Watergate History Paper

Ryan Stevens
Mrs. Jill Nussel
Hist-H106
10 October 2012
Final Draft

Watergate Scandal
The Watergate Scandal had everything. For many, the first thing that comes to mind about Watergate is the Nixon administration and the political scandal that destroyed the reputation of the White House. There are several questions that come to a persons mind when they think about the Watergate Scandal. For example one question commonly asked is was the Watergate necessary, and was Nixon to paranoid about others? Also a commonly asked question is did Richard Nixon have a choice in resigning from his duty as President of the United States? Watergate was the unnecessary event that led to Richard Nixon’s downfall in office. “On June 17, 1972, five men, including CIA agent James McCord were arrested in the burglary of the Democratic party headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C.” “The Post Investigates.” Later in the year, the Federal Grand Jury accused those five men for their involvement in the Watergate burglary. Then a little Less than two months later, Richard Nixon was reelected President in a landslide over George McGovern, the Democratic candidate.
Prior to the accusations, the story of the burglary caught the eye of two Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. The two learned from a security aide that James McCord, an employee on the payroll of Nixon’s reelection committee was among those five arrested for the Watergate Scandal. Within weeks Woodward and Bernstein reported that the Grand Jury investigating the burglary had sought testimony from two men who had worked in the Nixon White House, former CIA officer Hunt and former FBI agent Liddy. Both men would ultimately be accused for guiding the burglars with walkie-talkies from the hotel room opposite the Watergate building. (“The Post Investigates”) Later on, Bernstein found out that former Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stan’s deposited $25,000 of Nixon’s reelection campaign funds into a bank account for burglars. This was the first time information actually connected Richard Nixon to the crime at Watergate.
As Bernstein and Woodward the engaged in the story further, they deeply relied on Mark Felt, a high level FBI official who was in control over the FBI files on the Break in as a confidential source. His access to these reports allowed him to confirm or deny what people were telling Bernstein and Woodward, and also let them know what leads to pursue. This man came to be known as “Deep Throat,” the reliable source who has been portrayed as a hero for his help in making the Nixon scandal public. His identity remained a secret for 30 years until on May 31, 2005, when Felt announced publicly that he was none other than “Deep Throat, the secret Washington Post source, (“Ex-FBI Official: I’m Deep Throat.”) By the time of April 1973, the Watergate scandal had spread far beyond the originated burglary, and by that summer of 1973 Watergate had become a full-out national scandal.
It was revealed that Watergate burglars Hunt and Liddy had broken into the office of psychiatrist Daniel Ellsberg the former Defense Department analyst who gave the top-secret Pentagon papers to the New York Times. “The most sensational revelation came in July 1973, when white House aide Alexander Butterfield told the committee that Nixon had a secret taping system that recorded his phone conversations in the Oval Office” (“The Government Acts.”) Richard Nixon refused to release the tapes, and the White House stating “executive privilege” refused to comply with subpoenas to release the tapes. This brought on a major struggle between a President, a Senate committee, and Prosecutor who were determined to get those tapes. After a number of meetings however, Richard Nixon agreed to release written statements of the taped conversations. Soon after this event Attorney General Richardson was ordered to fire Archibald Cox a federal prosecutor. This was put in place in an attempt to avoid a full-blown trial and possibly have to hand over the tapes all together. “ Richardson decided to resign instead of carrying out the order, as did Nixon’s top deputy Williams Ruckelshaus” (“The Watergate Decade.”) General Robert Bork became the acting Attorney General and fired Cox. “These firings were dubbed ‘the Saturday Night Massacre,’ and ignited a firestorm in Washington, with people calling for impeachment,” (“The Government Acts.”)
Nixon’s reputation, which already was already going on a downfall, was soon damaged even more. “On November 20, 1973, one of his lawyers informed a federal judge that one of the key tapes sought by investigators contained an 18 minute erasure that White House official had trouble explaining,” (The Government Acts). This put a huge hole in Nixon’s defense. Since these tapes would most likely prove or disprove the accusations against him the existence of such a large gap of information from the tape surely suggests something harmful to Nixon’s case was during that time. And now everyone really wanted to know what was said on those 18 minutes erased from the tapes.
Soon after more tapes were released Nixon’s entire defense crumbled into nothing he had no other choice other than to resign. Nixon states, “I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad.
To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home.
Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office.” (Richard Nixon’s Resignation)
Richard Nixon was a dishonest and corrupt president who abused his power to complete goals he had set for himself. He used campaign funds to hire men to spy on the Democrats in order to pummel the Democratic opponent in the upcoming election. And as the election came and passed, it showed that Nixon did not need to commit such an unnecessary act. Nixon won the 1972 election with 62% of the overall votes with 45,767,218 votes to McGovern’s meager 28,357,668 votes, (“The Watergate Decade.”) As the process of the Watergate scandal moved forward it became increasingly clear that Nixon was linked to the crime. And by the time the transcripts of the tapes were released, Nixon most likely knew that he surely would face impeachment. Obviously even in the heat of the Watergate scandal rising, Nixon was still able to win the election with little to know problems at all, but what defeated Nixon more than anything, and surely would have been the proof that pushed impeachment were the taped conversations in the Oval Office. With this unsolvable evidence, Nixon’s defense crumbled. Nixon was a nervous man one who did not have for trust many people, who taped conversations just in case he would need them some day. Nixon became overly paranoid about the people around him, and therefore put into motion the circumstances that led him to his resignation.
Nixon clearly did not need to undertake the unnecessary Watergate break in, nor did he need to tape conversations in the Oval Office, which led to his ultimate departure from the White House. After all this happened, Nixon was left with only one road, and that road was the road of resignation.