Did you ever hear of, and read, the book "Silent Coup" (Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, 1991), which is pretty much the definitive work on Watergate?
It was written after all the passion and hate had died down, the facts separated from the fluff. All of the major and minor "players" in Watergate, with ONLY the exceptions of Richard Nixon and Alexander Haig were interviewed.
It gives one the distinct impression that Watergate was a creation of John Dean, who wished to protect his girlfriend (later his wife), whose name had gotten into Democratic National Committee files.
Just a second-rate burglary.
But given the intricate elaborate Rube-Goldbergesque way big government works, this second-rate burglary escalated into something quite a bit more.
One also gets the impression Nixon, Haldemann, Erlichman, and the usual "villains" had no idea, absolutely no idea, what was going on, and that they assumed it was something that REALLY involved them, and was bigger than it really was.
On such tiny random by-chance things history is made.
G Gordon Liddy's book "When I was a Kid, This was a Free Country" has a chapter about Watergate. It basically says that John Dean's GF/wife was a prostitute and he wanted to protect her identity and, I suppose, himself. Liddy was sued a few years ago over saying this on the radio. He won.
Yup! And on a side note---When I was living in L.A. I once saw, at the corner of Sunset and Doheny, Maureen Dean and some guy (not John Dean) making smoochy-smoochy as they walked into a restaurant on the Strip.