Richard nixon biography watergate scandal a push

Early s political scandal in the US

"Watergate" redirects here. For the buildings, see Watergate complex.

Richard Nixon was a Republican congressman who served as vice president under Dwight D. Nixon ran for president in but lost to charismatic Massachusetts Senator John F. Undeterred, Nixon returned to the race eight years later and won the Colorless House by a solid margin. Inhe resigned rather than be impeached for covering up illegal activities of party members in the Watergate affair.

For other uses, see Watergate (disambiguation).

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of the Watergate scandal.

The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon which began in and ultimately led to Nixon's resignation in It revolved around members of a group associated with Nixon's re-election campaign breaking into and planting listening devices in the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D.C., on June 17, , and Nixon's later attempts to hide his administration's involvement.

Following the arrest of the burglars, both the urge and the Department of Justice connected the money found on those involved to the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP), the fundraising arm of Nixon's campaign.^[1][2]Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, journalists from The Washington Post, pursued leads provided by a source they called "Deep Throat" (later identified as Mark Felt, associate director of the FBI) and uncovered a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage directed by Colorless House officials and illegally funded by donor contributions.

Nixon dismissed the accusations as political smears, and he won the election in a landslide in November. Further investigation and revelations from the burglars' trial led the Senate to establish a particular Watergate Committee and the Residence of Representatives to grant its Judiciary Committee expanded authority in February ^[3][4] The burglars received lengthy prison sentences that they were told would be reduced if they co-operated, which began a flood of testimony from witnesses.

In April, Nixon appeared on television to deny wrongdoing on his part and to announce the resignation of his aides. After it was revealed that Nixon had installed a voice-activated taping system in the Oval Office, his administration refused to grant investigators access to the tapes, leading to a constitutional crisis.^[5] The televised Senate Watergate hearings by this show had garnered nationwide attention and public interest.^[6]

Attorney General Elliot Richardson appointed Archibald Cox as a special prosecutor for Watergate in May.

Cox obtained a subpoena for the tapes, but Nixon continued to resist. In the "Saturday Night Massacre" in October, Nixon ordered Richardson to flame Cox, after which Richardson resigned, as did his deputy William Ruckelshaus; Solicitor General Robert Bork carried out the order.

The incident bolstered a growing widespread belief that Nixon had something to hide, but he continued to defend his innocence and said he was "not a crook". In April , Cox's replacement Leon Jaworski issued a subpoena for the tapes again, but Nixon only released edited transcripts of them.

In July, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to release the tapes, and the House Judiciary Committee recommended that he be impeached for obstructing justice, abuse of might, and contempt of Congress. In one of the tapes, later known as "the smoking gun", he ordered aides to narrate the FBI to halt its investigation.

On the verge of being impeached, Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9, , becoming the only U.S. president to do so. In all 48 people were found ashamed of Watergate-related crimes, but Nixon was pardoned by his vice president and successor Gerald Ford on September 8.

Public response to the Watergate disclosures had electoral ramifications: the Republican Party lost four seats in the Senate and 48 seats in the House at the mid-term elections, and Ford's pardon of Nixon is widely agreed to have contributed to his election defeat in A word merged with the suffix "-gate" has become widely used to call scandals, even outside the U.S.,^[7][8][9] and especially in politics.^[10][11]

Wiretapping of the Democratic Party's headquarters

On January 27, , G.

Gordon Liddy, Finance Counsel for the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP) and former aide to John Ehrlichman, presented a campaign intelligence plan to CRP's acting chairman Jeb Stuart Magruder, Attorney General John Mitchell, and Presidential Counsel John Dean.

The plot involved extensive illegal activities against the Democratic Party. According to Dean, this marked "the opening scene of the worst political scandal of the twentieth century and the beginning of the end of the Nixon presidency".^[12]:&#;p.

xvii&#;

Mitchell viewed the design as unrealistic. Two months later, Mitchell approved a reduced version of the plan, which included burglarizing the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate Complex in Washington, D.C.

to photograph campaign documents and install listening devices in telephones. Liddy has since insisted that he was duped by both Dean and at least two of his subordinates. This included former CIA officers E. Howard Chase and James McCord, the latter of whom was serving as then-CRP Security Coordinator after John Mitchell resigned as attorney general to become the CRP chairman.^[13][14]

In May, McCord assigned former FBI agent Alfred C.

