Lesson unlearned. The Watergate scandal as a poltergeist The American president who resigned because of Watergate
Context
Arkady Smolin, special correspondent for RAPSI
Forty years have passed since the beginning of the Watergate scandal. Those events were so ahead of their time that we only received terms to describe the essence of the legal revolution that took place then: after the rise and fall of Wikileaks, after the transformation of Arab Facebook revolutions into tactics of street terror on the streets of London. This was not so much the first presidential impeachment as the victory of the policy of de-anonymization and the transformation of the media into the “people's militia.”
2011 has all the prerequisites to go down in history as a new incarnation of 1968: the year of revolutions, youth riots and the agony of outdated forms of power. The first thing that catches your eye is the incompetence of existing legal mechanisms, ranging from the European strategy of multiculturalism and tolerance to the nationalist and authoritarian practices of the Middle East.
An island of relative social stability and tranquility abroad can only be observed in the United States, where even the threat of default has not yet provoked a noticeable increase in the level of protest activity. Unlike Europe, discussions overseas important issues society occurs without street excesses. Thus, the only legal system that has once again demonstrated its effectiveness is the Watergate Formula.
What exactly is it?
Dictatorship of transparency
The result of the investigation by Washington Post journalists Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein can be called a ban on secrecy - a "dictatorship of transparency." A whole series of events from 1969 to 1974, of which the Watergate scandal was the most publicized, but far from the most important, radically changed the form of interaction between government and society, quietly making Julian Assange’s dream a reality just a year after his birth.
The first significant event associated with Watergate occurred on June 13, 1971, when the New York Times published secret documents stolen from the Pentagon. A few days later, her initiative was supported by the Washington Post, and then many other newspapers.
From the publications, it became obvious that the administrations of all American presidents from Harry Truman to Lyndon Johnson systematically distorted public information about US military operations in Southeast Asia. In particular, it became known that Laos and Cambodia were deliberately drawn into the war by the Americans.
In addition, it turned out that the “Tonkin Incident” on August 2, 1964, when American ships collided with torpedo boats of the DR Vietnam fleet, was deliberately provoked by the White House and the Pentagon.
Two days after the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the Federal Government asked the Supreme Court to halt publication. However, the court found the evidence of the need for such a measure insufficient.
The result of the judges' decision was the current broad interpretation of the constitutional provision on freedom of speech: in particular, the absence of a crime in the actions of the media publishing materials transferred to them by third parties.
There is a version that it was this judicial precedent that made it possible to change the arsenal of interdepartmental wars. The essence of the change that has occurred is clearly illustrated by the difference between the methods of eliminating two US presidents: John Kennedy and Richard Nixon.
Without going into conspiracy theories, we note the fact that based on this legal precedent, a year later, FBI Vice President Mark Phelps chose Washington Post journalists as a weapon to eliminate Nixon's growing secret intelligence service. Together with the president himself.
Today this story can finally come to an end. The legal norm, created by the precedent decisions of the US Armed Forces on the publication of the “Pentagon Files” and Nixon’s Watergate negotiations, receives its final form exactly forty years later. At the end of July this year, the Federal District Court in Washington upheld the claim of historian Stanley Cutler. The court's opinion stated that Nixon's testimony was of historical value and therefore should not be kept secret.
However, the US government may challenge the court's decision. President Barack Obama's administration opposed the release of Nixon's testimony, including due to privacy concerns. However, apparently, the prospects for an appeal are very conditional. After all, the outcome of the Watergate scandal was the revocation of executive privilege by the court.
It is also important to note that Nixon gave the testimony in question before a jury after his resignation in California in 1975. Minutes of deliberations involving jurors are generally not disclosed. Now the classification of secrecy will be removed from these materials.
Since American laws are of a precedent nature, it is now quite possible to say that officially there is almost no secret information left in the United States (in reality, only the details of military operations are hidden). The court's decision deprived the authorities of all known formal ways to conceal important information from the public.
Therefore, it is important integral part The “Watergate formula” was the application in practice of a “presumption of guilt” in relation to the object of a journalistic investigation.
However, the current court decision can be considered a legislative formality. The alliance between the FBI and the media finally became known to everyone six years ago, when 90-year-old FBI veteran Mark Felt admitted that he was the same Deep Throat agent who leaked information to the media during the Watergate scandal.
It is believed that in this way he settled scores with Nixon, who after the death of J. Edgar Hoover appointed the head of the FBI not Felt, whom everyone considered his heir, but Patrick Gray, a man from the presidential entourage who had connections with the CIA. It is quite possible, because the FBI and CIA were then in the most acute phase of the war, and there is also plenty of evidence that Nixon was going to weaken the FBI as much as possible by relying on intelligence.
One thing is clear: the transition to open play was a forced step by the FBI leadership after the disclosure of the Media dossier. And only this fact matters for society and for strengthening the independence of the judicial system.
Two shots in Big Brother
On the night of March 8, 1971, a small group of an amateur “commission to investigate the activities of the FBI” entered the premises of the bureau branch in the Pennsylvania city of Media. The FBI managed to publish the secret documents obtained there in a magazine a few days later.
From these documents, the public learned that for many years the FBI had been secretly monitoring the behavior and mentality of citizens. In the 1960s, the bureau increased its focus on anti-racial activists and opponents of the Vietnam War. The greatest outrage was caused by the fact that the FBI did not limit itself to surveillance, switching to provocative tactics that had dire consequences for their victims.
When the policy of the secret threat ("Big Brother") was finally discredited, the FBI switched to a modified, even more total, but paradoxically absolutely legal, "policy of leaks", the wide PR of which Assange did, forty years late.
Instead of controlling the collective mind, preference was given to directing it in the right direction through a system of hints and provocations. Instead of secretly destroying trends that threaten national security, there is their exposure, the “desacralization” of the secrets of underground and behind-the-scenes enemies.
To enter the public space, the intelligence services needed the media. Since then, a stable form of defining the special status of a journalist as a “national security expert” has appeared in the Western press. Of fundamental importance for the legal health of society is the fact that almost none of these journalists have long been making no secret of their task of providing a literary presentation of intelligence information that requires legalization.
This does not mean that the media are used for a war of compromising evidence. On the contrary, giving all interested political actors space in the press pages to publish accusations and suspicions has turned the media into an alternative, social and moral court.
At the same time, the selection and verification of the reliability of information turns journalists into assistants (in terms of the functions they perform, practically “advisers”) of the judicial system. For example, Washington Times national security expert Bill Hertz notes that he double-checks when he takes information from intelligence agencies. “We also strive to ensure that intelligence agencies, by giving us some information, thereby achieve their specific goals. It is also prohibited to provide disinformation to the American press.”
However, it is unlikely that Felt’s initiative would have turned into a trend, and simply would have been successfully implemented without legislative support. Its legal basis was the principle of “fair mistake”. The right of the media to it was recognized in 1964 by the US Supreme Court. He ruled that public figures wishing to sue for libel must not only prove that the published information was false, but also that the editors either knew about it or published it with “gross disregard” for the question of its veracity or falsity.
With the help of an “honest mistake,” the media gained the right to publish both investigative journalism and materials from third-party sources.
