Watergate

The Watergate office building named after the deal that led to President Nixon's departure.

The Watergate business, the Watergate scandal, was a major political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s as a result of the break-in of the Democratic National Committees (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate office complex in Washington, D C on June 17, 1972, and the Nixon administration's attempt to black out its land. When the plot was discovered and investigated by the US Congress, the Nixon administration's opposition to its investigations led to a constitutional crisis. The term Watergate has come to include a number of secret and often illegal activities conducted by members of the Nixon administration. These activities included, among other things, bugging the offices of political opponents and people whom Nixon or his officials were suspicious of. Nixon and his closest associates organized harassment of activist groups and politicians, with the help of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The scandal led to the discovery of several cases of abuse of power by the Nixon administration, prosecution and Richard Nixon's resignation as US President on August 9, 1974, the only US president to date. The scandal also resulted in prosecutions against 69 people, of whom 48 were found guilty and sentenced to prison, many of whom were Nixon's top government officials.

The deal began with the arrest of five men for burglary at the DNC headquarters in the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972. The FBI linked the burglars' cash to a slush fund used by the President's Re-election Committee (CRP), the official organization for Nixon's campaign. In July 1973, the evidence applied to the president's staff, including testimony from former employees, revealed in a Senate Watergate Committee investigation that President Nixon had a tape recording system in his office and that he had recorded many conversations. After a lengthy series of bitter court battles, the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the president had to hand over the ties to government investigators, which he eventually did. Recordings from these tapes revealed that the president had tried to hide the dubious actions that had taken place after the break-in. When Nixon was facing an almost certainly public prosecution in the House of Representatives and an equally secure indictment by the Senate, he resigned as president on August 9, 1974. His successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him on September 8, 1974.

Richard Nixon had been elected president of the United States in the 1968 elections, and in November 1972 it was again time for presidential elections. Both the 1968 and 1972 elections took place in the shadow of the Vietnam War, and in a United States characterized by great political contradictions.

On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested: three exile Cubans and two other Americans, James McCord and Frank Sturgis, after being arrested on a charge of breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters in Watergate. These five, as well as two people in the Republicans' campaign organization, Gordon Liddy and E Howard Hunt, were sentenced in court Sept. 15, 1972. Obtaining information on Republicans' political opponents' intentions for the election later that year was believed to have been the reason for the break-in. Some time later, the whole scandal began to spark, but it took some time before the connections with Nixon and his staff were completed, and the deal therefore did not have a significant impact on the presidential election in the United States in 1972. The election was won by Nixon, who in January 1973 began a second term in office. as president.

It has subsequently emerged that Gordon Liddy contacted Justice Minister Richard Kleindienst the day after the burglary and tried to persuade him to release the five who had been arrested, but that Kleindienst refused.

The journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post succeeded in revealing that the White House was involved in the burglary, and probably even the president himself. The unveiling took place with the help of a centrally located source which was given the cover name Deep Throat. The identity of the source was unknown until May 31, 2005, when former FBI official Mark Felt revealed himself as the mythical source.

The underlying reason for his submission is believed to be Nixon bypassed him by the appointment of FBI commander after J Edgar Hoover.

Haldeman and Ehrlichman, two of the Nixon employees som was forced to resign at an early stage of the Watergate business. A crucial reason that Nixon was forced to resign was a tape recording of a conversation between Haldeman and Nixon on June 23, 1972.

In 1973, the Watergate business was developed in several stages. Following media disclosures that centrally located persons had arranged the burglary, the United States Senate appointed a special committee to review the incidents. The committee operated from 1973-1974 and held its first television broadcast interrogation on May 17, 1973, but as of April 30, 1973, three of Nixon's advisors, H R Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Dean, had resigned or dismissed for their knowledge of or involvement in the affair. On the same day, Richard Kleindienst resigned from his post as Minister of Justice. New Mayor Elliot Richardson appointed May 19, 1973, with Nixon's fond memory, Archibald Cox as Special Watergate Prosecutor with Independent Position.

