelligence,” biographer Richard Reeves concluded. “He was too suspicious, his judgments were too harsh, too negative. He clung to the word and the idea of being ‘tough.’ He thought that was what had brought him to the edge of greatness. But that was what betrayed him. He could not open himself to other men and he could not open himself to greatness.”

The three Germans LBJ referred to were chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman, and, of course, Henry Kissinger. Reporters who covered the administration came to know the triumvirate by a variety of ethnic-slanted monikers: the German Shepherds, the Berlin Wall, the Fourth Reich, the Teutonic Trio, and All the King’s Krauts.I “Never before had so much authority with so little accountability been delegated to so few,” Rather and Gates observed.

As his campaign manager in ’68, Mitchell embraced the “Southern Strategy,” stirring division and peeling off the right wing of the Democratic Party, setting a model that would guide the GOP until the present day by embracing a vision for a new race-based politics that united white Americans under an “emerging Republican majority.”

Mitchell aide Kevin Phillips, explained in Phillips’s words how “the more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans.” It was ugly and poisonous to American politics, but—like the Red Scare—remarkably effective.

This wide-reaching vision for a domestic surveillance program complemented Nixon’s own conviction that the nation’s chief executive was entitled to broad powers that decided what was legal and what wasn’t when it came to protecting the country. “He saw the president as above the law and empowered to do anything he or the intelligence community deemed necessary in furtherance of national security,” historian Melissa Graves said.

“I want the break-in,” Nixon continued. “Hell, they do that. You’re to break into the place, rifle the files, and bring them in.… Just go in and take it. Go in around eight or nine o’clock,” he said, beginning to stray into actually planning the operation himself. “Clean it up. These kids don’t understand. They have no understanding of politics. They have no understanding of public relations. John Mitchell is that way. John is always worried about is it technically correct? Do you think, for Christ sakes, that the New York Times is worried about all the legal niceties? Those sons of bitches are killing me.”I

To Mark Felt, who had been tasked with executing the urgent, full-field investigation on Schorr, the episode proved a cautionary tale: These Nixon folks seemed far too comfortable deploying the FBI as a political tool—and when it backfired, they were far too comfortable letting it take the blame.

Years later, Liddy explained what was going through his mind as he volunteered to kill an American reporter on an American street on the orders, supposedly, of the American president: “I know it violates the sensibilities of the innocent and tender-minded, but in the real world, you sometimes have to employ extreme and extralegal methods to preserve the very system whose laws you’re violating.” Liddy’s observation, given in a 1980 Playboy interview, is as concise a summary as we’ve ever seen of the mindset that led Nixon’s men so corruptly and thoroughly into more chaos.

the ’68 election: There was also the “Greek Connection,” where the campaign

Nixon fell back on one of his firmest convictions: He was only doing to others what they were doing to him. “A lot of people think you oughta wiretap,” he said. “They probably figure they’re doing it to us, which they are.”

The FBI director laid out the various theories the bureau was exploring: (1) a legitimate or illegitimate CIA operation; (2) a political espionage and intelligence scheme by people associated with the Republican Party or the president’s reelection campaign; (3) a Cuban right-wing mission; or (4) some kind of setup by a double

agent. All seemed likely and unlikely in their own ways. “We just could not see any clear reason for this burglary,” Gray recalled later.

Through Haldeman’s comments, Nixon grunted his usual assents. What they said in that recorded conversation would soon become the central mystery and hinge of the entire Watergate scandal. The comments left little doubt of the intent; Nixon’s team intended to use the organs of government to cover up their own rogue operation, mislead investigators, and throw the cloak of national security over what was really a political

mission. “The scheme… relied on Nixon’s cherished powers; not only was it a clever move, it was a power move—the kind Nixon preferred,” journalist Tom Wicker observed later. Whatever else had transpired until that moment—from the Chennault Affair to the Huston Plan to the Fielding burglary to the Brookings plan—a new Rubicon had been crossed and a fatal wound for the administration now created, left to fester.VI

He had witnessed plenty of hardball politics and thought he knew the world of dirty tricks inside and out, which is also how he knew that Nixon’s campaign had gone beyond the accepted bounds. In fact, he had suspected something was off about the president’s reelection effort for a year.

