Mayhem: The 1970s You Never Knew, Episode 4

Summary

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The Preamble

Mayhem: The 1970s You Never Knew — Episode 4

Host: Sharon McMahon
Date: April 27, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode of The Preamble, Sharon McMahon unpacks the labyrinthine events of the Watergate scandal—exploring how a botched office break-in unraveled into the most infamous political conspiracy in American history, ultimately toppling President Nixon. With her trademark clarity and humor, Sharon traces the origins, key actors, cloak-and-dagger journalism, and the seismic aftermath, while highlighting how Watergate became the lens through which modern political accountability is still judged. She also touches on other headline events of 1973—including the founding of the DEA, the origins of the movement for women’s workplace equality, and Jimmy Carter’s “UFO” sighting.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The True Scope of Watergate (02:22)

• Watergate was not just one scandal or event, but a cascade of illegal activities coordinated to ensure Nixon’s re-election.
• Conspiracies collapse: Sharon explains, “They invariably collapse because eventually evidence is discovered and participants admit what they did out of fear.” (03:22)

From the Pentagon Papers to the Plumbers (03:55)

• Previously covered: Pentagon Papers exposed government deceit regarding the Vietnam War.
• Nixon’s response: formation of the “Plumbers,” a secret unit designed to plug leaks—who soon escalated to criminality, breaking into offices, including Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist and the DNC at Watergate.

The Cast of Characters (06:20)

• G. Gordon Liddy emerges as the name to know, an ex-FBI agent who masterminded illegal operations for Nixon’s team.
• The Committee to Re-Elect the President forms, with the unfortunate acronym CREEP.

Operation Gemstone: The (Almost) Supervillain Plot (09:05)

• Liddy proposed an elaborate, multi-stage scheme, with codenames like:
  • Operation Topaz: Kidnap anti-war organizers and hold them in Mexico.
  • Operation Crystal: Spy boat eavesdropping at the GOP convention.
  • Operation Ruby: Democratic campaign infiltration.
  • Operation Coal: Laundered money through Shirley Chisholm’s campaign, plus smear letters.
  • Operation Sapphire: Lure Democrats onto a bugged yacht with prostitutes.
  • Operation Turquoise: Sabotage the Democratic convention’s HVAC with “a commando team of Cubans.”
• All scrapped—not for legality, but “because of the budget.” (10:48)

  "Not ‘go back to the drawing board and come up with something that's not illegal,’...No, no, come back with something cheaper." -- Sharon McMahon (10:48)

The Break-In and Its Immediate Fallout (11:25)

• The DNC break-in is foiled by security guard Frank Wills; the burglars leave behind evidence linking them to the White House (address books with “WH” and names).
• Immediate panic and cover-up attempts within Nixon’s orbit; Liddy fears assassination, further illustrating the stakes.

Woodward, Bernstein, and Deep Throat (14:37)

• Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein begin to peel away the layers thanks to an anonymous source, “Deep Throat.”
• Woodward’s elaborate measures to protect Deep Throat’s identity, meeting in an underground garage at 2am.
• Deep Throat later revealed as Mark Felt, the FBI’s second-in-command.

The Martha Mitchell Affair (15:55)

• John Mitchell, Nixon’s campaign director (also Attorney General), tries to silence his loquacious wife Martha, detaining and drugging her to keep her from talking to the press.
• Martha escapes long enough to alert reporter Helen Thomas, prompting a mini-scandal within the scandal.

  “It was the White House who was responsible for making her look mentally ill. But what could she do?” -- Sharon McMahon (18:10)

• Martha later makes a public stand; John Mitchell resigns "to care for Martha" (19:14).

Press & Public Start Connecting the Dots (20:00)

• Woodward and Bernstein discover a $350,000 CREEP slush fund for the burglary.
• The Post’s relentless reporting reveals White House efforts to obstruct justice and suppress media.

Nixon Wins—But Watergate Grows (21:50)

• Nixon triumphs in a historic landslide, partly due to his campaign’s emphasis on a Vietnam peace accord and the newly enfranchised youth vote.
• America was more focused on Vietnam than “a break-in at a D.C. office.”

