could easily win a national election. he had left the 1960 election which he lost narrowly to john f. kennedy with bitterness. and a sense the election had been stolen from him. this allowed the demon that is he always had within him to play during elections. >> it is about lust for power and absence of morality. >> it was all about holding on to power. no one can find out about this. whatever it takes. >> when the president does it it means that it is not illegal. >> i told the american people i did not trade hostages for arms. >> there will not be an abuse of power in this office. >> he develops weapons of mass destruction. >> we are in trouble. >> i just want to find 11,780 votes. >> and that's really when you reach a tipping point in a democracy. >> that's how dictators come to power. >> within hours of the arrests at the watergate, the nixon white house started covering up. i was the desk officer of the cover-up. i get the information and gather it and i share it and they were making decisions based on it as to how they can contain this problem. >> after the break-in, the fbi started an intense investigation to find out who in fact was responsible for sending these people in and how high up the orders came. >> john dean's primary job was to keep the investigators the hell away from the white house. don't let that investigation going on out there about the break-in and that sort of thing get into the white house. >> nixon understood that if people found out that the campaign staff was breaking in to the democratic national committee it would be a disaster for his re-election so he had to stop it. >> johner lickman called pat gray who i would be in charge of monitoring the fbi investigation. but i was also getting information above pat gray from the head of the criminal division of the department of justice henry peterson. we had been at the department of justice together. he knows not only everything the fbi knows but the grand jury and the u.s. attorneys know. i was keeping a eye generally on where the investigation was going and sending it up to the president. >> we learned very quickly that secret service had a report from metropolitan police. howard hunt's name was in the address book they found in the possession of the burglar. howard hunt was involved with the plumbers trying to track down leaks. >> hunt is the reason why the white house has to go into full cover-up mode immediately. hunt leads back to the plumbers. hunt leads back to the break-in. hunt leads back to coleson. this was really explosive stuff. >> i was in a meeting in ehrlichman's office. howard hunt had an office in the executive office building and stuff in the safe that we should get our hands on. ehrlichman called another staffer and told him to get the con tints of the safe. my deputy started to go through them and when i came in he said, listen, we don't want to leave fingerprints on this. why don't i get some rubber gloves to see what's here? that's the way it started. >> hunt's safe was loaded. there were some disguises that came from the cia that hunt used in '71. they were in the safe. >> there was a big briefcase and in it chap sticks with wires hanging out of them. literally these were from the scene of the crime. >> i told him about it and he said, john, you drive across the river at night. i said, i do. he said stop on the bridge and deep six that stuff. i convinced him that the smartest thing for the president was to give as much to the fbi as we could. >> he wanted to give the fbi the oirmgs was a unique event by the out of control group and the white house was cooperating. >> we had a night police reporter who heard from one of his source that is one of the burglars had an address book and in it was the name howard hunt as well as the initials for the white house next to it. woodward took the information and trying to find out who howard hunt was. >> called the white house switchboard. asked for howard hunt and the operator said, i believe he might be in mr. colson's office. he was nixon's hatchet man and that, of course, increased the interest and finally i got hunt on the phone and said, how come your name is in the address books of the burglars caught at the watergate? and he paused and screamed, good god! and hung up the phone. >> and so that became the next great focus of what we were trying to learn. if one of the burglars is known to be working for the white house, then that's quite amazing. >> the burglars believed that they were engaged in a national security effort ordered by the president. nixon did not want the congress and the american people to learn they thought they were working for him. >> to keep the burglars quiet the nixon white house starts talking to the cia about paying their legal fees and their salaries through the end their trial. >> i went in. i said those who were arrested at the dnc appear to have connections with the cia. they're now in a lot of trouble. is this the thing that the cia can come in and take care of them? >> the cia said, what? why? we won't be paying your spys. that will make the country think we are somehow involved. >> the next thing i heard about money to take care of the people arrested at the watergate is from john mitchell who said to get the services of a fund-raiser for the re-election committee good at raising money. >> herb dispersed $220,000 to the burglars. >> i didn't really stop to ponder it. i didn't want to ponder it. i didn't want to think about what i was doing so i didn't dwell on it. >> my sense is john deeb started out as a loyal soldier to try to prevent this from getting out of control but it is not just people in the government covering up something. it is really aimed at paying people to lie to protect higher ups and ongoing grand jury investigation. >> dean was an essential part of the criminal enterprise. he is the one who helped to deliver the money to the burglars. he is the one who got information from the justice department and so forth to help squash what was going on. >> i thought i could help myself and help these people who were in a whole hell of a lot of trouble and never needed me as much as they do and i got deeper in the mix than i otherwise probably would have been. 