Richard Nixon's S.O.B.

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"Every president needs an S.O.B. — and I'm Nixon's."

H.R. Haldeman

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My family was still out of the country when former White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman took the witness stand at the Senate Watergate Committee's hearings 40 years ago today so I didn't see him testify, but I'm sure he was quite a sight.

He always was in those days. He was kind of a Mephistopheles with a crewcut, I guess; with the German surname, he always seemed more sinister than the rest — to me, anyway. Maybe it was the influence of those World War II movies I watched as a child.

Haldeman and former White House aide John Ehrlichman were known as Richard Nixon's "Berlin Wall" because of their Germanic surnames and their tendency to restrict access to the Oval Office.

They also had the shared trait of unquestioned loyalty to their leader — even when that leader had forced them to resign only a few months earlier.

Haldeman's testimony had been eagerly anticipated because of his special position in the Nixon White House as chief of staff. The job was still new and evolving when Haldeman became chief of staff, but he appeared to relish its reputation as a presidential "gatekeeper."

It was said Haldeman was closer to Nixon than anyone else in the White House (with the possible exception of Nixon's wife). The word around Washington was that he was the first person to see Nixon each morning and the last to see him each night — and, because of the nature of his job, he saw Nixon many, many times in between.

It was to be expected, therefore, that he would be a Nixon defender on the stand. And he was.

"I have full confidence," he told the Watergate committee 40 years ago, "that when the entire truth is known, it will be clear to the American people that President Nixon had no knowledge of or involvement in either the Watergate affair itself or the subsequent effort of a 'coverup' of the Watergate."

Ironically, the Watergate figure with whom Haldeman probably had the most in common 40 years ago today — at least on the surface — was John Dean, who had testified a month earlier.

Both men delivered lengthy statements on their first days on the witness stand and answered questions on the other days. But that was where the similarities ended. Their stories were quite different.

In his statement 40 years ago today, Haldeman insisted that he and Richard Nixon had no knowledge of the Watergate break–in and that Dean had "badly misled" them. He also said he had listened recently to the tape of the March 21, 1973 meeting between Nixon and Dean in which Dean warned Nixon that there was a "cancer ... close to the presidency."

Haldeman observed that he had participated in part of that meeting but had missed the first hour — and the edited transcripts that Nixon released the following spring confirmed that.

Dean, Haldeman told the committee, "[had], in a number of instances, misinterpreted the intent or implications of things that might have been said."

Haldeman went on to say that "[h]aving observed the president all those years, in many different situations, it was very clear to me on March 21 that the president was exploring and probing; that he was surprised; that he was trying to find out what in the world was going on; he didn't understand how this all fit together, and he was trying to find out."

However, "It is impossible," wrote Theodore H. White, "to misinterpret the flow of [Dean's and Nixon's] conversation; the president [had] ordered Dean to buy time for him ..."

On the stand the next day, Haldeman vigorously denied participating in a coverup, then he wrapped up his testimony on the third day by describing his proposal to link Communist protests to the campaign for the Democrats' nominee, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.

But as each member of the committee took his turn questioning Haldeman, it was increasingly clear that Haldeman knew little (or said he knew little) of the important details of key events that other witnesses had described.

For example, Haldeman — a man known for taking meticulous notes on large legal pads — said he could not recall when he first heard of the Watergate burglary. Even Haldeman admitted that was "incredible."

Haldeman's opening statement may also have included the public unveiling of one of the most noxious justifications for Watergate that was offered by the Nixon White House. In an almost offhand kind of way, Haldeman alleged that the Democrats engaged in far more serious sabotage during the 1972 campaign than the Republicans.

Lowell Weicker, a Connecticut Republican (and an unsuccessful candidate for his party's presidential nomination in 1980) who loathed the Nixon White House and considered its behavior a betrayal of GOP principles, challenged Haldeman on that point. He produced a memo from Haldeman to Dean suggesting that Dean spread a story linking Communists to protests in which McGovern supporters also participated.

The inescapable conclusion — for anyone who had been paying attention to the hearings — was that the memo confirmed what Dean had said about paranoia in the White House in general and in Nixon's and Haldeman's minds specifically.

Perhaps the most astonishing revelation came when Haldeman spoke of the White House tapes.

In just a couple of weeks since they learned of the tapes' existence, the senators on the committee had clearly come to regard the tapes as crucial to their investigation, but they had been denied access to them. However, Haldeman spoke almost nonchalantly about keeping several of the tapes at his home in a 48–hour period earlier that month and listening to a specific tape at the president's request.

This was only a few months after Nixon had asked for and received Haldeman's resignation.

Haldeman's lawyer read into the record a White House letter instructing Haldeman not to discuss the contents of the tapes, but Haldeman seemed oddly eager to speak about them, anyway. He asserted that the tapes proved that Nixon did not know as much about the coverup as Dean had claimed.

Committee chairman Sam Ervin was skeptical, contending that the White House and Haldeman had done some "canoodling together" to leak a sanitized version of the tapes in the hearings while keeping the originals from the committee's scrutiny.

Weicker wondered aloud how the White House could justify letting Haldeman listen to the tapes while denying that privilege to Dean and the others.

