WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.640 You know, usually when we think about the fall 00:00:02.640 --> 00:00:05.719 of a superpower's government, we imagine something 00:00:05.719 --> 00:00:08.820 cinematic, right? Like a massive invading army 00:00:08.820 --> 00:00:12.220 or a sudden dramatic revolution in the streets. 00:00:12.460 --> 00:00:16.520 Right, yeah. A grand historical catalyst. feels 00:00:16.520 --> 00:00:18.620 necessary to topple an entire administration. 00:00:18.800 --> 00:00:20.800 I mean, the dominoes are supposed to start falling 00:00:20.800 --> 00:00:23.420 because of a giant, undeniable push. Exactly. 00:00:24.120 --> 00:00:27.600 But then you step into the world of 1970s American 00:00:27.600 --> 00:00:30.420 politics, and suddenly that grand historical 00:00:30.420 --> 00:00:32.859 catalyst is, well, it's a piece of duct tape. 00:00:33.020 --> 00:00:35.100 A literal piece of duct tape. Yeah. I mean, we 00:00:35.100 --> 00:00:37.679 are looking at a constitutional crisis, the complete 00:00:37.679 --> 00:00:40.539 unraveling of a presidency. triggered by something 00:00:40.539 --> 00:00:42.899 you'd buy at a hardware store for like two bucks. 00:00:43.039 --> 00:00:46.060 It is the absolute definition of history turning 00:00:46.060 --> 00:00:49.619 on the mundane. You know, a tiny sticky mistake 00:00:49.619 --> 00:00:51.500 that brought down the most powerful man in the 00:00:51.500 --> 00:00:55.590 world. Yeah. So welcome to this deep dive. Today 00:00:55.590 --> 00:00:57.890 our mission is to cut through the pop culture 00:00:57.890 --> 00:00:59.990 myths of the most infamous political scandal 00:00:59.990 --> 00:01:02.210 in American history. We are of course talking 00:01:02.210 --> 00:01:05.170 about Watergate and our source for this deep 00:01:05.170 --> 00:01:08.769 dive is a comprehensive Wikipedia article detailing 00:01:08.769 --> 00:01:12.780 the entire just sprawling saga, we are going 00:01:12.780 --> 00:01:16.620 to unpack how a quote unquote third rate burglary 00:01:16.620 --> 00:01:19.340 brought down a presidency, exploring the bizarre 00:01:19.340 --> 00:01:22.739 cast of characters, the wildly chaotic operations 00:01:22.739 --> 00:01:25.459 and, you know, the profound legacy it left on 00:01:25.459 --> 00:01:27.599 American trust. Right. And setting the stage 00:01:27.599 --> 00:01:30.590 here. is crucial to understand the stakes for 00:01:30.590 --> 00:01:33.709 you as a listener. Because, I mean, in 1974, 00:01:34.250 --> 00:01:36.010 Richard Nixon became the first United States 00:01:36.010 --> 00:01:37.930 president to ever resign from office. Which is 00:01:37.930 --> 00:01:40.709 still wild to think about. Completely. But this 00:01:40.709 --> 00:01:42.530 story doesn't actually start with a break -in 00:01:42.530 --> 00:01:44.569 at a hotel. It starts with an administration 00:01:44.569 --> 00:01:46.769 that was just utterly obsessed with secrecy, 00:01:47.250 --> 00:01:49.209 terrified of leaks, and willing to do whatever 00:01:49.209 --> 00:01:51.890 it took to stop them. That paranoia basically 00:01:51.890 --> 00:01:53.769 set the stage for everything that followed. OK, 00:01:53.849 --> 00:01:55.450 so let's unpack this, because I know the break 00:01:55.450 --> 00:01:57.090 -in is the famous part, right? But the source 00:01:57.090 --> 00:01:58.689 material says this all actually started a year 00:01:58.689 --> 00:02:01.650 earlier in 1971 because of something called the 00:02:01.650 --> 00:02:03.769 Pentagon Papers. Yeah, the Pentagon Papers. How 00:02:03.769 --> 00:02:07.150 does a leaked military report lead to a hotel 00:02:07.150 --> 00:02:09.330 burglary? Well, the connection is all about the 00:02:09.330 --> 00:02:11.310 atmosphere it created inside the Oval Office. 00:02:11.509 --> 00:02:15.310 So the Pentagon Papers were this massive 7 ,000 00:02:15.310 --> 00:02:18.110 -page secret study of U .S. involvement in the 00:02:18.110 --> 00:02:20.860 Vietnam War. That's a lot of pages. Yeah right. 00:02:21.020 --> 00:02:23.599 and an analyst named Daniel Ellsberg leaked them 00:02:23.599 --> 00:02:26.180 to the press, exposing a staggering amount of 00:02:26.180 --> 00:02:28.300 government deception spanning, like, multiple 00:02:28.300 --> 00:02:31.479 presidencies. Now, initially, Nixon wasn't too 00:02:31.479 --> 00:02:33.219 worried because the papers covered the actions 00:02:33.219 --> 00:02:36.680 of previous administrations. Oh, okay. But his 00:02:36.680 --> 00:02:39.819 national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, he 00:02:39.819 --> 00:02:42.000 felt very differently about it. He was furious. 00:02:42.120 --> 00:02:44.699 I mean, Ellsberg had been his mentee. Oh, wow. 00:02:45.000 --> 00:02:47.659 Yeah. So Kissinger essentially pressures Nixon, 00:02:47.800 --> 00:02:49.780 warning him that this makes the administration 00:02:49.780 --> 00:02:52.120 look weak. pushing the president into what his 00:02:52.120 --> 00:02:55.939 own chief of staff described as a frenzy. A frenzy. 