The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

parties in Georgetown were saying about him. Were they finally
changing their minds in any way about Richard Nixon?
Despite his nervousness, by 1972 it was clear that events were lining
up well for him. His Democratic opponent in his reelection bid would
be Senator George McGovern, a diehard liberal. Nixon was ahead in
the polls, but he wanted much more. He wanted a complete landslide
and mandate from the public. Certain that men like O’Brien had some
tricks up their sleeve, he began to rail at Haldeman to do some spying
and get some dirt on the Democrats. He wanted Haldeman to assemble
a team of “nutcutters” to do the necessary dirty work with maximum
efficiency. He would leave the details up to him.
Much to his chagrin, in June of that year Nixon read in the
Washington Post of a botched break-in at the Watergate Hotel, in
which a group of men had attempted to plant bugs in the offices of
Larry O’Brien. This led to the arrest of three men—James McCord, E.
Howard Hunt, and G. Gordon Liddy—with ties to the committee for
the reelection of President Nixon. The break-in was so badly done that
Nixon suspected it was all a setup by the Democrats. This was not the
efficient team of nutcutters he had advocated.
A few days later, on June 23, he discussed the break-in with
Haldeman. The FBI was investigating the case. Some of the men
arrested were former CIA operatives. Perhaps, Haldeman proposed,
they could get top brass in the CIA to put pressure on the FBI to drop
the investigation. Nixon approved. He told Haldeman, “I’m not going
to get that involved.” Haldeman responded, “No, sir. We don’t want
you to.” But Nixon then added, “Play it tough. That’s the way they play

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and that’s the way we’re going to play it.” Nixon put his counsel, John
Dean, in charge of the internal investigation, with clear instructions
that he should stonewall the FBI and cover up any connections to the
White House. Anyway, Nixon had never directly ordered the break-in.
Watergate was a trifle, nothing to tarnish his reputation. It would fade
away, along with all the other dirty political deeds never discovered or
recorded in the history books.
And indeed he was correct, for the time being—the public paid little
attention to the break-in. Nixon went on to have one of the biggest
landslides in electoral history. He swept every state except
Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. He even won over a large
percentage of Democrats. He now had four more years to solidify his
legacy and nothing to stop him. His popularity numbers had never
been higher.
Watergate, however, kept coming back to life and would not leave
him alone. In January 1973, the Senate decided to launch an
investigation. In March, McCord finally spilled the beans, implicating
various members of the White House staff in the ordering of the break-
in. Hunt began demanding hush money to not reveal what he knew.
The way out of this mess was simple and clear—hire an outside lawyer
to do an internal investigation of the break-in, with the full cooperation
of Nixon and his team, and bring all the details to light. Nixon’s
reputation would suffer, some would go to prison, but it would keep
him politically alive, and he was the master of coming back from the
dead.
Nixon, however, could not take such a step. There would be too
much immediate damage. The thought of coming clean about what he
knew and had ordered frightened him to death. In meetings with Dean
he continued to discuss the cover-up, even suggesting where they could
come up with hush money. Dean cautioned him to not get so involved,
but Nixon seemed oddly fascinated by the growing mess he had
created, and unable to pull himself away.
Soon he was forced to fire Haldeman and Ehrlichman, both of
whom had been deeply implicated in the break-in. It was an ordeal to
get him to personally fire them, and when it came to delivering the
news to Ehrlichman, he broke down and sobbed. But it seemed that
nothing he did could stop the momentum of the Watergate

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investigation, which got closer and closer to Nixon, making him feel
like a trapped rat.
On July 19, 1973, he received the worst news of all: the Senate
committee investigating Watergate had learned of the secret taping
system installed in the White House, and they demanded that the tapes
be handed over to them as evidence. All Nixon could think about was
the intense embarrassment that would ensue if the tapes went public.
They would make him the laughingstock of the world. Think of the
language that he had used and the many harsh things he had
advocated. His image, his legacy, all the ideals he had striven to realize,
it would all be ruined in one fell stroke. He thought of his mother and
his own family—they had never heard him speak as he had done in the
privacy of his own office. It was as if he were another person on those
tapes. Alexander Haig, who was now his chief of staff, told Nixon he
had to tear out the taping system and destroy the tapes immediately,
before receiving an official subpoena.
Nixon seemed paralyzed: Destroying the tapes would be an
admission of guilt; perhaps the tapes would exonerate him, as they
would prove he had never directly ordered the break-in. But the
thought of any of these tapes becoming public terrified him. He went
back and forth on this in his mind, but in the end he decided to not
destroy them. By invoking executive privilege he would resist handing
them over.
Finally, as pressure mounted, in April 1974 Nixon decided to release
edited transcripts of the tapes in the form of a 1,200-page book and
hope for the best. The public was horrified by what it read. Yes, many
had thought him slippery and devious, but the forceful language, the
swearing, the sometimes hysterical, paranoid tone of his conversation,
and the utter lack of compunction or hesitation in ordering various
illegal acts revealed a side of Nixon they had never suspected. Even
members of his family were shocked. When it came to Watergate, he
seemed very weak and indecisive, not at all the de Gaulle image he
wanted to project. He never once showed the slightest desire to get at
the truth and punish the wrongdoers. Where was the man of law and
order?
On July 24 came the final blow: the Supreme Court ordered him to
hand over the tapes themselves, and among them would be the
recorded conversation of June 23, 1972, in which he had approved of

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using the CIA to quash the FBI investigation. This was the “smoking
gun” that revealed his involvement in the cover-up from early on.
Nixon was doomed, and although it was against everything he believed
in, by early August he decided to resign.
The morning after he delivered his resignation speech to the
country, Nixon addressed his staff one last time, and fighting to control
his emotions, he concluded, “Never get discouraged, never be petty;
always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t
win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.” Along with
his family, he then got into the helicopter that was to take him into
political exile.
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