THE CRISIS: A Telltale Tape Deepens Nixon's Dilemma

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visible and painful. More than ever before in the tangled and sordid revelations of the Watergate scandal, the tape report pinpointed the near certainty of wrongdoing within the White House and perilously close to the Oval Office. As more than one sympathetic Republican Congressman pointed out, the burden of proof has now been shifted to the President to demonstrate his innocence in the court of public opinion. On July 23 Richard Nixon had assured Senator Sam Ervin in a letter: "The tapes, which have been under my sole personal control, will remain so." While under that control, the Watergate evidence on one of them was forever erased.