40 years after Watergate, scandal full of what-ifs still captivates

[Valin]

Detroit Free Press/AP:

 

Mark S. Smith

6/17/12

 

WASHINGTON -- Watergate's "what-ifs" still tantalize.

 

What if a security guard hadn't noticed tape on a door latch outside the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate office building?

 

What if a calculating president hadn't taped his private words for posterity?

 

What if President Richard Nixon simply had come clean about the break-in and cover-up -- and apologized?

 

Forty years of investigation, reporting, trials, debate and research have yielded no simple answer to how a clumsy raid that Nixon's spokesman termed a "third-rate burglary" became a titanic constitutional struggle and led to his resignation.

 

(Snip)

 

5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats' Office Here

Alfred E. Lewis

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, June 18, 1972