The ‘dirty tricks’ exposed in these documents exploded the perception of the USA as a paragon of virtue and blurred the lines between them and their undemocratic Cold War enemies. As such, they are central to any discussion of the extent of the Cold War and its dangerous domestic as well as foreign consequences.
James Schlesinger, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), did not like surprises. In May 1973 he was shocked to learn that two of the individuals behind the burglary of the Democratic National Committee Headquarters, located at the Watergate Hotel in Washington DC, had previously worked for the CIA and that the Agency had provided them with technical support for ‘dirty tricks’ run by the Nixon White House. Particularly upsetting to him was that he discovered this embarrassing information not from his underlings at the Agency, but from the front pages of the Washington Post.
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