The Watergate Crisis

¶ … Watergate Crisis

The Watergate scandal began with some confidential papers, bungling burglars, a preeminent hotel complex in Washington, D.C., and a trail of fraud leading directly to the Committee to Re-Elect President Richard M. Nixon. The scandal didn't stop at inept White House staffers, but went all the way to the Oval Office and the president himself. Watergate was the ultimate political crisis brought about by one man's ruthlessness and paranoia. In the end, Richard M. Nixon's own worst enemy was himself.

When former defense analyst for the Rand Corporation, Daniel Ellsberg, leaked the Defense Department's secret history of the Vietnam War to The New York Times, Nixon wanted information to discredit Ellsberg. Nixon aide, G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent, and E. Howard Hunt, a shadowy figure rumored to be a CIA agent, agreed to place a wiretap on the telephone line of Ellsberg's Beverly Hills psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding. When the wiretap didn't provide the necessary incriminating evidence, Liddy came up with another plan. Ellsberg's actual files could prove to be of immense value. (Liddy 218)

The White House Plumbers, so named because they were hired to stop information leaks, included Liddy and Hunt. Seven men took on the task of breaking into Fielding's office to find the Ellsberg files. However, the plumbers didn't find any information on the former Pentagon worker. But nearly a year later, their break-in skills were put to use when the plumbers were hired to wiretap the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel in June 1972.

A laid it out for [Jeb] Magruder, telling him that five of our men had been arrested in DNC headquarters in the Watergate early that morning and that it could compromise the committee," Liddy wrote in his autobiography, Will. (Liddy 343) Magruder was Nixon's special assistant and the committee Liddy refers to is the Committee to Re-Elect the President, headed by former attorney general John Mitchell.

Mitchell called a press conference to deny any link from the committee to the Watergate break-in. However, the money that was used by the burglars to post bail was eventually traced back to funds from the Committee to Re-Elect the President.

By September 1972, it was discovered that Mitchell, while serving as Nixon's attorney general, controlled a secret Republican fund used to finance widespread intelligence-gathering operations against the Democrats.

Nixon exercised control over the situation from the start. 'Track down Magruder and see what he knows,' he had ordered [H.R.] Haldeman... The cover-up and the destruction of evidence began at once. Then he met with [John] Ehrlichman. Watergate was discussed, although no tape of the conversation has ever been produced." (Summers 428)

Nixon had ordered the installation of a concealed tape recording system in the Oval Office, the Executive Office Building, and Camp David. "As late as April 25, 1973, well after the smoking-gun conversations about stonewalling and hush money, Nixon was still congratulating himself on the secret system. 'I'm damn glad we have it, aren't you?' he crowed." (Carlson 1991)

Despite his glee at having his secret taping system, the recordings eventually brought about Nixon's downfall. According to Henry Kissinger, Nixon's Secretary of State, the president was at his best writing policy memoranda or when jotting down marginal notes on the work of others. "But these have been overshadowed by the tapes, which - at least those chosen for publication - show Nixon at his worst: manipulative and grandiloquent all at once. Second, the tapes bring out the worst in Nixon's interlocutors as well." (Kissinger 65)

The FBI determined through its investigations that the Watergate break-in was just the tip of the iceberg in a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of the Nixon re-election committee. Although the FBI's investigation focused on key White House staff, the president was re-elected in one of the largest landslides in American political history. Nixon won by more than 60% of the vote and crushed the Democratic nominee, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.

In January 1973, Liddy and James W. McCord Jr. were convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping in the Watergate break-in. Five other men pled guilty, but the mystery of who ordered the break-in remained unsolved.

Three months later, Nixon's top White House staffers, H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst resigned because of the Watergate scandal. White House counsel, John Dean was then fired by Nixon.

By the end of April 1973, the prosecutorial noose had sufficiently tightened around Haldeman and Ehrlichman so that the president was forced to accept their resignations, along with those of Dean and Kleindienst." (Garment 92)

The Senate Watergate hearings began in May and former solicitor general Archibald Cox is named as the Justice Department's special prosecutor.

Dean began testifying on a Monday and did not finish until Friday. He told about the cover-up, including the effort to obstruct the FBI investigation by paying hush money to the Watergate burglars, Hunt and Liddy. He accused the president of having participated in these activities from the beginning." (Garment 95)

By July 1973, the taping system in the Oval Office was no longer a secret. "From that day until Nixon's resignation in August 1974, the drama of Watergate lay in the fight over the tapes - who would hear them, what was on them, and what they meant." (Garment 96)

Oftentimes Nixon would whisper during key Watergate conversations in the Oval Office.

White House counsel John Dean was to notice Nixon 'posturing' during Watergate conversations, 'always placing his own role in an innocuous perspective...' I wondered if the meeting was a setup,' Dean wrote later. His suspicions deepened when Nixon got up and walked away a few steps before saying something compromising to himself in 'an almost inaudible tone.'" Dean told Watergate investigators that he discussed the Watergate cover-up with the president at least 35 times.

Once the secret tape recording system was discovered, Nixon refused to turn over presidential recordings to the Senate Watergate committee or the special prosecutor. Over and over again, Nixon proclaimed innocence of any wrongdoing in the Watergate scandal.

The Watergate Special Prosecution Force went all the way to the Supreme Court to force Nixon to turn over all the White House tapes. Of the 60 hours of recordings handed over to the prosecution, only 12 1/2 hours were made public.