1973

ATC reports win prestigious honors: the Ohio State Award and the George Foster Peabody Award.

Susan Stamberg conducts a weekly series of phone calls to a small band of "ordinary" citizens across the country, sounding them out on the unfolding Watergate story. Their reactions become a litmus test on changing public attitudes toward the Nixon White House.

On the June 26 show, ATC listeners heard excerpts of the Senate Watergate Committee testimony of John W. Dean III, counsel to the president. In a statement hundreds of pages long, Dean outlined his own complicity -- and that of Nixon and many White House aides -- in the handling of Watergate. Then he was quizzed by committee members, including Sen. Joseph Montoya, D-N.M.:

Dean: "I feel the president was aware of an effort to cover up Watergate. The first time I had firsthand knowledge he was aware of this was September 15, 1972, when I met with him."

Montoya: "How would you characterize the Watergate burglary?"

Dean: "That's probably the most difficult question asked yet. I would say it was the opening act of one of America's great tragedies."

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