Wednesday, July 30 at 8 pm
Repeats Monday, August 4 at 3 am

The Watergate scandal began with an almost comically inept burglary of the Democratic Party headquarters in the Washington, DC, office and apartment complex known as the Watergate; it ended 26 months later with the resignation of the president. The tale unfolded in the summer of 1973, as the Senate Watergate Committee heard testimony by President Nixons White House staff and Republican campaign officials revealing a conspiracy of clandestine operations, illegal slush funds, CIA subterfuge and political sabotage. Like the plot of a Hollywood potboiler, the scandal grew to include "enemies" lists and smoking guns, Deep Throat and a Saturday night massacre. One of historys greatest detective stories, it is a nearly unbelievable tale of men determined to retain their political power by almost any means. Their ability to come so close to succeeding is a cautionary tale for every generation. The fact that they were stopped is a testament to the strength of Americas constitutional democracy.

In the summer of 1973, PBS made the historic decision to broadcast live the U.S. Senates Watergate investigation when the commercial networks opted to reduce their daily coverage. Now, 30 years later, Watergate Plus 30: Shadow of History explores what America learned from Watergate and the relevance of these lessons to the way American democracy operates. This compelling two-hour documentary features interviews with many of the principal players in this historical drama who have now had 30 years to reflect on their role in Watergate and the long shadow it has cast on American history.

The documentary includes interviews with co-conspirators John Dean and Jeb Stuart Magruder, who served time in jail for their illegal acts; journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who unraveled key parts of the story and became famous as a result; former senators Lowell Weicker, Jr. and Howard Baker, who investigated a president from their own party; and attorney Sam Dash, the Senate Watergate Committee counsel who led the investigation.

As Bob Woodward says, "Watergate is not one thing. Its a mindset." Ultimately, it was about the limits of presidential power. As the hearings unfolded, White House staff and campaign aides who had been drawn into illegal activities or supported them at the periphery revealed their own confusion about the ethics of what they had done. Democratic Senator Herman Talmadge from Georgia inquired, "If the president could authorize a covert break-in and you dont exactly know where that power would be limited, you dont think it could include murder or other crimes beyond covert break-ins, do you?" John Ehrlichman replied, "I dont know where the line is, Senator."

When Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968, America was still in the throes of the Vietnam War. Vivid footage recalls the massive protests outside the White House that created a siege mentality inside. Nixon, elected pledging to end the war and bring the country together, was frustrated and antagonized by the noisy demonstrations at his gates and by anti-war sentiment that extended even into the ranks of the government officials. Historian and author Richard Reeves comments, "There was no difference, I think, in Nixons mind between the politics and the national security. To him it was all about him. It was all about his enemies trying to stop him from doing those things he seriously believed in." 

In 1971, the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, which revealed that the previous Democratic administration had lied to the American people about why and how they were conducting the Vietnam War. Although the documents were an indictment of Democratic presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Nixon was persuaded that he would be politically vulnerable if these kinds of government leaks were tolerated. Still shocking after 30 years, Oval Office tape recordings reveal Nixon conspiring with Henry Kissinger and H.R. Haldeman to get the Brookings Institutions safe "cleaned out" to prevent any future leaks. "And have it cleaned out in a way that makes somebody else responsible," Nixon says.

With the 1972 campaign gearing up, the covert operations that were spurred by the publication of the Pentagon Papers intensified into a strategy of political spying and sabotage against key Democrats and members of the press. Jeb Stuart Magruder, then deputy campaign director at the Committee to Re-elect the President, observes that these tactics werent even necessary. The public approval Nixon enjoyed at the time suggested a comfortable re-election victory, but the illegal intelligence gathering was driven by Nixons obsession for more information. Magruder recalls, "Nixon always wanted more information, he wanted to get his enemies, opponents & he just felt that was the way to keep himself on top and everyone else on the bottom."

The Watergate burglary was a local police story at first, almost too bizarre to be taken seriously. But as Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein started to follow a trail of money, the trail led to U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell and right into the White House. Men like White House counsel John Dean were drawn into the cover-up, at the time rationalizing their own involvement as playing the hardball game of politics and advancing their careers. Dean remembers, "We were getting ourselves right smack in the middle of an obstruction of justice conspiracy. But it wasnt planned that way. We thought we were responding to political problems."

The cover-up succeeded in keeping a lid on the scandal through the election, which Nixon won in a landslide over the Democratic nominee, George McGovern. Then, in the spring of 1973, one of the Watergate burglars, James McCord, wrote a letter to U.S. District Court Judge John J. Sirica, who was presiding over the trial of the seven men involved in the Watergate break-in. The letter detailed the political pressure McCord and the other Watergate defendants received to plead guilty and remain silent. When Judge Sirica released the letter to the press, the unraveling of the White House cover-up began and public sentiment grew for a Senate investigation. 

When Senator Sam Ervin convened the Senate Watergate Committee hearings, former White House staff members and campaign operatives became household names as they offered their dramatic testimony. Attorney General John Mitchell, White House counsel John Dean, top White House advisor John Ehrlichman, campaign operative Donald Segretti, campaign treasurer Hugh Sloan, Alexander Butterfield, who still served as White House deputy, and dozens of others took their turn at the witness table.  Nixon loyalists like McCord, who worked in the surveillance espionage operation, initially resisted giving evidence. But after he felt betrayed by the White House, he testified about a meeting with Attorney General John Mitchell who personally approved the operations.  Sam Dash, former chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, still feels sympathy for some of the people who were ensnared in Watergate. McCord, he believes, was essentially "a victim of the White House taking people who are loyal like McCord and having them commit very serious crimes."

The turning point in the Watergate investigation was the discovery that President Nixon had secretly recorded all conversations in the Oval Office since 1971. Until this point, testimony was only as credible as the witness. Tape recordings would be irrefutable.  But the battle to get the tapes set off a constitutional crisis about the limits of executive privilege. After a ruling by the Supreme Court, Nixon released the tapes, reaffirming the most fundamental principles of American democracy that even the president is accountable under law.