The Watergate scandal : key facts, names and dates

On March 1, former Nixon Administration aides H.R.Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, and Gordon Strachan; former attorney general John Mitchell; and campaign aides Robert Mardian and Kenneth Parkinson were indicted on charges of covering up the 1972 break-in of Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Office Building. The grand jury also gave Judge John Sirica a sealed report believed to deal with Nixon's role in the cover-up, with the recommendation that it be forwarded …

…But, on March 20, the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected their appeal from Sirica's ruling by a vote of 5 to 1.In a 22-page written opinion, Sirica made it clear that the secret grand jury report as well the briefcase of material dealt with President Nixon's acts "in his public capacity" during the period under investigation. Prosecution sources said special prosecutor Leon Jaworski had advised the jurors that they could not indict a president in office.