How many people know that, in the 1972 illegal wiretaps of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office building, the wiretappers heard conversations that sounded as if someone there was running a call-girl ring?
(I had heard this, and the rumors attached to it, but a new book gives the idea a little more significance.)
How many people know that Woodward and Bernstein last year turned over their Watergate notes (mostly Woodward’s) to the University of Texas, and those notes show that, though the reporters claimed in “All the Presidents Men” to have had 17 confidential conversations with “Deep Throat” Mark Felt, their notes show they actually talked to Deep Throat only three times, and conversations with at least two other people are incorrectly attributed to Deep Throat?
Will we ever understand what happened at the Watergate in May and June of 1972? Exactly two weeks after the burglars were caught, Nixon’s campaign chairman John Mitchell, the president’s former attorney general, resigned from the Committee to Re-Elect the President without explanation.
Asking why? The White House tapes show Nixon ordered a cover-up of his associates’ roles in the burglary, but he doesn’t appear to have known of the burglary or bugging beforehand. So what was it all about?
Frank Warner
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