WatergateJoin now to read essay WatergateJon WhiteMrs. ViensJunior Honors English7 May 2008WatergateFor many people, the first word that comes to mind when they think about the Nixon administration is Watergate, the political scandal the scarred the sacredness of the White House during the 1970’s. Was Watergate necessary, and did he need to be so paranoid about others? Did Nixon have a choice in resigning? Watergate was an unnecessary event that led to Richard Nixon’s downfall.
“On June 17, 1972, five men, including CIA agent James McCord were arrested in the burglary of the Democratic party headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C.” “The Post Investigates.” Later that year, the Federal Grand Jury indicted these five men for their involvement in the Watergate burglary. Less than two months later, Richard Nixon was reelected President in an unprecedented landslide over George McGovern, the Democratic candidate. At the end of January the following year, James McCord and Gordon Liddy were convicted of illegally wiretapping the Democrats Watergate apartments, (“The Watergate Decade”).
Prior to the indictments, the story of the burglary intrigued two Washington Post reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. Bernstein and Woodward learned through a security aide, that James McCord, an employee on the payroll of Nixon’s reelection committee, was among those arrested.
Within a few weeks, Woodward and Bernstein reported that the Grand Jury investigating the burglary had sought testimony from two men who had worked in the Nixon White House, former CIA officer E. Howard Hunt and former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy. Both men would ultimately be indicted for guiding the burglars, via walkie-talkies, from the hotel room opposite the Watergate building. (“The Post Investigates”)
Later on, Bernstein found out that former Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stans deposited $25,000 of Nixon’s reelection campaign funds into a bank account for one of the burglars. This was the first time information actually linked Nixon to the crime. As Bernstein and Woodward pursued the story further, they deeply relied on Mark Felt, a high level FBI official who sought over the FBI files on the Break in as a confidential source. Felt’s access to these reports allowed him to confirm or deny what sources were telling Bernstein and Woodward, and he could also let them know what leads to pursue. This man came to be known as “Deep Throat,” the reliable source who has been personified as a hero for his help in making the Nixon scandal public. Deep Throat’s identity remained a secret for another 30 years until on May 31, 2005, when Felt announced publicly that he was none other than “Deep Throat, the secret Washington Post source, (“Ex-FBI Official: I’m Deep Throat.”)
The Watergate Riddle And The Folly
The last thing Congress does every day after the election is to tell the story, and I’ve seen it with much greater speed than before when I was reporting the Watergate stories. When you’re talking about a case where Congress didn’t tell the story before the election, you have to make it part of the story. The story began around 8 o’clock, for example. There were already a lot of witnesses present, mostly Democrats, who were looking for help or assistance. Then there were Democrats, Republicans, some Republicans who were in the process of running for reelection for their party; there was Rep. Walter Jones, who didn’t take the bait and offered to do it for a fee, but was ultimately left out. And so forth. The idea of doing the story, as I called it, is that Democrats have to hold the public, the press, and the intelligence agencies to account. And the public generally agrees, but it’s hard for me to imagine a way a Republican president would get on that side and keep the American people informed of the scandal if he thought that the other party would be right.
Let’s start with the fact that Watergate broke under the noses of all four major houses of Congress this year for one reason: the Democratic senatorial and House minority parties. I believe that House Democrats have not been able to get enough publicity for the crimes perpetrated by Nixon, and the GOP has not been able to attract enough Democratic support.
Why? My biggest concern was the fact that we had not been listening to one voice over and over, and so on and so forth over and over, as did the Republican House Judiciary Committee. I mean, we were getting an update on this in January in all seven intelligence committees. I actually called one of them because they were in a good mood and they were taking up the topic. I had, as I said earlier, three reports, which were one about the investigation into the burglary and the others about whether Mr. Nixon lied to the press. So the last two were some kind of the ‘one voice’ questions, if you will. This is what we said to the committee: if no one asked us about this, we could investigate the matter but so much more that we lost our job.
