Going all the way back to Richard Nixon's inexplicable decision to record himself committing crimes and then getting his secretary, Rosemary Woods, to take the fall for erasing the most incriminating segment, American political scandals have been defined by a simple credo: It's not the crime that gets you, it's the cover-up.
In the Iran Contra affair, for instance, Lt. Colonel Oliver North enlisted his secretary, Fawn Hall, to help him shred damaging documents and President Bill Clinton notoriously dispatched his secretary, Betty Currie, to retrieve gifts that he had given to former White House aide Monica Lewinsky during Independent Counsel Ken Starr's investigation. Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards persuaded a campaign worker to take responsibility for fathering the child Edwards had with his mistress while his wife was dying of cancer. In every case, these attempts to cover up their misdeeds by dispatching an underling to do their dirty work were eventually discovered. But these privileged, powerful leaders just can't seem to help themselves.
