No American history, government, or journalism collection is complete without the new edition of what has been characterized as the best account of the fall of Richard Nixon. "Washington Post" editor Sussman became a walking compendium of Watergate knowledge, a reference source to be summoned when even the library failed.
No American history, government, or journalism collection is complete without this new edition of The Great Coverup: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate, by Barry Sussman, the best account of the fall of Richard Nixon. It is a dramatic case study of tenacious reporting and suspenseful twists and turns in the political crime of the century. John Dean, Nixon s White House counsel, said ten years after the break-in, When people ask me which book they should read to understand Watergate, I recommend this one Serious Watergate students report this is the best overview of the subject. I heartily agree. Anyone who wants to understand Watergate, and not make a career of it, should read The Great Coverup." (Reviews and excerpts are here: http: //www.watergate.info/sussman/.) A key Nixon goal was to limit the Watergate investigation to the break-in alone, making it appear to be little more than politics as usual. But by September, 1973, as Sussman, who was the Washington Post s special Watergate editor, spells out, Watergate was clearly the ultimate in political crimes Under Nixon the CIA had been dragged into domestic affairs; the investigation and findings of the FBI had been subverted; the Justice Department had engaged in malicious prosecutions of some people and failed to act in instances where it should have; the Internal Revenue Service had been used to punish the President s alleged enemies while ignoring transgressions by his friends and by the President himself; the purity of the court system had been violated; congressmen had been seduced to prevent an inquiry into campaign activities before the election; extortion on a massive scale had been practiced in the soliciting of illegal contributions from the nation s great corporations; the President had secretly engaged in acts of war against a foreign country and agents of the President were known to have engaged in continued illegal activities for base political ends. Soon afterward Nixon fired the special prosecutor investigating him, the first act in the Saturday Night Massacre, and a few days after that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in an ominous cold war message, announced that