WATERGATE
The Watergate scandal (1972–1974) was the biggest American political scandal since Teapot Dome during President
Warren G. Harding’s administration. Unlike the earlier
crimes for profit, Watergate was about political dirty tricks.
Like Teapot Dome, Watergate had a special prosecutor who
obtained criminal convictions of White House officials.
Unlike the earlier scandal that did not impact the president
or his political party, Watergate became a constitutional
crisis that forced President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation
and contributed to the Republican Party losing the White
House in the 1976 presidential election.
Watergate was the name of a Washington, D.C., hotel
and office complex. In the early 1970s, its sixth floor housed
the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters.
A surveillance squad hired by the Republican Party broke
into the DNC offices to plant bugging devices and wiretaps. The wiretaps were monitored from the seventh floor
of the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge across the street.
Three weeks later, on June 17, 1972, they broke in again
to fix phone taps and to photograph documents. This time
they were caught, when Watergate night watchman Frank
Wills noticed a taped-over door lock. The police arrested
five men: Bernard Barker, Virgilio González, Eugenio Martínez, James W. McCord Jr., and Frank Sturgis.
Though White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler dismissed the break-in as a “third-rate burglary,” the perpetrators had embarrassing ties to President Nixon, who was
running for reelection. McCord was officially employed as
Chief of Security at the Committee to Re-elect the President
(CRP, also known pejoratively as CREEP), and McCord’s
notebook confiscated by the police had the telephone number of E. Howard Hunt, who had previously worked for
Nixon’s White House. These White House connections
generally were disregarded, however, because the Nixon
campaign had a comfortable lead in opinion polls and did
not need to resort to political espionage.
Yet, like the tip of a political iceberg, the Watergate incident eventually emerged as a massive conspiracy to abuse
executive power. The conspiracy’s crimes included bribery,
destruction of evidence, eavesdropping, extortion, illegal
campaign contributions, illegal use of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), phone tapping, political burglary, political
sabotage, obstruction of justice, using taxpayers’ money
for private purposes, and tax fraud. The press’s revelation
of these crimes depended on luck, perseverance, and assistance from a secret source within the government.
Nixon and the Press
During his long and distinguished career in politics, Nixon
had a love-hate relationship with the press. The antipathy
between Nixon and the press undoubtedly traced back to
his days as a member of the U. S. House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HUAC) in the late 1940s, his senatorial campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950,
outspoken criticism of liberals in politics and the press during the Cold War, and his failed 1962 gubernatorial race in
California. When Nixon as president could control the news
agenda, he excelled, but when journalistic enterprise took
over, he felt vulnerable.
Nixon had early success in the news spotlight. As a
young U.S. Congressman from California, he gained nationwide fame on HUAC investigating Alger Hiss, a U.S. State
Department official accused of passing secret documents
to a Soviet spy ring. Hiss was convicted of perjury. In 1950
Nixon cashed in on his image as a tough-minded anti-Communist and won his race for U.S. Senator by a wide margin,
although critics charged that he had smeared his opponent,
Douglas.
When the Republican Party nominated World War II
hero Dwight D. Eisenhower as its candidate for the U.S.
Presidency in 1952, Eisenhower asked an elated Nixon to
be his vice-presidential running mate. However, Nixon’s
ascendancy seemed to falter just as it got started, when the
press accused Nixon of having accepted improper campaign contributions. Eisenhower was reticent to intervene,
so Nixon defended himself on national television. The public accepted Nixon’s emotional protests of innocence, and
Eisenhower’s confidence in his running mate was restored.
The speech became known by the name of Nixon’s dog,
“Checkers,” and in it he announced that the pet was the only
gift he had accepted and he was not going to give it back.
After eight years as an exceptionally active and newsworthy vice president, Nixon became the Republican Party’s
presidential nominee in 1960 against a young Democratic
senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. Nixon lost
by two-tenths of one percent of the popular vote in one of
the closest national elections in U.S. history. The margin
of victory later was pegged to Kennedy’s superior showing in four televised debates, in which Nixon was the better
debater but appeared weak and indecisive to the television
audience.
