Essay on Watergate Scandal and President Nixon

Richard Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal left no doubt to his involvement of being impeached. During the Nixon Administration, he was able to prevent colleges from being gender biased and allowing both male and female to have equal opportunity and receiving financial aid as well as competing in sports. He was able to establish the Environmental Protection Agency. He also worked to create a relationship between the U.S and the Middle East. Unfortunately, even with all of the accomplishments, he was able to have, everyone will remember Richard Nixon as the president who was involved in the Watergate scandal. The Watergate scandal left an asterisk by his legacy while being in the office, the results left him with having to resign and with him facing criminal charges as well, the Scandal became well known to the public in the summer of 1974. Through my essay, I will discuss why I am intrigued by the Watergate scandal, and discuss what if Richard Nixon never got caught on the audio tape?

Nixon used his authority to access official documents to benefit himself. He damaged the way people say him as a person. He was supposed to be someone that America was supposed to trust but never question. Investigations proved years of political espionage and illegal surveillance. Instead of reviving the ultimate price of injustice in office, impeachment, Nixon chose to resign and further lost the respect of the American public. The crime in acted on that day made citizens question the leadership of their country and the measures their leaders will go to for themselves. The coward decision that Nixon chose to take and end his presidency and not accept full responsibility of his infidelities truly showed the abuse of power that took place during his years of presidency.

As time progressed and the investigation began to uncover the truth about what transpired at the Watergate apartment complex several things became evident: most of the burglars were ex-CIA and ex-FBI personnel, the burglars were paid with money directly from the re-election campaign and President Nixon not only knew about and sanctioned the break-in but deliberately attempted to cover it up. When called before Congress to testify about his knowledge, White House staffer John Dean testified that Nixon and his aides attempted to “stonewall” the investigation. As Congress continued its inquiry, it became clear

Former President Richard Nixon is most well-known for his role in the Watergate crisis in the early 1970’s. The Watergate crisis started in June of 1972, when the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters was broke into by members of Nixon’s re-election committee. The press took this breaking news and began to dig deeper into what the Whitehouse (President Nixon) was hiding. Over the next two years heavy investigations into the Watergate incident revealed that President Nixon did, in fact, ordered a cover-up to keep the incident under control. Fearing impeachment, President Nixon resigned his presidency in August 1974,

After the break-in, Nixon needed to protect his image so that American’s could still trust him. To accomplish this, he let a number of employees take the blame for him. The Watergate Seven were a group of men involved in the scandal, who were also advisors and aides to President Nixon. On January 8, 1973, these men were put to trial. With urges from Nixon, five of the seven pleaded guilty. Then on January 30, 1973, six of Nixon’s aides and the lawyer for his re-election committee were charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to cover-up the break in. This included John Mitchell, Harry Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Charles W. Colson, Gordon Strachan, and Kenneth Wells Parkinson. However, after the trial, CIA operative, James W. McCord, wrote a letter to Judge John Sirica. In which he claimed that the defendants had pleaded guilty under duress. He also said that they committed perjury and that others were involved in the Watergate break-in. Leading to further pressure being put on Nixon and his alleged involvement in the break-in. Eventually, Nixon’s deceitful involvement would be revealed to the American public.

details to the press during the height of the Watergate scandal, especially to Washington Post’s

Richard Nixon, though created a large credibility gap within the US, he accomplished a lot for the country. He served five years in the presidential office as a republican (1969-1974), and he was the only president to resign from office in history. Although through his presidency he had accomplished many things, such as creating revenue sharing, ending the draft, and creating anticrime laws, he still had a rough time rebuilding his reputation after many assumptions of corruption in his office. Though he never admittedly pledged guilty to his crimes of taking government funds for his own personal gain, there was proof that he was. After the Watergate scandal, the American people set their mind to believe what the proof led to, so Nixon’s

There was allegations of the diversion of funds from Whitewater through the Madison Saving and Loan to cover some of the campaign debts of the Clinton's. There were also allegations of whether the Clinton's gained income-tax benefits from the failure of Whitewater that they were not entitled to. To date no charges have been filed against President Clinton or his wife Hillary (Whitewater 1). The whole Watergate scandal, brought about charges of political bribery, burglary, extortion, wiretapping, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, tax fraud, and illegal use of the CIA and the FBI, campaign contributions and taxpayers money for private matters. In all, more than 30 administration officials and other people in the Nixon administration pleaded guilty or were found guilty of illegal acts (Time and Again 2).