Sen. Daniel Inouye was skeptical that anyone could be sure the tapes had not been tampered with while they had been unguarded in Haldeman's possession.

And majority counsel Sam Dash pondered the question of how Nixon could claim the tapes were confidential when he allowed Haldeman — a private citizen at that point — to keep some in his home.

There were no answers from Richard Nixon's S.O.B.

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A Man's Home Is His Castle

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Sen. Herman Talmadge of Georgia

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There were many memorable moments during the Senate Watergate Committee's hearings in the summer of 1973. They call them "sound bites" today, which isn't a bad description since such quotes almost always bite someone.

If you talk to folks who remember the Watergate scandal, you'll get a lot of responses — but no clear consensus — to the question, "What was the most memorable moment (or sound bite) for you?"

That is kind of a difficult question for me to answer because my family spent most of that summer out of the country, and we missed seeing and hearing many of the iconic moments when they happened. We kept up with the news — as did most of the Americans we encountered — through foreign editions of the news weeklies (TIME and Newsweek) or, when my parents were especially eager to learn what was happening, through daily editions of the International Herald Tribune (which is published today — and, I suppose, was published 40 years ago — by the New York Times).

Over the years, I have seen video clips of most, if not all, of those moments — several times. And, although it is a tough choice, I have concluded that my personal favorite "sound bite" came 40 years ago today when Sen. Herman Talmadge of Georgia was questioning John Ehrlichman, a former aide to Richard Nixon.

It was the second of five days of testimony for Ehrlichman. On the first day, he had defended, on grounds of national security, the break–in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist — which, in fact, was intended to gather information that could be used to discredit Ellsberg in the eyes of the public. Ellsberg was a former military analyst who played a key role in the release of the so–called Pentagon Papers, an insider's history of American involvement in Vietnam.

Several senators objected to the break–in, but, as I say, Ehrlichman defended it. The next day, Talmadge was clearly wrestling with issues that had been raised earlier.

"Now, if the president could authorize a covert break–in [of Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office] and you do not know exactly what that power would be limited," Talmdage said, "you do not think it could include murder or other crimes beyond covert break–ins, do you?"

"I do not know where the line is, senator," Ehrlichman replied.

"Where is the check on the chief executive's power as to where that power begins and ends, that is what I am trying to determine," Talmadge told him. "Do you remember when we were in law school we studied a famous principle of law that came from England, and also is well known in this country, that no matter how humble a man's cottage is that even the king of England cannot enter without his consent?"

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John Ehrlichman testifies in July 1973.

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"I'm afraid that has been considerably eroded over the years, has it not?" Ehrlichman asked with what could only be described as a snarky grin on his face.

That grin remained frozen as he listened to Talmadge's reply — and the thunderous ovation it received. Perhaps he knew the cameras were focused on him as Talmadge made his response.

"Down in my country we still think it's a pretty legitimate principle of law," Talmadge said as a wave of approving applause swept over the room.

All my life (which, I admit, was quite brief at that time), I had heard that "a man's home is his castle," but I never completely understood what it meant until I read this exchange in one of those periodicals I mentioned earlier.

It left quite an impression on me, formed the foundation of everything that I believe and hold dear as an adult.

A man must have some domain that is his and cannot be violated without his consent — unless a warrant is issued, and that requires pretty solid evidence that something illegal is going on.

That is freedom. No American citizen can be subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures. It is a privilege that cannot be found everywhere, but it goes with being an American. It is why so many people around the globe still want to become Americans — even when there are so many other people who would like to do us harm.

American citizenship is about more than a person's physical address. It is about being treated with common respect and dignity.

Even in America, though, there is not total freedom. There are rules we all must observe.

People like to believe they have unlimited freedom in America, but that is not, never has been true. With freedom comes responsibility.

When I am away from my home, I take it for granted that I will have to observe rules that are made by others. When the light is red, I have to stop and permit others to go past me, even if I am late for something. I must wait my turn for anything I want to buy — even if the people ahead of me showed no respect for the rules that restrict the number of items to be purchased in certain checkout lines. At work, I must follow whatever rules have been set by the boss — even if I think some or all of those rules are unfair and/or unreasonable.

But, when I am at home, I need only concern myself with my agenda. That can mean a lot of things, but mainly it means that I am in control of my particular patch of earth. It does not matter if I rent it or own it outright. It is my home.

I do have to be considerate of others. If I live in an apartment (which I do) and it is late at night, I can't play my stereo or my TV loud enough to keep people who are trying to sleep awake. But, as long as I do not intrude on other people's space — or break the law — I am free to do as I please in my own space.

A person cannot always explain or justify things he/she does in private, but it is someone's personal space, and justification is not necessary. Not even a king — or a president — may violate my personal space or demand justification of anything.

It was true in 1973, and it is still true today — even when surveillance is applied to things that didn't exist 40 years ago, like email and cellular phones.

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Spilling the Beans

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A pretty convincing case can be made that what happened 40 years ago today was what marked the beginning of the end for Richard Nixon.

Three weeks earlier, Nixon's claim to have been uninvolved in — in fact, to have been unaware of — either the planning of the Watergate burglary or its coverup took a severe (but hardly lethal) blow when his former counsel, John Dean, spent a week testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee.

