Morgan Episode 46 watergate pt 1

All right, are you yawned out? Oh, you're allergies, oh. Ask Kyle, like he knows like how to be hooked up with inhalers, so, all right, ready? Welcome to Illiquid History, where two best friends tell you a story from history and no one told us to do that. I'm Morgan, joined by my asthmatic co-host, Emily. We're just talking about how she needs an inhaler. Well, how are you doing, Emily? Yay, promotions are so great. It's very official looking. Yes, yes. Yeah. I just need to put my sign up and then we'll both have neon signs that say on air. All right. I'm good. I have to say this topic that we're going to go over today has been in my brain, and I literally can't think of anything else until I get it out of my brain. I'm sure you've had episodes where it's like this, I'm living in this world and I need to tell you about it, so I can, I won't be able to get out of it immediately because this is going to be a two-parter. Yeah, this episode is way too much for one episode, and I realized that three days ago when I started researching this, and I was like, hmm, this seems like an interesting topic. I found a documentary series about it on Discovery+, and I was like, hmm, this seems interesting. And I watched all four episodes of this documentary series, and I was like, this is going to be a lot more than one episode. And just for this one, part one, I have more than 15 sources. Gosh, this story is huge. I literally have been, like, Kyle has heard bits and pieces of this story since, like, Saturday. And he was like, oh, this seems really cool, and I was like, yeah, I think it'll be interesting. And then I got, like, half through one episode. I'm like, oh my gosh, Kyle, this and this and this and this and this. And then the next episode, oh my god, this and this and this. So he knows, like, some of the story, but this is wild. So we're going to go into our skit, and then I will reveal, the audience already knows because of the title, but Emily, I will reveal to you what this topic is about after our skit. Ooh, it's so crazy. Okay, let's get started. Yeah, sure. I think he was, like, 24. So, yeah. It's the evening of June 17, 1972. The nighttime security guard, Frank Wills, has just started shift. Have fun on your shift, Frank. He walks down the hallway to the stairwell on the first floor when he notices something odd. He removes the tape and continues on his rounds. When he returns about 10 minutes later, he sees tape on the door again. Frank immediately calls the police. SWAT shows up shortly after. You said you think there's a burglar here, sir? No. SWAT starts sweeping the building. There's tape on every stairwell door from the basement to the sixth floor. The team goes down the hallway where they eventually find five men in rubber gloves with espionage equipment. The consequences from this night will affect not only American politics, but American history. Tonight, or today, we are talking about the Watergate scandal. Emily just had a whole freakout moment. I think she almost lost her headphone. She's got tears in her eyes, y'all. Like, I don't think I've ever seen her arms move that much in my entire life. Holy... All I have to say, holy shit. Like, I have kind of tangentially known about Watergate... Yeah, yeah. There is not really... They're like, yeah, this is a scandal. Yeah, Nixon was the president. He was impeached. He resigned. That's it. But oh my god, this story goes so... It's so wild. It's so crazy. So before I jump in, I just want to say the documentary series I watched that really got me sucked into this story. Let me scroll down to what it's called. It is called Watergate Blueprint for a Scandal. It's a four-part documentary series by CNN, and it's on Discovery+. And it was just produced and published or aired in like 2022. So it's pretty recent. It has a lot of the guys that were involved in the story, and it's just a really good documentary. It really sucked me in. So I tried to kind of get this more into like more of a chronological timeline. I will be jumping back a little bit when I start part two next week, just from where I'm stopping the story today. And then next week, I'll pick up and we'll do a little bit of backtracking before we move on with the rest of the story. So are you ready, Emily? I could reenact it for you if you want. I couldn't hear you because the speakers stopped working. I guess you were screaming, but it was a lot of this. You did. It made like the speakers go silent on your end because I stopped hearing noise. So it was just you like waving your arms in the air. Okay, I am calm. Right. Well, I'm glad you're excited because I'm about to tell you not every tiny minute detail, but pretty much everything that I could find. Like, again, I used more than 15 sources for just part one. Honestly, I haven't even finished part two yet. I know like generally what happens, but I want to do a deeper dive with everything that happens in part two because it's a lot. So to start off, we're going to talk about Mr. President himself, Richard Nixon. I'm not going to go into his biography. I'm only going to talk about like the political side of things. I'm not getting into his life story. His political career kind of starts in high school when he ran for his like school president. But he lost to a more popular student, which may be kind of a theme for his life. When he after he graduated from Whittier College, which was the smaller university or college, he got a full ride to Duke University Law School. And he was a lawyer for a while in his hometown. He eventually moved to Washington, D.C. He worked for Franklin Roosevelt's Office of Price Administration. And the thing about Richard Nixon is that he has always been a very staunch conservative Republican. He is not a fan of the more liberal ideal ideas. He was not a fan of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Did not like it at all. And I thought like he did incorporate some more like social programs later on, which I'll get to. But like kind of a theme throughout his political career in his presidency, he does not like the left wing at all. So he eventually quit working for FDR's administration and he joined the Navy. He eventually ran for Congress. He won against long term Democratic Representative Jerry Voorhis. And he accused Voorhis of being sympathetic to communists. And