Watergate and Nixon

On the morning of June 17th 1972, in the Watergate hotel in Washington, the Democratic party's national committee offices were broken into. However the burglars were arrested inside the office because the security guard at the time was good at his job. Before President Richard Nixon's reelections, the United States was deeply internally divided because of the Vietnam war. Nixon and his advisors believed that in the country's political state a forceful campaign was necessary for reelection. Members of the committee to reelect President Nixon broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters to tap phones, and steal top secret documents. However as we usually see in movies the bad guys were bad at their job, and had to break in a second time on June 17th, because they did the wire the phones correctly the first time. The security guard saw that the locks had been taped and called the police who caught the burglars. The burglars could not be clearly connected to the president, until the police found the phone number to the reelection committee in their bag. Two months later Nixon gave a speech promising the public none of his staff were involved, and surprisingly the public believed him, and elected him again. While he made this promise, it was discovered that he paid the burglars hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep them quiet, as well as used the CIA to interfere and cease the FBI's investigation into the break in. In try to cover up the true, Nixon abused his presidential power, obstructed justice, and did way worse things than the actual break in. 7 conspirators were on charges related to the break in, but 5 were convinced by Nixon's aides to plea guilty and avoided trial, but the other two were convicted in 1973. This is when the public began to suspect a conspiracy, and the pressure was too much for some close to Nixon who testified against him, and revealed that every conversation in the oval office was on tape. Some of the tapes had evidence to prove Nixon's guilt, and he and the courts went back and fourth demanding and refusing the presentation of the tapes. By early 1947, 7 of Nixon's aides were on charges related to the Watergate scandal. In July of that year the Supreme Court order Nixon to turn over the tapes, and while he stalled as long he could, the House of Representatives used obstruction of justice, abuse of power, criminal over up, and constitutional violations as grounds for impeachment. Before he ever released the raw tapes, he released edited transcripts to the public of the tapes. The public was horrified by what they read, and on August 5th Nixon released the raw tapes under supreme court order. 3 days later Nixon resigned as president, as impeachment was imminent. While Nixon did many things wrong and should have spent much time in prison, Gerald Ford, the successor to Nixon pardoned him for his crimes while in office. Nixon's aides were convicted and sent to federal prison. After all the evidence was released, and Nixon was clearly guilty, he never admitted to any criminal wrongdoing, but blamed the whole situation of poor judgement. The scandal brought down an already dismayed country after the outcomes of the Vietnam war, and the previous years. The public became cynical, and mistrusting. 

http://watergate.info/burglary

http://www.history.com/topics/watergate

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/watergate/