Written by Eva Beere
‘I’m not a crook.’
– Richard Nixon, November 17th, 1973
On August 8, 1974, President Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign. His resignation came from the threat of possible impeachment as his complicity in the Watergate scandal became increasingly undeniable.
The inception of the Watergate scandal occurred in July 1971, when a Special Investigation Unit, called “The Plumbers”, was established within the White House. Nixon aides Egil Krogh and David Young were assigned to lead the unit by Nixon’s chief domestic advisor John Ehrlichman. Aptly named, The Plumbers were to prevent and investigate any potential intelligence leaks which would damage the President’s political reputation.
One of these leaks included the ‘Pentagon Papers,’ officially titled ‘United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967; A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense.’ Nixon ascended to the Presidency at a time of political turmoil, inheriting a country that was deeply divided over America’s involvement in Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers revealed that the presidential administrations of Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson had withheld information on the degree of American involvement in the Vietnam War, which had the opportunity to create a monumental divide between the American government and the public.
The Pentagon Papers were released by Daniel Ellsberg, a 40-year-old analyst at the RAND Corporation, who had previously served in the Pentagon’s International Security Affairs division. Ellsberg had begun to illegally remove these papers from the headquarters of the Department of Defense at the end of the Johnson Administration and provided his copies of the papers to the New York Times. On June 13th, 1971, the New York Times ran the story which proved U.S. governmental deception, with the front-page headline reading “Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces Three Decades of Growing US Involvement.”
After the leak, The Plumbers hatched a scheme to break into the office of Dr Lewis Fielding, who was Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. They aimed to find any information that would prove useful to stop Ellsberg from leaking any incriminating evidence in the future, yet they failed to find anything of use to them. Supposedly, the work of ‘The Plumbers’ resided after the Ellsberg break-in, however, ex-FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy and ex-CIA agent E. Howard Hunt continued to carry out illegal activities under the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP). For example, CREEP had hired the attorney, Donald Segretti, to mail letters falsely accusing U.S. Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, a fellow Democrat, of having an illegitimate child.
On June 17th, 1972, under the instruction of Liddy, five men broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office building, where they planned to steal top-secret documents and bug office phones. Frank Wills, the security guard on duty at the Watergate Office Building, noticed that someone had taped over the building’s locks, and called the police after having his suspicions aroused. Inside, police found five men, James McCord, Jr., Bernard L. Barker, Frank Sturgis, Eugenio R. Martinez, and Virgilio R. Gonzale. Over time, the identities of these men would be revealed, transforming a seemingly minor incident into something more serious. Four of these men had been active in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the fifth, James McCord, was associated with CREEP. Initially, the White House distanced itself from these men. The scandal was not immediately associated with Nixon, with the White House claiming the event to be a ‘third-rate burglary.’ This allowed for the re-election of Nixon in the autumn of 1979, whereby he achieved a landslide victory, winning 49 out of 50 states.
In January 1973, the Watergate break-in trial began, whereby Hunt and four of the Watergate burglars immediately pleaded guilty. However, McCord and Liddy chose to stand trial, being convicted on January 30th. Three days before his sentencing, after discovering he would be subject to a long prison sentence, McCord wrote a letter to Judge Sirica, claiming that he and the other defendants had been pressured to plead guilty and remain silent by key staff in the White House. McCord’s letter altered the perceived severity of the Watergate scandal, as suspicions turned to top presidential staff.
Whilst the trial was ongoing, an anonymous whistleblower, nicknamed ‘Deep Throat’ was providing key information to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. FBI official Mark Felt would, in 2005, reveal himself as the whistleblower, responsible for leaking information that pointed to Nixon’s involvement. Having been urged to ‘follow the money,’ Woodward and Bernstein published articles that linked Nixon’s reelection campaign to the men who had been arrested for the burglary and were currently awaiting trial in federal district court.
In February 1973, the Senate established a committee to investigate the Watergate scandal, leading to a series of public hearings, which were televised by three major television networks. Throughout the hearings, Nixon repeatedly declared that he was ignorant of the Watergate burglary, and only one witness, John Dean, implied that Nixon was involved in the cover-up. However, a handful of Nixon aides, including Alexander Butterfield, testified to the grand jury that Nixon had secretly taped every conversation in the Oval Office, some of which contained information that the President had been involved in the cover-up of the Watergate burglary. Nixon initially refused to hand over these tapes to the Senate Watergate Committee, leading the House Judiciary Committee to pass three articles of impeachment. On July 24th, 1974, in the case, United States v. Nixon, the Supreme Court ruled that President Nixon had to hand over his tapes to the special prosecutor.
His interference with the FBI investigation was clarified by two tapes. Firstly, the ‘Smoking Gun’ tape revealed a conversation between President Nixon and political aide, H.R. Haldeman, on the ongoing FBI investigation, where they proposed having the CIA ask the FBI to halt the investigation by claiming the break-in was a national security operation. Secondly, a tape recorded on June 20th, 1972, the first recorded conversation between Nixon and Haldeman since the Watergate arrests, contained an 18 ½ minute gap. There was considerable speculation as to the content of this prolonged gap, leading to theories that Nixon had erased 18 ½ minutes of incriminating evidence.
Under threat of impeachment, and knowing the tapes would tie him to Watergate, Nixon resigned on August 9th, 1974, declaring in his resignation speech, ‘I would say only that if some of my Judgments were wrong, and some were wrong, they were made in what I believed at the time to be the best interest of the Nation.’ Although in recent years impeachment has become more common, Nixon’s impeachment in 1974 was only the second time in history, with the first time being over one hundred years prior.
Nearly fifty years on, the legacy of Watergate remains significant. Not only has the word Watergate become synonymous with corruption and crime, whereby the suffix -gate is derived from the Watergate scandal, but Nixon still remains a figure of controversy in American politics. The President’s role in the cover-up damaged the relationship between the American public and the government, creating a schism which is still being repaired today.
Bibliography
Okpaku, Joseph, and Bonnie Schulman. “Who’s Who and What’s What in Watergate.” Transition, no. 45 (1974): 70–74. https://doi.org/10.2307/2935030.
Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. Watergate Trial Tapes. Accessed November 20, 2024. https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/watergate-trial-tapes.
Ritchie, Donald A. “Investigating the Watergate Scandal.” OAH Magazine of History 12, no. 4 (1998): 49–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25163236.
United States Senate. “Watergate.” About Powers & Procedures: Investigations. Accessed November 20, 2024. https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/watergate.htm.
Featured image credit: “Richard Nixon and family at Knott’s Berry Farm, 8-16-1968” by Orange County Archives is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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