this is in like the 50s when the Big Red Scare was happening. Yes. And Nixon was actually on the House Un-American Activities Committee, which accused a bunch of congressmen, congresspeople, political figures of being communists. And was like trying to root out like which are the communists and communist sympathizers. So he was really involved with that. And again, that was another theme throughout his career as well. And so this was in like the 40s. In 1950, he ran for Senate against Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas. And while he was running against her, his campaign party was spreading unfair representations of her previous voting tendencies. And this earned him the nickname Tricky Dick. I couldn't figure out if he won or lost that election, but it also shows a pattern of him being unscrupulous when going against political opponents. He eventually, in 1952, he won the nomination for Vice President for Dwight D. Eisenhower. Before the election, though, it was revealed that Nixon had a secret fund that was allocated from campaign donations two months before the election. So he had like a secret fund for himself. Not good. So to kind of save face, in September of 1952, Nixon gave a national addressing. Yes, he did have a secret fund. No, he did not use it improperly. And actually, the Democrats are the ones you need to worry about. Look at their snooty wives and all their fur coats. My wife is a good Republican lady and has a cloth coat. Yes. And the only political gift we ever got was a Congress Daniel puppy for my six-year-old daughter, who she named Checkers. And this speech became known as the Checkers speech because of that. That was like his closing line for his speech. But anyway, people moved past it. He was allowed to stay as the vice president nominee. And then when Eisenhower won the presidency, Nixon was the vice president for two terms. While Eisenhower was president, he got really, really sick. He had like a stroke and a heart attack. So Nixon started – Eisenhower was still president, but Nixon was like kind of doing more behind the scenes. He was making sure Eisenhower's policies were being passed, like the 1957 Civil Rights Bill. And because of Eisenhower's health issues, he and Nixon created a policy about how – like what the vice president's responsibilities and powers would be if the president was incapacitated, like for illness. And it's actually made its way into the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, like the powers of the vice president. In 1960, Nixon ran for president against John F. Kennedy. And this was the – I think it was the first televised presidential debate. And Nixon was super sick. He was like recovering from the flu, was super tired and weak, and like sweaty, and it was just kind of a mess. And he didn't want to put a bunch of makeup on because he didn't want people to think that he was trying to compete against John F. Kennedy's looks. Because John F. Kennedy was like – you know, we know John F. Kennedy. He's young, he's attractive, tan. Emily's giving like a nod. She's like, yeah. He had the hair and all that. So, and it was very interesting because according to TV viewers, Kennedy did much better in the debate. But according to radio listeners, Nixon did much better in the debate. Because they didn't have like the bias of looking at his physical, his pale, sweaty, gray suit-ness against like John F. Kennedy's more like vibrant appearance. Absolutely. And there is a thing in psychology – I think it's called like the halo bias or something. But people who are more attractive, like conventionally attractive, they are seen as better. They're seen as better people. If they have transgressions, they're not seen as being as severe as someone who did the exact same thing who's less attractive. Humans are weird. Anyway, so – and actually this is very interesting. So, this presidential race was very, very close. Like very close. Like only 120,000 votes or something like that. Like very narrow margin. And it even like triggered recounts because it was so close. But Nixon was like, no. Like don't worry about it. Don't worry about the recounts. No one's going to try to steal the presidency. There are a lot of parallels between this case that – or this topic we're covering today and things that have happened in recent history. But he was like, no. Like don't worry about it. John F. Kennedy's president. In 1962, two years later, he eventually decided to run for governor. He didn't really want to do it. He did anyway. This wasn't really the best idea. He was accused of running for president to better like local election opportunities. And he lost by a lot. It kind of made him a little bit unpopular. So, after this, Nixon moved to New York City and kept to himself but eventually decided to run for president again in 1968. And this time, there was a lot of shit happening in the U.S. Vietnam was going on. The Cold War was in full swing. And the Democratic Party was really a mess because at this time, Robert Kennedy had just been assassinated. And he was like one of the front runners for the presidential election. So, everything's kind of a mess. And Nixon was described as a, quote, calm amidst the storm. He was seen as like a steady figure, unflappable. And he promised an end to the Vietnam War. So, he eventually was elected president in 1968, was inaugurated in 1969. And so, that's where I'm going to stop with like kind of his presidential journey because we're about to pick up. But I just have a couple of things that he accomplished during his presidency to kind of give more of a balanced look at who he was as a president. Yes, there are some things that he did that weren't great. But there were some things that he did that the, I was reading like biography.com. I'm pretty sure it was talking about how he was able to toe like the bipartisan lines pretty effectively. He, for example, he appointed biracial committees to work on school desegregation in the south in a way that southern states were generally happy with. He, so, in 1968, 70% of black students were in all black schools. But by 1970, 18% were in all black schools. So, that's a huge decrease from 70% to 18% in just two years. Desegregation. He appointed a lot of women in his administration, which was not really common at the time. And he created a presidential task force