The Watergate Tapes: A Dramatization of Taped Conversations at the Nixon White House

On June 17, 1972, five burglars were arrested in the offices of the Democratic National Committee located in the Watergate office complex in Washington D.C. They had been sent by the campaign to re-elect Richard Nixon as President of the United States. That incident, and the coverup that followed, led to President Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974.

The investigation into the coverup eventually revealed that the President had taped every conversation that took place both in the White House and the nearby Government Office Building .After a lengthy legal battle, the President was forced to turn over many of the tapes, which appeared in a voluminous edited transcript published by the Government Printing Office on April 29, 1974. This version of the tapes did not include the famous "smoking gun" tape, revealed later, in which the President ordered the coverup before he was re-elected. But it provided a vivid portrayal of the unraveling of the coverup as members of the Nixon administration attempted desperately to escape responsibility and punishment for the crime of the obstruction of justice.

Unfortunately, the sheer size of the transcripts (1,254 pages) made it unlikely that general readers would plow through them. I have attempted here to reveal the drama they contain in the way a sculptor carves a statue that is submerged in a block of marble -- shaping the drama purely by cutting, never adding to the original material.

All dialogue is taken either from the Government Printing Office's transcripts of the taped conversations or scanned copies of the original typescripts stored in the National Archives. I have filled in an occasional deleted expletive or an unintelligible but obvious name or phrase and have at times added a full name or title to clarify who is being referred to. I have also made some grammatical corrections and smoothed out the numerous interruptions and hesitation sounds. Other than that, every word that is spoken in this play has been taken in sequence from the transcripts. However, the text has been substantially cut (though never rearranged) to focus on the drama of the relationship between Richard Nixon and the White House Counsel, John Dean. While the transcripts include some indications of pauses or laughter, most of the stage directions are the playwright's imagination of what might reasonably dramatize the recorded words.