The subject of
political corruption has always been interesting to me that is why today we are
going to spend some time talking about one of the most infamous scandals in the
history of the United States: Watergate. Before I jump in, I chose to
research this topic because in the future I want to work with the FBI and try
and prevent this kind of thing from happening again, but as Confucius once
said: "Study the past if you would define the future" and this should
have remember and learn from past mistakes so we can prevent history from
repeating itself.
During
the sun's rising on the morning of June 17, 1972, a group of 5 men are found in
the Democratic party's political headquarters at the Watergate complex in
Washing, D.C. The police are called and the men were found with copies of top
secret files and with new wire-taps as the original taps they installed in May
failed to function properly. At the time, nobody had any idea of what political
espionage had just been uncovered. In the following weeks, President Nixon
stated that the White House staff and the administration had any involvement in
the incident, shortly after, President Nixon won a second term in office in one
of the largest landslide victories over George McGovern.
After
the election, it came out that President Nixon had arranged for the burglars to
receive several hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush money. A member of the
White House staff named John Dean, testified to Nixon's crimes and this was the
beginning of the Watergate scandal, protest broke out on Pennsylvania Avenue in
front of the White House, people calling for the impeachment of Nixon, and an
investigation by the FBI into the scandal. Nixon used his executive powers to
employ the CIA to impede the FBI during their investigation, this was a bigger
crime than the espionage he was trying to cover up. Archibald Cox was appointed
as the special prosecutor for the case, he called for the release of recorded
audio tapes from the White House phone calls. However, Nixon made claim that he
can't release the tapes because they contained classified national security
secrets of the government, this came to creation of the term we know today
as "executive privilege". Cox continued to demand the tapes
after Nixon claimed "executive privilege" as a result, Nixon
ordered that the justice department fire Cox, the justice department refused
and several of the top member resigned. Finally, one of the official fired Cox,
he was replaced by Leon Jaworski, and this was known as the
Saturday Night Massacre. Jaworski resumed the investigation and claimed that
the tapes were not protected under presidential privilege. The U.S supreme
court ordered a subpoena for Nixon to release the tapes, which he released part
of them, then, on August 8th President Nixon resigns from office just before
impeachment. After 6 weeks, Gerald Ford then becomes the 38th
president of the United States.
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| Front page of the "St. Louis Globe-Democrat" news paper, this is but one of many news papers with this front page story |
Word Count: 500
Sources:
Andrews, Evan.
“What Was the Saturday Night Massacre?” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 4
“The Watergate
Scandal.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009,
“Nixon used his executive powers to employ the CIA to impede the FBI during their investigation, this was a bigger crime than the espionage he was trying to cover up.“
ReplyDeletePersonally, I believe the president is obviously familiar with the laws, but he was probably in a state of panic. Do you think Nixon took this into consideration before using his executive powers?
I am sure he did, but as we discussed in class, the parties were at war (for lack of a better term) with each other and he wanted to assure victory over the democrats in the election.
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