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Watergate; Scandal In The White House Essay, Research Paper

The Watergate Scandal was a series of crimes committed by the President Nixon

and his staff members who were found to of spied on and harassed political

opponents, accepted illegal campaign contributions, and covered up their own

misdeeds.

On June 17, 1972, The Washington Post published a small story. In which the

reporters stated that five men had been arrested breaking into the headquarters

of the Democratic National Committee. These bumbling fools had made two attempts

prior; the first time they were halted in their efforts due to what they thought

was an alarm, their second attempt the next day led them to no better

conclusion, when they were confronted by a locked door, which they were unable

to open. Finally on the third day (Sunday) having sent the locksmith back to

Miami on a day round trip, they got the door wrenched open and went in. (Emery,

05).

The democratic headquarters were located in a Washington, D.C. building complex

called Watergate. These burglars were carrying equipment to wiretap telephones

and take pictures of documents. The Washington Post had two reporters who

researched deep into the story. Their names were Carl Bernstein and Bob

Woodward, they discovered that one of the suspects had an address book with the

name and phone number of a White House official who could have been involved in

the crime (Woodward). The reporters suspected that other White House officials

had ordered the break-in. During a press conference in August of 1972, president

Nixon said that nobody on the White House staff was involved in the crime. Most

of the public accepted Nixon’s word and dropped the questioning. But when the

burglars went to trial four months later. The story changed rapidly from a small

disturbance to a national scandal, which ended only when Richard Nixon was

forced from office. The Watergate investigation eventually exposed a long series

of illegal activities in the Nixon administration. Nixon and his staff were

found to have spied on and harassed political opponents, embezzled campaign

contributions and tried to cover-up their illegal acts.

For years Nixon was carrying on the crimes and they were not noticed until 1972.

1969 was the date in which the Watergate scandal really began.

It all started when Nixon had the White House staff make up a list called the

enemies list. Nixon had enemies, which include about 300 liberal politicians,

journalists and actors. Most of these people made a public speech against the

Vietnam War. Nixon’s aids formed a tax audit on these `enemies’ (Feinberg, 75).

He also had agents find out personal information that would harm them

politically. Nixon was always worried about government employees revealing

secret information to the newspapers or other media sources. The president’s

agents helped him by wiretapping phone lines that belonged to reporters in order

to find out any revealing material. Nixon was so worried about internal

espionage that during the Cambodia bombing he felt he had to wiretap his own

staff members. In June of 1971, The New York Times formed work that was

published about the history of the Vietnam War; these were known as the Pentagon

Papers. The classified information pointed towards some policies that may have

been responsible for causing the Vietnam War. Daniel Ellsberg, a former

employee, gave some classified documents to the Washington post. Nixon was

infuriated by their publishes. Nixon then tried to twist Ellsberg’s actions into

a form of treason, but Nixon did not want to take Ellsberg to court. Instead he

made a secret group of CIA agents that went by the code name plumbers this is a

name made up “because they cover up leaks”(Schudson, p.18), that could hurt the

White House, such as the pentagon papers. While they were searching for

incriminating evidence the “Plumbers” stumbled across Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s

office. Although they discovered nothing wrong they were not content to leaving

Ellsberg alone and it is believed that they had initiated a plan to try and

further discredit Ellsberg’s reputation (Watergate, Cover-up).

One of Nixon’s biggest worries was about having enough votes for the election in

1972. Nixon was concerned that Edmund Muskie of Maine would win because he was

the strongest Democratic candidate. Hoping to wipe out Edmund from the

competition, the Plumbers began to play a bunch of so called `dirty tricks’

(Schudson, 26). They issued false statements in Muskie’s name and told the press

false rumors about him, so that the plumbers could publish it to the public.

Worst of all, they sent a letter to the New Hampshire newspaper stating that

Muskie was making mean remarks about French Canadian ancestry. All of these

slurs enabled Nixon to gain further ground on Muskie in the elections. Despite

Nixon’s efforts the Democratic nomination went to George McGovern, a liberal

senator from South Dakota. His supporters included many people who backed the

civil rights, anti-war and environmental movements of the 1960s. McGovern had

fought to make the nomination process more open and democratic. Congress had at

that time passed the 23rd amendment of the Constitution allowing

eighteen-year-Olds to vote. As a result, the 1972 Democratic Convention was the

first to include large numbers of

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