00:02:56.259 --> 00:02:59.199 Overlooking weak. Exactly. So Nixon demands that 00:02:59.199 --> 00:03:01.800 these leaks be stopped by any means necessary. 00:03:02.219 --> 00:03:04.560 And that directive leads to the creation of a 00:03:04.560 --> 00:03:07.159 secretive group inside the White House, known 00:03:07.159 --> 00:03:09.659 officially as the Special Investigations Unit. 00:03:09.780 --> 00:03:11.400 But they got a much catchier nickname, didn't 00:03:11.400 --> 00:03:13.780 they? The Plumbers. The Plumbers. Because they 00:03:13.780 --> 00:03:15.759 fixed leaks. I mean, you really can't make this 00:03:15.759 --> 00:03:18.080 up. It's so literal. And the men chosen to lead 00:03:18.080 --> 00:03:21.020 the Plumbers were, well, they were far from your 00:03:21.020 --> 00:03:23.379 average Washington bureaucrats. Yeah. You had 00:03:23.379 --> 00:03:26.879 E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA agent, deeply involved 00:03:26.879 --> 00:03:30.120 in the 1954 Guatemalan coup and the disastrous 00:03:30.120 --> 00:03:33.620 Bay of Kigs invasion. Oh, boy. Right. And alongside 00:03:33.620 --> 00:03:37.199 him was G. Gordon Liddy. a former FBI agent who 00:03:37.199 --> 00:03:39.479 actually wanted to name the group Odessa. Wait, 00:03:39.680 --> 00:03:42.319 Odessa? Yeah, which was rumored to be a network 00:03:42.319 --> 00:03:45.860 of former Nazi SS officers. Okay, which should 00:03:45.860 --> 00:03:48.360 have been a massive red flag for anyone in human 00:03:48.360 --> 00:03:50.300 resources. That's a little bit, yeah. And their 00:03:50.300 --> 00:03:53.219 early operations were completely chaotic, from 00:03:53.219 --> 00:03:55.520 what I'm reading. The source material notes their 00:03:55.520 --> 00:03:58.419 first big mission was to destroy Daniel Ellsberg's 00:03:58.419 --> 00:04:01.479 reputation. Right. And to do that, they burglarized 00:04:01.479 --> 00:04:03.840 the Los Angeles office of Ellsberg psychiatrist, 00:04:04.099 --> 00:04:05.860 looking for his... confidential health files. 00:04:06.620 --> 00:04:08.840 They completely botch it, trash the office, find 00:04:08.840 --> 00:04:10.860 absolutely nothing useful, and yet, get this, 00:04:11.419 --> 00:04:14.039 Hunt actually celebrates the failure with a champagne 00:04:14.039 --> 00:04:16.720 toast. I know, it's wild. What's fascinating 00:04:16.720 --> 00:04:19.160 here is the rapid escalation of their tactics. 00:04:19.639 --> 00:04:21.680 I mean, the psychiatric office wasn't enough. 00:04:21.980 --> 00:04:24.319 They literally drew up a plot to firebomb the 00:04:24.319 --> 00:04:26.399 Brookings Institution. Wait, a think tank in 00:04:26.399 --> 00:04:29.399 D .C.? A prominent think tank, yeah. The plan 00:04:29.399 --> 00:04:31.819 was to create a massive fiery diversion so they 00:04:31.819 --> 00:04:34.399 could send in burglars disguised as firefighters 00:04:34.399 --> 00:04:37.160 to steal files in the chaos. You are kidding 00:04:37.160 --> 00:04:39.740 me. No. And the White House only scrapped that 00:04:39.740 --> 00:04:42.040 plan because buying a fake fire engine was deemed 00:04:42.040 --> 00:04:45.560 too expensive. Oh my gosh. This is like a paranoid 00:04:45.560 --> 00:04:50.259 CEO hiring a group of rogue amateurish mercenaries 00:04:50.259 --> 00:04:54.750 to do like routine HR investigations. It is mind 00:04:54.750 --> 00:04:57.350 -boggling how this escalating ridiculousness 00:04:57.350 --> 00:04:59.350 was being treated as a legitimate government 00:04:59.350 --> 00:05:02.029 strategy by the highest office in the land. It 00:05:02.029 --> 00:05:03.850 really is. And if we connect this to the bigger 00:05:03.850 --> 00:05:06.649 picture, it establishes a vital pattern. The 00:05:06.649 --> 00:05:08.629 White House had essentially created a counter 00:05:08.629 --> 00:05:11.250 -government apparatus. They were operating entirely 00:05:11.250 --> 00:05:14.870 outside the law, normalizing things like surreptitious 00:05:14.870 --> 00:05:17.689 entry, which is just a polite government term 00:05:17.689 --> 00:05:20.730 for burglary, and domestic espionage against 00:05:20.730 --> 00:05:24.129 political rivals, long before the word gate ever 00:05:24.129 --> 00:05:26.149 made the news. So that normalized culture of 00:05:26.149 --> 00:05:28.910 illegal espionage seamlessly transitioned into 00:05:28.910 --> 00:05:32.759 Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign. Gordon Liddy 00:05:32.759 --> 00:05:34.720 moves over to the Committee for the Re -election 00:05:34.720 --> 00:05:37.300 of the President, which has the unfortunate acronym 00:05:37.300 --> 00:05:41.079 CRP. Oh, yeah. And Liddy pitches this massive 00:05:41.079 --> 00:05:43.720 intelligence program called Operation Gemstone. 