EVERYONE wishes that Watergate had never happened--the press very much included. Yet, without smugness, it must be said that most of the dramatic and disturbing revelations of the Watergate affair would never have occurred without energetic digging by the press. Some of the more important disclosures, in fact, were made by TIME as a result of diligent reporting by correspondents in our 21-man Washington bureau. Correspondent David Beckwith, while covering the trial of the Watergate Seven, landed the only interview granted by confessed Wiretapper E. Howard Hunt. TIME was first to reveal Hunt's promise to his fellow defendants that unidentified "friends" would pay up to $1,000 a month for their silence while they were in prison, that Jeb Stuart Magruder of C.R.P. (the Committee for the Re-Election of the President) had been dispensing money from a secret campaign fund, and that the money had been rerouted through a Mexican lawyer. TIME was first to reveal that the bugging devices planted at the Watergate were monitored from a motel across the street by agents of the C.R.P.

Last October we disclosed that the Justice Department had information indicating that Donald Segretti had been hired by two members of the White House staff to subvert the Democratic election campaign. In March, 1973, a story in TIME revealed that Presidential Counsel Charles Colson was listed in White House records as Hunt's supervisor, and that Hunt's pay vouchers for the "caper" had been signed in Colson's office.

As the scandal broke open late last week, a large part of our Washington bureau was mobilized to track down information for this week's cover story. Dean Fischer filed on the tense mood in the White House; Hays Gorey covered the Justice Department; and Senate Correspondent Stanley Cloud reported on the Watergate Committee's continuing investigation of the scandal. Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey, meanwhile, returned to his home town of Greenfield, Iowa, to gauge the mood of some average citizens toward the Watergate affair and its implications.

The Washington files were Teletyped to New York, where Associate Editor Ed Magnuson wrote the cover story. In the past five weeks he has written our cover story on Senator Sam Ervin, who is directing an investigation of the affair, and our cover on L. Patrick Gray's contested nomination as FBI director--two stories spawned by the Watergate disclosures.

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