Watergate at 50: The Burglary That Changed the Nation – clip

Daniel Breen / Brandeis University

It has been called “The Scandal that Never Goes Away” — and with good reason.  Fifty years after the break-in at the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, we still do not know the full story of how the burglary came to happen.  What we DO know is that the events that followed, culminating in President Nixon’s resignation in August of 1974, continue to hold lessons about the nature of power that seem to resonate ever more strongly as the years go by.  In this presentation, Professor Dan Breen will tell the story of how a local break-in became a national scandal, and how it profoundly changed the way Americans think about their political institutions.