Watergate scandal

From Wikinfo

Template:Watergate The Watergate scandal was a 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. by members of President Richard Nixon's administration and the resulting cover-up which led to the resignation of the President. A number of the perpetrators were from the "plumbers unit", originally set up to "plug leaks," and some were former members of the CIA. Though then-President Nixon had endured two years of mounting political embarrassments, the court-ordered release in August 1974 of a "smoking gun tape" about the burglaries brought with it the prospect of certain impeachment for Nixon; he resigned only four days later, on August 9, 1974, making him the only U.S. President to have resigned from office.

Break-in

Main article: Watergate burglaries

When Frank Wills, a security guard, found proof of a break in, he called the police. On June 17, 1972, police apprehended five men attempting to break into and wiretap Democratic Party offices. The five men were Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, James W. McCord, Jr., Eugenio Martínez and Frank Sturgis. With two other accomplices they were tried and convicted in January 1973. All seven men were either directly or indirectly employees of President Nixon's Campaign to Re-elect the President, CREEP, and many people, including the trial judge, John J. Sirica, suspected a conspiracy involving higher-echelon government officials. In March 1973, James McCord, one of the convicted burglars, wrote a letter to Sirica charging a massive coverup of the burglary. His letter transformed the affair into a political scandal of unprecedented magnitude.

Significance

The scandal revealed the existence of a White House dirty tricks squad, an enemies list (the Nixon's Enemies List), a plumbers unit to plug leaks and a secret campaign slush fund associated with the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP), all with high level administration involvement. It brought into the open the involvement of the Attorney General, John N. Mitchell, in the dirty tricks, funds and cover up, as well as key White House advisors, all of whom went to prison for these crimes.

Senate investigation

The connection between the break-in and the President's re-election campaign fundraising committee was highlighted by its media coverage. In particular, investigative coverage by The Washington Post and The New York Times fueled focus on the event. The coverage dramatically increased the profile of the crime and consequent political stakes. Fed tips by an anonymous source (W. Mark Felt) they would later identify only by the code name "Deep Throat," Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered information suggesting that knowledge of the break-in and attempts to cover it up led deep into the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and even the White House itself. Rather than ending with the trial and conviction of the burglars, the investigations grew broader; a Senate committee chaired by Senator Sam Ervin was set up to examine Watergate and started to subpoena White House staff.

On April 30, 1973, Nixon was forced to ask for the resignation of two of his most influential aides, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, both of whom would soon be indicted and ultimately go to prison. He also fired White House Counsel John Dean, who had just testified before the Senate and would go on to become the key witness against the President.

On the same day, Nixon appointed a new Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, and gave him authority to designate, for the growing Watergate inquiry, a special counsel who would be independent of the regular Justice Department hierarchy, to preserve his independence. On May 19, 1973, Richardson named Archibald Cox to the position. Televised hearings had begun two days before.

Tapes

Main article: Watergate tapes

The hearings held by the Senate Committee, in which Dean was the star witness and in which many other former key administration officials gave dramatic testimony, were broadcast from May 17, 1973 to August 7, 1973, causing devastating political damage to Nixon. Each network maintained coverage of the hearings every third day, starting with ABC on May 17 and ending with NBC on August 7. An estimated 85 percent of Americans with television sets tuned in to at least one portion of the hearings.^[1]

Perhaps the most memorable question of the hearings came when Republican Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee asked "What did the President know, and when did he know it?", which focused attention for the first time on Nixon's personal role in the scandal.

On July 13, 1973, Donald Sanders, the Assistant Minority Counsel, asked Alexander Butterfield in discovery if there were any type of recording systems in the White House. Butterfield answered that, though he was reluctant to say so, there was a system in the White House that automatically recorded everything in the Oval Office. Later, Chief Minority Counsel Fred Thompson put the question to Butterfield directly in televised hearings: "Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?" The shocking revelation radically transformed the Watergate investigation. The tapes were soon subpoenaed by first special prosecutor Archibald Cox and then the Senate, as they might prove whether Nixon or Dean was telling the truth about key meetings. Nixon refused, citing the principle of executive privilege, and ordered Cox, via Attorney General Richardson, to drop his subpoena.

