Early in the morning on June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a 24-year-old security guard at the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D.C., noticed that a door lock had been taped open. He ripped off the tape and closed the door, but when he went on the next round, he found the door taped open again. He called the police, who found five burglars in the Democratic National Committee headquarters located in the building.
President Nixon directed his henchmen, The Plumbers, H R for Harry Robbins “Bob” Haldeman and John Daniel Erlichman and AG John Newton Mitchell to prepare what became known as the Nixon Enemies List following the Ellsberg fracas... and many found themselves published there.
Diana Bonnor Lewis, my Nixon hating mother, was among them... she and her family were watched by the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover. That whole business caused me to pay attention... as a student.
Deep Throat was credited for feeding the WaPo reporters ... and I wondered who he might be. As I aged, I grew well connected and acted.
I found Deep Throat living in Santa Rosa, California, and called his isolated single frightened daughter, Joan Felt... repeatedly, till she answered.
W. Mark Felt was living in her garage... suffering with occasional aspirational pneumonia and from the rising damp in the walls of her garage.
It took a while to gain her confidence. John D. O’Connor, her incredible lawyer, helped. She had him call me.
She had three sons... to enhance their lives and their diminished pride in their heroic, courageous, ignored grandfather who had fed the downfall of Nixon - and been criminalised and pardoned... as his wife committed suicide with Felt’s service revolver in their kitchen -
I called California schools and we paid for their education with silent directed donations that became their scholarships.
We worked with colleagues and local construction people to drain the walls of that garage to address the mold caused by the rising damp, and sent in retired Harvard Medical School professors to address Mark’s health concerns, and Joan’s.
Along the way - well before, somehow... mysteriously, of course .. certain reporters not associated with WaPo learned the identity of William Mark Felt Sr., who had worked for the FBI.. So, Deep Throat was discovered, breaking the informational control monopoly of WaPo reporters Carl Milton Bernstein and Robert Upshur “Bob” Woodward... who had done nothing for Felt and his family, then living in poverty and unwell as their Pulitzer driven fame soared - crediting them with the disclosures that led the to outing the whole mess of Watergate Plumbers and the financiers, some 70 others to fame and fortune, some from jail - all working their stories - see John Wesley Dean III - George Gordon Battle Liddy Esq., et al - and turning their lemons to lemonade as Mark Felt faded out and died and his grand kids went on to live normal lives... free of the blinding light... of disclosure.
The Washington Post reporters were credited and made millions off the courage of one man and their newfound fame.
The suffering and suicide of that man’s wife and and the suffering and agony of their daughter - and her three boys - were ignored...
Roger Stone was a pariah in 1972 and remains one to this very day. What sane person would have a tattoo of a known criminal on his back. He was and will always be a disgrace.
And now we have a judiciary (engineered through obstruction of routine appointments, among other means) comprised mainly of those who prefer to sit on the benches they aren’t qualified to grace like nincompoops.
The idea of the likes of Kavanaugh saying “I had no intention of sitting on the bench like a nincompoop and watching the parade go by” unless he were dipsomanaically plagarizing it as a fratbro in between groping women is pretty slim, and the judiciary’s less visible but equally unqualified appointees will be ruling on matters of grave national import in the coming months and years. Difficult to contemplate.
"Nixon had cultivated an image of himself as a clean family man, and the tapes revealed a mean-spirited, foul-mouthed bully."
Trump's was well-known for being "a mean-spirited, foul-mouthed bully," not to mention many worse things, but still won the presidency and wreaked havoc that's nearly brought democracy to its knees. And yet he's still widely popular, though maybe his popularity will sink after all the historic news this week. It's all an indictment of how much has changed in 50 years.
As for Watergate, the story had a profound influence on me. It prompted me to attempt my break-in — into journalism, equipped only with a love of current events and curiosity. Living in Tallahassee at the time, two years out of college in 1974, I walked into a small six-day-a-week newspaper in South Georgia without an appointment and left with a reporting job. Talk about learning on the job.
Memories flooded back today when I stumbled upon Jake Tapper's interview with Woodward and Bernstein on CNN and heard their stories from that extraordinary time.
I have had a really emotional night, having watched both “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once” and the second episode of “For All Mankind,” season 3. Really in my feels but also feeling mind-expanded, future-thinking and hopeful. It was a little bonkers to take a step back in time and read tonight’s letter after that.
