Watergate Summary: The Biggest Political Corruption Scandal in American History

The year is 1972. The man in charge of our country is a man named Richard Milhous Nixon. The events that unfold over the next 2 years will go down as a first in American History. The end result is the President of the United States of America, as Rodger Streitmatter says is “forced to his knees” In other words, he resigned from office. The man we trusted to run our country, the man we the people voted into office, had done us wrong. As the events are revealed is show another side of President Nixon who thought only of himself. He used the power the citizens of the United States gave him to his advantage. By the year 1974, the trust was gone. 

The events all started on June 17^th, 1972 in our nation capital. The Washington Police caught 5 men in suits wearing surgical gloves at the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate office complex. These men were caught trying to place listening devices in the offices. The supplies that the burglars were caught with included: lock picks, $2300.00 in cash all in $100 bills, walkie talkies, a device to listen to police calls, film, 2 cameras and tear gas guns. To me, smells like trouble. The Washington Post, the leading newspaper in Washington ran the burglary story on the front page. The story hinted that maybe this was more than a burglary story. Who knew this was just the tip of the iceberg. Two days after the story ran in the Post, White House Press secretary Ron Ziegler refused to comment and said that :certain elements” may stretch this beyond what it really is. At this time the Post gave the Watergate story to two reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. From the beginning Woodward being the rookie journalist knew he had lots of work ahead of him. But he never would have guessed that his would be the turning point in his career. This turned out to be one of the biggest Presidential stories in American History. This also made him one of the leading journalists in his field. The two reporters were nicknamed “Woodstein”. The evidence was starting come out. First there was information about E. Howard Hunt; he refused to make any comments about his connection to the White House. In August 1972, Woodstein found out the burglars had been paid with Nixon funds. In October of the same year Woodstein broke the story that the Nixon re-election strategy was based on dirty tricks against the Democratic Presidential candidates. Also in October it was reported that both the Watergate burglaries and the campaign of political sabotage were financed by a secret fund controlled by the president’s closest aides. All this reporting in the 4 months following the burglaries proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt there was a lot more than what the White house had coined a “3^rd rate burglary” Woodstein had uncovered the largest abuse of power in the history of the presidency.

The now famous reporters had done everything they could to get evidence to back there story on the Watergate scandal. They begged, knocked on endless doors, pleaded, and even lied to get the information they needed to verify there stories. They didn’t rely on a whistleblower but they would get the biggest break in the scandal which would be dubbed “Deep Throat”. This was a reference to a popular pornographic movie at the time. It wasn’t until 2005 that the source behind the name was revealed. The person behind the infamous name was none other then the #2 man at the head of the FBI at the time, W. Mark Felt. He had verified many of the facts at the time of the scandal. All of these this had to be verified before Woodstein had reported them in the Post. Basically, the Washington Post had run with the stories of the Watergate scandal alone.

A lot of the other newspapers, television stations, news agencies accused the Post of overplaying the story. The Post pretty much had been alone. Even the top dogs, The New York Times, the AP and UPI hadn’t reported on the scandal. After months of the investigation after the burglaries the White House stood its ground. They admitted nothing, downplayed everything. Nixon aides cut off access to administration sources and threatened to cancel the licenses of 2 Florida TV stations the Post had owned. The abuse of power to starting to be evident, The attacks by the Post intensified they reported that the White House Chief of Staff, Haldeman had participated in the political corruption, Nixon’s target continued to be the TV stations in Florida. According to Oval Office tape recordings the president instructed aides to have political supporters in Jacksonville and Miami try to block the license renewals of the two stations, claiming they were not providing the community service that the FCC required. Nixon apparently told Haldeman that “The Post is going to have problems with this one” The two station ultimately had there licenses renewed only after spending a lot of time and money. After a year of the White House campaign against the Post the Post started feeling the strain in its pockets. The stock of the Post was starting to plummet from $38 to $21 per share and the Post couldn’t prove that it was Nixon and his friends that were putting the pressure on Wall Street. Of course Nixon and the White House had denied everything.

Although the Washington Post deserves most of the credit, the Fourth Estate alone didn’t expose the Watergate scandal. The corruption was of such monumental proportions that it took all arms of the government to expose the President and all his cohorts. The judicial branch entered when they indicted the 5 burglars and there 2 bosses. E. Howard hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. In January 1973, Judge Sirica announced he wasn’t satisfied with the 7 indictments and that they didn’t tell the complete story. One of the burglars James McCord then broke his silence in exchange for a lighter sentence. His testimony confirmed most of the reporting of Woodstein. A federal grand jury then indicted 3 of Nixon’s closest aides, John Mitchell, Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. Sirica demanded to listen to Nixon’s secret Oval Office tape recordings. The legislative branch voted to establish a committee to investigate charges of corruption in the 1972 Presidential election. The legislative branch brought everything to a climax when the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted 3 articles of impeachment in July 1974, charging President Nixon of obstruction of justice, abuse of power and contempt of Congress for defying committee subpoenas. In May 1973 Attorney General Richardson appointed Archibald Cox to investigate Watergate. Judge Sirica wanted to hear the White House tapes, Nixon refused to release them. An appeals court ruled in Sirica favor and Cox said that he would continue to seek the tapes from the White House. Nixon told Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused he later resigned from office. After numerous attempts to fire Cox he was eventually fired. In the end, Judge Sirica found out that 18 ½ minutes of the Oval Office tapes were erased. The gap occurred on June 20^th 1972, 3 days after the break-ins. Critics began to speculate that the President knew about the break ins and he was trying to destroy the evidence proving he knew about everything from the start.

So before the impeachment process could be completed on August 9^th 1974 President Richard Milhous Nixon resigned from office. To this day he is the only President to resign. So as we can see from the results of one man’s reporting on a story in the nations capital we have uncovered how the power of the press works.