The committee met from May 17 to August 7. In the words of The New York Times staff, "that was enough." Committe revelations effectively ended the White House attempt to stonewall media revelations and succeeding investigations:

"Richard Milhous Nixon, the archetypal loser of America politics, transformed by the bizarre events of the 1972 campaign into the biggest winner in history, had been backed into a corner."

Hearings followed some major breaks in the administration's nearly yearlong attempt to short-circuit the investigation. Only a few weeks before, James W. McCord, a convicted Watergate conspirator, had written to its presiding judge, John J. Sirica, to assert that he had been under White House pressure to conceal facts. In the same period, one of Nixon's closest confidants, White House counsel John W. Dean III, was accused of lying by L. Patrick Gray III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The case had broken wide open.

More stunning revelations followed:

Out of the grand jury room and the committee offices there now tumbled story after story: Dean had promised to tell all . . . Jeb Stuart Macgruder, the number two man at the Committee for th

Author and political writer Garry Wills called Richard Nixon "the last liberal," putting him in the context of a post-War era where both Republicans and Democrats believed in government's power for positive change. To the extent this is true, the role Nixon played in paving the way for the Reagan era and the Contract with America may have been a major step toward the current emphasis on small government and cancellation of the New Deal. The distrust of government that makes this possible may be the most lasting Watergate legacy of all.

Ambrose, Stephen E. Nixon. Vol. 2, The Triumph of a Politician 1962-1972. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.

The Supreme Court became involved, voting eight to nothing that the president was obligated to turn over tape recordings of all subpoenaed conversations. This led to submission of what became known as "the smoking gun tape," in which "President Nixon is heard directing his aides to demand that the CIA do what it could to shackle the FBI's investigation of Watergate." Members of the House Judiciary Committee, who had been considering impeachment, even Richard Nixon's staunchest Republican supporters, now felt compelled to come out in favor of impeachment. On August 9, 1973, Richard Nixon resigned and his appointed vice president, Gerald R. Ford, a former Michigan congressman and House leader, became president of the United States.

The election of 1968, in which Richard Nixon nearly seized defeat from the jaws of victory, ultimately overcoming Hubert Humphre