I love how HCR writes because it feels approachable, informative and like she’s writing directly to me, to make sure I understand the deeper meaning of everything that’s happening so much all the time. Even such a disturbing historical account can be made enjoyable by such good writing.
Then I got to the part about Nixon claiming to be not guilty, to essential DARVO the entire situation.
I was shocked at how blindingly clear the parallel stories line up, how history is reflecting current events and current events are mirroring history; lined up like storyboard cards with mirror images facing each other, marching in a row to eternity.
I was astonished at the dots I was connecting - that Heather was exposing to me with such straightforward but compelling language.
I said out loud “it’s like they have a playbook. It’s all so specific, like a recipe they followed, but I don’t understand - how could they do such a thing? How is it possible?”
The final paragraph about Roger Stone was a cold glass of water to the face.
I think these dots are connecting more clearly for me right now because of my fresh understanding (kind of, a little bit) of experience between the multiverses, and the threads that connect the present to the past. It occurs to me that this is one more legacy that can be directly attributed to slavery.
This poison seeps from that centuries old wound because these men - these “elite” and landowning men who have always declared themselves above the rules that apply to the common man, the poor man, the slave - they have never been held truly accountable for the damage they have unleashed on the country; damage visited on generation after generation, damage that infects the minds of racists, that traumatizes families and breaks down the fibers that knit together communities. They have not truly been punished, and not in a meaningful way that sent a message to the rest of the likeminded, privileged men in power. They have not made amends and instead expected the rest of us to forgive, to hate the sin but love the sinner, to sweep it under the rug where they can refuse to acknowledge their abuse and feign ignorance when we call out their continued abusive actions.
They’ve never *not* been able to do anything they want.
And because they have never been held accountable, they believe they don’t have to be. They believe they never will. They believe the rest of us cannot hold them accountable, nor that we can mete out justice as it is deserved.
We must not fail to hold them accountable. Our future depends on it.
Massachusetts was the only state that Nixon didn't win in the 1972 election. As a resident of Massachusetts at the time of Watergate, I enjoyed seeing all the bumper stickers that said "Don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts." Now fifty years later we have to question whether the rule of law still exists in the Supreme Court as it teeters toward taking away the rights of citizens -- a court that is taking an absolute position that the doctrine of one religion has to be obeyed over all other religions and in the instant of conception makes two small united cells have more right to life than the existing person it is embedded in. That means half the citizens do not have the unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness guaranteed by the Constitution but not by the Roberts Court, a court that has no standing with me. It is as illegitimate as the methods and contempt used by Moscow Mitch and the Senate to stuff the Court with Justices who are trampling and smothering the rule of law. Freedom is a precious commodity now. We, the People, all of us this time - Freedom!
Almost right. I knew several people on Nixon's 1968 campaign and a few of the went on to the White House. What Nixon feared a Kennedy. JFK had beaten him in 1960. In 1968 he expected to beat LBJ. He was very concerned when it looked like Bobby Kennedy would be his opponent.
As it was he beat Humphrey by an uncomfortably thin margin.
In 1972 he had a phobia about the possibility that the Democrats would nominate Ted Kennedy.
On a side note. When we were teens, I knew Roger Stone. He was an arrogant whiny little bitch back then, too.
What frightens me about this story is that Frank Wills died in poverty. After doing the American people a great favour, he was discarded. I'm Australian. It's now coming up to five years since I've been able to see my boyfriend. Twelve years since I've been able to retain a reliable income. Twelve years since I took an idea based upon my family's / community's social contract in Rural Australia to a meeting with a staff member of the US National Security Council. At first I thought I would just have to wait until Trump lost power. Then I thought maybe I had to wait until after Scott Morrison lost power in Australia. Now, I'm not sure what I'm waiting for. And I'm looking at what happened to Frank Wills and I'm thinking ... there's something rotten in America.
I was outraged when President Ford pardoned ex-President Nixon. But as the years passed, I came to accept the popular view that the pardon was justified in order to turn the nation’s attention to more urgent concerns.
I now see that Dr. Richardson is correct in writing that the pardon ultimately encouraged the criminal acts of former President Trump. The absence of consequences also showed congressional Republicans that they can freely aid and abet those crimes.
If AG Garland’s DOJ fails to prosecute as many criminal actors as practical before this Fall’s election then our future is bleak.