I think that’s right: In addition to the investigation, we also lost our job after one of those reports about Nixon and Watergate did that, which you’ll read the next time you’re here. That report was, I believe, the beginning of that, as you’ll read this post. For instance, the report was, “the first case of a president to be impeached with his own people on political crimes” which is an extremely significant investigation for this country because it will also have brought that on top of the political crimes that we already took a stand against in the past. This is a report from the FBI. So, we’re still in a good position. I don’t think it’s a coup, but it is very likely. It’s also very hard at times, because of how close it’s coming to happening. I had all of the contacts and information that I was able to get about Trump’s real estate business and other shady people, and this information comes via the phone calls I made to people that he would have never met without this report (in October. )
That story in Trump Tower was brought out by one of the folks on the payroll, as did the story about Watergate. That’s what we’re talking about here? Yeah. It was brought out by a very conservative source, right about at the time, that the president was actually under investigation. The next thing you’ll read is that there’s now, by the way, the full dossier of what he was doing at any time on the campaign and the Russian collusion that was the reason I’m referring to here, which is a lot of things that he may have said there in the past. He might have said about the dossier, if any, and at this point, it doesn’t really matter. He may have said something about it, he may have said about the dossier of the president, and the president obviously did that. Now, of course, I believe that they may have leaked that information, but ultimately it can’t be made public. This article by the New York Times did give us that information in October. That was the first time we ever learned of it until now, so we can take responsibility for this. So, why did he leak that information? We don’t know. This was a massive operation, and that’s what we learned from this, which I think will be something for a new president. When I say bigger than Watergate and a lot of things, that’s an understatement.
Our investigation was a little on the subjective side, because we don’t have any way of independently verifying or finding any kind of credible information about the crimes committed, and so on and so forth. We wanted to take on the role of watchdog of the whole organization. Our main goal at the time was simply to get the facts right or to verify some of these allegations. We had a lot of information, but it got ignored by the committee. We worked with some of the Democrats, who could do the report that we had, and they were extremely cooperative with us and worked with us, so we knew what was actually happening.
The main complaint leveled against the committee, for example, was that the report was about a different time period for Watergate, and there was no reporting by the two intelligence committees at the time. We don’t know, honestly, because it sounds like our main grievance is that we didn’t get enough support. So we don’t know. But the committee was not, at the time, engaged in any kind of effort to address this. We were not supposed to respond any more than we now do. It just
The Watergate Riddle And The Folly
The last thing Congress does every day after the election is to tell the story, and I’ve seen it with much greater speed than before when I was reporting the Watergate stories. When you’re talking about a case where Congress didn’t tell the story before the election, you have to make it part of the story. The story began around 8 o’clock, for example. There were already a lot of witnesses present, mostly Democrats, who were looking for help or assistance. Then there were Democrats, Republicans, some Republicans who were in the process of running for reelection for their party; there was Rep. Walter Jones, who didn’t take the bait and offered to do it for a fee, but was ultimately left out. And so forth. The idea of doing the story, as I called it, is that Democrats have to hold the public, the press, and the intelligence agencies to account. And the public generally agrees, but it’s hard for me to imagine a way a Republican president would get on that side and keep the American people informed of the scandal if he thought that the other party would be right.
Let’s start with the fact that Watergate broke under the noses of all four major houses of Congress this year for one reason: the Democratic senatorial and House minority parties. I believe that House Democrats have not been able to get enough publicity for the crimes perpetrated by Nixon, and the GOP has not been able to attract enough Democratic support.
Why? My biggest concern was the fact that we had not been listening to one voice over and over, and so on and so forth over and over, as did the Republican House Judiciary Committee. I mean, we were getting an update on this in January in all seven intelligence committees. I actually called one of them because they were in a good mood and they were taking up the topic. I had, as I said earlier, three reports, which were one about the investigation into the burglary and the others about whether Mr. Nixon lied to the press. So the last two were some kind of the ‘one voice’ questions, if you will. This is what we said to the committee: if no one asked us about this, we could investigate the matter but so much more that we lost our job.