00:05:44.240 --> 00:05:47.680 The scale of this pitch is just wild. Oh, Gemstone 00:05:47.680 --> 00:05:50.139 was breathtaking in its illegality. I mean, Liddy 00:05:50.139 --> 00:05:52.160 pitches this directly to Attorney General John 00:05:52.160 --> 00:05:53.600 Mitchell. The attorney general. The attorney 00:05:53.600 --> 00:05:56.040 general. And the plan included Operation Diamond, 00:05:56.339 --> 00:05:58.500 which involves kidnapping anti -war protesters, 00:05:58.759 --> 00:06:00.720 drugging them and detaining them in Mexico during 00:06:00.720 --> 00:06:03.819 the Republican convention using a squad of hired 00:06:03.819 --> 00:06:06.220 mobsters. And there's also Operation Sapphire, 00:06:06.439 --> 00:06:08.819 right? A plan to put sex workers on a yacht to 00:06:08.819 --> 00:06:11.779 entrap Democratic politicians in Miami. Exactly. 00:06:12.279 --> 00:06:14.740 And John Mitchell, the top law enforcement officer 00:06:14.740 --> 00:06:17.620 in the country, looks at this astonishing presentation 00:06:17.620 --> 00:06:20.959 of federal crimes and essentially says, This 00:06:20.959 --> 00:06:23.620 is too expensive and unrealistic. Give me a simpler 00:06:23.620 --> 00:06:25.560 bugging plan. He doesn't arrest them. He doesn't 00:06:25.560 --> 00:06:26.920 arrest them. He doesn't throw them out of the 00:06:26.920 --> 00:06:29.600 building. He just asked for a budget cut, which 00:06:29.600 --> 00:06:32.279 brings us directly to the fateful decision to 00:06:32.279 --> 00:06:34.339 bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters 00:06:34.339 --> 00:06:37.019 at the Watergate complex in Washington, D .C. 00:06:37.279 --> 00:06:40.120 They assemble a crew, hunt and Lydia are managing 00:06:40.120 --> 00:06:43.060 things. Yep. They bring in James McCord, the 00:06:43.060 --> 00:06:44.819 security chief for the reelection committee and 00:06:44.819 --> 00:06:48.120 a former CIA officer. And they hire a crew of 00:06:48.120 --> 00:06:52.240 Cuban exiles with heavy. BIA ties, Barker, Martinez, 00:06:52.500 --> 00:06:55.240 Gonzalez, plus a man named Frank Sturges. Right, 00:06:55.319 --> 00:06:57.300 and they actually pull off a successful break 00:06:57.300 --> 00:07:02.060 -in first on May 28, 1972. They get in, plant 00:07:02.060 --> 00:07:04.899 bugs on the phones of some DNC staffers, and 00:07:04.899 --> 00:07:07.579 get out unnoticed. OK, so they did it. They did, 00:07:07.740 --> 00:07:09.579 but the intelligence they gather is terrible. 00:07:10.060 --> 00:07:12.000 John Mitchell actually called the transcripts 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:14.500 shitty. Yeah. They were mostly just capturing 00:07:14.500 --> 00:07:18.000 personal gossip from secretaries using the phone 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:20.500 of a minor staffer named Spencer Oliver. Because 00:07:20.500 --> 00:07:22.879 the boss is unhappy, they decide they have to 00:07:22.879 --> 00:07:25.839 go back in to fix the bugs and photograph documents. 00:07:26.339 --> 00:07:28.240 This is the fatal return on the night of June 00:07:28.240 --> 00:07:31.379 17th. Exactly. And to keep the doors in the stairwell 00:07:31.379 --> 00:07:34.240 from locking behind them while they work, McCord 00:07:34.240 --> 00:07:37.680 tapes the door latches. But he tapes them horizontally, 00:07:38.259 --> 00:07:40.639 leaving pieces of the tape highly visible from 00:07:40.639 --> 00:07:43.500 the outside. Just sticking right out. Right out. 00:07:44.259 --> 00:07:46.480 And a security guard named Frank Wills is doing 00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:49.439 his rounds. He spots this tape, assumes the maintenance 00:07:49.439 --> 00:07:51.660 worker left it, takes it off, and goes across 00:07:51.660 --> 00:07:53.879 the street for a coffee. OK. When he comes back, 00:07:53.959 --> 00:07:56.139 the tape is back on the door. So he immediately 00:07:56.139 --> 00:07:58.319 calls the police. And the response is incredibly 00:07:58.319 --> 00:08:01.459 swift due to pure chance. Pure chance. An unmarked 00:08:01.459 --> 00:08:04.500 car belonging to an undercover vice squad. Three 00:08:04.500 --> 00:08:07.420 cops dressed like hippies happens to be nearby 00:08:07.420 --> 00:08:10.319 and arrives in minutes. Hippie cops. Hippie cops. 00:08:10.899 --> 00:08:13.360 The burglars realize someone is sweeping the 00:08:13.360 --> 00:08:14.980 building, so they hide behind a partition in 00:08:14.980 --> 00:08:17.879 the DNC office. But the undercover cops find 00:08:17.879 --> 00:08:20.420 them anyway. They are caught red -handed with 00:08:20.420 --> 00:08:23.740 bugging equipment and rolls of crisp $100 bills. 