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They're getting on a bit now. John Dean, for instance – he of the "cancer on the presidency" – exudes a gravitas in his early seventies that he never possessed when he was the bright-eyed, impossibly preppy 33-year-old serving as Richard Nixon's White House counsel. Or take Egil "Bud" Krogh, once head of Nixon's notorious "Plumber's Unit", now an avuncular lawyer and lecturer on presidential politics.
Their old adversaries, the Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, were even younger, 29 and 28 respectively, when the story came along that would change everything. In some ways, they've changed less. Trim and disciplined, measured of speech, Woodward is part of the establishment. Back then, Bernstein always looked the rebel of the pair and still does, fleshy and faintly raffish, bearing visible evidence of a hard-lived life.
And all of them were reunited last Monday evening at an event in the office building that was the scene of the crime that ignited the most celebrated political scandal of the 20th century. In case you'd forgotten, exactly 40 years ago today, in the early hours of 17 June 1972, a private security guard called Frank Wills noticed tape covering the latches of several doors, allowing them to close but remain unlocked. He removed the tape, only to come back an hour later to find them sealed over again. At that point Wills called the police, who arrested five burglars, all dressed in suits and ties but wearing rubber gloves. The building was called Watergate. The rest is American history.[Read more...]