barrett feared it was hiding a gun. he drop the coat, but it was precarious at this point, almost ready to let a round go. reporter: so what do you think when you sigh five guys stand up in suits? they all look like business people. i m thinking is this some kind of international thing. reporter: you mean like spies? i know i m in something big. reporter: the white house called it a third-rate burglary. it became clear, though it s never been firmly established who ordered the break-in or what the purpose was, but from the beginning, the question was how high up it went. nixon claimed his knew nothing. that defense soon began to unravel, in part from facts uncovered by carl bernstein and woodward. a year later, john dean, the white house counsel, said nixon
going after donald trump? that is the biggest question of all. could these hearings prompt him to maybe speed that up? once, assuming donald trump is going to want to run again for president, and it does seem like he will, once he declares that he is in the running, it is going to mean much more difficulty for the attorney general to bring charges against him because then it looks like, really, a partisan plot. looks like, really, a partisan lot. , looks like, really, a partisan lot, , , ., ., plot. many people are drawing comparisons plot. many people are drawing comparisons between - plot. many people are drawing comparisons between this - comparisons between this congressional investigation and watergate in the 1970s. is this bigger than that? is that comparison a fair one? it is not really comparison a fair one? it is not really comparable. - comparison a fair one? it 3 not really comparable. richard nixon covered up a third rate burglary. donald trump, and there is a lot of ev
do this story. for woodward and bernstein it wasn t only that the break-in seemed fishy. there was something just as odd about the white house response. presidential press secretary ron ziegler called it a third-rate burglary attempt. ron ziegler calling it a third-rate burglary, that was the tipoff to us. there seemed to be nothing third-rate about it except they got caught. they raised the stakes so high. with this third-rate burglary nonsense. it was apparent that something here was really rotten. nixon assigned his top lieutenants the president s men the task of managing the fallout from the break-in. among them chief of staff bob haldeman and presidential adviser john ehrlichman would become the guardians of the clandestine activities.
for woodward and bernstein it wasn t only that the break-in seemed fishy. there was something just as odd about the white house response. presidential press secretary ron ziegler called it a third-rate burglary attempt. ron ziegler calling it a third-rate burglary, that was the tipoff to us. there seemed to be nothing third-rate about it except they got caught. they raised the stakes so high. with this third-rate burglary nonsense. it was apparent that something here was really rotten. nixon assigned his top lieutenants the president s men the task of managing the fallout from the break-in. among them chief of staff bob haldeman and presidential adviser john ehrlichman would become the guardians of the clandestine activities. ehrlichman begins to monopolize more and more of their time. we know that because nixon had a secret tape recording system in
is the fact that the question has to be asked because of the president of the united states behavior over the past three years. and actually, i m sure as robert mueller knows, over the past 30 years. willie, it really was a surreal moment when you saw kristen welker ask that question. as susan said, it s a question that we all knew had to be asked. we were all waiting for it to be asked again to see if he would finally deny it. just a surreal moment that really does make watergate look look a third-rate burglary. it s also a question the fbi was interested in. they needed to look into whether or not the president of the united states was an asset, john, of russia. again, there s a body of evidence behind that question that kristen welker asked.