3 Top Nixon Aides, Kleindienst Out; President Accepts Full Responsibility; Richardson Will Conduct New Probe

The drumbeat of disclosures, growing more serious and sensational on virtually a daily basis since Mr. Nixon announced two weeks ago that there were "major developments" in the case, has lifted Watergate into a national scandal of historic proportions. It is an affair that is now being compared to such scandals as Teapot Dome in the 1920s and the Grant scandals of a century ago.

Watergate did not burst so suddenly and dramatically on the national scene. Indeed, for months it was widely discounted officially -- and ignored publicly -- as a clumsy, bungled "caper."

The case came to light last June 17, a Saturday. A security guard by the name of Frank Wills noticed a latch of a basement door taped open at the Watergate complex of apartments and offices. He removed the tape and continued his rounds. Later he discovered the tape and been replaced. He called the Metropolitan police.

New morning's Washington Post reported the news of the break-in.

Five men, including one who said he had been a Central Intelligence Agency employee, were surprised at gunpoint about 2:30 a.m. by police in a sixth floor suite occupied by the Democratic National Committee. When arrested, the suspects were all wearing rubber surgical gloves. Sophisticated electronic eavesdropping devices and burglary equipment were confiscated.

Police also seized $2,300 in cash. Most of the money was in $100 bills with the serial numbers in sequence. As the months passed and the story unfolded, the use of $100 bills became a characteristic of the Watergate affair.

The suspects, it developed, were engaged in an elaborate plot to bug the Democratic Party headquarters. Adding to the bizarre nature of the case was the composition of that original group of five men.

Some of them came out of a background of anti-Castro activities with a vaguely and ill-defined association with the CIA in the days of the Bay of Pigs invasion of April, 1961. Three of the men were born in Cuba. A fourth was said to have trained Cuban exiles for guerrilla activity after the Bay of Pigs.

The fifth booked as "Edward Martin, alias James W. McCord" of New York City and perhaps the Washington metropolitan area, said he had retired from the CIA in 1970. He gave his present occupation as a "security consultant."

Nine months later, after the trial and conviction of the original Watergate conspirators, it was McCord who precipitated a new round of accusations culminating in yesterday's resignations. McCord stated publicly that "political pressure" had been applied to the Watergate defendants to plead guilty and remain silent, that government witnesses had committed perjury and that others were involved in the conspiracy.

But for months after the original break-in and arrests the Watergate case seemed consigned to an incident without major national significance.

Except for that first Sunday in June when the Watergate operation surfaced, it did not dominate the news. It was overshadowed in the days ahead by news of combat operations in Vietnam, of the U.S. pulling out its last land forces, and of the approaching national political conventions and subsequent presidential election.