On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., setting off the political scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon.
President Nixon prepares to address the nation with copies of the edited White House transcripts April 29, 1974, just months before his resignation.
President Nixon prepares to address the nation with copies of the edited White House transcripts April 29, 1974, just months before his resignation.
The arrest prompted a series of nationally televised Senate hearings that captivated the nation and prompted Nixon to resign.
The hearings, which took place 40 years ago this month, were convened under the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities with the premise of investigating ethical wrongdoing by both political parties, but soon became known simply as the Watergate Hearings.
"Government Exhibit 133: Chapstick Tubes with Hidden Microphones" This device was found in the White House office safe of E. Howard Hunt, who helped direct the Watergate break-in.
While looking into the story, young Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein discovered that the burglars received money from Nixon’s re-election committee, and that two Nixon aides had guided the burglars through the Watergate complex via walkie-talkies from their perch across the street.
They discovered that Attorney General John Mitchell oversaw a secret Republican fund to gather intelligence on Democrats. The FBI concluded that since 1971, the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP) and the White House had been spying on Democrats, attempting to pacify Nixon’s paranoia about losing his 1972 re-election.
But there was little need to worry. Despite public information about the Watergate burglary and the administration’s involvement, Nixon easily won re-election in November 1972 against Democrat George McGovern with one of the largest margins in history.
In January 1973, the five burglars and their two accomplices appeared in federal district court, but even after two men were convicted, questions lingered. The Senate voted unanimously on Sen. Ted Kennedy’s resolution to form the select committee to dig deeper into ethical wrongdoing related to the 1972 election.
Protesters call for Congress to impeach President Nixon. in October 1973
Nixon believed in taping all of his Oval Office conversations, but resisted Ervin’s subpoena of his tapes, once again claiming executive privilege. The Senate committee argued that separation of powers required the president to comply and sued Nixon in federal district court.
Nixon did not turn over the tapes until 1974, when the Supreme Court ordered him to in a separate case, United States v. Nixon. The evidence was damning, and the House Judiciary Committee adopted three articles of impeachment, prompting Nixon to resign in August 1974.
A scandal unfolds
When news of a break-in at DNC headquarters first came to light, it was not evident that it was part of a larger scheme of political espionage, or spying.
Into Congress’ hands
Four Democratic and three Republican senators were given a $500,000 budget and subpoena powers to investigate the break-in and any subsequent illegal activity that came to light, much of which Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting had already illuminated. Conservative Southern Democrat Sam Ervin, a Senate elder and widely regarded Constitutional expert, was chosen to chair the committee both because he had no higher political aspirations that would compromise his impartiality and because his relative conservatism gave the committee bipartisan credibility. Nixon forbid his aides from testifying before the committee, claiming executive privilege, but when Ervin threatened to have the White House sergeant at arms arrest the president, Nixon compromised, limiting executive privilege invocations to his records. John Dean, who had served as White House counsel until Nixon fired him in April, was among the first to testify before the Senate committee in June. Seeking immunity from prosecution, he told senate investigators that Nixon knew about efforts to cover up the Watergate break-in, becoming the first White House insider to turn on Nixon. He recalled telling Nixon that the cover-up was a “cancer on the presidency”.