Nixon's defenders insisted that it was the word of only one man against the words of everyone else. Had it remained that way, Nixon might well have weathered the storm and limped through his second term. I'm sure there would have been lingering suspicions about Nixon's guilt or innocence — but no evidence to elevate those suspicions from whispered rumors to criminal accusations.

But what happened 40 years ago today changed things.

I'm speaking of Alexander Butterfield's revelation of the existence of a White House taping system that had been recording all of Nixon's meetings and phone conversations. Butterfield was a deputy assistant to Nixon, having gotten that position through an old college friend of his, Bob Haldeman, the president's chief of staff.

(I always thought that was historically significant, but the only mention I have seen of it — other than an opinion piece that, appropriately, ran in the Washington Post a month ago — has been in the form of rather brief entries in "Today in History" type columns.)

Butterfield's job in the White House never struck me as being particularly glamorous — but his duties did differ from those of his colleagues in at least one important regard. He was responsible for maintaining the taping system, and very few people knew about that.

But everyone knew about it on this day in 1973.

Butterfield was called in to testify in public after undergoing pre–testimony questioning from the committee's staff three days earlier.

In his testimony three weeks earlier, Dean had suggested that Nixon's behavior had led him to believe conversations might have been recorded, and the committee had been following up on that in routine pre–testimony questioning of witnesses. Butterfield later said that he had decided not to voluntarily disclose the existence of the system, but he would truthfully answer any direct question that was put to him.

It turned out that Butterfield was asked a direct question in that pre–testimony session — by the counsel for the minority, Donald Sanders — and he confirmed that such a system did exist. This put him at the head of the line for witnesses who would be called the following Monday — when the chief counsel for the minority, Fred Thompson, asked him the now–famous question, "Are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?"

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Butterfield replied that, when he was working at the White House, he had been aware of the presence of listening devices and that they had been installed about three years earlier.

After describing the extent of the taping system and identifying who had knowledge of its existence, Butterfield was asked if either John Ehrlichman or John Dean would have known about it.

"It would be very unlikely," Butterfield replied. "My guess is they definitely did not know."

As I have written here before, my family was out of the country in the summer of 1973 so I do not have any firsthand knowledge of what the atmosphere was like on that Monday in July. But my guess is that, after watching extensive testimony from the former attorney general and the former counsel to the president, viewers couldn't have been enthusiastic when Butterfield, the former deputy assistant to the president, was called to testify.

He sounded like something of a nuts and bolts guy when he described his duties in the White House.

"I was in charge of administration," Butterfield told the committee, "that is to say that the staff secretary, who is the day–to–day administrator at the White House, reported directly to me. And, of course, I reported to Mr. Haldeman, as did everyone.

"I was responsible for the management and ultimate supervision for the Office of Presidential Papers and the Office of Special Files ... I was in charge of security at the White House insofar as liaison to the Secret Service and the Executive Protection Service is concerned and insofar as FBI background investigations for prospective presidential appointees is concerned."

Even after hearing a rundown on his duties, viewers had to wonder who this guy was and what he could possibly contribute to the discussion. They were about to find out.

It was a critical moment in the evolution of the Watergate scandal. Of that, there can be no doubt.

But it seems appropriate at this point to mention something.

I have heard some people complain that it is an urban myth that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters responsible for the early coverage of the scandal, brought down the Nixon presidency. I'm willing to concede that point to a certain extent.

Woodward and Bernstein alone did not bring down the Nixon presidency. It was the accumulated weight of the various investigations, like the proverbial snowball rolling downhill, that brought Nixon down — along with his own hubris and paranoia.

Woodward and Bernstein kept the story alive when virtually no one else in the Fourth Estate was willing to take the chance. Nixon, after all, enjoyed approval ratings in the upper 50s, even lower 60s, in the summer of 1972, and he wielded enormous power. No one wanted to offend him. No one wanted to challenge him. The existence of the "enemies list" was not acknowledged publicly until after Dean testified, but many in the press had long suspected that there was such a thing — if not on paper, certainly in the minds of Nixon and his minions.

By this day in 1973, plenty of questions had been raised but practically no answers had been given. In the minds of most — and in spite of mountains of apparent evidence to the contrary — it was still seen as one man's word against another's.

But when Butterfield told the Senate Watergate Committee 40 years ago today that a taping system had been recording every Oval Office meeting and conversation that involved the president, everyone knew that there was a witness, a silent witness, that would verify whether Nixon or Dean was telling the truth.

In short, it was now possible, everyone knew, to get an answer to Sen. Howard Baker's memorable question: "What did the president know and when did he know it?"

This witness was not vulnerable to accusations of faulty memory, but it could be tampered with — as America would discover in a few months.

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The Empire Strikes Back

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"You will be better advised to watch what we do instead of what we say."

John Mitchell
July 1969

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John Dean had wrapped up his testimony about a week and a half earlier, and Congress had adjourned for its July 4 recess.

When the Senate Watergate Committee resumed its business 40 years ago today, the former attorney general of the United States and former manager of Richard Nixon's re–election campaign, John Mitchell, was scheduled to testify. He testified for three days.