And in 1969, a precedent-setting decision was made that allowed the publication of even those statements that contained abstract calls for the violent overthrow of the government. As the Supreme Court has ruled, such publications must be protected provided they do not lead to an imminent threat of unlawful action.
If the “honest mistake” was an encouragement for the publication of versions, then the second decision of the US Supreme Court was nothing more than the legalization of the right of journalists to bring charges. The media have actually become an independent investigative institution. Having received the status of a full-fledged assistant to the court, the media turned into a lower-level body of power - something like a “civilian police” (the right of citizens to independently investigate a crime and bring charges in court), the need for which was so persistently discussed in our country during the reform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Legal war of intelligence services
The publication of the Pentagon Papers showed the possibility practical application these laws. However, Nixon attempted a “legal counter-revolution.” The President ordered the formation of a special secret service at the White House. The unit, known as the “plumbers” (they acted under the guise of plumbers), included his closest advisers and assistants. Their first task was to find and punish those responsible for leaking information from the Pentagon.
The problem was solved quite quickly. The main culprit was Dr. Daniel Elsberg, an employee National Council Security, consultant on “Vietnamese affairs” to Foreign Minister Henry Kissinger. Elsberg did not wait for the inevitable arrest and himself appeared in court, which left him free on bail of 50 thousand dollars. Soon after, Ellsberg's case fell apart due to serious procedural violations: the court learned that the defendant's telephone conversations had been illegally wiretapped by a team of "plumbers."
According to American researchers, Nixon was obsessed with Manichaean enemy-friend thinking, which made it acceptable for him to equate legitimate opposition with extremism. For example, in 1970, Nixon approved a large-scale plan to undermine the anti-war movement with the help of the FBI and CIA.
There are well-founded assumptions that the “plumbers” could become the basis for a new extensive network of highly secret intelligence, which would tie up all politically influential forces, placing authoritarian control over them in the hands of the president. If not for Watergate, the "plumbers" might well have grown into the American "Stasi".
This project could only be destroyed through a huge scandal and a restructuring of the country's legal system in order to prevent similar precedents in the future.
As you know, on June 17, 1972 (four months before the presidential election), at the headquarters of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, located in the Watergate complex in Washington, five men in business suits and rubber surgical gloves were detained by breaking into the hotel. .
They set up listening equipment and, according to some reports, photographed internal documents of the Democratic headquarters. In addition to the two bugs, a set of master keys and $5,300 in cash in consecutive hundred-dollar bills were found on them.
The connection of this particular incident with the Nixon administration has not yet been proven. It is only known that the president actually had tapes of illegally recorded conversations between Democrats, but that “wiretapping” obviously had nothing to do with the Watergate Hotel. That the president ordered or even knew about this action, which his press secretary classified as a "third-rate hack," is unlikely.
Researcher Robert Gettlin wrote: “From the point of view of the upcoming elections in November, this crime was completely meaningless. The bugs could not provide any such secret information about rivals: by mid-June, the Democrats had not yet elected their presidential candidate ready to challenge Nixon "And all the public opinion polls showed: whoever Nixon's opponent turns out to be, he will be smashed to smithereens."
An indirect confirmation of Nixon's formal innocence is his reaction to the incident. The President at first did not attach any significance to the arrest and returned to Washington from vacation only a day later, after newspapers reported that the arrested Howard Hunt was connected with the White House.
It wasn't until nearly a week later, on June 23, that Nixon and his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, had a series of taped conversations in which Nixon refers to the Watergate story as a "smoking gun." And then he discusses how “in the interests of national security” he can obstruct the investigation with the help of the CIA and the FBI.
The president's aides managed to quickly localize the problem. Nixon easily won the election by a huge margin. The fact that the scandal did reach national proportions was the result of the activity of two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Indeed, Nixon most likely did not order the wiretapping of Watergate, but the public was interested not only in the fact of the offense, but also in the reaction of the president and his staff. Only professional journalists with the support of intelligence services could convey such information to the public in an accessible form.
At this moment, the very “Watergate formula” was born. The media has become a civil body that monitors the activities of the authorities in the interests of society. And the intelligence services have established themselves as the guarantor of national security and the viability of constitutional norms, not personally controlled by anyone, but absolutely transparent.
The new position of the intelligence services was formalized legislatively in 1975, when the Senate created a commission that placed the heads of the CIA subordinate to both houses of the US Parliament. Since then, the President of the United States cannot give a single order to intelligence without the knowledge and approval of the Senate.
The Last Spy Novel
But the role of conductor of the Watergate scandal solely belonged to Mark Felt. He combined four functions at once: he organized a scandal, officially investigated it, secretly leaked information, and sought himself out as a “traitor” within the department.
The “legal revolution” in American society took place according to the classic canons of spy novels. Not even Woodward's investigative partner Bernstein knew that Felt was Deep Throat's informant, only he himself. Felt and Woodward agreed not to call or meet in public - only in an underground garage in Arlington after a pre-arranged signal.
Woodward communicated the need for a meeting by moving flower pot on your balcony. When Felt needed a meeting, Woodward received the New York Times, on page 20 of which there was a clock face with arrows indicating the hour of the meeting. Woodward got to Arlington by hailing a taxi on the street, leaving the car halfway, catching another one, and walking the last few blocks to the meeting place.
It is symptomatic that it was not the usual police squad who came to arrest the burglars, but plainclothes agents. According to official version, the nearest patrol crew did not have gasoline at the time of the call, after which the signal was redirected to the next car, in which the undercover officers found themselves. Therefore, the car did not have a siren, which made it possible to take the burglars by surprise.
Of course, this whole story is too reminiscent of a standard FBI provocation (for which the bureau was subjected to public obstruction after the publication of Media materials). However, all these “setups” would have been useless if the president had reacted within the framework of the law. The provocation organized by Felt only highlighted his unlawful pattern of behavior. This was a campaign not so much against a specific President Nixon, but against the policy of concealing information.
Watergate denouement
In January 1973, the trial of the Watergate burglars began. In March, the Senate Watergate Committee was formed, and trial hearings began to be televised throughout the country. It is unlikely that the scandal would have had such significance in the history of the country if not for the reaction of society to it. It is believed that 85% of Americans watched at least one meeting. They actively expressed their dissatisfaction with the president's behavior. Thus, the independent judicial system received tangible support from the politically active part of society.
A journalistic investigation revealed the names of government officials who, under threat of criminal liability, spoke about the existence of audio recordings confirming the involvement of the presidential administration in the Watergate scandal.
Nixon persisted in his reluctance to present the tapes in his possession to the investigation even after February 6, 1974, when the US House of Representatives decided to begin impeachment proceedings.
Nixon relied on executive privilege, but this privilege was ineffective against the constitutional and legal charges of the president of “treason, bribery or other crimes and misdemeanors.” In July 1974, the Supreme Court unanimously determined that the president did not have such privileges and ordered him to immediately release the tape to prosecutors.
However, four months before this decision, Nixon actually buried his political career. In April 1974, the White House decided to launch a counteroffensive by publishing a distorted copy of the conversation containing 1,200 pages. This document finally turned American society against the president. Citizens were disappointed by the inconsistencies with Nixon's early statements, but they were even more shocked by the tone of communication in the White House and the criminal way of thinking.
