The investigation of the Democratic Supreme thing were back in the problem area because the FBI is not under control because they are not under control.

And they have their investigation is now leading into productive areas because they've been able to trace the money, not to the money itself, but to the bank.

The sources, the bank itself and it goes to the structures we want together.

The way the annualist now is for us to have voters call back ready and just saying, stay in hell out of this, how do you call them in the future.

But we are carrying out my hell of a lot of things.

That's what everything started. This is a hot people. I don't know how to cover a lot of security. That's a scam. There's a whole lot of things that we just deal with.

Very bad amount of having this thing when you're hurt. It's all stupid. It's hot and hot and manly. We have nothing to do with ourselves. You call it that.

You got a feeling. It's my account. The way it is. That's what we're going to play.

Stay the hell out of it. Those were the key words from the so-called smoking gun tape.

The conversation between Richard Nixon and his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, about how to get the FBI to back off its investigation into the Watergate break-in that occurred 50 years ago this week, June 17th, 1972.

The plan they came up with in the days after the burglary was to get the CIA and its powerful director, Richard Helms, to tell the then head of the FBI, L Patrick Gray, to back off, to stay the hell out of it, to drop its probe into the financing of the break-in, less dark agency secrets would be revealed.

It was a lie, of course. The Watergate break-in had been bankrolled by Nixon campaign donors, not the agency spooks it Langley. But as Jefferson Morley writes in his new book, Scorpion's Dance, the president, the spymaster, and Watergate, Helms was prepared to do what Nixon wanted, at least first.

Drafting a memo instructing two deputies that the agency needed to instruct the bureau to, quote, confine themselves to the personalities already arrested, unquote, and, quote, desist from expanding this investigation into other areas.

Helms may have later gotten cold feet, but as Morley reminds us, it was just one of many examples of the exceedingly strange and still mysterious relationship between Nixon and the spymaster, a dynamic in which each man seemed to have abundant blackmail material against each other.

The country prepares to commemorate the half-century anniversary of Watergate. We'll look back at the events of that era and get a fascinating new take on why they matter more than ever right now, on this episode of Skull Duggery's buried treasure.

I, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States. I will, to the best of my building, deserve, protect, and defend, Constitution of the United States. So, help me, God.

So, help me, God. So, help me, God.

So, help me, God.

I'm Michael Isgov, Chief Investigative Correspondent for Yahoo News.

I'm Dan Clyde, Editor-in-Chief of Yahoo News. And I'm Victoria Besidey, a senior counsel at states United.

So, no small irony that we are commemorating the 50th anniversary of Watergate, which is widely viewed as the political scandal that represented the greatest threat to American democracy.

The same week that the January 6 hearings are revealing what was arguably an even greater threat to American democracy with Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election culminating in the attack on the Capitol.

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