on women's rights to work on cases of discrimination. And he ordered the Department of Justice to try sex discrimination cases and had the Department of Labor create sex discrimination policies. Yeah. Yeah. He put in place the family assistance plan, which provided cash to low income families instead of the programs that were already in place, like food stamps and Medicaid. And everyone hated this idea. Like, both bipartisanly, people hated this idea. So, not everything was a winner. And then he advocated for the Clean Air Act in 1970. And he established the Department of Natural Resources and the Environmental Protection Agency. But he also tried to quash the Clean Water Act because the budget got too big. Congress overturned his veto and then he retaliated by impounding half of the money. So, again, like, yeah. And then I'm not even going to go into all the things going on with China, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, South America. Yeah, you just have to know that Henry Kissinger was in his cabinet. If you know anything about Henry Kissinger, rest in distress. He was responsible for a lot of conflict in the world, let's just say. Anyway, the kind of vibe that I got from looking through everything is that Nixon, he was someone that would kind of do whatever it took to keep his position of power. One source I read said that he was becoming known more as someone who would rather confront than compromise. He wanted to consolidate his power throughout his presidency and his attitude suggested that he thought the president was above the established checks and balances set forth in the Constitution. Which is really the problem. It's problematic and it's kind of why our story happens today. So, in the 1960s, the standard of living in the U.S. was at an all-time high. And this is more to give context of what the U.S. was like. The aftereffects of post-World War II, baby boomers, and the Cold War military spending all tied together to create a really strong economy. Television was becoming more popular as a medium. The civil rights movement was in full swing. There were more measures to help people in poverty and those struggling with mental health issues. The 1970s saw the women's movement, an expansion of social work. So, things weren't perfect, but as a whole, things were pretty good. People were happy for the most part. Yes, there were social things like the civil rights movement, of course. I think the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1968. So, you know, good things happening. Okay, so now we're getting into the story story. So, I'm going to say a couple names. And I have pictures of these gentlemen throughout the notes so you can have a look at them. So, Nixon's inner circle at the time of this story. While he's president, we have Jeb Magruder, who's the deputy director. We have John Mitchell, who's Nixon's campaign manager, and he's the former attorney general. We have H.R. Bob Haldeman, he's the White House chief of staff. John Ehrlichman, he's the assistant to the president and was in domestic affairs. And we have John Dean, who's the counsel to the president. And John Dean is like our main character in this story. He was in the documentaries I watched. He is very vital to this story, which I'll get into later. If you don't already know everything that happens with Watergate. So, they're talking that everyone in the documentary I was watching said that Nixon was vindictive and vengeful. He literally had a list of people he considered his enemies and would get people to snoop on them and work to undermine their influence. There were 823 people and organizations on these lists. Some people and organizations include Paul Newman, the actor, Edward Kennedy, he hated the Kennedys, the Black Panthers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, Jane Fonda, the actress, and Georgia O'Keeffe, the artist. And these were people that may have spoken out against Nixon or just kind of ideally didn't match his politics. Like if they were liberal or Democrats, a lot of times they're on his list. And again, there's like 823, I'm not going through all of them. That was just like a couple. I was like, oh, I know who that is. And retaliation tactics against these people included not inviting them to like White House dinners, special events, and allegedly sticking the IRS on them to audit them and just kind of make their lives miserable. So, he wasn't like arresting anyone, he wasn't beating anybody up. But he was misusing his powers as president to like make his political enemies, quote unquote enemies, miserable. So, we're already really not off to a good start. And many of Nixon's former cabinet members and staff all said in the documentary I watched that he would go to whatever lengths necessary to get what he wanted. So, now we're going to jump forward to 1971. The Pentagon Papers are released. And the Pentagon Papers are, it's, the actual title of the papers are, excuse me, the Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force. And this is a series of documents that were released by Daniel Ellsberg, who's a military analyst, which shed light on the bungling and the misuse of resources during the Vietnam War and how the American citizens were misled about why the war was happening. And it wasn't just Nixon, it was like all the way back to FDR. It's like FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, Nixon, like how they all mishandled the Vietnam War. And this pissed off Nixon. Oh, it royally pissed him off. And actually, you can look up the Pentagon Papers because I found them. I did not go through them because there are over 7,000 pages, declassified pages. You can look at 7,000, which is only about 38% of the report. It's a lot. But you can go to the National Archives website and you can look up the Pentagon Papers. And if you want to go through 7,000 declassified documents, you can. They're available in PDF. Anyway, so in response to the leaking and the whistleblowing of the Pentagon Papers, he created a task force to kind of help mitigate his paranoia and vindictive personality. So the squad he creates are known as the plumbers. And their job is to track down leaks and discredit enemies, quote unquote. And there's actually the plumbers because they got tracked on leaks. And there's actually, there's several movies made about these kind