Nixon returned to California to practice law in Los
Angeles. He won the Republican nomination for governor of California in 1962, but after losing the election by
a wide margin, he blamed his defeat on unfair press coverage. Bitterly, he announced to reporters, “You won’t
have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” His political
retirement was apocryphal, however, as Nixon continued
to keep a close eye on Republican politics. When conservative Republican Barry Goldwater lost a landslide election
to incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, Nixon
was able to reestablish himself as his party’s leader. In
1966 he successfully campaigned on behalf of Republican congressional candidates. Then, after a series of primary
victories in 1968, Republican Party leaders concluded that
he had the best chance to win the White House and nominated him to be their candidate.
As in 1960, the 1968 popular vote was exceedingly
close, but this time Nixon came out on top. Nixon defeated
Democratic Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, who ran
after President Lyndon B. Johnson bowed out in March
because of discouraging developments in the Vietnam War.
Nixon ran on a “peace with honor” platform, though he was
vague about specifics. A key to Nixon’s victory was a split
of Democratic Party strength in the South. Some votes went
to racial segregationist Governor George C. Wallace of
Alabama, who won forty-six electoral votes for the American Independent Party. Nixon’s television commercials cast
their candidate as a moderate conciliator who was firm on
the rule of law. Once again, Nixon succeeded politically
when he, and not the press, was in control of his own image.
Even before moving into the White House in 1969, one of
Nixon’s top priorities was assure his reelection in 1972.
Watergate Investigation Led
by the Washington Post
Washington Post metro editor Barry Sussman assigned
Bob Woodward and borrowed Carl Bernstein from the
paper’s Virginia bureau to report the Watergate break-in
story. Their first dispatch was on the burglars’ arraignment
on the day of the burglary. Cued by the Associated Press
wire, their second story noted that burglar James McCord
served currently as the Chief of Security at CRP, the DNC’s
rival. Their third story on June 20, 1972, followed the clue
that police found two burglars had contacts to White House
employee E. Howard Hunt. When Woodward tried to call
Hunt, he got the office of Charles W. Colson, a special counsel to the President. The White House identified Hunt as a
consultant to Colson. Slowly other puzzle pieces dropped
into place to suggest a well-organized effort by the White
House to spy on the DNC.
During a news conference on June 22, President Nixon
denied White House involvement in the burglary. The New
York Times, the Boston Globe, and CBS News looked more
deeply into the burglary story but did not find much. However, the Washington Post stuck with the story. Woodward
and Bernstein reported that the White House had assigned
Hunt to look into the private life of Senator Edward Kennedy. To help confirm story facts and keep the two reporters
on track, Woodward consulted a secret source inside the
government, which turned out to be the number two official
at the FBI, W. Mark Felt. Code named “Deep Throat,” Felt’s
identity was kept from the public until May 31, 2005, when
his family announced Felt’s role in the Watergate affair—a
claim later confirmed by Woodward.
The Watergate Cover-Up
On June 23, 1972, President Nixon and White House Chief
of Staff H. R. “Bob” Haldeman discussed using the CIA
to obstruct the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate breakins (a tape recording of their conversation later was made
public). The CIA was restricted by law from spying within
the United States, but agreed to help the White House by
claiming to the FBI that an active investigation would compromise the CIA’s agents, thereby jeopardizing national
security. Nixon and Haldeman’s real fear was that the FBI
would discover what former Attorney General John Mitchell called “White House horrors”—criminal and unethical
maneuvers undertaken by Hunt and his subordinate, G.
Gordon Liddy, in a special investigations unit, nicknamed
the “Plumbers.” The Plumbers investigated leaks of information to the press and ran various sabotage operations
against the Democrats, Vietnam War protestors, and other
political enemies.
Among notorious Plumbers’ operations was the break-in
at the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, a former
Pentagon and State Department employee who had leaked a
secret government study, the “Pentagon Papers,” to the New
York Times. Though not critical of the Nixon White House
directly, the Pentagon Papers embarrassed the government
in general and threatened to undermine support for Nixon’s
war policies. Hunt and Liddy found nothing useful when
they broke into the psychiatrist’s office, and their role was
not revealed until 1973. However, the judge in Ellsberg’s
trial for espionage, theft, and conspiracy dismissed the case
because of evident government misconduct.
