BOOKS: Watergate: A New History: Garrett M. Graff

Jul. 2—Fifty years ago, June 17, 1972, five men were caught and arrested while breaking into the national Democratic headquarters in the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C.

What started as a blip on crime reports eventually led to impeachment proceedings against and the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.

Watergate has become synonymous with political scandal with "gate" being added to everything from investigations into numerous allegations of bad deeds to conspiracy theories.

For many people, Watergate is the end of a presidency, the beginning of a loss of faith in American government and institutions, or it is only the Woodward and Bernstein newspaper investigation detailed in "All the President's Men."

But in Garrett M. Graff's recently published "Watergate: A New History," the groundbreaking work of reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein at The Washington Post ends about 300 pages into this 700-plus-page book.

The newspaper investigation does not get short shrift here but Graff's extensively researched book reveals just how much more there is to Watergate than the story that unfolded in the book and movie "All the President's Men."

Though it must be noted it is odd hearing Woodward's source known for decades by the nickname Deep Throat referred to by his real name Mark Felt throughout this book; Felt revealed he was Deep Throat in the early 2000s. Here, Felt, the No. 2 man in the FBI doesn't provide behind-the-scene information out of a sense of exposing wrong for the national good but rather out of spite for being passed over as the FBI director following the death of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. One last note on Graff's Deep Throat coverage, Nixon and his administration had surmised that Felt was Woodward's undercover source early in the newspaper's coverage of Watergate.

"Watergate: A New History" hews closer to telling the stories of all the President's men than the Bernstein and Woodward book. Graff digs deep into the personalities, backgrounds and actions of all of the high-ranking Nixon administration officials caught in the trap of the burglaries and the subsequent coverup as well as all of the officials affected by the growing scandal. It also looks at other reporters covering Watergate, investigators charged with probing the scandal and many others connected to Watergate.

Graff doesn't open with the Watergate burglary. Instead, he spends the first few chapters on other actions taken by the Nixon administration: its response to the Pentagon Papers, the Chennault Affair, the Huston Plan, etc., to show a pattern of wrongdoing that led to the actions at the Watergate.

In the end, even after 670 pages of text and another 100 pages of notes, appendix, methodology, Graff, like so many investigators and even administration members of the past, cannot answer the main question: Who ordered the burglary at the Watergate?

Fifty years later, after extensive investigations, research and dozens of memoirs from participants and now with many of the principals dead, the world may never know the answer.