The Saga Unfolds

Changes at the FBI

MAY 1972

After J. Edgar Hoover's death, Mark Felt becomes the No. 2 at the FBI but is disappointed he isn't named director

Dirty Dealings

JUNE 17, 1972

Five men are arrested trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex.

TWO DAYS LATER

According to the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, Deep Throat confirms that E. Howard Hunt, right, a former CIA operative who works for the White House, was involved in the break-in. That establishes the first link to the Administration.

JULY 1972

Felt and two colleagues meet with FBI acting Director L. Patrick Gray to protest White House interference in the Watergate investigation.

Making Connections

AUG. 1, 1972

The Post prints that a $25,000 check for the Nixon campaign fund wound up in one of the burglars' bank accounts.

SEPTEMBER 1972

Deep Throat suggests to Woodward that high officials in the Nixon re-election campaign financed the break-in.

OCTOBER 1972

Deep Throat connects the break-in to a larger spying effort against Democrats and says Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, above, controls the funding.

NOVEMBER 1972

Nixon and Spiro Agnew, below, are re-elected.

Things Fall Apart

JAN. 30, 1973

The five burglars plus the break-in planners, Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, are convicted.

APRIL 1973

Deep Throat tells Woodward that former Nixon campaign chairman John Mitchell and White House special counsel Charles Colson financed Hunt and Liddy's operation. Deep Throat confirms that Gray, below, destroyed files from Hunt's safe at the White House's direction. Gray withdraws his name from Senate consideration for the director's post and exits the FBI. Felt once again hopes to get the director's seat, but the job goes to William Ruckelshaus instead.

APRIL 30, 1973

Top White House aides Haldeman and John Ehrlichman and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst resign over the scandal. Nixon fires counsel John Dean, above, who has been cooperating with investigators.

Senate Pressure

MAY 1973

Senate Watergate hearings begin.

JUNE 1973

Dean testifies that he discussed a cover-up of the burglary with Nixon. Felt retires from the FBI.

JULY 1973

Nixon, who tape-recorded his Oval Office meetings, refuses to turn over White House tapes to the Senate Watergate Committee or to the special prosecutor.

End of the Game

JULY 24, 1974

The Supreme Court rules that Nixon must turn over 64 recordings of White House conversations.

THREE DAYS LATER

Congress passes the first of three articles of impeachment against Nixon, charging obstruction of justice.

AUG. 9, 1974

Nixon resigns, the only U.S. President to do so.

The Secret Is Finally Out

MAY 31, 2005

Vanity Fair reveals that Mark Felt, left, with his daughter Joan, is the celebrated Deep Throat.