The real reason, it now seems - if "Silent Coup" is correct - was that Nixon's lawyer, John Dean, was hiding an embarrassing personal liaison.
Dean's wife, Maureen Biner Dean, had been a roommate and close friend of a woman who headed a ring of Washington, D.C., prostitutes. That information was locked inside the DNC office.
"The real ops (operations) officer was Hunt; and his principal, the man who conceived and commanded the Watergate operation, was John Dean. John Mitchell and Richard Nixon had nothing whatsoever to do with it," Liddy said.
"In other words," I asked him, "if Nixon had known Dean's real reasons for the break-in, he would not have protected the `burglars' and the cover-up would never have happened?"
"That's exactly correct," Liddy said. "He would have flushed the whole thing right at the start. Mitchell would not have gone to jail and Richard Nixon would have retained his presidency."