CRP Director John Mitchell, along with campaign
managers Jeb Stuart Magruder and Fred LaRue, approved
Hunt and Liddy’s espionage plans, including the break-ins.
Whether Nixon was directly involved is unclear. The evidence shows that Nixon knew about the Watergate break-in
later and directed its cover-up, including dispensing hundreds of thousands of dollars of hush money to the burglars
to plead guilty and to keep quiet about their White House
connections.
The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los
Angeles Times, Time magazine, and Newsweek magazine
continued to report misappropriated campaign funds and
break-in links to the White House, but the charges had
little effect on Nixon’s reelection bid. Thwarted by perjury of White House officials and the cover-up payoffs, the
FBI’s investigation of the break-in had stopped with seven
men—the burglars, McCord and Liddy—while the candidacy of Democratic challenger, Senator George McGovern
of South Dakota, was self-destructing. McGovern won the
Democratic nomination by opposing Nixon’s Vietnam War
policies, but his appeal to moderates for support made him
appear to waffle on his anti-war stance. His indecisiveness and incompetence became a campaign issue when the
press uncovered mental illness in the personal history of
his nominee for vice president, Senator Thomas Eagleton
of Missouri. In November, Nixon won the landslide election
he had been seeking all his life.
On January 8, 1973, a U.S. District Court convicted
the original Watergate burglars, plus Liddy and Hunt, of
conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping. All except McCord
and Liddy pleaded guilty. Trial judge John Sirica, known as “Maximum John” because of his harsh sentencing, gave
sentences of thirty-years’ imprisonment, but indicated he
would reconsider if the defendants would cooperate with
his effort to learn the true Watergate story. During the trial,
the New York Times had published Seymour Hersh’s report
that the Watergate conspirators had been promised $1,000 a
month to keep silent. Sirica wanted to know who made the
payments. A short time later, John McCord complied with
Sirica’s offer, implicated the CRP in the burglary and the
payoffs, and admitted to perjury. The federal prosecutor,
Earl Silbert, convened a new Watergate grand jury, and the
cover-up began to unravel. On April 19, the Washington Post
reported that Mitchell and presidential counsel John Dean
had approved and helped to plan the Watergate burglary. The
Watergate story had new life on newspaper front pages.
The Senate Watergate Investigation
McCord’s revelations dramatically recharged interest in
Watergate. On April 30, 1973, Nixon attempted to blame a
rogue element in his administration. He coerced the resignations of Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, two of his most
powerful aides, and fired counsel John Dean, whom Nixon
blamed for failing to keep him informed. Nixon also gave
authority to new Attorney General Elliot Richardson to
appoint an independent Watergate prosecutor and promised
a clean sweep in the White House. On May 18, Richardson named Archibald Cox as prosecutor. Cox was inexperienced in criminal law but was staunchly independent.
Meanwhile, a special U.S. Senate committee, chaired
by Sam Ervin of North Carolina, subpoenaed White House
staff members. The committee’s star witness was disaffected
White House counsel Dean, who felt he was been set up by
Nixon to take the blame for Watergate. Dean’s detailed testimony implicated nearly every White House staff member,
including Nixon, of obstruction of justice to cover up the
Watergate burglary, but Dean stopped short of accusing the
president of planning the break-in itself. The hearings were
broadcast to a rapt television audience throughout the summer of 1973 and devastated Nixon’s political support. The
Senate committee probe began to focus on the president
himself, as famously stated by Republican Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee: “What did the president know and
when did he know it?”
On July 13, 1973, Alexander Butterfield, deputy assistant to the President, told the Senate Watergate committee about a secret audio taping system that automatically
recorded everything in the Oval Office. Both the committee
and Special Prosecutor Cox soon subpoenaed the tapes as
essential to their investigations. Nixon refused, citing the
principle of executive privilege. When Cox refused to drop
his subpoena, Nixon ordered Attorney General Richardson
to fire Cox as special prosecutor. When Richardson and his
deputy William Ruckelshaus refused in turn to fire Cox,
Nixon compelled their resignations on October 20—the
so-called “Saturday Night Massacre.” The new acting head
of the Justice Department, Solicitor General Robert Bork,
dismissed Cox. Widespread condemnation caused Nixon to
declare to a gathering of Associated Press managing editors, “I am not a crook.”
