Howard Baker Quotes

It was accountability that Nixon feared.

There were no dead bodies in Watergate.

The central question is simply put: What did the president know and when did he know it?

I recently read some of the transcripts of Nixon's Watergate tapes, and they spent hours trying to figure out who was leaking and providing information to Carl and myself.

I ordered that they use any means necessary, including illegal means, to accomplish this goal. . . . The president of the United States can never admit that.

[Referring to Richard Nixon:] Either impeach him or get off his back.

Compared to Nixon.

I’m positive that the President is innocent of any involvement in Watergate

If the President really wanted to know exactly how Rove and Libby were involved, he could walk down to their offices and demand that they answer him honestly.

You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I'm innocent. You've got to believe I'm innocent. If you don't, take my job.

The fact of the Watergate cover-up is not nearly as interesting as the step into making the cover-up. And when you understand the step, you understand that Richard Nixon lied. That he was a criminal.

Nixon's attempts to order subversion of various departments was bound to come out in some form.

I don’t know what he was so angry about. He won…. If I had won, he would have been much better off. He would have been spared getting disgraced by Watergate.

I’ve studied Nixon since the Kennedy campaign. I’ve no doubt that the trail will lead to the Oval Office.

He [Richard M. Nixon] told us he was going to take crime out of the streets. He did. He took it into the damn White House.

We can be lied to only so many times. The best thing that he [President Nixon] can do for the country is to get the hell out of the White House and get out this afternoon.

Come, come, come and play spy with me, Down at the old Watergate; Come, come, come live and lie with me, Down at the old Watergate. See the little German band, Ehrlichman and Haldeman; Don't Martha Mitchell look great? Come, come, come don't be shy with me; I'll have the whole FBI with me; Down at the old Water—we'll make the police blotter — Down at the old Watergate.

Had matters gone as planned—and the [Watergate] tapes trickled out posthumously—[Richard] Nixon would have managed the extraordinary feat of committing suicide after his own death.

… a lying crook in the Presidency

Even the most cynical can hardly be surprised by the antics of Nixon and his accomplices as they are gradually revealed. It matters little, at this point, where the exact truth lies in the maze of perjury, evasion, and of contempt for the normal - hardly inspiring - standards of political conduct.

I don't believe President Nixon ordered a break-in, but people working for him were doing it. And then that dragged the president in. And then you have the cover-up. And before you know it, the president's gone.

What was Watergate? A little bugging!

Without the tape-recorded evidence demonstrating irrefutably, in Nixon's own voice, his knowledge of and active involvement in obstruction of justice, it is likely that Nixon would have escaped impeachment and removal from office.

Nixon officials foreshadowed both the historic distinction and seamy underside of the presidency.

Watergate was a constitutional crisis of the highest order.