00:08:24.259 --> 00:08:26.860 Meanwhile, Hunt and Liddy are over in a hotel 00:08:26.860 --> 00:08:29.360 room at the Watergate, monitoring this entire 00:08:29.360 --> 00:08:32.899 disaster on a two -way radio. When the arrests 00:08:32.899 --> 00:08:35.559 happen, they absolutely panic. They flee the 00:08:35.559 --> 00:08:38.919 hotel, leaving behind rooms full of highly traceable 00:08:38.919 --> 00:08:42.399 evidence, including address books with the initials 00:08:42.399 --> 00:08:45.000 WH for White House. It's unbelievable. Wait, 00:08:45.039 --> 00:08:46.700 I just have to push back on this whole narrative 00:08:46.700 --> 00:08:48.879 for a second. We are told these guys were elite 00:08:48.879 --> 00:08:51.379 operatives. We're talking about former CIA spies, 00:08:51.759 --> 00:08:54.559 men involved in international coups. Yeah. But 00:08:54.639 --> 00:08:56.539 They leave visible duct tape sticking out of 00:08:56.539 --> 00:08:59.279 doors, they get busted by cops dressed as hippies, 00:08:59.379 --> 00:09:01.500 and they abandon a hotel room full of evidence, 00:09:01.740 --> 00:09:03.480 linking them directly to the President of the 00:09:03.480 --> 00:09:05.620 United States. It sounds like a bad comedy of 00:09:05.620 --> 00:09:08.580 errors. Right. But that contradiction is exactly 00:09:08.580 --> 00:09:11.879 the point. These were men who had quite literally 00:09:11.879 --> 00:09:14.399 helped overthrow foreign governments, yet they 00:09:14.399 --> 00:09:16.500 were taken down by a simple piece of duct tape. 00:09:16.679 --> 00:09:19.980 and an observant night guard. It's crazy. It 00:09:19.980 --> 00:09:22.759 highlights an incredibly dangerous mix of extreme 00:09:22.759 --> 00:09:26.720 hubris and stunning incompetence. They felt so 00:09:26.720 --> 00:09:28.820 untouchable operating under the shadow of the 00:09:28.820 --> 00:09:31.960 White House that they became inexplicably sloppy. 00:09:32.179 --> 00:09:33.759 Well, here's where it gets really interesting. 00:09:34.240 --> 00:09:37.000 We know exactly how they were caught, but the 00:09:37.000 --> 00:09:39.059 source material reveals something completely 00:09:39.059 --> 00:09:41.779 shocking. To this day, there is no historical 00:09:41.779 --> 00:09:44.120 consensus on why they actually broke into the 00:09:44.120 --> 00:09:46.929 DNC that night. None. 69 people were eventually 00:09:46.929 --> 00:09:49.110 charged, the president of the United States resigned, 00:09:49.250 --> 00:09:51.529 and yet the actual burglars and the people giving 00:09:51.529 --> 00:09:53.950 the orders couldn't even agree on what they were 00:09:53.950 --> 00:09:56.230 trying to steal. This raises an important question, 00:09:56.289 --> 00:09:58.549 doesn't it? How can the most famous burglary 00:09:58.549 --> 00:10:01.929 in history lack a clear motive? We have competing 00:10:01.929 --> 00:10:04.490 theories. The standard theory is exactly what 00:10:04.490 --> 00:10:07.009 it looks like. An incompetent break -in born 00:10:07.009 --> 00:10:09.710 of White House paranoia to get political dirt 00:10:09.710 --> 00:10:12.690 on the Democratic chairman, Larry O 'Brien. Right. 00:10:12.919 --> 00:10:15.039 But the burglars themselves believed entirely 00:10:15.039 --> 00:10:17.580 different things. According to the article, the 00:10:17.580 --> 00:10:19.419 Cuban operatives thought they were looking for 00:10:19.419 --> 00:10:21.659 financial documents proving that Fidel Castro 00:10:21.659 --> 00:10:24.809 was secretly funding the Democrats. Yep. And 00:10:24.809 --> 00:10:26.529 others thought they were looking for dirt the 00:10:26.529 --> 00:10:29.090 Democrats had on illicit campaign contributions 00:10:29.090 --> 00:10:32.389 to Nixon, specifically cash from the eccentric 00:10:32.389 --> 00:10:34.590 billionaire Howard Hughes. And then there's the 00:10:34.590 --> 00:10:36.809 escort ring theory. Oh, the escort ring theory, 00:10:36.970 --> 00:10:39.250 which Gordon Liddy and others firmly endorsed. 00:10:39.350 --> 00:10:41.529 OK, tell me about this one. Well, the burglars 00:10:41.529 --> 00:10:45.309 were strangely fixated on bugging the phone of 00:10:45.309 --> 00:10:48.590 that minor staffer Spencer Oliver. The transcript 00:10:48.590 --> 00:10:51.169 showed his phone was frequently used by secretaries 00:10:51.169 --> 00:10:54.600 to arrange assignations. So the theory claims 00:10:54.600 --> 00:10:57.539 that White House counsel John Dean actually ordered 00:10:57.539 --> 00:11:00.700 the break -in to find files linking his own partner 00:11:00.700 --> 00:11:04.580 to a DC escort ring. Wait, an escort ring? That 00:11:04.580 --> 00:11:07.980 sounds completely absurd. Why would former intelligence 00:11:07.980 --> 00:11:10.580 agents risk a federal operation and their own 00:11:10.580 --> 00:11:12.919 freedom just to find a minor staffer's little 00:11:12.919 --> 00:11:15.100 black book? Well, Liddy believed that Dean was 00:11:15.100 --> 00:11:17.279 using the massive machinery of the reelection 00:11:17.279 --> 00:11:20.200 campaign to run a personal errand. John Dean 00:11:20.200 --> 00:11:23.399 of course called this absolute baloney and vehemently 00:11:23.399 --> 00:11:25.500 denied it. But the fact that the men running 00:11:25.500 --> 00:11:27.960 the operation genuinely suspected each other 00:11:27.960 --> 00:11:31.360 of such wildly different motives shows how fractured 00:11:31.360 --> 00:11:33.860 and compartmentalized the conspiracy really was. 00:11:34.419 --> 00:11:37.080 Definitely. There is also the CIA sabotage theory. 