...The Watergate Scandal Richard Milhous Nixon was the thirty-seventh President of the United States of America from 1969 until 1974. Nixon completed his first term as President in 1973 and was re-elected for the position for the next four years. However, Nixon would have his time in the White House cut short by the series of events that occurred in the twenty-six months that followed the Watergate burglary. On June 17, 1972 five men, one White House employee and four Cubans, broke into the Watergate Office Building in Washington, DC in an attempt to bug the Democratic National Committee (DNC) office. The break in and the events that took place afterwards led to the resignation of Richard Milhous Nixon on August 8, 1974. The morning of June 18, Nixon was at his home in Key Biscayne, FL. when he read a headline about the Watergate break in. The idea was out of this world and Nixon did not believe what he was reading. Nixon dismissed the story as a political prank (Nixon 625-626). James McCord, Bernard Barker, Virgilo Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, and Frank Sturgis had been arrested and charged with second-degree burglary by the Washington police (WHT 820). McCord, a former CIA officer, was employed by the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP) as a security consultant. Ironically McCord was supposed to prevent the very things he was doing to the DNC. Nixon telephoned Charles Colson, a special counsel to President Nixon, that evening to discuss the Watergate break in. Colson said...
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...It was suggested that the President had tried to repair the damages that were caused the Watergate scandal in the first article. From a speech President Nixon had given, it showed that there were a lot things that still needed to be done regarding the scandal. The article stated that the officials under the Watergate scandal were cheating, lying and engaging in illegal activities while in high positions of the government. The people believed that the president did not stand up to the crisis and that he had only done the bare requirements for the situation at hand. The people stongly believed that President Nixon should have done something more to eliminate the Watergate scandal as soon as it was leaked. The article had also showed that the people were not happy with President Nixon’s actions by only accepting the resignations of H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, (Genovese, 1999). He had also accepted the resignation of Attorney General Kleindienst and appointed Elliot Richardson and instructed him to handle the crisis. Finally, the President had made the correct decision by dismissing his White House Counsel John Dean. The second article portrays President Nixon as a good, moral leader. It tried to defend the President from being impeached by acknowledging his achievements. The article also showed that he was human and not perfect. The actions of the President by trying to resolve the crisis, led to speculations by the Chicago Tribune's editorial to leave office...
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...The Watergate Scandal is one of the most serious political crimes committed by the President of the United States and his staff. Richard Nixon, anxious of losing his reelection, made an unacceptable move to place himself and the Republicans above of the Democratic party. The Watergate Scandal started with a few men , who broke in to the Democratic National Committee building, in order to plant listening devices, and stop leaks of any information regarding his earlier Presidency. The first article Watergate: The Unfinished Business, makes the reader willing to look deeply into the innocence of President Nixon. The author decided to present an important key events, rather than make a direct statement about Nixon's guilt. As a society, we want...
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...What impact - both short and long term, did the Watergate Scandal have on American domestic politics and our foreign policy in the 70s? After Nixon took government in the year 1969 and he proposed dramatic American government restructuring. Nixon believed that buried creative entrepreneurship below Red Tape Mountains and fostered dependency in handouts. Nixon had been practicing the New Federalist when he entered into the congress in 1946. Throughout Nixon political career, he opposed huge government programs, and then he fought to restore the political authority in the local level. By the act of Civil Rights in 1964 and voting rights in 1965, most of the African Americans were lived without any protection of law, equal economic opportunity and equal access of public facitlities. Nixon...
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...Richard Nixon the 37th U.S. President was involved in one of the most controversial issues that the United States has ever seen. Nixon's role in the Watergate Scandal definitely warranted his impeachment. The Watergate Scandal remains well known throughout history today. This problem led toward Nixon resigning only two years in his 2nd term. Did President Nixon make the right choices? Can anybody truly trust the government after a situation like this?. Many Historians believe this altered the course of history and so we can't never truly trust the Government again. Although others believe that Nixon did not make the best decision; but, this should not alter the way the people view our Government. On June 18, 1972, a story about a robbery...
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...17, 1972, after midnight, a security guard at the watergate building in Washington D.C, identified as Frank Wills, found security tapes on some of the unlocked building doors. Wills did not pay attention to the tape until an hour later, where he found the same doors now blocked, and went on to call the police. After the arrival of the police, five men equipped with spy devices with a value of about 3500 dollars were found in the building of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and were immediately arrested. While the intruders were awaiting federal prosecution, the FBI began an investigation on the incident. Thanks to the report of two Washington Post journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, there were suggestions that led to the connection between the five men, who were now awaiting trial in federal court, and the re-election campaign of the current president Richard Nixon. Unsurprisingly, the White House refused this possibility and denied any connection between the five individuals and President Nixon. In November 1972 Richard Nixon was re-elected as president of the United States of America even though the connection with the stealing of Watergate documents was confirmed months before. The Senate voted on February 1973 for the creation of a Select Committee on...
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...Out of the events in American History that have occurred throughout the period, one of the ones that interests me the most is the Watergate Scandal. With that in mind, the book I chose to read is called Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon by Fred Emery. Although I had a basic knowledge of the scandal, I learned much by reading this book including those behind it and the coverup itself, in greater detail than I had known before. The book starts off by giving some background information including events that were transpiring during the Nixon administration. Many of these consist with Nixon’s handling of Vietnam and other events such as the Kent State Shootings and then the Pentagon Papers. Through this...
