The Watergate scandal is one of the biggest scandals in US history. The Watergate scandal happened when president Richard Nixon was tied to a crime in which former CIA and FBI agents broke into the Democratic National Committee and George McGovern which was the other presidential candidate. These agents that worked for Nixon were known as “plumbers” these plumbers did many covert and illegal things. Part of these illegal activities is when five men tried to break into the Watergate complex. The five men were discovered by a security guard and were all arrested. Once they were arrested one of the men was known to be connected to Charles Colson who was the special council to the president. Once this link was established the media was all over it and the scandal started to be revealed.
Woodward and Bernstein were two journalist for the Washington Post and they were the two reporters who uncovered the links between the break in and got through all the cover up to link it back to the CIA, FBI and the White House. Woodward relied heavily on “Deep Throat” he was the greatest source of information that was coming straight from the White House. He hid his name so no one would find out until years later. “Deep Throat” was actually the FBI’s number two Mark Felt. Mark helped Woodward by pointing him in the right direction when it came to the investigation.
Nixon went to his lawyer John Dean to have him try to help cover this whole thing up before too much information was released to the public. Dean went about trying to pay everyone off and to have them all stay quiet. However in early 1973 this cover up started to fall apart when FBI Director Patrick gray testified at a hearing where he said he was asked to keep away from the Watergate investigation. Gray soon resigned because he destroyed files that were directly related to the scandal. Then at the end of April, more white house officials resigned because of their involvement and John Dean was fired.
Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox proved the connections between the burglary and the White House. Also with Dean now cooperating with Cox he said that Nixon talked to him many times about Watergate. Then when all of this happened Nixon fired Cox, the attorney general and the attorney general's deputy. This looked very suspicious for him to fire them after they had made the connections to him and the scandal. With all of the evidence being piled up against Nixon he made the decision to resign as president of the United States.
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| Woodward and Bernstein in the Washington Post news room |
I have watched a documentary on the Watergate scandal and it was very detailed and gave a good overview of this investigation. You hit a lot of key points and then wrapping it up Nixon resigning from office. What is the picture illustrating?
ReplyDeleteThis topic is really interesting to me because you would think that you would be able to trust the president of the united states, and Nixon did a lot of shady stuff that probably made a lot of Americans lose trust in the government/president. This also makes me wonder if other presidents have done something similar and successfully covered it up, and we will never know.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Nixon did not lie of he would have been in as much trouble as he was. What he did was still bad. It also makes me wonder if the government still does these types of things and gets away with it.
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