00:11:37.500 --> 00:11:40.460 McCord and Hunt were former CIA. The CIA provided 00:11:40.460 --> 00:11:43.740 their disguised gear and the CIA later refused 00:11:43.740 --> 00:11:46.500 to cooperate with the FBI investigation. There's 00:11:46.500 --> 00:11:48.960 a theory that the CIA deliberately sabotaged 00:11:48.960 --> 00:11:51.419 the break -in, maybe even leaving that tape on 00:11:51.419 --> 00:11:54.730 the door intentionally to take down a Nixon administration 00:11:54.730 --> 00:11:57.230 that was becoming very hostile to the intelligence 00:11:57.230 --> 00:12:00.230 agency. It's an interesting theory. But stepping 00:12:00.230 --> 00:12:03.350 back, the specific motive almost ceases to matter 00:12:03.350 --> 00:12:05.950 in the grand scheme of things. Why is that? Regardless 00:12:05.950 --> 00:12:07.710 of whether they were looking for escort files, 00:12:08.090 --> 00:12:10.549 campaign finance, dirt, or Castro's money, the 00:12:10.549 --> 00:12:12.409 act itself isn't what brought down the president. 00:12:13.029 --> 00:12:15.850 The act triggered the true crisis, the cover 00:12:15.850 --> 00:12:19.580 -up. And the cover -up started immediately. As 00:12:19.580 --> 00:12:22.159 soon as the sun came up on June 18th, it was 00:12:22.159 --> 00:12:24.259 pure panic mode. They weren't trying to figure 00:12:24.259 --> 00:12:26.299 out what went wrong. They were trying to survive. 00:12:26.620 --> 00:12:30.000 We are talking about the immediate, frantic destruction 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:32.799 of evidence. Jeb Magruder, a deputy campaign 00:12:32.799 --> 00:12:35.659 manager, is literally burning files in his home 00:12:35.659 --> 00:12:38.740 fireplace. John Dean orders Howard Hunt's White 00:12:38.740 --> 00:12:41.659 House safe drilled open and tells people to deep 00:12:41.659 --> 00:12:44.720 -six the contents in the Potomac River. and the 00:12:44.720 --> 00:12:46.700 acting director of the FBI, L. Patrick Gray. 00:12:46.960 --> 00:12:49.779 He is literally... given sensitive files from 00:12:49.779 --> 00:12:52.259 the White House and burns them in his own fireplace 00:12:52.259 --> 00:12:54.679 around Christmas, the head of the FBI. It's beyond 00:12:54.679 --> 00:12:57.240 belief. Yes. And then comes the hush money. The 00:12:57.240 --> 00:12:59.919 White House realizes these burglars know too 00:12:59.919 --> 00:13:01.679 much, so they start paying them off to plead 00:13:01.679 --> 00:13:04.159 guilty and stay silent. Right. They funnel $180 00:13:04.159 --> 00:13:06.879 ,000 in cash to the plumbers. And some of this 00:13:06.879 --> 00:13:09.080 money is actually being dispersed by Howard Hunt's 00:13:09.080 --> 00:13:11.139 wife, Dorothy, right up until she tragically 00:13:11.139 --> 00:13:12.759 dies in a commercial plane crash in Chicago. 00:13:12.879 --> 00:13:14.860 Which just adds another layer of darkness to 00:13:14.860 --> 00:13:17.139 all of this. And speaking of darkness, we have 00:13:17.139 --> 00:13:19.139 to look at the chilling case of Martha Mitchell. 00:13:19.460 --> 00:13:21.840 Yeah, that is a rough story. She was the wife 00:13:21.840 --> 00:13:24.179 of John Mitchell, the former attorney general 00:13:24.179 --> 00:13:26.899 and head of the reelection campaign. Martha was 00:13:26.899 --> 00:13:30.759 a highly visible vocal conservative pundit. She 00:13:30.759 --> 00:13:33.980 was famous for calling reporters. And she happened 00:13:33.980 --> 00:13:37.139 to know James McCord, one of the arrested burglars, 00:13:37.440 --> 00:13:40.059 because he had been her personal security detail. 00:13:40.259 --> 00:13:43.220 Right, so she recognizes his name. Exactly. She 00:13:43.220 --> 00:13:45.720 is in a villa in California when she reads about 00:13:45.720 --> 00:13:48.679 the arrest. She figures out the campaign is lying 00:13:48.679 --> 00:13:51.769 and threatens to call the press. Her husband's 00:13:51.769 --> 00:13:54.690 security guard, a man named Steve King, literally 00:13:54.690 --> 00:13:57.549 breaks down her bedroom door, rips the phone 00:13:57.549 --> 00:13:59.730 out of the wall, and holds her captive. It's 00:13:59.730 --> 00:14:02.509 horrifying. She tries to escape. She badly cuts 00:14:02.509 --> 00:14:04.509 her hand on a glass door, and they actually bring 00:14:04.509 --> 00:14:07.690 in a doctor to forcibly sedate her. It's unbelievable. 00:14:07.889 --> 00:14:10.269 She is held down by FBI and Secret Service agents. 