Saturday Night Massacre

Main article: Saturday Night Massacre

Cox's refusal to drop his subpoena led to the "Saturday Night Massacre" on October 20, 1973, when Nixon compelled the resignations of Richardson and then his deputy William Ruckelshaus in a search for someone in the Justice Department willing to fire Cox. This search ended with Solicitor General Robert Bork, and the new acting department head dismissed the special prosecutor. Public reaction was immediate and intense, with protestors standing along the sidewalks outside the White House holding signs saying "HONK TO IMPEACH," and hundreds of cars driving by honking their horns. Allegations of wrongdoing prompted Nixon famously to state "I am not a crook" in front of 400 startled Associated Press managing editors at Walt Disney World in Florida on November 17, 1973.^[2] Nixon was forced, however, to allow the appointment of a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, who continued the investigation. While Nixon continued to refuse to turn over actual tapes, he did agree to release edited transcripts of a large number of them; Nixon cited the fact that any sensitive national security information could be edited out of the tapes; it was also speculated that the tapes may have contained both foul language and racial slurs, which would have worsened Nixon's image. The tapes largely confirmed Dean's account, and caused further embarrassment when a crucial, 18½ minute portion of one tape, which had never been out of White House custody, was found to have been erased. The White House blamed this on Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, who said she had accidentally erased the tape by pushing the wrong foot pedal on her tape player while answering the phone. However, as photos splashed all over the press showed, for Woods to answer the phone and keep her foot on the pedal would have been unlikely. Later forensic analysis determined that the gap had been erased in several segments—at least five, and perhaps as many as nine^[3] – refuting the "accidental erasure" explanation.

Supreme Court

The issue of access to the tapes went all the way to the Supreme Court. On July 24, 1974, in United States v. Nixon, the Court (which did not include the recused Justice Rehnquist) ruled unanimously that claims of executive privilege over the tapes were void, and they further ordered him to surrender them to Jaworski. On July 30, 1974, he complied with the order and released the subpoenaed tapes. Nixon, once the contents of the tapes were revealed, resigned just 10 days later.

Articles of impeachment, resignation, and convictions

On January 28, 1974, Nixon campaign aide Herbert Porter pleaded guilty to the charge of lying to the FBI during the early stages of the Watergate investigation. On February 25, 1974, Nixon's personal lawyer Herbert Kalmbach pleaded guilty to two charges of illegal election-campaign activities. Other charges were dropped in return for Kalmbach's cooperation in the forthcoming Watergate trials.

On March 1, 1974, former aides of the President, known as the Watergate Seven—Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Charles Colson, Gordon C. Strachan, Robert Mardian and Kenneth Parkinson—were indicted for conspiring to hinder the Watergate investigation. The grand jury also secretly named Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator. Dean, Magruder and other figures in the scandal had already pleaded guilty. Charles Colson stated in his book Born Again that he was given a report by a White House aide that clearly implicated the CIA in the whole Watergate scandal and showed an attempt to implicate him as the one responsible.

On April 7, 1974, the Watergate grand jury indicted Ed Reinecke, Republican lieutenant governor of California, on three charges of perjury before the Senate committee. On April 5, 1974, former Nixon appointments secretary Dwight Chapin was convicted of lying to the grand jury.

Nixon's position was becoming increasingly precarious, and the House of Representatives began formal investigations into the possible impeachment of the President. The committee's opening speeches included one by Texas Representative Barbara Jordan that catapulted her to instant nationwide fame. The House Judiciary Committee voted 27 to 11 on July 27, 1974 to recommend the first article of impeachment against the President: obstruction of justice. The second (abuse of power) and third (contempt of Congress) articles were passed on July 29, 1974 and July 30, 1974 respectively.

In August, the previously unknown tape from June 23, 1972 was released. Recorded only a few days after the break-in, it documented Nixon and Haldeman formulating a plan to block investigations by having the CIA falsely claim to the FBI that national security was involved. The tape was referred to as a "smoking gun." With few exceptions, Nixon's remaining supporters deserted him. The ten congressmen who had voted against all three articles of impeachment in the committee announced that they would all support impeachment when the vote was taken in the full House. It was now almost certain that Nixon would be impeached by the House and removed from office by the Senate.