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...(DNC) at the Watergate Hotel and Complex on June 17, 1972, the burglary was reported briefly and soon forgotten amidst other headlining news. Months later, the Watergate Burglary exploded when ties were found between the break-in and Richard Nixon’s Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP) (Bernstein). Thus began the Watergate Scandal: the bugging and burglary at the Watergate Complex, the cover-up ordered by President Nixon himself, and the Watergate trials which revealed patterns of ethical misconduct within the Nixon administration. The scandal’s traditional timeline ranges from the break-in at the Watergate Complex, Washington D.C. in June of 1972...
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...Scandals are actions, incidents or events regarded as morally degraded or legally wrong causing general public outrage, repercussions at a global scale and casting a shadow incessantly. Whilst scandals can be considered as a blast of unhallowed interferences ruffled with a smooth stream of domestic felicity, it must be acknowledges that scandals aid as whistleblowers, self-evidently exposing the delinquency unparalleled to any speakers or reformers. Reformers and speakers urge earnestly to improve an existing institution, law, and practice by alteration and correction of abuses and malpractices. But their practices need persistent reinforcements and continuous monitoring to ensure peace and pleasantness provided their motives are unbaised and true. For example, Martin Luther who was hoping to start a limited discussion to reform a specific abuse within the church ended up unleashing a huge movement the irrevocably altered the nature of the church as a whole....
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...Out of all the scandals we went over this semester, the Watergate scandal is my favorite. The Watergate scandal happened during Nixon’s presidency when his organization called CREEP hired five men (the plumbers) to break into the Watergate to wire it in order to spy on his opposing opponents. The plumbers were arrested before they could successfully finish their job because a security guard seen tape on the door latch outside of the Democratic National Committee Headquarters. President Nixon told the media that the White House didn’t have any involvement into the break in and told his lawyer, John Dean, to cover up any connection of the break in to the White House. The event that shocked me the most during this scandal is the Saturday Night Massacre because President Nixon ordered the Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, and his Deputy, William Ruckelshaus, to fire Archibald Cox (special prosecutor) but they refused so President Nixon requested for them to resign. President Nixon got Cox fired because Cox gave him a subpoena that required him to reveal the tapes in court that he is hiding that have information on it about the break in. This event showed an evil side of President Nixon, that was very shocking to me....
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...In the 1976 film, All the President’s Men directed by Alan J. Pakula, it includes the Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. These two men are known to have uncovered the facts about the Watergate Scandal that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. It looked like it might have cost these two their jobs, reputation, and most importantly, their lives due to the extent they went through to obtain information. The film begins with a security guard, Frank Wills, who plays himself at the Watergate complex working the night shift. He soon finds a door that is unlocked with tape and notices it to be suspicious so he calls police who then find and arrest five burglars in the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Following this, everyone is searching for news and who these burglars were and why they did it so the Washington Post assigns Bob Woodward who is one of the new reporters to cover the story. Woodward becomes knowledgeable that out of the five men, four were Cuban Americans from Miami and the last was named as James McCord. McCord reveals that he had recently left the CIA as other have CIA ties. Woodward then connects the burglars to Howard Hunt who was a former...
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...In 1972, Richard Nixon, then president of the United States of America, was associated with the Watergate Scandal. The Watergate Scandal involved five burglars that broke into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC in the morning of June 17. They were trying to steal secret documents and fix wiretap phones that were not working properly in order to find something to bring down Nixon’s opponents. Despite Nixon’s adamant denial to being linked to the scandal, the burglars were connected ultimately to Nixon’s re-election campaign after finding copies of the number to the White House re-election committee. However, at the time, many voters believed Nixon that he was not part of the scandal, so he...
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...Richard Nixon was the first President to be impeached in America but the legal system was also on trial. The political fiasco put the legal profession in a bad light. Some of the lawyers pleaded guilty. It seemed like it was hard to keep a secret if there were lots of people that were involved in this secret plan. The Watergate scandal rocked the whole nation of America, and to a great extent it also shocked the world. The center of this controversy Richard Nixon was the most powerful man in the world. The president of the most powerful nation on earth was under trial here. Nixon’s aides were charged with different crimes in connection with the break- in at the Watergate building. President Nixon had resigned from his office while insisting on his innocence of the crime being attributed to him. Investigators couldn’t find the “smoking gun” that would point to the president as the mastermind or as a part of a grand conspiracy in the break-in. It is also an important to note that the public’s access to this information and their following reaction that really helped to understand the real issue. The question as to how did the Watergate scandal changed America? There are...
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...Watergate Scandal (The Alienation of the Youth from Government) We have had forty-three different presidents. Almost all of the presidents had done something to blemish their presidency, by accident or not. Richard Nixon’s presidency was blemished from the beginning, but this blemish may have saved the Republican party for the future to come. This incident was known as the Watergate Scandal. The scandal revolves around a place known as the Watergate Hotel. This was where the Democratic party’s campaign meetings were taking place for the 1974 election. This was the same election to provide many “dirty tricks” on both sides. To switch gears for a moment, during this election, the Republican party had formed a group known as the Committee for...
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...The Watergate scandal rocked the American public to its core. During Nixon’s re-election, operatives involved with his campaign trespassed into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel because of his involvement in the attempted coverup Nixon was brought up on charges. Then Vice President Agnew resigned in October 1973 over charges of tax evasion and the acceptance of bribes, which resulted in Gerald Ford being appointed as the vice president. Less than a year into Ford’s Vice Presidency, Nixon resigned, leaving Ford to become the first unelected president of the United States ("Gerald Ford"). Gerald Ford accepted the presidency during a time of great mistrust towards the federal government. He recognized his...
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