Caption, Richard Nixon was President of the United States for the Republican Party.Article information
- Author, Ana Maria Roura
- Role, BBC News World
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3 hours
The Watergate scandal is today a symbol of corruption and conspiracy.
What began as a robbery in a Washington building ended with the resignation of the 37th President of the United States, Richard Nixon, on August 8, 1974.
“I have never been a deserter. Leaving the presidency before my term ends is abominable to every instinct in my body.“But as president, I must put America’s interests first,” Nixon said in a radio and television address.
The event shook American politics and society.
He was the first and only president in the country to resign, a fact that marked a turning point in public confidence in those in power.
The Watergate case had four key moments that culminated, 50 years ago, with the fall of Nixon.
1. Theft
It all started with an alleged robbery.
On June 17, 1972 Five men—three Cubans, one Cuban-American and one American—entered the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the early hours of the morning.located in the Watergate building complex in Washington DC
The party’s campaign was centralized there, as it aimed to defeat Nixon in the elections in November of that year.
The building’s janitor noticed something suspicious and called the police, who arrested the five individuals.
The next day, The Washington Postone of the country’s main newspapers, reported the event with some data that They began to raise suspicions.
For example, the alleged robbers were dressed in suits, wore surgical gloves and carried listening equipment and cameras.
In addition, they had almost US$2,300 in cash.
Caption, Bob Woodward (left) and Carl Bernstein (right) at an event to commemorate 50 years of Watergate, in 2022.
With this data, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, two young reporters from the Postthey began to investigate the case.
For this it was crucial “deep Throat”an anonymous source whose identity was revealed three decades later: Mark Felt, then deputy director of the FBI.
With his help, the journalists turned the plot on its head: they began to find connections between the alleged robbery and the White House.
2. The Cuban “plumbers”
The first evidence of this link was published in August 1972: a $25,000 check for Nixon’s re-election campaign had been deposited into the bank account of one of the thieves.
The reporters’ inquiries also revealed that some of those involved in the robbery had participated in CIA operations against the Fidel Castro regime.
But this was just the tip of the iceberg.
They also found that Attorney General John Mitchell controlled a secret fund to collect information on members of the Democratic Party.
Y Everything pointed to that The orders came from the White House.
At that time, Nixon was nearing the end of his first term and a committee in the White House was directing the strategy for his re-election.
Although Nixon was the favorite to win the election, his path was not clear.
Caption, Equipment seized from the Watergate “burglars.”
One of his main obstacles was not having fulfilled the promise with which he came to the presidency in 1968: end the war in Vietnam.
This occurred at a time when the civil rights and anti-war movements were in full swing.
In addition, in 1971 a scandalous leak known as the “Pentagon Papers” had left the president in a bad position.
These secret documents on the conflict in Vietnam leaked to the newspaper The New York Times They revealed how the public had been deceived about what was happening in the war.
Following this scandal, Nixon created a Special Investigations Unit within the White House, better known as the “Plumbers” unit because their task was to stop any leaks.
It is at this point that this story intersects with that of Watergate.
One of the “plumbers,” G. Gordon Liddy, was transferred to the Committee to Re-elect Richard Nixon.
From there came the order to spy on the Democrats in the offices of the Watergate building and find any document that could harm them.
But as this information came to light, Nixon’s popularity remained intact.
In fact, it swept the elections in November 1972.
3. The White House cover-up
Everything took a dramatic turn in February 1973, when the investigations reached the Senate.
In the public hearings of the case, which were followed on television by millions of Americans, several witnesses agreed that although Nixon had not given the direct order to spy on the Democrats in Watergate, he did had ordered a cover-up of the case’s links to the White House.
But it was not only details of Watergate that came to light.
It was also learned that the spy and conspiracy network It had become almost a culture of “the ends justify the means” in the White House.
There were even details of illegal financing of many of the illegal operations and contributions to the Republican Party in exchange for political favors.
Caption, Nixon preferred to resign rather than be removed through an impeachment process. impeachment.
However, one of the most serious revelations was the one uncovered by the telephone and conversation listening system that President Nixon himself had installed in the Oval Office.
The president justified himself by saying that he had installed the device to write his memoirs.
The fierce battle over the tapes marked the beginning of the end of Nixon’s second term.
4. The fall of Nixon
According to experts, the process that ended with Nixon’s resignation tested the independence of the powers in the United States: the Justice, the Senate, the Congress and the Executive Branch.
Historian Dafydd Townley, from the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom, told BBC Mundo a few years ago that this event marked “the end of the relationship between the presidency and the people“.
He added: “Ultimately, the bond between the American people and the trust they had in the executive branch disappeared in 1974. And it hasn’t really come back.”
First there was the dispute between the Senate, which wanted to obtain the recordings from Nixon’s office, and the president, who refused to hand them over, citing security reasons.
But the drama escalated when several Justice Department officials, including the attorney general, resigned while others were fired amid pressure from the White House to quash the Senate investigation.
There was strong condemnation from public opinion and some described this episode as an attempted coup d’état by the government, for interfering in justice.
The recordings were finally made public when the Supreme Court demanded it on July 24, 1974.
One of them put the president at the center of the conspiracy.
Caption, For historian Dafydd Townley, this event marks “the end of the relationship between the (US) presidency and the people.”
The audio showed Nixon talking to one of his advisers about how the CIA should block FBI investigations into the Watergate case, just six days after the press reported the alleged break-in.
Congress immediately began impeachment proceedings or impeachment against Nixon, accusing him of obstruction of justice and abuse of power.
Fifteen days later, Nixon resigned from office.
A few days after taking office, his successor, Gerald Ford forgave Nixon and many analysts think this caused even more disillusionment in society.
But other experts say the case also showed that, despite their flaws, institutions in the United States are strong and function independently.
What many agree on is that this was One of the most murky episodes in American politics in the 20th century.
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