I thought John Dean ordered the break in to protect his girlfriend or mistress.
That's according to the work that's bound to be the final definitive word on Watergate,
Silent Coup; a wonderful and meticulously researched book. All the principals excepting Richard Nixon and Alexander Haig were interviewed (this was during the late 1980s)--everybody from John Mitchell to John Dean to John Erlichman to John Sirica to Sam Ervin to Bob Woodward to Charles Colson; the whole lot of them.
The whole cast of characters, excepting two; the list is enormously long, and of course it helped that by the time the two writers did their research, all statutes of limitations had expired, and so everyone involved was free to spill beans.
It's a very long--monstrously long--and complicated book,
Silent Coup, but I have all the confidence that after the passions are dead,
Silent Coup will be considered by succeeding generations as "the" book that tells all, that tells all the truth, about Watergate.
And you know, sir, it concludes pretty the same as I had always (sort of speculated); this stupid "compartmentalization" of "information."
The writers clearly demonstrated Watergate happened because John Dean wanted to protect his go-go girl girlfriend, and Alexander Haig wanted to obstruct any relations with Red China.
That's apparently all it was, but this stupid "compartmentalization" of "information" led to all sorts of unanticipated events and unexpected consequences.