The Legal Avalanche & The Attempted Cover-Up (24:55)

• Acting FBI director admits the White House interfered in the FBI investigation, sharing classified files.
• The Watergate burglars start blackmailing the White House in exchange for hush money.
• Under pressure, some conspirators seek deals and expose high-level involvement.

The Senate Investigates—America Watches (28:54)

• A Senate committee is unanimously established to investigate Watergate, prioritizing public transparency.
• Hearings broadcast live; public awareness and outrage mushroom.

  “A poll showed...97% of Americans had heard of Watergate...67% thought that Nixon was involved in the cover-up.” (29:49)

• Star witnesses reveal Nixon personally approved hush money and other cover-up measures (30:25).

The Smoking Gun: Tapes, the 18-Minute Gap & The Saturday Night Massacre (31:10)

• Discovery of Nixon’s secret taping system; Nixon resists subpoenas, offers “compromises” (audio transcripts by a hard-of-hearing senator).
• The “Saturday Night Massacre”: Nixon fires special prosecutor after multiple high-level DOJ resignations.
• When tapes are finally released, one has an 18-minute gap—still a mystery.

  “Over 50 years later...we still don’t know what was erased during those 18 minutes.” (33:52)

The Endgame: Nixon Resigns (35:00)

• Grand jury indicts Nixon as a co-conspirator.
• Supreme Court orders the release of more tapes, which prove Nixon’s involvement in the cover-up.
• Congressional support evaporates; Nixon resigns on August 9, 1974, the first and only president to do so.

  “Would he stay in office and try to move the country beyond Watergate? Or would he resign and lose everything he had worked for?” -- Sharon McMahon (36:45)

• Gerald Ford takes office and soon pardons Nixon; 19 others go to prison.

Deep Throat Revealed, Watergate’s Legacy & Other 1973 Milestones (38:10)

• In 2005, “Deep Throat” is revealed as Mark Felt.
• Watergate’s physical relics: The parking garage gets a historical marker; Jeff Bezos buys the original “taped” Watergate lock for $62,500.
• 1973 headlines: Nixon founds the DEA; women’s workplace equity organization “9 to 5” forms (inspiring the film and song); Jimmy Carter files his famous UFO sighting.

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Memorable Quotes & Notable Moments

• On CREEP:
  "Don't choose CREEP as the name of what you're going to use to reelect yourself. CREEP? No." (08:09)

• On Priorities:
  "Go back to the drawing board and come up with something cheaper. Not something more legal. Not something that won’t send us to prison." (10:48)

• On Martha Mitchell’s Ordeal:
  "Martha insisted it was the White House who was responsible for making her look mentally ill." (18:10)

• On Public Education:
  “The plan to educate Americans worked. A poll showed that...97% of Americans had heard of Watergate.” (29:49)

• On Political Integrity:
  “At some points in United States history, elected officials opt to put the good of the country over that of their political parties. So weird. So strange. Didn’t know it was possible.” (23:36)

• On the End:
  “Nixon went on television...to tell the American public that he would resign effective the following day at noon on August 9, 1974. He remains to date the only President to resign office.” (36:57)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:22 — Why Watergate matters, origins of the Plumbers
• 06:20 — The cast: G. Gordon Liddy and CREEP
• 09:05 — Operation Gemstone schemes
• 11:25 — The Watergate break-in and fallout
• 14:37 — Deep Throat and the Woodward/Bernstein investigation
• 15:55 — The Martha Mitchell affair
• 20:00 — The Post connects the funding dots
• 21:50 — Nixon’s re-election and shifting public focus
• 24:55 — Investigation escalation and dominoes falling
• 28:54 — Senate Watergate Committee and public hearings
• 31:10 — The tapes, the missing 18 minutes, and the Saturday Night Massacre
• 35:00 — The unravelling, resignation, and aftermath
• 38:10 — Deep Throat’s unmasking, other 1973 moments

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Tone & Language

Sharon’s delivery is sharp, occasionally sardonic, always clear—a blend of wry humor and pointed analysis. She breaks down dense historical events with metaphors, contemporary asides, and rhetorical questions (“So weird. So strange. Didn’t know it was possible.”). The narrative is pacy, energetic, and vivid, bringing the stakes and absurdities of the era to life.