George Steinbrenner,

Nixon had immediately seen the peril of Dean’s confessional. There wasn’t any corner of the scandal that Dean could show

without potentially exposing everything. “What the hell is he going to disclose that isn’t going to blow something?” Nixon asked Ehrlichman just hours after Dean’s talk. It was the fundamental problem with everything—Watergate was never a one-off burglary. It was the Gordian knot of scandal, unable to be untied neatly or at all.

“I say before you and before the American people that I’m here as a Republican,” the Connecticut senator said before a packed room. “And I think I express the feelings of the 42 other Republican Senators and the Republicans of Connecticut and the feelings of the Republican party far better than those who committed illegal, unconstitutional and gross acts.” He continued, his jaw firmly set, “Republicans do not cover up. Republicans do not go ahead and threaten. Republicans do not go ahead and commit illegal acts. And, God knows, Republicans don’t view their fellow Americans as enemies to be harassed.”VI

Cox ran the office with the aplomb of a law professor, trusting his team and stoking debate, ultimately falling back on what he called “Lincoln’s Rule”: Everyone on staff got one vote, but his vote counted more than everyone else’s combined. This was to protect against an important generational and philosophical divide he had identified: his young, ambitious team had mostly come of age amid the turmoil of the 1960s, and were naturally more distrustful of power and institutions.

At one point, as Nixon financier Maurice Stans started to bluster about how previous campaigns had also been populated with dirty tricks—one of the Nixon team’s favorite rejoinders—Ervin shot back, “You know there has been murder and larceny in every generation, but that hasn’t made murder meritorious or larceny legal.”II

“Now, though numberless fates of death beset us which no mortal can escape or avoid, let us go forward together, and either we shall give honor to one another, or another to us.”

As a first step, lawyer Richard Weinberg was tasked with researching the basic question: Can you indict a sitting president? The short answer, after wading through a lot of obscure legal questions, constitutional precedents, judicial opinions, and American history, appeared to be: “Yes, but you shouldn’t.” There was no specific prohibition in the Constitution or elsewhere, but there were real questions about the institutional “propriety” of the Justice Department bringing charges against the head of the executive branch.I

Their conclusion was that their highest service had to be to what was best for the nation, not just what was best for justice.

“The Watergate cover-up resembled an ordinary organized-crime case,” Ben-Veniste and Frampton recalled. “Serious offenses had been committed: obstruction of justice, tampering with witnesses, payoffs, misuse of investigative information, perjury. All of the defendants had some knowledge of what was going on. They met and discussed the problems that the federal criminal investigation posed for them.” The only thing that was remarkable was that the defendants were meeting in the Oval Office.

It wasn’t until eight years later, during an ABC News special, that the special prosecutor’s team discovered how accurate the Bernstein tip had been. In the interview, it was revealed that during a session when the jurors were evaluating evidence without the prosecutors present, they had indeed taken a straw poll. “There were 19 people in the grand-jury room that particular day,” juror Elayne Edlund told ABC’s 20/20, “and we all raised our hands about wanting an indictment—all

“My judgment is that the facts are overwhelming in this case that the President of the United States authorized a broad general plan of illegal electronic surveillance and that that plan was put into operation by his subordinates,” he began. No, the evidence wasn’t perfect—they didn’t have all the answers they might want, or every smoking gun about every corner of the scheme—but that, Doar argued over the course of ninety minutes, was precisely the challenge and brilliance of the Watergate scheme. “You find yourself down in the labyrinth of the White House, in that Byzantine empire where yes meant no and go was stop and maybe meant certainly, and it is confusing, perplexing and puzzling and difficult for any group of people to sort out,” he said, the passion in his voice finally breaking out of months of passive presentation. “But that is just the very nature of the crime—that in executing the means, everything will be done to confuse and to fool, to misconstrue, so that the purpose of the decision is concealed.”

