Key Figures Recall Watergate’s 25th Dash, Liddy, Woodward, Colson, Cox Assess Impact Of Ruinous Break-In

Twenty-five years after that infamous break-in, Watergate was remembered Tuesday for the abuse of power it signified and for the nation’s resilience in crisis.

On a strikingly normal day in a city that showed little interest in looking back, old Watergate figures and modern reformers marked the anniversary of the burglary that made Richard Nixon the only president to resign.

“There is only - and thank God only - one Watergate,” said Sam Dash, chief counsel on the Senate Watergate committee whose hearings riveted a nation.

Across the street from the scene of the break-in, radio host G. Gordon Liddy broadcast the talk show he built from his Watergate notoriety, reliving shadowy events most Americans have long forgotten.

“Another 25 years,” he murmured, “and nobody will have a clue about it.”

At the White House, spokesman Mike McCurry asserted Watergate led to “very positive changes in the structure of American politics.”

That legacy includes ethics codes, freedom of information laws and campaign reforms that brought more disclosure to political financing but by no measure stopped the use and abuse of big money.

“Watergate ultimately became a testament to the strength of our democracy, not an example of its failings,” said Ann McBride, president of Common Cause.

But she and other advocates of cleaner government, along with one Watergate ex-con, said the public outrage that drove those changes seems gone, replaced by cynicism.

“We simply don’t care anymore,” said Charles Colson, former special counsel to Nixon who came out of prison to start a religious ministry. “This is a very dangerous thing for a free society.”

The anniversary featured a tidbit on Deep Throat, who helped The Washington Post link the burglary to the presidency and whose identity has been one of the best kept secrets in Washington history.

Reporter Bob Woodward confirmed Deep Throat is still alive and has kept in touch with him. He repeated that he will not identify the source unless he gets permission or until the source dies.

Interviewed on NBC’s “Today Show,” Woodward also said the figure deceived others in denying he was Deep Throat.

“Twenty-five years ago he was risking a great deal personally and professionally,” Woodward said. “You may assume that in the course of this he was not truthful with colleagues and family members and he denied that he had provided information.”

Nixon resigned Aug. 9, 1974, under threat of impeachment. He had struggled to cover up the scandal that broadened from the night when burglars tied to his re-election committee tried to replace a faulty telephone bugging device installed in the Democratic offices during an earlier break-in.

Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, fired by Nixon in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre and now chairman emeritus of Common Cause, took heart from the scandal’s outcome.

“The prime lesson of the Watergate experience is the convincing evidence … of the ability of the American people to come together at times when abuse of political power appears and threatens our political system,” he said.

Liddy, 66, broadcast from the Premier Hotel, a standard Howard Johnson’s back in 1972 when a lookout in Room 723 kept watch for the burglars across the street. Liddy coordinated events from a third site, the Watergate Hotel.

“A short little detour in my outstanding career as a burglar,” he said of the bungled break-in.

Feigning wounded pride, he told his WJFK listeners he was also involved in the earlier, successful break-in. “My batting average is .500, not zero,” he said. He spent more than four years in prison.

Watching Liddy trade his Watergate past for radio fame, hotel guest Brendan McMahon said Liddy “got what he deserved” in prison and “more than he deserved” as a radio host.