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The Tape on the Door: One Detail That Brought Down a Presidency
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
A piece of tape on a stairwell latch. That's what unravelled the Nixon cover-up — and launched Woodward, Bernstein, and Deep Throat into history. This is the chapter where Watergate stopped being a third-rate burglary and became the scandal that named all scandals.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Before Watergate became the word that names every scandal, before the resignation and the tapes and the congressional hearings, it was something far smaller. Five men in surgical gloves, caught in an office building in the middle of the night.
The break-in at the Watergate complex on June seventeenth, nineteen seventy-two wasn't the first attempt. It was the third.
What the White House did next was arguably worse than the break-in itself. The five men were connected to the Committee to Re-Elect the President.
Two reporters at the Washington Post didn't let it go. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were assigned to what editors at most papers were treating as a local crime story.
Woodward had a source. He called him Deep Throat.
The investigation might have stalled there, without something from inside the White House itself. On July sixteenth, nineteen seventy-three, a White House aide named Alexander Butterfield appeared before the Senate Watergate Committee.
Before the tapes came the testimony. John Dean had been one of the architects of the cover-up.
The tape from June twenty-third, nineteen seventy-two was recorded six days after the break-in. It captured a conversation between Nixon and his Chief of Staff, H.R.
Richard Nixon announced his resignation on the evening of August eighth, nineteen seventy-four. He became the first American president to resign the office.
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