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Final Thoughts

Episode 4 of Mayhem: The 1970s You Never Knew offers an incisive, fast-paced tour of Watergate and its reverberations, expertly demystifying its complex timeline for listeners today. It’s essential listening for anyone seeking to understand political accountability—and the crucial role of investigative journalism—in American democracy.

Next Episode Teaser:
The upcoming episode will cover another 1973 headline event: Roe v. Wade.

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Transcript

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Hello friends, and welcome to the fourth episode. And in our series about the 1970s, it was a secret. Thirty years in the making. When the Watergate scandal broke, two intrepid reporters sought to find and reveal the truth. And to do that, they spent years cultivating a source. Over time, this source has grown beyond a mere person with a role in bringing the corruption in Watergate to light. And in popular culture, the source became mythical. Someone whose identity was unknown for over three decades. And the myth had a name. Deep throat. I'm Sharon McMahon and this is the Preamble Podcast. There are two things you need to know about Watergate. From the outset, it wasn't just one scandal, hearing or event, but numerous things that snowballed into one giant entity. It involved many people engaged in a conspiracy to keep President Nixon in office. And what you need to know about conspiracies is that they invariably collapse because eventually evidence is discovered and participants admit what they did out of fear. Earlier in the series we explored the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000 page document about a three decade long U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo leaked the 7,000 pages to the press at great personal risk because they believed Americans had a right to know that their government was not being truthful with them. Nixon was outraged and in response created a special investigations unit later nicknamed the Plumbers because their job was to stop leaks. The Plumbers were tasked with breaking into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office and later the office of the Democratic National Committee which was housed in the Watergate building. The Plumbers and their associates were just dudes off the street, okay? They included ex CIA and ex FBI agents and people in positions of power who worked closely with Nixon. Watergate is a complicated story, made even more so by the large cast of characters. It can be challenging to keep names and roles straight when dealing with so many people. So I'm not going to bombard you with lots of things to remember. One name that you do need to know. G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent who served as a special security advisor to Nixon. He helped plan the events that collectively came to be known as Watergate. His co conspirators included a White House lawyer and those who worked for creep, which is an acronym for the Committee for the re Election of the President. It's an unfortunate acronym by the way. Don't. Don't choose CREEP as. As the name of what you're going to use to reelect yourself. Creep? No. The burglars all shared anti Castro, anti communist beliefs. So they were convinced by creep that electing Nixon's opponent, George McGovern would be disastrous. And they had to do Anything. Anything to help Nixon win. They successfully broke into the DNC offices twice. The first time to plant recording devices. And the second time to replace a faulty one and take photographs of anything that might help Nixon's campaign. It was during this second break in that Frank Wills, the security guard, spotted something amiss and called the police. The men were arrested with $2,300 in sequential bills, recording equipment, sophisticated photography equipment, including a surplus of film and a radio they used to communicate with a lookout. Who was unable to alert them in advance because the police arrived in an unmarked car and were