I know we have enemies but I didn't know we were that popular

Rating: 8/10 (17 October 2008)

Long but never boring film despite it's almost unlimited cast of characters about the infamous Watergate break-in and the cover-up that followed. A cover-up that lead to the resignation of the then President Richard M. Nixon and the conviction of dozens of his aids up to his former as well as acting, at the time, Attorney General and White House Chief of Staff.
Based on the book "All the President's Men" by the two Washington Post reporters who broke the story Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, Dustin Hoffman & Robert Redford,the film starts just three weeks before the Watergate break-in on June 1, 1972 when President Nixon came back home to Washington D.C after his triumphant state visit to Communist China. In a Presidential Election campaign that was his to lose with President Nixon well ahead in the polls, against his Democratic challenger George McGovern, he did everything to not just win, which was a forgone conclusion, the Presidential Election but to protect those, the Watergate burglar's, who in fact put his stay in the White House in jeopardy!
What was referred to as a third rate burglary, by President Nixon and his supporters, metastasized into a cancerous growth on the presidency that destroyed not only Richard Nixon's career in politics but almost had him indited tried and convicted of possible crimes, which Nixon's successor in the White House Gerald Ford pardoned him of, against the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. The two documents that Nixon was sworn to uphold protect and defend when he was inaugurated, twice, as President of the United States of America.
The film has both Woodward and Bernstein following up a number of leads that seemed to lead nowhere in who was behind the Watergate break-in. With their investigation hitting one brick wall after another in pops the mysterious and shadowy Deep Throats, Hal Holbrook, who tips off reporter Woodward to what's behind the break-in in a number of vital clues he cryptically hands him.
This has both Woodward and Bernstein discover a secret slush fund run by non other then the former Attorney General in the Nixon Administration John Mitchell! Mitchell is now in charge of CREEP-The Committee to Reelect the President-and the secret slush fund is being used to destroy any of Nixon's Democratic opponents, Ed Kennedy Ed Muskie and George McGovern, who will end up running against him for the presidency. What's even worse is that Mitchell & Co are using slush fund money and their political clout to control the F.B.I C.I.A and Justice Department, in covering up the break-in, and thus undermining the US Constitution itself!
As it eventually turned out it was Richard Nixon who did more to destroy his presidency then Woodward Bernstein and their boss at the Washington Post Ben Bradlee, Jason Robards, all put together. Instead of Nixon letting the Wateregate burglars twist in the wind and not having him stick his neck, by using his power as President,out in saving their a**es-until at least after the 1972 election- the investigation of the break-in and who was behind it would have ended right there and then. The Watergate break-in would have been dismissed by the news media, including the Washington Post, as the work of a few overzealous Nixon campaign workers and nothing more.
P.S What's even more ironic as well as sad, for Richard Nixon, is that after the 1972 election that Richard Nixon was reelected by the biggest vote percentage, over 60%, in US Presidential Election History he could easily have gotten the Watergate burglars off legally by just pardoning them! Something Richard Nixon should have seriously thought about before breaking the law and not only having the burglars face, and later serve, long prison sentences but having himself put into the position of joining them behind bars as well!