Mitchell and Nixon were friends before Nixon became president. They had been friends since 1946, and they were colleagues on the same law firm before Nixon launched his second campaign for the presidency. Mitchell managed Nixon's successful 1968 bid and Nixon's re–election campaign in 1972 as well.

For whatever reason, Mitchell had Nixon's full confidence. Many Americans did not realize this 40 years ago, but Mitchell seemed to understand Nixon's personality — and, as a result, occupied a unique role among Nixon confidantes.

He might have been better suited to be Nixon's chief of staff, but I suppose Nixon was drawn to Mitchell's accomplishments in the legal field.

When Mitchell joined Nixon's New York law firm in 1967, he occupied the office adjacent to Nixon's, Theodore White wrote in "Breach of Faith." The men had several things in common, White wrote — born only eight months apart, they were of the same generation, and both had been veterans of World War II.

"Nixon was lonely in New York," White wrote. "[H]e enjoyed visits to Mitchell's country home ... where he could pound the piano. Tart–tongued, bald–headed, Mitchell had an almost roguish charm — and an air of tough, unruffled calm. Smoking his pipe, he would sit at a conference table, almost always speak last, then speak with apparent good sense."

In his book about the 1972 campaign, White wrote that Mitchell was the "[h]ardest of all the hard men around the president, by far," and that truly was something in the Nixon White House. "[H]e was as charming a conversationalist as one could meet," White wrote, "and at the same time as cold a personality as one ever encounters in politics."

I didn't see Mitchell's testimony when it happened, but I saw clips from it many times after. And I would agree with White's assessment. Mitchell's cold public persona came across loud and clear.

When Mitchell began his testimony 40 years ago today, he was almost surely the most well–known representative of the Nixon administration to appear. Dean had made an instant splash because he was the first to point the finger at Richard Nixon. For that reason, more than any other, there had been much anticipation of his appearance. But he was virtually unknown before his testimony.

Two big names who would follow Mitchell into the witness chair in July 1973 — Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman — were highly placed Nixon loyalists, too, but they were not as well known. Like so many other things that summer, the relative anonymity of Haldeman and Ehrlichman would soon be things of the past, but, on this day in 1973, Mitchell was probably the most effective witness to make the case for Nixon in the aftermath of Dean's testimony.

And he took a bullet for Nixon 40 years ago today. He accused Magruder of lying in his testimony, and he disputed what Dean had said.

(Mitchell had a way with words. He was the one who labeled administration activities "White House horrors." It was a phrase members of the committee used when questioning Mitchell — sometimes incorrectly, in Mitchell's view. When Sam Dash, counsel for the majority, used the phrase in a reference to the Watergate break–in, Mitchell corrected him: "Those are not the White House horrors, Mr. Dash." The distinction? The planning of such an operation was a "White House horror;" the actual carrying out of the plan was not.)

But Mitchell's smug, often arrogant attitude, which may have been appropriate for a courtroom, made it hard for anyone, even Nixon's defenders on the Senate committee, to like him.

Dash asked Mitchell at one point about a meeting he had with G. Gordon Liddy at which illegal activities were discussed, "[W]hy didn't you throw Mr. Liddy out of your office?"

"Well, I think, Mr. Dash," Mitchell replied, "in hindsight I not only should have thrown him out of the office, I should have thrown him out of the window."

The remark drew a smattering of apparently sympathetic — and somewhat nervous — laughter.

"Well, since you did neither ..." Dash said as the committee room erupted in loud laughter, refusing to be diverted from his point, " why didn't you at least recommend that Mr. Liddy be fired from his responsible position at the [president's re–election] committee since obviously he was presenting to you an irresponsible program?"

To which Mitchell replied, "Well, in hindsight I probably should have done that, too."

Folks became more familiar with Haldeman and Ehrlichman when Mitchell testified for a second day.

After he returned to the stand, Mitchell said that Haldeman and Ehrlichman did participate in a coverup, but they did so to protect Nixon.

But first, he had to answer a question from Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, who observed that Mitchell had testified that he regarded Nixon's re–election to be so important that he was "willing to engage in activities which have been well described as being irregular."

"To what length are you now willing to go to deceive in an effort to avoid further implication of the president in the activities under investigation by this panel?" Inouye asked. "More specifically, are you willing to lie to protect the president?"

"I do not have to make that choice," Mitchell answered, "because, to my knowledge, the president was not knowledgeable."

After being grilled by the committee chairman, Sen. Sam Ervin, on decisions he had made following the Watergate break‐in, Mitchell remarked, "It is a great trial being conducted up here, isn't it?"

On his third day of testimony, Mitchell was questioned about conflicts in his testimony and vigorously defended his credibility.

I have often wished that I could have seen Mitchell's testimony when it was happening because I get the feeling, from seeing brief video clips and reading transcripts of his testimony, that he wasn't persuasive.

If anything, he struck me as being evasive. I always thought he was a weaselly sort.

"[Y]ou enjoy the distinction ... that it was your purpose not to volunteer anything," Dash said at one point. "Is there a distinction between your not volunteering anything and lying? If you do not volunteer an answer to a direct question, you might say you do not volunteer anything, but actually you are lying."

Mitchell's reply? "I think we would have to find out what the specifics are, what the particular occasion and ..."

See what I mean?

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A Cancer Growing on the Presidency

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"We have a cancer within, close to the presidency, that's growing."

