WATERGATE A Transformation in American Political

On the evening of June 17, 1972, a security guard at the Watergate, a Washington complex that included a hotel, apartments, and offices, noticed something amiss about an office door. He called the police, who responded and arrested five burglars inside the office, the headquarters of the Democratic Party (National Archives 1). Thus began the most serious political scandal in American history, one that would topple President Richard M. Nixon, change American political and media culture, and give the world the suffex "-gate" as a shorthand for scandal.

It was clear from the outset that what the security guard had come upon was no ordinary burglary. As later recounted by journalist Bob Woodward, who with his colleague at the Washington Post, Carl Bernstein, would play a central role in exposing the scandal, the responding police apprehended "five men in business suits û not your ordinary DC burglars û pockets stuffed with hundred-dollar bills, sophisticated electronic and photographic equipment. The team of burglars had ties to the CIA, to the Nixon re-election committeee and the White House" (Woodward 1). As was later learned, the five men had come not to steal something from the Democratic headquarters, but to repair electronic surveillance equipment, "bugs," that had been planted in the headquarters some three weeks earlier.

1972 was a presidential election year, and it was obvious from the outset that

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Nixon at that point considered but rejected making a "statement" that would acknowledge White House knowledge of and involvement in covert political activities of which the Watergate break-in itself was only a part (Transcript 25-26). Instead, in April of 1973 the White House issued a statement that President Nixon had had no prior knowledge of the break-in. Once the tapes were revealed, this assertion was shown to be false; the tapes revealed that Nixon personally was closely briefed on the activities of several covert teams that had been established to interfere with the Democratic presidential campaign and with perceived enemies of the administration generally. Several prominent Republican members of Congress were outraged. In early 1974, the House Judiciary Committee began hearings to determine if grounds existed for impeachment of the president. In stark contrast to the Clinton impeachment process nearly a quarter-century later, opinion and votes in the committee did not break down along solidly partisan lines, and Nixon ultimately resigned, in August of 1974, rather than face impeachment in the House and a high probability of conviction by the Senate and removal from office. It is impossible to say now what might hav
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Approximate Word count = 1444
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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