Think Mirrors: Watergate I keep finding books on Watergate at thrift stores and the more I read, the more confused I become--but a few things do emerge. One thing is certain--it is a very dense web of inter-related events that begins, at least, at the end of WWII with the Cold War and the emergence of the CIA, and that it has a lot to do with the Bay of Pigs, oddly enough. To begin with, the Watergate Investigation covered up more than it revealed. We now know that Bob Woodward emerged from the Navy to suddenly become a journalist at the Washington Post--and that he was fed leaks by Mark Felt, who was disgruntled by the fact that he was not appointed director of the FBI. Woodward got the story despite the fact that seasoned reporters (he was not) had already been covering it--I have little doubt that Woodward was an intelligence asset.  But there is far more beyond that. Both Bill and Hillary were invited by their law professor to serve on the impeachment inquiry. Bill was planning a run for office and didn't sign on as Nixon was quite popular in Arkansas.  Hillary, as you probably know, was accused of unethical and erroneous legal opinions (she lied and said there were no drafts of proposed rules for procedure for the impeachment inquiry and actually appears to have removed them and hid them). According to the memoirs of Jerry Zeifman (counsel for the House Judiciary Committee), the Watergate investigation seemed designed to 'cover up malfeasance in high office throughout the Cold War: political assassinations around the world, sponsorship of coups to overthrow governments, illegal wiretaps on American citizens." One of the coups: Iran, 1953. CIA overthrew the govt of Mossadegh (he had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian oil company) and put the Shah into power. Likewise, Guatemala, 1954, the CIA assassinated Arbenz who had likewise wanted agrarian reform for his country. Worse still, CIA general counsel Lawrence Houston, fearing that the FBI might detect the CIA operatives actions, negotiated a secret deal--an illegal one--that prevented CIA operatives from facing criminal prosecution. This same agreement delegated the Attorney General's authority to the Director of the CIA--which meant that the CIA had the power to decide who could and could not be prosecuted. This basically authorized government sponsored murder. (Ford rescinded this agreement, but it was in place from Eisenhower on.) This is crucial background because you start to see all the turf that everyone is out to defend. Sound familiar? There's so much more, too. And many of the same players. Many patterns.  Nixon's big card, apparently was the Bay of Pigs. He directed Haldeman to use Bay of Pigs as leverage with Helms, in order to get Helms to pressure the FBI into backing off the investigation.