confirms judge sirica's assumptions. and that opens it all up. the mccord letter which he gives to judge sirica on march 19th, 1973, is the first crack, major crack, in the case and the first crack in the cover-up. this is absolutely what the white house had been worrying about all summer, the summer of 1972, that one of the burglars would tell his story. and that happens in 1973, in march of 1973. well, a lot of other things happen. a number of people were around the president who knew something about the hunt and liddy operation. decide they're going to try to get clemency, some type of legal protection and tell their stories. of course, those people are macgruder and john dean, the white house counsel. at this time the senate is gearing up for very public hearings. the senate has reacted to the very good journalistic work of woodward and bernstein. carl bernstein and bob woodward in the summer and fall of 1972. they've kept the watergate story alive. now, the cover-up has worked, but they've been digging and digging h

john sirica is republican, appointed republican. it was that at a certain age you're not likely to be considered. but whatever your age is, for a judge to rule against the executive in a fight of consequence to the executive is to make it highly unlikely any subsequent executive will promote you, whereas there's no such risk if you offend the legislative branch. there's very little and for good reason. congress cannot say we hereby cut judge green's salary. that is directly unconstitutional. so the commonality i come down do in my concluding remark is as a separation of powers notion, the watergate event brought to us a most unique occurrence, very rare, where the judicial branch stood up to the executive branch having in almost every other instance yielded to the executive branch when it had a fight with the legislative branch. for those students of criminal procedure, you might remember dickerson versus united states where chief justice rehnquist departed from his previous pattern of casting doubt on miranda when congress had ente