The story behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds.

I'm Dallas Taylor.

This is the story of the Watergate tapes.

This is an excerpt of a secret recording in 1972 of President Richard Nixon's Chief

of Staff, HR Holdeman, updating the president about the FBI's continuing investigation

into the Watergate scandal.

While it's hard to hear, this is the infamous smoking gun tape.

The recording of Nixon discussing the illegal Watergate break-in.

This tape was like a smoking gun at a crime scene that had Nixon's fingerprints all over

it.

Just over 40 years ago, a startling series of events in our nation's political history

took place.

Almost everyone has heard about the Watergate scandal, but many don't know what really happened,

why it's called Watergate, and how our lives are different today because of it.

Here's Nixon himself commenting on the break-in.

It's this piece of audio that led to the downfall of the 37th President of the United States.

Before we dive into the details of this tape, let's rewind and find out how we got here.

Before this scandal, the law was completely different.

Nixon personally owned these tapes, not the US government.

Despite the fact that recording without consent or knowledge was illegal, it was still

pretty common in the White House.

We now know that presidents back to FDR in 1940 taped, and so did Truman and Eisenhower

...