not in uniform. Perhaps because they were inattentive. But the burglars left behind an address book with phone numbers. Including numbers with notes like HH or George or WH which stood for things like Howard Hunt or G. Gordon Liddy and Whitehouse. It's not quite the same as the burglar who leaves his driver's license at the scene of a crime. But it did not take investigators long to crack the code. When the co conspirators learned the break in was a bust, they feared the worst. One tried to spin it by speaking on behalf of CREEP and saying they were not operating on our behalf with our consent. There is no place in our campaign or in the electoral process for this type of activity. G. Gordon Liddy assumed that he would be assassinated and openly asked that nobody assassinate him at his house. Because he didn't want his kids to see that. Imagine living your life feeling like, well, I'm probably going to be assassinated. The best I can hope for is not being assassinated in front of my children. It's one thing to be unsuccessful at work, but it really illustrates the high stakes when a failure leads someone to think, well, I'm probably going to be murdered now. Breaking into offices was one of the most benign acts that creep under G. Gordon Liddy's direction, considered taking. Liddy actually proposed a multi stage plot that he named Operation Gemstone to make sure that Nixon won by a landslide. Have you heard of Operation Gemstone? This plot was made up of multiple illegal activities, each identified by its own specific gem. Operation Topaz called for kidnapping the major anti war protest organizers and holding them in a location in Mexico for the duration of the Republican convention. So that their protests wouldn't detract from the convention or be publicized on television. Operation Crystal plan to use a luxury boat in the waters near the convention as a home base for listening into conversations in and around the gathering. Operation Ruby's premise was to install moles within the Democratic campaigns in order to gather insider information. Operation Cole sought to send laundered money through Shirley Chisholm's campaign, have their moles go public about it, and to spread vicious rumors through letters to magazines targeting black audiences about Chisholm's personal life and finances. And if you haven't heard of Shirley Chisholm, she was the first black woman elected to Congress in 1968. And the first to seek election to the presidency in 1972, although she did not get the Democratic nomination. Naming this plan Operation Coalition was a reference to the fact that she was an African American woman. Operation Sapphire plotted to use prostitutes to lure top ranking Democrats onto the fancy boat where, you guessed it, listening, recording and photographic equipment would already be in place. Operation Turquoise planned to sabotage the H VAC system of the Democratic National Convention in Miami. With the help of a, quote, commando team of Cubans helping to carry things out. These schemes seemed like great ideas to the Nixon team, except for one thing, the cost. John Mitchell, who was the Attorney General and Nixon's campaign director, told G. Gordon Liddy, go back to the drawing board and come up with something cheaper. Your ideas are great, but we can't spend this much money. Not go back to the drawing board and come up with something that's not illegal. Not go back to the drawing board and like come up with non criminal ideas. Not go back to the drawing board and come up with something that won't send us to prison. No, no, come back with something cheaper. G. Gordon Liddy revised his plans until he got the cost down to a quarter million dollars. And had the Defense Department type it up for the next meeting. The break ins at the Watergate building were the cheaper approach. The prostitutes and the boats and the spy activities were scrapped because of the budget. Except the burglars were caught red handed. And as they waited in jail, their bosses waited to see if they would divulge their secrets and jeopardize Nixon's re election campaign.