Baldwin III to carry out the wiretapping and monitor the telephone conversations afterward.^[15]

On May 11, McCord arranged for Baldwin, whom investigative whistleblower Jim Hougan described as "somehow special and perhaps well acknowledged to McCord", to stay at the Howard Johnson's motel across the street from the Watergate complex.^[16] Room was booked in the name of McCord's company.^[16] At the behest of Liddy and Hunt, McCord and his team of burglars prepared for their first Watergate break-in, which began on May ^[17]

Two phones inside the DNC headquarters offices were said to have been wiretapped.^[18] One was Robert Spencer Oliver's phone.

At the period, Oliver was working as the executive director of the Association of State Democratic Chairmen. The other phone belonged to DNC chairman Larry O'Brien. The FBI found no evidence that O'Brien's phone was bugged;^[19] however, it was determined that an powerful listening device was installed in Oliver's phone.

While successful with installing the listening devices, the committee agents soon determined that they needed repairs. They plotted a second "burglary" to get care of the situation.^[18]

Sometime after midnight on Saturday, June 17, , Watergate Complex security guard Frank Wills noticed tape covering the latches on some of the complex's doors leading from the underground parking garage to several offices, which allowed the doors to close but wait unlocked.

He removed the tape, believing it was not in itself suspicious. When he returned a short time later and discovered that someone had re-taped the locks, he called the police.^[20][21]

Police dispatched an unmarked police car with three plainclothes officers, Sgt.

Paul W. Leeper, Officer John B. Barrett, and Officer Carl M. Shoffler, who were working the overnight shift; they were often referred to as the "bum squad" because they often dressed undercover as hippies and were on the lookout for drug deals and other street crimes.

Alfred Baldwin, on "spotter" duty at the Howard Johnson's hotel across the road, was distracted watching the clip Attack of the Puppet People on TV and did not observe the arrival of the police car in front of the Watergate building, nor did he see the plainclothes officers investigating the DNC's sixth floor suite of 29 offices.

By the time Baldwin finally noticed unusual activity on the sixth floor and radioed the burglars, it was already too late.^[21]

The police apprehended five men, later identified as Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker, James McCord, Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis.^[13] They were criminally charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications.

The Washington Post reported the day after the burglary that, "police initiate lock-picks and door jimmies, almost $2, in cash, most of it in $ bills with the serial numbers in sequence a shortwave receiver that could pick up police calls, 40 rolls of unexposed film, two millimeter cameras and three pen-sized tear gas guns".^[22] The Share would later report that the actual amount of cash was $5,^[23]

The following morning, Sunday, June 18, G.

Gordon Liddy called Jeb Magruder in Los Angeles and informed him that "the four men arrested with McCord were Cuban freedom fighters, whom Howard Hunt recruited". Initially, Nixon's organization and the White Home quickly went to work to cover up the crime and any evidence that might possess damaged the president and his reelection.^[24]

On September 15, , a grand jury indicted the five office burglars, as well as Hunt and Liddy,^[25] for conspiracy, burglary, and violation of federal wiretapping laws.

The burglars were tried by a jury, with Judge John Sirica officiating, and pled guilty or were convicted on January 30, ^[26]

Initial cover-up

Within hours of the burglars' arrests, the FBI discovered E.

Howard Hunt's name in Barker and Martínez's address books. Nixon administration officials were concerned because Pursue and Liddy were also committed in a separate secret exercise known as the "White Property Plumbers", which was established to stop security "leaks" and explore other sensitive security matters.

Dean later testified that top Nixon aide John Ehrlichman ordered him to "deep six" the contents of Howard Hunt's White Property safe. Ehrlichman subsequently denied this. In the end, Dean and L. Patrick Gray, the FBI's acting director, (in separate operations) destroyed the evidence from Hunt's safe.

Nixon's own reaction to the break-in, at least initially, was one of skepticism. Watergate prosecutor James Neal was sure that Nixon had not established in advance of the break-in. As evidence, he cited a conversation taped on June 23 between the President and his chief of staff, H.

