[boop]

That's what grinds my gears. Nixon had NO idea about the break-in. He idiotically tried to protect the perps, instead of cutting them loose. The cover-up is always worse than the crime. If Clinton were a Republican, he would have been out on his ass at the mere mention of "suborning perjury". Nixon was a piker compared with the garden variety democrat politician. To this day I get pissed when I hear that Clinton was impeached for "lying about sex". If you look at the articles of impeachment, not ONE says that. It's all about lying to a grand jury, and wanting OTHER people to go to jail for perjury to protect his sex life.

Having sex in the Oval Office, fine. Just don't expect others to go to prison to protect your God-given "right" to have an intern lick your anus. Ref: Starr Report.

[sphinx]

Nixon had NO idea about the break-in. He idiotically tried to protect the perps, instead of cutting them loose.

I am not a close student of Watergate but have some acquaintences who have gone the extra mile, including two who actually sat down and read the transcripts of all the tapes. Neither is a professional historian (fairly accomplished amateur historians, however) or a politico with an axe to grind. Both had the impression, which is shared by a number of the published authors on Watergate, that Nixon simply didn't know what had happened. Unless a smoking gun emerges, I will continue to entertain that hypothesis. It's really Occam's Razor: Nixon's mishandling of the whole mess is most simply explained by ignorance. Had he known what was up, he probably could have found a way to cut his losses and contain the damage early.

That leads right back to the big unanswered question: who ordered the break-in, and what was the real target?