WaterGate: the most significant scandal in American political history. Maybe
you've heard of it before. Maybe you haven't. Nevertheless, it reshaped American politics
and how Americans view their government. The scandal is so influential that we named
any pop culture scandal after it. For example, “deflate-gate” (after the New England Patriots).
The suffix of -gate implies a scandal of great impact, and it's all because of Watergate and
the impact it still has on our society today. So what was the Watergate scandal? Simply put,
in 1972, President Richard Nixon committed several felonies while in office by authorizing
the burglary of the offices of his Democratic opponents during the 1972 presidential election.
He committed several more by bribing those involved to keep them from implicating his
role in the crime and by misleading investigators and destroying evidence that would have proved his
guilt. The scandal would force Nixon to become the first and only president to resign from office,
and it caused the American people to deeply distrust their government and those who ran
it. This distrust still exists today, whether warranted or not, and sometimes
manifests itself in conspiracy theories and outlandish claims that are never proven.
How did Watergate happen? On June 17, 1972, five masked men broke into the Democratic Party offices
at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., and were caught by a security guard. The burglars were
arrested and taken into custody. The burglars had photographs of documents that outlined
the Democrats’ strategy to beat Nixon and win the election, and the burglars planned to wiretap the
phones in the office. The Nixon campaign planned to use this information to stay a step ahead
of the Democrats and win the election themselves. Nothing seemed unusual about the crime until the
press discovered that one of the accused burglars, James McCord, was the coordinator of a group
called “The Committee to Re-elect the President.” This directly implicated that the Nixon campaign
was responsible for committing the crime for the purpose of cheating in the election,
and that perhaps, the president himself was involved. Privately, Nixon began to panic and
became obsessed with covering up his involvement in the crime. Nixon ordered all incriminating
papers destroyed at the White House offices, and he asked the CIA to urge the FBI to stop
the investigation into the burglary because (he claimed) it endangered national security. The FBI,
of course, refused this request and a few months later, “The Committee to Re-elect the President”
paid the burglars almost half a million dollars in hush money to keep them from talking to the
FBI and possibly implicating the president and his inner circle of advisers in the crime.
Initially, the public cared very little for the scandal. The Nixon administration
continued to deny any involvement, and Nixon ran for re-election in 1972. He continued to
brush off the scandal as nothing more than a salacious rumor and ridiculous conspiracy.
Nixon quote: “That's just plain poppycock. We're going to stay on the job until we
get the job done. Let others wallow in Watergate. We're going to do our job.”
The strategy worked, and Richard Nixon easily defeated George McGovern and was re-elected in
one of the biggest landslides in presidential history. However, as 1973 started, the scandal
surrounding Nixon and the Watergate break-in began to heat up. The secret unnamed source
inside the White House began leaking information to the Washington Post that connected members of
the Nixon administration to the burglary. Reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
persistently published articles using information provided by their source inside the White House,
and the public began to demand answers from Nixon. The scandal reached a fever pitch when James
McCord went on trial. McCord was the former coordinator of “The Committee to Re-elect
the President” was arrested in the burglary. McCord notified the court that he had lied
under oath to protect the president and provided statements in the court that
suggested that members of the Nixon administration were involved
in the burglary, even at his highest level. Nixon began to go into damage control, desperate
to keep control of the situation. On April 30, 1973, Nixon fired his White House counsel John
Dean and announced the resignation of his chief of staff H.R. Haldeman and chief domestic adviser
John Ehrlichman. Nixon hoped that by forcing his closest advisors to give up their positions,
he would convince the American people that he held those in his administration who were involved in
the crime responsible, and that it might take the presumption of guilt off of him personally.
Nixon also announced that he was appointing a new attorney general, Elliot Richardson,
and he was authorizing him to appoint a special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, who would investigate
the Watergate break-in. Nixon hoped that this action might make it appear as though he had
nothing to hide because he was willing to have the matter investigated from within the White House.