of events. So there's a movie about the Pentagon Papers called The Post, which has like Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks in it, I think. And then there's a movie called The White House Plumbers, and it has Woody Harrelson in it and another guy. But when I was trying to find pictures of the actual real life plumbers, pictures of the movie kept showing up. And I was like, no, I want a picture of the actual guys. So the men that were in the plumbers included G. Gordon Liddy, who is a former FBI agent, and possible Nazi because he would sign with like the SS after his signature. So that's great. E. Howard Hunt, who's a former CIA officer, Bud Crow, Chuck Colson, and David Young. So we got these five guys on the plumbers. And really, it's Liddy, Hunt, and Colson that I talk about the most in the story. So after the Pentagon Papers release, Nixon wanted the plumbers to break into the office of Ellsberg, who again was the whistleblower, his psychiatrist. Nixon wanted the plumbers to break into Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office to try to get dirt on him. Thankfully, they didn't. They successfully broke into his office, but thankfully didn't find anything. So I guess that means that his psychiatrist did a good job of like keeping his confidential papers locked up correctly. But they were also talking about firebombing an institution in order to get their hands on some papers, which thankfully they did not firebomb the institution. But Nixon, in the documentary, they're talking about saying Nixon's going like, firebomb them, firebomb them, when are we going to firebomb them? Like was really advocating for this. Yeah. And when you are the most powerful man in the United States, that power can get to your head very easily, for sure. And it did. It absolutely does. So now Nixon is up for re-election in 1972. He has a committee that he created called the Committee for the Re-election of the President. And in the documentary, everyone always said like the full name, but its acronym was C.R.E.E.P. So I will be saying C.R.E.E.P. when I'm referring to the Committee for the Re-election of the President. I don't know why more people didn't. I hope I don't get sued. C.R.E.E.P. And it was known that its acronym was C.R.E.E.P. like that was its official acronym, which is very funny to me. I agree. Like re-election committee for the president, like you can reword it in so many different ways, or like you can do president's re-election committee like. Prick. Maybe that one wasn't better. Oh, man. So anyway, we've already established that he's going to do, Nixon's going to do whatever it takes to be president. So while he's running for re-election, there is a very prominent Democratic nominee named. I thought I wrote his name down. I think his name was Muskie. But Nixon hated him. And he was like, if Muskie wins like the presidential nominee, like a Democratic nominee, then he very, very may well. Be elected president like he may out like win in the election. So C.R.E.E.P. wrote a letter saying that Muskie was like making fun of the derogatory term for French speaking Canadians called and the term is Canucks. So this became known as the Canuck letter and basically was accusing Muskie of saying all these horrible things and laughing. And it got like it spread like wildfire. Everyone was like, oh, my gosh, what a horrible thing Muskie did. And he literally had to like have a public address and was like, I did not write this letter. I would never write this letter. I don't know who would do this to me. Not that he wrote the letter, it was they wrote a letter saying that they were a person who witnessed Muskie saying all of these things. And. I don't think he's under there. Sorry, Kyle just walked in. And while he's doing this address like it's snowing, he's outside and the snow is like melting on his face and it makes it look like he's crying. And everyone's like, oh, my gosh, look at this weepy guy crying, saying he didn't write this letter. He wasn't involved in this situation. No one knows if he was actually crying for sure or not, but he was pissed off that he because of the negative backlash that he got from this, he ended up withdrawing from the presidential race. Yeah. So, again, like whatever it takes. So now we're getting into the break in. So G. Gordon Liddy, he was he's a plumber and he is one of Nixon's top espionage agents. And Nixon had him in charge of creating ideas like get the upper hand on Nixon's political opponents. And Dean in the documentary is talking about how Liddy came up with this one idea. And he had this crazy plan about like essentially kidnapping like these like congressmen and like blackmailing them and using sex workers like get information out of them. Like it was a bonkers, bonkers plan. And everyone was like, no, this idea sucks. It's too much. So Liddy went back to the drawing board and he came up with a second plan where a group of guys would break into the Watergate building, which is where the Democratic National Headquarters or not the Democratic National Convention headquarters was. They would break in. They would set up like listening devices and it would get information that way. And Dean was like, y'all need to stop this. Like, this is a terrible idea. Don't do it. And he wouldn't learn until afterwards that John Mitchell, who again was in Nixon's circle, made sure that this plan went through. So this is the plan. So now we go to the evening of June 17, 1972, where we opened our skit. Well, I'm going to give you the names of the burglars. There's five guys. So we have James McCord, who is a former CIA agent, and he's the current security consultant to the Republican National Convention. Virgilio R. Gonzalez, he's a locksmith. Bernard L. Barker, a former CIA operative. Frank A. Sturgis, an associate of Barker's with CIA Connections. And Eugenio R. Martinez, he worked for Barker's real estate agency and also had CIA connections. So they're not like, these aren't just some random guys. So these are the five guys that break into the Watergate headquarters. The target was Larry O'Brien's office. He was the DNC chairman. But they didn't, I've seen different things where they didn't know where it was, and so they just like kind of used an empty building or an empty room, but then also that they were in the office next to his. So I