158). The lying did not end there, it
went on and on for months, and as the scandal kept unraveling, "President Nixon
and the White House, and the CREEP officials were deliberately misleading the
public about the significance of the Watergate affair"(158). As Watergate was
becoming a front-page article in the newspapers, new evidence was being
uncovered. One piece of evidence that changed the peoples ideas of our president
was the tapping of every conversation in the oval office "since about the 18th month
of president Nixon's term" (Kutler 368). Those tapes would soon prove that the
president was deeply involved in the scandal.
During the trials, "the Nixon administration claimed that the March 21st,
1973 meeting was the first Nixon had heard of cover-ups", but after the tapes were
heard it was discovered that Nixon was involved from the beginning (Heritage 36).
The Nixon tapes brought much controversy. The tapes alone could prove the
president innocent or guilty, whichever one it was, Nixon refused to hand over the
tapes. The courts then demanded the tapes, and Nixon still would not give them up.
After much struggle Nixon agreed to give a transcript of the tapes. The transcripts
brought to light a significant amount of evidence against Nixon. The transcripts
revealed payoffs, affiliation with the burglaries, and the OK's to the cover-up, but
most important "the transcripts showed that Nixon had lied repeatedly after he had
denied knowing anything about the conspiracy" (27). After much struggle, the
courts finally got the tapes from Nixon. Archibald Cox issued for a subpoena for the
tapes started the bloodbath we now know as the Saturday Night Massacre. "The
night of October 20, 1973, possibly the most tumultuous in Ameri
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