Hello, friends, and welcome to the fourth episode in our series about the 1970s.

It was a secret 30 years in the making.

When the Watergate scandal broke, two intrepid reporters sought to find and reveal the truth.

And to do that, they spent years cultivating a source.

Over time, this source has grown beyond a mere person with a role in bringing the corruption in Watergate to light in popular culture, the source became mythical, someone whose identity was unknown for over three decades.

And the myth had a name.

Deep Throat.

I'm Sharon McMahon, and this is the preamble podcast.

There are two things you need to know about Watergate from the outset. It wasn't just one scandal, hearing, or event, but numerous things that snowballed into one giant entity.

It involved many people engaged in a conspiracy to keep President Nixon in office.

And what you need to know about conspiracies is that they invariably collapse.

Because eventually, evidence is discovered and participants admit what they did out of fear.

Earlier in this series, we explored the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000-page document about a three-decade-long

U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Daniel Ellsberg and

Anthony Russo leaked the 7,000 pages to the press at great personal risk because they believed

Americans had a right to know that their government was not being truthful with them.

Nixon was outraged and in response created a special investigations unit,

later nicknamed the plumbers because their job was to stop leaks.

The plumbers were tasked with breaking into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office and later the office of the Democratic National Committee, which was housed in the Watergate building.

The plumbers and their associates weren't just dudes off the street.

They included ex-CIA and ex-FBI agents and people in positions of power who worked

closely with Nixon. Watergate is a complicated story made even more so by the large cast of characters.

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