WASHINGTON (AFP) ― Almost four decades after the infamous Watergate break-in, the reporters who broke the story have concluded that then-president was “far worse” than they thought.

Nixon resigned in August 1974 for his administration’s role in a June 17, 1972, burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in the U.S. capital and the subsequent cover-up. He became the only U.S. president ever to resign from the office.

Many inaccurate ideas and myths related to Nixon’s role in the burglary and its cover-up have found long life over the years, reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward wrote in an op-ed piece the Washington Post on Saturday.

“Another ... has since persisted, often unchallenged: the notion that the cover-up was worse than the crime. This idea minimizes the scale and reach of Nixon’s criminal actions,” the reporters stressed.

Because hundreds of hours of Nixon’s secret tapes have been released; many Nixon aides have been tried, allowing for more detail to be released; there are many more issues related to Nixon and Watergate that have been clarified and more clearly illustrated than in years past, the pair wrote.

They chose to define Watergate as an intersection of what they called Nixon’s five wars.