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but then i realized he putt me in front of the bus. >> john dean was gradually being set up. nixon planned to make dean the fall guy. >> in the first couple weeks after the break-in i learned that there was an investigation by a prosecutor in florida who had found a check that went through the watergate burglar's catalanotto and connected to the committee for the re-election of the president so i said to the editors at "washington post," there's a guy down there in florida doing an investigation and they got me on the next plane to go down to florida where the burglars were from and there's the check for $25,000. i called woodward. i said somewhere in this world is a guy named kenneth and we need to find him really fast. woodward found him and indeed he worked at the campaign for the re-election of nixon. he gave a check and then he had gone into the bank account of one of the watergate burglars and the key connection between the committee for re-election of the president and the higher ups in the campaign. >> "the washington post" discovered that $25,000 in political contributions to president nixon's campaign somehow turned up in a florida bank account. >> over the summer there was a number of newpaper stories about all different things going on at the committee to re-elect the president and how the house bank committee got involved. >> the only serious investigation aside from the police arrests of the burglars was an effort by the house banking committee in congress to find out the source of the money for the burglars and headed by wright patman a forceful congressman from texas. >> chairman patman asking for subpoena powers to compelled those to appear before open televised hearings. >> he had the staff start an investigation in mid-august. >> he put that together and made an initial report to the members of the committee september 12th. september 15th the watergate burglars were indicted so that included the five at the watergate and e. howard hunt and g. gordon liddy. >> the fbi did the job and felt there's seven people to seek indictments for and when the indictments to limited to only seven people richard nixon knows who he has to thank. it is john dean. >> i was called in for what was called in those days a stroking session and it is sort of a pat on the head for a job well done. just the fact in the presence of the president is the reward. i'd nevada been in a one on one with just he and alderman and myself. nixon waxed long on what he wanted to do in the second term, to use the power of the presidency to go after enemies. >> we will not use the power. we had to used it narrowly. the justice department. but things are going to change now. it is an exciting prospect. >> no line in this tape is more embarrassing than the exciting prospect line which was pure suck-up. i had no idea there were tapes. i was embarrassed at my own behavior. >> there's a tremendous similarity between nixon, dean and trump and cohen. every now and then you get a pacpat on the back and a ray of sunshine on your body and feel a tremendous warmth from the most powerful person in the world. that's intoxicating. >> from the time of watergate to the trump era is you do for him and do for him, you do for him. you prostrate yourself. sacrifice your honor to protect him or in some way retaliate against adversaries. >> cost me everything. the law license. my freedom. my family's happiness. i was in the prison because i advocated for donald j. trump. >> september 15 meeting nixon met with halderman and dean. they discussed how to stop the patman investigation. >> stand up there in front of the cams ra. >> it could have been a disaster. nixon really couldn't withstand a wide open investigation. >> the members will vote to give the american people the facts, all the facts about this political espionage or shut the door. >> the solution was let's just get rid of it. use the republican power on the hill to block it. >> they went to gerald ford who was the republican leader in the house of representatives and asked him to marshal the republican votes on the pat marn committee to oppose any investigation and ford did that. >> 15-20. >> the resolution lost. >> so we lost the vote 20-15. >> we were running out of time. he called the hearing for october 10. so even though we didn't have subpoena power we thought that we can get them. we called mitchell, stands and dean and they did not show up. >> patman had the cameras come in and take pictures of the empty chairs and the cover-up went on. ♪ ♪ excuse me! uh, sir, we just cleaned the windows. enjoy the minions menu at ihop. for a limited time kids eat free! and catch minions: the rise of gru. only in theaters. i brought in ensure max protein, with thirty grams of protein. those who tried me felt more energy in just two weeks! 