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The Washington Post reported on the break in at the Watergate building, and President Nixon read it while he was vacationing in Florida. He immediately called G. Gordon Liddy, who couldn't really offer Nixon the reassurance he desperately wanted word that his people were not involved. Meanwhile, the young journalist Bob Woodward and his colleague Carl Bernstein investigated the identities of the burglars. Luckily for the men, the country, and the truth, a secret informant long known to Woodward offered up valuable insider information to ensure that the identity of his source remained confidential. Bob Woodward took multiple taxis getting out and hailing a different one so he would be harder to follow. He went to elaborate lengths to make sure no one was on his tail when he arrived at 2am at the appointed underground parking structure in Virginia. Deep Throat had to be Extraordinarily careful as his job was at risk every time he met with Woodward. Anyone who saw the two of them together could figure out his identity, jeopardizing not only his employment but also his ability to help the reporters uncover the layers of the break in and its cover up. Nixon and his chief of staff strategized to tell the acting director of the FBI to back off on investigations of the burglaries for the good of the country. As additional insurance against themselves and their colleagues, they considered making G. Gordon Liddy their scapegoat. He was actually right to suspect that an assassination might be his fate. Someone had to be the fall guy and his fingerprints were all over the plot. But the FBI didn't bite and they continued their investigation. They quickly found direct links between Nixon's re election campaign donations and the burglars. Nixon insisted that the power of the presidency meant that the FBI should do as instructed. And this time they reached out to the deputy director of the FBI with a directive to back off now. But that didn't fly. John Mitchell, the man who told G. Gordon Liddy that his plot, his gemstone plot, cost too much money, often traveled with his wife Martha And John and Martha Mitchell were at a fundraiser in Newport Beach, California when John was handed a phone and informed that the Watergate break in was not only unsuccessful, but that the plumbers were sitting in jail. John Mitchell took off, but not before making sure that his wife, who was very fond of the press corps, was locked in her hotel room under a former FBI bodyguard's supervision. Martha read the newspaper and saw images of the captured burglars. One of them was immediately familiar to her. James McCord. McCord had only recently been Martha's personal security guard and did things like drove her children to school. After being trapped in this hotel room for five days, Martha Mitchell managed to call Helen Thomas, a friend and one of the first female reporters who worked for United Press International. Often, Martha and Helen were the only women on Air Force One and Martha trusted her. The bodyguard overheard Martha and Martha screamed as he struggled to get the phone away from her. And then the line went dead. Unable to reach her friend, Helen Thomas called John Mitchell, who continued to insist that Martha was just ill and there was really nothing to worry about. In reality, John had been drugging Martha. When Martha was escorted back to Washington D.C. she told Helen that she she was leaving John unless he resigned. And she also made a public statement about her captivity and drugging. The Nixon administration called it the Martha issue. People surrounding Nixon suggested that they use her to make John Mitchell look like a doting husband. Oh look, she's mentally ill and he's standing by her. And John Mitchell resigned in order to care for Martha. From 1971 to 1973, Martha Mitchell was mentioned over 100 times in white House recordings. Martha insisted it was the White House who was responsible for making her look mentally ill. But what could she do? While the arrested burglars plus White House insiders were indicted on federal charges, our intrepid reporters Woodward and Bernstein, in part due to the confirmation of info they got from Deep Throat, realized that this was way more than what was originally dismissed by the White House as a third rate burglary. Woodward and Bernstein wore out their shoe leather by knocking on the doors of potential witnesses homes in order to gain information. Information. It paid off. And they uncovered that five prominent men in and near Nixon's inner circle had access to a $350,000 slush fund which was used to pay for the burglary. G. Gordon Liddy and other members of CREEP were tried. The Washington Post published each new new discovery as it unfolded. From the revelation that the break in was authorized by CREEP personnel and White House aides to the evidence that the Nixon administration was actively covering up their connections to the criminals. Nixon won re election by a landslide and the electoral map was awash in red as Nixon claimed over 520 electoral votes and his opponent only got 6 17. McGovern won Massachusetts and Washington D.C. and the rest of the entire country went for Nixon. In large part because of the peace accord that in his words would end the Vietnam War and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Remember how I recently mentioned in a previous episode that the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18? Well, the thousands of young people now given the ability to vote didn't swing for McGovern in large part because the Nixon campaign targeted them. They actively talked about the peace agreement that they were working on with Vietnam. And the Young Voters for the President organization hammered this idea. With Nixon we have peace and peace means no more draft. And as you can imagine, 18 to 21 year old voters cared deeply about the draft. At the time of the election, more Americans were concerned about Vietnam than at a break in at a Washington D.C. office building. The judicial system moved quickly. Once the burglars and their accomplices went to federal court, most of them pled guilty and only two of them opted to go to trial. This may come as a surprise. You may want to be seated at some points in United States history. Elected officials opt to put the good of the country over that of their political parties. So weird. So strange. Didn't know it was possible. But it did happen in the 1970s, and one of those times is when the Senate unanimously voted to create a committee to investigate the Watergate allegations. Nixon tried to reassure the press and the American public that they had already done their own investigation. So you don't need to trouble yourself like, don't worry about it. We have nothing to see here. We already did the investigation. We figured everything out. But that is not how this story ends. Nixon's top aides devised a strategy appear to go along with requests for information while delaying as long as possible. They also waged war against the press, especially the Washington Post, by drowning them with subpoenas for all of their sources and confidential information. The Nixon administration sued both Critical Creep and the newspaper, whose owner, Katherine Graham, claimed ownership of all of Woodward and Bernstein's Notes in order to protect them. And it worked.

