With permission from the author, Watergate.info offers extracts from this book by Barry Sussman, the former city editor of the Washington Post.
What those who know the most about Watergate say about “The Great Coverup”:
From: “All the President’s Men”, by Woodward and Bernstein
“Given prime responsibility for directing the Post’s Watergate coverage…Sussman had the ability to seize facts and lock them in his memory. On deadline he would pump these facts into a story in a constant infusion, working up a body of significant information to support what otherwise seemed like the weakest of revelations. In Sussman’s mind, everything fitted. Watergate was a puzzle and he was the collector of the pieces.”
From: “The Powers That Be”, by David Halberstam
“Before anyone else at the Post, Sussman saw Watergate as a larger story, saw that the individual events were part of a larger pattern, the result of hidden decisions from somewhere in the top of government which sent smaller men to run dirty errands…”
A statement by John Dean in April 1982, ten years after the break-in and long after almost all the Watergate books had been published:
“When people ask me which book they should read to understand what really happened during Watergate, I recommend this one. Barry Sussman was one of the first to perceive the full dimensions of Watergate, and he records it all in a fair, fast-paced, literate manner…Serious Watergate students report this is the best overview of the subject. I heartily agree. Anyone who wants to understand Watergate, and not make a career out of it, should read The Great Coverup.”