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ahead. get a great offer on internet and security, now with more speed and more bandwidth. plus find out how to get up to a $650 prepaid card with a qualifying bundle. 550,000 copies of this paper circulate every day. it is the only morning newspaper in the most powerful capital in the world. >> we wrote during watergate 300 stories, 350. first year we wrote 200 stories. most people, including our colleagues in the washington press corps, didn't believe the stories we were writing. we were way out there on a limb. >> we had witnesses and then we had deep throat, mark felt. >> woodward has this source. he had been a deputy director of the fbi. >> i was in the navy, navy operations sent me to the white house. i met felt, got his phone number, and when i became a reporter, he helped me with a number of stories before watergate, and then watergate was the big story. and i pressured him, and he said okay, let's meet in an underground garage. what he was talking about was the significance of the criminality, explaining in a very important way the scope and the scale of watergate. >> the media was critical in focusing the public's attention on what was happening with president nixon. >> i think the work of journalists was crucial in helping to expose nixon's criminality and improprieties. and they were young people. maybe they were too green in a way to know what they were up against, but it took a lot of courage and guts, and i have huge admiration and respect for bob woodward and carl bernstein. >> i don't respect the type of journalism, the shabby journalism that is being practiced by "the washington post." >> woodward and bernstein were obviously the most aggressive reporters, but it shows that journalism has its limit against the president. a president's pulpit is much more powerful than any one newspaper. >> we were attacked almost every day by the leadership of the republican party. they would try to make our conduct at "the washington post" the issue in watergate rather than the conduct of the president and the men around him. >> using innuendo, third person hearsay, unsubstantiated charges, anonymous sources, and huge scary headlines, "the post" has maliciously sought to give the appearance of a direct connection between the white house and the watergate. >> when somebody denies something that you know is true, it actually was a stimulus to us to keep working on this story, no matter how harsh the criticism and denunciation was. >> we started at the bottom. we learned from this bookkeeper who worked at the committee for the re-election of the president that there had been a secret fund that paid for undercover operations against the democrats. there were five people who controlled the funds, and finally, we get to the point where we know that nixon's campaign manager john mitchell, former attorney general of the united states, had been among those five people who controlled the secret funds. so we decided we're going do a story on this. i had this number for mitchell, and i called him, and mitchell answered the phone. and i said, mr. attorney general, i have a story i'd like to read to you that's in the next day's paper and get your response. i'm starting to read, and i got as far as john n. mitchell, attorney general of the united states, controlled a secret fund. and mitchell said, "jesus." and then i went a few more words into the first paragraph, and mitchell said, "jesus." and then i got to the end of the first paragraph, by which time the drift of the story was unmistakable. and mitchell said "jesus christ, all that crap, you're putting it in the paper. if you print that, katharine graham the publisher of "the washington post" is going to get her tit caught in a big fat ringer. and when this campaign is over, we're going do a little story on you two boys," and hung up the phone. i have to say, it is the most chilling story i've ever experienced as a reporter, because the threat was real. >> the brazenness that they could say those things about us, we'll do a little story on you and about mrs. graham, spoke volumes about their perception of their own dominance and power. >> i called ben bradlee, the editor of the paper. bradley said to us, you know there has never been a story like this ever before. you're about to say that the attorney -- the former attorney general of the united states, the highest law enforcement officer in the country is a crook. and we said, yeah. but we're right. >> "the washington post" says it has been told that while mitchell was attorney general, he controlled a secret republican party fund used to finance clandestine political espionage operations. mitchell denied the allegations today with some intensity. >> and so mitchell and some of the others at the committee for the re-election of the president came up with the idea that they could put "the washington post" out of business. one day a subpoena server came to "the washington post." i got a call from downstairs, and i said, don't let him upstairs to the newsroom. just hold him there. and i called bradlee, and i said, there is a subpoena server there for our notes. and he said, let me call katharine. i get emotional when i talk about this to this day. bradlee called me back. and he says, katharine graham says they're not your notes. they're her notes. and if anybody is going to go to