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Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney. Let's go get ready for a new case. We're gonna crack this case and prove we're the Greatest partners of all time. New friends. You are Gary Destiny and your last name. The Snake Dream Team. Habitats Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home. You're clearly barking it. Zootopia 2 now available on Disney Plus. Rated PG. The acting FBI director was questioned by the Senate and revealed that the White House was interfering in the FBI investigation and that he shared FBI files with White House counsel who was present during FBI interviews of the Watergate burglars. Nixon's lawyer informed him that the burglars and their associates were blackmailing the White House. And some of those involved had retained lawyers. The men wanted financial assistance, money to provide for their families while they were in jail. And also an incentive to keep quiet about how far up the political chain responsibility for this break in actually went. They had the upper hand. If they went public, Nixon and his administration would face a catastrophe. And this is how criminal enterprises are toppled. The people at the bottom are pressured and roll over on the higher ups. And in order to protect themselves. So while they could, those who were arrested and incarcerated tried to get as much money out of the White House as possible. While no one had explicitly implicated Nixon yet, co conspirators realized that eventually they, like the burglars, would face consequences. This was made explicit when one of the burglars, facing 45 years in prison and without any hush money that he had been previously promised, wrote a letter to the judge informing him that people in high positions knew about the break in and helped to cover it up. The judge read aloud the letter, which did not explicitly name names in open court. It stated, in part, there was political pressure applied to the defendants to plead guilty and remember, remain silent. Later that week, the letter writer did name names and they were those of people who served closest to the President. Another Nixon insider met with a Washington D.C. defense attorney and spilled almost everything in the hopes of getting a plea deal, including giving federal prosecutors the insider information they needed about the break ins at Daniel Ellsberg, psychiatrist and also the Democratic National Committee offices. At this point, only misplaced loyalty to Nixon kept the informant from revealing Nixon's personal involvement in the COVID up. The FBI director resigned after the news published information that he took files containing evidence about political sabotage and espionage from the White House to his own home, where he burned them in the fireplace. That's not. No, nothing suspicious about that. The FBI director testified that Nixon's advisors assured him that the files did not relate to Watergate. And the rest of us are supposed to believe that he Just needed what? Some kindling to build a fire. Okay. Like rats fleeing a sinking ship, participants in the COVID up began turning on each other in an attempt to save themselves. Woodward and Bernstein reported that Nixon's right hand men were the masterminds behind the COVID up. And immediately people in Nixon's inner circle began resigning. The President addressed the nation, proclaiming his innocence and promoting his former secretary of defense to be the new Attorney General tasked with learning the whole truth about Watergate. Remember when I said that? The Senate voted unanimously to create a committee to investigate Watergate. They were tasked with issuing subpoenas for witnesses and documents with the understanding that they were to write a final report at the end of February 1974. Their purpose was to investigate any criminal activity and subsequent cover up in addition to all other illegal, improper or unethical conduct occurring during the presidential campaign of 1972, including political espionage and campaign finance practices. The committee's lawyers stressed the importance of public education on political processes and to that end helped to coordinate a twofold approach to making sure that Americans knew what was happening in the government. By getting both newspapers who reported investigative stories and public television to broadcast the hearings live. The two weeks of daily broadcasts, which preempted other entertainment, garnered a wide audience. The plan to educate Americans worked. A poll showed that a month after the hearings began, 97% of Americans had heard of Watergate. And of those, 67% thought that Nixon was involved in the COVID up. And who was testifying at the hearings? Woodward and Bernstein's informant. The informant said that they had spoken about the break in and cover up in Nixon's presence well over 30 times and that Nixon approved large sums of hush money and brainstormed ways of getting more. The saga took on a new sense of urgency when, under oath, Nixon's former appointments secretary disclosed that the President had secretly taped conversations and that he had done so since 1971. Everyone wanted to know what is on those tapes. The special prosecutor subpoenaed them, but Nixon balked and balked hard. Nixon claimed executive privilege and then the judge ordered the tapes to be turned over. The Nixon administration appealed. The appeals court upheld the lower court ruling and Nixon offered a compromise. Listen, I'll transcribe them for you. You know, I'll save you the trouble of having to listen to them or I will have a senator, this guy over here who is actually known to be hard of hearing, to listen to them and he'll transcribe them. The