John Dean to Richard Nixon
March 21, 1973

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When the Senate Watergate Committee convened in mid–May 1973, wrote Theodore H. White in "Breach of Faith," the committee's vague objective was to investigate 1972 presidential campaign activities.

In five weeks of hearings, the committee had heard some intriguing testimony but nothing that could directly link Richard Nixon to the crimes that had been committed in his name.

That started to change 40 years ago today when former White House counsel John Dean began a week of testimony.

Well, actually, the tide began to shift a couple of weeks earlier when Jeb Magruder, a former special assistant to the president and deputy director of Nixon's re–election campaign, testified that the former attorney general and campaign director, John Mitchell, had authorized him to burglarize the Democratic headquarters.

That certainly ratcheted up the interest in Dean's testimony. Mitchell and Nixon were close. Mitchell, after all, had directed Nixon's campaigns in 1968 and 1972. In between, he had been Nixon's top law enforcement officer.

There was nothing very exciting about the testimony on the surface, though. As theater, it was tedious. Dean delivered an opening statement on the first day in a lifeless monotone, and he referred to many people with whom viewers weren't necessarily familiar.

While there may have been nothing exciting about his delivery, there was plenty that was exciting in his testimony. And a buzz of excitement preceded his appearance before the Senate Watergate Committee. His testimony became must–see TV long before the phrase was used to promote a network schedule.

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Dean had a lot to tell the senators, and he used his entire first day on the stand to read a massive opening statement, pausing occasionally for a sip of water.

Dean told the senators that Nixon had been involved in the coverup all along. He also said he warned the president — prophetically, as it turned out — that "there was a cancer growing on the presidency and that if the cancer was not removed the president himself would be killed by it."

Looking back on that conversation, with the benefit of the transcript of the actual recording, White observed that Dean, in his choice of the cancer analogy, had "obviously thought through his briefing [for Nixon] carefully."

As the week went on, Dean told the senators that Nixon had misled the nation and insisted his accusations against Nixon were true. He revealed the existence of the "enemies list" and told the senators its purpose, and he told a story of a president who was obsessed with demonstrations and spoke of using IRS audits as weapons against his political foes.

Dean's testimony that week was often so detailed that some observers openly wondered how he could possibly have retained so much detail about conversations he'd had months earlier. To confirm what he said, it would be necessary to have some kind of corroborating evidence. But the conversations hadn't been recorded. Or had they?

"The televised hearings were already an unexpected hit that summer," wrote Matthew Cooper last month in the National Journal, "but the ratings soared with Dean's testimony. Still, when Dean finished, Nixon's defenders dismissed his account as one man's obfuscations and misinterpretations of what the president meant."

"Then, a few weeks later, a former White House aide named Alexander Butterfield testified before the committee that the president had installed a taping system in the White House," Cooper wrote.

And all bets were off.

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The Peaks in a Scandal Investigation

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"Somewhere between my ambition and my ideals, I lost my ethical compass."

Jeb Magruder

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More than a quarter of a century passed between our births, and I was still a boy when he appeared before the Senate Watergate Committee 40 years ago today.

It's fair to say I didn't completely understand what was happening. Nevertheless, I understood enough that I must say I kind of empathized with Jeb Magruder. I couldn't really help it.

He had had a meteoric rise. He started out as a salesman, then, when he was 34, he was appointed to the White House staff. For one so young, it must have been mind–boggling.

It also led him to do things in his service to Richard Nixon that he almost certainly never imagined he would do. But I always admired the fact that he never tried to pass the buck.

After informing the senators of his work for the Committee to Re–Elect the President (in which he participated in Nixon's 49–state triumph, at the time the second–largest electoral vote margin in history), he said, "Unfortunately, we made some mistakes in the campaign ... For those errors in judgment that I made, I take full responsibility. I am, after all, a mature man, and I am willing to face the consequences of my own acts."

In hindsight — and even at the time — most people would say they were more than errors. But perhaps that is semantic quibbling. Magruder did confess to his own guilt when he testified before the Senate Watergate Committee — which is more than can be said of Nixon.

Magruder's testimony was the first, really, to put the coverup conspiracy inside the walls of the White House, but he was careful not to implicate Nixon when he did so. (He reversed that in a PBS documentary in 2003, nearly a decade after Nixon's death.)

"These mistakes were made by only a few participants in the campaign," Magruder insisted 40 years ago today. "Thousands ... assisted in the campaign to re–elect the president, and they did nothing illegal or unethical. [A]t no point ... did the president have any knowledge of our errors in this matter."

Magruder did assert, however, that John Mitchell, John Dean and Bob Haldeman were involved. That wasn't exactly news in June 1973 — but now it was on the record. That was an important legal step.

In his book "Breach of Faith," Theodore H. White wrote of how the committee's investigation had moved slowly at first and likened its progress to hiking up a trail and reaching peaks along the way.

With his testimony, White wrote, "Magruder made the first peak — publicly, under oath, he said the authority to burglarize Democratic headquarters had been given him directly by the former attorney general, John Mitchell."

Magruder went on to write a book titled "An American Life: One Man's Road to Watergate," but he followed a rather different path to his testimony before the Watergate Committee.

