"Many of the corporate executives convicted of campaign-finance crimes during Watergate could now simply write a check to their favorite super PAC or, if they want to keep it secret, to a compliant nonprofit group."
"‘Deep Throat’ is only a dirty movie. Daniel Ellsberg is still seeing the same psychiatrist. Robert Bork sits on the Supreme Court, appointed in 1976, because he never sacked Archibald Cox, because Archibald Cox never left Harvard to become a special prosecutor, because there was nothing to prosecute, specially. Elizabeth Taylor is dead. She was never saved from drugs and booze and overeating by the Betty Ford Center, because the Betty Ford Center does not exist, because Betty Ford remained a perfectly happy golf widow in Grand Rapids, Mich., who sometimes acted a little silly at Christmas parties. … A generation of talented young people, over-educated and under-experienced, never took to sorting mail and answering phones at newspapers, trying to become famous reporters like Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. Instead, they became insurance actuaries, dentists and performance artists."
— Martha Sherrill, in a June 7, 1992, essay “What if Watergate hadn’t happened?” The 40th anniversary of the break-in is this month, Nixon was worse than we thought, and while investigative journalism is at risk, we still gate-ify every scandal.
Woodward & Bernstein on Watergate 4.0: How would the story unfold in the digital age?
1973 photo by Ken Feil (The Washington Post)
Speaking of Watergate, “Dick” is the best movie ever made about the subject. It’s also the best D.C. movie. Ever. Netflix immediately.
“Checkers! Shut up or I’ll feed you to the Chinese!”
Frank Wills, an $80-a-week security guard, triggered the uncovering of the Watergate scandal 39 years ago today.
The Post picked it up from there.
From his obituary in the Post (he died in 2000 of a brain tumor): Mr. Wills was considered a forgotten figure of Watergate when, in 1997, came a deluge of interview requests on the 25th anniversary of the break-in. He emerged embittered, telling a Boston Globe reporter: “I put my life on the line. I went out of my way. … If it wasn’t for me, Woodward and Bernstein would not have known anything about Watergate. This wasn’t finding a dollar under a couch somewhere.”
When the nation discovered another use for duct tape
June 17 - Break-in at the Watergate
Security Officer’s Log of the Watergate Office Building Showing Entry for June 17, 1972
During the early hours of June 17, 1972, Frank Wills was the security guard on duty at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. This log shows that at 1:47 a.m. he called the police, who arrested five burglars inside the Democratic National Committee Headquarters. Investigation into the break-in exposed a trail of abuses that led to the highest levels of the Nixon administration and ultimately to the President himself. President Nixon resigned from office under threat of impeachment on August 9, 1974.
Our favorite line item is on Page 50: At 4:47 Tim O’Brien, reporter with The Wash Post ID #413 walked into lobby door breaking glass. He was not hurt.
This is something we would do.
(via theatlantic)
