Former White House Counsel to President Nixon, John Dean, is pulled deeper into the cover-up of the Watergate break-in. Becoming too much to bear, Dean realizes he must convince Nixon to put an end to the lying and decides to take the President through problems that can only be solved by the truth. Dean's efforts are unsuccessful and his superiors plan to make him the scapegoat for their actions, but they will soon learn they have selected the wrong fall guy. As Bob Woodward would later describe it, "Dean was willing to blow himself up to end the cover-up." Dean makes plans to go public, providing information from which the Nixon administration could never recover.