How My Grandfather Helped Bring Down the Nixon Presidency
He was an ordinary businessman with no experience in journalism or politics, but he helped Woodward and Bernstein break a Watergate-era story.
In April 1974, President Richard Nixon released a thousand-page transcript of secretly recorded White House conversations, hoping to put an end to the Watergate scandal that was threatening his presidency. After the House Judiciary Committee demanded the tapes of these conversations, he offered the transcript instead, claiming it would prove his innocence. “The master of concealment, in a sudden reversal, has stunned the nation with an avalanche of garbled disclosure,” from the week of the release. “And through the sheer volume of the release, he has accomplished a takeover of our daily lives. The good citizen who reads