couldn't really get a clear picture which one it was. But I don't think they were in O'Brien's office. And apparently they had broken in earlier from what kind of piece together. They'd broken in earlier, planted a bug, but then they had to come back in and replace the bug because it was defective. And it was this night that the break in occurred. But they were going to plant more bugs in different rooms. And they had a bunch of other equipment, which I'll get into in just a second. And additionally, they had a lookout guy who had a walkie talkie and it was like their lookout. And on this evening, like everything we talked about in the skit, Frank Wills was doing his patrols. He found tape on the doors. He called the police. They came and the lookout was seeing all this happening. And he's like, like, guys, you've got to get out of there. The police are here. McCord had turned the sound all the way down on his walkie talkie and didn't hear the lookout guy telling them that the police were there. So, again, everything that we talked about in the skit happened and the police found the intruders at 2.30 a.m. The police had like their guns drawn when they found them. And then they're like, don't shoot. And they surrendered immediately. On the burglars, police found this is a direct, not a direct quote. I omit some words here and there. But for the most part, it's a direct quote from the original Washington Post article detailing the break-in by Alfred Lewis. Quote, two sophisticated devices capable of picking up and transmitting all talk, including telephone conversations, lock picks, and door jimmies. Almost $2,300 in cash, most of it in $100 bills with serial numbers in sequence. One walkie talkie, a shortwave receiver that could pick up police calls, 40 rolls of unexposed film, two 35mm cameras, and three pen-sized tear gas guns. And all five men were wearing rubber surgical gloves. Yeah. They literally had spy kits. I know. So, they get caught, they get arrested. Dean is in the Philippines when all this is happening, like doing like a mission something. He finds, he is, he comes back, he learns this happened. He's like, what the fuck? I told you guys not to do this. So now he has to do damage control because he works for the president. He's the president's counsel. So he's like, okay, I guess I got to get in here, got to figure out how to like kind of keep this quiet, make sure this doesn't get back to the president. Liddy, who was a plumber, he came up with the idea. He went straight to Dean and he took responsibility for the botched espionage. So Dean was like, okay, like, I appreciate you coming to me. We need to get a criminal attorney to help us figure out what we need to do to cover our asses. So Dean goes to Ehrlichman, who said, we don't need a lawyer. We'll just deny any accusations that come our way. We had nothing to do with this. It's fine. And everyone in the White House went along with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like the defense lawyer wasn't even for the guys that got caught. This was for the higher ups and making sure like Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Dean, this president, everyone else was like covered. You know, they're like, okay, those guys are caught. Like, we're just going to like, they'll be our scapegoat. Like, okay, they're left for it. And so now Dean is like, okay, I got to figure this out. And he becomes fully involved in the cover-up. Initially, the scandal, like the break-in didn't get a lot of attention. Like, all anyone knew was like five guys tried to break into the Watergate DNC headquarters. Weird. Okay. Moving on. And there were only a few that saw the need to report on it. So there's these two journalists named Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. I saw somewhere there a lot of times they're referred to as Woodstein because they're always together. They were two like late 20s reporters for the Washington Post that were like, y'all, we need to cover this story. This is important. And they were really the only people reporting on this. Oh, my God. Really? And the Post was behind them. Like, they were the only two that I could really figure out for the Post that were not just like covering what happened, but like digging into the details, what happened. And at one point, both the publisher and the editor of the Post were threatened to stop the story. And they're like, nah, we're going to keep reporting on this because it's important. Yeah. We're going to uncover the truth. So after the break-in, the FBI is like, we got to start investigating this. Like, one thing I will say about the story is that there were people that did the right thing. There were people that were like, we got to step up. We got to investigate this. While the public in general was like, who cares? The FBI was like, shit's going down. We got to figure out what the hell is going on. So when the FBI starts getting involved, the cover-up team is like, oh, shit, now we got to, like, get in first. We got to find what evidence we can and make sure it doesn't get into the FBI's hands. They find a bunch of stuff, most of it incriminating for the burglars, not a whole lot leading back to anyone else. So Ehrlichman's like, get rid of all of it. But Dean is like, no, we need to hand this over to the FBI so it looks like the White House is cooperating with the investigation and people will, like, not suspect us. So at this time, Dean is starting to understand just the way that everyone's talking to him, that he is starting to be set up as a scapegoat if and when this whole thing starts to crumble. Especially, he said not to, but he's doing his job. And, like, in the documentary, he said that he was like, I wish I, because he was feeling uneasy about the position he was in before all this happened. And he wanted to quit, but he was like, no, like, I work for the president. I'm his counsel. Like, this is a big opportunity for me. And I don't want to let anyone down. And in the documentary, he was like, man, I wish I quit on my first bad feeling. I would have gone to, like, another job. I wouldn't have been involved in this. But none of what came of this would have happened either if John Dean had not been involved. So the reason that John Dean realizes he's being set up as a scapegoat is that one day, Nixon has, like, a press conference saying