Amid increasing disclosures of White House involved in the Watergate break-in and its aftermath, Nixon announced the resignations of John Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldman, two of his closest advisers, in the dismissal of his counsel John W. Dean III. Growing suspicion of presidential involvement in the scandel resulted in an intensification of the investigation. Leaders in this inquiry included Judge Sirica, reporters for the Washington Post, the Ervin committee, and Archibald Cox, who was sworn in as special prosecutor in May 1973. Dean told the Ervin committee in June that Nixon had cover-up. A month later, former White House staff Alexander Butterfield revealed that Nixon had secretly tape-recorded conversations in his offices. Both Cox and the Ervin committee began efforts to obtain selected tapes. Nixon, citing EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE, refused to relinquish them and

The Watergate Scandal was truly the biggest political scandal in United States History. Over forty people where charged with crimes relating to the scandal. Bernstein and Woodward were given a fantastic oppourtunity to uncover something truly significant in history. The twenty-one months of investigative reporting done by these two men would ruin Nixon’s name and make these two common everyday reporters lives change forever. Woodward first got his life changing call on June 17th 1972 with his editor telling him about a small invasion of the Democratic Party Headquarters. With being related to the scandal, two members of President Nixon’s cabinet, H.R. Hadlemen and John Ehrlichman, quickly resigned. When first thought of the president even having something to do with the Watergate Scandal, he made every effort to possibly hide this career ruining event. The break in was first found by a security guard by the name of, Frank Wills. Wills saw a piece of tape covering a broken lock. Wills was

Ehrlichman was ordered to destroy incriminating documents and tapes. Then L. Patrick Gray resigned as acting director of the FBI, later admitting he had destroyed documents given to him by Ehrlichman and Dean. On June 23, 1972, Nixon learned about Mitchell's possible link with the operation, and Nixon instructed the FBI to stop the inquiry into the source of money used by the men who tapped the building. He said that "the investigation would endanger the CIA operations." Dean and the others subsequently sought to induce CIA officials to cooperate with this plan. On July 1, Mitchell left the CRP, citing personal reasons. On August 29, Nixon declared that no one in the administration, then employed, was involved in the Watergate. Although money found in the possession of the wire tappers was traced to the CRP, such evidence was insufficient to implicate high officials. On September 15, only the five men first arrested, plus Liddy and E. Howard Hunt , one of the plumbers, were indicted (Carson 2).

Richard Nixon's presidency is one of the most examined, analyzed and discussed, yet least understood, of all the American administrations in history. While many factors still remain to be discovered, and many mysteries are left to be resolved, we need to do the best that we can to make sense of this secretive president of our past and his era. He is the one American figure about whom very few people don't have strong feelings for. Nixon is loved and hated, honored and mocked . The term 'Watergate', labeled by Congress in 1974, stands for not only the burglary, but also for the numerous instances of officially sanctioned criminal activity and abuses of power as well as the obstruction of justice that preceded the actual break-in.

President Richard Nixon's Watergate Scandal is one of the most controversial court cases to this date. He was the first president to ever resign from office and caused the American trust in the government to suffer. Did Richard Nixon really have something to hide? Did the Supreme court make the right decision? Was the case handled in the most sufficient way? Whether one agrees with the outcome of Nixon vs. United States or not, this case left a mark on American history and shouldn't lessen trust in the American Government. The case was treated just as equally as any other case and went through the long Judicial practice as stated in the Constitution.

The United States Justice System is founded on In it's historical context, Watergate was not a surprising development when it is considered that Nixon was a paranoid personality capable of using any avenue to insure that his political objectives were attained. He had proved that early in his political career in his famous Checkers speech. By the early 70's however the nation had changed. It wasn't as easy to dupe the public with sappy speeches to explain away political indiscretions. The country was seriously concerned about our involvement in Southeast Asia and how the administration was going to extricate itself from the disaster. The media was on the job during this watershed period in our political history.

The direct impact of this case was the release of the conversations between Nixon and his close advisors. At first, the tapes that were released were damaged, and parts of them were erased. However, Nixon’s attempts to deceive the public and the court were futile. He eventually released the unedited versions of the tapes. Those tapes spelled the end of Richard Nixon’s run as the President of the United States. One of the tapes that was released was called the “smoking gun” tape. In this tape Nixon tells his advisors that they should approach the director of the investigation from the CIA and FBI and tell the to stop the investigation of Watergate because it was a matter of national security. Nixon lost a lot of support from the public when