This day in history. The price of the Watergate scandal – US President Nixon resigns / Article

“Every physical instinct in me resists the thought of leaving my post before the end of my term. But as President, I must put America’s interests first. my time and attention at this time when we must focus all our attention on the important issues of peace in our foreign policy and prosperity without inflation at home President Ford will take his oath of office. “

The citizens of the United States heard these words on the evening of August 8, 1974, gathering around the television screens. This meant that the next day, August 9 around noon, Richard Nixon would no longer be their president. Thus ended Nixon’s second term as president, his active political career and, in general, the Watergate scandal for more than two years.

When Richard Millhouse Nixon became the 37th president of the United States in 1969, he already had a strong political career behind him. He had been a senator, vice president in the Eisenhower administration, argued with Nikita Khrushchev in the famous “Kitchen Debate”, lost the 1960 presidential election to John Fitzgerald Kennedy, because the one about ended up looking much better in the televised debates, while the sympathy of most radio listeners after the debates was on Nixon’s side. In the presidential elections of 1968, the so-called “silent majority” voted – the socially conservative middle class, who did not like hippies, did not like pacifist demonstrations, but was also very tired of the war in Vietnam. Nixon promised to lead America out of the war “with honor,” and he largely succeeded. In 1972, Nixon won the election for the next term of the president by a landslide.

On the night of June 17, 1972, the Washington police received a call to Watergate – a complex of offices, apartments and hotels. When they got there, the law enforcement officers arrested five men who illegally entered the Democratic Party headquarters building, went through documents and installed secret listening devices.

Very quickly, the connection of the detainees with the administration of the president was revealed – and then it began.

One discovery led to another, the media got involved, the Senate and Congress took over the investigation. Little by little, it is revealed that Nixon’s team organized all kinds of illegal wiretapping and breaking into foreign buildings, ordered the FBI to track down unsavory journalists. and political opponents, false documents to discredit them, to create illegal assets in Mexico, from which they created. he financed all of it, and also, when the investigation began, he bribed witnesses. It was also discovered that many conversations in the White House were secretly recorded, and the court requested that they be released as possible evidence. The audience was open to the political food, which for the common man is delicious in nature.

The world became different after Watergate. Conversations in the Oval Office of the White House were secretly recorded even before Nixon, but not again after him. After this scandal, journalists became more aggressive, more interested in finding the political kitchen. Since Nixon himself and many of his associates were lawyers, the reputation of the profession was greatly damaged. And, of course, similar failures of politicians in America and elsewhere in the world began to be called names with the ending “-gate”. Let’s say, Irangate of the Reagan administration, or – the case with Monika Lewinska’s tattered dress, which is called either Monikgate, or – in English – “Zippergate”, which in Latvia could be between -translated as “zipper gate”.

The article was first published on LSM.lv on August 9, 2023.

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