WATERGATE: The Most Critical Nixon Conversations

The portions of the transcripts that appear to bear most directly on the President's guilt or innocence are excerpted in chronological order, with comment and annotation, on these and the following pages. As Nixon said, many of these words are ambiguous, but many of them are less so than the White House has tried to depict them.

How they are judged by the Congress and the American people may well determine Nixon's survival in office. The White House transcripts, often unpunctuated and containing spelling and other errors, are reproduced here as they were issued, in a distinctive typeface for ready...