Throughout this time, Nixon still denied any involvement in the ordeal. After being told by key Republican Senators that enough votes existed to convict and remove him, Nixon decided to resign. In a nationally televised address on the evening of August 8, 1974, he announced he would resign effective noon on August 9, 1974. Though Nixon's resignation obviated the pending impeachment, criminal prosecution was still a possibility. He was immediately succeeded by Gerald Ford, who on September 8, 1974, issued a pardon for Nixon, immunizing him from prosecution for any crimes he may have committed as President. Nixon proclaimed his innocence until his death, although his acceptance of the pardon was construed by many as an admission of guilt. He did state in his official response to the pardon that he "was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy."

Charles Colson pleaded guilty to charges concerning the Ellsberg case; in exchange, the indictment against him for covering up the activities of CRP was dropped, as it was against Strachan. The remaining five members of the Watergate Seven indicted in March went on trial in October 1974, and on January 1, 1975, all but Parkinson were found guilty. In 1976, the U.S. Court of Appeals ordered a new trial for Mardian; subsequently, all charges against him were dropped. Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell exhausted their appeals in 1977. Ehrlichman entered prison in 1976, followed by the other two in 1977.

Aftermath

Main article: Watergate babies

The effects of the Watergate scandal did not by any means end with the resignation of President Nixon and the imprisonment of some of his aides. The effect on the upcoming Senate election and House race only three months later, was enormous. Voters, disgusted by Nixon's actions, became thoroughly disillusioned with the Republican Party. In that election, the Democrats gained five seats in the Senate and a remarkable forty-nine in the House.

Unknowingly, the Watergate Scandal caused many changes in campaign financing. The scandal became a huge factor in the Freedom of Information Act in 1986, as well as laws requiring new financial disclosures by key government officials.

While not legally required, other types of personal disclosure, such as releasing recent income tax forms, became expected. Presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt had recorded many of their conversations, but after Watergate this practice purportedly ended.

The scandal led to an era in which the reporters and press became more interested in finding the dirt of the politicians and national figures. For instance, Wilbur Mills, a powerful congressman, was in a drunken driving accident. The incident, similar to others which the press had previously never mentioned, was reported, and Mills soon had to resign from his position as the chairman of the United States House Committee on Ways and Means. In addition to reporters becoming more aggressive in revealing the personal conduct of key politicians, they also became far more cynical in reporting on political issues.

Since Nixon and many senior officials involved in Watergate were lawyers, the scandal severely tarnished the public image of the legal profession.^[5] In order to defuse public demand for direct federal regulation of lawyers (as opposed to leaving it in the hands of state bar associations or supreme courts), the American Bar Association (ABA) launched two major reforms. First, the ABA decided that its existing Model Code of Professional Responsibility (promulgated 1969) was a failure, and replaced it with the Model Rules of Professional Conduct in 1983. The MRPC has been adopted in part or in whole by 44 states. Its preamble contains an emphatic reminder to young lawyers that the legal profession can remain self-governing only if lawyers behave properly. Second, the ABA promulgated a requirement that law students at ABA-approved law schools take a course in professional responsibility (which means they must study the MRPC). The requirement remains in effect.

The Watergate scandal left such an impression on the national and international consciousness that many scandals since then have been labeled with the suffix "-gate"—such as Koreagate, Contragate/Iran-gate, Whitewatergate, Travelgate, Fornigate/Monicagate/Zippergate and so on.

According to Thomas J. Johnson, professor of journalism at Southern Illinois University, During Nixon's final days, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger boldly predicted that history would remember him as a great president and that Watergate would be relegated to a minor footnote. ^[6]

Media and fiction

• Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford starred (as Bernstein and Woodward respectively) in the 1976 movie All the President's Men.
• Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams star in the 1999 film "Dick", a comedy parody based on the Watergate scandal with an alternative theory on who Deep Throat really is.