that he has a team leading an independent investigation, and his own counsel, John Dean, found that no one on the White House staff was involved. Everything was fine. It was just these five guys. Like, came out and said, John Dean wrote a report and found that we are not involved. So John Dean is like, shit, people, I didn't say anything. I didn't, like, he's setting me up. Because if things fall apart, I'm going to get blamed for not doing my job or being an infighter or just straight up lying. At one point, a journalist found in the possession of one of the burglars that has Howard Hunt's name and number. And Howard Hunt, again, is one of Nixon's plumbers. And he was in on the Elson break-in and the psychiatrist's office break-in. So, like, the FBI investigators find it and Woodward and Bernstein get their hands on this info and they call Hunt. They're like, do you have anything to do with this? And he, like, hangs up on them. Yeah. So don't be suspicious. Additionally, the post-journalist, Woodstein, they learn that there's a lawsuit in Florida going on because one of the burglars tried to catch a $25,000 check that they're able to trace back to creep. Right. So now, now that, like, a presidential committee is found, like, with ties to a $25,000 check going into a burglar's bank account, the House Banking Committee, like, House of Representatives Banking Committee gets involved to investigate these shenanigans happening. And it's brought to light that Liddy and Hunt are also tied to the break-in. So a few days, just a few days after the investigation starts, seven people are indicted. The five men involved in the burglary, Liddy and Hunt. So, yeah. So Bernstein and Woodward are like, oh, shit, this is crazy, but these can't be the only guys. Like, there has to be more. So now they start getting information from an inside source. Deep Throat. Deep Throat. No, they didn't call themselves that. That's the name they got from, like, the media. They were not a fan of this nickname. Yeah. Deep Throat. Yes, Deep Throat. But, so, anyway, we'll move past that. So this was their inside source that was giving them, like, seeds of information about everything that was happening with the Watergate. It's starting to become known as, like, the Watergate affair. Woodward was more or less the only person that was really, like, directly involved with Deep Throat. Like, they would meet in, like, parking lots at night, and, like, he never saw his face, and, like, making sure they're not followed. Like, super, super, like, film noir, super secret spy shit. And, basically, Deep Throat's role was limited to telling them if the information they had was correct or not. Woodward called him as, quote, decidedly unhelpful on some occasions. Like, I think, I didn't write it down, but I think at one point they were kind of closing in on Coulson, I think, as someone who had ties to the break-in. And Deep Throat was like, no, don't look at Coulson. But then they did anyway, and they did find things later. So Deep Throat's identity wasn't revealed until 2005. No. His name was W. Mark Felt, and I think he worked for the FBI. He didn't even tell his family until 2002. Yeah, when he was, like, 88. So for 30 years. Yeah. Well, because the FBI is actively investigating the break-in. So, and Woodward and Bernstein are the only journalists really working on this case. And so Deep Throat is, like, giving them little bits of information to give, like, get out there. Not enough to, like, jeopardize the case. Not enough to, like, affect the investigation, but enough to start trying, at least trying to get the public's awareness, like, the seriousness of this case. Like, this is, like, if higher-ups in the White House are involved in this, this means it's big. Like, there's so much breaking of the law happening here, like, spy shit happening within the United States. Again, potential just political parties. Like, this, at this point, is unheard of. So the post-journalists are doing whatever they can to investigate the break-in. And unfortunately, the Nixon administration is doing whatever it can to stop them. And they're hitting dead ends. They're getting threatening phone calls. But Bernstein and Woodward learn that there are secret creep funds that were allocated to spy on Nixon's political enemies. And they were able to trace Mitchell to those funds. And they call him. And they're like, hey, are you involved in these secret funds? We know you are. And he was like, fuck you. I'm going to get you, like, wrecked if you don't stop. So Mitchell threatened, like, the entire Washington Post. And threatened to get Bernstein and Woodward arrested because they were subpoenaed. And they found these notes that were, like, from, just like the research notes. And Catherine Graham, who's a publisher of the post, was willing to take the fall and let herself be arrested so Woodward and Bernstein could keep writing their story. I couldn't find if she actually did or not. Just that she was willing to. I don't think they ever moved forward with an arrest or not. Like, this shit is so crazy. But with the post, like, publishing all these stories, like, almost constant stories about all these new leads and events happening with the Watergate break-in, the public really wasn't even paying that much attention in the first place. There were only a few people here and there. Like, I found this, another, like, wasn't really, it's kind of a documentary. But there's this talk show host named Dick Cavett in the 70s. And he started reading the Washington Post articles and was like, oh, my God, this is crazy. Everyone needs to know about this. And he started talking about the Watergate break-in on his talk show. And I don't think he was, like, so much a political talk show host. He was just, like, a nighttime talk show host. But he even had, like, Edward Kennedy on the set. He had, like, as the case kept progressing, like, he had, like, the previous attorney general come in. He had multiple senators come on the show to talk about their opinions of everything that was happening with the investigation. But, again, like, he was one of the only ones talking about it. And, finally, right before the election happened, a CBS correspondent, Walter Klondike, who had a really big, how am I going to say this, like, a really big place in the news. Like, he was a very