00:14:10.529 --> 00:14:12.590 When she finally gets back to New York and contacts 00:14:12.590 --> 00:14:15.149 a reporter, she says, I'm black and blue. I'm 00:14:15.149 --> 00:14:17.850 a political prisoner. And the White House apparatus 00:14:17.850 --> 00:14:21.230 just completely gaslights. her, feeding the press 00:14:21.230 --> 00:14:23.190 coordinated stories that she's having a nervous 00:14:23.190 --> 00:14:25.950 breakdown. This is a terrifying example of the 00:14:25.950 --> 00:14:29.169 mechanics of power. She was an insider, the wife 00:14:29.169 --> 00:14:31.429 of the campaign head, and the moment she became 00:14:31.429 --> 00:14:34.750 a liability, the political machine simply treated 00:14:34.750 --> 00:14:38.330 her like a hostile foreign asset. It shows how 00:14:38.330 --> 00:14:40.950 the apparatus of the state can be instantly weaponized 00:14:40.950 --> 00:14:43.549 against a single citizen to protect itself. It 00:14:43.549 --> 00:14:45.679 really does. But, you know, the administration 00:14:45.679 --> 00:14:48.500 successfully silenced Martha Mitchell. But their 00:14:48.500 --> 00:14:51.039 biggest problem wasn't a person talking. It was 00:14:51.039 --> 00:14:55.019 the money talking. The FBI was tracing the serialized 00:14:55.019 --> 00:14:57.580 $100 bills found on the burglars directly back 00:14:57.580 --> 00:15:01.100 to campaign contributions. That paper trail forced 00:15:01.100 --> 00:15:03.399 the White House to take extreme measures on June 00:15:03.399 --> 00:15:06.779 23, 1972. Right. Which leads to the creation 00:15:06.779 --> 00:15:09.210 of the smoking gun tape. White House counsel 00:15:09.210 --> 00:15:11.549 John Dean, Chief of Staff H .R. Haldeman and 00:15:11.549 --> 00:15:14.269 John Mitchell plot to have the CIA step in and 00:15:14.269 --> 00:15:16.710 tell the FBI to back off. And Nixon explicitly 00:15:16.710 --> 00:15:19.210 approves the plan on tape. He does. He tells 00:15:19.210 --> 00:15:21.730 Haldeman to go to the CIA and instruct them to 00:15:21.730 --> 00:15:24.389 pressure the FBI to drop the investigation by 00:15:24.389 --> 00:15:26.309 falsely claiming it would expose the whole Bay 00:15:26.309 --> 00:15:28.750 of Pigs thing. Which, I mean, whether Bay of 00:15:28.750 --> 00:15:31.889 Pigs was code for CIA assassination plots or 00:15:31.889 --> 00:15:34.629 just general intelligence dirty laundry, Nixon 00:15:34.629 --> 00:15:37.230 is caught on tape ordering the obstruction of 00:15:37.230 --> 00:15:39.970 justice. Yes. But the public didn't know about 00:15:39.970 --> 00:15:42.870 that tape yet. What the public was seeing were 00:15:42.870 --> 00:15:45.590 the articles by Washington Post reporters Bob 00:15:45.590 --> 00:15:48.549 Woodward and Carl Bernstein. And they were being 00:15:48.549 --> 00:15:51.009 guided by the most famous anonymous source in 00:15:51.009 --> 00:15:54.289 American history, Deep Throat. Mark Felt, the 00:15:54.289 --> 00:15:56.879 associate director of the FBI. The source material 00:15:56.879 --> 00:15:59.100 notes something really interesting here. For 00:15:59.100 --> 00:16:01.620 decades, Deepthroat was portrayed as this purely 00:16:01.620 --> 00:16:04.240 noble whistleblower protecting democracy. Yeah, 00:16:04.259 --> 00:16:06.919 like a hero. Right. But the reality is a lot 00:16:06.919 --> 00:16:10.059 more human. He was furious that Nixon had passed 00:16:10.059 --> 00:16:12.460 him over for the top job at the FBI after J. 00:16:12.500 --> 00:16:14.919 Edgar Hoover died. He was leaking to the press 00:16:14.919 --> 00:16:17.379 largely out of spite to undermine the guy who 00:16:17.379 --> 00:16:20.440 got the job instead of him. It's so true. Historical 00:16:20.440 --> 00:16:23.440 motivations are rarely pure. synthesizing the 00:16:23.440 --> 00:16:25.980 political reality of this entire period, the 00:16:25.980 --> 00:16:27.820 destroyed evidence, the hush money, the silenced 00:16:27.820 --> 00:16:30.500 witnesses. The stark truth is that the cover 00:16:30.500 --> 00:16:32.600 -up actually worked at first. It really did. 00:16:32.860 --> 00:16:36.220 It was incredibly effective. In November 1972, 00:16:36.779 --> 00:16:39.340 months after the break -in, Richard Nixon won 00:16:39.340 --> 00:16:42.720 re -election in a massive, historic 49 -state 00:16:42.720 --> 00:16:46.139 landslide. The American public largely didn't 00:16:46.139 --> 00:16:48.299 connect the White House to the Watergate burglars. 00:16:48.440 --> 00:16:50.879 He wins the biggest landslide ever while secretly 00:16:50.879 --> 00:16:54.159 running a massive criminal cover -up. But the 00:16:54.159 --> 00:16:56.960 cover -up was holding together by a thread. That 00:16:56.960 --> 00:17:00.000 thread finally snapped in 1973 when the conspirators 00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:02.120 themselves began to crack under pressure from 00:17:02.120 --> 00:17:04.900 Judge John Sirica and the Senate hearings. Then 00:17:04.900 --> 00:17:07.740 came the revelation that shifted the entire balance 00:17:07.740 --> 00:17:09.920 of power. Right. So during the televised Senate 00:17:09.920 --> 00:17:13.000 Watergate hearings, an aide named Alexander Butterfield 00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:16.059 is testifying, and he casually reveals the existence 00:17:16.059 --> 00:17:18.940 of a secret voice -activated taping system in 00:17:18.940 --> 00:17:21.599 the Oval Office. Just rocks that bombshell. The 00:17:21.599 --> 00:17:23.619 White House had been recording everything. The 00:17:23.619 --> 00:17:26.109 special prosecutor Archibald Cox immediately 00:17:26.109 --> 00:17:28.769 subpoenas the tapes. And Nixon refuses, citing 00:17:28.769 --> 00:17:30.549 executive privilege. Now, for those who might 00:17:30.549 --> 00:17:33.150 not follow the legal weeds, what exactly is executive 00:17:33.150 --> 00:17:35.170 privilege and why did Nixon think it would save 00:17:35.170 --> 00:17:38.089 him? Well, executive privilege is basically this 00:17:38.089 --> 00:17:40.630 legal principle that allows a president to keep 00:17:40.630 --> 00:17:42.769 internal communications and documents secret. 