Songs and music

• The Lynyrd Skynyrd song Sweet Home Alabama (1974) has the words "Watergate does not bother me, does your conscience bother you?"
• The Gil Scott-Heron songs H2O Gate Watergate Blues (1976) and We Beg Your Pardon America (1977) are based on the Watergate Scandal.
• The song I'm So Bored with the USA (1977) by The Clash mentions the scandal with the lyrics "Never mind the stars and stripes. Let's print the Watergate tapes", one of the band's several criticisms of America found in the song.
• The Queen song Bicycle Race (1978) mentions the scandal: "I don't want to be a candidate/For Vietnam or Watergate/All I want to do is bicycle!"
• The Billy Joel song We Didn't Start the Fire (1989) speaks of the incident.
• The Manic Street Preachers song The Love of Richard Nixon (2004) describes many of Richard Nixon's achievements, and describes his resignation following the scandal as "death without assassination."
• Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote a song entitled "Postcards from Richard Nixon" (2006), which appears on John's album The Captain and The Kid, the sequel to Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy.
• Beastie Boys' hit "Sabotage" features the lyrics "I can't stand it, I know you planned it/I'm gonna set it straight, this Watergate."

In fiction

• The Nickelodeon Cartoon "Hey Arnold!" featured a full-length movie with the character "Helga" acting as "Deep Voice" to conceal her identity.
• The Disney Channel Cartoon "The Proud Family" featured a school presidential election for the main character "Penny" while her friend used espionage to obtain illegal footage of a running mate. When publicly showing this tape of a boy sucking his thumb, she used the pseudonym "Scratchy Throat."
• While driving through the rain in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Brad and Janet listen to Richard Nixon's resignation speech ("I am not a quitter!").
• In the first season of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman Perry White takes his top two reporters, Lois Lane and Clark Kent, to meet his number one source Sour Throat in a basement, and when Lois is shocked at what little he gives them, the source says, "What did you expect: follow the money".
• The Watergate scandal was an influence upon the television series The X-Files. The first season featured a character (played by Jerry Hardin) modeled after Deep Background/Deep Throat and referred to by both names. The second season also featured a similar character simply named X. The character named the smoking man was also inspired by Deep throat.
• In Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks's character, staying the night at the Watergate (on Nixon's suggestion), witnesses the break-in from his hotel room window. He innocently rings the front desk under the presumtion that the people with torches have had a power failure in their room and are looking for a circuit board. This inadvertently causes guard Frank Wills to investigate and catch the intruders.
• The movie Dick starring Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams is based around the story of Watergate.
• The episode Sideshow Bob Roberts of The Simpsons parodies the Watergate scandal and "All the President's Men" when Bart and Lisa start investigating Sideshow Bob's election fraud.
• Many Futurama episodes feature Nixon's head in a jar and portray Nixon as having been elected as President of Earth. One episode in particular parodies the Watergate scandal by having Fry, Leela, and Bender sneak into Nixon's Watergate Hotel room. (He is staying there because you get a discount if you've been there before.) Later, Bender tapes Nixon's evil plan to "go into people's houses at night and wreck up the place," and Nixon, knowing that the tape would ruin his chances, makes a trade for it.
• In the movie Point Break, a gang of bank robbers wear masks of former United States Presidents. While leaving a bank at the end of the first robbery, the one wearing a Nixon mask proclaims "I am not a crook".
• Missing White House Tapes was an album created by National Lampoon.
• In both the PlayStation videogame Metal Gear Solid and the GameCube remake Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, one of the characters who remains anonymous throughout most of the game uses the pseudonym "Deepthroat". He informs and warns the player at several intervals in the game. In the sequel, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, another character imitates the character from the first and uses the same handle, but later changes to "Mr. X", which may be a reference to the aforementioned X-Files tie-in.
• In an episode of Family Guy entitled Deep Throats, "Stewie" and "Brian" meet an informant (Kermit the frog) in an underground car park for details on a scandal involving the town's Mayor (Adam West). The informant, Kermit, uses the pseudonym "Deep Throat".
• In the Quantum Leap episode "Star-Crossed," Sam is a college professor in 1972 trying to reunite his future fiancée with her father, a general in the Pentagon. They visit the hotel where he is staying, but are forced to sneak in via an 'unlocked' side door after being refused entry. Upon investigation, a security guard finds that the door they had used had actually been taped to prevent from locking, and the audience soon discover the location to be the Watergate Hotel.
• In the second season episode "Negotiation" of NewsRadio, Matthew Brock jokingly inquires of Jimmy James as to whether or not he was really "Deep Throat". (Mr. James, incidentally, was portrayed as possessing top-secret government conspiracy information a number of times throughout the show's five-season run.) A season later, in the episode "President", Mr. James confirmed that he was, in fact, the informant previously known only as "Deep Throat".
• In Nickelodeon's "Fairly OddParents" movie entitled "Channel Chasers", Timmy's parents, Mom and Dad, encounter Vicky's sister Tootie, who hides her identity behind the pseudonym "Deep Toot", a play on the name "Deep Throat".
• In the movie Trading Places, Eddie Murphy poses as undercover operator Clarence Beeks to provide false financial information to the Duke brothers in a scene reminiscent of Bob Woodward's clandestine meetings with "Deep Throat".
• Celebrity impersonator Rich Little starred in 1978 in a one-man rendition of A Christmas Carol, where he personified the ghost of Jacob Marley as Richard Nixon who drags audio tape reels instead of chains and tells Ebenezer Scrooge that he would be visited by a ghost every 18½ minutes (i.e. the length of time erased off a key recording of Nixon subpoenaed by the House committee investigating Watergate).
• In the final episode of Rik Mayall's comedy show Believe Nothing, Mayall's character comes across a tape showing a conversation between Nixon and Kissinger during the Watergate scandal. This tape reveals that Nixon and Kissinger conspired to alter all the new digital watches being produced in a way that every hour was made 30 seconds longer in order to eliminate the incriminating 18 minutes of the watergate scandal. After 30 years of this, the world was several months out of sync with actual time, and thus global warming was a myth, as it feels like April in January, because it actually is April.
• Kurt Vonnegut's book "Jailbird" is centered on the life of "Walter F. Starbuck", a fictional member of the Watergate scandal.
• In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, a hotel named the "Gatewater Hotel" (which is a play on the Watergate Hotel) is a location in Case 2. It becomes famous after the case has ended. And in the sequel, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All, an extension of the hotel, the "Gatewater Imperial Hotel", becomes the scene of a murder in Case 4.
• In an episode of Cyberchase explaining scales on graphs, one of hacker's sidekicks gives clues and is assigned the pseudonym of "Squeaky Throat".
• David Frye's "Richard Nixon, A Fantasy". David Frye convincingly impersonates many officials/celebraties of the Watergate era in this Richard Nixon nightmare where he gets convicted, sentenced, and executed.

