The Watergate scandal was a scandal during and after the Presidential Election. Entry 1 of 2 : a scandal usually involving abuses of office, skulduggery, and a cover-up.
The metonym Watergate came to encompass an array of clandestine and often illegal activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration, including bugging the offices of political opponents and people of whom Nixon or his officials were suspicious; ordering investigations of activist groups and political figures ….
Terms in this set 12 Congress acted to reduce the powers of the President. The President would have to consult congress before sending troops into action. The President could not use federal money for personal reasons.
Congress set limits on contributions to Presidential campaign funds. Specifically, he had removed from office Edwin Stanton, the secretary of war whom the act was largely designed to protect. You just studied 10 terms! If a federal official commits a crime or otherwise acts improperly, the House of Representatives may impeach—formally charge—that official.
If the official subsequently is convicted in a Senate impeachment trial, he is removed from office. Presider, Celebrant, Homilist or Preacher, and Concelebrants. The presider is literally the one who presides, or sometimes called the main celebrant.
The Watergate scandal changed American politics forever, leading many Americans to question their leaders and think more critically about the presidency. The origins of the Watergate break-in lay in the hostile political climate of the time.
By , when Republican President Richard M. Nixon was running for reelection, the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War , and the country was deeply divided. A forceful presidential campaign therefore seemed essential to the president and some of his key advisers. Their aggressive tactics included what turned out to be illegal espionage.
The wiretaps failed to work properly, however, so on June 17 a group of five burglars returned to the Watergate building. The guard called the police, who arrived just in time to catch them red-handed. In August, Nixon gave a speech in which he swore that his White House staff was not involved in the break-in. Most voters believed him, and in November the president was reelected in a landslide victory. It later came to light that Nixon was not being truthful.
This was a more serious crime than the break-in: It was an abuse of presidential power and a deliberate obstruction of justice. Meanwhile, seven conspirators were indicted on charges related to the Watergate affair. Sirica and members of a Senate investigating committee—had begun to suspect that there was a larger scheme afoot. At the same time, some of the conspirators began to crack under the pressure of the cover-up.
Nixon struggled to protect the tapes during the summer and fall of When Cox refused to stop demanding the tapes, Nixon ordered that he be fired, leading several Justice Department officials to resign in protest. These events, which took place on October 20, , are known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Eventually, Nixon agreed to surrender some—but not all—of the tapes. Early in , the cover-up and efforts to impede the Watergate investigation began to unravel.
In July, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over the tapes. The source was, in journalistic parlance, on deep background which meant he could not even be quoted anonymously.
By early , cracks began to appear in the cover-up of Watergate when FBI director Patrick Gray testified at hearings intended to confirm him as permanent director of the FBI that he had been asked to keep the White House abreast of the Watergate investigation on a daily basis. Soon afterwards one of the Watergate burglars, James McCord, wrote to Judge John Sirica claiming that he had perjured himself in testimony by lying about the nature of the burglary saying it had been a CIA operation when in fact it involved other government officials.
Soon after Dean began co-operating with Watergate prosecutors and Gray resigned as head of the FBI after it emerged he had destroyed files connected to the scandal. At the end of April there are further departures as White House officials John Ehrlichman, Bob Haldeman , and attorney general Richard Kleindienst all resigned because of their involvement. Dean was fired. John Dean gave a page prepared statement to the Senate Watergate Committee in June , lasting a total of seven hours.
AP Photo. But the most explosive relation came when the former presidential appointments secretary Alexander Butterfield revealed that all conversations and phone calls in Nixon's office had been taped since The tapes were almost immediately disconnected on Nixon's order and he refused to comply with the committee's subpoena for him to release the tapes invoking presidential privilege.
The battle over the release of the tapes continued as the special prosecutor, Cox, refused to drop the subpoena. Later Nixon famously went in front of the media and the world at a press conference from Disney World in Florida to declare that he is not a crook:. YouTube: maxpowers In March of the grand jury indicted seven Nixon officials - known as the Watergate Seven - for their involvement in the cover-up and many later served jail time. But the battle over the tapes continued and went all the way to the US Supreme Court where, with the exception of the recused Justice William Rehnquist whom Nixon had appointed , there was a unanimous ruling that they should be released.
Open journalism No news is bad news Support The Journal Your contributions will help us continue to deliver the stories that are important to you. Nixon complied with the order in July and released the subpoenaed tapes which revealed several crucial conversations with his lawyer John Dean in which Dean described the continuing cover-up operations as a "cancer on the presidency".
It then emerged that there had been an minute section of the tapes erased. Nixon's personal secretary Rose Mary Woods said this had been done accidentally when she pushed the wrong foot pedal but photos posed for the media appeared to undermine the liklihood of this and analysis later determined the tape had been erased in several sections. The in August of '74, a previously unknown audio tape was released which recorded an Oval Office conversation a few days after the break-in which documented the formulation of a plan by Nixon and Bob Haldeman to block investigations by having the CIA falsely claim to the FBI that national security was at issue in the Watergate break-in.
This is the exact audio from the tape that is referred to as the 'smoking gun' and in the words of Nixon's own lawyers "proved that the President had lied to the nation, to his closest aides, and to his own lawyers — for more than two years":. YouTube: multisuperhands. The game was up. Facing certain impeachment after being told by Republican senators that they would vote in favour of such a motion, Nixon decided to resign, saying that the scandal over Watergate would prevent him from carrying out his duties:.
YouTube: MCamericanpresident. After saying farewell to staff in the White House East Room on the morning his resignation came into effect - 9 August - Nixon and his wife Pat departed on Marine One. Before entering the helicopter he gave a famous v-sign salute which had become one of his best known trademarks while in office :. Succeeded by Gerald Ford - who himself had succeeded Nixon's other vice president Spiro Agnew in '73 - the new incumbent issued a presidential pardon to Nixon ensuring that he would not face any criminal prosecution.
Impeachment proceedings against Nixon had already been dropped following his resignation. Ford explained that he felt the Nixon family's situation was "an American tragedy in which we all have played a part":. YouTube: footagefile In total the scandal resulted in 69 government officials being charged and 48 being found guilty including some of Nixon's most senior aides - chief of staff Bob Haldeman and special counsel Charles Coulsen along with two former attorneys general, and a number of other lawyers whose convictions severly tarnished the public image of the legal profession particularly in Washington.
Nixon continued to proclaim his innocence right up until his death in saying only that he had been wrong in not acting more "decisively" in dealing with the illegalities of the Watergate scandal. Famously he did a high-profile television interview with the British broadcaster David Frost in The interview included Nixon's answer to a question about the legality of his actions in which he said: "Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.
YouTube: willfungku Watergate has led to the publication of hundreds of books, dozens of films and many, many references in popular culture including the use of the suffix -gate for any scandal.
After 40 years it continues to resonate in modern day politics and acts as a warning to anyone in public life of the dangers of being too driven by power to not notice the moral, ethical and legal implications of what you are doing. You can obtain a copy of the Code, or contact the Council, at www.
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