R. Haldeman, in which Nixon asked, "Who was the asshole that did that?"^[27] However, Nixon subsequently ordered Haldeman to have the CIA block the FBI's research into the source of the funding for the burglary.^[28]

A rare days later, Nixon's press secretary, Ron Ziegler, described the event as "a third-rate burglary attempt".

On August 29, at a news conference, Nixon stated that Dean had conducted a thorough investigation of the incident, when Dean had actually not conducted any investigations at all. Nixon furthermore said, "I can speak categorically that&#; no one in the White House staff, no one in this Administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident." On September 15, Nixon congratulated Dean, saying, "The way you've handled it, it seems to me, has been very skillful, because you—putting your fingers in the dikes every time that leaks possess sprung here and sprung there."^[13]

Kidnapping of Martha Mitchell

Main article: Martha Mitchell §&#;June kidnapping, aftermath and vindication

Martha Mitchell was the wife of Nixon's Attorney General, John N.

Mitchell, who had recently resigned his role so that he could become campaign manager for Nixon's Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP). John Mitchell was aware that Martha knew McCord, one of the Watergate burglars who had been arrested, and that upon finding out, she was likely to speak to the media.

In his opinion, her knowing McCord was likely to link the Watergate burglary to Nixon. John Mitchell instructed guards in her security detail not to let her contact the media.^[29]

In June , during a device call with United Press International reporter Helen Thomas, Martha Mitchell informed Thomas that she was leaving her husband until he resigned from the CRP.^[30] The phone call ended abruptly.

A few days later, Marcia Kramer, a veteran crime reporter of the New York Daily News, tracked Mitchell to the Westchester Country Club in Rye, Recent York, and described Mitchell as "a beaten woman" with apparent bruises.^[31] Mitchell reported that, during the week following the Watergate burglary, she had been held captive in a hotel in California, and that security guard Steve King ended her phone to Thomas by pulling the phone cord from the wall.^[31][30] Mitchell made several attempts to escape via the balcony, but was physically accosted, injured, and forcefully sedated by a psychiatrist.^[32][33] Following conviction for his role in the Watergate burglary, in February , McCord admitted that Mitchell had been "basically kidnapped", and corroborated her reports of the event.^[34]

Money trail

On June 19, , the press reported that one of the Watergate burglars was a Republican Party security aide.^[35] Former attorney general John Mitchell, who was then the head of the CRP, denied any involvement with the Watergate break-in.

He also disavowed any knowledge whatsoever of the five burglars.^[36][37] On August 1, a $25, (approximately $, in dollars) cashier's check was found to have been deposited in the US and Mexican bank accounts of one of the Watergate burglars, Bernard Barker.

Made out to the finance committee of the Committee to Reelect the President, the check was a campaign donation by Kenneth H. Dahlberg. This money (and several other checks which had been lawfully donated to the CRP) had been directly used to finance the burglary and wiretapping expenses, including hardware and supplies.

Barker's multiple national and international businesses all had separate bank accounts, which he was initiate to have attempted to apply to disguise the true start of the money being paid to the burglars. The donor's checks demonstrated the burglars' straightforward link to the finance committee of the CRP.

Donations totaling $86, ($, today) were made by individuals who believed they were making private donations by certified and cashier's checks for the president's re-election. Investigators' examination of the bank records of a Miami company run by Watergate burglar Barker revealed an account controlled by him personally had deposited a check and then transferred it through the Federal Reserve Check Clearing System.

The investigation by the FBI, which cleared Barker's bank of fiduciary malfeasance, led to the direct implication of members of the CRP, to whom the checks had been delivered. Those individuals were the committee bookkeeper and its treasurer, Hugh Sloan.

As a private organization, the committee followed the normal business practice in allowing only duly authorized individuals to accept and endorse checks on behalf of the committee. No financial institution could accept or process a check on behalf of the committee unless a duly authorized individual endorsed it.

The checks deposited into Barker's bank account were endorsed by Committee treasurer Hugh Sloan, who was authorized by the finance committee. However, once Sloan had endorsed a check made payable to the committee, he had a legal and fiduciary responsibility to watch that the check was deposited only into the accounts named on the check.

Sloan failed to do that. When confronted with the potential charge of federal bank fraud, he revealed that committee deputy director Jeb Magruder and finance director Maurice Stans had directed him to give the money to G. Gordon Liddy.

Liddy, in rotate, gave the money to Barker and attempted to hide its origin. Barker tried to disguise the funds by depositing them into accounts in banks outside of the United States. Unbeknownst to Barker, Liddy, and Sloan, the complete record of all such transactions was held for roughly six months.

Barker's operate of foreign banks in April and May to deposit checks and withdraw the funds via cashier's checks and money orders, resulted in the banks keeping the entire transaction records until October and November

All five Watergate burglars were directly or indirectly tied to the CRP, thus causing Judge Sirica to suspect a conspiracy involving higher-echelon government officials.^[38]

On September 29, , the press reported that John Mitchell, while serving as attorney general, controlled a secret Republican fund used to finance intelligence-gathering against the Democrats.

On October 10, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post reported that the FBI had determined that the Watergate break-in was part of a large campaign of political spying and sabotage on behalf of the Nixon re-election committee.

The Watergate scandal began early in the morning of June 17,when several burglars were arrested in the office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate complex of buildings in Washington, D. Nixon took aggressive steps to cover up the crimes, but when Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein revealed his role in the conspiracy, Nixon resigned on August 9, The Watergate scandal changed American politics forever, leading many Americans to question their leaders and think more critically about the presidency. They later plead guilty to conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping.

Despite these revelations, Nixon's campaign was never seriously jeopardized; on November 7, the President was re-elected in one of the biggest landslides in American political history.

Role of the media

The connection between the break-in and the re-election committee was highlighted by media coverage—in particular, investigative coverage by The Washington Post, Time, and The Brand-new York Times.

The coverage dramatically increased publicity and consequent political and legal repercussions. Relying heavily upon anonymous sources, Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered information suggesting that learning of the break-in, and shots to cover it up, led deeply into the upper reaches of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and the White Dwelling.

Woodward and Bernstein interviewed Judy Hoback Miller, the bookkeeper for Nixon's re-election campaign, who revealed to them information about the mishandling of funds and records being destroyed.^[39][1]

Chief among the Post's anonymous sources was an individual whom Woodward and Bernstein had nicknamed Deep Throat; 33 years later, in , the tipster was identified as Mark Felt, deputy director of the FBI during that period of the s, something Woodward later confirmed.

Felt met secretly with Woodward several times, telling him of Howard Hunt's involvement with the Watergate break-in, and that the White House staff regarded the stakes in Watergate as extremely high. Felt warned Woodward that the FBI wanted to perceive where he and other reporters were getting their information, as they were uncovering a wider web of crimes than the FBI first disclosed.

All the secret meetings between Woodward and Felt took place at an underground parking garage in Rosslyn over a period from June to January Prior to resigning from the FBI on June 22, , Felt also anonymously planted leaks about Watergate with Time magazine, The Washington Daily News and other publications.^[1][40]

During this early period, most of the media failed to understand the full implications of the scandal, and concentrated reporting on other topics related to the presidential election.^[41] Most outlets ignored or downplayed Woodward and Bernstein's scoops; the crosstown Washington Star-News and the Los Angeles Times even ran stories incorrectly discrediting the Post's articles.

After the Post revealed that H.R. Haldeman had made payments from the private fund, newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and The Philadelphia Inquirer failed to publish the data, but did publish the Colorless House's denial of the story the following day.^[42] The Colorless House also sought to isolate the Post's coverage by tirelessly attacking that newspaper while weakening to criticize other damaging stories about the scandal from the New York Times and Time magazine.^[42][1]

After it was learned that one of the convicted burglars had written to Judge Sirica alleging a high-level cover-up, the media shifted its focus.

Time magazine described Nixon as undergoing "daily hell and very minute trust".

The website is no longer updated and links to external websites and some internal pages may not work. Richard Nixon was elected the 37th President of the United States after previously serving as a U. Representative and a U. Senator from California.

The distrust between the press and the Nixon administration was mutual and greater than usual due to lingering dissatisfaction with events from the Vietnam War. At the same time, public distrust of the media was polled at more than 40%.^[41]

Nixon and uppermost administration officials discussed using government agencies to "get" (or retaliate against) those they perceived as hostile media organizations.^[41] Such behavior had been taken before.