“I realize that most people would understand an effort to conceal a mistake, but this was not done by a private citizen and the people who are working for President Nixon are not private citizens,” Doar said, by way of a conclusion. “This was the president of the United States. What he decided should be done following the Watergate break-in caused action not only by his own servants, but by the agencies of the United States, including the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA, and the Secret Service. It required perjury, destruction of evidence, obstruction of justice, all crimes. But, most important, it required deliberate, contrived,

continued, and continuing deception of the American people.” It was simple: “Reasonable men acting reasonably would find the president guilty.” The committee was captivated and some were even convinced.

California representative Jerome Waldie for his turn concluded, “Common sense tells you that a President of the United States does not condemn the payment of over $400,000 to seven people occupying a D.C. jail because they have committed a burglary unless he wants something from them,” and Virginia Republican Caldwell Butler spoke, sadly, about the state of the presidency and the nation, saying that he would vote to impeach, “but there will be no joy in it for me.” The gangly, good-natured Butler had been a strong Nixonite—supporting the candidate throughout his campaigns and earning his own congressional seat on the president’s coattails in the ’72 landslide. “For years we Republicans have campaigned against corruption and misconduct,” he had told the committee, “but Watergate is our shame.” Syndicated columnist Mary McGrory, who would win a Pulitzer for her columns covering the impeachment, called Butler’s words “the single most fiery and liberating sentence spoken” throughout the Watergate investigations, as Butler became “the first Republican to slash the comforting myth that somebody else, of unknown party origin, was to blame.” Drafting

much to help him. He flashed a triumphant, defiant victory sign, and

He also argued he’d always had the nation’s best interests at heart—trying to protect national security amid a time of turmoil and revolution—and that he’d always had the executive authority to do what he and his men did. “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal,” Nixon said at one point, to the shock of not only his interviewer, but the world beyond.

Nixon’s protests through the scandal had been right in some respects: What he’d been accused of doing was part and parcel in many ways of what predecessor presidents had done. The difference had only been that Nixon had brought the work into the White House itself, removing the arm’s-length deniability that had protected his predecessors. “The whole mess fell on Nixon,” Bryce Harlow said later. “The White House had proven too big, too powerful, too irresponsible, too independent, too self-satisfied and arrogant.” Neither the White House, the FBI, nor the CIA would ever be the same.

Nixon left all his worst enemies emboldened. As journalist Teddy White wrote in his 1975 history of the era, Breach of Faith, the news media in the capital would never look at the White House the same again: “If Nixon has bequeathed to his presidential successors a permanently hostile news system, he has cursed them all.”

Today, we’ll never really know the full truth of Watergate. The remaining mysteries are spread among too many people, many of whom are now dead, their secrets buried alongside them. There remain big, unanswered—and perhaps now forever unknowable—questions even about the central Watergate break-in itself: Who ultimately ordered it? What was the actual purpose and target of the burglars? Were its central players, Hunt and McCord, cooperating with the CIA even as they carried out the operation at the DNC’s offices? Were the burglars really after political intelligence or were they hunting for blackmail material?

Nixon is a well-documented and almost insanely thoroughly biographized president. Beyond the aforementioned texts by Richard Reeves and Stephen Ambrose, four others in particular stand above the rest: Tom Wicker’s One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream, Tim Weiner’s One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon, Evan Thomas’s Being Nixon: A Man Divided, and John Aloysius Farrell’s magisterial Richard Nixon: The Life. They are simply the best of a crowded class.

Similarly, there are four canonical books on the scandal itself: Barry Sussman’s engaging and insightful The Great Cover-Up: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate, from 1974; J. Anthony Lukas’s 1976 classic Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years, which managed to capture so much so early; Stanley Kutler’s 1992 classic The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon, which still stands as the preeminent exegesis of the scandal; and Fred Emery’s 1994 Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon.