WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.819 Welcome back to The Deep Dive. We are tackling 00:00:02.819 --> 00:00:07.080 a subject today that it pretty much defines the 00:00:07.080 --> 00:00:10.080 entire concept of a modern political scandal. 00:00:10.339 --> 00:00:12.740 It really does. You know the suffix. You just 00:00:12.740 --> 00:00:15.919 add deragate to literally anything. Deflategate, 00:00:15.980 --> 00:00:18.320 pizzagate, you name it, and it instantly means 00:00:18.320 --> 00:00:20.640 something. Right. It implies a cover -up, a conspiracy. 00:00:21.059 --> 00:00:23.160 A hidden truth. Yeah. And we are, of course, 00:00:23.160 --> 00:00:26.199 talking about the original, the Watergate scandal. 00:00:26.460 --> 00:00:28.539 The one that started it all. Now, I know what 00:00:28.539 --> 00:00:30.660 you might be thinking. Everyone feels like they 00:00:30.660 --> 00:00:33.000 know this story. It's, you know, it's the foundational 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:35.539 myth of American political cynicism. Uh -huh. 00:00:35.780 --> 00:00:38.320 You've got the basic building blocks, Nixon, 00:00:38.619 --> 00:00:41.780 the tapes, the resignation. I am not a crook. 00:00:41.780 --> 00:00:44.119 All the big lines. It's the high school history 00:00:44.119 --> 00:00:46.320 version. Which is, I think, where most people 00:00:46.320 --> 00:00:48.600 stop. They know how it ends. So they just assume 00:00:48.600 --> 00:00:50.299 the story in the middle is, you know, a straight 00:00:50.299 --> 00:00:52.820 line from a burglary to a helicopter lifting 00:00:52.820 --> 00:00:55.359 off in the South Lawn. But looking at the source 00:00:55.359 --> 00:00:57.799 material we're digging into today, which is this 00:00:57.799 --> 00:01:00.799 incredibly comprehensive breakdown of the whole 00:01:00.799 --> 00:01:03.119 timeline, not just the highlights, the reality 00:01:03.119 --> 00:01:07.590 is so much weirder, so much messier. It is not 00:01:07.590 --> 00:01:10.890 a straight line. Not at all. It's a jagged chaotic 00:01:10.890 --> 00:01:15.769 line of frankly incompetence bizarre kidnapping 00:01:15.769 --> 00:01:19.290 plots. I mean calm rational sounding discussions 00:01:19.290 --> 00:01:22.030 about firebombing think tanks. Exactly. And a 00:01:22.030 --> 00:01:26.230 level of paranoia that is it's honestly hard 00:01:26.230 --> 00:01:28.010 to wrap your head around in what's supposed to 00:01:28.010 --> 00:01:30.230 be a functioning democracy. And that's the word 00:01:30.230 --> 00:01:33.049 right there. Paranoia. You really can't understand 00:01:33.049 --> 00:01:35.450 Watergate if you just look at it as a single 00:01:35.450 --> 00:01:38.040 event. You can't just call it a third rate burglary, 00:01:38.040 --> 00:01:39.879 which was the famous line at the time. Right. 00:01:39.959 --> 00:01:43.040 You have to see it as the, I guess, the inevitable 00:01:43.040 --> 00:01:45.400 explosion of a pressure cooker that had been 00:01:45.400 --> 00:01:47.900 building and building for years. So that's our 00:01:47.900 --> 00:01:49.640 mission for this deep dive. We're going to try 00:01:49.640 --> 00:01:51.840 to move past that dry textbook summary and really 00:01:51.840 --> 00:01:53.760 unpack what they call the White House horrors. 00:01:54.099 --> 00:01:56.780 We want to understand how a group of men who 00:01:56.780 --> 00:01:59.340 were. On paper, the most powerful people in the 00:01:59.340 --> 00:02:02.299 world ended up seriously debating whether they 00:02:02.299 --> 00:02:05.219 should use a yacht full of sex workers to blackmail 00:02:05.219 --> 00:02:07.700 their political opponents. It sounds like a bad 00:02:07.700 --> 00:02:11.860 movie plot. It does. Or how a simple piece of 00:02:11.860 --> 00:02:14.319 tape, just a standard piece of adhesive tape 00:02:14.319 --> 00:02:17.259 on a door latch, managed to completely unravel 00:02:17.259 --> 00:02:20.039 an entire presidency. The smallest detail with 00:02:20.039 --> 00:02:22.539 the biggest consequence. So let's get into it. 00:02:22.800 --> 00:02:25.879 The source material makes it really clear. We 00:02:25.879 --> 00:02:28.099 can't start at the Watergate complex in June 00:02:28.099 --> 00:02:31.199 of 72. We have to rewind. We have to go back 00:02:31.199 --> 00:02:33.460 to the beginning of the Nixon presidency around 00:02:33.460 --> 00:02:36.300 1969. And the atmosphere in that White House, 00:02:36.340 --> 00:02:38.340 it seems. I mean, it seems like a fortress under 00:02:38.340 --> 00:02:40.599 siege right from the very beginning. Absolutely. 00:02:40.960 --> 00:02:43.139 You have to think about what Nixon inherited 00:02:43.139 --> 00:02:45.939 when he came into office in 69. The Vietnam War. 00:02:46.319 --> 00:02:48.800 The Vietnam War is absolutely raging. The country 00:02:48.800 --> 00:02:50.520 is more divided than it's been since the Civil 00:02:50.520 --> 00:02:53.139 War. And he'd campaigned on this promise to end 00:02:53.139 --> 00:02:56.539 the war honorably. Very vague term. Very vague. 00:02:56.699 --> 00:02:59.539 And the reality on the ground was a total stalemate. 00:02:59.659 --> 00:03:02.340 So to try and break that stalemate, he authorizes 00:03:02.340 --> 00:03:04.819 these secret bombing campaigns in Cambodia. A 00:03:04.819 --> 00:03:06.819 neutral country, it's important to note. A neutral 00:03:06.819 --> 00:03:09.000 country, exactly. And this was not something 00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:11.199 he wanted the American public, or even Congress 00:03:11.199 --> 00:03:14.020 for that matter, to know about. But secrets don't 00:03:14.020 --> 00:03:17.620 stay secret for long in Washington. No. In May 00:03:17.620 --> 00:03:21.300 of 1969, the New York Times breaks the story. 00:03:21.479 --> 00:03:24.120 They expose the bombing. And this seems to be 00:03:24.120 --> 00:03:26.800 the trigger. This is like patient zero for the 00:03:26.800 --> 00:03:30.780 paranoia that follows. Nixon didn't just see 00:03:30.780 --> 00:03:33.800 this as a news leak. No, he saw it as an act 00:03:33.800 --> 00:03:35.979 of treason. He took it incredibly personally, 00:03:36.039 --> 00:03:38.599 and he saw it as a structural threat to the power 00:03:38.599 --> 00:03:40.900 of the presidency itself. This is that imperial 00:03:40.900 --> 00:03:44.599 presidency idea taking root. It is. Nixon truly 00:03:44.599 --> 00:03:47.319 believed that the executive branch had an absolute, 00:03:47.479 --> 00:03:50.039 unquestionable right to conduct foreign policy 00:03:50.039 --> 00:03:52.659 without any interference and that anyone who 00:03:52.659 --> 00:03:55.020 leaked information was, in effect, committing 00:03:55.020 --> 00:03:57.139 an act of war against his administration. So 00:03:57.139 --> 00:03:58.960 his reaction isn't, OK, let's tighten up our 00:03:58.960 --> 00:04:01.080 security protocols. Oh, no. His reaction is to 00:04:01.080 --> 00:04:03.479 go on the offensive immediately. He's on his 00:04:03.479 --> 00:04:06.139 wiretaps. Yes. And not just on the people he 00:04:06.139 --> 00:04:08.840 suspects leaked it. He taps reporters. He taps 00:04:08.840 --> 00:04:10.680 his own staff on the National Security Council. 00:04:10.780 --> 00:04:13.009 He wants to know who is talking to whom. And 00:04:13.009 --> 00:04:15.409 J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, was, what, not moving 00:04:15.409 --> 00:04:18.649 fast enough? Well, Hoover was a complicated figure. 00:04:18.750 --> 00:04:21.370 He had his own power base. And he pushed back 00:04:21.370 --> 00:04:25.040 on some of the more aggressive. surveillance 00:04:25.040 --> 00:04:27.899 requests. Sometimes he'd just slow walk them. 00:04:28.100 --> 00:04:31.240 So Nixon's inner circle decides to just go around 00:04:31.240 --> 00:04:33.379 the official channels. They decided to bypass 00:04:33.379 --> 00:04:36.259 the FBI completely. This is the moment that always 00:04:36.259 --> 00:04:39.160 gets me. You have the entire apparatus of the 00:04:39.160 --> 00:04:41.699 U .S. government at your disposal. And John Ehrlichman, 00:04:41.860 --> 00:04:44.480 the domestic policy chief, just decides now we'll 00:04:44.480 --> 00:04:46.920 set up our own private investigation unit. It 00:04:46.920 --> 00:04:49.920 speaks to a profound level of distrust in the 00:04:49.920 --> 00:04:51.899 very institutions they're supposed to be running 00:04:51.899 --> 00:04:55.079 deep. deep distrust. So they hire these two guys, 00:04:55.240 --> 00:04:57.879 Jack Caulfield and Anthony Elasovich. And these 00:04:57.879 --> 00:05:01.649 aren't like. seasoned CIA analysts? Not at all. 00:05:01.730 --> 00:05:04.430 They were former NYPD detectives. They were street 00:05:04.430 --> 00:05:07.170 guys. Their job was to dig up dirt, follow people 00:05:07.170 --> 00:05:09.709 around, essentially act as the president's private 00:05:09.709 --> 00:05:12.290 eyes. It feels less like intelligence work and 00:05:12.290 --> 00:05:14.269 more like something out of a pulp detective novel. 00:05:14.389 --> 00:05:16.689 That's a perfect way to put it. But things really, 00:05:16.750 --> 00:05:19.269 really escalate with the Pentagon Papers. OK, 00:05:19.389 --> 00:05:22.110 so that was the catalyst that pushed them from 00:05:22.110 --> 00:05:25.129 shady private investigators into outright criminal 00:05:25.129 --> 00:05:29.629 activity. It was June 1971. The New York Times 00:05:29.629 --> 00:05:32.470 starts publishing the Pentagon Papers, this massive 00:05:32.470 --> 00:05:35.870 7000 page secret history of U .S. involvement 00:05:35.870 --> 00:05:38.889 in Vietnam. And it had been leaked by a man named 00:05:38.889 --> 00:05:41.310 Daniel Ellsberg. Now, I was reading in the notes 00:05:41.310 --> 00:05:43.370 here that Nixon's initial reaction was actually 00:05:43.370 --> 00:05:46.550 kind of muted. He wasn't that worried. That's 00:05:46.550 --> 00:05:49.089 right. His first political instinct was, well, 00:05:49.149 --> 00:05:51.629 hang on. This report mostly covers the Kennedy 00:05:51.629 --> 00:05:54.110 and Johnson years. This makes the Democrats look 00:05:54.110 --> 00:05:56.500 bad, not me. But that's not how everyone saw 00:05:56.500 --> 00:05:59.060 it. No. Henry Kissinger, his national security 00:05:59.060 --> 00:06:02.480 advisor, absolutely lost his mind. He was furious. 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:05.240 Ellsberg had been a mentee of his, someone he 00:06:05.240 --> 00:06:07.279 had brought into the inner circle. So for Kissinger, 00:06:07.399 --> 00:06:09.480 it was personal. Deeply personal. And he went 00:06:09.480 --> 00:06:11.939 to Nixon and essentially argued, if you let this 00:06:11.939 --> 00:06:13.759 stand, if you can't control your own secrets, 00:06:13.980 --> 00:06:16.220 the entire world will see you as weak. The Soviets 00:06:16.220 --> 00:06:18.399 will see you as weak. The North Vietnamese will 00:06:18.399 --> 00:06:21.160 see you as weak. He basically goaded Nixon into 00:06:21.160 --> 00:06:24.019 a rage. He whipped him into what H .R. Haldeman, 00:06:24.199 --> 00:06:26.399 Nixon's chief of staff, later described in his 00:06:26.399 --> 00:06:29.019 diary as a frenzy. So they try to stop it legally. 00:06:29.199 --> 00:06:31.579 They do. The administration goes to court to 00:06:31.579 --> 00:06:33.379 try and block the publication. It goes all the 00:06:33.379 --> 00:06:36.279 way to the Supreme Court and they lose. It was 00:06:36.279 --> 00:06:39.220 a huge, humiliating public defeat for Nixon. 00:06:39.519 --> 00:06:42.079 And at that point, they decide that the legal 00:06:42.079 --> 00:06:44.899 route is a dead end. And if the law doesn't work 00:06:44.899 --> 00:06:47.480 for you, you go outside the law. This is when 00:06:47.480 --> 00:06:50.160 the order comes down from the top. Stop the leaks. 00:06:50.699 --> 00:06:54.519 By any means necessary. By any means. That phrase 00:06:54.519 --> 00:06:56.740 is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It is. And by 00:06:56.740 --> 00:07:00.139 any means led directly to the creation of the 00:07:00.139 --> 00:07:02.720 Special Investigations Unit. Better known to 00:07:02.720 --> 00:07:05.339 history by the greatest, most perfect nickname 00:07:05.339 --> 00:07:08.920 in all of politics, the plumbers. It really is 00:07:08.920 --> 00:07:10.860 an incredible name. How did they even get it? 00:07:10.939 --> 00:07:13.699 It's almost disappointingly simple. David Young, 00:07:13.899 --> 00:07:15.920 one of the aides running the unit, was talking 00:07:15.920 --> 00:07:18.220 to his grandmother on the phone. He told her 00:07:18.220 --> 00:07:20.540 his new job in the White House was to stop leaks. 00:07:20.839 --> 00:07:23.519 Oh, no. And she just said, oh, that's nice, dear. 00:07:23.579 --> 00:07:25.000 So you're a plumber. He thought it was funny. 00:07:25.040 --> 00:07:27.000 So he put a sign on his office door that said 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:29.819 the plumbers and the name just stuck. But the 00:07:29.819 --> 00:07:32.079 men they hired for this unit were not plumbers. 00:07:32.399 --> 00:07:36.000 They were very serious and very strange operators. 00:07:36.540 --> 00:07:38.939 This is where we meet the two architects of the 00:07:38.939 --> 00:07:41.850 whole disaster. E. Howard Hunt. And G. Gordon 00:07:41.850 --> 00:07:44.629 Liddy. Okay. Tell us about them. Hunt was ex 00:07:44.629 --> 00:07:49.170 -CIA. Yes. A real old school cold warrior. He 00:07:49.170 --> 00:07:51.889 was a veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion. A 00:07:51.889 --> 00:07:54.269 bit of a washed up spy who was writing spy novels 00:07:54.269 --> 00:07:56.850 on the side. He really lived in this world of 00:07:56.850 --> 00:08:00.209 cloak and dagger. And Liddy? Liddy was. Well, 00:08:00.290 --> 00:08:02.329 he was G. Gordon Liddy. He was almost a category 00:08:02.329 --> 00:08:05.209 unto himself. He was ex -FBI, but he was this 00:08:05.209 --> 00:08:08.470 incredibly flamboyant, intense personality obsessed 00:08:08.470 --> 00:08:11.430 with Nietzschean ideas of will and power. The 00:08:11.430 --> 00:08:13.389 source material describes him in a way that honestly 00:08:13.389 --> 00:08:15.769 makes him sound like a Batman villain. That's 00:08:15.769 --> 00:08:17.970 not far off. To give you a sense of his mindset, 00:08:18.209 --> 00:08:19.990 he originally wanted to name their little group 00:08:19.990 --> 00:08:23.329 Odessa. Odessa. What's that? It was the rumored 00:08:23.329 --> 00:08:26.089 name of the secret network of former SS officers 00:08:26.089 --> 00:08:29.069 who helped Nazis escape from Europe after World 00:08:29.069 --> 00:08:31.610 War Two. Wait, wait. He wanted to name a White 00:08:31.610 --> 00:08:34.210 House unit after a supposed Nazi escape network. 00:08:34.879 --> 00:08:38.460 Yes. And the truly terrifying thing isn't just 00:08:38.460 --> 00:08:40.740 that he suggested it. It's that nobody in the 00:08:40.740 --> 00:08:43.100 White House immediately fired him for suggesting 00:08:43.100 --> 00:08:45.340 it. That tells you everything you need to know 00:08:45.340 --> 00:08:47.519 about the culture they were building. They valued 00:08:47.519 --> 00:08:51.440 that kind of ruthless, amoral, can -do attitude. 00:08:51.659 --> 00:08:53.440 And they didn't really care about the package 00:08:53.440 --> 00:08:55.820 it came in. So the Plunners have their mandate. 00:08:56.379 --> 00:08:59.600 Stop the leaks. Their first major target is the 00:08:59.600 --> 00:09:02.669 man who started it all, Daniel Ellsberg. Right, 00:09:02.769 --> 00:09:04.529 but they aren't trying to prove he leaked the 00:09:04.529 --> 00:09:06.769 papers. Everybody already knew that. They wanted 00:09:06.769 --> 00:09:09.389 to destroy him personally. They wanted compromise, 00:09:09.610 --> 00:09:11.750 as the Russians would say. They were convinced 00:09:11.750 --> 00:09:13.830 that if they could dig into his psychiatric history, 00:09:13.889 --> 00:09:15.830 they could find something to discredit him as 00:09:15.830 --> 00:09:18.629 a nutcase, a deviant, something to smear him 00:09:18.629 --> 00:09:21.169 with. So they hatched a plan to break into the 00:09:21.169 --> 00:09:24.409 office of his psychiatrist, a Dr. Lewis Fielding. 00:09:24.620 --> 00:09:28.360 This is the fielding break -in, September 1971. 00:09:29.100 --> 00:09:31.779 And you can really see this as the dress rehearsal 00:09:31.779 --> 00:09:34.539 for Watergate. The same playbook. The exact same 00:09:34.539 --> 00:09:37.480 playbook. And it was, by all accounts, a complete 00:09:37.480 --> 00:09:41.139 disaster. They flew in a team of Cuban exiles 00:09:41.139 --> 00:09:43.279 from Miami. The same guys who would later be 00:09:43.279 --> 00:09:45.860 at the Watergate. The very same guys. Veterans 00:09:45.860 --> 00:09:48.899 of the Bay of Figs who were fiercely loyal to 00:09:48.899 --> 00:09:51.460 Hunt. They broke into the doctor's office in 00:09:51.460 --> 00:09:54.340 Beverly Hills. They pried open the filing. cabinets 00:09:54.340 --> 00:09:57.179 with a crowbar and they totally trashed the place. 00:09:57.259 --> 00:09:59.899 I trash it. To create a cover story. They wanted 00:09:59.899 --> 00:10:02.179 it to look like a robbery gone wrong like some 00:10:02.179 --> 00:10:04.779 drug addict was looking for cash or pills. Did 00:10:04.779 --> 00:10:07.399 they find anything on Ellsberg? It's a bit of 00:10:07.399 --> 00:10:10.519 a mystery. Liddy in his memoir claims they found 00:10:10.519 --> 00:10:13.470 absolutely nothing. Other accounts from inside 00:10:13.470 --> 00:10:15.950 the unit suggest they did find Ellsberg's file 00:10:15.950 --> 00:10:18.370 and that Hunt immediately sent it over to the 00:10:18.370 --> 00:10:20.929 CIA. Which would be highly illegal. Highly illegal. 00:10:21.190 --> 00:10:23.490 But either way, the operational result was a 00:10:23.490 --> 00:10:25.750 total failure. They'd committed a federal crime. 00:10:25.889 --> 00:10:27.990 They left a huge physical trail of destruction 00:10:27.990 --> 00:10:30.750 and they gained zero political leverage from 00:10:30.750 --> 00:10:33.490 it. Now, a normal person, a normal organization 00:10:33.490 --> 00:10:35.990 would look at that botched burglary and think, 00:10:36.110 --> 00:10:38.549 OK, let's let's pull back. This is too risky. 00:10:38.649 --> 00:10:41.809 But they didn't. They did the opposite. Expanded 00:10:41.809 --> 00:10:44.690 the scope of their operations. The list of what 00:10:44.690 --> 00:10:47.129 came to be known as the White House horrors from 00:10:47.129 --> 00:10:50.690 this period is it's just insane. It truly is. 00:10:50.909 --> 00:10:53.590 Let's start with the big one. The proposed firebombing 00:10:53.590 --> 00:10:56.269 of the Brookings Institution. Right. Let's just 00:10:56.269 --> 00:10:59.009 pause on that for a second. The phrase firebombing 00:10:59.009 --> 00:11:01.549 a Washington, D .C. think tank is a phrase that 00:11:01.549 --> 00:11:04.009 should not exist in the annals of American politics. 00:11:04.330 --> 00:11:07.169 Mind boggling. What was the plan? Why? Nixon 00:11:07.169 --> 00:11:09.309 was convinced that a safe at the Brookings Institution 00:11:09.309 --> 00:11:11.789 contained classified documents related to the 00:11:11.789 --> 00:11:14.259 Vietnam War that he wanted. So he couldn't just 00:11:14.259 --> 00:11:16.620 get them legally. Apparently not. So Liddy's 00:11:16.620 --> 00:11:18.960 plan was to use firebombs to create a diversion. 00:11:19.299 --> 00:11:21.799 You set the building on fire, and in the ensuing 00:11:21.799 --> 00:11:24.480 chaos, you send your team in disguised as firefighters. 00:11:24.840 --> 00:11:27.480 Oh, come on. I'm serious. They would rush in, 00:11:27.600 --> 00:11:30.240 ostensibly to fight the fire, but their real 00:11:30.240 --> 00:11:32.879 mission was to break open the safe and rescue 00:11:32.879 --> 00:11:34.759 the documents before the real fire department 00:11:34.759 --> 00:11:37.820 got there. It is literally the plot of a heist 00:11:37.820 --> 00:11:41.379 movie. A really badly written heist movie. Thankfully, 00:11:41.480 --> 00:11:44.080 even for them, that plan was ultimately rejected 00:11:44.080 --> 00:11:46.820 as being a little too extreme. A little too extreme, 00:11:46.940 --> 00:11:49.200 that's reassuring. But they had other projects. 00:11:49.379 --> 00:11:52.240 They started digging into Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick 00:11:52.240 --> 00:11:54.639 accident, trying to find more dirt on him. They 00:11:54.639 --> 00:11:57.980 forged diplomatic cables. Yes, this one is just 00:11:57.980 --> 00:12:00.299 incredible. They forged State Department cables 00:12:00.299 --> 00:12:03.000 to try and retroactively linked President John 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:06.460 F. Kennedy to the 1963 assassination of the South 00:12:06.460 --> 00:12:10.200 Vietnamese president, Ngo Dinh Diem. That's not 00:12:10.200 --> 00:12:13.120 just dirty tricks. That's historical revisionism. 00:12:13.259 --> 00:12:15.860 It's disinformation warfare against a deceased 00:12:15.860 --> 00:12:18.309 president from your rival party. It's a level 00:12:18.309 --> 00:12:21.250 of political poison that is hard to fathom. And 00:12:21.250 --> 00:12:23.309 there was even another plan targeting Ellsberg. 00:12:23.529 --> 00:12:26.389 Why now? Liddy proposed drugging him with LSD 00:12:26.389 --> 00:12:28.730 right before he was scheduled to give a big public 00:12:28.730 --> 00:12:31.289 speech. The idea was that he'd get on stage and 00:12:31.289 --> 00:12:34.149 start rambling incoherently, and he'd be discredited 00:12:34.149 --> 00:12:36.649 as a drug -addled lunatic on national television. 00:12:37.029 --> 00:12:40.230 It's terrifying because it shows there were no 00:12:40.230 --> 00:12:43.509 lines. There were absolutely no boundaries. They 00:12:43.509 --> 00:12:45.309 weren't willing to at least discuss crossing. 00:12:45.710 --> 00:12:48.649 None whatsoever. And this brings us into the 00:12:48.649 --> 00:12:52.269 election year, 1972. The plumbers' unit is officially 00:12:52.269 --> 00:12:55.370 dissolved. But the key personnel, Liddy and Hunt, 00:12:55.509 --> 00:12:58.490 they don't go away. No, they just get a new job. 00:12:58.509 --> 00:13:00.429 They're transferred over to the campaign. To 00:13:00.429 --> 00:13:01.889 the Committee for the Re -election of the President. 00:13:02.049 --> 00:13:05.730 CRP. Or, as it became affectionately known, CREEP. 00:13:05.830 --> 00:13:08.549 The acronym that just keeps on giving. So Liddy 00:13:08.549 --> 00:13:11.350 becomes the general counsel for CREEP. And our 00:13:11.350 --> 00:13:13.230 source says he was introduced to the campaign 00:13:13.230 --> 00:13:16.470 leadership explicitly as the man in charge of 00:13:16.470 --> 00:13:18.830 dirty tricks. They weren't even hiding it. And 00:13:18.830 --> 00:13:21.889 in January of 1972, Liddy walks into the office 00:13:21.889 --> 00:13:23.710 of the attorney general of the United States, 00:13:23.929 --> 00:13:25.870 John Mitchell. Who it's crucial to remember is 00:13:25.870 --> 00:13:27.669 also the head of the CRP at this point. He's 00:13:27.669 --> 00:13:30.230 wearing two hats. Exactly. And Liddy comes in 00:13:30.230 --> 00:13:32.370 with these big, professionally prepared presentation 00:13:32.370 --> 00:13:35.970 charts to pitch a massive program of covert operations. 00:13:36.769 --> 00:13:39.639 Codename Operation Gemstone. Liddy and his code 00:13:39.639 --> 00:13:45.100 names. So what was in Operation Gemstone? What 00:13:45.100 --> 00:13:47.159 was he pitching to the attorney general? Okay, 00:13:47.220 --> 00:13:48.679 so let's break down the options he presented. 00:13:48.840 --> 00:13:51.539 First, there was Operation Diamond. Diamond. 00:13:51.960 --> 00:13:54.500 Sounds glamorous. It was a plan to deal with 00:13:54.500 --> 00:13:57.139 the anti -war protesters they expected at the 00:13:57.139 --> 00:13:59.679 upcoming Republican National Convention in Miami. 00:14:00.019 --> 00:14:02.090 And how are they going to deal with them? Liddy 00:14:02.090 --> 00:14:04.590 proposed that they would identify the ringleaders 00:14:04.590 --> 00:14:07.509 of the protest groups, kidnap them off the street, 00:14:07.669 --> 00:14:11.450 drug them, and then transport them to a secret 00:14:11.450 --> 00:14:13.750 safe house in Mexico and hold them there until 00:14:13.750 --> 00:14:16.350 the convention was over. So casual international 00:14:16.350 --> 00:14:18.850 kidnapping of American citizens. That's plan 00:14:18.850 --> 00:14:21.919 A. That's plan A. Then there was... Operation 00:14:21.919 --> 00:14:25.360 Sapphire. Okay. This involved chartering a high 00:14:25.360 --> 00:14:28.320 -end yacht, staffing it with very expensive sex 00:14:28.320 --> 00:14:30.720 workers, and equipping it with hidden cameras 00:14:30.720 --> 00:14:32.340 and microphones. I think I see where this is 00:14:32.340 --> 00:14:35.559 going. The plan was to lure prominent Democratic 00:14:35.559 --> 00:14:38.679 officials onto the yacht, get them into compromising 00:14:38.679 --> 00:14:41.899 situations, and film the whole thing for blackmail 00:14:41.899 --> 00:14:44.820 material. It's a honeypot scheme. A literal floating 00:14:44.820 --> 00:14:48.789 honeypot. What else was on the menu? Operation 00:14:48.789 --> 00:14:51.769 Turquoise. Operation Turquoise was, in comparison, 00:14:52.070 --> 00:14:55.409 almost comically petty. The plan was simply to 00:14:55.409 --> 00:14:57.889 sabotage the air conditioning system at the Democratic 00:14:57.889 --> 00:15:00.470 National Convention, which was also in Miami. 00:15:00.750 --> 00:15:03.190 The goal was just to make the convention hall 00:15:03.190 --> 00:15:06.629 unbearably hot and humid so that when the TV 00:15:06.629 --> 00:15:08.610 cameras were rolling, all the delegates would 00:15:08.610 --> 00:15:11.029 look sweaty, angry and uncomfortable. So the 00:15:11.029 --> 00:15:13.570 plans range from kidnapping, which is a major 00:15:13.570 --> 00:15:16.889 felony, to a high school prank. It's an incredible 00:15:16.889 --> 00:15:19.690 spectrum of illegality and absurdity. And there 00:15:19.690 --> 00:15:22.529 was one more, Operation Emerald, which involved 00:15:22.529 --> 00:15:24.950 using a spy plane to intercept the communications 00:15:24.950 --> 00:15:28.230 of the Democratic candidate's campaign jet. So 00:15:28.230 --> 00:15:30.149 here's the moment. This is the pivotal moment 00:15:30.149 --> 00:15:33.570 in the entire scandal. Liddy presents these options. 00:15:33.809 --> 00:15:36.799 Kidnapping. prostitution sabotage to john mitchell 00:15:36.799 --> 00:15:38.860 the chief law enforcement officer of the united 00:15:38.860 --> 00:15:40.919 states and mitchell's response is not gordon 00:15:40.919 --> 00:15:43.740 you are insane and you're under arrest no his 00:15:43.740 --> 00:15:45.639 response and this is a near direct quote was 00:15:45.639 --> 00:15:48.179 basically gordon this is not realistic and it 00:15:48.179 --> 00:15:50.320 costs too much money It was a budget dispute. 00:15:50.480 --> 00:15:53.200 He didn't object on moral or legal grounds. He 00:15:53.200 --> 00:15:56.440 objected on budgetary grounds. Exactly. The initial 00:15:56.440 --> 00:15:59.039 price tag for Operation Gemstone was a million 00:15:59.039 --> 00:16:02.440 dollars. Mitchell balked at the price. He told 00:16:02.440 --> 00:16:04.419 Liddy to go back to the drawing board and come 00:16:04.419 --> 00:16:07.279 back with a scaled -down, more realistic version. 00:16:07.539 --> 00:16:09.740 And that scaled -down, cheaper, more realistic 00:16:09.740 --> 00:16:13.019 version was the Watergate break -in. That was 00:16:13.019 --> 00:16:15.929 the compromise. They would target the Democratic 00:16:15.929 --> 00:16:19.750 National Committee, the DNC headquarters at the 00:16:19.750 --> 00:16:22.429 Watergate office complex. And what was the specific 00:16:22.429 --> 00:16:24.750 goal? What were they looking for? The approved 00:16:24.750 --> 00:16:28.039 plan had two main objectives. photograph any 00:16:28.039 --> 00:16:29.700 interesting documents they could find in the 00:16:29.700 --> 00:16:32.860 files, and plant bugs on two key telephones. 00:16:33.039 --> 00:16:35.279 Whose phones? The phone of Larry O 'Brien, who 00:16:35.279 --> 00:16:37.740 was the DNC chairman, and another DNC official 00:16:37.740 --> 00:16:40.840 named R. Spencer Oliver. Why O 'Brien? Was there 00:16:40.840 --> 00:16:42.860 some specific dirt they thought he had? Well, 00:16:42.879 --> 00:16:44.860 there are a few competing theories on that. The 00:16:44.860 --> 00:16:46.799 standard explanation is that they were just on 00:16:46.799 --> 00:16:49.179 a general fishing expedition. They wanted financial 00:16:49.179 --> 00:16:51.600 documents, campaign strategy, anything they could 00:16:51.600 --> 00:16:54.019 use. But there are other theories. There is a 00:16:54.019 --> 00:16:56.600 more salacious theory, one that Liddy himself... 00:16:56.620 --> 00:16:59.279 pushed in his book later on, that they were actually 00:16:59.279 --> 00:17:02.039 looking for evidence related to a supposed call 00:17:02.039 --> 00:17:05.220 girl ring. The sexpionage angle again. Right. 00:17:05.319 --> 00:17:07.700 The theory was that this ring was being used 00:17:07.700 --> 00:17:10.440 by DNC staffers and they wanted proof to use 00:17:10.440 --> 00:17:12.799 for blackmail. But it's worth noting that John 00:17:12.799 --> 00:17:14.980 Dean and most of the other main figures have 00:17:14.980 --> 00:17:17.359 always dismissed that as a self -serving fantasy 00:17:17.359 --> 00:17:19.920 from Liddy. But whatever the specific motive, 00:17:20.119 --> 00:17:23.630 the plan was approved. Gordon Liddy finally got 00:17:23.630 --> 00:17:26.430 his go order for a black bag operation. He got 00:17:26.430 --> 00:17:28.869 his budget, and he started assembling the team. 00:17:29.049 --> 00:17:30.549 So let's meet the players who are actually going 00:17:30.549 --> 00:17:33.130 to carry out this third -rate burglary. First 00:17:33.130 --> 00:17:35.869 up, we have James McCord. McCord was the security 00:17:35.869 --> 00:17:39.589 chief for the CRP, another ex -CIA guy, but he 00:17:39.589 --> 00:17:41.750 was more of a technician. He was their electronics 00:17:41.750 --> 00:17:44.029 and bugging expert. Then we have the guys who 00:17:44.029 --> 00:17:46.930 did the physical breaking and entering, the Cubans. 00:17:47.029 --> 00:17:50.160 Yes. Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio 00:17:50.160 --> 00:17:53.279 Martinez and Frank Sturgis, who wasn't actually 00:17:53.279 --> 00:17:55.299 Cuban, but he was an American soldier of fortune 00:17:55.299 --> 00:17:58.619 who is deeply embedded in the anti Castro movement 00:17:58.619 --> 00:18:01.700 in Miami. And for these men, this wasn't just 00:18:01.700 --> 00:18:04.779 a simple burglary, was it? No. You have to understand 00:18:04.779 --> 00:18:07.839 their mindset. They saw this as a patriotic duty. 00:18:08.059 --> 00:18:10.240 They were told that the Democrats were secretly 00:18:10.240 --> 00:18:12.720 taking money from Fidel Castro, that they were 00:18:12.720 --> 00:18:15.619 communists in disguise. For them, this was a 00:18:15.619 --> 00:18:18.099 legitimate operation in the ongoing war against 00:18:18.099 --> 00:18:20.740 communism. They were true believers being manipulated 00:18:20.740 --> 00:18:24.019 by Hunt and Liddy. Absolutely. And Hunt and Liddy 00:18:24.019 --> 00:18:25.880 were supposed to be overseeing the whole thing 00:18:25.880 --> 00:18:28.660 from a safe distance. From a command post across 00:18:28.660 --> 00:18:31.539 the street. At the Howard Johnson's motel, watching 00:18:31.539 --> 00:18:34.910 from a balcony. Now, the break -in on June 17th 00:18:34.910 --> 00:18:37.410 is the one everyone knows. But the source material 00:18:37.410 --> 00:18:39.869 really highlights that this was not their first 00:18:39.869 --> 00:18:42.210 attempt. And the run -up to it was basically 00:18:42.210 --> 00:18:44.769 a comedy of errors. Oh, they were shockingly 00:18:44.769 --> 00:18:46.430 bad at this. They were the gang that couldn't 00:18:46.430 --> 00:18:48.670 shoot straight. So walk us through the failed 00:18:48.670 --> 00:18:51.349 attempts. Okay, so attempt number one is on May 00:18:51.349 --> 00:18:54.690 26th. Hunt and Martinez go to the Watergate to 00:18:54.690 --> 00:18:56.710 try and pick the lock on the DNC office door. 00:18:57.309 --> 00:19:00.150 They fail. And somehow, in the process, they 00:19:00.150 --> 00:19:02.750 manage to get themselves locked inside an adjacent 00:19:02.750 --> 00:19:05.049 banquet room overnight. Wait, they got locked 00:19:05.049 --> 00:19:07.130 in? They just had to sit there in the dark until 00:19:07.130 --> 00:19:09.269 the hotel staff came and unlocked the doors in 00:19:09.269 --> 00:19:12.029 the morning? That is just beyond humiliating. 00:19:12.069 --> 00:19:15.289 So they regroup. Attempt number two is the next 00:19:15.289 --> 00:19:18.769 night, May 27th. This time, they bring Virgilio 00:19:18.769 --> 00:19:20.690 Gonzalez, who was supposed to be their master 00:19:20.690 --> 00:19:22.980 locksmith. Okay, so this time it should work. 00:19:23.200 --> 00:19:25.539 Except Gonzalez gets to the door and realizes 00:19:25.539 --> 00:19:28.259 he brought the wrong set of lockpicking tools. 00:19:28.519 --> 00:19:30.619 You cannot make this stuff up. They have to abort 00:19:30.619 --> 00:19:33.799 again. But finally, on May 28th, attempt number 00:19:33.799 --> 00:19:36.839 three, they get in. Success. Temporary success. 00:19:37.099 --> 00:19:39.359 They get in, they plant the bugs, they use a 00:19:39.359 --> 00:19:42.039 camera to photograph a stack of documents, but 00:19:42.039 --> 00:19:44.299 the mission is still considered a failure. Why? 00:19:44.500 --> 00:19:47.420 Two reasons. First, the photos they took were 00:19:47.420 --> 00:19:50.079 all blurry and unreadable. John Mitchell later 00:19:50.079 --> 00:19:51.839 supposedly complained that they were shitty. 00:19:52.180 --> 00:19:54.920 And second, the bug they planted on Larry O 'Brien's 00:19:54.920 --> 00:19:57.160 phone was defective. It wasn't working properly. 00:19:57.400 --> 00:20:00.160 So the hubris just completely takes over. Instead 00:20:00.160 --> 00:20:02.700 of counting their losses and walking away, they 00:20:02.700 --> 00:20:04.519 decide they have to go back in. They have to 00:20:04.519 --> 00:20:07.579 go back in to fix the equipment. And that fateful 00:20:07.579 --> 00:20:11.640 decision brings us to the night of June 17, 1972. 00:20:12.240 --> 00:20:15.170 The team goes back in. James McCord, the tech 00:20:15.170 --> 00:20:17.910 guy, is responsible for setting up their entry 00:20:17.910 --> 00:20:20.029 and exit route through the parking garage. And 00:20:20.029 --> 00:20:22.309 this involves taping the door latches so they 00:20:22.309 --> 00:20:24.829 don't lock behind them. And this is it. This 00:20:24.829 --> 00:20:27.430 is the tiny detail that brings the whole thing 00:20:27.430 --> 00:20:30.470 crashing down. The piece of tape. McCord makes 00:20:30.470 --> 00:20:33.809 a critical, amateurish mistake. He places the 00:20:33.809 --> 00:20:36.109 piece of tape horizontally across the latch bolt. 00:20:36.230 --> 00:20:38.460 Which means it's visible. It's clearly visible 00:20:38.460 --> 00:20:40.559 from the outside of the door. A professional 00:20:40.559 --> 00:20:42.380 would have put it on vertically or it would have 00:20:42.380 --> 00:20:44.759 been hidden by the door frame. Enter Frank Wills. 00:20:44.900 --> 00:20:47.819 Frank Wills, a 24 -year -old security guard at 00:20:47.819 --> 00:20:51.019 the complex making, I think, about $80 a week. 00:20:51.319 --> 00:20:53.299 He's just doing his regular rounds. He comes 00:20:53.299 --> 00:20:55.119 to the door and he sees the tape. He doesn't 00:20:55.119 --> 00:20:57.839 immediately think international espionage. No, 00:20:57.900 --> 00:20:59.980 of course not. He thinks it's a maintenance crew. 00:21:00.259 --> 00:21:02.980 He assumes a cleaner taped the door open to take 00:21:02.980 --> 00:21:05.900 out the trash or something. So he just... peels 00:21:05.900 --> 00:21:08.339 the tape off, drops it in his pocket, and goes 00:21:08.339 --> 00:21:10.640 to get a burger. And the burglars, what do they 00:21:10.640 --> 00:21:13.119 do? They're already inside at this point. But 00:21:13.119 --> 00:21:15.180 later, when they're leaving, they find the door 00:21:15.180 --> 00:21:17.660 is locked again. And instead of aborting the 00:21:17.660 --> 00:21:20.180 mission, which any sane operative would do after 00:21:20.180 --> 00:21:22.579 realizing they've been discovered, McCord re 00:21:22.579 --> 00:21:24.859 -tapes the door. He picks the lock and puts a 00:21:24.859 --> 00:21:27.220 new piece of tape on the door in the exact same 00:21:27.220 --> 00:21:30.079 way. Unbelievable. So Frank Wills comes back 00:21:30.079 --> 00:21:31.920 from his break, he does his rounds again, he 00:21:31.920 --> 00:21:34.440 gets to the same door, and he sees the tape is 00:21:34.440 --> 00:21:37.390 back. And that's when he realizes, OK, this isn't 00:21:37.390 --> 00:21:39.690 the maintenance crew. Something is wrong here. 00:21:40.009 --> 00:21:42.769 So he calls the police. And here's the final 00:21:42.769 --> 00:21:45.890 beautiful layer of irony in this whole Keystone 00:21:45.890 --> 00:21:49.609 cops arrest. The police who respond, they don't 00:21:49.609 --> 00:21:52.190 exactly look like police officers. Not at all. 00:21:52.559 --> 00:21:55.539 The dispatcher sends the nearest available unit, 00:21:55.579 --> 00:21:57.819 which happens to be an unmarked car from the 00:21:57.819 --> 00:22:00.559 D .C. police vice squad. What were they doing? 00:22:00.680 --> 00:22:02.700 They were undercover, dressed as hippies, long 00:22:02.700 --> 00:22:05.660 hair, jeans, T -shirts, because they had been 00:22:05.660 --> 00:22:08.480 in a nearby park looking for drug deals. So Alfred 00:22:08.480 --> 00:22:11.339 Baldwin, the lookout in the Howard Johnsons across 00:22:11.339 --> 00:22:14.500 the street, he sees this car pull up. Right. 00:22:14.619 --> 00:22:16.740 He looks out his window. He sees these scruffy 00:22:16.740 --> 00:22:19.680 looking guys get out of an old car and he doesn't 00:22:19.680 --> 00:22:21.779 radio a warning. Because he thinks they're just 00:22:21.779 --> 00:22:24.119 kids going to a party. Exactly. He completely 00:22:24.119 --> 00:22:26.440 ignores them. By the time he sees lights flashing 00:22:26.440 --> 00:22:29.019 on and off inside the DNC offices on the sixth 00:22:29.019 --> 00:22:31.619 floor, it's far too late to warn anyone. The 00:22:31.619 --> 00:22:33.680 police catch them red -handed. They catch all 00:22:33.680 --> 00:22:36.599 five burglars hiding behind a partition in the 00:22:36.599 --> 00:22:39.819 office. They're arrested at gunpoint. And when 00:22:39.819 --> 00:22:42.400 the police search them? The entire conspiracy 00:22:42.400 --> 00:22:45.619 begins to unravel almost immediately. It wasn't 00:22:45.619 --> 00:22:47.599 just the sophisticated bugging equipment they 00:22:47.599 --> 00:22:50.119 had that was bad enough. It was the cash. Right. 00:22:50.180 --> 00:22:52.579 The sequential hundred dollar bills. Thousands 00:22:52.579 --> 00:22:55.880 of dollars in crisp, brand new, sequentially 00:22:55.880 --> 00:22:58.740 numbered one hundred dollar bills. But the most 00:22:58.740 --> 00:23:02.160 devastating discovery of all, they had address 00:23:02.160 --> 00:23:04.559 books on them. And in those address books were 00:23:04.559 --> 00:23:07.400 the names E. Howard Hunt and W. House. It was 00:23:07.400 --> 00:23:09.559 the smoking gun before the smoking gun tape. 00:23:09.700 --> 00:23:12.460 The police and the FBI immediately had a direct 00:23:12.460 --> 00:23:15.940 physical link from these five burglars to a consultant 00:23:15.940 --> 00:23:18.579 working for the White House. The cover -up had 00:23:18.579 --> 00:23:21.099 to begin before the sun came up. Okay, so let's 00:23:21.099 --> 00:23:23.200 shift to the cover -up. It is the morning of 00:23:23.200 --> 00:23:27.099 June 18th. The five burglars are in jail. What 00:23:27.099 --> 00:23:29.960 is the immediate reaction inside the Nixon orbit? 00:23:30.329 --> 00:23:33.069 It's a combination of panic and frantic destruction 00:23:33.069 --> 00:23:36.210 of evidence. Liddy rushes to the CRP offices 00:23:36.210 --> 00:23:39.109 and starts shredding piles and piles of documents. 00:23:39.349 --> 00:23:41.490 And Jeb Magruder, the deputy campaign manager. 00:23:41.690 --> 00:23:44.069 He takes the gemstone files, the charts Liddy 00:23:44.069 --> 00:23:46.210 had used in his presentation home with him, and 00:23:46.210 --> 00:23:48.390 literally burns them in his fireplace. But the 00:23:48.390 --> 00:23:50.990 FBI is good at what it does. They don't need 00:23:50.990 --> 00:23:53.589 the gemstone files. They have the money. This 00:23:53.589 --> 00:23:56.049 is the real life follow the money. Those hundred 00:23:56.049 --> 00:23:58.910 dollar bills all have serial numbers and the 00:23:58.910 --> 00:24:01.710 FBI starts meticulously tracing them. And where 00:24:01.710 --> 00:24:03.849 does that trail lead? It leads to a bank account 00:24:03.849 --> 00:24:06.549 in Miami, an account controlled by Bernard Barker, 00:24:06.589 --> 00:24:08.569 one of the burglars. OK, and where did Barker 00:24:08.569 --> 00:24:11.250 get that money? Well, the FBI found that Barker's 00:24:11.250 --> 00:24:13.670 account had received several checks from a man 00:24:13.670 --> 00:24:15.990 named Kenneth Dahlberg. And who was Kenneth Dahlberg? 00:24:16.210 --> 00:24:18.670 He was a Nixon campaign fundraiser from the Midwest. 00:24:18.970 --> 00:24:22.099 He told the FBI. Yeah, I collected donations, 00:24:22.440 --> 00:24:24.920 turned them into a cashier's check, and I handed 00:24:24.920 --> 00:24:26.839 that check to the committee to re -elect the 00:24:26.839 --> 00:24:29.859 president. So the chain is complete. The burglars 00:24:29.859 --> 00:24:32.160 were paid with Nixon campaign funds. It's an 00:24:32.160 --> 00:24:35.880 undeniable link. Now, while the FBI is methodically 00:24:35.880 --> 00:24:38.220 following this paper trail, the White House is 00:24:38.220 --> 00:24:41.099 trying to silence the human trail. And this brings 00:24:41.099 --> 00:24:43.920 us to the really tragic story of Martha Mitchell. 00:24:44.140 --> 00:24:46.490 We absolutely have to talk about her. Because 00:24:46.490 --> 00:24:49.349 for so long, the media and the public treated 00:24:49.349 --> 00:24:51.690 her like a joke, like this kooky alcoholic character. 00:24:52.029 --> 00:24:54.250 But when you look at the source material, what 00:24:54.250 --> 00:24:57.089 happened to her was it was extraordinary violence. 00:24:57.309 --> 00:25:00.690 It was horrific. Martha was John Mitchell's wife. 00:25:01.039 --> 00:25:03.460 And she wasn't just a political spouse. She was 00:25:03.460 --> 00:25:05.819 a celebrity in her own right. She was famous 00:25:05.819 --> 00:25:08.000 for being incredibly outspoken for these late 00:25:08.000 --> 00:25:09.980 -night phone calls she'd make to reporters. She 00:25:09.980 --> 00:25:11.380 was in California when the break -in happened. 00:25:11.440 --> 00:25:13.339 Yes, she was there for a campaign event, and 00:25:13.339 --> 00:25:16.039 she's watching the news, and she sees James McCord's 00:25:16.039 --> 00:25:19.519 face on TV, and she recognizes him instantly. 00:25:19.779 --> 00:25:22.289 He was her family's former bodyguard. Right. 00:25:22.430 --> 00:25:24.809 And in that moment, she knows. She knows her 00:25:24.809 --> 00:25:26.609 husband, the attorney general, has to be involved 00:25:26.609 --> 00:25:29.210 in this. And John Mitchell knows that she knows. 00:25:29.390 --> 00:25:32.450 And he knows she will talk. So he essentially 00:25:32.450 --> 00:25:35.109 has her put under guard. He leaves her in California 00:25:35.109 --> 00:25:37.950 under the watch of a security agent named Steve 00:25:37.950 --> 00:25:41.430 King, a former FBI agent. And his orders are 00:25:41.430 --> 00:25:44.410 explicit. Do not let her speak to the press. 00:25:44.650 --> 00:25:47.529 And when she tries to. She manages to get Helen 00:25:47.529 --> 00:25:49.930 Thomas, the legendary reporter, on the phone. 00:25:50.109 --> 00:25:52.299 She starts saying things like, They don't want 00:25:52.299 --> 00:25:55.079 me to talk. And Steve Kinn bursts into the room 00:25:55.079 --> 00:25:57.200 and rips the telephone cord directly out of the 00:25:57.200 --> 00:25:59.480 wall. That's assault. It gets so much worse. 00:25:59.660 --> 00:26:02.119 The source describes how five men then held her 00:26:02.119 --> 00:26:05.359 down on her bed while a doctor came in and forcibly 00:26:05.359 --> 00:26:08.240 injected her with a powerful sedative. They drugged 00:26:08.240 --> 00:26:10.240 her against her will. They held her prisoner 00:26:10.240 --> 00:26:13.440 in that hotel room for days. When she was finally 00:26:13.440 --> 00:26:15.680 allowed to leave, she had visible black and blue 00:26:15.680 --> 00:26:18.440 bruises all over her arms. She told reporters 00:26:18.440 --> 00:26:21.119 she'd been held captive. And what was the administration's... 00:26:21.130 --> 00:26:25.049 response to these accusations. Pure and simple. 00:26:25.210 --> 00:26:28.049 They launched a smear campaign. They told the 00:26:28.049 --> 00:26:30.269 press she was an alcoholic, that she was having 00:26:30.269 --> 00:26:32.069 a nervous breakdown, that she needed psychiatric 00:26:32.069 --> 00:26:34.970 help. They systematically destroyed her credibility 00:26:34.970 --> 00:26:37.450 to hide their crime. It's where we get the term 00:26:37.450 --> 00:26:40.190 the Martha Mitchell effect. Exactly. When a medical 00:26:40.190 --> 00:26:43.309 professional wrongly diagnoses a patient's true 00:26:43.309 --> 00:26:47.049 accurate beliefs as being delusions, Nixon himself 00:26:47.049 --> 00:26:49.750 later said on the tapes, if it hadn't been for 00:26:49.750 --> 00:26:51.690 Martha Mitchell, there would have been no Watergate. 00:26:52.009 --> 00:26:55.950 It's chilling. So while Marth is being held captive, 00:26:56.069 --> 00:26:58.750 Nixon is in the Oval Office just six days after 00:26:58.750 --> 00:27:02.789 the break -in. This is June 23, 1972. And he's 00:27:02.789 --> 00:27:05.410 hatching the plan to shut down the FBI investigation. 00:27:05.730 --> 00:27:07.769 This is the conversation that is captured on 00:27:07.769 --> 00:27:09.910 what will become known as the smoking gun tape. 00:27:10.109 --> 00:27:12.130 Right. Nixon and Haldeman are in the Oval Office. 00:27:12.289 --> 00:27:14.630 They know the FBI is tracing the money trail 00:27:14.630 --> 00:27:17.170 back to the campaign. They need to stop it. So 00:27:17.170 --> 00:27:19.069 Haldeman comes up with what he calls the CIA 00:27:19.069 --> 00:27:21.869 defense. What is that? The plan was to have the 00:27:21.869 --> 00:27:24.269 director of the CIA call the acting director 00:27:24.269 --> 00:27:27.569 of the FBI and tell him, essentially, stop investigating 00:27:27.569 --> 00:27:30.369 this money trail from Mexico. If you keep digging, 00:27:30.589 --> 00:27:32.730 you're going to compromise sensitive, ongoing 00:27:32.730 --> 00:27:35.750 national security operations related to the CIA. 00:27:36.029 --> 00:27:37.849 Was that true? Were there any CIA operations 00:27:37.849 --> 00:27:40.289 at risk? Not at all. It was a complete and total 00:27:40.289 --> 00:27:42.630 lie. But it was a very clever lie because it 00:27:42.630 --> 00:27:45.109 played on the CIA's sensitivity about their past 00:27:45.109 --> 00:27:48.630 failures, specifically the Bay of Pigs. So they 00:27:48.630 --> 00:27:51.789 were using the CIA as a shield to obstruct justice. 00:27:52.130 --> 00:27:54.630 They were using the specter of national security 00:27:54.630 --> 00:27:57.829 to block a criminal investigation. And Nixon 00:27:57.829 --> 00:27:59.750 signs off on it. You can hear him on the tape 00:27:59.750 --> 00:28:02.569 telling Haldeman, play it tough. And that moment 00:28:02.569 --> 00:28:06.049 right there. That is the crime. That's unambiguous 00:28:06.049 --> 00:28:07.890 obstruction of justice from the president of 00:28:07.890 --> 00:28:10.170 the United States. It is. But the crucial point 00:28:10.170 --> 00:28:12.849 to remember is that at this time, nobody knows 00:28:12.849 --> 00:28:15.130 this tape exists. It just goes into the vault, 00:28:15.230 --> 00:28:17.950 a secret ticking time bomb. So for the moment, 00:28:18.009 --> 00:28:20.750 the cover -up actually holds. The 1972 election 00:28:20.750 --> 00:28:23.470 happens in November. And Nixon wins in one of 00:28:23.470 --> 00:28:25.829 the biggest landslides in American history. He 00:28:25.829 --> 00:28:29.549 wins 49 out of 50 states. The public, for the 00:28:29.549 --> 00:28:32.130 most part, still sees Watergate as just some 00:28:32.130 --> 00:28:35.710 weird minor caper that didn't involve the president. 00:28:36.029 --> 00:28:38.890 They survived the election, but they couldn't 00:28:38.890 --> 00:28:42.349 survive the legal system. In January 1973, the 00:28:42.349 --> 00:28:44.670 trial of the seven Watergate conspirators begins. 00:28:45.339 --> 00:28:47.200 And this is where the system starts to push back. 00:28:47.339 --> 00:28:49.660 And it pushes back in the form of the presiding 00:28:49.660 --> 00:28:52.960 judge, John Sirica. Maximum John, they called 00:28:52.960 --> 00:28:55.440 him. Yes. And he was not a judge who would just 00:28:55.440 --> 00:28:57.579 sit back passively. He was deeply suspicious 00:28:57.579 --> 00:29:00.279 of the whole case. The prosecution's theory, 00:29:00.460 --> 00:29:02.440 which was also the White House's official story, 00:29:02.579 --> 00:29:05.180 was that Liddy and McCord were rogue agents, 00:29:05.440 --> 00:29:07.180 that they had acted completely on their own. 00:29:07.299 --> 00:29:09.299 And Sirica just didn't buy that. Not for a second. 00:29:09.519 --> 00:29:13.240 He looked at these men, ex -CIA, ex -FBI professionals, 00:29:13.599 --> 00:29:15.460 and he couldn't understand. what their motive 00:29:15.460 --> 00:29:17.359 would be. Why would they risk everything for 00:29:17.359 --> 00:29:19.940 this? He kept interrupting the trial, grilling 00:29:19.940 --> 00:29:22.980 witnesses himself. He was actively digging for 00:29:22.980 --> 00:29:25.140 the truth right from the bench. And all the while, 00:29:25.279 --> 00:29:27.380 the White House is frantically trying to keep 00:29:27.380 --> 00:29:29.640 the defendants quiet. They're paying them hush 00:29:29.640 --> 00:29:32.640 money. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in secret 00:29:32.640 --> 00:29:35.900 cash payments. Delivered by Anthony Ulasovich, 00:29:36.039 --> 00:29:39.220 the ex -cop, in paper bags left in airport lockers 00:29:39.220 --> 00:29:42.279 and phone booths. They were buying silence. And 00:29:42.279 --> 00:29:44.160 for a while it seemed to be working. It did. 00:29:44.299 --> 00:29:46.920 The burglars all pled guilty. Liddy was convicted. 00:29:47.160 --> 00:29:49.880 Nobody talked. Until sentencing day. This is 00:29:49.880 --> 00:29:52.579 where Sirica plays his trump card. It was a brilliant 00:29:52.579 --> 00:29:55.140 legal move. He provisionally sentences the burglars 00:29:55.140 --> 00:29:57.480 to incredibly long prison terms. We're talking 00:29:57.480 --> 00:30:00.740 35, 40 years. But he says he will review those 00:30:00.740 --> 00:30:03.680 sentences in three months. The message was crystal 00:30:03.680 --> 00:30:06.559 clear. It was. Cooperate, tell me the truth, 00:30:06.640 --> 00:30:08.940 and I can reduce your sentence. Stay silent and 00:30:08.940 --> 00:30:11.690 you will die in prison. And that threat was enough 00:30:11.690 --> 00:30:15.309 to crack James McCord. On March 23rd, 1973, just 00:30:15.309 --> 00:30:17.730 before his final sentencing, McCord hands a letter 00:30:17.730 --> 00:30:20.450 to Judge Sirica. Sirica reads it aloud in open 00:30:20.450 --> 00:30:22.849 court, and it is an absolute bombshell. What 00:30:22.849 --> 00:30:25.279 did it say? McCord admitted that perjury was 00:30:25.279 --> 00:30:27.779 committed during the trial. He admitted that 00:30:27.779 --> 00:30:29.859 political pressure had been applied to him and 00:30:29.859 --> 00:30:31.920 the other defendants to plead guilty and remain 00:30:31.920 --> 00:30:35.480 silent. And most importantly, he said that higher 00:30:35.480 --> 00:30:37.539 ups were involved in the conspiracy and had not 00:30:37.539 --> 00:30:40.200 been identified. The dam breaks. The dam breaks. 00:30:40.420 --> 00:30:42.559 And that letter leads directly to the Senate 00:30:42.559 --> 00:30:45.000 establishing an investigative committee. The 00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:46.859 Ervin Committee. The Senate Watergate Committee 00:30:46.859 --> 00:30:49.920 chaired by Sam Ervin, a Democrat from North Carolina. 00:30:50.299 --> 00:30:53.819 He had this public persona of being a folksy, 00:30:53.819 --> 00:30:56.220 simple country lawyer, but he was actually a 00:30:56.220 --> 00:30:58.720 brilliant constitutional scholar. And these hearings 00:30:58.720 --> 00:31:01.099 were televised? This became national event television? 00:31:01.480 --> 00:31:03.859 It was. The whole country just stopped working 00:31:03.859 --> 00:31:05.720 to watch them. It was the original must -see 00:31:05.720 --> 00:31:09.380 TV. And the star witness, the man who blew the 00:31:09.380 --> 00:31:12.460 whole thing open, was John Dean. White House 00:31:12.460 --> 00:31:15.039 counsel John Dean. He's a tragic figure in some 00:31:15.039 --> 00:31:17.519 ways. He is. He was this young, incredibly ambitious 00:31:17.519 --> 00:31:19.900 lawyer who had been tasked with managing the 00:31:19.900 --> 00:31:22.720 cover -up. But he began to realize that Nixon, 00:31:22.960 --> 00:31:25.299 Haldeman and Ehrlichman were setting him up. 00:31:25.400 --> 00:31:27.559 They were going to make him the scapegoat for 00:31:27.559 --> 00:31:30.319 the whole affair. So he decides to flip to save 00:31:30.319 --> 00:31:32.980 himself. He goes to the prosecutors and then 00:31:32.980 --> 00:31:35.579 he sits in that hearing room for days in his 00:31:35.579 --> 00:31:38.900 horn -rend glasses. And in this very flat, monotone 00:31:38.900 --> 00:31:41.700 voice, he lays out everything. He talks about 00:31:41.700 --> 00:31:44.220 the cancer on the presidency. Yes. He details 00:31:44.220 --> 00:31:46.700 the hush money payments, the offers of presidential 00:31:46.700 --> 00:31:51.069 clemency, the creation of the enemies list. directly, 00:31:51.190 --> 00:31:53.670 personally implicates President Nixon in the 00:31:53.670 --> 00:31:56.410 cover -up. But, and this is a huge problem for 00:31:56.410 --> 00:31:59.490 the committee, it's still his word against the 00:31:59.490 --> 00:32:01.430 president's word. And Richard Nixon is still 00:32:01.430 --> 00:32:03.549 a very popular president in many parts of the 00:32:03.549 --> 00:32:06.609 country. To them, Dean just looks like a disgruntled 00:32:06.609 --> 00:32:08.910 employee, a rat trying to save his own skin. 00:32:09.089 --> 00:32:11.470 The committee needed corroboration. They needed 00:32:11.470 --> 00:32:14.049 hard proof. And that proof walked in the door 00:32:14.049 --> 00:32:17.369 in the form of a minor aide named Alexander Butterfield. 00:32:17.759 --> 00:32:21.500 Friday the 13th, July 1973, a date that will 00:32:21.500 --> 00:32:24.359 live in infamy for Richard Nixon. Butterfield 00:32:24.359 --> 00:32:26.740 is a deputy assistant to the president. He's 00:32:26.740 --> 00:32:28.539 being interviewed by the committee staff behind 00:32:28.539 --> 00:32:30.839 closed doors, just a routine interview. They're 00:32:30.839 --> 00:32:32.519 asking him basic questions about how the White 00:32:32.519 --> 00:32:34.519 House records conversations, meeting minutes, 00:32:34.640 --> 00:32:37.119 things like that. Right. And then a staffer asks, 00:32:37.319 --> 00:32:39.299 almost as a throwaway question at the end of 00:32:39.299 --> 00:32:41.720 the day, is there any other system in place for 00:32:41.720 --> 00:32:44.180 recording conversations? And Butterfield pauses. 00:32:44.279 --> 00:32:48.319 He pauses and then he says, very quietly, I was 00:32:48.319 --> 00:32:52.200 aware of listening devices. Yes, sir. the silence 00:32:52.200 --> 00:32:54.519 in that room must have been absolutely deafening 00:32:54.519 --> 00:32:57.279 it changed world history Butterfield revealed 00:32:57.279 --> 00:33:01.519 that since 1971, Nixon had a secret voice -activated 00:33:01.519 --> 00:33:04.799 taping system installed in the Oval Office. It 00:33:04.799 --> 00:33:07.299 recorded everything. The meetings with Dean about 00:33:07.299 --> 00:33:09.480 the cover -up, the meetings with Haldeman about 00:33:09.480 --> 00:33:12.319 using the CIA, the meetings with Mitchell, it 00:33:12.319 --> 00:33:14.519 was all on tape. All of it. Why? I mean, why 00:33:14.519 --> 00:33:16.960 would a man so paranoid about leaks and secrets 00:33:16.960 --> 00:33:19.900 tape himself committing federal crimes? A combination 00:33:19.900 --> 00:33:22.519 of hubris and a misguided sense of history. He 00:33:22.519 --> 00:33:25.220 wanted to write his memoirs. He saw himself as 00:33:25.220 --> 00:33:27.579 a great statesman. on par with Churchill or de 00:33:27.579 --> 00:33:30.339 Gaulle. He wanted a perfect secret record of 00:33:30.339 --> 00:33:32.759 his own brilliance for future historians to study. 00:33:32.859 --> 00:33:34.980 He never imagined that a court would force him 00:33:34.980 --> 00:33:36.619 to release those tapes while he was still in 00:33:36.619 --> 00:33:39.359 office. Never in a million years. So the entire 00:33:39.359 --> 00:33:42.259 focus of the scandal shifts overnight. It's no 00:33:42.259 --> 00:33:44.569 longer about who you believe. It's about getting 00:33:44.569 --> 00:33:47.150 the tapes. The new special prosecutor, Archibald 00:33:47.150 --> 00:33:49.769 Cox, immediately subpoenas nine of the tapes. 00:33:49.930 --> 00:33:53.369 And Nixon immediately refuses. He claims executive 00:33:53.369 --> 00:33:55.809 privilege. What's the argument there? The argument 00:33:55.809 --> 00:33:58.190 is that a president needs to be able to get candid, 00:33:58.390 --> 00:34:01.170 honest advice from his aides, and they won't 00:34:01.170 --> 00:34:03.210 give it if they think their private conversations 00:34:03.210 --> 00:34:06.319 will be made public. He argues that the separation 00:34:06.319 --> 00:34:09.320 of powers means the courts simply can't compel 00:34:09.320 --> 00:34:11.599 the president to release his internal records. 00:34:11.840 --> 00:34:14.900 This standoff leads to probably the most dramatic 00:34:14.900 --> 00:34:16.940 weekend in the history of the Justice Department. 00:34:17.179 --> 00:34:20.159 The Saturday Night Massacre, October 20, 1973. 00:34:20.719 --> 00:34:23.400 Nixon has had enough of Cox. He decides he wants 00:34:23.400 --> 00:34:25.519 him fired. So he calls his attorney general, 00:34:25.659 --> 00:34:27.860 Elliot Richardson. And Richardson is a man of 00:34:27.860 --> 00:34:30.619 real integrity. He had promised the Senate during 00:34:30.619 --> 00:34:33.219 his confirmation hearings that the special prosecutor 00:34:33.219 --> 00:34:36.420 would have full independence. So when Nixon gives 00:34:36.420 --> 00:34:39.039 him the order to fire Cox, Richardson refuses. 00:34:39.500 --> 00:34:42.960 He flies to the White House and resigns on the 00:34:42.960 --> 00:34:45.599 spot rather than carry out an order he believes 00:34:45.599 --> 00:34:48.039 is wrong. So Nixon moves down the chain of command. 00:34:48.260 --> 00:34:50.699 He calls the deputy attorney general, William 00:34:50.699 --> 00:34:53.780 Ruckelshaus. You're the acting AG now. You fire 00:34:53.780 --> 00:34:57.420 him. Ruckelshaus also refuses. So Nixon fires 00:34:57.420 --> 00:34:59.519 him. Now the Justice Department is essentially 00:34:59.519 --> 00:35:02.039 headless. We are down to the number three official, 00:35:02.239 --> 00:35:05.119 the Solicitor General. Robert Bork. And Bork 00:35:05.119 --> 00:35:08.079 agrees to do it. He does. He later said he did 00:35:08.079 --> 00:35:10.019 it because he believed someone had to stay and 00:35:10.019 --> 00:35:12.500 run the department to prevent total chaos. So 00:35:12.500 --> 00:35:15.000 he wrote the letter. He officially fired Archibald 00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:17.599 Cox. And the public reaction? It was an absolute 00:35:17.599 --> 00:35:20.480 firestorm. The FBI was sent to seal off the special 00:35:20.480 --> 00:35:23.239 prosecutor's offices. The news broke on a Saturday 00:35:23.239 --> 00:35:25.860 night. It looked, for all the world, like a coup. 00:35:26.219 --> 00:35:28.079 It looked like the president was dismantling 00:35:28.079 --> 00:35:29.920 the Justice Department to save his own skin. 00:35:30.179 --> 00:35:33.980 The public went ballistic. Allistic. Telegrams 00:35:33.980 --> 00:35:37.039 flooded Washington. Western Union literally couldn't 00:35:37.039 --> 00:35:39.360 keep up with the volume. Half a million messages 00:35:39.360 --> 00:35:42.480 poured in. There were spontaneous protests. And 00:35:42.480 --> 00:35:44.800 congressmen who had been defending Nixon suddenly 00:35:44.800 --> 00:35:47.679 started using the word impeachment. He thought 00:35:47.679 --> 00:35:50.260 firing Cox would end the investigation. Instead, 00:35:50.460 --> 00:35:52.800 it guaranteed his impeachment would begin. So 00:35:52.800 --> 00:35:55.079 he's forced to appoint a new special prosecutor. 00:35:55.639 --> 00:35:58.320 Leon Jaworski, and he's forced to finally start 00:35:58.320 --> 00:36:00.980 handing over some of the subpoena tapes, which 00:36:00.980 --> 00:36:03.880 is where we discover the famous gap. The 18 and 00:36:03.880 --> 00:36:06.719 a half minute gap. One of the key tapes, a conversation 00:36:06.719 --> 00:36:09.320 between Nixon and Haldeman just three days after 00:36:09.320 --> 00:36:12.599 the break -in, had this long, loud, buzzing sound 00:36:12.599 --> 00:36:14.639 right where the conversation should have been. 00:36:14.840 --> 00:36:18.849 And the official explanation was creative. Nixon's 00:36:18.849 --> 00:36:21.590 loyal secretary, Rosemary Woods, took the blame. 00:36:21.710 --> 00:36:23.570 She claims she must have accidentally erased 00:36:23.570 --> 00:36:25.570 it while transcribing the tape. The Rosemary 00:36:25.570 --> 00:36:28.050 stretch. Yes. She claims she was reaching for 00:36:28.050 --> 00:36:29.989 the phone but accidentally kept her foot on the 00:36:29.989 --> 00:36:32.329 transcriber's control pedal, erasing the tape. 00:36:32.489 --> 00:36:34.989 They even had her pose for photographs, trying 00:36:34.989 --> 00:36:37.630 to reenact this position. And it was physically 00:36:37.630 --> 00:36:40.170 impossible. Completely impossible. And later, 00:36:40.289 --> 00:36:43.269 a panel of audio experts analyzed the tape. They 00:36:43.269 --> 00:36:45.429 found it wasn't one single accidental erasure. 00:36:45.730 --> 00:36:49.690 The tape had been deliberately erased and rewound 00:36:49.690 --> 00:36:51.889 at least five separate times. It was a clear, 00:36:51.909 --> 00:36:55.070 intentional destruction of evidence. And everyone 00:36:55.070 --> 00:36:58.150 knew it. Everyone knew it. By early 1974, the 00:36:58.150 --> 00:37:00.070 walls are just closing in from every direction. 00:37:00.750 --> 00:37:04.269 Nixon tries one last gambit. He decides to release 00:37:04.269 --> 00:37:06.570 edited transcripts of the tapes to the public. 00:37:06.670 --> 00:37:09.309 The famous blue book. His hope was this would 00:37:09.309 --> 00:37:11.449 satisfy everyone and make the issue go away. 00:37:11.630 --> 00:37:15.460 But this backfired. spectacularly. It was a catastrophe 00:37:15.460 --> 00:37:17.980 for him. Even with all the swear words replaced 00:37:17.980 --> 00:37:20.480 with the phrase expletive deleted, the content 00:37:20.480 --> 00:37:22.480 of those transcripts was just shocking to the 00:37:22.480 --> 00:37:24.139 American public. It wasn't the crime, it was 00:37:24.139 --> 00:37:26.320 the character. Exactly. The tapes didn't show 00:37:26.320 --> 00:37:29.480 a noble statesman struggling with a crisis. They 00:37:29.480 --> 00:37:32.420 showed a petty, vindictive, bigoted man obsessed 00:37:32.420 --> 00:37:35.360 with getting revenge on his enemies. His own 00:37:35.360 --> 00:37:37.739 political base, the so -called silent majority 00:37:37.739 --> 00:37:41.079 of moral conservatives, were horrified by his 00:37:41.079 --> 00:37:43.900 language and his character. Then comes the final 00:37:43.900 --> 00:37:47.980 fatal blow from the Supreme Court. United States 00:37:47.980 --> 00:37:52.780 v. Nixon, July 24th, 1974. The court rules, 8 00:37:52.780 --> 00:37:55.360 -0, that he must turn over the remaining tapes. 00:37:55.659 --> 00:37:59.699 8 -0. His own conservative appointees voted against 00:37:59.699 --> 00:38:02.699 him. They did. The court ruled that while executive 00:38:02.699 --> 00:38:05.460 privilege is a real concept, it is not absolute, 00:38:05.619 --> 00:38:07.760 and it cannot be used to withhold evidence in 00:38:07.760 --> 00:38:10.400 a criminal investigation. He had no more legal 00:38:10.400 --> 00:38:13.760 road to run. And that final batch of tapes included 00:38:13.760 --> 00:38:16.880 the June 23rd smoking gun tape. The one where 00:38:16.880 --> 00:38:19.739 he is heard clearly and unambiguously ordering 00:38:19.739 --> 00:38:22.280 the CIA to be used to obstruct the FBI investigation. 00:38:22.719 --> 00:38:25.000 Once that tape became public, his support on 00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:27.360 Capitol Hill just stifled. It vanished overnight. 00:38:27.559 --> 00:38:29.940 Which leads to that famous final meeting in the 00:38:29.940 --> 00:38:32.500 Oval Office. Yes. Senator Barry Goldwater, the 00:38:32.500 --> 00:38:34.260 conscience of the Republican Party, along with 00:38:34.260 --> 00:38:36.360 the GOP leadership, goes to the White House to 00:38:36.360 --> 00:38:37.960 meet with the president. And they deliver the 00:38:37.960 --> 00:38:40.440 bad news. It's the end. Nixon asked them, frankly, 00:38:40.500 --> 00:38:42.019 what his chances are in a Senate impeachment 00:38:42.019 --> 00:38:45.059 trial. And Goldwater is brutally honest. He says, 00:38:45.199 --> 00:38:48.139 Mr. President, you have maybe four or five votes 00:38:48.139 --> 00:38:50.739 in the Senate and I am not one of them. He needed 00:38:50.739 --> 00:38:54.619 34 votes to survive. He had maybe four. The game 00:38:54.619 --> 00:38:58.630 was over. The next day, August 8th, 1974, Richard 00:38:58.630 --> 00:39:01.269 Nixon goes on national television and announces 00:39:01.269 --> 00:39:04.650 his resignation. On August 9, he gives that famous 00:39:04.650 --> 00:39:07.389 wave from the helicopter door and Gerald Ford 00:39:07.389 --> 00:39:09.590 becomes president. Our long national nightmare 00:39:09.590 --> 00:39:13.050 is over. So he said, but there's a very controversial 00:39:13.050 --> 00:39:16.309 coda to this story. A month later, President 00:39:16.309 --> 00:39:19.550 Ford issues a full and unconditional pardon for 00:39:19.550 --> 00:39:21.550 Richard Nixon. A decision that almost certainly 00:39:21.550 --> 00:39:24.900 cost him the 1976 election. It destroyed his 00:39:24.900 --> 00:39:27.260 political career. It did. Ford's argument was 00:39:27.260 --> 00:39:28.980 that the country couldn't move on. It couldn't 00:39:28.980 --> 00:39:31.940 heal if it had to endure a years long trial of 00:39:31.940 --> 00:39:34.199 a former president. He wanted to close the book. 00:39:34.440 --> 00:39:36.519 But for millions of Americans, it just looked 00:39:36.519 --> 00:39:38.400 like a corrupt bargain. It looked like the elites 00:39:38.400 --> 00:39:40.380 protecting one of their own. It felt like the 00:39:40.380 --> 00:39:43.000 principle of equal justice under law didn't apply 00:39:43.000 --> 00:39:46.139 to the man at the very top. Exactly. So as we 00:39:46.139 --> 00:39:47.920 wrap this all up, let's just talk for a minute 00:39:47.920 --> 00:39:50.199 about the legacy. Beyond the gate suffix being 00:39:50.199 --> 00:39:52.840 attached to every scandal, how did this fundamentally 00:39:52.840 --> 00:39:55.739 change the DNA of America? I think the biggest 00:39:55.739 --> 00:39:58.840 casualty was trust. It absolutely destroyed public 00:39:58.840 --> 00:40:01.739 trust in government. Before Watergate, despite 00:40:01.739 --> 00:40:04.260 all the turmoil of Vietnam, there was still a 00:40:04.260 --> 00:40:06.360 sort of baseline assumption that the president, 00:40:06.519 --> 00:40:09.300 whoever he was, was at least trying to act in 00:40:09.300 --> 00:40:11.820 the national interest. And after Watergate? After 00:40:11.820 --> 00:40:15.400 Watergate, the baseline assumption for many people 00:40:15.400 --> 00:40:17.940 became that the government is probably lying 00:40:17.940 --> 00:40:21.190 to you. That cynicism became deeply embedded 00:40:21.190 --> 00:40:24.250 in the culture. It also led to a wave of reforms. 00:40:24.610 --> 00:40:28.130 New laws were passed. Oh, yes. We got the Privacy 00:40:28.130 --> 00:40:30.230 Act, major amendments to the Freedom of Information 00:40:30.230 --> 00:40:32.789 Act. The FISA courts were created to oversee 00:40:32.789 --> 00:40:35.510 government surveillance. We tried to build institutional 00:40:35.510 --> 00:40:37.710 guardrails to prevent something like this from 00:40:37.710 --> 00:40:40.190 ever happening again. But those guardrails are 00:40:40.190 --> 00:40:42.210 only as strong as the people who are supposed 00:40:42.210 --> 00:40:44.409 to be enforcing them. That's the constant struggle. 00:40:44.449 --> 00:40:46.969 And of course... It completely changed journalism. 00:40:47.269 --> 00:40:49.730 Woodward and Bernstein became celebrities, folk 00:40:49.730 --> 00:40:53.110 heroes. The idea of the adversarial press. of 00:40:53.110 --> 00:40:55.409 the journalist's job being to hold power to account 00:40:55.409 --> 00:40:58.409 became the dominant model. And the deep throat 00:40:58.409 --> 00:41:01.289 archetype, the brave anonymous source leaking 00:41:01.289 --> 00:41:04.369 secrets from inside the system, became the blueprint 00:41:04.369 --> 00:41:07.250 for modern investigative reporting. I want to 00:41:07.250 --> 00:41:09.090 leave our listeners with one final thought, a 00:41:09.090 --> 00:41:11.309 kind of counterfactual that really struck me 00:41:11.309 --> 00:41:12.949 while going through the source material. It's 00:41:12.949 --> 00:41:15.630 about luck. Yeah. We tell this story as a triumph 00:41:15.630 --> 00:41:18.730 of the American system. The press worked, the 00:41:18.730 --> 00:41:21.409 courts worked, Congress worked, and they all 00:41:21.409 --> 00:41:25.739 did. But what if Alexander Butterfield hadn't 00:41:25.739 --> 00:41:28.300 been asked that one throwaway question? What 00:41:28.300 --> 00:41:30.760 if he hadn't casually mentioned the taping system? 00:41:31.099 --> 00:41:33.280 Without the tapes, there was no hard evidence. 00:41:33.380 --> 00:41:35.460 The cover -up of the actual break -in had been 00:41:35.460 --> 00:41:37.579 honestly pretty effective. Nixon had destroyed 00:41:37.579 --> 00:41:39.619 most of the direct evidence. Without the tapes, 00:41:39.699 --> 00:41:41.599 it was just John Dean's word against the presidents. 00:41:41.840 --> 00:41:44.320 It's a terrifying thought the cover -up was holding. 00:41:44.719 --> 00:41:47.519 Without those tapes, Richard Nixon almost certainly 00:41:47.519 --> 00:41:49.980 would have finished his second term. The imperial 00:41:49.980 --> 00:41:52.679 presidency would have been validated. And we 00:41:52.679 --> 00:41:54.800 might be living in a very, very different constitutional 00:41:54.800 --> 00:41:57.719 reality today. It suggests that our democracy 00:41:57.719 --> 00:42:00.519 wasn't necessarily saved by the grandeur of the 00:42:00.519 --> 00:42:03.460 system, but maybe by a single acts of almost 00:42:03.460 --> 00:42:06.780 lucky admission in a closed door hearing. Which 00:42:06.780 --> 00:42:09.420 is a very fragile thing to have to rely on. It 00:42:09.420 --> 00:42:12.460 is indeed. Well, that is our deep dive on Watergate. 00:42:12.579 --> 00:42:15.320 It's a story of burglars and bugs and a constitutional 00:42:15.320 --> 00:42:17.840 crisis. But at its heart, it's really a story 00:42:17.840 --> 00:42:20.440 about the absolute arrogance of power. And a 00:42:20.440 --> 00:42:22.940 story about why you should never, ever tape a 00:42:22.940 --> 00:42:25.840 door latch horizontally. Words to live by. Thanks 00:42:25.840 --> 00:42:27.960 for listening. Stay curious, stay skeptical, 00:42:28.019 --> 00:42:30.280 and we will see you on the next deep dive.