The public reaction actually equated the choice of marginal vocabulary by government officials with real crimes and offenses. This reaction seems quite justified, because by that time psychologists had already proven that the use of certain lexical tools predetermines the choice of actions. If you give a person a hammer, he will look for a nail, a pen, a piece of paper, and if you allow him to use obscenities, he will begin to look for someone to humiliate and destroy.
About the film "All the President's Men", I discovered that today's reader only in the most general terms imagines the anatomy of the largest political scandal of the twentieth century. However, the blog turned out to be too small for this story, so we publish it in the “Comments” section. There are no hints in this about the current presidential campaign; all coincidences are coincidental.
Watergate was, without exaggeration, one of the most important events in American history. This is one of the main lessons taught by the American system of checks and balances to politicians around the world. A lesson that politicians, unfortunately, never learned.
This political detective thriller began, in general, as an accident. This was in June 1972. The US presidential election campaign was in full swing. was represented by the current President Richard Nixon, and Spiro Agnew ran for vice president with him. They were opposed by George McGovern and Sargent Schriever.
In the early morning of June 17, 1972, about six months before the election, Frank Wills, one of the security guards at Washington's fashionable Watergate Hotel, discovered that someone had broken into the Democratic National Committee office, which was located in the hotel. He called the police, who detained five: Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker, James McCord, Eugenio Martinez and Frank Sturgis.
Subsequent investigation revealed that these five (one of them was a CIA operative, three had ties to the intelligence agencies through the anti-Castro movement, and another was an electronics specialist) infiltrated the office of the Democratic National Committee on behalf of Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy, members of the White House staff. (Hunt used to work for the CIA). Hunt and Liddy led a group of White House employees called the "Plumbers." This group was created to combat leaks of information about the activities of the presidential administration and eliminate the consequences of such leaks. In the Watergate office of the Democrats, they installed listening equipment and looked for documents compromising the presidential administration, in particular, presidential adviser John Dean. The White House learned that the head of the Democratic Committee, Larry O'Brien, had such documents through the president's brother Donald Nixon. Later it turned out that there were no documents, and Donald bought the bluff of John Meyer, O'Brien's predecessor as head Democratic Committee.
The burglars admitted that the June intrusion into the Democratic office was the second, and the first took place on May 28. Then the phones of O'Brien and his deputy were bugged. One of the two main "plumbers", Howard Hunt, stated under oath that the goal of the hackers was to check the data on the Democrats receiving money from the Cuban government. They photographed some financial documents, found in the Democratic headquarters. Subsequently, all evidence remaining after the first hack was destroyed by White House employees, in particular, Gordon Liddy, John Dean, as well as the deputy head of the Committee for the Re-election of the President Jeb Magruder and acting FBI Director Patrick Gray. The Committee John Mitchell, a former attorney general, led the effort to re-elect the president.
Suspicions that high-ranking officials were involved in the story of hackers breaking into the Democratic headquarters arose, of course, immediately. Public interest in this case was fueled by a journalistic investigation by The Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Their reporting on Watergate was based largely on anonymous sources, most notably one called Deep Throat. In 2005, FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt was hiding under this nickname. Citing these sources, Woodward and Bernstein argued that the tracks lead "to the very top."
In 1974, Woodward and Bernstein published the book All the President's Men, in which they spoke in more detail about their journalistic investigation of Watergate than in their newspaper articles. In 1976, Alan Pakula made a film based on this book, in which Woodward was played by Robert Redford, Bernstein by Dustin Hoffman, and Deep Throat (the filmmakers did not yet know who it was). By the way, the same Watergate Hotel security guard Frank Wills appeared in the film as himself.
On November 7, 1972, in the presidential election, Nixon won a more than convincing victory over McGovern. He managed to dodge the first blow related to Watergate. The subsequent blows were all the more painful.
The Watergate burglars were convicted in January 1973. But this was only the beginning of the scandal. In the spring, the Senate created a special committee to investigate Watergate. It was led by Democratic Senator from North Carolina Sam Ervin. The committee's hearings, which opened in May, have become America's favorite television show. For the second time, television played against Richard Nixon: in 1960, he miserably lost his first in history to John Kennedy, and now television fueled interest in the matter that he tried to hush up.
The main witness for the prosecution at the Senate hearings was former presidential adviser John Dean, who was fired by Nixon.
In parallel, a special non-departmental commission, created on Nixon’s instructions by the new Attorney General Eliot Richardson, began its own investigation. It was headed by Archibald Cox, who was Kennedy's solicitor general (the official representing the United States in cases before the Supreme Court).
In July 1973, one of Nixon's aides, Alexander Butterfield, testifying to a Senate committee, reported that other rooms in which President Nixon communicated with his subordinates were bugged. These tapes promised to become the main evidence in the Watergate investigation, since they would establish how well the president and his inner circle were aware of the illegal actions of their subordinates. The Senate and Cox Commission immediately demanded these records be provided to them. Nixon refused, citing executive privilege (the right of officials, including the president, not to provide information to the legislature).
Nixon's position was all the more difficult because his vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned on October 10. Formally, this was not connected with Watergate, but with the corruption charges brought against him. But by this time, Agnew's name was firmly associated with Watergate (it was he who was believed to have covered up White House staffers involved in illegal activities). He was replaced as vice president by Republican House Minority Leader Gerald Ford.
The Senate and Cox Commission continued to demand the tapes, and on October 19, Nixon proposed a compromise: he would provide the tapes to John Stennis, a Democratic senator from Mississippi, who would prepare a report on their contents and present it to Cox. Cox refused, and on October 20, Nixon ordered Attorney General Richardson to fire him. Richardson refused and resigned in protest. Nixon made a similar demand to William Ruckelshaus, Richardson's deputy, who became acting. Attorney General, but he followed Richardson's example. And about. Robert Bork became the head of the Department of Justice (in the USA this department is headed by the Attorney General), who finally fired Cox.
These actions of Nixon, called the "Saturday Night Massacre", caused real fury of the public and Congress. It was after this that the House of Representatives began to prepare Nixon. A month later, justifying his actions, Nixon gave his famous "I'm not a crook!" speech. (“I”m not a crook!”).
Richard Nixon: In all the years that I have been involved in politics, I have never obstructed justice. And I welcome this kind of investigation, because people need to know whether the president is a crook or not. I'm not a crook! I honestly earned everything I have!
Leon Jaworski has become the new head of the special commission to investigate Watergate. The White House provided him with some records, but those conversations between Nixon and aides who were most interested in the investigation were not in them. But it turned out that 18 and a half minutes of recording were missing from the tape (erased in several steps). It is unknown who erased them, whether it was by accident or intentionally. Several attempts were made to restore the recording without success. The tape is now kept in the National Archives. Americans are waiting for technology to appear that will allow them to restore the erased fragments.
On March 1, 1974, seven people from Nixon's inner circle were convicted of obstruction of justice, including the head of the Committee to Re-Elect President John Mitchell, who became the first person to serve as US Attorney General and then go to prison. Nixon aides John Ehrlichman and Bob Haldeman were also convicted. A month later, Jaworski again demanded that the investigative commission be provided with recordings of Nixon’s conversations with the convicts.