well-known anchor, a very beloved news anchor. He started talking about the Watergate break-in as well, despite enormous pressure from the administration to not do so. But, again, like, no one was really paying attention. Like, they were like, oh, yeah, this break-in happened. Okay. So, the election happens because while all this is going on, Nixon is still running for president. He wins by a landslide, by, like, 2 million votes. The only states that he did not win were Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. He won every other state, which is crazy to me. But, I mean, when you think about it, like, everything I talked about in the beginning, like, he did a lot of things, like, had programs and policies that seemed to really benefit the American people. So, I would understand why he was so popular and was reelected so easily. So, after the election, Coulson, who was a plumber, told Dean that the money they were expecting to come through to pay off the burglars wasn't coming, and this needed to be taken care of. And Hunt had already been paid $200,000 and was demanding more. And Coulson recorded this conversation between himself and Hunt and pretended like he had no idea what Hunt was talking about. Like, who are you? What money? I don't know. And memos were sent out between Coulson, Dean, and Magruder to figure out what to do about the money. It's just messy. John Dean starts taking a more active role in the cover-up, in part to take care of his own skin. He had just gotten married. He didn't want to go to prison. So, he was like, okay, you know, it's after, like, the election's over. We'll just do it for a little while longer and everything will blow over. It'll be fine. Spoiler alert, it was not fine. Mostly he was waiting until after the trial of the burglars, of the seven. When he found one of Hunt's or he found some of Hunt's notebooks that had all kinds of evidence in them about the break-in, about higher-ups, and Dean shredded and burned the notebooks and destroyed all that evidence. Yeah. On December 8, 1972, Hunt's wife was killed in a horrific plane crash. Like, 400 people died, I think, in this plane crash. It was really horrible. And this made Hunt want to figure out how he could be granted clemency, which was, it could be like a pardon. And so, he wanted clemency. He told Coulson. Coulson told Ehrlichman, and Ehrlichman said, don't mention this to Nixon. And Coulson went and told him anyway. And this will come back in just a second. So, now we get to the trial, January 8, 1973, so just a month after this. Barker, Gonzalez, Martinez, and Sturgis, who were the four besides McCord involved in the burglary, and Howard Hunt all pled guilty. They did not find what they pled guilty to, but they all pled guilty. So, they did not have a trial. McCord and Liddy pled not guilty. They went to trial, and they were both eventually convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and wiretapping. The judge acting on these cases was John Sirica, or Sirica. It was pronounced both ways. So, he was like, something's weird about this. It's weird that just the burglars and, like, two other guys were implicated in this. This seems like something that goes up way higher than just these random dudes. What about the people that hired them? Who are they? What's their deal? And it got to the point where he felt that the prosecuting attorney was not asking good enough questions. So, he, the judge started, like, addressing the witness on the stand, like, asking them questions. Like, what's happening here? What's going on? And Sirica had a gut feeling that the White House or someone in the White House was behind this. Following the trial, Dean became Nixon's point person in the cover-up and in the investigation of what was becoming known as the Watergate affair, like I said. Not just the break-in, but people are starting to be like, okay, there's something else happening here. Hunt reached out to Dean and demanded $120,000 to keep quiet. Again, he's already gotten $200,000. He demanded $120,000 more to keep quiet. And Dean was like, nah, I don't want any more part in this. I'm out. Like, I don't want to be involved in extortion. He was already kind of freaking out because everything that they were doing was obstruction of justice. And at this point, this wasn't really something that was used a lot, especially in federal cases. And it was unthinkable that it would be occurring within, like, the president's staff or involving the president himself. And Dean, he is a lawyer. He's not a criminal lawyer, but he is a lawyer. So he's reading up about obstruction of justice and he's like, this is like everything we're doing. And he's freaking out about it. So Nixon, Haldeman, and Dean were all discussing money. They were discussing the clemency that Hunt wanted. And, like, eventually, like, Nixon was like, okay, like, we'll find the money, but we're not going to grant Hunt clemency. But we can pay him off. Dean tried to appeal to Nixon to stop this nonsense. He was like, this has to end. He met with him and tried to get him to see reason. He was like, we would need insane amounts of money to pay off all these people. Like, they're going to break. And Nixon's like, how much money do we need? And Dean's like, I don't know, a million dollars. And he was like, I can get you a million dollars. So I actually have a clip of this conversation that I'm going to play for you, Emily, and I will include in the episode. I think it's fair use, so I won't get knocked for copyright. Let me get to it. Okay. This should work. Let me know if it doesn't work. Just give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down if you can hear it or not. The reason I thought we had a problem with Sony is because 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 on some of these things. And I thought that... You've got to know. I've got to know. I can give you something that we shouldn't unravel. Let me give you my overall version of your judgment. I think that there's 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. It's compounding. It grows geometrically now because it compounds itself. That will be clear as I explain some of the details of why it is. And basically it's because, one, we're being blackmailed. Two, people are going to start perjuring themselves very quickly. They have not had to perjure themselves