Well, the serpent’s egg Roger Stone….has resurfaced to bring us Watergate Two Point OH! If you just substituted “Nixon” with 45’s name, you have a repeat performance with almost identical crimes, committed in the name of hatred and disrespect for the American People. I was twenty-five in 1974, a public servant in New York City, and politically very engaged. I watched Sam Ervin as often as possible during that hot summer. My father, an artist, designed a beautiful poster of Nixon as Louis XVI, crumpling the Bill of Rights in his claw-like hand with the motto: “Apres Moi Le Deluge”. Brilliant. Yes, Heather, with these latest hearings on the near overthrow of democracy in our country, as you said “The fat is in the fire!” I read today’s letter with great pleasure and some laugh out loud moments. Thank you, our precious friend.
When I worked in politics, I kept a framed copy of Ruckleshaus' statement about the Saturday Night Massacre on the wall in front of my desk where I could see it easily. "You must always maintain the option of saying 'no.'"
One day our teacher, an Englishman who had worked in Canada, came into the classroom and spoke these words:
"If you ever have any say in the matter, do everything possible to make sure that Richard Nixon never becomes President of the United States of America."
I don't recall now if there were Americans in that class, maybe one, the son of a distinguished general. But I suspect I'll have been one of the few to have gotten the message, remembering that face well from the unsavory group assisting Senator Joe McCarthy at the HUAC hearings.
All I can think, upon reading the words "attack attack attack", is that they don't care about governing. Only winning and obtaining absolute power. Trump is in the"they" category. And too many others. What a despicable party. Toxic. Poisonous. Destructive. I'm getting really sick of it.
In the summer of 1974 I was backpacking through Europe. When, in August, Nixon was forced to resign, virtually every person with whom I came in contact was in awe of one fact—that our US institutions held.
Fast forward to summer, 2022. Amid the devastatingly incriminating Select Committee hearings, 2020 election deniers running to represent their party as governors, Secretaries of State, Attorneys General, and the like, with few exceptions, so far, are winning their primaries. Moreover, as we speak, Republican elites are ruthlessly organizing to fill less visible local positions (e.g., county clerks and election judges, presumably expected to help people to ensure their votes are counted) with their own people— people who don’t believe in free and fair elections.
Adding insult to injury, GOP controlled state legislatures unilaterally are changing state election rules to change who can be in charge, how votes are counted, and how they’re certified, while Manchin and Sinema refuse, without Republican support, to pass federal legislation safeguards that would ensure votes are cast and counted correctly without interference and without they’re being diluted through partisan gerrymandering.
In light of the rapidly approaching midterms many justifiably believe are going to be a referendum on democracy, I suspect we nearly are running out the clock on protecting the key mechanisms of representative government by popular consent. Though I don’t have a ready solution, I do take heart from the presence of more and more dedicated and smart Substack communities and civic organizations that refuse simply to watch and wait and expect someone else to carry the weight for us.
A wonderful summary. Watergate was my introduction to the intricacies of American politics and constitutional law. As the Senate Watergate Committee hearings began, I was a precocious seventh-grader who had just completed an American history course that included, every Friday, a lecture on the Constitution. We studied it all year, took tests, memorized passages. I was therefore completely prepared to spend the next two summers glued to the television, watching the Ervin committee and then the Judiciary Committee at work. An aside - I remember the Fall of 1973, just after the Saturday Night Massacre, when Agnew had just been sentenced and I spent days discussing with classmates what "nolo contendere" meant. I was convinced throughout that Watergate was the most threatening and dramatic political moment I'd ever see. Who knew?
One small detail point about tonight's letter - "expletive deleted" actually trended a little earlier than you suggest. Immediately after the subpoena, in April 1974, the White House preemptively sent the House Judiciary Committee edited transcripts of many of the tapes, (though not all of them) in lieu of complying with the subpoena. The Committee rejected the transcripts and continued to press for release of the tapes. But the transcript was published in paperback by both the New York Times and the Washington Post, among others, and introduced the famous redaction.
The "smoking gun" tape, released Monday, August 5 in compliance with the Supreme Court decision, was indeed an invocation of national security but with a specific action - Nixon agreed to ask the CIA to call off the FBI's investigation of the Watergate break-in on national security grounds. Jaworski considered it evidence of Nixon's involvement in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Thanks for everything you do to keep us informed - and sane - during this much more severe time of trial. We're grateful.
