Covering everything from Richard Nixon's acceptance speech at the 1968 Republican national convention to Gerald Ford's pardon in 1974, this textbook places the student in the midst of one of the most dramatic events in American political history.

Acknowledgments vii The Cast of Characters viii Introduction 1 Watergate: A Brief History 5 I Richard Nixon: At Work and in His Own Words 9 Acceptance Speech: 1968 9 The Personality of the President 10 The Man on Top 12 II The White House Horrors 19 Plumbers and Enemies 19 III The Watergate Break-In 31 The Burglary 31 The Role of the President’s Campaign Committee 34 What Did the White House Know? 36 The White House Reacts: Private and Public Comment 37 IV Cover-Up! The White House Responds 41 The “Smoking Gun”: Using the CIA 41 The Money Trail 47 “Stonewalling” and Perjury 59 V The Conspiracy Unravels: Judge Sirica, the Ellsberg Case, the Senate, and the Special Prosecutor 75 Fatal White House Leaks 75 Sirica and McCord 76 Defections: Dean and Magruder 79 The Ellsberg Case 82 Nixon Responds 87 The President and His Men: Taped Conversations, February–April 1973 90 Haldeman and Ehrlichman Resign 109 The Special Prosecutor 111 The Special Prosecutor: Nixon’s Reaction 114 The Special Prosecutor Takes Over 117 Senate Select Committee: John Dean 117 Senate Select Committee: Ehrlichman and Haldeman 122 Senate Select Committee: Revelation of the Tapes 131 VI The Tapes and the Saturday Night Massacre 135 The Battle for the Tapes 135 The President Retreats 145 October: The Cruelest Month 148 The Saturday Night Massacre 155 The President Succumbs 156 The New Special Prosecutor 158 The 18½-Minute Tape Gap 163 VII The Final Agony: Impeachment, Resignation, Pardon 167 Nixon Embattled 167 The Impeachment Inquiry 176 U.S. v. Nixon 190 Resignation 198 The Pardon 203 Appendix 207 Watergate Special Prosecution Force Criminal Actions Final Report, 1975 207 Bibliographical Note 219

Watergate: A Brief History with Documents places the reader at the epicenter of one of the most significant political scandals in American history. Watergate represented a constitutional crisis on a scale not experienced since the Civil War, and the documents included in this volume capture the powerful emotions of this crucial moment, revealing the partisan politics that were at play and the extraordinary efforts of participants to bring the episode to a conclusion without causing permanent damage to the Constitution. The documents include excerpts from speeches, news conferences, congressional testimony, memos, and court rulings. Transcripts of tapes involving the White House staff, President Richard Nixon, members of Congress, the CIA, and FBI, and others are supplemented with transcripts of recently released tapes that reveal Nixon's innermost thoughts and reactions to events as they unfolded, including his awareness of the identity of the anonymous source known as “Deep Throat.” This book serves as a powerful lesson in how American law and politics work and will resonate deeply with all readers, especially a new generation unfamiliar with the constitutional crisis that shook our nation and ultimately toppled a presidency.

“With his judicious selection of documents and his insightful and clear narrative, Stanley Kutler, the dean of Watergate historians, provides the best brief treatment of the greatest political scandal in American history.” Melvin Small, Wayne State University, author of The Presidency of Richard Nixon “Professor Kutler is the indispensable historian of Watergate, and this is the indispensable sourcebook -- the key documents, placed in the deep context that only an expert can provide.” Stanley N. Katz, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, editor-in-chief of The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History “A fair-minded and accessible collection of key documents on the most important political/ constitutional scandal of the twentieth century, with succinct introductory essays by the acknowledged expert on the history of Watergate.” Jeffrey P. Kimball, Miami University, author of Nixon’s Vietnam War “Four decades after Nixon’s election, Watergate remains the greatest constitutional crisis of our times, and any scholar, student, or citizen wishing to understand its enormity – and why it rocked the nation like no act of executive wrongdoing before or since – should peruse the documents in this indispensable volume.” David Greenberg, Rutgers University, author of Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image