jail, she is going to go to jail. and it shows you the courage of this great publisher, that she would do that. and to me, in many ways, it's the most emotional moment of all of the coverage. and indeed, she was the possessor of the notes. >> if we hadn't been right, we'd have been dead because all the newspaper has is its credibility. and our credibility was being attacked every day. >> it took courage. it took persistence. it took honor. it took ethics to uncover the things that they uncovered for the greater good of the country. and i wish we had more people like them at the moment. >> there was also at that time much more trust in the media. that the people who are presenting the news were believed and considered to be trustworthy sources who were presenting the facts objectively. >> you're saying it's a falsehood, and they're giving sean spicer, our press secretary gave alternative facts to that. >> during the time of watergate, there was only one set of facts. today it's not how it exists. and it's been changed and it's been abused under the trump administration because he only creates alternative sets of facts. >> i think what we see again and again is that the only thing standing between democracy and tyranny are people being willing to do the right thing. t-mobiley miles with 5g than verizon. t-mobile has more 5g bars in more places than anyone. another reason t-mobile is the leader in 5g. lemons. lemons, lemons, lemons. look how nice they are. the moment you become an expedia member, you can instantly start saving on your travels. so you can go and see all those, lovely, lemony, lemons. 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[laughs] we'll drive you happy at carvana. my own feeling was that watergate didn't have legs. it hadn't taken on as a campaign issue. "the washington post," yes, they were on the story. but on television, the only person that was picking up anything was walter cronkite on cbs. >> the public wasn't engaged. watergate was not resonating at all out in the country, and that was one of the reasons that walter wanted to do these long powerful pieces, right before the election. >> at first it was called the watergate caper. five men apparently caught in the act of burglarizing and bugging democratic headquarters in washington. >> because i had covered watergate from the beginning, i was part of helping put the things together. in my time at cbs, i'd never seen anything like that. that was explosive. >> escalating finally into charges of a high-level campaign, a political sabotage and espionage, apparently unparalleled in american history. >> elevating the issue for the public to understand better what was really happening. and in fact bob woodward told me that he thought it was going to turn the election over to george mcgovern. he believed that, those pieces would make that much of a difference. of course, they didn't. they made almost no difference in the vote. >> this was a day that comes every four years, when the people of the united states choose one man to wield the greatest power given to any world leader. >> west virginia a surprise, going to the republicans. new hampshire not a surprise. maryland, agnew's revenge, back in the republican column. >> one thing that became very clear on election night, to a degree, the cover-up was working. >> nixon has won the reelection to the presidency. >> nixon won by an enormous landslide. >> it looks like the second greatest defeat ever handed to a candidate. >> he carried every state except massachusetts and the district of columbia. >> he just swamped and overwhelmed george mcgovern and the democrats. >> congratulations on your victory. i hope that in the next four years you will lead us to a time of peace abroad. >> the american people didn't care about watergate. it hadn't moved the political needle at all. >> i've never known a national election when i would be able to go to bed earlier than tonight. >> after the election, i thought the cover-up would be over, but it wasn't. a few days after the election, chuck colson waltzes into my office with a conversation he had recorded between himself and howard hunt. >> the reason i called you is because of commitments that were made to all of us at the onset have not been kept. there is a great deal of financial expense here that has not been covered, and what has been getting has been coming in very minor dribs and drabs. this is a long haul thing that the costs are very, very high. i thought you would want to know that this thing must not break apart for foolish reasons. >> hunt on the recording makes it very clear the money is not flowing the way they want, and if the money didn't come everybody would start talking. i asked what are we doing? this is a quid pro quo situation. is it bribery on our part or is it something else, a crime i didn't know much about, obstruction of justice? so that's when i came back to my office, got my law books out, and found out we were clearly obstructing justice. >> paying hush money to a burglar so he wouldn't talk. that's obstruction of justice. you are obstructing the administration of the law. >> it was an obscure, seldom used statute. watergate put obstruction of justice on the map. >> it was complex because there isn't much law on obstruction of justice by the president or his aides. >> when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal. >> by definition? >> exactly. >> there were probably many people who believed that what they were doing was