President Nixon directed his henchmen, The Plumbers, H R for Harry Robbins “Bob” Haldeman and John Daniel Erlichman and AG John Newton Mitchell to prepare what became known as the Nixon Enemies List following the Ellsberg fracas... and many found themselves published there.
Diana Bonnor Lewis, my Nixon hating mother, was among them... she and her family were watched by the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover. That whole business caused me to pay attention... as a student.
Deep Throat was credited for feeding the WaPo reporters ... and I wondered who he might be. As I aged, I grew well connected and acted.
I found Deep Throat living in Santa Rosa, California, and called his isolated single frightened daughter, Joan Felt... repeatedly, till she answered.
W. Mark Felt was living in her garage... suffering with occasional aspirational pneumonia and from the rising damp in the walls of her garage.
It took a while to gain her confidence. John D. O’Connor, her incredible lawyer, helped. She had him call me.
She had three sons... to enhance their lives and their diminished pride in their heroic, courageous, ignored grandfather who had fed the downfall of Nixon - and been criminalised and pardoned... as his wife committed suicide with Felt’s service revolver in their kitchen -
I called California schools and we paid for their education with silent directed donations that became their scholarships.
We worked with colleagues and local construction people to drain the walls of that garage to address the mold caused by the rising damp, and sent in retired Harvard Medical School professors to address Mark’s health concerns, and Joan’s.
Along the way - well before, somehow... mysteriously, of course .. certain reporters not associated with WaPo learned the identity of William Mark Felt Sr., who had worked for the FBI.. So, Deep Throat was discovered, breaking the informational control monopoly of WaPo reporters Carl Milton Bernstein and Robert Upshur “Bob” Woodward... who had done nothing for Felt and his family, then living in poverty and unwell as their Pulitzer driven fame soared - crediting them with the disclosures that led the to outing the whole mess of Watergate Plumbers and the financiers, some 70 others to fame and fortune, some from jail - all working their stories - see John Wesley Dean III - George Gordon Battle Liddy Esq., et al - and turning their lemons to lemonade as Mark Felt faded out and died and his grand kids went on to live normal lives... free of the blinding light... of disclosure.
The Washington Post reporters were credited and made millions off the courage of one man and their newfound fame.
The suffering and suicide of that man’s wife and and the suffering and agony of their daughter - and her three boys - were ignored...
Thank you Heather.
I'm old enough to remember when this was an unthinkable act by the Government Administration.
Little did I know, this was child's play compared to what this Nation would become..
Be safe. Be well.
Roger Stone was a pariah in 1972 and remains one to this very day. What sane person would have a tattoo of a known criminal on his back. He was and will always be a disgrace.
And now we have a judiciary (engineered through obstruction of routine appointments, among other means) comprised mainly of those who prefer to sit on the benches they aren’t qualified to grace like nincompoops.
The idea of the likes of Kavanaugh saying “I had no intention of sitting on the bench like a nincompoop and watching the parade go by” unless he were dipsomanaically plagarizing it as a fratbro in between groping women is pretty slim, and the judiciary’s less visible but equally unqualified appointees will be ruling on matters of grave national import in the coming months and years. Difficult to contemplate.
"Nixon had cultivated an image of himself as a clean family man, and the tapes revealed a mean-spirited, foul-mouthed bully."
Trump's was well-known for being "a mean-spirited, foul-mouthed bully," not to mention many worse things, but still won the presidency and wreaked havoc that's nearly brought democracy to its knees. And yet he's still widely popular, though maybe his popularity will sink after all the historic news this week. It's all an indictment of how much has changed in 50 years.
As for Watergate, the story had a profound influence on me. It prompted me to attempt my break-in — into journalism, equipped only with a love of current events and curiosity. Living in Tallahassee at the time, two years out of college in 1974, I walked into a small six-day-a-week newspaper in South Georgia without an appointment and left with a reporting job. Talk about learning on the job.
Memories flooded back today when I stumbled upon Jake Tapper's interview with Woodward and Bernstein on CNN and heard their stories from that extraordinary time.
I have had a really emotional night, having watched both “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once” and the second episode of “For All Mankind,” season 3. Really in my feels but also feeling mind-expanded, future-thinking and hopeful. It was a little bonkers to take a step back in time and read tonight’s letter after that.
I love how HCR writes because it feels approachable, informative and like she’s writing directly to me, to make sure I understand the deeper meaning of everything that’s happening so much all the time. Even such a disturbing historical account can be made enjoyable by such good writing.