In "All the President's Men," Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein wrote that Magruder, initially reluctant to say anything, had been regarded as a "super–loyalist" — but he went to the prosecutors in April of 1973 when the house of cards that was the coverup was collapsing around him.

One of Woodward's sources within Nixon's re–election campaign organization told him Magruder would be "the next McCord" — a reference to Watergate burglar James McCord's letter to Judge John Sirica in early 1973 just before the burglars were to be sentenced. It prevented the sentencing from being that last act in the Watergate drama — and was, in White's words, a "peak" in the Watergate scandal.

Much like Magruder's testimony 40 years ago today — although I don't think I would call it a game changer.

The Nixon White House had kept the Watergate scandal under wraps for nearly a year — until McCord began talking about things like perjury and hush money — and they managed to keep a lid on things for awhile longer.

But the peaks in the investigation were coming more frequently now. The next one would come within two weeks when John Dean took the stand.

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Reasserting That the People Rule

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"We are beginning these hearings today in an atmosphere of the utmost gravity. The questions that have been raised in the wake of the June 17 break–in strike at the very undergirding of our democracy. If the many allegations made to this date are true, then the burglars who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee ... were in effect breaking into the home of every citizen of the United States. And if these allegations prove to be true, what they were seeking to steal was not the jewels, money or other property of American citizens but something much more valuable — their most precious heritage, the right to vote in a free election."

Sen. Sam Ervin
May 17, 1973

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Forty years ago today, the Senate Watergate Committee held its first session.

(I'm going to resist the temptation to compare what began four decades ago today to the scandals that have been erupting in Washington recently — even though there are many initial similarities. The scandals will only prove to be truly comparable if they play out like Watergate did.)

I doubt that very many Americans realized at the time where the road on which the committee had taken the nation would lead. Initially, President Nixon appeared to be insulated from the unsavory activities that had led to the Watergate break–in — just as Barack Obama today claims to have beeen unaware of what was done in his name. All the highest–ranking officials insisted that, even if they acknowledged their own culpability, the president was guiltless.

It would be more than a month before John Dean's testimony would directly challenge Nixon's stated version of events. It would be about two months before the existence of a taping system in the Oval Office — and, therefore, the existence of evidence that could confirm whether Dean's version or Nixon's was correct — became public knowledge.

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Those things happened during the Watergate Committee's work in the summer of 1973.

The hearings that summer were a genuine sensation. Years before cable TV, decades before the internet, people were bringing portable TVs to their workplaces to follow the testimony. Drivers were listening to the hearings on their car radios.

On a retrospective on Watergate I watched once, I heard Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee say that, at the height of the hearings, he could walk from his newsroom to the street, where he could get a taxi and take it anywhere in the city, and he could get out and walk along any street and never miss a beat in the coverage, so pervasive was the coverage by the media of the day.

But that was later.

On this day in 1973, I couldn't say how many Americans were watching. In my hometown, school had not yet dismissed for the summer — as I recall, the dismissal of school came in late May — so I would have been in school on the day the hearings began. My mother was at home in those days, but I have no memory of coming in from school that afternoon and finding her watching the TV. Perhaps she was, but I was a child and the weather was probably nice, and I probably did what I usually did after school on nice days at that time in my life.

I probably played baseball with the neighborhood kids until our parents called us in for dinner or until the sun went down.

Which means I probably made a beeline for my room, put on my rattiest clothes and went back outside to take advantage of what remained of daylight.

I have no memory of the opening statement by the chairman of the committee, Sen. Sam Ervin of North Carolina.

But, as I read it now, four decades after the fact, I am struck by the timelessness of the message — Ervin's assertion that "the right to vote in a free election" is more valuable than jewels or money or property.

Over time, fame and fortune have become part of the American dream, but the original American dream was to have a land where power resides with the people. Individual affluence has nothing to do with that.

It just doesn't get any more basic than that. It has always been at the heart of America, from the earliest days when America was little more than an idea right up to modern times, that the people rule here — and they wield their power through the ballot box.

That isn't always good news for incumbent officeholders — but America isn't about them.

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A Simple Twist of Fate

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This day in 1973 was a pivotal one in the story of the Watergate scandal.

By March 23, 1973, the scandal had mostly stalled. The Washington Post, TIME magazine and The New York Times continued to publish stories, but the public's general interest in the investigation was way down. Supporters of President Nixon protested that there was a media bias against the president, and many people in the political center were beginning to agree.

(One of the things that the Watergate scandal made clear to me was the fact that, no matter how much Americans may dislike their president, they will give him more than the benefit of the doubt. Nixon was about as loathsome as they come, but, although many of his supporters had misgivings about him, they always wanted to think well of whoever was president, and they refused to convict him in their minds until the constantly mounting evidence of his complicity left them no choice.)

To be sure, there have been times in America's history when the press acted not so much as a watchdog but as a lapdog. But the Watergate scandal was not one of them. Forty years later, I take pride, as a journalist, in noting that the reporting of that scandal was mostly accurate — astonishingly so, considering how many attempts were made by the administration to throw the reporters off the scent.

But in the early spring of 1973, the story really hadn't gained a lot of traction.

