[andyfox]

With the election getting close, the Nixon team sabotaged the Paris peace talks. They privately assured the South Vietnamese military rulers than an incoming Nixon regime would give them a better deal than they would get from the Democrats. The South Vietnamese withdrew from the talks on the eve of the election. Here is what Clark Clifford said about this:

"The activities of the Nixon team went far beyond the bounds of justifiable political combat. It constituted direct interference in the activities of the executive branch and the responsibilities of the Chief Executive, the only people with authority to negotiate on behalf of the nation. The activities of the Nixon campaign constituted a grosss, even potentially illegal, interference in the security affairs of the nation by private individuals."

Having got away with what I see as this act of treason, the Nixon team may well have felt that this undermining of the Democrat's Vietnam strategy had produced the margin of victory for them in a close election. They got away with it because the matter was never investigated with any degree of rigor by the press or anyone else. As the same men faced the election of 1972, there was nothing in their previous exprience with an operation of doubtful legality to scare them off. Ergo Watergate.