US Presidency
1973

Good evening: Now that most of the major witnesses in the Watergate phase of the Senate committee hearings on campaign practices have been heard, the time has come for me to speak out about the charges made and to provide a perspective on the issue for the American people. For over four months, Watergate has dominated the news media. During the past three months, the three major networks have devoted an average of over 22 hours of television time each week to this subject. The Senate committee has heard over 2 million words of testimony. This investigation began as an effort to discover the facts about the break in and bugging of the Democratic National Headquarters and other campaign abuses. But as the weeks have gone by, it has become clear that both the hearings themselves and some of the commentaries on them have become increasingly absorbed in an effort to implicate the President personally in the illegal activities that took place.