That changed 40 years ago today. James McCord and E. Howard Hunt, the last of the Watergate burglars, had been convicted in January, and John Sirica, the judge who presided over their trial, was slated to hand down the burglars' sentences in March. Prior to doing so, he received a letter from McCord, alleging that the burglars had entered guilty pleas under duress, the defendants had perjured themselves, and other, unnamed individuals had been involved in the conspiracy and its coverup.

McCord asked Sirica — who was known as "Maximum John" for his tendency to hand down the most severe penalties allowed by law — for leniency. Sirica handed down some stiff penalties — Hunt, for example, was sentenced to 35 years — but Sirica made it clear the sentences were "provisionary," depending on their cooperation with investigators.

McCord's sentence, however, was postponed, and Sirica revealed in court the existence of the letter. McCord also asked to meet privately with Sirica after sentencing. When the request was granted, he told the judge that he and the other defendants had lied at the bidding of former Attorney General John Mitchell and then–White House counsel John Dean.

It was a game changer.

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As McCord had anticipated in his letter to Sirica, he was called to testify before the Senate committee that was investigating the Watergate break–in and coverup.

He probably didn't foresee the public's reaction — with the exception of Dean's testimony about a month later, McCord's testimony on the first full day of witness questioning may have been the most heavily anticipated.

But it seems likely that, if not for the letter McCord wrote to Sirica, his testimony could have been quite different — if it had happened at all.

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Burst of Joy

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In my career as a journalist, I have known several people who truly were gifted at photography.

Personally, I have never been much more than an aim–and–shoot photographer. When I was a reporter, I occasionally took a camera with me and returned with acceptable photographs that ran with my stories. But I never mastered the intricacies of photography. Never came close to snapping a photograph that was worth the proverbial 1,000 words or a Pulitzer Prize.

I've always been a little envious of those folks who had a photographer's eye. I've been told that I am a good writer, and one person even told me that my writing was like music, which appealed to me because I love music even though I'm not terribly musical.

Music is an art form, and I love the arts. I get that from my mother, I suppose. She was a first–grade teacher, and she used her classroom to spread her creative wings. In fact, after she died, we received a letter from an old friend of my parents. He said that he had long suspected that, if Mom had not gone into teaching, her artistic gifts would have drawn her to the stage.

Anyway, Mom always encouraged a love of the arts — and writing was one of them. Her encouragement sure worked on me. I have always loved to read, and writing has always been more pleasure than work for me.

But writing has never seemed that artistic to me. Maybe that is because it has always come easily to me, maybe too easily at times, and I've always felt that great art requires great effort — like giving birth.

But, for some people, maybe it doesn't require a great effort. Maybe it really is as effortless as it seems.

Maybe that is how it is with great photographers.

Great photography, like the theater, excels at capturing dramatic moments in life, and there have been few moments in my lifetime that were more dramatic than when American prisoners of war started coming home from Vietnam in 1973.

I saw many dramatic photographs in those days. In fact — in hindsight — 1973 was filled with dramatic moments. It was the year that Richard Nixon famously declared that he was not a crook — an astonishing assertion for a president to make — a few months after it was revealed that Nixon had been recording Oval Office and telephone conversations for a couple of years. It was the year that Rose Mary Woods tried to take the heat for her boss — and failed. Her re–creation of her alleged error was preserved by many photographers.

But the most dramatic photographs of that year came when the POWs began coming home from Vietnam.

For the most part, America's veterans were treated shabbily by their fellow Americans. To an extent, it was understandable that Americans behaved as they did. They were frustrated by the waste of the war, and they felt deceived by their government. Being unable to take out their frustrations on the people who were really responsible, they lashed out at the most visible and most accessible symbols of the war — the young men who fought in it.

That wasn't fair. Soldiers carry out orders. They don't make policy. Even so, many Americans — to their everlasting shame — greeted returning Vietnam vets in the vilest ways.

Not so at Travis Air Force Base in northern California on this day in 1973.

Associated Press photographer Sal Veder happened to be in the right spot at the right time to snap a photo (above) that came to be known as "Burst of Joy." Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm was greeted by his family after spending more than five years as a prisoner of war. His 15–year–old daughter led the way, her arms outstretched. Her brothers, sister and mother followed, each face glowing in a radiant smile.

When I first saw that photo, it seemed to be the perfect bookend for a painful chapter in American history. It took many photos to tell the story of the Vietnam war — the photo of Vietnamese children running from their burning schoolhouse showed a side of war that non–combatants seldom see, and the photo of a young girl kneeling over the body of a victim at Kent State illustrated the divisions at home.

"Burst of Joy" allowed Americans to feel good again after years of feeling bad.

But there is a truth behind pictures that can't be seen — and the truth behind "Burst of Joy" was the fact that Stirm, who had been released by North Vietnam only three days earlier, had received a letter from his wife on the day of his release telling him that their marriage was over.

I don't know if the children knew about this so their smiles may well have been genuine. But the smile on Loretta Stirm's face, at least, hid a darker truth about the price of war.

Veder won a Pulitzer Prize for the photo he shot of the homecoming, and copies of it are on display in each of the children's homes.

But the focal point of the photo, Lt. Col. Stirm, does not. For him, it is a painful reminder.

