Watergate scandal

Following the arrest of the burglars, both the press and the Department of Justice connected the money found on those involved to the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP), the fundraising arm of Nixon's campaign.

[1][2] Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, journalists from The Washington Post, pursued leads provided by a source they called "Deep Throat" (later identified as Mark Felt, associate director of the FBI) and uncovered a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage directed by White House officials and illegally funded by donor contributions.

In July, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to release the tapes, and the House Judiciary Committee recommended that he be impeached for obstructing justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress.

Two months later, Mitchell approved a reduced version of the plan, which included burglarizing the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate Complex in Washington, D.C. to photograph campaign documents and install listening devices in telephones.

This included former CIA officers E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, the latter of whom was serving as then-CRP Security Coordinator after John Mitchell resigned as attorney general to become the CRP chairman.

[23] The following morning, Sunday, June 18, G. Gordon Liddy called Jeb Magruder in Los Angeles and informed him that "the four men arrested with McCord were Cuban freedom fighters, whom Howard Hunt recruited".

[31] Mitchell reported that, during the week following the Watergate burglary, she had been held captive in a hotel in California, and that security guard Steve King ended her call to Thomas by pulling the phone cord from the wall.

Barker's multiple national and international businesses all had separate bank accounts, which he was found to have attempted to use to disguise the true origin of the money being paid to the burglars.

On October 10, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post reported that the FBI had determined that the Watergate break-in was part of a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage on behalf of the Nixon re-election committee.

Relying heavily upon anonymous sources, Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered information suggesting that knowledge of the break-in, and attempts to cover it up, led deeply into the upper reaches of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and the White House.

[41] Most outlets ignored or downplayed Woodward and Bernstein's scoops; the crosstown Washington Star-News and the Los Angeles Times even ran stories incorrectly discrediting the Post's articles.

In 1971, the White House requested an audit of the tax return of the editor of Newsday, after he wrote a series of articles about the financial dealings of Charles "Bebe" Rebozo, a friend of Nixon.

"Nixon's conversations in late March and all of April 1973 revealed that not only did he know he needed to remove Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Dean to gain distance from them, but he had to do so in a way that was least likely to incriminate him and his presidency.

Urged by Nixon, on March 28, aide John Ehrlichman told Attorney General Richard Kleindienst that nobody in the White House had had prior knowledge of the burglary.

He fired White House Counsel John Dean, who went on to testify before the Senate Watergate Committee and said that he believed and suspected the conversations in the Oval Office were being taped.

[45][48]On the same day, April 30, Nixon appointed a new attorney general, Elliot Richardson, and gave him authority to designate a special counsel for the Watergate investigation who would be independent of the regular Justice Department hierarchy.

On Monday, July 16, in front of a live, televised audience, chief minority counsel Fred Thompson asked Butterfield whether he was "aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president".

Responding to the allegations of possible wrongdoing, in front of 400 Associated Press managing editors at Disney's Contemporary Resort,[52][53] on November 17, 1973, Nixon emphatically stated, "Well, I am not a crook.

His legal team favored releasing the tapes unedited, while Press Secretary Ron Ziegler preferred using an edited version where "expletive deleted" would replace the raw material.

[78] Additionally, John Jacob Rhodes, the House leader of Nixon's party, announced that he would vote to impeach, stating that "coverup of criminal activity and misuse of federal agencies can neither be condoned nor tolerated".

From the discussions I have had with Congressional and other leaders, I have concluded that because of the Watergate matter I might not have the support of the Congress that I would consider necessary to back the very difficult decisions and carry out the duties of this office in the way the interests of the Nation would require.

To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home.

In his official response to the pardon, he said that he "was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy".

I didn't think it would be proper for me to make any recommendations at all, and I told him so.Charles Colson pled guilty to charges concerning the Daniel Ellsberg case; in exchange, the indictment against him for covering up the activities of the Committee to Re-elect the President was dropped, as it was against Strachan.

[citation needed] Instead, Nichter sided with late journalist J. Anthony Lukas of The New York Times, who had concluded that the committee was seeking to find evidence linking the Democrats to prostitution, as it was alleged that Oliver's office had been used to arrange such meetings.

[125] From 1968 to 1970, Hughes withdrew nearly half a million dollars from the Texas National Bank of Commerce for contributions to both Democrats and Republicans, including presidential candidates Humphrey and Nixon.

[131] United States–Australia relations have been considered to have figured as influential when, in November 1975, Australia experienced its own constitutional crisis which led to the dismissal of the Whitlam Government by Sir John Kerr, the Australian Governor-General.

[142] Iranian then-Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi told the press in 1973, "I want to say quite emphatically ... that everything that would weaken or jeopardize the President's power to make decisions in split seconds would represent grave danger for the whole world.

[144] Kissinger told the National Press Club in January 1977 that Nixon's presidential powers weakened during his tenure, thus (as rephrased by the media) "prevent[ing] the United States from exploiting the [scandal]".

[145] The publisher of The Sacramento Union, John P. McGoff, said in January 1975 that the media overemphasized the scandal, though he called it "an important issue", overshadowing more serious topics, like a declining economy and an energy crisis.