Watergate's continuing domination of the news is reflected this week in TIME'S Nation section, where most of the stories deal with some aspect of the growing scandal. The deluge of Watergate news in the past few months has been particularly trying for the Nation section's reporter-researchers, who, under Head Researcher Raissa Silverman, sort out the facts and keep our stories accurate.

Two of the reporter-researchers most deeply engaged in our Watergate coverage are Harriet Baumgarten and Robert Goldstein, who have researched all our Watergate-related cover stories (seven in the past eleven weeks). This week, for the fourth time, Goldstein was again on the cover assignment, gathering material for our story on President Nixon's counterattack against his critics. For his research, Goldstein spent much of the week closely reading the President's statement of last week and comparing it with his earlier speeches about the scandal.

Much of that statement concerned national security, and for our analysis of U.S. security practices, Anne Constable provided background information. From sources in the TIME library and past files from TIME correspondents, Constable outlined the rapid growth of Government surveillance of citizens in the past decade and some of the undercover tactics in use today.

Some of those tactics have recently been used to plug Government leaks to the press, and Reporter-Researcher Mary Kelley went back through old files and newspaper clippings to study the long history of such leaks. Mary Jane Hodges researched the various Government intelligence agencies, and Alexandra Rich pored over the daily transcripts for our running account of the Senate Watergate hearings.

Meanwhile Picture Researcher Alice Rose George was busy gathering the Watergate pictures taken by TIME'S photographers, wire services and independent agencies, and by deadline time had assembled some 15,000 shots, from which the pictures published in THE NATION this week were chosen.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.