At the request of Nixon's Alabaster House in , the FBI tapped the phones of five reporters. In , the Ivory House requested an audit of the tax return of the editor of Newsday, after he wrote a series of articles about the financial dealings of Charles "Bebe" Rebozo, a ally of Nixon.^[43]

The administration and its supporters accused the media of making "wild accusations", putting too much emphasis on the story and of having a liberal bias against the administration.^[1][41] Nixon said in a May interview with supporter Baruch Korff that if he had followed the liberal policies that he reflection the media preferred, "Watergate would have been a blip."^[44] The media noted that most of the reporting turned out to be accurate; the competitive character of the media guaranteed widespread coverage of the far-reaching political scandal.^[41]

Scandal escalates

Rather than ending with the conviction and sentencing to prison of the five Watergate burglars on January 30, , the investigation into the break-in and the Nixon Administration's involvement grew broader.

"Nixon's conversations in late March and all of April revealed that not only did he know he needed to remove Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Dean to gain distance from them, but he had to do so in a way that was least likely to incriminate him and his presidency. Nixon created a new conspiracy—to effect a cover-up of the cover-up—which began in late Protest and became fully formed in May and June , operating until his presidency ended on August 9, "^[12]:&#;p.

&#; On March 23, , Judge Sirica read the court a letter from Watergate burglar James McCord, who alleged that perjury had been committed in the Watergate trial, and defendants had been pressured to remain silent. In an attempt to make them talk, Sirica gave Hunt and two burglars provisional sentences of up to 40 years.

Urged by Nixon, on March 28, aide John Ehrlichman told Attorney General Richard Kleindienst that nobody in the White House had had prior knowledge of the burglary. On April 13, Magruder told U.S. attorneys that he had perjured himself during the burglars' trial, and implicated John Dean and John Mitchell.^[13]

John Dean believed that he, Mitchell, Ehrlichman, and Haldeman could go to the prosecutors, tell the facts, and save the presidency.

Dean wanted to protect the president and have his four closest men take the fall for telling the truth. During the critical meeting between Dean and Nixon on April 15, , Dean was totally unaware of the president's depth of information and involvement in the Watergate cover-up.

It was during this meeting that Dean felt that he was being recorded. He wondered if this was due to the way Nixon was speaking, as if he were trying to prod attendees' recollections of earlier conversations about fundraising.

Dean mentioned this observation while testifying to the Senate Committee on Watergate, exposing the thread of what were taped conversations that would unravel the fabric of the conspiracy.^{[12]:&#;pp. –&#;}

Two days later, Dean told Nixon that he had been cooperating with the U.S.

attorneys. On that same day, U.S. attorneys told Nixon that Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean, and other White House officials were implicated in the cover-up.^[13][45][46]

On April 30, Nixon asked for the resignation of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, two of his most influential aides.

They were both later indicted, convicted, and ultimately sentenced to prison. He asked for the resignation of Attorney General Kleindienst, to ensure no one could claim that his innocent friendship with Haldeman and Ehrlichman could be construed as a conflict.

He fired Alabaster House Counsel John Dean, who went on to testify before the Senate Watergate Committee and said that he believed and suspected the conversations in the Oval Office were being taped. This information became the bombshell that helped force Richard Nixon to resign rather than be impeached.^[12]:&#;pp.

–&#;

Writing from prison for New West and New York magazines in , Ehrlichman claimed Nixon had offered him a large sum of money, which he declined.^[47]

The President announced the resignations in an address to the American people:

Today, in one of the most tough decisions of my Presidency, I accepted the resignations of two of my closest associates in the White House, Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, two of the finest public servants it has been my privilege to perceive .

The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon which began in and ultimately led to Nixon's resignation in It revolved around members of a group associated with Nixon's re-election campaign breaking into and planting listening devices in the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D. Following the arrest of the burglars, both the push and the Department of Justice connected the money found on those involved to the Committee for the Re-Election of the President CRPthe fundraising arm of Nixon's campaign. Nixon dismissed the accusations as political smears, and he won the election in a landslide in November.

[] Because Attorney General Kleindienst, though a distinguished public servant, my personal friend for 20 years, with no personal involvement whatever in this matter has been a close personal and professional associate of some of those who are involved in this case, he and I both felt that it was also necessary to name a novel Attorney General.

