Watergate

Watergate, a political espionage and cover‐up case that began during the 1972 presidential campaign and eventually caused President Richard M Nixon's resignation.The name derives from the Washington, D.C., residential and office complex that was the site of the break‐in that triggered the entire episode.

Nixon Administration Illegalities.

The constitutional crisis known as “Watergate” resulted from President Nixon's obsession with his political “enemies” and his resolve to win reelection by the largest possible margin. In 1970, amid massive protests against the Vietnam War, Nixon authorized extensive surveillance of antiwar groups by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Security Agency, and even the Internal Revenue Service. In 1971, Nixon staff members recruited a team of ex‐FBI and CIA sleuths, nicknamed “the Plumbers,” to trace the leaks that had led to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, a hoard of government documents detailing Vietnam War planning. Among other illegal activities, the Plumbers stole the confidential psychiatric records of Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon staff member who had released the documents, in an effort to discredit him.

As a natural extension of these tactics, Nixon's reelection campaign manager (and head of “CREEP,” the Committee to Re‐Elect the President), the former attorney general John Mitchell, in March 1972 approved “Operation Gemstone,” a blueprint for “dirty tricks” aimed at undermining potential Democratic nominees. The break‐in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in the Watergate building on the night of 17 June 1972 was part of Gemstone; its objective was to plant wiretaps on DNC telephones. Those who staged the break‐in made crucial mistakes, however, and were arrested by municipal police. Apprehended were four Cuban nationals and a former CIA employee, James McCord, whose address book implicated G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt of the Plumbers' unit.

Journalistic, Judicial, and Legislative Inquiries.

Although Democratic nominee George McGovern tried to make the break‐in a campaign issue, the media dismissed it as a mere “caper,” and it did not impede Nixon's landslide victory in November. Two Washington Post reporters, Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein, continued to probe the case, however. They later revealed that an unidentified source they labeled “Deep Throat” told them early on that Mitchell and top White House aides John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman were involved not only in the break‐in but in a subsequent cover‐up operation as well. In January 1973, Federal District Judge John Sirica convicted the four Cuban defendants, along with McCord and White House operatives Liddy and Hunt, and ominously suggested that Congress investigate further. In fact, McCord had revealed to Sirica details of the conspiracy, including large payoffs from White House sources to the Watergate defendants to buy their silence. In February, the Senate established the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, whose charge included investigation of the break‐in. Democrat Sam Ervin of North Carolina was appointed chair, with Republican Minority Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee serving as vice chair.

The administration's denials of any involvement began to unravel in March, when White House Counsel John Dean III testified in court that Ehrlichman and Haldeman, and perhaps Nixon himself, had ordered a cover‐up of the White House connection with the break‐in. In late April, Nixon announced the resignations of Ehrlichman, Haldeman, and Dean, further fanning public suspicions. Within weeks, the president yielded to pressures for a neutral investigator to conduct a nonpolitical inquiry, permitting the Justice Department to appoint the Harvard law professor Archibald Cox as special prosecutor. Cox launched his investigation just as the Senate committee's hearing got under way in mid‐May. The “Watergate hearings,” televised over fifty‐three days extending into November, attracted enormous public and media attention.

A major breakthrough in the Senate investigation occurred on 16 July 1973, when White House assistant Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of a system for tape‐recording conversation in the president's Oval Office. Both Cox and the Senate committee pressed Nixon to release tapes of several key conversations, but he refused, invoking “executive privilege.” On 20 October 1973, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliott Richardson to fire Cox. After Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus both refused the order and resigned, Solicitor General Robert Bork ousted Cox. This episode, dubbed the “Saturday Night Massacre,” escalated the worsening crisis. In August and October, respectively, CREEP official Jeb Magruder and John Dean had pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and other charges. The resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew on 10 October (after pleading no contest to tax evasion charges unrelated to Watergate) added to the sense of constitutional crisis. The Senate committee concluded its hearings in November (though its final report did not appear until mid‐1974), but the drama continued in the courts.

Impeachment Hearings, Nixon's Resignation, and Aftereffects.

Throughout early 1974, Nixon continued to resist subpoenas for the tapes. In March, a federal grand jury indicted seven more administration figures for conspiracy, obstruction of justice, perjury, and other charges. Those indicted included Mitchell, Ehrlichman, Haldeman, and White House Special Counsel Charles Colson, with the president named an “unindicted co‐conspirator.” Nixon agreed in late April to release edited transcripts, but his strategy backfired as even the sanitized transcripts increased public outrage. On 24 July 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Nixon must release the relevant tapes. The tapes revealed Nixon's intimate involvement in all phases of the cover‐up and provided the “smoking gun” that investigators had been seeking. The Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives had already commenced impeachment hearings. After the panel voted positively on four articles, impeachment was inevitable and a Senate vote for the president's removal seemed likely. Facing defeat, Nixon resigned on 9 August 1974; he was succeeded by Gerald Ford, Agnew's replacement as vice president. Ford's pardon in September saved the former president from prosecution but also contributed to Ford's defeat in the 1976 election.

Except for Nixon himself, nearly all the major figures implicated in the break‐in and cover‐up eventually served prison sentences. Mitchell, Ehrlichman, and Haldeman each served terms of eighteen months or more—among the longest of any of the conspirators. Most of the highest‐profile figures in the case, however, later earned substantial royalties from books about their involvement and commanded large fees on the lecture circuit. Watergate‐related legal skirmishes continued for more than two decades, as Nixon and the executors of his estate battled to prevent public release of all the White House tapes.

Conventional wisdom both at the time and later held that the outcome of Watergate proved that the “system works.” Yet, had it not been for the persistence of Woodward and Bernstein, the determination of Judge Sirica, and the disclosure of the White House tapes, attempts to conceal official involvement in the break‐in might have gone undetected. Historians continue to debate whether the episode was a bizarre aberration or a logical outgrowth of the massive expansion of presidential power and the official preoccupation with secrecy and “national security” in Cold War America. The institutional impacts of the crisis—in addition to Nixon's resignation—were obvious and significant: The War Powers Act (1973), the Federal Election Campaign Amendments (1974), the Ethics in Government Act (1978), and the Presidential Records Act (1978) all grew directly out of the unraveling of the Watergate conspiracy.
See also Democratic Party; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Federal Government, Judicial Branch; Republican Party.

Bibliography

J. Anthony Lukas , Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years, 1976.
Bob Woodward and and Carl Bernstein , The Final Days, 1976.
Stanley Kutler , The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon, 1990.
Michael Schudson , Watergate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past, 1992.
Barry Sussman , The Great Cover‐Up: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate, 1992.
Fred Emery , Watergate: The Corruption and Fall of Richard Nixon, 1994.

Gary W. Reichard