This time it was about a tape called "smoking gun" - an expression from one of the stories about Sherlock Holmes, meaning indisputable evidence. Its content speaks for itself:
Richard Nixon to his assistant Bob Haldeman: ... tell these guys[to investigators] : “Listen, the thing is, this whole Bay of Pigs thing might come to light.” Without details. There’s no need to lie to them that we have nothing to do with it, just play out a comedy of errors like “the president believes that the Bay of Pigs story might come to light.” And let these guys call the FBI and say that we wish for the good of the country that this case does not go any further. Dot.
(The conversation took place in Oval Office on the morning of June 23, 1972, a few days after the Watergate burglars were caught. Transcript.)
The dispute between investigators and the White House reached the Supreme Court, which ruled on July 24 that Nixon must produce the tapes. On July 30, the recordings were provided to Jaworski. On August 5, the "smoking gun" was unveiled. On August 9, Nixon resigned.
Richard Nixon (last 13 seconds of video) : I will resign as president at noon today. Vice President Ford will be brought to this office at this hour."(Full audio recording of the resignation announcement with original footage.)
Gerald Ford became the first and last president USA, who took this position without participating in the elections as a candidate for either the presidential or vice-presidential post (that is, strictly speaking, an appointed and not an elected president). Upon taking office, he declared: “The long nightmare for our people is over.” On September 8, Ford, using the presidential pardon power, announced, which forgives Nixon all his revealed and unidentified crimes. In the 1976 presidential election, Ford was defeated by Democrat Jimmy Carter.
35 years ago, on April 30, 1973, US President Richard Nixon was forced to fire his top aides, Harry Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, and several other influential people in the White House. On this day, the decline of the political career of Richard Nixon began, who left office without waiting for the end of the impeachment proceedings that followed the Watergate scandal.
It all started on June 17, 1972, when police at the Watergate complex in Washington (hotel rooms, apartments and offices) detained five people who had broken into the office of Democratic National Committee Chairman Larry O'Brien and tried to install various listening devices. Later, two more of their “accomplices” related to the Nixon election campaign were arrested - Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy. The details of what happened were told to the public by journalists from the then far from most influential newspaper The Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who followed the progress of the further investigation. They referred to anonymous sources, the main one of which went under the nickname Deep Throat - that was the name of the sensational and banned porn film in the United States, released in 1972. In 1974, Woodward and Bernstein wrote the best-selling book All the President's Men about Watergate. The book was made into a film two years later. Robert Redford played Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman played Carl Bernstein.
Prosperous burglars
Those involved in the Watergate investigation drew attention to the fact that all those detained had some connection with the presidential re-election campaign, a successful project that allowed Nixon to be re-elected to a second term in November 1972. Then the Republican politician won in 49 of 50 states, losing only in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. Nixon's Democratic opponent in the presidential election was Senator George McGovern.
Judge John Sirica, who dealt with the case of the burglars, suspected that traces of the crime could lead to the highest echelons of power.
The determination of the judge and his assistants to understand what happened, the excellent work of financial intelligence and the careful monitoring of the progress of the investigation by means mass media, especially by The Washington Post, turned this case into the biggest scandal.
Actually, suspicion was aroused not only by the fact that those arrested were related to the Nixon campaign. Some of them were representatives of the middle class, their professional activities assumed rather modest earnings. Meanwhile, the amounts found on them were impressive. Thousands of dollars in cash were found in the burglars' pockets, bags, and hotel rooms. Later it turned out that enormous sums also passed through bank accounts.
Unproven backstory
Even the investigators who made the most daring assumptions about who was behind this whole story could not imagine the complexity of the intrigue. It took months to unravel it. But to this day, various conspiracy theories related to Watergate still haunt the minds of American journalists.
Nixon was allegedly forced to initiate wiretapping by the skillful bluff of lobbyists from the Democratic camp. In any case, this is evidenced by the most widespread version, partially set out in 1976 in Playboy magazine, and now popularized by the Wikipedia resource, but not mentioned at all by, say, the Britannica encyclopedia.
In 1971, the president's brother Donald Nixon allegedly approached John Mayer, a former partner of Howard Hughes, one of the richest men in the United States at the time. Donald Nixon asked Meyer, who knew Larry O'Brien very well, to work closely with the Democrats while remaining in good relations with the Nixons to answer a few questions about the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. What Hughes reported shocked Donald Nixon. According to unconfirmed reports, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee had documents at his disposal indicating illegal transactions between Richard Nixon and Howard Hughes.
Donald immediately reported this to his brother. Richard Nixon allegedly decided to find out in more detail what kind of documents O'Brien had and what strategy the Democrats would follow.
Neither Donald nor Richard knew that O'Brien had no documents and that Meyer's task, as formulated in the Democratic camp, was to misinform the president. But the process was launched, the White House Secret Service prepared special equipment, which they tried to install in the Watergate hotel complex.
However, there is no evidence that the events shortly before June 17, 1972 developed exactly like this.
Progress of the investigation
However, let's return to the course of the investigation.
On March 23, 1973, Judge Sinica, after reading the verdict for the Watergate burglars, released a letter from one of them, James McCord. As he reported, the White House is hiding that it has anything to do with the hack, and the defendants are under pressure from the White House, whose employees demand that those arrested take the blame. By the way, five of them did just that.
By early 1973, public pressure had become so great that Richard Nixon was forced to create the post of special prosecutor to investigate the Watergate case. Although the appointment was to be made by the US Attorney General, the special counsel was completely independent from the Department of Justice. In April 1973, Elliot Richardson became the new Attorney General, who chose Archibald Cox as the prosecutor in the Watergate case. This lawyer was the representative of the American government in the Supreme Court under John Kennedy, whom, according to eyewitnesses, Nixon, to put it mildly, did not like.
But Nixon fired another lawyer, White House Counsel John Dean. After all, it was Dean who became the main witness at the hearings on the Watergate case of the special committee of the Senate, and he testified against the president. Dean later pleaded guilty.
The hearings were broadcast by several television companies. Is it worth mentioning that the rating of the president, who had brilliantly won the elections a few months earlier, was rapidly falling?
It is said that the key question of the entire Watergate investigation was asked at the hearing by Republican Senator Howard Baker: “What did the President know and when did he know it?” Then the senators asked the White House representatives whether the conversations in the Oval Office were recorded. After detailed questioning, it was established that Nixon was in the habit of recording all conversations that he had both in the Oval Office and in his other offices. His interlocutors were not warned about this. Another Nixon assistant, Alexander Butterfield, admitted this.
On Saturday night
Immediately, both the Senate and Archibald Cox issued subpoenas ordering the President to disclose the contents of the audio recordings. Nixon, citing executive privilege, refused to do so and demanded that Cox withdraw the subpoena. Cox refused. Then Nixon demanded that Attorney General Richardson, and then his deputy William Ruckelshaus, fire Cox. The lawyers refused and preferred to resign themselves. It happened on Saturday October 20, 1973. And the “prosecutors’ revolt” went down in history under the name “Saturday Night Massacre.”
As a result, Cox was fired by acting. US Attorney General Robert Bork. However, under pressure from the public, the media, and demonstrations on the streets of Washington, the administration was forced to appoint a new special prosecutor. It was Leon Jaworski.
