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President Richard Nixon resigns in August 1974 after Watergate scandal - Newspapers.com

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30 Apr 1974, 8 - The Baltimore Sun at Newspapers.com

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24 Aug 1972, Page 34 - The Philadelphia Inquirer at Newspapers.com

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19 Aug 1973, Page 21 - The Indianapolis Star at Newspapers.com

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08 Nov 1972, 1 - Quad-City Times at Newspapers.com

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The Watergate Scandal: Timeline and Background

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Watergate: Inside the scandal that took down a presidency

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Table of Contents

1. The Watergate Break-In

2. Nixon's Obstruction of Justice

3. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein Investigate

4. The Saturday Night Massacre

5. Nixon Resigns

The Watergate scandal began early in the morning of June 17, 1972, when several burglars were arrested in the office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate complex of buildings in Washington, D.C. This was no ordinary robbery: The prowlers were connected to President Richard Nixon's reelection campaign, and they had been caught wiretapping phones and stealing documents. Nixon took aggressive steps to cover up the crimes, but when Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein revealed his role in the conspiracy, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. The Watergate scandal changed American politics forever, leading many Americans to question their leaders and think more critically about the presidency.

The Watergate Break-In

The origins of the Watergate break-in lay in the hostile political climate of the time. By 1972, when Republican President Richard M. Nixon was running for reelection, the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War, and the country was deeply divided.

A forceful presidential campaign therefore seemed essential to the president and some of his key advisers. Their aggressive tactics included what turned out to be illegal espionage. In May 1972, as evidence would later show, members of Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President (known derisively as CREEP) broke into the Democratic National Committee's Watergate headquarters, stole copies of top-secret documents and bugged the office's phones.

Did you know? Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein deserve a great deal of the credit for uncovering the details of the Watergate scandal. Their reporting won them a Pulitzer Prize and was the basis for their best-selling book "All the President's Men." Much of their information came from an anonymous whistleblower they called Deep Throat, who in 2005 was revealed to be W. Mark Felt, a former associate director of the FBI.

The wiretaps failed to work properly, however, so on June 17 a group of five burglars returned to the Watergate building. As the prowlers were preparing to break into the office with a new microphone, a security guard noticed someone had taped over several of the building's door locks. The guard called the police, who arrived just in time to catch them red-handed.

It was not immediately clear that the burglars were connected to the president, though suspicions were raised when detectives found copies of the reelection committee's White House phone number among the burglars' belongings.

In August, Nixon gave a speech in which he swore that his White House staff was not involved in the break-in. Most voters believed him, and in November 1972 the president was reelected in a landslide victory.

Nixon's Obstruction of Justice

It later came to light that Nixon was not being truthful. A few days after the break-in, for instance, he arranged to provide hundreds of thousands of dollars in "hush money" to the burglars.

Then, Nixon and his aides hatched a plan to instruct the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to impede the FBI 's investigation of the crime. This was a more serious crime than the break-in: It was an abuse of presidential power and a deliberate obstruction of justice.

Meanwhile, seven conspirators were indicted on charges related to the Watergate affair. At the urging of Nixon's aides, five pleaded guilty to avoid trial; the other two were convicted in January 1973.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein Investigate

By that time, a growing handful of people-including Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, trial judge John J. Sirica and members of a Senate investigating committee-had begun to suspect that there was a larger scheme afoot. At the same time, some of the conspirators began to crack under the pressure of the cover-up. Anonymous whistleblower " Deep Throat " provided key information to Woodward and Bernstein.

A handful of Nixon's aides, including White House counsel John Dean, testified before a grand jury about the president's crimes; they also testified that Nixon had secretly taped every conversation that took place in the Oval Office. If prosecutors could get their hands on those tapes, they would have proof of the president's guilt.

Nixon struggled to protect the tapes during the summer and fall of 1973. His lawyers argued that the president's executive privilege allowed him to keep the tapes to himself, but Judge Sirica, the Senate committee and an independent special prosecutor named Archibald Cox were all determined to obtain them.

The Saturday Night Massacre

When Cox refused to stop demanding the tapes, Nixon ordered that he be fired, leading several Justice Department officials to resign in protest. (These events, which took place on October 20, 1973, are known as the Saturday Night Massacre.) Eventually, Nixon agreed to surrender some-but not all-of the tapes.

Early in 1974, the cover-up and efforts to impede the Watergate investigation began to unravel. On March 1, a grand jury appointed by a new special prosecutor indicted seven of Nixon's former aides on various charges related to the Watergate affair. The jury, unsure if they could indict a sitting president, called Nixon an "unindicted co-conspirator."

In July, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over the tapes. While the president dragged his feet, the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Nixon for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, criminal cover-up and several violations of the Constitution.

