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Nixon 's Presidency A Period Wrought With Scandal

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Nixon’s presidency—a period wrought with scandal. The most well-known of these, Watergate, a complex web of deceit, has become a political term synonymous with corruption and crime. Afraid of possible defeat in the 1972 election, Nixon and his republican associates sanctioned underhanded, illegal, acts, namely a break-in at the Democratic Party national headquarters at the Watergate complex. The break-in failed and the story was revealed to the public, despite the Nixon administration’s attempts to cover up the scandal. As a result of their insistence on covering up the infamous event, the leadership of the United States was sent spiraling into a mess of treachery and dishonesty, threatening both the nation’s stability and future. Beginning the night of June 16, 1972, and continuing on into the wee hours of the morning on June 17, Nixon and his seven associate-burglars—G. Gordan Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, James McCord, Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, and Frank Sturgis—attempted to break in to the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, with the intent to use phone bugs and photos to provide Nixon, a Republican, with information that would hopefully secure him the victory in the 1972 presidential election (Anderson 8-10). To begin, the burglars placed tape on stairway doors, preventing them from locking, allowing them to make an easy exit, the first of many mistakes (Cruden 16). Armed with walkie-talkies and

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