In December, Nixon agreed to produce copies of the tapes that Judge Sirica had requested in August. Of the nine tapes ordered by the judge, the White House produced only seven, arguing that the other two tapes never existed. A significant portion of the recording on one of the seven tapes was erased, according to the White House, by accident. However, technical experts doubted this.
Nixon tapes
The Nixon tapes, as the media called the audio materials presented by the president, are a separate chapter of American history. After the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to produce additional audio recordings in July 1974, Americans learned that their president did not shy away from strong words or statements that were far from the canons of political correctness. A conversation between President Nixon and one of his assistants, Haldeman, also became known about how the CIA should, citing its sources, notify the FBI that the Watergate scandal needed to be hushed up for reasons of national security. It turned out that the main activity of another presidential assistant, Erlichman, was compiling lists of Nixon's enemies. Audio recordings also confirmed the veracity of John Dean's testimony. At various times, audio recordings unrelated to the Watergate case revealed that Nixon was suspicious of the large presence of Jews in the media industry, and that in a conversation with his national security adviser Henry Kissinger, he called Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi an “old hag.” ".
After the court ruling, Richard Nixon did not wait for the obvious outcome of the impeachment proceedings initiated by Congress. On August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned, having made a televised address to the nation the day before, where he announced that he was transferring powers to his Vice President Gerald Ford. His closest White House aides - the so-called Watergate Seven - were indicted on numerous charges, mainly of conspiracy. Nixon was given co-conspirator status without being charged.
Richard Nixon never took blame for the Watergate scandal. However, Nixon accepted the official pardon that Gerald Ford granted him in September 1974, which caused a storm of indignation among Americans. Thus, his successor spared him from further punishment, because Ford forgave Nixon for any crimes that he might have committed while serving as president. Nixon considered his only mistake to be that he did not initiate a rigorous investigation into the Watergate scandal from the very beginning. Richard Nixon died on April 22, 1994.
Deep Throat Secret
In 2005, the name of the person who was the main source of sensational materials from Woodward and Bernstein became known. It turned out to be Mark Felt, who served as deputy director of the FBI during the Watergate scandal. Even Felt’s relatives did not know that The Washington Post reporters owed their fame to him for many years. Three years ago, in an interview with Vanity Fair, Felt, 91, admitted that he wanted “the public to know and respect me and remember my name,” which is why he revealed Deep Throat’s true name to the world. Journalists confirmed the authenticity of Felt's words and thanked him.
After the Watergate affair, additional requirements for financial reporting of election campaigns were introduced in the United States, and the most notorious scandals in the English-speaking world are called words with the suffix gate.
"Gates" in history
Administration of the President Ronald Reagan violated several federal laws about the arms trade, which led to Irangate: at special hearings in the US Congress in 1986-1987, it was established that the United States, bypassing the officially announced ban on arms supplies to Iran, traded with the country. A portion of the $48 million in total proceeds went to fund Nicaragua's right-wing rebels.
"Dianagate", which began with the publication of a transcript of a telephone conversation on August 23, 1992 Princess Diana of Wales with friend James Gilbey, precipitated her divorce from Prince Charles. The conversation was recorded by 70-year-old retired amateur radio operator Cyril Reenan and sold to a newspaper for £10,000. In a conversation that took place on December 31, 1989, the princess compares herself to the heroine of the TV series and complains about the attitude of representatives of the “fucking royal family” towards her.
With the participation of an American citizen in the mid-1990s, “Kazakhgate” happened in the vastness of the USSR. Investigative authorities of the USA and Switzerland charged the entrepreneur with James Griffen, who served as adviser to Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev from 1995 to 1999, is accused of bribery. According to investigators, Griffen transferred bribes totaling $80 million for Kazakh officials to secret accounts in Swiss banks. According to Griffen, he acted on behalf of American intelligence services, seeking lucrative contracts for oil supplies to the United States. In particular, he may have helped Shevron obtain a 50% stake in the Tengiz oil field. For this, “Mr. Kazakhstan,” the holder of a Kazakh diplomatic passport (although dual citizenship is prohibited in Kazakhstan), received the right to $0.07 from each barrel produced.
Name of the 42nd President of the United States Bill Clinton appears in at least two scandals with the suffix "gate". The second presidential campaign was accompanied by the publication of revealing materials from Newsweek magazine and other American publications. This scandal was called "Chinagate". According to data obtained by journalists, the administration of President Bill Clinton turned a blind eye to the sale of American satellite technology to the Chinese army. In response, significant amounts of donations poured into Democratic Party accounts. In 1996, the head of Loral Corporation, a trade brokerage firm, made the largest individual donation to the US Democratic Party in the amount of $1.089 million. According to journalists, an American entrepreneur of Taiwanese origin, close to the Chinese military circles, John Chun, donated $10 thousand to Bill Clinton's presidential campaign and $18,000 to John Kerry for his Senate campaign. According to some American experts, everyone modern successes in the space industry, the Chinese are indebted to the Clinton administration.
Bill Clinton's second presidential term could have ended with impeachment if his testimony in the Monicagate case had been found to be a lie under oath. 22-year-old Monica Lewinsky, who interned at the White House in 1995-1996, admitted in conversations with her friend Linda Tripp that she had a sexual relationship with the president. After the tapes were turned over by Linda Tripp to prosecutor Kenneth Starr, Bill Clinton was forced to testify under oath.
On January 26, 1998, at a press conference at the White House, the President stated that he did not have any sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky; he later referred to the fact that he did not have them during trial.
The House of Representatives approved Clinton's impeachment, but the Senate acquitted him.
The administration of current US President George W. Bush also has “gates” on its record. Plamegate erupted in 2003 after The Washington Post revealed the name of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame. In 2003, her husband, American diplomat Joseph Wilson, during five months of work in Niger, could not find confirmation of information from the US secret services about Iraqi purchases of uranium in Niger. After the White House decided to invade Iraq based on false procurement data, Wilson published his report in The New York Times. According to American media, the leak of Valerie Plame's name could only have occurred by order from the White House. White House chief political strategist Karl Rove was expected to be found guilty of a criminal offense, but the only one to face public charges was Lewis Libby, former chief of staff to US Vice President Dick Cheney. In June 2007 he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and an additional two years probationary period and a fine of $250 thousand for giving false testimony in an investigation into the leak of the name of a CIA employee.
The actions of local and federal authorities during Hurricane Katrina, recognized by the public as erroneous, were collectively called “Katrinagate.” According to the victims, the authorities announced the evacuation too late and failed to provide adequate conditions in the shelters, as a result of which people spent several days without water, food or hope for help. The decision of the city mayor to turn the Superdome indoor stadium into a shelter, which became practically a torture chamber for thousands of victims, was also recognized as a mistake.
Remarks from unprofessional photographers and bloggers cost a Reuters photographer his career in the summer of 2006. Reutersgate was at the center Adnan Hajj, who has collaborated with the agency for more than 10 years. Two of the photographer's works, taken in Lebanon during the Israeli bombing in the summer of 2006, clearly show traces of editing in the graphics program Photoshop. In one of the photographs, the photographer drew smoke from buildings destroyed by raids. On the second, two others were added to the only captured missile fired at ground-based thermal traps. All 920 photographs of Hajj were removed from the agency's archives.