I think that’s right: In addition to the investigation, we also lost our job after one of those reports about Nixon and Watergate did that, which you’ll read the next time you’re here. That report was, I believe, the beginning of that, as you’ll read this post. For instance, the report was, “the first case of a president to be impeached with his own people on political crimes” which is an extremely significant investigation for this country because it will also have brought that on top of the political crimes that we already took a stand against in the past. This is a report from the FBI. So, we’re still in a good position. I don’t think it’s a coup, but it is very likely. It’s also very hard at times, because of how close it’s coming to happening. I had all of the contacts and information that I was able to get about Trump’s real estate business and other shady people, and this information comes via the phone calls I made to people that he would have never met without this report (in October. )
That story in Trump Tower was brought out by one of the folks on the payroll, as did the story about Watergate. That’s what we’re talking about here? Yeah. It was brought out by a very conservative source, right about at the time, that the president was actually under investigation. The next thing you’ll read is that there’s now, by the way, the full dossier of what he was doing at any time on the campaign and the Russian collusion that was the reason I’m referring to here, which is a lot of things that he may have said there in the past. He might have said about the dossier, if any, and at this point, it doesn’t really matter. He may have said something about it, he may have said about the dossier of the president, and the president obviously did that. Now, of course, I believe that they may have leaked that information, but ultimately it can’t be made public. This article by the New York Times did give us that information in October. That was the first time we ever learned of it until now, so we can take responsibility for this. So, why did he leak that information? We don’t know. This was a massive operation, and that’s what we learned from this, which I think will be something for a new president. When I say bigger than Watergate and a lot of things, that’s an understatement.
Our investigation was a little on the subjective side, because we don’t have any way of independently verifying or finding any kind of credible information about the crimes committed, and so on and so forth. We wanted to take on the role of watchdog of the whole organization. Our main goal at the time was simply to get the facts right or to verify some of these allegations. We had a lot of information, but it got ignored by the committee. We worked with some of the Democrats, who could do the report that we had, and they were extremely cooperative with us and worked with us, so we knew what was actually happening.
The main complaint leveled against the committee, for example, was that the report was about a different time period for Watergate, and there was no reporting by the two intelligence committees at the time. We don’t know, honestly, because it sounds like our main grievance is that we didn’t get enough support. So we don’t know. But the committee was not, at the time, engaged in any kind of effort to address this. We were not supposed to respond any more than we now do. It just
By April 1973, the Watergate scandal had spread far beyond the original burglary, and, by that summer of 1973, Watergate had become a full-blown national scandal.
It was revealed that Watergate burglars, Hunt and Liddy, had broken into the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who gave the top-secret Pentagon papers to the New York Times. Seeking information to discredit Ellsberg, they found nothing and left undetected.” John Dean, a white house lawyer was the first person to break the news of the Nixon White House. (“Dean Alleges Nixon Knew of Cover-up Plans,”)
“The most sensational revelation came in July 1973, when white House aide Alexander Butterfield told the committee that Nixon had a secret taping system that recorded his phone conversations in the Oval Office” (“The Government Acts.”) Nixon refused to release the tapes, and the White House stating “executive privilege” refused to comply with subpoenas to release the tapes. Executive Privilege is “the doctrine that the president, as chief executive, is entitled to candid and confidential advice from aides” (“The Government Acts.”) This brought on a major constitutional struggle between a President and a Senate committee and Prosecutor who was determined to get the tapes. After countless meetings, however, Nixon agreed to release written summaries of the taped conversations. Attorney General Richardson was ordered to fire Archibald Cox, a federal prosecutor. In an attempt to avoid a full-blown trial and possibly have to hand over the complete tapes all together. “ Richardson decided to resign instead of carrying out the order, as did Nixon’s top deputy Williams Ruckelshaus” (“The Watergate Decade.”) Solicitor