They were practically kids back then – most of them at least – when the Senate Watergate committee was announced, and they wanted in. One, a young Senate elevator operator, closed the door on a senator’s arm and wouldn’t open it until he agreed to pass along her résumé. Another got a job by promising to help a senator clear out a backlog of 10,000 letters. Others landed positions when their former Georgetown law professor Sam Dash was named chief counsel. Few had robust experience.

They photocopied $100,000 worth of bills to trace their serial numbers, interviewed witnesses in a windowless room dubbed the “dungeon,” and encountered countless dead ends, such as calling every Miami locksmith in the Yellow Pages to find the one who had changed the lock on a safe – only to have him say he couldn’t recall whether he’d seen stacks of cash. 

From May to November 1973, as many as 80 million Americans tuned in to watch their committee unravel a web of misdeeds that started with a “third-rate burglary” in the Watergate Hotel and led to a broad pattern of corruption within the White House.