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How Did The Watergate Scandal

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The Watergate Scandal is one of America’s most shameful moments that we still haven’t completely recovered from. The Watergate Scandal involved President Richard Nixon between 1972 and 1974. On June 17, 1972, the police had found five burglars at the office of the Democratic national Committee at the Watergate complex. Four of them were part of the CIA and the fifth burglar was security chief of the committee trying to re-elect the president. They had stole copies of top-secret documents and bugged the office phones. Because there was a fault in their wiretaps, they had to return on June 17 but the police caught them. It was not clear if the burglars were partnered with the president. However in August, Nixon gave a speech defending himself …show more content…

He had instructed the CIA to delay the FBI’s investigation. Nixon had abused his power as the president and deliberate obstruction of justice. Five of Nixon’s aides were pleaded guilty and avoided the trial while another two were convicted in 1973. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein began to suspect that there was more to this scandal. Many government officials were beginning to crack and testified that Nixon had taped every conversation that took place in the Oval office. Nixon tried to hide the tapes during 1973. Archibald Cox was a prosecutor who was determined to obtain the tapes. Nixon orders Cox to be dismissed which lead to the resignation of many Justice Department officials. This was known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Nixon had released some of his tapes but not all. The cover-up was falling apart. In July 1974, the Supreme Court had ordered Nixon to surrender all of the tapes. The House of Representatives voted to impeach the president for his abuse of power, criminal cover-up, violated the Constitution, and for interfering with justice. On August 5, 1974, Nixon had turned the tapes over to the public. He resigned three days

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Nixon was already being pressure to release tapes of his conversation in the White House but he refused to give them up (Fienberg 74). Nixon proposed an alternative on October 19, by giving the court a summary

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So the early morning of June, 1972 Nixon ordered his plumbers to break and bug/wiretap the Democratic National Committee Headquarters located in Watergate apartments(The scandal’s name was named after the location of where the crime occurred). Unfortunately for the president, the mission was a failure and the plumbers were arrested. The White House administration were quick to deny any wrongdoing in the Watergate scandal, stating “no one in the White House staff, no one in this administration presently employed was involved in this bizarre incident... ”(The

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Richard Nixon, our 37th president of the United States, is best remembered for his involvement in the Watergate scandal in the 1970’s. The Watergate scandal is mainly known for the break in at the Watergate building which is where the Democratic National Committee is located at in Washington, D.C. The break in consisted the undertaking of wiretapping of phones and the act of stealing confidential documents. After time had passed by, the FBI started growing suspicious about Nixon’s role in the scandal especially when he tried covering up the issue by providing hush money for the people who were involved in the break in. He also tried stopping the FBI from doing their job by not allowing to investigate the break in and as well as firing any disobedient

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The Watergate scandal happened during the Nixon administration. While Nixon was running for reelection, he had seven people break into the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate headquarters. The seven burglars stole highly sensitive documents and attempted to wiretap the phones. The wiretaps failed, and the group returned on June 17, 1972 to try again. This time, they were caught by security.

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Although it is debateable whether or not Nixon knew of the break-ins, he did behave very suspiciously. He became very secretive, resentful, and defensive towards his critics, even going so far as to make

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Eventually, when Nixon went to trial the judge asked him to hand over the tapes there were parts missing, which showed the country that he was covering up something. These tapes would show that Nixon had acknowledgement of the break-in a week before it even happened. The judge ended up convicting Nixon with three felonies, federal crime, abusing presidential powers, and keeping evidence. Furthermore, Nixon was forced to resign from the presidential seat and handing over the seat to Gerald Ford, who is the only president to not be elected as president

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One of the major political scandals that affect the U.S. is the watergate Scandal. The Watergate Scandal happened on June 17, 1972 in the early morning. The five men were arrested for breaking into the main office the Democratic National Committee. The democratic National committee is located in Washington D.C.

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Nixon delivered his second Watergate speech three months later, on April 15, 1973. In this speech, Nixon accepts the blame due to his position as an authority, while still maintaining his own innocence in relation to the scandal, declaring, “‘because the abuses occurred during my Administration, and in the campaign for my reelection, I accept full responsibility for them. However, it is my constitutional responsibility to defend the integrity of this great office against false charges’” (Nixon second Watergate speech).

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The Watergate Scandal involved robbery, presidential corruption, verbal harassment as-well as assaults on a senator’s wife, and a long list of other unlawful acts. What is amazing about this scandal, is that it shows that crime happens on all levels of society, and that even the leader of the free world should be held accountable for his actions. After all

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Richard Nixon was a very paranoid man and thought that his enemies were everywhere so in the re-election in 1972, he would prove the his enemies and to the world that he was the greatest and he would stop at nothing to get to his goal. The results that came out from the re-election were amazing, he defeated George McGovern by the almost 20 million more votes which made him seem invincible at the time. During his 2 years as president, 2 reporters from the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did not believe that he could win by such a milestone so they dug and dug on Richard Nixon and they found everything out about him. They found out that there was a committee made called the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP) that was a secret committee that would break laws in order for Nixon to win the re-election. The most well known incident of the Watergate Scandal was when 3 burglars from the CRP sneaked into the Watergate complex to put tiny microphones all over the place so they could listen on what the Democrat’s strategies were so they could always be one step ahead.

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Nixon case developed because Nixon tried to use his executive power to deny turning over the tapes. The United States has a separation of powers to avoid giving one branch too much power, but Nixon was trying to overstep by not turning in the tapes, and when he finally did release them, they were tampered. Nixon also tried to argue that the tapes could not be heard in courts because it involved arguments between the executive branch. His lawyers also tried to say because he is the president he had immunity to deny releasing any tapes. Executive privilege is basically the president power to withhold information from the public eye.

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The failure of others can teach valuable lessons to people throughout their lives. The Watergate Scandal presented a valuable teaching lesson and was a noteworthy political embarrassment amid the Presidency of Nixon. On June 17, 1972 President Richard Nixon performed a break-in he orchestrated amongst seven ex-cons into a Democratic headquarter, The Watergate Complex in Washington D.C. Questions then started to raise about Nixon’s involvement in the break-in because of some minor slipups on his part, but he continued to fight and fight against the other branches of the government for leniency. These acts caused Nixon to crumble because they showed something was truly up and led to the news in his involvement in the scandal (Miller, 116).

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Woodward and Bernstein kept digging and they found a $25,000 cashier’s check in John Mitchell’s bank account. This check was for Nixon’s re-election campaign. As Woodward and Bernstein uncovered secrets about Watergate, an investigation was opened by the Senate. Hillstrom once stated, “On February 7, 1973, the U.S. Senate voted 77-0 to establish a committee to conduct an investigation on the Watergate affair” (Hillstrom 28). As more and more was uncovered about the Watergate scandal, the Senate decided to start an investigation.

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What is even more dishonorable, is that Nixon had secret tapes that he secretly recorded with 3,700 hours of meetings and calls in executive offices. These tapes were the fault of the entire scandal, which was detrimental to Nixon’s presidency. Nixon refused to turn them over and eventually handing over edited transcripts of the tapes. In order to hide the incriminating evidence, Nixon compulsively lied throughout the whole predicament to the press and to the people of America-even the government. Eventually, Nixon handed over the tapes as commanded by the US Supreme Court.

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After the Watergate Complex burglars were apprehended, the affair was at first considered a minor news story. In the United States, the 1970s were a turbulent decade characterized by tremendous social, political, and economic changes. It soon became clear that the break-in was a part of a greater effort of the Nixon administration. This effort included political sabotage and espionage. The investigation was led by prosecutor Archibald Cox.

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