A Tectonic Crack in the Watergate Dam

April 18, 2025

April 30, 1973: Despite continuing revelations of election campaign wrongdoing and Watergate actors beginning to break their silence—like convicted burglar James McCord the previous month (see The Letter that Changes Everything)—most Americans in the spring of 1973 continued to swear by Nixon’s claim the White House had nothing to do with the scandal.

But then comes a confession by acting FBI Director Patrick Gray.

In his April confirmation hearings, unrelated to Watergate at first, Gray admits to burning documents taken from the White House safe of convicted Watergate conspirator Howard Hunt.

(A momentary refresher on Howard Hunt and his White House connections: along with former FBI agent Gordon Liddy, Hunt was initially employed by Nixon’s senior aides as a “plumbers” unit to “plug leaks” of sensitive info getting out to the press. But the ex-CIA operative’s duties expanded beyond that. He would become the handler—again paired with Liddy—of the five burglars arrested with bugging equipment at the Watergate’s DNC headquarters. The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward was able to expose Hunt’s involvement with the break-in because of a notation in one of the burglar’s address books: HH at WH, 202-456-2282. When Woodward dialed the number, it took him to the office of the President’s Special Counsel.)

11 days after the break in, when Gray had been at the FBI as its interim head for only two months, he was handed envelopes of “political dynamite” by John Dean, counsel to the President, in the presence of Nixon's chief domestic policy adviser, John Ehrlichman. “The material should never see the light of day,” said Dean, implying the files endangered national security.

In truth, the envelopes contained faked documents and damning gossip amassed by Hunt on Ted Kennedy, while the senator was a possible presidential democratic candidate. Having lost his bid for the White House to JFK in 1960, Nixon seemed particularly paranoid about possibly running for re-election against another Kennedy brother.

After making his admission, Gray resigned from the FBI.

Following Gray’s bombshell announcement, Ehrlichman vehemently denies instructing Gray to destroy the documents. But two days later, under a tsunami of public outcry, Ehrlichman resigns as well. So too does Nixon’s notorious, hardball-player Chief of Staff, Bob Haldeman, simultaneously accused of ordering campaign donations be used for hush money payments to the burglars.

In response, Nixon gives his first televised speech addressing Watergate. Saying he had just accepted the resignations of “the finest public servants it has been my privilege to know,” Nixon stresses that doing so was not to imply wrongdoing, but to “restore public confidence that legal and ethical standards are being enforced by the President of the United States.” Even so, Nixon complains he'd been the victim of people he trusted lying to him. He fires Dean and swings the spotlight of blame onto the 34-year-old lawyer.

Nixon’s trying to scapegoat Dean—who’d been so star-struck by the President—and expecting the young lawyer to take the blame for the cover-up and go quietly to jail, would prove a fatal misjudgment. Dean fought back. In June, during five days of jaw-dropping testimony, the nation would be transfixed by his recounting of exactly what the President knew and when he knew it.