It started out as a burglary of the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the luxurious Watergate Hotel and Office Building in Washington DC. While most other journalists saw it as a limited escapade, Woodward and Bernstein kept digging until they discovered a hidden world of political espionage and sabotage, orchestrated from within the White House.
What ultimate brought down Richard Nixon was not the original scandal but his attempts to cover it up. In retrospect, it's hard to imagine why he took so many risks in order to defeat such a weak Democratic candidate as George McGovern.
Background Information
The Watergate scandal began as a botched burglary of the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in 1968. The White House is the official residence in Washington DC of the President of the United States. George McGovern, a senator from South Dakota, was nominated by the Democrats in 1972 as a peace candidate, but he lost heavily in November to Richard Nixon.