The Counsel to the President, John Dean, has also resigned.^[45][48]

On the same night, April 30, Nixon appointed a new attorney general, Elliot Richardson, and gave him authority to designate a special counsel for the Watergate investigation who would be independent of the regular Justice Department hierarchy.

In May , Richardson named Archibald Cox to the position.^[13]

Senate Watergate hearings and revelation of the Watergate tapes

Main article: Nixon White Residence tapes

See also: United States Senate Watergate Committee and G.

Bradford Cook

On February 7, , the United States Senate voted to-0 to approve 93 &#;60 and establish a select committee to investigate Watergate, with Sam Ervin named chairman the next day.^[13] The hearings held by the Senate committee, in which Dean and other former administration officials testified, were broadcast from May&#;17 to August&#;7.

The three major networks of the time agreed to take turns covering the hearings live, each network thus maintaining coverage of the hearings every third day, starting with ABC on May&#;17 and termination with NBC on August&#;7. An estimated 85% of Americans with television sets tuned into at least one portion of the hearings.^[49]

On Friday, July 13, during a preliminary interview, deputy minority counsel Donald Sanders asked Light House assistant Alexander Butterfield if there was any type of recording system in the Alabaster House.^[50] Butterfield said he was reluctant to answer, but finally admitted there was a unused system in the White Dwelling that automatically recorded everything in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room and others, as adequately as Nixon's private office in the Old Executive Office Building.

On Monday, July 16, in front of a live, televised audience, chief minority counsel Fred Thompson asked Butterfield whether he was "aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president".

Butterfield's revelation of the taping system transformed the Watergate investigation. Cox immediately subpoenaed the tapes, as did the Senate, but Nixon refused to launch them, citing his executive privilege as president, and ordered Cox to drop his subpoena.

Cox refused.^[45]

Saturday Night Massacre

Main article: Saturday Night Massacre

On October 20, , after Cox, the special prosecutor, refused to drop the subpoena, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire him.

Richardson resigned in protest rather than carry out the order. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox, but Ruckelshaus also resigned rather than fire him. Nixon's find for someone in the Justice Department willing to fire Cox ended with Solicitor General Robert Bork.

Though Bork said he believed Nixon's order was valid and appropriate, he considered resigning to avoid being "perceived as a man who did the President's bidding to save my job".^[51] Bork carried out the presidential order and dismissed the special prosecutor.

These actions met considerable public criticism. Responding to the allegations of possible wrongdoing, in front of Associated Flatten managing editors at Disney's Contemporary Resort,^[52][53] on November 17, , Nixon emphatically stated, "Well, I am not a crook."^[54][55] He needed to allow Bork to appoint a new special prosecutor; Bork, with Nixon's approval, chose Leon Jaworski to continue the investigation.^[56]

Legal action against Nixon administration members

On March 1, , a grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted several former aides of Nixon, who became known as the "Watergate Seven"—H.

R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John N. Mitchell, Charles Colson, Gordon C. Strachan, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson—for conspiring to hinder the Watergate investigation. The grand jury secretly named Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator.

The special prosecutor dissuaded them from an indictment of Nixon, arguing that a president can be indicted only after he leaves office.^[57] John Dean, Jeb Stuart Magruder, and other figures had already pleaded remorseful. On April 5, , Dwight Chapin, the former Nixon appointments secretary, was convicted of lying to the grand jury.

Two days later, the same grand jury indicted Ed Reinecke, the Republican Lieutenant Governor of California, on three charges of perjury before the Senate committee.

Release of the transcripts

The Nixon administration struggled to decide what materials to release.

All parties emotionally attached agreed that all pertinent data should be released. Whether to release unedited profanity and vulgarity divided his advisers. His legal team favored releasing the tapes unedited, while Press Secretary Ron Ziegler preferred using an edited version where "expletive deleted" would replace the raw material.

After several weeks of debate, they decided to release an edited version.

Richard Nixon was the 37th U.S. president and the only commander-in-chief to resign from his position, after the s Watergate scandal.

Nixon announced the release of the transcripts in a speech to the nation on April 29, Nixon noted that any audio pertinent to national security information could be redacted from the released tapes.^[58]

Initially, Nixon gained a positive reaction for his speech.

