Watergate Quotes

“Despite two years of burgeoning controversy and spreading scandal, there had always remained at the core of Nixon's world a certain confidence-the idea that both because he was Richard Nixon, the politician whose phoenixlike ability to rise from the ashes always surprised his critics, and because he was the president, bathed in the office's unique mystique, he would manage to power his way through the worst. He'd always imagined, in Garment's words, that the dog would talk. The White House stood still in shock as it realized that that confidence no longer held true.”
― Garrett M. Graff, Watergate: A New History

“It also underscored the challenge ahead: Every one of the players seemed to be involved in so many shady activities that it was hard to keep a narrative straight.”
― Garrett M. Graff, Watergate: A New History

“On one visit to the Oval Office to meet with his successor, Lyndon Johnson couldn’t believe how neat and functionally lacking Nixon’s desk was; he had always prided himself on a massive desktop telephone apparatus that allowed him to instantly connect with people at all levels of the government and was confounded to see Nixon’s tiny telephone with just three direct-connect buttons: “Just one dinky little phone to keep in touch with his people,” he related in wonder to guests at dinner afterward. “That’s all—just three buttons and they all go to Germans!”
― Garrett M. Graff, Watergate: A New History

“Richardson reached Harvard Law legend Archibald Cox during a lecture”
― Garrett M. Graff, Watergate: A New History

“Martha Mitchell, the flamboyant and fiery wife of Nixon’s attorney general, arrived under a yellow organza parasol and wide-brim hat, wearing a pale-apricot couture dress and high-heel slingbacks—the same outfit she’d worn earlier in the year to meet Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace.”
― Garrett M. Graff, Watergate: A New History

“(Hoover had retaliated with a smear campaign labeling Nelson a drunk, but as the reporter later quipped, “What they didn’t realize is that you can’t ruin a newspaperman by branding him a drunk.”)”
― Garrett M. Graff, Watergate: A New History