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 maki
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.