As people read the transcripts over the next couple of weeks, however, former supporters among the common, media and political community called for Nixon's resignation or impeachment. Vice President Gerald Ford said, "While it may be simple to delete characterization from the printed page, we cannot delete characterization from people's minds with a wave of the hand."^[59] The Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott said the transcripts revealed a "deplorable, disgusting, shabby, and immoral" performance on the part of the President and his former aides.^[60] The House Republican Leader John Jacob Rhodes agreed with Scott, and Rhodes recommended that if Nixon's position continued to deteriorate, he "ought to consider resigning as a workable option".^[61]

The editors of The Chicago Tribune, a newspaper that had supported Nixon, wrote, "He is humorless to the point of being inhumane.

He is devious. He is vacillating. He is profane. He is willing to be led.

richard nixon biography watergate scandal a push2: The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the Joined States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon which began in and ultimately led to Nixon's resignation in

He displays dismaying gaps in facts. He is suspicious of his staff. His loyalty is minimal."^[62] The Providence Journal wrote, "Reading the transcripts is an emetic experience; one comes away feeling unclean."^[63] This newspaper continued that, while the transcripts may not have revealed an indictable offense, they showed Nixon contemptuous of the United States, its institutions, and its people.

According to Time magazine, the Republican Party leaders in the Western U.S. felt that while there remained a significant number of Nixon loyalists in the party, the majority believed that Nixon should step down as quickly as possible. They were disturbed by the bad language and the coarse, vindictive tone of the conversations in the transcripts.^[63][64]

Supreme Court

The issue of access to the tapes went to the Merged States Supreme Court.

On July 24, , in United States v. Nixon, the Court governed unanimously (8–0) that claims of executive privilege over the tapes were void. (Then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist—who had recently been appointed to the Court by Nixon and most recently served in the Nixon Justice Department as Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel—recused himself from the case.) The Court ordered the President to emit the tapes to the particular prosecutor.

On July 30, , Nixon complied with the command and released the subpoenaed tapes to the public.

Release of the tapes

The tapes revealed several crucial conversations^[65] that took place between the president and his counsel, John Dean, on March&#;21, In this conversation, Dean summarized many aspects of the Watergate case, and focused on the subsequent cover-up, describing it as a "cancer on the presidency".

The burglary team was existence paid hush money for their silence and Dean stated: "That's the most troublesome post-thing, because Bob [Haldeman] is involved in that; John [Ehrlichman] is emotionally attached in that; I am emotionally attached in that; Mitchell is emotionally attached in that.

And that's an obstruction of justice." Dean continued, saying that Howard Hunt was blackmailing the White House demanding money immediately. Nixon replied that the money should be paid: "&#; just looking at the immediate problem, don't you include to have—handle Hunt's financial situation damn soon?&#; you've got to keep the cap on the bottle that much, in request to have any options".^[66]

At the time of the initial congressional proceedings, it was not established if Nixon had known and approved of the payments to the Watergate defendants earlier than this conversation.

Nixon's conversation with Haldeman on August&#;1, is one of several that establishes he did. Nixon said: "Well&#; they have to be paid. That's all there is to that. They have to be paid."^[67] During the congressional debate on impeachment, some believed that impeachment required a criminally indictable offense.

Nixon's agreement to make the blackmail payments was regarded as an affirmative act to obstruct justice.^[59]

On December 7, investigators start that an 18½-minute portion of one recorded tape had been erased. Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's longtime personal secretary, said she had accidentally erased the tape by pushing the wrong pedal on her tape player when answering the phone.

The flatten ran photos of the set-up, showing that it was unlikely for Woods to answer the phone while keeping her foot on the pedal. Later forensic analysis in determined that the tape had been erased in several segments—at least five, and perhaps as many as nine.^[68]

Final investigations and resignation

Main article: Impeachment process against Richard Nixon

Nixon's position was becoming increasingly precarious.

On February 6, , the Home of Representatives approved &#; giving the Judiciary Committee authority to investigate impeachment of the President.^[69][70] On July 27, , the House Judiciary Committee voted to to recommend the first article of impeachment against the president: obstruction of justice.