Nevertheless, "Burst of Joy" continues to be "part of the nation's collective consciousness, often serving as an uplifting postscript to Vietnam," wrote Carolyn Kleiner Butler for the Smithsonian magazine eight years ago. "That the moment was considerably more fraught than we first assumed makes it all the more poignant and reminds us that not all war casualties occur on the battlefield."

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'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'

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"I came here to tell you the truth — the good, the bad and the ugly."

Lt. Col. Oliver North
July 7, 1987

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A good word to describe Oliver North when he began his Iran–Contra testimony a quarter of a century ago would be defiant.

He seemed to enter the hearing room with a chip on his shoulder, and he was all too eager to defend the secret policy he had been carrying out.

Many Americans probably heard his name for the first time when Ronald Reagan dismissed him following the revelation of that policy in November 1986.

After that, as I recall, he mostly slipped from the public's thoughts until his former secretary, Fawn Hall, testified about how she had helped shred documents for her boss and smuggled others from the office.

Then people began clamoring for North to testify — as if most had just heard his name for the first time. And, I guess, there were those who had. I suppose there were some people — very sheltered people — who had no idea who Oliver North was before this day in 1987.

In fact, I know there were. I was one of them. Well, not entirely. I mean, I had heard the name in connection with reports about his involvement in the scandal and his intention to testify. Otherwise, I didn't know much about him.

But after this day 25 years ago, his name was a household word.

In 1987, I was working nights on the Arkansas Gazette's sports desk so I watched North's testimony every day — until about the middle of the afternoon on days when I had to go to work, all day on days when I didn't.

(On those days when I worked, I would often set my VCR to record in my absence. Then, when I returned home after midnight, I would stay up and watch the rest of his testimony from that day.)

Rudy Abramson of the Los Angeles Times wrote that North was "the most eagerly awaited witness since Watergate's John W. Dean III" 14 years earlier.

There is truth in that, but it wasn't quite the same.

When Dean testified in the summer of 1973, I remember hearing his testimony on radios and TV sets wherever I went. My parents watched Dean's testimony on the family TV set, and they had the car radio set to the testimony so it was possible for me to go from the house to the car and never miss a thing.

Then, almost anywhere I might go — the grocery store, the barber shop, whatever it might be — I could see/hear the testimony on small portable TVs or on radios.

(My family lived in the country, a few miles outside the city limits. I remember one day when my father need to get something from a hardware store in town, and I went along with him. I could hear the testimony on the TV as we left the house, then Dad switched on the radio when we got in the car and we listened to it all the way into town. Then, we may have missed a minute or two of testimony when we walked from the parking lot into the hardware store, but when we did, we found that the proprietor was watching the telecast on his portable TV.

(As long as we were in town, Dad wanted to run a few errands at nearby stores so we walked from the hardware store to the other businesses. All along the way, I could hear the testimony — on radios in cars and stores, on portable TVs. Hardly missed a beat.)

Before his testimony, Dean's was not a familiar face to most Americans. But even though I was much younger at the time of Watergate, I knew more about Dean when he started his testimony than I knew about North.

Looking at it from another angle, both of those key witnesses — North and Dean — received generally high points for credibility from congressional investigators and viewers.

Dean challenged Richard Nixon's version of events, and Nixon's own tapes demonstrated how reliable Dean's memory and word were. Ultimately, Nixon resigned.

North, on the other hand, did not implicate Reagan in any wrongdoing. He did not challenge Reagan's decision to dismiss him when the plot came to light; if Reagan was involved more directly, North did not accuse him.

It seemed to me at the time that a lot of people hoped he would — or, at least, that he would get caught in a contradiction that would give ammunition to the administration's critics.

Kind of like the people who go to car races hoping to see a pileup.

The revelation of the Iran–Contra scandal in November 1986 marked the end of a really astonishing spike in presidential popularity. For nearly two years, Reagan had enjoyed the approval of more than half of survey respondents — often far more than half.

His approval dropped below 50% when Iran–Contra was made public, though, and it only rose above 51% once in the next 19 months — when Hall testified.

Reagan didn't resign. No evidence was ever uncovered that he authorized diversion of arms profits to the Contras, and Reagan remained president through the conclusion of his second term in 1989.

Gallup has been measuring presidential job approval since the dawn of Franklin Roosevelt's second term in 1937, and, of the presidents who have been re–elected in the last 75 years, only Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton enjoyed comparable periods of popularity.

A year before North's testimony, in July 1986, Reagan's job approval stood at 63%, according to Gallup. His popularity dipped below 50% when the scandal became public knowledge, and, by the time North began giving his testimony 25 years ago today, Reagan was clinging to a 49–43 plurality in the Gallup poll.

But Reagan bounced back. By the end of 1988, he was back at 63% approval.

In the years ahead, in fact, the implementation of the arms–for–hostages plan seemed to get a certain amount of vindication.

The now 68–year–old North ran for the U.S. Senate from Virginia nearly 20 years ago and narrowly lost to Lyndon Johnson's son–in–law. He has written several books and is a popular commentator for Fox News.

Enforcement of the Boland Amendment, which had been passed in the early 1980s, seemed to restrict future U.S. aid to the Contras. Congress later repealed the Boland Amendment, however, and funding for the Contras resumed.

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