Hello and thank you for downloading Witness from the BBC World Service.

It's 40 years since Richard Nixon became the first and so far only US President to resign

from office following the Watergate scandal.

Fahana Heider has been speaking to journalist Tom DeFranck who watched The Drama Unfold.

It's August 1974 and America is a deeply divided country.

It's divided over US policies in Southeast Asia, the economy is a mess and politically

public opinion and a majority of the country's congress has turned against its own president.

That summer everything has come to focus on Richard Nixon and what he did and didn't

know about a break in at the opposition democratic party headquarters at the Watergate complex

in Washington.

This was an extraordinary moment you'd had two and a half years of open warfare.

You just had to expose after expose after expose and after two and a half years it all

came to a crescendo in the first week in August of 1974.

So new details were reported today in the Democratic Headquarters bugging investigation.

We have a report from ABC's Bob Clark.

The Saturday trail of the Watergate Caper veered closer to the White House today as it led

once again to this motel across the street from Democratic Headquarters where the celebrated

bugging took place.

In August 1974, Tom DeFranck was a young White House correspondent working for Newsweek

magazine.

The end of Richard Nixon really began on Monday, August 5th when the White House released

the transcripts of three tape recordings that Nixon had wanted to keep private but the

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