justified on some level. >> obstruction of justice is an attempt to thwart an investigation. >> you can tell someone to lie on your behalf, you can lie in order to divert investigators and prosecutors away from yourself, you can destroy documents. >> i think john dean was realistic because he saw that the criminal laws applied to the president and everybody else, and that sooner or later, this was going to come out. >> i thought to myself, you know, you're in a heap of trouble. why this was difficult is because i had just gotten married, just weeks earlier. i have to make this cover-up work. i really have just sort of been, yeah, well, okay, if i got to pass that information on, fine. you do the dirty work. now the dirty work had to be done by me. >> why did you think you had to make it work? >> because i was going go to jail otherwise. and i would have never subjected the woman who is the love of my life to that kind of agony knowing now the situation i was in. and this is where i really become involved in knowingly engaging in criminal behavior. that's when i do the really stupid things like find two notebooks that should have been turned over to the fbi still in my file from hunt's safe, and they have all of his names of his people involved in the ellsberg break-in. >> the guide that would allow you to piece everything together, it was the hunt notebooks. >> this is dynamite. so i shred those notebooks. >> and to destroy evidence is a crime of obstruction of justice. >> no one told me to do that, but i knew those would implicate high profile people so, i solved that on my own. because they went from my shredder to a burn bag. and that would make sure it would disappear. ugh-stipated... feeling weighed down by a backedup gut" miralax is different. it works naturally with the water in your body to unblock your gut. ...free your gut. and your mood will follow. there's a monster problem and our hero needs solutions. so she starts a miro to brainstorm. “shoot it?” suggests the scientists. so they shoot it. hmm... back to the miro board. dave says “feed it?” and dave feeds it. just then our hero has a breakthrough. 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i'm speechless. thanks for the apoquel. ahh, that's what friends are for. ask your veterinarian for apoquel. next to you, apoquel is a dog's best friend. as they approached the trial, the cover-up was working. >> the government witness list does not include john mitchell, maurice stans or other figures who could be expected to make the trial first rate political drama. the justice department wants to handle the case as a routine burglary and bugging. >> they were paying money for individuals to shut up about what they knew. >> but there's a problem. hunt's wife dies in a plane crash in december of 1972. and hunt's position on what he needs to stay silent changes. >> a panicked colson called me one day. colson wants to know what he should do because hunt clearly wants clemency and some assurances. when hunt lost his wife, it put his family in a terrible situation, and he was on his way to prison. so colson laid this all out in front of ehrlichman, and ehrlichman said you absolutely cannot mention clemency to the president. >> offering clemency to one of the burglars so he wouldn't talk, that would be obstruction. >> but colson goes to the president. the president promised colson executive clemency, in other words, a pardon for hunt with the understanding that colson would tell hunt and hunt would stay quiet. >> seven men went on trial today in a washington federal court charged with the break-in and burglary of democratic national headquarters in the watergate building last june. two are former white house aides. the other five were caught during the break-in at 2:00 in the morning wearing rubber gloves and carrying photocopying equipment. >> hunt and the cubans plead guilty. mccord and liddy plead innocent and decide to go to trial. >> and there was a very savvy judge sitting there. his name was john sirica. he was a no nonsense judge. he was actually a very conservative judge, throw the book at them kind of judge. >> there was a prosecutor in the courtroom, and judge sirica felt early on that he wasn't pursuing the idea that this went higher than these five burglars. >> he couldn't believe that the prosecution was so inept. why was it being cut off at the burglar level? why wasn't it going higher? >> earl silbert, who was the chief prosecutor u.s. attorney had a philosophy that if you're going go after the higher up, the higher up they are, the more you have to have them by the balls, and did not feel that they had enough of it. >> and he kept saying to the prosecutor, "you're not asking about the higher ups. what about the higher ups?" the judge. so he started to question the burglars themselves. >> weren't you suspicious when you were told to use an assumed name? didn't that indicate to you there was some hanky-panky going on? no, your honor. >> he was very concerned about the justice department prosecution. made no bones about that. he said something is fishy here. >> sirica, who had repeatedly >> has repeatedly expressed an interest asked baldwin to what person at the reelection committee he had delivered logs of wiretapped conversations. i do not know. >> and he just knew in his gut that it was pointing to that building down at 1600 pennsylvania avenue. he knew it and he wouldn't let go. and it made a difference. to stand up to power, it's really hard to do