On the night of June 17, 1972, a security guard in the Watergate office complex in Washington, DC called the police when he found a door repeatedly taped open.

Patient compendium drawing from 3400 hours of audio tapes, archival footage, declassified documents, et al, weaves a rich texture of understanding, particularly effective in flashbacks from their current day selves to their Watergate-era roles for such stalwarts as Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward and John Dean. Numerous current day parallels are elegantly understated.—Mike Rankin