the wiretapping of his political opponents. conspiracy, extortion, blackmail. high crimes against the very structure of our constitutional state. the nixon/agnew team receives an overwhelming mandate from the american voters, sweeping every state but one, massachusetts. as a result of the cover-up, richard nixon stayed in office a lot longer than he should have. but imagine if the american people had known in the summer of 1972 the extent to which richard nixon had participated in criminal enterprises. it s not just a desire for political power. it s a lust. i mean, that s what nixon said. i lust for power . the man in the middle in the watergate scandal is 34-year-old john wesley dean, iii. i thought the cover-up was going to end after the election. i was wrong. i have no prior knowledge of the watergate break-ins. it s going to get worse, much worse. seven men went on trial today in a washington federal court charged with the break-in and burglary of d
one of the things i suggest to the president is that it s very likely that the cover-up is going to blow. i said i don t know who s going to go, who is going to blow. i tell him mccord, for example. mccord was worried. mccord decides he s going to blow the whistle. this was supposed to be the finale for the seven watergate defendants the day of sentencing. but instead the case broke wide open again. mccord wrote judge sirica a letter. in it he says other people not yet named were involved in the break-in at democratic national headquarters. he says the political pressure was brought on defendants to plead guilty and remain silent. he says there was perjury in the trial testimony. the letter he released in sirica s courtroom was clearly his last-ditch effort after he had been convicted. he did not know that much, but he knew enough to know it went higher and that the trial