Watergate Series 1

This episode looks at the break-in at the Democrats' headquarters in the Watergate Hotel on the night of 17 June 1972.

Nixon's burglars are caught and the president himself is at the head of a cover-up that links the crime to the White House. In November 1972, five months after the break-in, Nixon is returned to office.

President Richard Nixon had the Watergate burglars paid to keep silent about their links to the White House, a cover-up that enabled him to win a second presidential term in 1972. But once the facts began to emerge, the president sought a succession of scapegoats. The revelation that conversations in his office had been recorded meant his crimes were no longer a secret.

The so-called Saturday Night Massacre, the chain of events that unfolded on 20 October 1973, when President Nixon demanded that special prosecutor Archibald Cox be fired.

President Nixon clings on to the White House as the case against him mounts. The automatic recording system he ordered to be installed in the Oval Office, however, contains damning evidence.