Alternate theories

Further information: Kennedy assassination theories

Numerous theories have persisted in claiming deeper significance to the Watergate scandal than that commonly acknowledged by media and historians. In the book The Ends of Power, President Richard Nixon's chief of staff Haldeman claimed that the term 'Bay of Pigs' was used by Nixon as a coded reference to the Kennedy Assassination in a White House conversation recorded on the Watergate tapes.^[7] This same theory was later referred to in the Oliver Stone Nixon biopic.

An alternate theory to the mainstream media account of the Watergate scandal can be found in Silent Coup, a 1991 book by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin. The two authors believe that it was Nixon's silent war with the Pentagon that ultimately led to his removal from office. The book was widely criticized for leaps of logic and weak evidence, and its theories enjoy little support from either professional historians or the general public.

Another theory to the resignation of Nixon is that he was secretly promised a pardon by Ford. In order to save his own skin, Nixon resigned from the Presidency in return for a pardon.

Note on "-gate"

The suffix "-gate" has been used to indicate a "political scandal" - often, in fact, trivial, and rarely reaching the criminality or extent of the original incident.

Further reading

• Michael Schudson, Watergate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past (New York, 1992)
• Woodward and Bernstein wrote a best-selling book based on their experiences titled All the President's Men, published in 1974.

References

See also

• List of scandals with "-gate" suffix
• Deep Throat
• Watergate Babies
• E. Howard Hunt
• Charles W. Colson
• Nixon's Enemies List
• Pentagon Papers
• Daniel Ellsberg
• Richard Helms

External links

• White House tape transcripts
• The White House tapes themselves
• Washington Post Watergate Archive
• Washington Post Watergate Tape Listening Guide
• BBC News reports on Watergate
• Watergate Timeline
• Watergate Key Players
• Extensive set of online Watergate
• Biography of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

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References

• Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Watergate scandal" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal January 4, 2004, updated from Wikipedia July 18, 2007