Nixon Resigns

Finally, on August 5, Nixon released the tapes, which provided undeniable evidence of his complicity in the Watergate crimes. In the face of almost certain impeachment by Congress, Nixon resigned in disgrace on August 8, and left office the following day.

Six weeks later, after Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn in as president, he pardoned Nixon for any crimes he had committed while in office. Some of Nixon's aides were not so lucky: They were convicted of very serious offenses and sent to federal prison. Nixon's Attorney General of the United States John Mitchell served 19 months for his role in the scandal, while Watergate mastermind G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent, served four and a half years. Nixon's Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman spent 19 months in prison while John Ehrlichman spent 18 for attempting to cover up the break-in. Nixon himself never admitted to any criminal wrongdoing, though he did acknowledge using poor judgment.

His abuse of presidential power had a long-lasting effect on American political life, creating an atmosphere of cynicism and distrust. While many Americans had been deeply dismayed by the outcome of the Vietnam War, and saddened by the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and other leaders, Watergate added further disappointment to a national climate already soured by the difficulties and losses of the previous decade.

HISTORY Vault: Nixon: A Presidency Revealed

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The Watergate Scandal - Timeline, Summary & Deep Throat

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A June 1972 break-in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters led to an investigation that revealed multiple abuses of power by the Nixon administration and a vote by the House Judiciary Committee for impeachment.

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Watergate scandal, interlocking political scandals of the administration of U.S. Pres. Richard M. Nixon that were revealed following the arrest of five burglars at Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate office-apartment-hotel complex in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 1972. On August 9, 1974, facing likely impeachment for his role in covering up the scandal, Nixon became the only U.S. president to resign.

Burglary, arrest, and limited immediate political effect

Early on June 17, 1972, police apprehended five burglars at the office of the DNC in the Watergate complex. Four of them formerly had been active in Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) activities against Fidel Castro in Cuba. (Though often referred to in the press as "Cubans," only three of the four were of Cuban heritage.) The fifth, James W. McCord, Jr., was the security chief of the Committee to Re-elect the President (later known popularly as CREEP), which was presided over by John Mitchell, Nixon's former attorney general. The arrest was reported in the next morning's Washington Post in an article written by Alfred E. Lewis, Carl Bernstein, and Bob Woodward, the latter two a pair of relatively undistinguished young reporters relegated to unglamorous beats-Bernstein to roving coverage of Virginia politics and Woodward, still new to the Post, to covering minor criminal activities. Soon after, Woodward and Bernstein and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigators identified two coconspirators in the burglary: E. Howard Hunt, Jr., a former high-ranking CIA officer only recently appointed to the staff of the White House, and G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent working as a counsel for CREEP. At the time of the break-in, Liddy had been overseeing a similar, though uncompleted, attempt to break into and surveil the headquarters of George S. McGovern, soon to become the Democratic nominee in the 1972 U.S. presidential election.

Presidential Press Secretary Ron Ziegler responded that the president would have no comment on a "third-rate burglary attempt." The preponderance of early media reports, driven by a successful White House public relations campaign, claimed that there had been no involvement by the Nixon administration or the reelection committee. Meanwhile, the conspirators destroyed evidence, including their burglary equipment and a stash of $100 bills. Jeb Magruder, deputy director of CREEP, burned transcripts of wiretaps from an earlier break-in at the DNC's offices. The president, his chief of staff, H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, and the special counsel to the president, Charles Colson, Nixon's close political aide, spread alibis around Washington. Meanwhile, the White House arranged for the "disappearance" to another country of Hunt (who never actually left the United States), part of a plan for the burglars to take the fall for the crime as overzealous anticommunist patriots. On June 23, 1972, the president, through channels, ordered the FBI to tamp down its investigation. Later, this order, revealed in what became known as the Nixon tapes (Nixon's secret recordings of his phone calls and conversations in the Oval Office), became the "smoking gun" proving that the president had been part of a criminal cover-up from the beginning.

Throughout the 1972 campaign season, Woodward and Bernstein were fed leaks by an anonymous source they referred to as "Deep Throat," who, only some 30 years later, was revealed to be FBI deputy director W. Mark Felt, Sr. They kept up a steady stream of scoops demonstrating (1) the direct involvement of Nixon intimates in Watergate activities, (2) that the Watergate wiretapping and break-in had been financed through illegally laundered campaign contributions, and, in a blockbuster October 10 front-page article, (3) that "the Watergate bugging incident stemmed from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of President Nixon's re-election and directed by officials of the White House," part of "a basic strategy of the Nixon re-election effort."