special prosecutor was like, no thanks, I'll take the tapes and so Nixon retaliated in what would become known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Nixon ordered his Attorney General and later his second in command to fire this special prosecutor. Both the Attorney General and the second in command resigned on the spot rather than fulfill that order. And eventually Nixon found somebody willing to carry out his orders. Solicitor General Robert Bork. Public pressure led the administration to release some, but not all of the tapes. And of those tapes, one had an 18 minute long gap. Nixon Secretary Rosemary woods allegedly was to blame for a mishap during her transcription of the tape. A photo reenactment of her reaching across her desk and her testimony that it was her mistake were supposed to suffice when the gap was questioned. Over 50 years later with untold technological advancement, and we still don't know what was erased during those 18 minutes. Meanwhile, a grand jury returned a sealed indictment of Nixon as a co consent conspirator, along with the unsealed indictments of White House staff close to him. While transcripts of some of the tapes were released, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Nixon had to release an additional 64 tapes. On one recording. Not quite a week after the break in, Nixon told one of his closest staff members to direct the CIA to go to the FBI, say hey, your investigation of this whole Watergate thing, it might interfere with national security and you guys should probably back off. And that was it. Evidence that Nixon knew about and participated in the COVID up of a crime. Almost immediately, Nixon's to congressional support disappeared and the House began making moves towards impeachment. Nixon faced a monumental decision. Would he stay in office and try to move the country beyond Watergate? Or would he resign and lose everything he had worked for? The lack of support in his own party, the smoking gun tape which proved his prior knowledge of the break in and participation in the COVID up. And with charges of obstructing justice and the near certainty of publicly being found guilty in an impeachment trial, Nixon went on television on the night of August 8th to tell the American public that he would resign effective the following day at noon on August 9, 1974. He remains to date the only President to resign office. Vice President Gerald Ford took office immediately after Nixon's resignation. And a month later, Ford pardoned his predecessor. Nineteen other people went to prison. In 2005, the identity of Deep Throat was revealed to be Mark Felt, who was the second in command FBI official that Nixon had ordered to back off of the Watergate investigation. Remember, Nixon had said, oh, it's a CIA investigation. You might be compromising national security. He was saying that to Mark Felt, who was deep throat. In 2011, a historical marker was put up outside of the parking garage where Deep Throat and Bob Woodward met. It reads, mark Felt, second in command at the FBI, met Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward here in this parking garage to discuss the Watergate scandal. Felt provided Woodward information that exposed the Nixon administration's obstruction of the FBI's Watergate investigation. He chose the garage as an anonymous, secure location. They met at this garage six times between October 1972 and November 1973. The Watergate scandal resulted in President Nixon's resignation in 1974. Woodward's managing editor, Howard Simons, gave Felt the codename Deep Throat. Woodward's promise not to reveal his source was kept until fellow Felt announced his role as deep throat in 2005. In 2013, the garage was torn down. And in 2017, Jeff Bezos, who now owns Amazon and the Washington Post, bought at an auction the original Watergate lock, on which Frank Wills spotted tape and set in motion the investigation that would lead to Nixon's resignation. Bezos paid $62,500, a sum he could well afford. While Watergate dominated The headlines of 1973, other notable events occurred. President Nixon signed an executive order establishing the dea, or Drug Enforcement Agency, in order to crack down on the increased public presence and trafficking of drugs from the 1960s onward. In Boston, professional women started talking about pay inequity, about how caring for sick kids always fell to them, not their husbands, often at the risk of losing their jobs, and how male colleagues harassed them with impunity. They were sick of it, and they created an organization called 9 to 5 to fight for equal pay and equal, equal treatment. It inspired both the film and the song, and it's still active today. And future President Jimmy Carter came forward about his 1969 UFO sighting, which he witnessed with 10 other individuals at the Lions Club of Leary, Georgia, where he was giving a speech. Carter called it the darndest thing I have ever, ever seen. He filed both handwritten and typed reports, complete with his name and occupation as governor of Georgia. He said, it seemed to move toward us from a distance, stopped and moved partially away. It returned, then departed. It came close, maybe 300 to 1,000 yards. Moved away, came close and then moved away. Join me next time for another story that dominated the 1973 headlines. One of the most famous Supreme Court cases that is still on the minds of people today. Roe versus Wade. I'll see you then. The show is written and researched by Sharon McMahon, Amy Watkin Mandy Reed and Kari Anton. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder and it is executive produced and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon.

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