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(Tuesday, October 10, 1972, the Watergate scandal) — With the headline “FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats,” The Washington Post newspaper today carried Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s revelation that the June 17, 1972, Watergate break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters was not an isolated incident, but part of a campaign by the Nixon White House.

The article appeared exactly four weeks before the 1972 United States presidential election in which President Richard Nixon, a Republican, was re-elected over Democratic challenger George McGovern in a 49-state electoral landslide.

Bernstein and Woodward wrote: “FBI agents have established that the Watergate bugging incident stemmed from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of President Nixon’s re-election and directed by officials of the White House and the Committee for the Re-election of the President.

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The activities, according to information in FBI and Department of Justice files, were aimed at all the major Democratic presidential contenders and — since 1971 — represented a basic strategy of the Nixon re-election effort.

During their Watergate investigation, federal agents established that hundreds of thousands of dollars in Nixon campaign contributions had been set aside to pay for an extensive undercover campaign aimed at discrediting individual Democratic presidential candidates and disrupting their campaigns.

“Intelligence work” is normal during a campaign and is said to be carried out by both political parties. But federal investigators said what they uncovered being done by the Nixon forces is unprecedented in scope and intensity, the Post reported.