to protect other people in life. And that is just... And there's no assurance that that won't bust. So let me give you some basic facts about the Watergate and about Segrest. So I'm going to stop it right there because it goes on for about three more minutes. Were you able to hear what they were saying? It's really muffled in general. Dean and Nixon, yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, and he even said this whole thing is a cancer on your presidency. And this is known as the cancer on the presidency tape. And we'll get to tapes later. I'll talk about it more in Part 2. But then the rest of the tape goes on to explain, like, Dean goes through each step of, like, what happened, the planning, what happened, the arrests, and how they're all implicated in it. And you can hear Nixon be like, uh-huh, yep, yep, this all sounds right. And he's like, I don't think you really understand the magnitude of the situation. Like, we need to do something about this. So and it's, like, four minutes, 30 seconds. You can find the clip. I found it. The link I used is on the Nixon Presidential Library website. And I was able to download it. So I will include that little bit that we listened to in our episode so you guys can hear it more clearly. But, yeah, it's Dean is, like, pleading with Nixon. So McCord decided. So, again, he is, like, the leader of the burglar group. McCord decided he himself had had enough as well. He was like, I'm over it. He wrote a letter to Judge Sirica and admitted that the defendants had all perjured themselves when they faced political pressure to lie under oath. He didn't name any names but implied that the White House was involved. So Nixon called Dean and was like, the exact thing that you predicted would happen has happened. And Dean was like, yeah, duh, I told you. Like, Dean saw this coming from a mile away. He was like, this is exactly what's going to happen. These guys have perjured themselves. They're either going to break because the stress is too much or they're going to keep demanding money. Like, this can't continue. So after all this happened, Nixon told Dean to go up to Camp David, which is like a presidential retreat in the wilderness in, like, New England. He was like, get out of here. Go figure out, like, take a week, figure out how to fix everything and then come back. And Haldeman, as Dean was leaving or when he was there and called him, Haldeman said, why don't you just write another report? Making a callback to how Nixon had said Dean had written a report saying that they were all clear. And Haldeman knew that the report was bullshit. He knew that Dean didn't write a report. He was just being an asshole. And then McCord throws Dean under the bus and says that Dean had prior knowledge of the break-in in his letter. So this is the final straw for Dean. While he's at Camp David, he realizes, he's like, I need to think about what's important to me. I have my wife. I have my life. I can't keep doing this anymore. This lie, this cover-up cannot continue. He's got to come clean about everything. He understands he may go to jail for this. It doesn't matter. This blatant corruption and constitutional violation that the president is doing has to stop. And Dean is about to blow this whole thing wide open. And that's where we're stopping for part one. This is the only place I could think of that had a natural stopping point before things really fucking go. Because oh my god is a fucking go after this. So I'm not done. I'll just say that things are about to get wild. Wild. Y'all thought this was wild. It gets even more. There's more secrets, more, like, the hearings that, like, I'm really excited to talk about the hearings. And just everything that happens afterwards. Right? Like, that's, like, when I went into the story, like, again, it's four parts. And they talk about the break-in in the first episode. I was like, what more do they have to talk about? Oh, boy. There's so much to talk about. Yeah. Most of the story is about Dean, about the inner circle, how everyone plays a part in this, and then people doing the right thing. So this, I'm not going to say it was a happy ending, but you will feel justified at the end. So for the most part. Because this is America. And our justice system is back. But for the most part, things are justified. I feel a lot better. I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders now that I've, like, started being able to talk about this in full. It's not, like, buzzing around in my brain anymore. I'll tell you, like, if I find something crazy, I'll be like, oh, my God, Emily. Yeah. I'm excited to talk about part two next week after my vacation with my boyfriend. I'll let you all know what we do. I will. I'll probably find out, like, when we get there. He's not even going to tell me what to pack until, like, Thursday or Friday. And we leave Friday. I'm stressed. I know. No. I'll let him, like, pick out an outfit for me, like a dress maybe. Because we have different senses of fashion. He's more of a polo and slacks kind of guy. Makes sense. Comfy man clothes. I know. I've given back a lot of Kyle's clothes I've stolen because I feel bad. Because I have all of my clothes. He doesn't have a lot of clothes that he wears. Like, not a lot of comfy clothes. He has a lot of polo shirts. He has a lot of slacks. And a lot, a lot of T-shirts. But he doesn't have, like, a lot of hoodies. So, like. That's nice. That's very nice of you. All right. We'll go ahead and let these people go. Yes. Illequipped history podcast group and page. I have to think about it every time. Illequipped history. Illequipped history at gmail.com. At illequipped history. Patreon.com slash illequipped history. We have bonus episodes. We have stickers. And you get a shout out. And review. Yeah. It makes our day when you guys leave comments on our social media. And we love hearing from you guys. If you loved an episode, even if you didn't like an episode that much, let us know. And we can improve ourselves. Just do it politely. She's a delicate flower, y'all. I think this story has a lot of morals in it. Don't exploit. Don't sic the IRS on people you don't like. Yep. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And he will do. You'll be like, yeah, Dean, next week. Maybe. You probably will. All right. Yeah, let's let these people go home. Goodbye.