00:17:43.630 --> 00:17:46.349 The logic is that the president's advisors need 00:17:46.349 --> 00:17:49.150 to be able to speak freely and offer blunt advice 00:17:49.150 --> 00:17:51.589 without fear of being dragged into court or having 00:17:51.589 --> 00:17:54.789 their conversations published. So Nixon argued 00:17:54.789 --> 00:17:57.190 that handing over the tapes would destroy the 00:17:57.190 --> 00:17:59.349 ability of any future president to get honest 00:17:59.349 --> 00:18:01.309 advice. But the courts didn't buy that, right? 00:18:01.549 --> 00:18:03.630 No, the courts argued that executive privilege 00:18:03.630 --> 00:18:05.509 cannot be used to cover up a crime. And this 00:18:05.509 --> 00:18:08.069 standoff leads to one of the most dramatic weekends 00:18:08.069 --> 00:18:10.670 in American political history, the Saturday Night 00:18:10.670 --> 00:18:13.950 Massacre. Nixon is desperate to protect the tapes. 00:18:15.130 --> 00:18:18.250 On October 20, 1973, he decides Archibald Cox 00:18:18.250 --> 00:18:21.150 has to go. Yeah. He orders his attorney general, 00:18:21.390 --> 00:18:23.130 Elliot Richardson, to fire the special prosecutor. 00:18:23.750 --> 00:18:26.369 Richardson refuses and resigns in protest. Wow! 00:18:26.789 --> 00:18:29.109 So Nixon then orders the deputy attorney general, 00:18:29.430 --> 00:18:31.930 William Ruckelshaus, to do it. He also refuses 00:18:31.930 --> 00:18:34.950 and is fired. He fires him. Yep. Finally, the 00:18:34.950 --> 00:18:37.029 third -in -command, solicitor general Robert 00:18:37.029 --> 00:18:39.349 Bork, agrees to carry out the order and fires 00:18:39.349 --> 00:18:42.130 Cox. It's important to understand why Nixon had 00:18:42.130 --> 00:18:45.160 to go through this bizarre firing squad. You 00:18:45.160 --> 00:18:47.220 might wonder why the president didn't just fire 00:18:47.220 --> 00:18:49.839 Archibald Cox himself. Right. It's a good question. 00:18:50.480 --> 00:18:52.880 It's because of the legal mechanism of the special 00:18:52.880 --> 00:18:56.039 prosecutor. The prosecutor was designed to be 00:18:56.039 --> 00:18:58.369 independent from the White House. Only the head 00:18:58.369 --> 00:19:00.430 of the Justice Department had the legal authority 00:19:00.430 --> 00:19:03.650 to fire him. Nixon had to desperately cycle through 00:19:03.650 --> 00:19:05.710 the chain of command until he found someone who 00:19:05.710 --> 00:19:08.650 would comply with his order. Exactly. And the 00:19:08.650 --> 00:19:12.210 fallout was apocalyptic for Nixon. Telegrams 00:19:12.210 --> 00:19:15.170 flooded Congress, protests erupted, and the House 00:19:15.170 --> 00:19:17.549 of Representatives officially launched impeachment 00:19:17.549 --> 00:19:20.490 inquiries. Nixon had to back down and hand over 00:19:20.490 --> 00:19:22.529 the tapes. But there was a catch, wasn't there? 00:19:22.569 --> 00:19:25.970 A big catch. Several tapes were missing and one 00:19:25.970 --> 00:19:28.650 crucial tape. A conversation from just days after 00:19:28.650 --> 00:19:31.049 the break -in had an 18 and a half minute gap. 00:19:31.609 --> 00:19:34.630 It had been erased. Oh, enter Nixon's loyal secretary. 00:19:34.880 --> 00:19:37.779 Rosemary Woods. She claimed she was transcribing 00:19:37.779 --> 00:19:40.299 the tape, answered a phone call, and accidentally 00:19:40.299 --> 00:19:42.779 hit the record button instead of stop, while 00:19:42.779 --> 00:19:45.059 simultaneously keeping her foot clamped down 00:19:45.059 --> 00:19:47.160 on the pedal of the transcription machine for 00:19:47.160 --> 00:19:50.299 18 minutes. Yeah, and it resulted in a completely 00:19:50.299 --> 00:19:53.200 implausible physical pose. When she was asked 00:19:53.200 --> 00:19:55.519 to recreate it for photographers, she had to 00:19:55.519 --> 00:19:58.359 contort herself across her desk, reaching backward 00:19:58.359 --> 00:20:00.539 while pointing her toe. Like she's playing Twister. 00:20:00.799 --> 00:20:03.619 Exactly. The press mocked it endlessly as the 00:20:03.619 --> 00:20:07.000 Rosemary stretch and, you know, scientific panels 00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:09.220 later proved the tape was deliberately erased 00:20:09.220 --> 00:20:11.420 in multiple separate segments. It wasn't an accident. 00:20:11.759 --> 00:20:14.599 Right. So in July 1974, the Supreme Court rules 00:20:14.599 --> 00:20:17.779 8 -0 that Nixon must release the remaining tapes. 