On June 17, 1972 the democratic headquarters in the Watergate Hotel was broken into. Five men has taped over a few locks, leaving the doors open. A security guard noticed and called the police. Five men were arrested inside and charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communication. The five men were Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Baker, James W McCord Jr., Eugenio Martinez, and Frank Sturgis. On September 15 a grand jury indicted them and two other men for conspiracy, burglary, and violation of federal wiretapping laws. The men were all investigated and found to have ties to the 1972 Committee to Re-elect the President. The judge suspected a conspiracy theory involving government officials.
The investigation began immediately after the arrest and uncovered some disturbing evidence. They found one of the burglars was a Republican Party security aide. Nixon’s re-election campaign manager John Mitchell denied involvement in or knowledge of the burglaries. Later, a $ 25,000 cashier’s check identifying the Nixon re-election campaign was found in the bank account of a burglar. Further investigation into the accounts revealed thousands more from the Nixon campaign. They found that John Mitchell, while Attorney General, had a secret Republican account used to fund Democratic intelligence gathering. On October 10 the FBI announced that Watergate was part of a series of political spying and sabotage ordered by the heads of the campaign. Even so, Nixon was re-elected that year in a huge landslide.
Media began putting Watergate in the spotlight. One of the papers covering the stories was the Post. The relied mostly on anonymous information that uncovered knowledge of the break ins and attempted cover ups by the FBI, CIA, and the White House. One of the tipsters was nicknamed Deep Throat and later found to be former Deputy Director of the FBI William Mark Felt SR. The investigations grew broader as more information continued to surface about the event and its attempted cover ups. On April 30, 1973 Nixon had to ask H R Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, two very influential aides, to resign. Both were indicted and went to prison. He also fired White House Counsel John Dean who was eventually the key witness against Nixon. He appointed a new attorney general, Elliot Richardson, that same day.
The former aides to the President, the “Watergate seven” were all indicted for conspiracy to hinder the investigation. Nixon was secretly named an unindicted co-conspirator. Some plead guilty to their charges. The House of Representatives began formal investigation into the possible impeachment of the president. Nixon denied involvement the whole time. After being told that enough votes existed to remove him from office, he decided to resign. He made his resignation address on August 8, 1974. Gerald Ford, his VP, pardoned Nixon from any criminal prosecution from crimes he did or may have committed during his presidency.
I feel that it is unfortunate that this happened. It was definitely wrong that they broke into the Democratic Headquarters, but whether they acted on their own or under Nixon is up for discussion. I’m not sure I completely believe that Nixon was behind all of this. He had to step down whether guilty or not because if he didn’t he would have been impeached, causing a lot of embarrassment.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal#Investigation
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Watergate
Comments