You've probably heard the expression that the cover-up is always worse than the crime — a notion that was cemented by the mother of all U.S. political scandals, Watergate. Think about it — only five burglars were nabbed by D.C. cops inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972. But when the dust finally settled over the next couple of years, an astonishing 69 Nixon administration officials or allies of the 37th president were indicted, and 48 were convicted of crimes.
How did Watergate metastasize? As the scope of the investigation grew, more and more players felt compelled to lie to the FBI or to Congress or some other authority, or even to physically destroy evidence — either to hide what they'd done to help their boss Richard Nixon try to bury the scandal, or because the probers might learn about other nefarious activities.
For example, Richard Kleindienst, who was attorney general at the time of the Watergate break-in, came under scrutiny and was ultimately convicted of contempt of Congress for lying about a different Nixon-related scandal. And the acting FBI director, L. Patrick Gray, made the stunning admission that he'd taken papers from the safe of one of the ultimately convicted burglars, E. Howard Hunt, and burned them in his fireplace. Remarkably, Gray wasn't charged — but such episodes convinced the public that Nixon had warped the highest levels of government to serve him, and not the rule of law.
