Is America heeding Watergate\'s lessons, 40 years on?

Sunday marks exactly 40 years since a handful of third-rate burglars were arrested at the tony Washington building as they broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

What followed was a series of revelations about hush money, espionage, secret recordings and an elaborate cover-up that shocked the world -- a scandal so explosive it reached the highest echelons of power and ultimately brought down president Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace in August 1974.

Much of what we know about Watergate first came to light through the gumshoe reporting of The Washington Post\'s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose work became the user\'s manual for investigative reporting.

But a man who had a profound effect on the aftermath of Watergate said students of history should focus directly on the occupant of the White House at the time, and his terrifying abuse of executive authority.

"It is not a journalism story. It\'s all about Richard Nixon," historian, author and retired professor Stanley Kutler told AFP.

It was Kutler\'s successful 1990s lawsuit against Nixon and the National Archives that forced the release of the long-suppressed tapes from the recording system that the president had ordered installed in the White House.

The recordings, he said, show a paranoid and vengeful president who spent an inordinate amount of time ordering underlings to dig up dirt on his opponents.

"Nixon had enemies, imagined and real," many of whom had emerged in the heat of a divisive Vietnam war when Washington was overrun with thousands of protesters, Kutler said.

"From Vietnam, we didn\'t learn the lesson that there are limits to American power." And Watergate showed Americans "the limits of presidential power," he said.

"Take those two events, Vietnam and Watergate, and you get a new country after that."

Woodward and Bernstein last Sunday were quick to point to the "enormous" crimes committed by Nixon and the various "wars" he launched -- against the anti-war movement, the press, Democrats who threatened to rob him of a second term, and the Watergate cover-up and obstruction of justice.

"Really what we found is that his White House became, to a remarkable extent, a criminal enterprise such as we\'ve never had in our history," Bernstein told CBS.

Americans have always had a healthy distrust of government. It\'s part of the country\'s makeup, said Steve Billet, who directs the Masters in Legislative Affairs program at George Washington University.

But as Watergate unfolded, "the government turned into the enemy," Billet said. "It became the fulfillment of a prophecy that government might endanger our liberties, and it did."

As Americans remained suspicious of the potential for malfeasance and abuse in the White House, that dire assessment undermined confidence in the government and the president, and that persists to this day, Billet and others say.

Kutler said he believes Watergate "had a lot to do with superheating our political climate," in which partisanship is the order of the day on Capitol Hill.

"Everything is done in the context of politics today," he said. "This is the way our minds are working now."

The investigation of Watergate and its vast cover-up ultimately sent 40 Nixon aides and others to jail.

Among them was John Dean, who was counsel to Nixon at the time of the Watergate break-in and eventually cooperated with the probe.

He now warns of a return to excessive executive power, particularly in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks.

"Watergate\'s warning has steadily lost its power over the years, particularly given fear of terrorism during the past decade," Dean wrote this week in The New York Times.

"That fear has been used to justify levels of presidential power that Nixon could have only dreamed possible."

Dean cites a long list of presidential excesses: Ronald Reagan\'s abuses during the Iran-Contra episode; Bill Clinton\'s deceit during the Monica Lewinsky affair; George W. Bush\'s commitment to war in Iraq based on "fake intelligence;" and President Barack Obama\'s continued detention of US citizens who are deemed terror threats.

And with abuse inevitably inviting scandal, it may be just a matter of time before a new bombshell like the one 40 years ago.

"I can certainly imagine another Watergate," said author Thomas Mallon, whose book "Watergate: A Novel" came out in February.

With information the most valued currency in politics, the next great scandal "would certainly involve something like hacking," Mallon said.

"People have learned to be more cautious," he said, but "at some point in American history, there will be some scandal that eclipses Watergate."

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