.
The term Watergate
has come to encompass an array of clandestine and often illegal activities
undertaken by members of the Nixon administration. Those activities included
such "dirty tricks" as bugging the offices of political opponents and
people of whom Nixon or his officials were suspicious. Nixon and his close
aides apparently ordered investigation of activist groups and political
figures, using the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).Watergate was
a major political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s,
following a break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at
the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. in 1972 and President Richard
Nixon's administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement. When the
conspiracy was discovered and investigated by the U.S. Congress, the Nixon
administration's resistance to its probes led to a constitutional crisis.
The scandal led to
the discovery of multiple abuses of power by the Nixon administration, articles
of impeachment,[2] and the resignation of Nixon. The scandal also resulted in
the indictment of 69 people, with trials or pleas resulting in 48 being found
guilty, many of whom were Nixon's top administration officials.[3]
The affair began
with the arrest of five men for breaking and entering into the DNC headquarters
at the Watergate complex on Saturday, June 17, 1972. The FBI investigated and
discovered a connection between cash found on the burglars and a slush fundused
by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP), the official
organization of Nixon's campaign.[4][5] In July 1973, evidence mounted against
the President's staff, including testimony provided by former staff members in
an investigation conducted by the Senate Watergate Committee. The investigation
revealed that President Nixon had a tape-recording system in his offices and
that he had recorded many conversations.[6][7]
After a protracted
series of bitter court battles, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that
the president was obligated to release the tapes to government investigators,
and he eventually complied. These audio recordings implicated the president,
revealing he had attempted to cover up activities that took place after the
break-in and to use federal officials to deflect the investigation.[5][8]Facing
near-certain impeachment in the House of Representatives and equally certain
conviction by the Senate, Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9,
1974.[9][10] On September 8, 1974, his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him.
The name
"Watergate" and the suffix "-gate" have since become
synonymous with political scandals in the United states
Wiretapping of the Democratic Party's headquarters
In January 1972, G. Gordon Liddy, general counsel to the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP), presented a campaign intelligence plan to CRP's Acting Chairman Jeb Stuart Magruder, Attorney General John Mitchell, and Presidential Counsel John Dean, that involved extensive illegal activities against the Democratic Party. According to Dean, this marked "the opening scene of the worst political scandal of the twentieth century and the beginning of the end of the Nixon presidency."[16]
Mitchell viewed the
plan as unrealistic. Two months later, he was alleged to have approved a
reduced version of the plan, to include burgling the Democratic National
Committee's (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate Complex in Washington,
D.C.—ostensibly to photograph campaign documents and install listening devices
in telephones. Liddy was nominally in charge of the operation, but has since
insisted that he was duped by Dean and at least two of his subordinates. These
included former CIA officers E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, then-CRP Security
Coordinator (John Mitchell had by then resigned as Attorney General to become
chairman of the CRP).[17][18]
In May, McCord
assigned former FBI agent Alfred C. Baldwin III to carry out the wiretapping
and monitor the telephone conversations afterward.[19] McCord testified that he
selected Baldwin's name from a registry published by the Society of Former
Special Agents of the FBIto work for the Committee to Re-elect the
President.[19] Baldwin first served as bodyguard to Martha Mitchell, the wife
of John Mitchell, who was living in Washington.[19] Baldwin accompanied Martha
Mitchell to Chicago.[19] Martha did not like Baldwin and described him as the
"gauchest character I've ever met."[19] The Committee replaced
Baldwin with another security man.[19]
On May 11, McCord
arranged for Baldwin, whom investigative reporter Jim Hougan described as
"somehow special and perhaps well known to McCord,"[19] to stay at
the Howard Johnson's motel across the street from the Watergate complex.[19]
The room 419 was booked in the name of McCord’s company.[19] At behest of G.
Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt,[19] McCord and his team of burglars prepared
for their first Watergate break-in,[19] which began on May 28.[19]
Two phones inside
the offices of the DNC headquarters were said to have been wiretapped.[19] One
was the phone of Robert Spencer Oliver, who at the time was working as the
executive director of the Association of State Democratic Chairmen, and the
other was the phone of DNC secretary Larry O'Brien.[20] The FBI found no
evidence that O'Brien's phone was bugged.[21] However, it was determined that
an effective listening device had been installed in Oliver's phone.[22]
Despite the
success in installing the listening devices, the Committee agents soon
determined that they needed to be repaired.[22] They planned a second
"burglary" in order to take care of this.[22]
Shortly after
midnight on June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a security guard at the Watergate
Complex, noticed tape covering the latches on some of the doors in the complex
leading from the underground parking garage to several offices (allowing the
doors to close but remain unlocked). He removed the tape, and thought nothing
of it. He returned an hour later and, having discovered that someone had
retaped the locks, Wills called the police. Five men were discovered inside the
DNC office and arrested.[17] They were Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, James
McCord, Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis, who were charged with attempted
burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications. On
September 15, a grand jury indicted them, as well as Hunt and Liddy,[23] for
conspiracy, burglary, and violation of federal wiretapping laws. The five
burglars who broke into the office were tried by a jury, Judge John Sirica
officiating, and were convicted on January 30, 1973.[24]
Cover-up and its
unraveling
Within hours of
the burglars' arrest, the FBI discovered the name of E. Howard
Hunt in the address books of Barker and Martínez. Nixon administration
officials were concerned because Hunt and Liddy were also involved in a
separate secret activity known as the White House Plumbers, which was set
up to stop security "leaks" and to investigate other sensitive
security matters. Dean would later testify he was ordered by top Nixon
aide John Ehrlichman to "deep six" the contents of Howard
Hunt's White House safe. Ehrlichman subsequently denied that. In the end, the
evidence from Hunt's safe was destroyed (in separate operations) by Dean and
the FBI's Acting Director, L. Patrick Gray.
