Article references and compares Watergate and the Pentagon papers movie "The Post" with the current situation. FYI, The Pentagon Papers document a period
ending in 1967. Nixon took office the following year and was involved with the release kerfuffle in 1971.
Wikipedia summarizes the Pentagon Papers as divulging how LBJ lied about the Vietnam War.
Nixon's stonewalling of teh P Papers may have more to do with protecting executive authority and the constitution than covering hisself, but my memory fails. And remember, Nixon is the one that ended the Vietnam War. I'll be interested to see "The Post". I'm confident they make a republican out to be the bad guy.
Another bad comparison is the miscreants of Watergate with those of this Trump dossier. G Gordon Liddy & co. were loosely associated with Nixon and the RNC...some working for free-lance security firms, iirc.....which is a far cry from the FBI/DoJ leadership.
President Nixon's first reaction to the publication was that, since the study embarrassed the Johnson and Kennedy administrations rather than his, he should do nothing. However, Henry Kissinger convinced the president that not opposing the publication set a negative precedent for future secrets. The administration argued Ellsberg and Russo were guilty of a felony under the Espionage Act of 1917, because they had no authority to publish classified documents. After failing to persuade the Times to voluntarily cease publication on June 14, Attorney General John N. Mitchell and Nixon obtained a federal court injunction forcing the Times to cease publication after three articles. -- Wikipedia
Nixon probably had it right to begin with.
When you take into account how dogged and how devious he was about things, he probably should have just let it go.