Richard Nixon
President of the United States, 1969–74
Won re-election in 1972, resigned on 9 August 1974 after the smoking-gun tape and impeachment articles. Pardoned by Ford. Never tried. The mixed status of the dossier is his legal afterlife.
The named cast is large. The six below are the ones English civic memory still uses to explain burglary, cover-up, press, court, Senate and pardon.
Mark Felt's 2005 unmasking closed a side mystery; it did not rewrite the tapes.
People
John Dean
White House counsel, then witness
Warned of a cancer on the presidency and testified to the Senate in June 1973. His turn from insider to witness is a central beat. He later served a sentence on a reduced path.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Washington Post reporters
Kept the CRP money story alive with Bradlee's backing. All the President's Men made them the English hero-reporters. They share credit with prosecutors and Congress.
John Sirica
Chief judge, U.S. District Court
Refused to treat the burglary as a quiet guilty plea. McCord's letter to him opened the White House file. The bench, not only the press, forced the case upward.
Sam Ervin
Chair, Senate Select Committee
The North Carolina Democrat's televised 1973 hearings made Dean, Butterfield and the tapes a living-room event. The committee is the civic classroom of the scandal.
Gerald Ford
President; issued the pardon
Sworn in on 9 August 1974. Pardoned Nixon on 8 September. He said the country needed to move on. Many voters treated the pardon as the last Watergate act and punished him in 1976.
Aides filled the dock. The president left by resignation and pardon. That is the people map of a mixed case.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.