Fifty years ago last week, Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency. His resignation was compelled by the impending release of the infamous White House tape recordings, which the Supreme Court, in a case that I argued, had just ordered disclosed.

The batch of subpoenaed tapes included the “smoking gun tape,” proving that Nixon himself had been a chief architect of the criminal coverup of responsibility for the break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic Party.

For a while, the public breathed a collective sigh of relief. The republic was safe. Nixon went off to California, soon spared prosecution by a pardon from his successor, President Gerald Ford, but never to seek public office again.

As the smug commentary went, Watergate showed that “the system works.” America would never again have to worry about a criminal occupying the White House or aspiring to do so.

Both that confidence in the system and the assurance that the presidency had become off limits to criminals proved misguided. The contrast with the current era could not be more stark or more disquieting.

Watergate proved that the system is not self-sustaining and autonomous. It only works if the right people are in place in the right institutions at the right time — and willing to commit themselves to playing their proper roles vigorously and courageously.

From my perspective as counsel to the Watergate Special Prosecutor, I tend to focus on the two special prosecutors with whom I served, Archibald Cox and Leon........

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