After it became clear that Nixon's employees had been aware of the Watergate burglary, the question of Nixon's personal knowledge of the burglaries became an important issue in the ongoing Senate hearings. On July 13, 1973, it emerged that there were systems for automatic tape recording in the White House, including the Ovala Room, the President's own study. Following this disclosure, the Watergate Street Prosecutor, Archibald Cox, requested via the injunction to remove the tapes. Citing the president's legal position, Nixon refused to release the tapes and ordered (via Elliot Richardson) Cox to withdraw his injunction, even though Nixon himself had ensured Cox had an independent position. Instead, on October 19, 1973, Nixon offered a compromise which meant that Democratic Senator John C. Stennis, but only he, would be able to listen to the tapes and then summarize the content. When Cox refused to agree to this compromise, Nixon ordered his Justice Minister Richardson to dismiss Cox. Richardson refused and resigned on October 20, 1973. Deputy Justice Minister William Ruckelshaus also refused to dismiss Cox and resigned the same day. The second in the Justice Department was Solicitor General Robert Bork, and he also intended to resign rather than dismiss Cox. However, Richardson and Ruckelshaus advised him to follow the president's orders, rather than empty the Justice Department on more bosses. The reason for this was that both Richardson and Ruckelshaus had assured in Senate hearings that they would not intervene in the Watergate investigation, but that Bork had not made any such promises. Nixon therefore appointed Bork as acting Minister of Justice and Archibald Cox was dismissed on the same day by Bork, Saturday, October 20, 1973. (Curiously, Cox himself had been Solicitor General in the years 1961-1965). All of these events came to be called the Saturday Night Massacre by the media.

Richard Nixon during the press conference where he announced his departure.

Nixon's actions provoked outrage among the public and a rallying cry in Congress. Proposals to put Nixon before state law were already aroused the days after Cox's dismissal, and several of Nixon's Republican party mates withdrew from him. Nixon was therefore forced to agree to appoint a new special Watergate prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, on November 1, 1973. Nixon still refused to release the tapes themselves, but did print out parts of the tapes. These prints had been edited, partly because Nixon's diligent use of profanity and other gross language had been removed. In addition, it was found that an important section of a tape had been deleted.

Watergate prosecutor Jaworski therefore, like his representative Cox, demanded access to the tapes and also issued a injunction. The development following the dismissal of Cox made it impossible for Nixon to dismiss Jaworski as well, and instead the White House appealed the injunction in court. Because of the clear constitutional nature of the case, the Watergate Prosecutor requested that the United States Supreme Court take the case directly, instead of going through lower courts first, and this was granted. In its ruling of July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court ruled that the president was required to disclose the unedited tapes to the prosecutor.

At this time, the US House of Representatives had begun preparations for a civil lawsuit against Nixon through voting in its Justice Committee, which on July 27-July 30 voted through all three points.

The tapes were handed over to the Watergate Prosecutor on July 30, 1974, and included, inter alia, recording a discussion between Nixon and Haldeman on June 23, 1972, six days after the Watergate burglary, discussing how to darken the incident. This tape came to be called the smoking gun tape after an American term ("the smoking gun") used as crucial evidence in criminal cases.

After this, a number of Republican senators announced Nixon the fact that the prosecution would gather enough votes in the Senate to cast him. Nixon therefore chose to announce on August 8, 1974, that he would resign the day after, August 9, 1974, and he was thereby succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford. Gerald Ford had been vice president since December 6, 1973, since Nixon's first vice president Spiro Agnew had resigned as a result of a tax and money laundering lawsuit. Ford, upon his entry, had been taken from the House of Representatives and thus had not belonged to the administration at the time of the Watergate burglary and the attempted blackout. Therefore, there were no suspicions that he too would be involved in the scandal.

A large number of Nixon employees and other people were given penalties, including multi-year prison sentences, for their involvement in the Watergate business. However, Nixon himself did not have to face trial because on September 8, 1974, Gerald Ford issued amnesty for his deeds during the presidential term, which is believed to have contributed to Ford losing the 1976 presidential election.

In 1978, Congress, with the Independent Counsel Act, issued special provisions on independent investigators, corresponding to Watergate prosecutors Cox and Jaworski, to avoid incidents similar to Saturday Night Massacre.

The entire Watergate scandal was filmed in 1976 in the form of All the President's Men with Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in the lead roles, based on Bernstein's and Woodward's book of the same name (Swedish title, And All the President's Men), and with script by William Goldman. The film received an Oscar for best screenplay and Jason Robards received an Oscar for best male supporting role by, according to David Halberstam's book The Powers That Be, largely imitating the then editor-in-chief of the Washington Post, Benjamin C. Bradlee. The title is a paraphrase on Robert Penn Warren's book (and later movie) All the King's Men.

In Oliver Stone's movie Nixon, the Watergate scandal has a prominent place and also in Ron Howard's movie Frost / Nixon.

The movie Dick released in 1999 is a satirical depiction of the Watergate deal. The roles include Kirsten Dunst, Michelle Williams, Dan Hedaya (as Nixon), and Will Ferell and Bruce McCulloch as Woodward and Bernstein.