Watergate:


In October 1972, The Washington Post reported the FBI had determined Nixon aides had spied on and sabotaged numerous Democratic presidential candidates as a part of the operations that led to the infamous Watergate scandal. During the campaign five burglars were arrested on June 17, 1972 in the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office complex. They were subsequently linked to the White House. This became one of a series of major scandals involving the Committee to Re-Elect the President (known as CRP but referred to by outsiders as CREEP), including the White House enemies list and assorted "dirty tricks." The ensuing Watergate scandal exposed the Nixon administration's rampant corruption, illegality, and deceit. Nixon himself downplayed the scandal as mere politics, but when his aides resigned in disgrace, Nixon's role in ordering an illegal cover-up came to light in the press, courts, and congressional investigations. Nixon evaded taxes, accepted illicit campaign contributions, ordered secret bombings, and harassed opponents with executive agencies, wiretaps, and break-ins. Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in October 1973 for accepting bribes, but Nixon hung on to power, claiming, "I am not a crook." His secret recordings of White House conversations were subpoenaed, and revealed details of his complicity in the cover-up. Nixon was named by the grand jury investigating Watergate as "an unindicted co-conspirator" in the Watergate Scandal. He lost support from some in his own party as well as much popular support after what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre of October 20, 1973 in which he ordered Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor in the Watergate case, to be fired, as well as firing several of his own subordinates who objected to this move. The House Judiciary Committee opened formal and public impeachment hearings against Nixon on May 9, 1974. Despite his efforts, one of the secret recordings, known as the "smoking gun" tape, was released on August 5, 1974 and revealed that Nixon authorized hush money to Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt, and also revealed that Nixon arranged for the blackmailing of the CIA into telling the FBI to stop investigating certain topics because of "the Bay of Pigs thing". Several of the Watergate burglars were involved in the Bay of Pigs operation. Haldeman would later claim that when Nixon used the phrase "the Bay of Pigs thing," he was actually referring to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In light of his loss of political support and the near certainty of both his impeachment by the House of Representatives and his conviction by the Senate, he resigned on August 9, 1974, after addressing the nation on television the previous evening. He never admitted wrongdoing, though he later conceded errors of judgment.

On September 8, 1974, a blanket pardon from President Gerald R. Ford, who served as Nixon's second vice president, effectively ended any possibility of indictment. The pardon was highly controversial and Nixon's critics claimed that the blanket pardon was quid pro quo for his resignation. No evidence of this "corrupt bargain" has ever been proven, and many modern historians dismiss any claims of overt collusion between the two men concerning the pardon. The pardon hurt Ford politically, and it was one of the major reasons cited for Ford's defeat in the election of 1976.

__________________
||||||||||||||||||||50% Complete