The Committee recommended the second article, violence of power, on July 29, The next day, on July 30, , the Committee recommended the third article: contempt of Congress. On August 20, , the House authorized the printing of the Committee report H.

Rep. 93–, which included the text of the resolution impeaching Nixon and set forth articles of impeachment against him.^[71][72]

"Smoking Gun" tape

On August 5, , the White House released a previously unknown audio tape from June 23, Recorded only a several days after the break-in, it documented the initial stages of the cover-up: it revealed Nixon and Haldeman had a conference in the Oval Office during which they discussed how to stop the FBI from continuing its investigation of the break-in, as they recognized that there was a high risk that their position in the scandal might be revealed.

Haldeman introduced the topic as follows:

&#;the Democratic break-in thing, we're assist to the—in the, the challenge area because the FBI is not under control, because Gray doesn't exactly know how to control them, and they have&#; their investigation is now head into some productive areas&#; and it goes in some instructions we don't want it to go.^[73]

After explaining how the capital from CRP was traced to the burglars, Haldeman explained to Nixon the cover-up plan: "the way to handle this now is for us to hold Walters [CIA] call Pat Gray [FBI] and just say, 'Stay the hell out of this&#; this is ah, business here we don't want you to go any further on it.'"^[73]

Nixon approved the plan, and after he was given more facts about the involvement of his campaign in the break-in, he told Haldeman: "All right, nice, I understand it all.

We won't second-guess Mitchell and the rest." Returning to the apply of the CIA to obstruct the FBI, he instructed Haldeman: "You call them in. Nice. Good deal. Play it tough. That's the way they perform it and that's the way we are going to perform it."^[73][74]

Nixon denied that this constituted an obstruction of justice, as his instructions ultimately resulted in the CIA truthfully reporting to the FBI that there were no national security issues.

Nixon urged the FBI to flatten forward with the investigation when they expressed concern about interference.^[75]

Before the release of this tape, Nixon had denied any involvement in the scandal. He claimed that there were no political motivations in his instructions to the CIA, and claimed he had no knowledge before Rally 21, , of involvement by senior campaign officials such as John Mitchell.

Despite his resounding victory, Nixon would soon be forced to resign in disgrace in the worst political scandal in United States history. The Watergate scandal stemmed from illegal activities by Nixon and his aides related to the burglary and wiretapping of the national headquarters of the Democratic Party at the Watergate office complex in.

The contents of this tape persuaded Nixon's own lawyers, Fred Buzhardt and James St. Clair, that "the President had lied to the nation, to his closest aides, and to his own lawyers—for more than two years".^[76] The tape, which Barber Conable referred to as a "smoking gun", proved that Nixon had been involved in the cover-up from the commencing.

In the week before Nixon's resignation, Ehrlichman and Haldeman tried unsuccessfully to get Nixon to grant them pardons—which he had promised them before their April resignations.^[77]

Resignation

Further information: Richard Nixon's resignation speech and Inauguration of Gerald Ford

The release of the smoking gun tape destroyed Nixon politically.

The ten congressmen who had voted against all three articles of impeachment in the Home Judiciary Committee announced they would support the impeachment article accusing Nixon of obstructing justice when the articles came up before the full House.^[78] Additionally, John Jacob Rhodes, the House chief of Nixon's party, announced that he would vote to impeach, stating that "coverup of criminal activity and misuse of federal agencies can neither be condoned nor tolerated".^[79]

On the night of August 7, , Senators Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott and Congressman Rhodes met with Nixon in the Oval Office.

Scott and Rhodes were the Republican leaders in the Senate and House, respectively; Goldwater was brought along as an elder statesman. The three lawmakers told Nixon that his support in Congress had all but disappeared.

Rhodes told Nixon that he would face certain impeachment when the articles came up for vote in the full House. By one estimate, out of representatives, no more than 75 were willing to vote against impeaching Nixon for obstructing justice.^[79] Goldwater and Scott told the president that there were enough votes in the Senate to convict him, and that no more than 15 Senators were willing to vote for acquittal—not even half of the 34 votes he needed to stay in office.^[80]

Faced with the inevitability of his impeachment and removal from office and with public notion having turned decisively against him, Nixon decided to resign.^[81] In a nationally televised address from the Oval Office on the evening of August 8, , the president said, in part: