What

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What was Watergate?
From www.boston.com
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More complicated than some of the scandals that
have followed in its wake, Watergate involved a
wide-ranging web of political espionage. It also
took down a president, changed the role of the
news media in public debate, and challenged many
people's assumptions about the dignity of public
office. The stage was set in 1968, when Richard
M. Nixon -- who had lost the Republicans the
presidency eight years earlier -- made a comeback
and won the White House. (Globe Photo)
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The Watergate, which gave the scandal its name,
was a hotel and office complex in Washington. In
1972, the Democratic National Committee had its
headquarters there. (The Watergate is still
around, and is still a part of public life --
Monica Lewinsky took refuge there at the height
of the scandal about her affair with President
Clinton.) (Globe Photo)
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Without Frank Wills, the scandal never would have
happened. On June 17, 1972, Wills, then 24, was
a security guard at the Watergate. While doing
his rounds, he found that a door lock had been
covered with electrical tape to keep it from
locking. He called police, who found five men
burglarizing the offices of the Democratic
National Committee. The burglars had equipment
for bugging the phones at the DNC. Wills quit his
job because he didn't get a raise for
discovering the burglary. (Globe Photo)
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Among those arrested was James W. McCord,
security director for the Committee To Re-Elect
the President (CREEP). John Mitchell, head of the
Nixon re-election campaign (pictured) denied any
ties between the campaign and the
burglary. (Globe Photo)
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The burglars were later revealed to be "plumbers"
-- members of a clandestine unit of the CRP, led
by John Mitchell. One of the plumbers' previous
jobs was a 1971 burglary at the office of a
psychiatrist who was treating Daniel Ellsberg
(pictured). Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon
Papers -- the Defense Department's secret history
of the Vietnam War to The New York Times. They
were published by the Times, The Boston Globe,
and The Washington Post. (Globe Photo)
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One of those arrested in the burglary, Bernard
Barker, was carrying an address book with an
entry for "HH" (Howard Hunt, pictured) at "WH"
(White House). Hunt was a spy novelist and White
House consultant who had previously worked for
the CIA, and was revealed as one of the planners
of the burglary. (Globe File Photo)
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On Aug. 1, two Washington Post reporters, Bob
Woodward (right) and Carl Bernstein, reported
that a 25,000 cashier's check, apparently
earmarked for the Nixon campaign, wound up in
the bank account of one of the accused burglars.
Woodward and Bernstein would follow the story
for more than a year, eventually writing a book,
"All the President's Men," about what they
discovered. (Globe Photo)
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On Sept. 29, 1972, Woodward and Bernstein
reported that John Dean (pictured), former
attorney general turned White House counsel,
controlled a Republican slush fund used to
finance intelligence-gathering operations
against the Democratic Party. (Globe Photo)
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Ken Clawson, a former reporter who joined the
White House communications staff under Nixon,
was named in an Oct. 10, 1972, story as the
writer of an anonymous letter to a New Hampshire
newspaper that helped torpedo the career of
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Edmund
Muskie. The letteralleged that Muskie had used
the slur when describing French-Canadians, a
large part of his Maine constituency. The Post
described this "Canuck letter" as part of a
"massive campaign of political spying and
sabotage" on Nixon's behalf. (Globe Photo)
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On Nov. 7, 1972, Nixon was re-elected by a
landslide over Sen. George W. McGovern of South
Dakota. (Globe Photo)
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On Jan. 30, 1973, G. Gordon Liddy (pictured) and
James W. McCord were convicted of conspiracy,
burglary, and wiretapping in the Watergate
break-in. Liddy, a former FBI agent, was not
among those first arrested, but was convicted of
planning the burglary. (Globe Photo)
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In February 1973, the Senate established the
Select Committee on Presidential Campaign
Activities to investigate the Watergate break-in
and rumors of other operations. Sam Ervin, a
North Carolina Democrat who cultivated a folksy
"country lawyer" persona, is chairman Howard
Baker, a Republican from Tennessee, is his
deputy. (Globe Photo)
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On March 19, days before his sentencing in the
original Watergate burglary, James W. McCord
sent a letter to Judge John Sirica, describing
how other suspects had withheld information and
charging that payments were made by high White
House officials to persuade them to lie and
plead guilty. Sirica made the letter
public. (Globe Photo)
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Presidential Counsel John Dean was fired at the
end of April for cooperating with the Watergate
Committee. His testimony the following summer
would be key to the investigation, and his
description of the cover-up as "a cancer on the
presidency" would become one of the
best-remembered remarks from the scandal. (Globe
Photo)
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Also at the end of April, Nixon's top aides,
Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman (left) and
domestic-affairs assistant John Ehrlichman
(center), resigned over their roles in the
widening scandal. Also resigning was the
attorney general, Richard Kleindienst. Elliot
Richardson of Massachusetts is named to replace
Kleindienst. (Globe Photo)
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On May 18, 1973, the Senate Select Committee
(later known simply as the "Watergate
Committee") began its hearings, which were
nationally televised. The same day Richardson,
about to take office as attorney general,
appointed Archibald Cox as a special prosecutor
for Watergate. (Globe Photo)
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Alexander Butterfield, a former presidential
appointments secretary, testifed before the
Senate committee in July, confirming that Nixon
had a system in place for taping all
conversations and phone calls in his office. The
committee and Nixon began a battle over the
tapes. (Globe Photo)
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Nixon, increasingly embattled in his refusal to
hand over any tapes, began a series of events
known as the "Saturday Night Massacre" by
ordering Richardson to fire Cox (pictured).
Richardson refused and resigned. Deputy Attorney
General William Ruckelshaus was also ordered to
fire Cox, refused and resigned. Robert Bork, then
solicitor general (and later, briefly, a Supreme
Court nominee), finally fired Cox. (Globe
Photo)
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Nixon finally released some of the tapes. In
December 1973, investigators discovered an 18
1/2-minute gap in one of them. Chief of Staff
Alexander Haig (pictured) said one theory was
that "some sinister force" erased the
segment. (Globe Photo)
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Rosemary Woods, Nixon's secretary, took the blame
for the gap, demonstrating in this photo how she
could have accidentally erased the segment of the
tape. (Globe Photo)
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Nixon, who had been named an "unindicted
co-conspirator" when charges were filed against
seven of his aides, had also been the subject of
impeachment hearings by the House Judiciary
Committee, which began considering the matter in
February 1974. (Globe Photo)
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By April 30, 1974, the Senate committee still
hadn't gotten all the tapes it had asked for.
Instead of handing them over, Nixon released
1,200 pages of edited transcripts. The
transcripts were notable for the frequent use of
the delicate "expletive deleted" to replace
saltier language. (Rolling Stone ran a quiz
suggesting a range of profanities that might
have filled a few Important gaps.) That summer,
the Supreme Court affirmed a lower court order
that Nixon turn over all the tapes. (Globe
Photo)
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Late in July, the House Judiciary Committee
passed the first of three articles of
I mpeachment against Nixon. On August 5, under
increasing pressure, he released transcripts of
three conversation he had with Haldeman six days
after the Watergate break-in. The June 23 tape
became known as "the smoking gun" because it
revealed that Nixon ordered the FBI to abandon
its investigation of the break-in. Under
increasing threat of impeachment, Nixon resigned
three days later. (Globe Photo)
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Vice President Gerald Ford assumed the presidency
to fill out Nixon's term. One of his early acts
in office was to issue a full pardon for Nixon
for all charges related to the Watergate
case. (Globe Photo)
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One of the lasting impacts of Watergate was a
change in the relationship between government
and the media. Reporters Woodward and Bernstein
-- and their editor, Ben Bradlee, and publisher
Katharine Graham (pictured) -- are credited with
moving past the Nixon administration's attempts
at a cover-up to bring the web of misdeeds to
light. Other journalists joined the chase, and
more than 50 journalists appeared on Nixon's
"enemies list. (Globe Photo)
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Watergate made its way into popular culture with
the publication of Woodward and B ernstein's
book, "All the President's Men," and the movie
based on it, starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert
Redford as the two reporters. Phrases like
"expletive deleted" and "credibility gap"
entered the language during the height of the
story, and subsequent scandals Monicagate,
Irangate -- had "-gate" appended to their names.
(Globe Photo)
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The presidents who came after Nixon found greater
restrictions on their activities, including a
ban on "slush funds" and a law requiring them to
report financial statements. They also faced
more public cynicism and deeper questioning of
the facts behind their actions. Ultimately, many
believe that the system of checks and balances
worked, and that the result was astronger
democracy. (Globe Photo)