[CrosscutSaw]

Okay, so maybe Nixon shouldn’t have just resigned, but how did the CIA get the whole watergate thing to go down in the first place?

The old,"Show me the man and I'll show you the crime" principle. If he didn't attempt to cover up the Watergate break-in, they would have gotten him on something else.

[cgbg]

“If he didn’t attempt to cover up the Watergate break-in, they would have gotten him on something else.”

Correct answer—and Nixon was all mobbed up—the CIA could have cooked his goose in lots of ways.

The CIA thought they had all the bases covered for blackmail instead of destruction—McCord as part of the break-in team, Hunt as one of the team leaders, later Butterfield in the WH—but as Haldemann famously said—nobody could get the toothpaste back in the tube...