00:20:18.279 --> 00:20:20.700 Among those tapes is the smoking gun conversation 00:20:20.700 --> 00:20:23.500 from June 23. And once that tape is released 00:20:23.710 --> 00:20:25.750 Proving Nixon directed the cover -up from the 00:20:25.750 --> 00:20:28.430 very beginning, his remaining Republican support 00:20:28.430 --> 00:20:31.329 in Congress completely vanishes. Facing certain 00:20:31.329 --> 00:20:33.930 impeachment and removal from office, Richard 00:20:33.930 --> 00:20:38.069 Nixon resigns on August 9, 1974. He is later 00:20:38.069 --> 00:20:40.490 fully pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. 00:20:40.910 --> 00:20:43.690 So what does this all mean? When you look at 00:20:43.690 --> 00:20:46.450 the arc of this story, the sheer irony of the 00:20:46.450 --> 00:20:49.410 tapes is just unbelievable. Nixon installed a 00:20:49.410 --> 00:20:52.410 secret recording system because he was obsessed 00:20:52.410 --> 00:20:55.150 with preserving his legacy for history. And those 00:20:55.150 --> 00:20:57.210 exact tapes are what proved he was a criminal 00:20:57.210 --> 00:21:00.009 and forced him out of office. It is the ultimate 00:21:00.009 --> 00:21:03.509 historical irony. But within that tragedy, we 00:21:03.509 --> 00:21:05.849 have to unpack the constitutional triumph. How 00:21:05.849 --> 00:21:09.089 so? Well, Watergate was the ultimate stress test 00:21:09.089 --> 00:21:11.269 for the American system of government. and a 00:21:11.269 --> 00:21:14.329 system held. The press investigated, the Senate 00:21:14.329 --> 00:21:16.750 held public hearings, the judiciary enforced 00:21:16.750 --> 00:21:19.049 subpoenas, and the Supreme Court unanimously 00:21:19.049 --> 00:21:21.009 ruled against the most powerful man in the world. 00:21:21.529 --> 00:21:23.509 The separation of powers worked exactly as the 00:21:23.509 --> 00:21:25.650 founders designed it to. That's a great point. 00:21:25.869 --> 00:21:27.769 Watergate wasn't just a hotel break -in. It was 00:21:27.769 --> 00:21:30.549 a massive campaign of political espionage, illegal 00:21:30.549 --> 00:21:33.549 wiretapping, hush money, and obstruction of justice. 00:21:34.009 --> 00:21:36.210 It permanently shattered the American public's 00:21:36.210 --> 00:21:38.549 unquestioning trust in their government. It also 00:21:38.549 --> 00:21:40.809 changed the legal landscape. The fallout from 00:21:40.809 --> 00:21:43.309 Watergate led directly to the Privacy Act, an 00:21:43.309 --> 00:21:45.789 expanded Freedom of Information Act, and the 00:21:45.789 --> 00:21:48.170 creation of mandatory ethics courses for lawyers 00:21:48.170 --> 00:21:51.400 across the country. It forced transparency onto 00:21:51.400 --> 00:21:54.359 a system that had grown entirely too comfortable 00:21:54.359 --> 00:21:56.460 operating in the shadows. I want you to think 00:21:56.460 --> 00:22:00.119 about this. Every single time you hear a scandal 00:22:00.119 --> 00:22:02.720 ending in the suffix gate, from deflate gate 00:22:02.720 --> 00:22:05.720 in football to whatever new political scandal 00:22:05.720 --> 00:22:08.380 is dominating the news today, you are hearing 00:22:08.380 --> 00:22:12.119 the direct echoes of those five Cuban burglars 00:22:12.119 --> 00:22:14.359 getting caught in Washington, D .C. all those 00:22:14.359 --> 00:22:16.539 years ago. The linguistic shadow Watergate is 00:22:16.539 --> 00:22:19.160 everywhere. But there's also a geopolitical shadow. 00:22:19.259 --> 00:22:21.819 that is rarely discussed. Oh, yeah. This is a 00:22:21.819 --> 00:22:23.700 fascinating ripple effect found in our source 00:22:23.700 --> 00:22:25.240 material that we haven't even touched on yet. 00:22:25.799 --> 00:22:28.220 Could a bungled hotel burglary have literally 00:22:28.220 --> 00:22:30.559 changed the map of the world? It sounds crazy, 00:22:30.599 --> 00:22:33.500 but maybe. Right. According to the Wikipedia 00:22:33.500 --> 00:22:36.440 article, both Secretary of State Henry Kissinger 00:22:36.440 --> 00:22:39.759 and Chief of Staff Alexander Haig later claimed 00:22:39.759 --> 00:22:42.200 that the domestic paralysis caused by the Watergate 00:22:42.200 --> 00:22:45.680 scandal had global consequences. They argued 00:22:45.680 --> 00:22:48.259 that the weakness and distraction of the US government 00:22:48.259 --> 00:22:52.039 emboldened foreign adversaries, directly contributing 00:22:52.039 --> 00:22:54.900 to the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 00:22:54.900 --> 00:22:58.660 and the fall of Sidon in 1975. Think about that. 00:22:58.799 --> 00:23:01.799 a local crime in Washington DC consuming the 00:23:01.799 --> 00:23:04.619 attention of the Oval Office so entirely that 00:23:04.619 --> 00:23:07.019 it shifted the balance of the Cold War. It's 00:23:07.019 --> 00:23:08.380 definitely something for you to think about the 00:23:08.380 --> 00:23:10.200 next time you see a piece of duct tape on a door. 00:23:10.480 --> 00:23:12.440 It might just be holding up a poster or, you 00:23:12.440 --> 00:23:13.839 know, it might just change the course of human 00:23:13.839 --> 00:23:14.200 history.