Watergate: The One That Brought Down a President

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The Thursday series on conspiracy theories that turned out to be true.

What was alleged: In 1972, people started saying the Nixon White House wasn't just running a reelection campaign — it was running a criminal operation. That the break-in at the Democratic headquarters was ordered from the top, paid for with campaign money, and covered up by the President himself.

What was true: All of it. On June 17, 1972, five men were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. They had bugging equipment and thousands in cash. The money trail led back to Nixon's reelection committee. And the cover-up — the hush money, the destroyed evidence, the lies — went all the way to the Oval Office. On August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency rather than face impeachment. No spin, no alternative telling. It happened.

How it came out: Two young reporters at the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, wouldn't let it go. They had a secret source inside the government — a man they called "Deep Throat" — who kept pointing them deeper. (His real name was Mark Felt, the FBI's number-two man. He didn't reveal himself until 2005, more than thirty years later.) Then came the Senate hearings, broadcast on television, and then the tapes — Nixon had been recording his own conversations, and the recordings proved the cover-up. The system did what it was built to do: reporters reported, Congress investigated, the courts ordered the tapes released, and the President left.

Here's what I keep coming back to with Watergate. The people who first said "the White House is behind this" sounded crazy. The White House called it a "third-rate burglary." The press secretary laughed it off. For months, believing it took more faith than evidence.

But somebody checked. That's the whole story, really. Not that powerful people conspire — of course they do, that's not news. The news is that two reporters with a notebook and a source who wouldn't give his name kept pulling the thread until the truth came out the other end.

Watergate is why "conspiracy theory" can't just be a shut-down word. Sometimes the theory is the truth, and it just hasn't finished coming out yet.

Next Thursday: Tuskegee — the forty-year experiment.


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