For a year, Nixon and new special prosecutor Leon
Jaworski struggled over control of the tapes, until July 24,
1974, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously
(Justice William Rehnquist recused himself) that Nixon’s
claim of executive privilege over the tapes was void. Nixon
and Haldeman’s taped conversation of June 23, 1972, provided the “smoking gun” that prosecutors were looking for
against Nixon. On July 27, the House of Representatives
Judiciary Committee started official impeachment proceedings against Nixon for obstruction of justice, abuse of
power, and contempt of Congress. With political support
crumbling and many of his aides indicted or convicted,
Nixon addressed a national television audience on August
8, 1974, and announced he would resign effective noon the
next day. Nixon was succeeded in the presidency by Gerald R. Ford, who on September 8 issued a broad pardon
that immunized Nixon from punishment for any crimes he
might have committed as president.
Aftermath
President Nixon’s resignation and the imprisonment of some
of his aides did not end the effects of Watergate. The scandal led to more transparent government, such as revision
of campaign financing laws, the amendment in November,
1974 of the Freedom of Information Act (1966), and new
requirements for financial disclosures by government officials. The public came to expect other unofficial types of
personal disclosure, such as releasing recent income tax
forms. Because the taping of Oval Office conversations had
been Nixon’s downfall, the practice ended, at least to public
knowledge.
Watergate also led to far more aggressive news reporting
on politicians’ public and private lives. Shortly after Nixon’s
resignation, for example, Wilbur Mills was forced to resign
his powerful post in Congress because of a drunken driving
accident, the type of an infraction that previously the press
usually overlooked. Inspired by Woodward and Bernstein’s
heroics, a new generation of journalists enthusiastically
embraced investigative reporting, and journalism school
enrollments ballooned across the country. Woodward and
Bernstein went on to successful careers as authors. Riding
high from its lead role uncovering Watergate, the Washington Post lay claim to national newspaper status.
Because Nixon and many other Watergate conspirators
were lawyers, the scandal also sullied the public image of
the legal profession. To improve its standing and to head
off government regulation, the American Bar Association
launched a major reform in 1983 — the Model Rules of
Professional Conduct — which law school students are
required to study and which remain in effect.
Popular culture adopted the “gate” suffix for later political scandals, such as “Koreagate” during 1976, “Contragate”
during President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and “Whitewatergate” during President Bill Clinton administration in
the 1990s.
Meanwhile, in the wake of Nixon’s resignation, the former president and others attempted to rehabilitate his image.
The efforts were partly successful. Upon his death in 1994,
he was honored as a senior statesman with little mention of
the devastating scandal that forced the first resignation of a
U.S. president.
Further Reading
Bernstein, Carl, and Bob Woodward. All the President’s Men.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974.
Buchwald, Art. I Am Not a Crook. New York: Putnam, 1974.
Dash, Samuel. Chief Counsel: Inside the Ervin Committee — The
Untold Story of Watergate. New York: Random House,
1976.
Jaworski, Leon. The Right and the Power: The Prosecution of
Watergate. New York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1976.
Kutler, Stanley I. The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of
Richard Nixon. New York: Knopf : Distributed by Random
House, 1990.
Lang, Gladys Eden, and Kurt Lang. The Battle for Public Opinion: The President, the Press, and the Polls during Watergate. New York : Columbia University Press, 1983.
Nixon, Richard M. The White House Transcripts: “Submission of
Recorded Presidential Conversations to the Committee on
the Judiciary of the House of Representatives by President
Richard Nixon” (introduction by R.W. Apple, chronology by
Linda Amster). New York: Viking Press, 1974.
Schudson, Michael. Watergate in American Memory: How We
Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past. New York:
Basic Books, 1992.
Sirica, John J. To Set the Record Straight: The Break-in, the Tapes,
the Conspirators, the Pardon. New York: Norton, 1979.
Staff of the New York Times. The End of a Presidency. New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974.
Sussman, Barry. The Great Coverup: Nixon and the Scandal of
Watergate. New York: Crowell, 1974.
White, Theodore H. Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon.
New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1975.
Russell J. Cook