Then I got to the part about Nixon claiming to be not guilty, to essential DARVO the entire situation.
I was shocked at how blindingly clear the parallel stories line up, how history is reflecting current events and current events are mirroring history; lined up like storyboard cards with mirror images facing each other, marching in a row to eternity.
I was astonished at the dots I was connecting - that Heather was exposing to me with such straightforward but compelling language.
I said out loud “it’s like they have a playbook. It’s all so specific, like a recipe they followed, but I don’t understand - how could they do such a thing? How is it possible?”
The final paragraph about Roger Stone was a cold glass of water to the face.
I think these dots are connecting more clearly for me right now because of my fresh understanding (kind of, a little bit) of experience between the multiverses, and the threads that connect the present to the past. It occurs to me that this is one more legacy that can be directly attributed to slavery.
This poison seeps from that centuries old wound because these men - these “elite” and landowning men who have always declared themselves above the rules that apply to the common man, the poor man, the slave - they have never been held truly accountable for the damage they have unleashed on the country; damage visited on generation after generation, damage that infects the minds of racists, that traumatizes families and breaks down the fibers that knit together communities. They have not truly been punished, and not in a meaningful way that sent a message to the rest of the likeminded, privileged men in power. They have not made amends and instead expected the rest of us to forgive, to hate the sin but love the sinner, to sweep it under the rug where they can refuse to acknowledge their abuse and feign ignorance when we call out their continued abusive actions.
They’ve never *not* been able to do anything they want.
And because they have never been held accountable, they believe they don’t have to be. They believe they never will. They believe the rest of us cannot hold them accountable, nor that we can mete out justice as it is deserved.
We must not fail to hold them accountable. Our future depends on it.
Massachusetts was the only state that Nixon didn't win in the 1972 election. As a resident of Massachusetts at the time of Watergate, I enjoyed seeing all the bumper stickers that said "Don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts." Now fifty years later we have to question whether the rule of law still exists in the Supreme Court as it teeters toward taking away the rights of citizens -- a court that is taking an absolute position that the doctrine of one religion has to be obeyed over all other religions and in the instant of conception makes two small united cells have more right to life than the existing person it is embedded in. That means half the citizens do not have the unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness guaranteed by the Constitution but not by the Roberts Court, a court that has no standing with me. It is as illegitimate as the methods and contempt used by Moscow Mitch and the Senate to stuff the Court with Justices who are trampling and smothering the rule of law. Freedom is a precious commodity now. We, the People, all of us this time - Freedom!
Almost right. I knew several people on Nixon's 1968 campaign and a few of the went on to the White House. What Nixon feared a Kennedy. JFK had beaten him in 1960. In 1968 he expected to beat LBJ. He was very concerned when it looked like Bobby Kennedy would be his opponent.
As it was he beat Humphrey by an uncomfortably thin margin.
In 1972 he had a phobia about the possibility that the Democrats would nominate Ted Kennedy.
On a side note. When we were teens, I knew Roger Stone. He was an arrogant whiny little bitch back then, too.
What frightens me about this story is that Frank Wills died in poverty. After doing the American people a great favour, he was discarded. I'm Australian. It's now coming up to five years since I've been able to see my boyfriend. Twelve years since I've been able to retain a reliable income. Twelve years since I took an idea based upon my family's / community's social contract in Rural Australia to a meeting with a staff member of the US National Security Council. At first I thought I would just have to wait until Trump lost power. Then I thought maybe I had to wait until after Scott Morrison lost power in Australia. Now, I'm not sure what I'm waiting for. And I'm looking at what happened to Frank Wills and I'm thinking ... there's something rotten in America.
I was outraged when President Ford pardoned ex-President Nixon. But as the years passed, I came to accept the popular view that the pardon was justified in order to turn the nation’s attention to more urgent concerns.
I now see that Dr. Richardson is correct in writing that the pardon ultimately encouraged the criminal acts of former President Trump. The absence of consequences also showed congressional Republicans that they can freely aid and abet those crimes.
If AG Garland’s DOJ fails to prosecute as many criminal actors as practical before this Fall’s election then our future is bleak.
