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Watergate
Watergate affair, in U.S. history, series of scandals involving the administration of President Richard M. Nixon; more specifically, the burglarizing of the Democratic party national headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C.
The Watergate affair signifies the web of political scandals that plagued President Richard Nixon from 1972 until his resignation in 1974.
The beginning of the Watergate scandal began in June 1971, when the Pentagon Papers were published. In September 1971, the “plumbers” unit was created to plug leaks in the administration. This resulted in the burglary of a psychiatrist’s office to find files on Daniel Ellsberg, the former defense analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers.
On May 28, 1972, bugging equipment was installed at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel and office complex in Washington, D.C. This was the first of two burglaries to occur.
On June 17, 1972, during the presidential campaign of that year, Washington, D.C., police officers arrested seven employees of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) as they were breaking into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex. Five men were arrested during this break-in. Not only had Nixon, his aides, and his reelection campaign conspired to sabotage the president’s Democratic challengers, but also they were now attempting to impede the investigation of the Watergate case.
There was never any evidence that Nixon ordered the break-in or that he was aware of plans to burglarize the Democratic National Committee. But from the start, Nixon was involved in the cover-up of the incident. By the time of the Watergate break-in, “the money to finance such “pranks” was being illegally collected through the Committee to Re-elect the President and placed under the control of the White House staff” (Bailey, Cohen, Kennedy 973).
The cover-up began to unravel as various people, including John Dean, legal counsel to the president, began to believe they were being set up as fall guys, and began to cooperate with prosecutors. As a result, of John Dean’s cooperation, Nixon dismissed him at the end of April. After Nixon’s “I’m not a crook” speech, Dean testified to the Ervin Committee that “there had been a cover-up, and the Nixon had approved it”(Emery 170). Another devastating disclosure was that a Whit House aide told the committee that Nixon had “installed a taping system in the White House and that many of the conversations about Watergate had been recorded” (Bailey, Cohen, Kennedy 974). After a yearlong battle for Nixon to turn over the tapes, Archibald Cox took him to court in October 1973. Nixon pleaded “executive privilege”, and refused to turn over the tapes and ordered Cox fired.
On February 6, 1974 the [next page]