Nixon's own
reaction to the break-in, at least initially, was one of skepticism. Watergate
prosecutor James Neal was sure Nixon had not known in advance of the break-in.
As evidence, he cited a June 23 taped conversation between the President and
his Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman, in which Nixon asked, "Who was
the asshole who ordered it?" But Nixon subsequently ordered Haldeman to
have the CIA block the FBI's investigation into the source of the funding for
the burglary.
A few days later,
Nixon's Press Secretary, Ron Ziegler, described the event as "a
third-rate burglary attempt." On August 29, at a news conference,
President Nixon stated Dean had conducted a thorough investigation of the
matter, when in fact Dean had not conducted any investigation at all. Nixon
also said, "I can say categorically that... no one in the White House
staff, no one in this Administration, presently employed, was involved in this
very bizarre incident." On September 15, Nixon congratulated Dean, saying,
"The way you've handled it, it seems to me, has been very skillful,
because you—putting your fingers in the dikes every time that leaks have sprung
here and sprung there
Role of the media
The connection
between the break-in and the re-election committee was highlighted by media
coverage—in particular, investigative coverage by The Washington Post, Time, and The New York Times. The coverage dramatically
increased publicity and consequent political repercussions. Relying heavily
upon anonymous sources, Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered information
suggesting that knowledge of the break-in, and attempts to cover it up, led
deeply into the upper reaches of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and the
White House. Woodward and Bernstein interviewed Judy Hoback Miller, the bookkeeper for Nixon,
who revealed to them information about the mishandling of funds and records
being destroyed.[27]
Chief among
the Post's anonymous sources was an individual whom Woodward and
Bernstein had nicknamed Deep Throat; 33 years later, in 2005, the
informant was identified as William Mark Felt, Sr., deputy director of the
FBI during that period of the 1970s, something Woodward later confirmed. Felt
met secretly with Woodward several times, telling him of Howard Hunt's
involvement with the Watergate break-in, and that the White House staff
regarded the stakes in Watergate extremely high. Felt warned Woodward that the
FBI wanted to know where he and other reporters were getting their information,
as they were uncovering a wider web of crimes than the FBI first disclosed. All
of the secret meetings between Woodward and "Deep Throat" (W. Mark
Felt) took place at an underground parking garage somewhere in Rosslyn over a period from June 1972 to
January 1973. Prior to resigning from the FBI on June 22, 1973, Felt also
anonymously planted leaks about Watergate to Time magazine, the Washington Daily News and other
publications.[28]
During this early
period, most of the media failed to grasp the full implications of the scandal,
and concentrated reporting on other topics related to the 1972 presidential
election.[29] After the reporting that one of
the convicted burglars wrote to Judge Sirica alleging a high-level cover-up,
the media shifted its focus. Time magazine described Nixon as
undergoing "daily hell and very little trust." The distrust between
the press and the Nixon administration was mutual and greater than usual due to
lingering dissatisfaction with events from the Vietnam War. At the same time, public distrust
of the media was polled at more than 40%.[29]
Nixon and top
administration officials discussed using government agencies to "get"
(or retaliate against) those they perceived as hostile media organizations.[29] The discussions had precedent.
At the request of Nixon's White House in 1969, the FBI tapped the phones of
five reporters. In 1971, the White House requested an audit of the tax return
of the editor of Newsday, after he wrote a series of articles
about the financial dealings of Charles Rebozo, a friend of Nixon.[30]
The Administration
and its supporters accused the media of making "wild accusations,"
putting too much emphasis on the story, and of having a liberal bias against
the Administration.[29] Nixon said in a May 1974
interview with supporter Baruch Korff that if he had followed the
liberal policies that he thought the media preferred, "Watergate would
have been a blip."[31] The media noted that most of the
reporting turned out to be accurate; the competitive nature of the media
guaranteed widespread coverage of the far-reaching political scandal.[29] Applications to journalism schools reached an all-time high
in 1974.[29]