Well, the serpent’s egg Roger Stone….has resurfaced to bring us Watergate Two Point OH! If you just substituted “Nixon” with 45’s name, you have a repeat performance with almost identical crimes, committed in the name of hatred and disrespect for the American People. I was twenty-five in 1974, a public servant in New York City, and politically very engaged. I watched Sam Ervin as often as possible during that hot summer. My father, an artist, designed a beautiful poster of Nixon as Louis XVI, crumpling the Bill of Rights in his claw-like hand with the motto: “Apres Moi Le Deluge”. Brilliant. Yes, Heather, with these latest hearings on the near overthrow of democracy in our country, as you said “The fat is in the fire!” I read today’s letter with great pleasure and some laugh out loud moments. Thank you, our precious friend.
When I worked in politics, I kept a framed copy of Ruckleshaus' statement about the Saturday Night Massacre on the wall in front of my desk where I could see it easily. "You must always maintain the option of saying 'no.'"
1952. At school in England. I was 12.
One day our teacher, an Englishman who had worked in Canada, came into the classroom and spoke these words:
"If you ever have any say in the matter, do everything possible to make sure that Richard Nixon never becomes President of the United States of America."
I don't recall now if there were Americans in that class, maybe one, the son of a distinguished general. But I suspect I'll have been one of the few to have gotten the message, remembering that face well from the unsavory group assisting Senator Joe McCarthy at the HUAC hearings.
All I can think, upon reading the words "attack attack attack", is that they don't care about governing. Only winning and obtaining absolute power. Trump is in the"they" category. And too many others. What a despicable party. Toxic. Poisonous. Destructive. I'm getting really sick of it.
In the summer of 1974 I was backpacking through Europe. When, in August, Nixon was forced to resign, virtually every person with whom I came in contact was in awe of one fact—that our US institutions held.
Fast forward to summer, 2022. Amid the devastatingly incriminating Select Committee hearings, 2020 election deniers running to represent their party as governors, Secretaries of State, Attorneys General, and the like, with few exceptions, so far, are winning their primaries. Moreover, as we speak, Republican elites are ruthlessly organizing to fill less visible local positions (e.g., county clerks and election judges, presumably expected to help people to ensure their votes are counted) with their own people— people who don’t believe in free and fair elections.
Adding insult to injury, GOP controlled state legislatures unilaterally are changing state election rules to change who can be in charge, how votes are counted, and how they’re certified, while Manchin and Sinema refuse, without Republican support, to pass federal legislation safeguards that would ensure votes are cast and counted correctly without interference and without they’re being diluted through partisan gerrymandering.
In light of the rapidly approaching midterms many justifiably believe are going to be a referendum on democracy, I suspect we nearly are running out the clock on protecting the key mechanisms of representative government by popular consent. Though I don’t have a ready solution, I do take heart from the presence of more and more dedicated and smart Substack communities and civic organizations that refuse simply to watch and wait and expect someone else to carry the weight for us.
A wonderful summary. Watergate was my introduction to the intricacies of American politics and constitutional law. As the Senate Watergate Committee hearings began, I was a precocious seventh-grader who had just completed an American history course that included, every Friday, a lecture on the Constitution. We studied it all year, took tests, memorized passages. I was therefore completely prepared to spend the next two summers glued to the television, watching the Ervin committee and then the Judiciary Committee at work. An aside - I remember the Fall of 1973, just after the Saturday Night Massacre, when Agnew had just been sentenced and I spent days discussing with classmates what "nolo contendere" meant. I was convinced throughout that Watergate was the most threatening and dramatic political moment I'd ever see. Who knew?
One small detail point about tonight's letter - "expletive deleted" actually trended a little earlier than you suggest. Immediately after the subpoena, in April 1974, the White House preemptively sent the House Judiciary Committee edited transcripts of many of the tapes, (though not all of them) in lieu of complying with the subpoena. The Committee rejected the transcripts and continued to press for release of the tapes. But the transcript was published in paperback by both the New York Times and the Washington Post, among others, and introduced the famous redaction.
The "smoking gun" tape, released Monday, August 5 in compliance with the Supreme Court decision, was indeed an invocation of national security but with a specific action - Nixon agreed to ask the CIA to call off the FBI's investigation of the Watergate break-in on national security grounds. Jaworski considered it evidence of Nixon's involvement in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Thanks for everything you do to keep us informed - and sane - during this much more severe time of trial. We're grateful.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nixon-announces-release-of-white-house-watergate-tapes
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/05/watergate-smoking-gun-tape-released-aug-5-1974-753086