Nevertheless, the White House successfully framed Woodward and Bernstein's reporting as the obsession of a single "liberal" newspaper pursuing a vendetta against the president of the United States. Shortly before the election, CBS News prepared a lengthy two-part television report synthesizing the scandal's emerging ties to the White House. However, after the first segment aired on October 27, Colson threatened CBS's president, William Paley, and the second segment was truncated. Newspapers that were sympathetic to Nixon hardly mentioned Watergate at all. In an election eve Gallup Poll, respondents overwhelmingly said that they trusted Nixon more than Democratic candidate McGovern. Nixon was reelected in a historic landslide-winning all but Massachusetts and the District of Columbia-and embarked on what looked to be a dynamic second term.

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Watergate scandal | Summary, History, Timeline, Deep Throat, & Facts

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Watergate scandal, interlocking political scandals of the administration of U.S. Pres. Richard M. Nixon that were revealed following the arrest of five burglars at Democratic National committee headquarters in the Watergate office-apartment-hotel complex in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 1972.

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Take a look at CNN's Fast Facts on Watergate and learn more about the 1970s political scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

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What became known as the Watergate scandal uncovered an intricate trail of wrongdoing, one that went all the way to the White House.

The burglary and ensuing scandal led to the only resignation of a US president, changed American politics forever and became a synonym for government corruption.

The break-in

On June 17, 1972, police arrested five men trying to bug and steal documents from the DNC headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington.

One of those men, James McCord Jr., was the security chief of the Committee to Re-elect the President.

The suspects were found with a series of items, including lock picks, $100 bills with the serial numbers in sequence and a shortwave receiver that could pick up police calls, The Washington Post reported at the time.

The White House distanced itself from the burglars, and initially the scandal did not ensnare Nixon. He was re-elected that November over his Democratic rival, Sen. George McGovern.

But months after his inauguration, journalists and congressional investigations began to piece together details of the scandal, pointing to White House involvement.

'Deep Throat'

Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward jumped on the story after the break-in.

With the help of a source known as "Deep Throat," later identified as FBI official Mark Felt, they wrote a series of groundbreaking articles on the Watergate scandal.

"It was not about a break-in, a single break-in," Bernstein told CNN in 2003. "It was about a pattern of illegal activities involving beating up members of the political opposition physically, stealing their memos, wiretapping political opponents, breaking into offices of psychiatrists, firebombing think tanks."

Months after the break-in, some of the burglars pleaded guilty and were convicted of conspiracy and other charges.

But a handful of journalists, along with the Judge John Sirica, who presided over the burglars' trials, sensed there was more to the story.

In March 1973, the judge released a letter written by McCord in which he said White House officials had pressured the defendants to plead guilty.

As the scandal blew up, Nixon and his aides were suspected of obstruction of justice by planning to use the CIA to stop the FBI's investigation.

Some Nixon administration officials later were convicted of charges relating to Watergate. They included John Mitchell, Nixon's onetime campaign chairman and attorney general; former White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman; John Dean, the White House counsel; and John Ehrlichman, his domestic policy adviser.

'Saturday Night Massacre'

Though the burglary trial had ended, the fallout over the scandal was just beginning.

The Senate voted to create a special investigative committee to look into Watergate. On July 13, 1973, a White House aide told Senate committee members that Nixon had taped all his Oval Office conversations.

A battle ensued over the release of tapes recorded after the break-in.

Archibald Cox, who was appointed Watergate special prosecutor, subpoenaed the tapes. Nixon refused to turn them over.

In what became known as the " Saturday Night Massacre," Solicitor General Robert Bork fired Cox at Nixon's order.

Bork did so after Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus quit rather than obey Nixon's order to dismiss the special prosecutor.

Resignation

After the firings, calls for Nixon to be impeached grew louder.

The White House later agreed to release some of the subpoenaed tapes, but one included a mysterious 18-minute gap.

In April 1974, the White House released more than 1,200 pages of edited transcripts of the Oval Office tapes. But it still refused to turn over the actual tapes, citing executive privilege.

On July 24, 1974, the US Supreme Court ordered the White House to hand over tape recordings of White House conversations.

Nixon released the tapes, including the so-called smoking gun, which showed he tried to use the CIA to block the FBI investigation of the burglary.

The tape connected Nixon directly to the burglary, a fact he had long denied. His support in Congress vanished, and the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against him.

On August 9, Nixon resigned without admitting any guilt.

"Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself," he said in his farewell address to the White House staff.

Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn in immediately after Nixon's departure.

"Our long national nightmare is over," he told the nation.

A month later, the new President pardoned Nixon, who expressed "regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate" have caused the nation and the presidency.

"One thing I can see clearly now is that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy," Nixon said in accepting the pardon.

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watergate scandal: a look back at crisis that changed us politics - cnnpolitics

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Watergate scandal: The crisis that changed US politics

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What became known as the Watergate scandal uncovered an intricate trail of wrongdoing, one that went all the way to the White House. The burglary and ensuing scandal led to the only resignation of a US president, changed American politics forever and became a synonym for government corruption.

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Watergate Scandal Essay

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Thomas Vinson News Story Investigation 1 Essay