that. for a judge to step out of his role but he did it. you wonder, you know. you wonder in our own times. where are those heroes? >> about the time of the trial, i started having regular meetings with nixon on watergate. and he told me very frankly. he said i've gotter lichtman working on the second term. you've been reporting about watergate to me through them. i'd like you now to start reporting directly to me. this was the first time i'd really developed a one-on-one relationship with nixon, and i soon realized i am his point man on watergate. on march 19th, one of the lawyers from the reelection committee came to my office. he told me, he said john, howard hunt wanted me to send a message to you. he said if i don't get $120,000 like yesterday, i'm going to have some seamy things to say about what i did for john ehrlichman at the white house. >> i erupted to the person who brought the message and told him i'm 80 of the money business. i don't want anything to do with it. i'm not going to let hunt extort me. this is the end. this conversation was a turning point for me. i had had itith the cover-up. w e make and model. get a whole lot of something with farmers policy perks. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ it's started. somewhere between a cuddle and a struggle, it's...the side hug. tween milestones like this may start at age 9. hpv vaccination - a type of cancer prevention against certain hpv-related cancers, can start then too. for most, hpv clears on its own. but for others, it can cause certain cancers later in life. you're welcome! now, as the "dad cab", it's my cue to help protect them. embrace this phase. help protect them in the next. ask their doctor about hpv vaccination today. without question, hunt's message to me was a trigger, and it was the beginning of the end of my involvement in the cover-up. being extorted, these guys weren't going to go away. this issue wasn't going to go away. nixon had won the election, and there was rumbling that the investigations were going to be starting up again. this wasn't working, wouldn't work. and it made me realize i would have to live this lie the rest of my life. this was a lifetime commitment i was unwilling to make. and i decide i would go in and do my best to get the president to end the damn thing. >> dean understood the consequences, which was remarkable for somebody who had very little criminal background, if any. i think that he had a conscience much stronger than other people did, and he also was realistic in recognizing that what he was doing and others were doing would not go away. >> this was the time to try to get him to realize the implications of what was going on. i had no idea these conversations were being recorded at this point. >> in our conversations, i have the impression that you don't know everything i know, and it makes it very difficult for you to make judgments that only you can make. there is no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we've got. we have a cancer within -- close to the presidency that's growing. it's growing daily. >> and that was of course a dramatic and vivid description of what was going on in the united states. >> i mean, he was using the strongest words that he could use in explaining how this was all spinning out of control, and it was not going end well. >> and i'm trying get him to lead the way so he gets the credit for ending the cover-up. >> some were being blackmailed. two, people are going to start perjuring themselves very quickly to protect other people and the like, and there's no assurance. >> what i'm really doing is making the demand that hunt has made, taking to it the president in the hope he says my god, john, don't get involved in extortion. he does the exact opposite. >> i would say these people are going -- how much money do you need? >> i would say these people are going to cost a million dollars over the next few years. you can get a million dollars and you can get it in cash. i know where it can be gotten. >> that was an astronomical number to me at that time. putting that number out was trying to throw the president off that we just can't pay that kind of money. to the contrary, he says that's no problem, john. i'm stunned. as i listened to that tape, i can hear my own frustration come out where i feel i have failed to convince him based on solid evidence of the criminality that's going on. try to show that he's got a problem with me. >> some people are going to have to go to jail. i think i could, for one. then i tell him i think i've obstructed justice. >> let's talk about your obstruction of justice role. i don't see it. i don't see it. >> well, i've been a con -- i've been a conduit for information on -- on taking care of people out there whoa are guilty of crimes. >> oh, you mean like the, the blackmail? >> the black medical, right. >> and i don't know how you go stronger in talking to the president. >> telling him that there needed to be an end to it, that nixon needed to cut it off and save the presidency, and nixon refused. >> i've often thought that this was the day i first met the real richard nixon. this man is up to his eyebrows in this thing. if we don't come forward and end this, a lot of people are going to go to jail. this thing has got to end, and i'm going to be the one that has to blow this all up. the story of watergate, is, the abuse of power by somebody in a position to exercise that power. >> nixon wants to win. so he did activities to secure