‘I’m living in the bubble’: the man who helped bring Nixon down, 50 years on

John Dean speaks on the 1972 Watergate break-in and why he has never been more concerned about US democracy than now

I've never escaped Watergate," says John Dean, as once again he allows the years to melt away, the old faces to crowd in and the secret tapes to whirr in his mind. There's just no choice. I'm living in the bubble. It's become a fact of life."

America has never escaped Watergate either. The biggest political scandal of the 20th century, and the only one to cause a presidential resignation, has become a byword for lost innocence and lost faith in institutions. Along with the Vietnam war, it marked the end of an era in which a president's words were met with automatic trust rather than default scepticism.