Watergate Scandal

The origins of the Watergate break-in lay in the turbulent political climate of the time. By 1972, when Republican President Richard M. Nixon was running for reelection, the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War, and the country was deeply divided.

A forceful presidential campaign therefore seemed essential to the president and some of his key advisers, and their aggressive reelection strategy included a variety of "dirty tricks" including spies, phony campaign literature, even illegal espionage. In May 1972, members of Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President (known derisively as CREEP) broke into the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate headquarters, stole copies of secret documents and bugged the office’s phones.

The wiretaps failed to work properly, however, so on June 17 a group of five burglars returned to the Watergate building. As the prowlers were preparing to break into the office with new wiretap devices, a security guard noticed someone had taped over several of the building’s door locks. The guard called the police, who arrived just in time to catch the burglars red-handed.

It was not immediately clear that the burglars were connected to the president, though suspicions were raised when detectives found copies of the reelection committee’s White House phone number among the burglars’ belongings.

In August, Nixon gave a speech in which he swore that his White House staff was not involved in the break-in. Most voters believed him, and in November 1972 Nixon was reelected in a landslide victory over the Democratic Party's nominee, George McGovern.

It later came to light that Nixon was not being truthful. A few days after the break-in, for instance, he arranged to provide hundreds of thousands of dollars in “hush money” to the Watergate burglars.

Then, Nixon and his aides hatched a plan to instruct the CIA to impede an FBI investigation of the crime. This was a more serious crime than the break-in; it was clearly an abuse of presidential power and a deliberate obstruction of justice.

Meanwhile, seven conspirators were indicted on charges related to the Watergate affair. At the urging of Nixon’s aides, five pleaded guilty to avoid trial; the other two were convicted in January 1973.

By that time, a growing number of people—including Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, trial judge John J. Sirica and members of a Senate investigating committee—had begun to suspect that there was a larger scheme afoot. At the same time, some of the conspirators began to crack under the pressure of the cover-up. A secretive FBI whistleblower codenamed “Deep Throat," who would remain anonymous for decades, provided key information to Woodward and Bernstein.

A handful of Nixon’s aides, including White House counsel John Dean, testified before a grand jury about the president’s crimes; they also testified that Nixon had secretly taped every conversation that took place in the Oval Office. If prosecutors could get their hands on those tapes, they would have proof of the president’s guilt.

Nixon struggled to protect the tapes from the grand jury during the summer and fall of 1973. His lawyers argued that the president’s executive privilege allowed him to keep the tapes to himself, but Judge Sirica, the Senate committee and an independent special prosecutor named Archibald Cox were all determined to obtain them.

When Cox refused to stop demanding the tapes, Nixon ordered that he be fired, leading several Justice Department officials to resign in protest. These firings and resignations, which took place on Saturday, October 20, 1973, became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Eventually, Nixon agreed to surrender some—but not all—of the tapes.

By 1974, the Nixon administration's cover-ups and efforts to impede the Watergate investigation began to unravel. On March 1, a grand jury appointed by a new special prosecutor indicted seven of Nixon’s former aides on various charges related to the Watergate affair. The jury, unsure if they could indict a sitting president, called Nixon an “unindicted co-conspirator.”

In July, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over all the tapes. When the president dragged his feet, the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Nixon for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, criminal cover-up and several violations of the U.S. Constitution.

Finally, on August 5, Nixon released the tapes, which provided undeniable evidence of his complicity in the Watergate crimes. The tapes included a highly suspicious 18-minute gap in a conversation between Nixon and Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman; tape analysts testified that the erasure was intentional, further clouding Nixon's credibility.

Perhaps more damning was the so-called "Smoking Gun" tape, on which Nixon and Haldeman discussed their plan to block any FBI investigations into the Watergate affair by having the CIA falsely claim that national security was involved.

Nixon resigned on August 8, 1974, in the face of almost certain impeachment over his role in the Watergate scandal. The following morning, Nixon and his family vacated the White House and returned to California. Minutes later, Vice President Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as the 38th president of the United States.

Six weeks after resigning in disgrace, Nixon was pardoned by Ford for any crimes he had committed while in office. Some of Nixon’s aides weren't so lucky: several were convicted of serious offenses and sent to federal prison.

Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell served 19 months for his role in the scandal, while Watergate mastermind G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent, served four and a half years. Haldeman spent 19 months in prison, and John Ehrlichman was jailed for 18 months for attempting to cover up the break-in. Nixon himself never admitted to any criminal wrongdoing, though he did acknowledge using poor judgment.

His abuse of presidential power had a long-lasting effect on American political life, creating an atmosphere of cynicism and distrust. While many Americans had been deeply dismayed by the outcome of the Vietnam War, and saddened by the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and other leaders, Watergate added further disappointment to a national climate already soured by the difficulties and losses of the previous decade.