Lucy, Wyatt and Rufus have to go to June 20, 1972 to retrieve the Watergate Tapes. Rufus gets asked by Rittenhouse to report to their man in 1972 for status updates. When Flynn catches them, they tie up Wyatt, while Rufus and Lucy have to search for "the Doc" mentioned in the Watergate tapes.
Tropes:
- 555: Rufus is given a number that he's supposed to call. It starts with JK-5.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: The missing 18 minutes from the Watergate scandal were about Rittenhouse, of whom Nixon was terrified of.
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: It's revealed that a former Rittenhouse operative — in the 1970s — is an African-American woman who had been born into the conspiracy. Strangely enough, David Rittenhouse, the founder of the organization, was a staunch white supremacist and chauvinist. Presumably, his followers chose to take a different approach. This is later confirmed by a member of Rittenhouse in the series.
- A House Divided: The team's trust in each other is shattered in "The Watergate Tapes", with the twin revelations about Lucy's journal from the future which is in Flynn's hands, and that Rufus has been spying on them for Rittenhouse.
- Let's You and Him Fight: In "The Watergate Tapes," Rufus and Lucy trick Rittenhouse and Flynn into showing up at the same place, leading to them shooting at each other. Flynn laughs at the audacity of the situation.
- Properly Paranoid: Richard Nixon with regard to Rittenhouse. It's all but stated that the missing 18 1/2 minutes on the Watergate tapes concerns his apprehension about them and implied that Rittenhouse is the source of Nixon's legendary paranoia in general.
- The Reveal: Two big ones:
- As it turns out Rittenhouse is real and has been behind Mason's time travel exploits as well as working behind the scenes of American history for decades (if not longer). When Flynn stumbled onto a mention of them at the NSA, his family was killed and he was put on the run for revenge.
