Watergate Scandal

Congress resolved to watch CIA activities.

Nixon must give officials his recordings
The Supreme Court's position in the water gate cases is that Nixon must hand over his recordings.

US journalist Carl Bernstein is 73 years old (birthdate: February 14, 1944).

The Senate began an investigation, calling witnesses and issuing subpoenas for evidence. The White House refused at first to provide some of the requested information. The Senate hearing raised more questions. The White house eventually provided tapes of some of the meeting and phone calls made there. There was a suspicious gap in one of the taps. After awhile the House began preparing for an impeachment vote and President Nixon resigned his office.
( The last chapter was the Gerald Ford became President and pardoned Nixon of all Watergate related charges. )

Archibald Cox was the special prosecutor that President Nixon asked Richardson to fire. Richardson had promised not to interfere in the investigationand so he resigned his position as attorney general.

The revelation of the White House system for taping conversations uncovered a "smoking gun".

One of the tapes confirmed that the President himself had knowledge of the cover-up and actively worked to keep it hidden.

Nixon's only option, to avoid impeachment, was to resign the Presidency.

The Watergate Scandal was a scandal that occurred during the Nixon Administration. Nixon was paranoid after the pentagon papers were released so he assigned "white house plumbers" to prevent information from leaking to the public. He had these plumbers go to the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel to steal documents and wire tap phone lines. The incident was made popular due to the journalist Bob Woodward. A man named Alex Butterfield released information that president Nixon had tapes he was keeping secret. Nixon had also given out hush money to the burglars so they don't say anything. After the tapes were released, Nixon resigned (quit) to avoid being impeached and vice president Gerald Ford took his place and pardoned all charges against Nixon. This means that Gerald Ford basically cancelled all charges on Nixon and Nixon wasn't given any real punishment for this scandal.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

The revelation of the White House system for taping conversations uncovered a "smoking gun".

One of the tapes confirmed that the President himself had knowledge of the cover-up and actively worked to keep it hidden.

Nixon's only option, to avoid impeachment, was to resign the Presidency.

The scandal began on 17 June 1972 with a break-in at the offices of the National Democratic Committee in the Watergate Complex in Washington, DC.

Rose Mary Woods, President Richard Nixon's personal secretary, became a central figure in Watergate for two reasons. First, she received a copy of a list of secret contributors of illegal donors to the Committee to Re-elect the President. The original had gone to Maurice Stans, but he destroyed it when the scandal became public. Woods's copy was never destroyed and the Special Prosecutor at that time, Archibald Cox, wanted it. The list became known as "Rose Mary's baby." The second reason is that she transcribed many of the tape recordings Nixon made in the Oval Office. When Congress demanded Nikon turn over the tapes, he refused, but agreed to releases transcripts of them instead. One tape had a gap of several minutes, which was an obvious erasure. Woods claimed that she had made the erasure by mistake during the transcription process. This was doubted but never proved a lie. In order for the erasure to have occurred as she said it had, she would have had to contort her body across her desk in an almost impossible manner. Ironically, Rose Mary Woods lived at the Watergate Hotel at the time of the break-in.

Archibald Cox

they were Both big on religion

Although largely remembered and criticized for Watergate, Nixon was actually an active President that accomplished more than most during his administration.

Nixon's accomplishments while in office included: ERA (Equal Rights Amendment), ending segregation, revenue sharing, ending the draft, new anti crime laws, started the process of ending the Cold War, recognized and fought against foreign oil price gouging, and implemented a broad environmental program (he is largely responsible for the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). He was the only President to achieve a balanced national budget between 1961 and 1998.

Some of his most acclaimed achievements came in his quest for world stability. During visits in 1972 to Beijing and Moscow, he reduced tensions with China and the U.S.S.R. His summit meetings with Russian leader Leonid I. Brezhnev produced a treaty to limit strategic nuclear weapons. In January 1973, he announced an accord with North Vietnam to end American involvement in Indochina. In 1974, his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, negotiated disengagement agreements between Israel and its opponents, Egypt and Syria.

Nixon did not personally "bug" the Watergate hotel, he had it burglarized. Nixon needed to find evidence that the Democrats were funding the Vietnam anti-war protesters. The Democratic Party was using the hotel at the time. The time was during the '72 presidential campaign. Nixon rose to fame as Ike's hatchet man. Nixon was instrumental in the McCarthy "witch hunt", House Committee on Un-American Activities. Illegal wire taps, burglary and other 'black bag' type operations were his and his party's wheel house. Back then, the US government and some of its citizens still believed we were under attack from "Commies"-- Communists. Nixon believed that even good upstanding citizens had been indoctrinated as Communist spies.

The movie is called "All the President's Men" and is taken from the book by the same name written by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

When Nixon resigned, the vice president, Gerald R. Ford became the president and he did pardon Nixon, a move that may have cost him re-election.

The revelation of the White House system for taping conversations uncovered a "smoking gun".

One of the tapes proved that the President himself had knowledge of the cover-up and actively worked to keep it hidden.

Nixon's only option, to avoid impeachment, was to resign the Presidency.

In 1973-4 he sat on Senate Committee that investigated Watergate. He is famous for asking aloud "What did the President know and When did he know it.

He denied any involvement in the case.

Richard Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment charges growing from illegal acts during and after his reelection campaign in 1972. This was part of the so-called "Watergate Scandal" that included a break-in at a Washington building and a subsequent White House coverup of its involvement.

Nixon's Vice President, Spiro T. Agnew, had resigned in 1973 after a bribery indictment, and the newly appointed Vice President, Gerald Ford, became President.

Charles Colson was a so called supervisor of the Watergate affairs. He put together the "missions" but did not actually participate. For this very reason, Colson was tried under the charges or obstruction of justice.

Many people felt that the government, particularly the Presidency, had betrayed them.

deepthroat

One of the two events that caused Americans to become disillusioned with the Federal government during the first half of the 70's was the energy crisis. The second thing was the growing concern about the environment.