August 9, 1974. The 37th President of United States of America, Richard Milhous Nixon, resigned from president ship in face of certain impeachment.
Early in the morning of June 17, 1972, the office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate building in Washington, D.C. was burgled. This was no ordinary robbery: The prowlers were connected to President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, and they had been caught while attempting to wiretap phones and steal secret documents.
While historians are not sure whether Nixon knew about the Watergate espionage operation before it happened, he took steps to cover it up afterwards, raising “hush money” for the burglars, trying to stop the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from investigating the crime, destroying evidence and firing uncooperative staff members. In August 1974, after his role in the Watergate conspiracy had finally come to light, the president resigned. His successor, Gerald Ford, immediately pardoned Nixon for all the crimes he “committed or may have committed” while in office. Although Nixon was never prosecuted, the Watergate scandal changed American politics forever, leading many Americans to question their leadership and think more critically about the presidency.
The origins of the Watergate break-in lay in the hostile politics of the 1960s. By 1972, when Republican President Richard Nixon was running for reelection, the United States was fully involved in the Vietnam War. This war had caused deep fault lines within the country's populace and politics.
In such a harsh political climate, the President and some of his key advisers planned aggressive tactics, including illegal espionage, to win the reelection and therefore the first burglary in May 1972. The burglars stole copies of top-secret documents and bugged the office’s phones.
The wiretaps failed to work properly, however, so on June 17 the group returned to the Watergate building. As the prowlers were preparing to break into the office with a new microphone, a security guard noticed that they had taped the building’s locks. The guard called the police, who arrived just in time to catch the spies red-handed.
It was not immediately clear that the burglars were connected to the president. There were some suspicions when detectives found copies of the reelection committee’s White House phone number among the burglars’ belongings. In August, Nixon, in a speech, swore that his White House staff was not involved in the break-in. Most voters believed him, and in November the he was reelected in a landslide.
Read the book to find out how the scandal got exposed which led to Nixon's resignation. A fascinating read by all standards.
Young Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein deserve a good deal of the credit for uncovering the details of the Watergate scandal. Their reporting won them a Pulitzer Prize and was the basis for their best-selling book “All the President’s Men.” Much of their information came from an anonymous whistle blower they called Deep Throat, who in 2005 was revealed to be W. Mark Felt, a former associate director of the FBI.
Namaste
Prabir
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