The fame of colleagues does not leave anyone alone
On September 29, 1980, the article “Jimmy's World” appeared in The Washington Post and thundered throughout the United States. The publication's reporter Janet Cook wrote a brilliant piece about the fate of an eight-year-old boy, Jimmy, a resident of one of the poor neighborhoods of the US capital. According to the reporter, Jimmy's mother's boyfriend got such a young creature addicted to heroin. The boy claimed that when he grew up, he would become a drug dealer. City officials and civil rights activists demanded that Cook tell them Jimmy's place of residence. Cook did not agree, citing the fact that in this case the heroin dealers would simply kill the boy. However, after attempts by police units specially assigned by Washington Mayor Marion Barry to find the boy were unsuccessful, rumors spread throughout the American capital: Jimmy was a figment of Janet Cook’s imagination. The Washington Post, of course, denied these rumors, and Cook was surprised that anyone would question her information.
On April 13, 1981, Janet Cook was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. The Washington Post was preparing to write a long story about Cook's life story. After taking her resume, the reporter's colleagues contacted professors at the universities where she studied and her former colleagues at The Toledo Blade. It turned out that Janet Cook was lying: she had never been a student at either Vassar College or the Sorbonne. But does she speak French (in her resume Cook wrote that she speaks four foreign languages), undertook to check Benjamin Bradley, at that time Chief Editor The Washington Post. Janet Cook did not speak French. Then the editors demanded to prove that the hero of her sensational story, Jimmy, existed. It was then that Cook confessed to her deception. The Pulitzer Prize was revoked and the reporter was fired.
In 1995, Ben Bradlee wrote an autobiography that became a bestseller. He devoted an entire chapter to Janet Cook, talking in detail about how some editorial staff immediately doubted the veracity of the essay, while others defended it to the last. Bradley called Cook a cross to the image of The Washington Post and Ben Bradlee. The only thing he left unexplained was who exactly gave the reporter the task of writing a piece on the topic “Heroin on the streets of Washington.”
“Does anyone doubt that there is an eight-year-old boy addicted to heroin living in the dark neighborhoods of America?” wrote Stars and Stripes editor Ellan Andrews in 1996. “The eight-year-old hero of the false story would be 23 years old now, and we all know: he is everything.” "He still lives there, in the slums. We read about another heroin boom in the country, that this drug is mainly used by university students, Jimmy's age."
In 1982, Janet Cook appeared on The Phil Donahue Show. She said that her lie was provoked by pressure from the editors of The Washington Post: after the Watergate scandal, the newspaper became popular, and journalists were constantly required to provide sensations.
The Watergate scandal is impossible in Russia
Gazeta asked political scientists to answer the question: can journalistic activity in Russia lead to the impeachment of the president or at least to serious damage to his image?
“I think not,” says political scientist Alexander Rahr. “In today’s Russia, this is impossible, unless it is connected with some serious crime, which was revealed in one form or another by journalists or a newspaper. The same Watergate, such easy corruption , even if it had happened in Russia, it would not have had any impact on the Russian domestic policy no meaning."
“I don’t see such a situation,” the deputy believes general director Center for Political Technologies Alexey Makarkin. - The United States has completely different traditions of democracy and a different attitude towards the media. It is more serious initially. The majority of the population considers the media to be representatives of the interests of society, and journalists to be citizens performing a particularly important public function. In Russia, the media are largely considered to be biased structures. If a journalist is conducting an investigation, then there is an order. The concepts of “compromising material” and “drain” appeared. In addition, there is strong opposition in the United States. There, the government can become the opposition within constitutional terms, and vice versa. Therefore, even many of Nixon’s party comrades, knowing full well that they could soon become the opposition, refused to support the president. The president was essentially isolated: Democrats were against him, and many Republicans believed that he had set them up. In Russia, the opposition has been sharply weakened, and, most importantly, the ability to become power is not visible behind it."
Watergate scandal- a major political scandal that occurred in the United States in 1972-1974. and went down in history as the Watergate affair. The result of this conflict was the resignation of the current President of America, Richard Nixon.
An interesting fact is that the case where the head of the United States had to leave his post early is so far the only one in the United States.
Today you will learn the causes of the Watergate scandal, as well as the consequences that it entailed.
The rise of Richard Nixon's political career
Richard Nixon won a Republican Senate seat when he was 33 years old. He was known for openly expressing his anti-communist beliefs, without fear of criticism.
Young Richard Nixon
His political career developed so quickly that already in 1950 he became the youngest senator in history.
First incident
However, as the saying goes, if everything goes too well for you, expect trouble. This is what happened to Nixon.
One American publishing house accused him of illegally using funds allocated for the election campaign. In addition to serious accusations, there were also quite funny ones.
For example, one journalist accused Richard Nixon of buying a cocker spaniel with money received from the state treasury.
However, the future president denied all these accusations, claiming that he had never broken the law in his life or made a deal with his conscience. According to the politician, the dog was bought at personal funds, and was a gift for his children.
Double fiasco
In 1960, he ran for the presidency of the United States for the first time. At that time, his main opponent was John Kennedy, who was the leader of the election race.
As a result, Kennedy became the President of America.
Less than a year later, Nixon took part in the gubernatorial elections in, but here too he failed.
Presidential post
In 1963, John Kennedy was assassinated during a campaign trip to Dallas. Then he was replaced by Lyndon Johnson, who achieved very good results in this post.
As his presidency came to an end, Johnson decided not to seek a second term.
For Nixon it was a real gift. In 1968, he wins the election and becomes President of America. An interesting fact is that he was ahead of his main rival by less than 1%.
Merits
Of course, Richard Nixon can hardly claim to be the best American president. However, he has serious merits in this post.
For example, he helped America get out of the Vietnam War and establish diplomatic relations with China.
Nixon is the first (since 1945) American president to visit Moscow. This happened in 1972.
The meeting turned out to be very productive. It raised important issues affecting both economic relations between states and the reduction of military potential.
Richard Nixon It would seem, what else can one dream of in the presidency when everything is going well?
Historical reference
Surely you know that in America there are two political forces, between which there is a constant struggle for power. These are Democrats and Republicans.
Representatives of one or the other camp alternately govern the United States, trying with all their might to keep power in their hands for as long as possible.
From the recent past, we can recall how the Democrat Barack Obama was replaced by a Republican.
It is easy to guess that in such conditions, for a successful political struggle, the current president should be as prudent as possible in order to stay for a second term.
Nixon, elected from the Republican Party, had no equal in this regard. He worked on all fronts at once. And at the same time.
The Secret Service and Other Instruments of Power
When Nixon took over the reins, he organized a personal secret service. This apparatus monitored the president's competitors and opponents.
The head of the United States wiretapped the telephone conversations of his opponents, and also allowed special agents to conduct searches of “suspicious” persons.
His actions increasingly began to show signs of a dictator. In order to stay in power, he resorted to blackmail and bribery.
When the next presidential election came, the politician, in order to gain the support of officials, allowed them to engage in tax fraud.
Plumbers Division
In 1971, the famous New York Times newspaper decided to publish classified materials received from the CIA. The information related to the war and seriously compromised the current president.
Naturally, Nixon did not like this, and he immediately reacted to the attack in his direction. According to some reports, he took this data leak as a personal challenge.
So, by his decree, the so-called “plumbers unit” was organized. In essence, this group of people was engaged in espionage and carried out various orders of their “boss”.
They blocked any attempts at rallies by the Democrats, and also eliminated people who were objectionable to the authorities.
Republican Nixon went to great lengths to once again become head of the White House. However, such actions could not remain in the shadows for long.
It was precisely such events that preceded the historical case known as the Watergate scandal.
Watergate incident
And now briefly about how the Watergate scandal began.
The Watergate complex in Washington was the headquarters of the Democratic Party, Nixon's rivals.
Watergate complex On June 17, 1972, 5 people dressed in plumbers’ clothes entered the hotel (an interesting fact is that it was after this that Nixon’s spy group began to be called “plumbers”).
However, these “plumbers” failed to complete the special task. They were prevented by a simple security guard who, by luck, decided to make an unscheduled detour. Noticing suspicious faces, he immediately called the police.
During the investigation, the police discovered a lot of irrefutable evidence, including a broken door to the Democratic headquarters, as well as wiretapping equipment.
From that moment on, a thorough investigation into the Watergate case began.
As soon as the incident became known to the public, President Nixon made every effort to hush up the scandal.
But nothing worked out for him, since every day more and more serious evidence appeared proving his involvement in the Watergate case. The discovered sound recordings played an important role in all this.
The President managed to destroy 20 minutes of valuable audio, but this did not save him. The materials found were quite enough to accuse Nixon of illegal actions towards his country.
The president's aides tried to justify the head of the United States, explaining the installation of listening equipment by saying that the sound recordings were made solely for history. But the investigation was not convinced by such arguments.
The Watergate scandal caused a storm of criticism throughout the country. The situation became especially aggravated when law enforcement agencies provided evidence that Nixon had repeatedly evaded paying taxes and used public funds for personal purposes.
Watergate verdict
If at the beginning of his political career Nixon easily managed to justify himself in buying a puppy, now things were much more serious.
Hearing daily accusations against him, the head of the White House, despite the gathering clouds, had no intention of leaving his post. However, they demanded (removal from office by court decision).
After conducting a thorough investigation, the Senate and House of Representatives made their decision on the Watergate scandal. They found incumbent President Richard Nixon guilty and removed him from office.
After studying all the audio recordings, it was discovered that not only Nixon, but also his associates abused their official position.
They resorted to blackmail and threats, and also extorted large sums of money from their “victims.” US citizens were amazed at the level and scale of corruption that came from the very top of power.
Resignation
All these things could have had a very detrimental effect not only on Nixon’s career, but on his life. When all the impeachment papers were ready, the president realized that he had lost.
That is why Richard Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. Vice President Gerald Ford became President of the United States.
He pardoned Nixon “for all the crimes that he might have committed,” which he had the right to do, since impeachment had not yet begun to be considered in the Senate.
Ford later noted that this decision was one of the main reasons for his defeat in the 1976 election.
An interesting fact is that Richard Nixon never admitted his guilt in the Watergate case, and until the end of his days he denied the accusations against him.
Watergate and the press
When analyzing the Watergate scandal, it is very important to note that the case would not have received such resonance if it were not for the press. It was she who challenged the president and led him to a crushing fiasco.
In essence, the media did something that the intelligence services had never been able to do in the entire history of America until that moment.
That is why the Watergate scandal became so famous all over the world, and the word “Watergate” itself became a household word.
The word "Watergate" refers to a scandal that results in impeachment. The suffix "gate" is also used when talking about scandals. For example: Monicagate during the Clinton administration, or Irangate under Reagan.
The theme of the Watergate scandal has been repeatedly depicted in literature, cinema and computer games.
Conclusion
From all that has been said, it is clear that Watergate represents the scandal that led to Richard Nixon's impeachment.
In fact, Watergate covers much more than that. important aspects concerning the policies of world powers. But let each reader draw his own conclusions.
If you love it at all, subscribe to the site in any convenient way. It's always interesting with us!
Did you like the post? Press any button.
The Watergate affair is a political scandal that occurred in America in 1972, which led to the resignation of the then head of state, Richard Nixon. This is the first and so far only time in American history when a president during his lifetime left his post early. The word "Watergate" is still considered a symbol of corruption, immorality, and criminality on the part of the authorities. Today we will find out what the background of the Watergate case was in the USA, how the scandal developed and what it led to.
The beginning of Richard Nixon's political career
In 1945, 33-year-old Republican Nixon won a seat in Congress. At that time, he was already famous for his anti-communist beliefs, which the politician did not hesitate to express publicly. Nixon's political career developed very rapidly, and already in 1950 he became the youngest senator in the history of the United States of America.
Excellent prospects were predicted for the young politician. In 1952, incumbent US President Eisenhower nominated Nixon for the post of vice president. However, this was not destined to happen.
First conflict
One of the leading New York newspapers accused Nixon of illegally using election funds. In addition to serious accusations, there were also some very funny ones. For example, according to journalists, Nixon spent part of the money on buying a cocker spaniel puppy for his children. In response to the accusations, the politician made a speech on television. Naturally, he denied everything, claiming that he had never in his life committed illegal or immoral acts that could tarnish his honest political career. And the dog, according to the accused, was simply given to his children as a gift. Finally, Nixon said that he was not going to leave politics and would not just give up. By the way, he will utter a similar phrase after the Watergate scandal, but more on that a little later.
Double fiasco
In 1960, he ran for president of America for the first time. His opponent was someone who simply had no equal in that race. Kennedy was very popular and respected in society, so he won by a huge margin. 11 months after Kennedy's appointment to the presidency, Nixon nominated himself for the post, but lost here too. After the double defeat, he thought about leaving politics, but the craving for power still took its toll.
Presidential post
In 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, he took his place. He coped with his task quite well. When the time for the next election approached, the situation in America greatly worsened - the Vietnam War, which dragged on too long, caused protests throughout the United States. Johnson decided that he would not run for a second term, which was quite unexpected for the political and civil community. Nixon could not miss this chance and announced his candidacy for the presidency. In 1968, beating his opponent by half a percentage point, he headed the White House.
Merits
Of course, Nixon is far from the great American rulers, but it cannot be said that he was the worst president in US history. He, together with his administration, was able to resolve the issue of America's withdrawal from the Vietnam conflict and normalize relations with China.
In 1972, Nixon came on an official visit to Moscow. In the entire history of relations between the USA and the USSR, such a meeting was the first. It brought a number of important agreements concerning bilateral relations and arms reduction.
But at one point, all of Nixon’s services to the United States literally became worthless. Only a few days were enough for this. As you may have guessed, the reason for this is the Watergate affair.
Political wars
As you know, the confrontation between Democrats and Republicans in America is considered a common thing. Representatives of the two camps almost take turns taking control of the state, nominating their candidates for elections and providing them with massive support. Of course, every victory brings great joy to the winning party and great disappointment to the opponents. To gain the levers of power, candidates often engage in very intense and unprincipled struggles. Propaganda, compromising material and other dirty methods come into play.
When one or another politician takes the reins of power, his life turns into a real fight. Every, even the slightest mistake becomes a reason for competitors to go on the offensive. To protect himself from the influence of political opponents, the president has to take a huge number of measures. As the Watergate case showed, Nixon had no equal in this regard.
The Secret Service and Other Instruments of Power
When the hero of our conversation, at the age of 50, came to the presidency, one of his first priorities was the creation of a personal secret service. Its goal was to control opponents and potential opponents of the president. The framework of the law was neglected. It all started when Nixon began wiretapping the telephone conversations of his competitors. In the summer of 1970, he went even further: he gave the go-ahead for the Secret Service to conduct non-sectional searches of Democratic congressmen. The President did not disdain the “divide and conquer” method.
To disperse anti-war demonstrations, he used the services of mafia militants. They are not police, which means no one will say that the government neglects human rights and laws democratic society. Nixon did not shy away from blackmail and bribery. When the next round of elections was approaching, he decided to enlist the help of officials. And so that the latter would treat him more loyally, he asked for certificates about the payment of taxes by people with the lowest income level. It was impossible to provide such information, but the president insisted, demonstrating the triumph of his power.
In general, Nixon was a very cynical politician. But if you look at the political world, from the point of view of dry facts, it is extremely difficult to find honest people there. And if there are any, they most likely just know how to cover their tracks. Our hero was not like that, and many knew about it.
"Plumbers Division"
In 1971, when there was only a year left before the next presidential election, the New York Times newspaper published in one of its issues classified CIA data regarding military operations in Vietnam. Although Nixon's name was not mentioned in this article, it called into question the competence of the ruler and his apparatus as a whole. Nixon took this material as a personal challenge.
A little later, he organized the so-called plumbers unit - a secret service engaged in espionage and more. An investigation conducted later showed that employees of this service were developing plans to eliminate people who were interfering with the president, as well as disrupting rallies held by Democrats. Naturally, during the election campaign, Nixon had to resort to the services of “plumbers” much more often than in normal times. The president was ready to do anything to be elected for a second term. As a result, the excessive activity of the spy organization led to a scandal that went down in history as the Watergate affair. Impeachment is far from the only result of the conflict, but more on that below.
How it all happened
The headquarters of the US Democratic Party Committee at that time was at the Watergate Hotel. One June evening in 1972, five men entered the hotel, carrying plumbers' suitcases and wearing rubber gloves. This is why the spy organization was later called the Plumbers. That evening they acted strictly according to the plan. However, by chance, the sinister deeds of the spies were not destined to take place. They were interrupted by a security guard who suddenly decided to conduct an unscheduled inspection. Confronted with unexpected guests, he followed instructions and called the police.
The evidence was more than irrefutable. The main one is the broken door to the Democratic headquarters. Initially, everything looked like a simple robbery, but a thorough search revealed grounds for more serious charges. Law enforcement officers found sophisticated recording equipment from the criminals. A serious investigation began.
At first, Nixon tried to hush up the scandal, but almost every day new facts were discovered that revealed his true face: “bugs” installed in the headquarters of the Democrats, recordings of conversations that took place in the White House and other information. Congress demanded that the president provide all the records to the investigation, but Nixon produced only part of them. Naturally, this did not suit the investigators. In this matter, not even the slightest compromise was allowed. As a result, all that Nixon managed to hide was 18 minutes of sound recording, which he erased. It could not be restored, but this no longer matters, because the surviving materials were more than enough to demonstrate the president’s disdain for the society of his native country.
Former presidential aide Alexander Butterfield claimed that conversations in the White House were recorded simply for the sake of history. As an irrefutable argument, he mentioned that during the time of Franklin Roosevelt, legal recordings of presidential conversations were made. But even if one agrees with this argument, there remains the fact of listening to political opponents, which cannot be justified. Moreover, in 1967, unauthorized listening was prohibited at the legislative level.
The Watergate case in the United States caused a great stir. As the investigation progressed, public outrage grew rapidly. At the end of February 1973, law enforcement officers proved that Nixon had committed serious tax violations more than once. It was also discovered that the President used huge sums public funds to fulfill personal needs.
Watergate case: verdict
Early in his career, Nixon managed to convince the public of his innocence, but this time it was impossible. If then the president was accused of buying a puppy, now it was about two luxurious houses in California and Florida. The "plumbers" were accused of conspiracy and arrested. And the head of state felt more and more every day not the owner of the White House, but its hostage.
He persistently, but unsuccessfully, tried to dispel his guilt and put the brakes on the Watergate case. The president’s state at that time can be briefly described with the phrase “struggle for survival.” With remarkable enthusiasm, the president refused his resignation. According to him, under no circumstances did he intend to leave the post to which he was appointed by the people. The American people, in turn, did not even think about supporting Nixon. Everything led to impeachment. Congressmen were determined to remove the president from high office.
After a full investigation, the Senate and House of Representatives rendered their verdict. They recognized that Nixon had behaved in a manner unbecoming of a president and was undermining America's constitutional order. For this he was removed from office and brought before the court. The Watergate affair caused the president's resignation, but that's not all. Thanks to audio recordings, investigators established that many political figures from the president’s entourage regularly abused their official positions, took bribes and openly threatened their opponents. The Americans were most surprised not by the fact that the highest ranks went to unworthy people, but by the fact that corruption had reached such a scale. What until recently was an exception and could lead to irreversible consequences has become commonplace.
Resignation
On August 9, 1974, the main victim of the Watergate case, Richard Nixon, left for his homeland, leaving the presidency. Naturally, he did not admit his guilt. Later, recalling the scandal, he would say that as president he made a mistake and acted indecisively. What did he mean by this? What decisive actions were discussed? Perhaps about providing the public with additional compromising evidence on officials and close associates. Would Nixon really agree to such a grandiose confession? Most likely, all these statements were a simple attempt to justify themselves.
His role in the development of the scandal was clearly decisive. According to an American researcher, during the Watergate scandal, it was the media that challenged the head of state and, as a result, caused him irreversible defeat. In fact, the press did what no institution in American history had ever managed before - it deprived the president of his post, which he received with the support of the majority. This is why Watergate and the press still symbolize the control of power and the triumph of the press.
The word “Watergate” has become entrenched in the political slang of many countries around the world. It refers to the scandal that led to impeachment. And the word “gate” has become a suffix that is used in the names of new political, and not only, scandals. For example: Monicagate under Clinton, Irangate under Reagan, the Volkswagen car company scam, which was nicknamed Dieselgate, and so on.
The Watergate case in the USA (1974) has been depicted more than once to varying degrees in literature, cinema and even video games.
Conclusion
Today we found out that the Watergate case is a conflict that arose in America during the reign of Richard Nixon and led to the resignation of the latter. But as you can see, this definition describes the events rather sparingly, even taking into account the fact that, for the first time in US history, they forced a president to leave his post. The Watergate case, the history of which is the subject of our conversation today, was a great revolution in the consciousness of Americans and, on the one hand, proved the triumph of justice, and on the other, the level of corruption and cynicism of those in power.