Jash Patel
AP Government and Politics
Mr. Toy
January 21st, 2018
The Watergate Scandal
On the night of June 17th, 1972, five men broke into the Watergate Complex in Washington, D.C.. Through the process of Nixon’s resignation, the media’s influence into governmental and public opinion, and the present day effects of Watergate, we see how the crimes of these five men sparked the greatest case of constitutional crisis in the history of the United States and created permanent public distrust in the U.S. government. The objective of the five men was to steal documents and bug the Democratic National Convention headquarters located in the Watergate Complex. All five men were caught and arrested by the police that night however the story was not linked to Nixon until months after his re-election. Months after Nixon’s re-election some of the thieves pleaded guilty, one of them James McCord, the security chief of the Committee to Re-elect the President pleaded guilty stating that he was pressured by the White House to keep quiet. As this document of McCord’s statement came out, there was widespread speculation that Nixon and his cabinet were using the CIA to cover up the FBI’s investigation. Eventually the senate created a special committee that was responsible for investigating. The committee later found that Nixon had taped his Oval office conversations and was subpoenaed to give all the tapes to the senate. Nixon in attempt to cover up some conversations released 1,200 pages of edited transcripts of the tapes, but still would not release the official tapes. However, after an official order from the Supreme Court, Nixon turned his tapes over to the senate. One of the tapes provided evidence that Nixon tried to use the CIA to cover up the FBI’s investigation into the crimes of the five burglars. The evidence then led to Nixon’s resignation however during his resignation speech he didn’t admit to being guilty.
Although I have already mentioned that the result of the Watergate Scandal was President Nixon resigning from his position in office, their is more depth in the story leading up to that moment. The morning after the burglary, Alfred Lewis, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein published an article in the Washington Post. Woodward and Bernstein along with the FBI were successful in identifying co conspirators G. Gordon Liddy who worked for CREEP (Committee to re-elect the President) and E Howard Hunt who was on the White House staff. However the White House public relations staff successfully covered up Nixon’s involvement in the scandal. Meanwhile, the White House arranged for the disappearance of Hunt, in hopes that the burglars would be seen as very dedicated anticommunist patriots. For the time being the Watergate Scandal had been put to bed, however, Woodward and Bernstein were persistent with the story. It was later found that the two were being given leaks by a man famously known as “Deep Throat”, who turned out to be FBI deputy director W. Mark Felt Sr. Felt’s goal was to feed the reporters information about FBI interviews and files that had to do with Watergate. He did this in order to build public and political outcry that would eventually pressure for Nixon’s resignation. Felt’s acknowledgement that it would be quite tough to prove that the most powerful man in the free world had committed heinous crimes which would lead to an impeachment, so therefore he took the approach of forcing the influence of the people on the President. However, that didn’t stop Felt and the FBI from persisting to find evidence. A couple months after the Watergate arrests, the FBI had decided to snoop around the bank accounts of the thieves and found a $25,000 dollar check that was directly linked to the Nixon Campaign. The discovery was a monumental first step to unraveling the scandal, the discovery of the check led to John Sirica the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia believing that a person higher up in the government was pulling the strings. He therefore decided to put pressure on the defendants, he decided to offer leniency on their sentences if they co-operated. McCord decided to act and admitted that the White House had told them to plead guilty and stay quiet. McCord’s admittance came in a letter that he officially submitted to Sirica and it implicated two very people that would prove to be crucial. In his letter he implicated John Dean, White House Counsel and Jeb Magruder who was apart of CREEP. Of the two John Dean would prove to be the most important as he directly linked Nixon to Watergate. The implication of Dean led to him being fully co-operative with prosecutors in revealing Nixon’s involvement with covering up the Watergate break-in. Eventually on June 25th, 1973 Dean testified in front of the Senate Committee that was investigating the Watergate scandal. Dean testified that he knew Nixon was apart of the cover-up and confirmed that there were tape recordings of Nixon discussing these such things. Although Dean had told the Senate Committee about the tapes, there was no actual proof of the tapes actually existing. The thought of their existence got “Deep Throat” to wonder who would be able to confirm the existence of the tapes. In accordance, Bob Woodward received information from “Deep Throat” suggesting that Alexander Butterfield who was in charge of “internal security” at the White House would know about the existence of the tapes. The information Woodward had received made him curious, so he decided to ask the Senate Committee very interesting questions about what he could possibly know. Butterfield admitted later on that he believes Woodward’s line of questioning is most likely what prompted the Committee to call him to testify. Butterfield was eventually questioned behind closed doors, and was asked if he could confirm the existence of the tapes. Butterfield knew it would ruin Nixon but answered truthfully in saying they did indeed exist. However, he stated specifically that he would not testify publicly as the tapes did jeopardize national security. That request didn’t hold up very long as only a few days later news had come out about a mysterious witness. With very little notice, Butterfield was publicly questioned by minority counsel Fred Thompson who got Butterfield to admit to the world that the taping system had existed. Archibald Cox, the special Watergate prosecutor learned of this news and immediately subpoenaed Nixon for his tapes, and to no one’s surprise he denied the subpoena citing executive privilege. However, Cox didn’t back down leading to the fight between Cox and Nixon being called the Saturday Night Massacre. Nixon then decided to fully abuse his power and ordered his attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to fire Cox. Elliot did not comply, and resigned instead. The new attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, also refused to fire Cox and resigned as well. The next man up Solicitor General Robert Bork successfully carried out Nixon’s aspirations of firing Cox. After the firing of Cox, Nixon had appointed the new special prosecutor as Leon Jaworski. However, these moves were all made in the view of the public which created widespread outcry and rumours of impeachment were slowly being introduced with bills that were being passed through the Legislative Branch. The widespread public outcry lead to immense pressure on the Nixon administration. As a result Nixon agreed to release 1,200 edited pages of transcriptions from the White House tapes. The release of the transcripts was followed up by an announcement from Nixon explaining that the tapings were very crucial to national security and therefore he had to cite his executive privilege. However on July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court case United States vs. Nixon was introduced and the Supreme Court unanimously rejected Nixon’s claim of Executive Privilege on the right to withhold the White House tapes. In reply, Nixon complied with the Supreme Court and surrendered 64 tape recordings. Of those tapes one in particular, which today is referred to as the “Smoking Gun”, recorded just 6 days after the Watergate break-in had Nixon stating that he had tried to use the CIA in hopes to block the FBI’s investigation into the scandal. As a result with a possible impeachment in play on August 8th, 1974, in a nationally televised address President Richard Nixon resigned. Immediately after his resignation Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn in, and with his newly attained title he pardoned Nixon for any crimes he may have committed.
The popular opinion seems to be that Nixon’s resignation was solely due to the inevitable impeachment and criminal charges that he was going to be charged with, however a factor that isn’t greatly attributed is the media’s influence on the government and on the public. However, the government and the public was only able to have a reaction to the Watergate scandal due to the influence of the media. The two biggest influences from the media were Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, they would be proclaimed by many as a primary reason in influencing the masses on the Watergate scandal. Marvin Kalb, a senior writer at Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, believes that the two writers reporting was “absolutely critical” to “creating an atmosphere in Washington and within the government that Nixon was in serious trouble and that the White House was engaged in a cover-up”. In addition, the atmosphere created by the two reporters in Washington was very important as it pressured people such as the presiding federal judge at the time of the scandal, John Sirica. Bob Woodward said that Sirica told him that Washington Post’s stories at the time had influenced him to crack down on the Watergate conspirators, which eventually led to Sirica obtaining a letter of guilt from James McCord which blew the case wide open. Woodward also goes on to say that “,Senators don’t decide to investigate in a vacuum”, with the same going for judges, a CBS News anchorman Dan Rather stated that "The record clearly shows that the cover-up would have worked if the press hadn't done its job”. In simplicity, the press’s job is to create awareness to the masses which was done by reporting every event of the scandal and televising the Watergate hearings on national television. Many scholars have written that “so many of the struggles between Nixon and his opponents … played out on television accounts for the impression that the news media and an aroused public opinion forced the downfall of Richard Nixon". The effect of the public was especially prevalent during their outcry against Nixon after his decision to fire Archibald Cox after his subpoena is what pressured Nixon to appease the public and release edited transcripts of the tapes. Eventually, the public felt so much distrust in the government that by the time of his resignation, Nixon’s approval rating had fallen to 24%. In addition it can be noted that a very important of the media’s influence during Watergate as mentioned before is the nationally televised senate hearings. In fact, 53% of people viewed Watergate as a serious matter which was up from 31% of people who viewed Watergate as a serious matter before the public hearings. Although the Watergate break-in occurred almost over 45 years ago, the distrust it instilled all those years ago still figures to exist till this day.
The present day effects of Watergate may seem miniscule especially since it happened over 45 years ago, however to this day it is still considered by many as the biggest in U.S. History and created public distrust that has stood the test of time. The Watergate scandal had a range of effects one in particular was that it pressured Congress to pass campaign finance reform legislation due to the campaign money that was given to the thieves as bribe money. Another effect was that the government began probing abuse of power at the CIA and other similar agencies that dealt with national security due to their heavy involvement in the break-in and its cover up. In addition, the political party that got affected the most were the Democrats, the problems are mostly due to the fact that they are stereotypically more inclined to have a greater role in national issues which hurts them because of the distrust caused by the scandal. In specific, the distrust in national issues such as Benghazi, the Affordable Care Act, and the Internal Revenue Service scandal display just how much Watergate has affected the level of trust in government. Also the immense level of distrust has caused younger generations to stay away from pursuing future careers in the government. Dan Blair, the CEO of the National Academy of Public Administration states that Watergate also helped to pass Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code,. which makes sure that tax returns and other relatable info is to be held in confidence. Blair also accredits Watergate with helping pass a passage in the Presidential Records Act that states that official records of the president are public documents. Finally, the biggest impact which is usually stated but generally undervalued is the significant increase of interest into the field of investigative journalism. The efforts of Woodward and Bernstein to this day are still revered as two journalists who weren’t afraid to ask the people hard questions and would have nothing stand in their way in the quest for the truth.
On the night of June 17th, 1972, five men broke into the Watergate Complex in Washington, D.C.. Through the process of Nixon’s resignation, the media’s influence into governmental and public opinion, and the present day effects of Watergate, we see how the crimes of these five men sparked the greatest case of constitutional crisis in the history of the United States and created permanent public distrust in the U.S. government. In the end the public distrust in the government will never truly disappear in totality instead only way to limit the public distrust is to continually reform the government in hopes of being able to get close to abolishing all public distrust. That being said, the constant reminder of events such as Watergate helps to remind us that mistakes like this are used to make sure they never happen again and to also use them as a benchmark for the growth of our country as a whole. We learn history in order to learn from our past mistakes and prevent them from happening in the future. Watergate taught us that it was a poster child for distrust and the greatest case of constitutional crisis ever but as an individual and a society it is our job to prevent from happening in the future.