The revelations during President Nixon's re-election shook America, particularly after the break-in was traced to members of a Nixon support group, the Committee to Re-Elect the President, or CREEP.
As the Washington Post continued to expose one cover-up after the other citing Deep Throat, the United States Senate launched an investigation that engulfed major political players including then US attorney general John Mitchell and chief White House advisers John Ehrlichman and H R Haldeman.
Former FBI officials Mark Felt (left) and Edward S Miller at a news conference April 15, 1981 after learning that President Ronald Reagan had pardoned them from their conviction of unauthorized break-ins during the Nixon administration's search for opponents during the Vietnam War.
Photographs: AP Photo/Gerald Herbert