But Nixon was wrong. In May of 1973, the Senate convened a special committee of their own to
investigate the Watergate break-in, and they called in administration officials
to provide testimony under oath on whether the president was personally involved in
the crime. President Nixon's criminality in the Watergate scandal begins to reveal itself in a
Senate subcommittee: In June of 1973, former White House counsel John Dean testified under oath that
President Nixon personally planned the cover up and had authorized the destruction of evidence and
the bribing of the accused to keep them quiet. In July of 1973, White House aide Alexander
Butterfield revealed to the Senate subcommittee that Nixon had secretly recorded nearly every
conversation he had had in the White House and over the phone. The tapes could prove Nixon's
role in the scandal and provide evidence of his guilt. These tapes would become known as
the “Nixon tapes” and would be his undoing. In October 1973, special prosecutor Archibald
Cox sued President Nixon, demanding the turnover of the White House tapes so that they could be
reviewed for evidence. Nixon refused to turn over the tapes and ordered his attorney general
Elliot Richardson to fire Archibald Cox, the investigator. This move made Nixon look like he
had something to hide since he himself authorized the appointment of Cox. Richardson refused to fire
Cox and resigned as Attorney General rather than following Nixon's unethical orders. The Deputy
Attorney General who took over for Richardson also refused to fire Cox, and he was fired by Nixon.
This panicked flurry of resignations and firings over the Nixon tapes became known
as the Saturday Night Massacre. Just days before, vice president Spiro Agnew resigned after it came
to light that he had accepted illegal bribes. The entire Nixon administration appeared to
be corrupt. Agnew was replaced quickly by House Minority Leader Gerald Ford.
Disturbed by Nixon's behavior and convinced of adequate evidence of presidential wrongdoing,
the House began preparing for impeachment hearings. The Nixon presidency was quickly coming
to a disgraced end. In March 1974, a federal grand jury indicted seven presidential aides on
charges of conspiracy obstruction of justice and perjury. Perjury is the crime of lying under oath.
In spring 1974, federal investigators demanded that President Nixon hand over unedited versions
of his secret White House tapes. Nixon refused, claiming that doing so would jeopardize national
security and that his private tapes were protected by executive privilege or a special protection
that Nixon thought the president should have that put him above the law. Nixon had always
believed in an imperial presidency or an idea that the presidency had a special elevated
status and government that made it more powerful than the other branches and gave it immunity
from the law. Even after he left office, he told reporter David Frost “when the president does it,
that mean is that it is not illegal.” July 24, 1974: the Supreme Court unanimously
ruled against Nixon claiming that the President had no executive privilege to hide potential
criminal evidence. They decided that Nixon must release the tapes to investigators. July 27,
1974: the House committee approved three articles of impeachment for President Nixon:
impeachment is when a sitting president is put on trial in the Senate after being accused of crimes
while in office. If convicted by the Senate, the president would be removed from office and could
face prison. Nixon was charged with obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of
Congress for refusing to hand over his tapes. If the House of Representatives voted to
impeach Nixon, he would have to stand trial in the Senate. Nixon: “I welcome this kind
of examination because people have got to know whether or not their president’s a crook. Well,
I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got.” Disgraced and desperate to hold on to power,
Nixon complied with the Supreme Court ruling. The president released his White House tapes,
but there were gaps in the audio that had been erased, making it appear that Nixon
was intentionally trying to destroy evidence. However, investigators discovered a conversation
that provided evidence that Nixon had not only known about the break-in,
but he personally approved of the plan to cover up the crime and mislead the FBI.
August 8, 1974: With overwhelming evidence of his criminal guilt and hoping to avoid
impeachment and an almost certain conviction in the Senate, Richard Nixon announced his
intention to resign the presidency. Nixon: “Therefore, I shall resign the
presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice president Ford will be sworn in
as president at that hour in this office.” Nixon never admitted any wrongdoing, even as
several of his former advisers were convicted of crimes related to the Watergate break-in.
Noon, August 9, 1974: Nixon becomes the first and only president to date to resign the office
of the presidency. His newly appointed Vice President, Gerald Ford, was sworn in
as the 38th President of the United States. September 8, 1974: In an effort to move the
nation past the shame of the Watergate scandal, President Ford addressed the nation from the
Oval Office and granted a full presidential pardon to Richard Nixon for any crimes he
may have committed against the United States. Ford: “and by these presents do grant a full
free and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States…”
This meant that Nixon would never face jail time for any crimes that
connected him to the Watergate burglary. The American people have never really
recovered from Watergate, still distrustful of government, a crisis of confidence in national
leadership has led to decades of partisan politics, and Richard Nixon's legacy seems
to be divided upon those party lines. To conservatives, he was a
Titan who revolutionized Cold War diplomacy and ushered in a new era of conservative values. To
liberals, he was a criminal and the most corrupt man to ever hold the presidency. Regardless of
opinion, Nixon's legacy is dominated by Watergate, and it will be forever.