Watergate

FROM THE INITIAL 1972 WATERGATE BREAK-IN until the ultimate resignation of Richard Nixon, TIME joined the Washington Post and the New York Times in keeping up "a steady rhythm of Watergate beats." Some of TIME's articles even made mention of W. Mark Felt, now revealed to be the legendary "Deep Throat." Highlights from our coverage of the break-in, the cover-up, and the vote to impeach:

Walking his late-night rounds at Washington's Watergate office building, a security guard spotted the tape blocking the bolt on a basement door.
From The Bugs at the Watergate
Jul. 3, 1972

The case had begun to resemble a dinner party at which the silverware starts disappearing. A certain taut silence has descended, but one cannot help noticing an embarrassing bulge in one of the guests' dinner jackets.
From Watergate, Contd.
Aug. 14, 1972

The Watergate case was breaking wide open. A ten-month campaign by some of the highest past and present officials of the Nixon Administration to cover up their involvement was crumbling.
From Ripping Open an Incredible Scandal
Apr. 30, 1973

The resignation of Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray III showed how far the deception had spread among men charged with law enforcement....After disclosure of the Hunt paper burning, several high FBI officials went to the office of the bureau's No. 2 man, W. Mark Felt, and said: 'If you don't tell Gray to get out of the building, we will.'
From New Shocks--and More to Come
May. 7, 1973

On Oct. 25, Woodward and Bernstein wrote that Presidential Aide H R. Haldeman had access to a secret campaign kitty used in part to fund political sabotage. Though other publications—principally TIME and the New York Times—kept up a steady rhythm of Watergate beats, Republican spokesmen reserved their harshest denunciations for the Post.
From The Watergate Three
May. 7, 1973

The Administration's appalling willingness to spy, snoop and wiretap can be traced as far back as 1969.... In the late spring of 1971, Hoover suddenly discovered that all of his records on the taps had disappeared. He ordered W. Mark Felt, now the bureau's No. 2 man, to investigate. Felt could not find out who had carried out what agents call 'a bag job'—a burglary—on the FBI'S own files. Felt asked Robert C. Mardian, then an Assistant Attorney General, if he knew who had taken the documents. Replied Mardian: 'Ask the President. Or ask Mitchell.'
From Nixon's Nightmare: Fighting to Be Believed
May. 14, 1973

Last week W. Mark Felt, the FBI's acting associate director, announced his intention to retire June 22. Felt has been No. 2 man in the FBI since May 1972. With the temporary, pinch-hitting director William D. Ruckelshaus devoting almost all his time to problems raised by Watergate, Felt has been running the show. Only 59, Felt could have stayed on for eleven more years.
From Rush for the Exit
May. 28, 1973

Though not present in the packed hearing room, Nixon was personally and directly confronted by the crouched figure of his youthful accuser, until lately his faithful counsel. Leaning into the microphone, Dean, 34, spoke in a lifeless monotone that would long be remembered by TV audiences.
From Dean's Case Against the President
Jul. 9, 1973

The revelation last week that Nixon had ordered the automatic and covert recording of all of his office talks and most of his telephone conversations since the spring of 1971 cast a startling new light on the astonishing affair.
From The Battle for Nixon's Tapes
Jul. 30, 1973

Nixon revealed that he would refuse to comply with an appeals-court order directing him to yield his controversial tapes and documents to Federal Judge John J. Sirica for in camera inspection.
From Richard Nixon Stumbles to the Brink
Oct. 29, 1973

The most important decision of Richard Nixon's remarkable career is before him: whether he will give up the presidency rather than do further damage to his country.
From An Editorial: The President Should Resign
Nov. 12, 1973

By raising new doubts and suspicions, Miss Woods' testimony sharply nipped any budding success of the President's ongoing Operation Candor, which is aimed at explaining away his multiple Watergate woes.
From The Secretary and the Tapes Tangle
Dec. 10, 1973

Ultimately, not only the primacy of the rule of law on which the American system rests but the presidency of Nixon stood challenged, plunging the U.S. into a grave governmental crisis. Fittingly, it was the American legal system, which had trained so many of the malefactors caught in the Watergate web, that came to the rescue.
From Judge John J. Sirica: Standing Firm for the Primacy of Law
Jan. 7, 1974

Going beyond the indictment, which was carefully framed with the aid of Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski and his staff, the Watergate grand jury took on its own initiative a step that portends serious consequences for the President.
From Seven Charged, a Report and a Briefcase
Mar. 11, 1974

If Deep Throat wanted to set up a meeting, he would send a message via Woodward's morning copy of the New York Times; on the lower corner of page 20, clock hands would be drawn to indicate the time of the rendezvous. Woodward says he never figured out how Deep Throat got hold of his newspaper.
From "Woodstein" Meets "Deep Throat"
Apr. 22, 1974

However uncertain the final impact on Nixon's fate, the Supreme Court hearing with its anticipation of a high-stakes legal showdown gripped Washington.
From "The United States v. Richard M. Nixon, President, et al."
Jul. 22, 1974

The article of impeachment was adopted, 27 to 11, by the committee at 7:07 p.m. on a warm Saturday night in Room 2141 of Washington's Rayburn Office Building. Richard Nixon became only the second President to stand so accused by a committee of Congress.
From The Fateful Vote to Impeach
Aug. 5, 1974

Throughout his self-inflicted Watergate ordeal, Nixon remained unwilling to admit, perhaps even to himself, the weight of his transgressions against truth and the Constitution. He was among the last to appreciate the futility of his lonely struggle to escape removal from office.
From The Unmaking of the President
Aug. 19, 1974

The evidence that finally convinced Richard Nixon's lawyer, his intimate aides and his hard-core congressional supporters that he had been involved in the Watergate cover-up was contained in three transcripts that he released to the public last week.
From 'Stay to Hell Out of This'
Aug. 19, 1974

In all, 26 former Nixon aides and agents have pleaded guilty or been convicted in the scandals known collectively as Watergate.... Here is a listing of the men who have been found guilty and the offices they once held:
From A Gallery of the Guilty
Jan. 13, 1975

Assuming Deep Throat does exist, one way to play the guessing game is to narrow the field by identifying men with access to the kind of information that Deep Throat provided Woodward.
From 'Deep Throat': Narrowing the Field
May. 3, 1976

TIME has learned that the cover-up included not telling investigators immediately about documents stored for five years in a filing cabinet in the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Among them were memos from Mark Felt—dubbed 'one-liners' by investigators—giving Edward Miller explicit orders for break-ins and other illegal activities.
From Sad and Sorry Chapter for the FBI
Apr. 24, 1978

Now 19, Culeman-Beckman says in 1988 he went to day camp with Jacob Bernstein, son of former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein, and Jacob told him that W. MARK FELT, associate director of the FBI during Watergate, was the shadowy source known as Deep Throat.
From People: Camp and Tell
By Michele Orecklin
Aug. 9, 1999

The real W. Mark Felt, the FBI bureaucrat unveiled by Vanity Fair last week as the country's most famous anonymous source, will always be obscured by that mythic shadowman who whispered secrets in an underground garage to a young Washington Post reporter, damning the Nixon presidency to its eventual demise.
From Inside Watergate's Last Chapter
By Johanna McGeary
June 13, 2005