Here’s an article I did for a magazine about the Watergate scandal. Click below to see the article as it appeared in the magazine, keep scrolling to read a text version
In recent times we have had numerous scandals including MP Andrew Mitchell’s PLEB-gate and the Old Trafford PIZZA-gate which saw Sir Alex Ferguson being hit by anonymously flung takeaway. Yet for all that we refer to Watergate as the daddy of scandals, very few people really understand what it was all about. So please read on as we try to explain in only a few pages a story that has inspired dozens of books, movies and the naming of many a dirty deed.
It was on the 17th June 1972 that a piece of tape became the frayed end of a tapestry; when pulled, said loose end unravelled an entire Government and led to the fall of a President. That piece of tape had been placed over a door-lock at Washington’s Watergate Hotel. To understand how a piece of tape brought down a President we must first look at that President, Richard M. Nixon.
Having lost the 1960 election to John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon was eventually elected to the Whitehouse as the 37th President of the US in 1968. He took office with a deep mistrust of the media who he blamed for his earlier defeat. He quickly established a “Committee to re-Elect the President” (later known as ‘CREEP’), made up of trusted agents and activists. CREEP had two clear branches, “Rat-Fuc**rs” targeted with infiltrating and disrupting opponents and “Plumbers” that were tasked with fixing “leaks” of classified information. The Rat-Fuc**rs were credited with dirty tricks like forging letters to undermine candidates and even stealing the shoes from the hotels of opposition campaigners.
Bugging with hidden microphones became a key part of their surveillance and disruption; this led to a team of “Plumbers” being dispatched to bug the Headquarters of The Democratic Party, based at the Watergate Hotel. After a failed first attempt, they arranged for an insider to tape the doors at night to prevent them from being locked securely. Sadly for the plumbers, a vigilant security guard noticed the tape and called the police, who in turn arrived in time to catch the 5 plumbers in the act. The first domino in a long chain had fallen.
The case was passed to the FBI and their Initial investigations established a link between one of the burglars and E. Howard Hunt, an ex-CIA officer. It was then established that Hunt was one of Nixon’s Plumbers who in turn had connections to Charles Coulson, special counsel to the President. While Nixon did not personally order the break-in, his subsequent involvement in trying to distance his administration from Watergate is what really brought him down. On one hand, Nixon was telling the press Corp, “I can categorically say that…. no one in the White House staff, no one in this administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident.”
In reality, it was Nixon’s Attorney General, John Mitchell that had ordered the break-in. But the sand in the hourglass of Nixon’s Presidency had begun to run out when he told his Chief of Staff, Bob Halderman of the burglars and their leaders, saying “They have to be paid. That’s all there is to that.” With those words a break-in became a conspiracy.
Despite rumblings, Nixon was still able to weather the storm and secure re-election in November 1972 with one of the biggest margins in modern history, beating Democrat George McGovern in almost every state in the country. Soon afterwards, John Dean began co-operating with Watergate prosecutors. Then Patrick Gray resigned as the Head of the FBI after it emerged that he had destroyed files connected to the scandal. At the end of April 1973 there were further departures as White House officials Bob Halderman, John Ehrlichman and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst all resigned. John Dean was fired.
Yet election victory for Nixon did not wash away the whiff of wrongdoing at Watergate. Two reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein worked for the Washington Post and were critical in unravelling the conspiracy. They initially followed the money trail from the burglars to their handlers and then on to the CREEP slush fund. They were able to establish links to the CIA, FBI, The Justice Department and then ultimately to the White House. Their stories were continually criticised, derided and denied by the White House Press Secretary, Ronald Ziegler (who later had to apologise).
In actual fact, Woodward’s confidential source was so critical to his investigations and so well placed within Government that he could not even be quoted anonymously for fear his identity could be compromised. He was so deep undercover he was given the code-name “Deep Throat” after the famous porn film of the day. Deep Throat would
later be unmasked as the FBI’s number 2 man, Deputy Director Mark Felt. Armed with intelligence from such a well placed source, the relentless probing by Woodward and Bernstein began to gain traction with the public.
But the most explosive testimony came from the former appointments secretary, Alexander Butterfield, when he revealed that all conversations and phone calls in Nixon’s office had been routinely recorded since 1971! The tapes were immediately disconnected and Nixon refused the committee’s subpoena to release them by invoking Presidential Privilege. The battle over the tapes carried on, with Special Prosecutor, Archibald Cox, refusing to drop the subpoena. When both the Attorney General (AG), Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckleshaus refused to fire Cox, Nixon called for their resignations. Nixon was able to fire Cox himself which in turn led to the AG and deputy AG resigning in protest. Nixon later gave a press conference from Disney World in Florida where he uttered the now immortal line: “I am not a crook!”
By early 1973, cracks began to appear in the cover-up. The FBI’s Director testified that he had been asked by Nixon’s lawyer, John Dean, to keep the White House abreast of the Watergate investigation on a daily basis. He further stated that it was his belief that Dean, Nixon’s lawyer, had “probably lied” to investigators. Then one of the burglars, James McCord, wrote to Judge John Sirica claiming that he had perjured himself in court when he had testified that the break-in was a CIA operation when in fact it involved other Government agencies.
The Senate Watergate Committee began televised hearings into the scandal in May 1973. They proved the connection between the burglary and CREEP and subsequently, the White House. John Dean revealed that he and Nixon had discussed Watergate on at least 35 occasions in a 245 page prepared statement that took 7 hours to read! The Watergate scandal saw 69 officials being charged and 48 convicted at almost every level of Government. Up to his death in 1994, Nixon still proclaimed his innocence. His only regret was he had been wrong in not dealing more decisively with the specific illegalities of the Watergate scandal. In a famous series of 1977 interviews with David Frost, Nixon said “Well, when the President does it, that means it is not illegal.”
In March of 1974, “The Watergate seven” were convicted for their involvement in the scandal, but the row over the tapes continued right up to the Supreme Court, where there was a unanimous ruling that the tapes should be released. When the tapes were released in July 1974, they revealed crucial conversations between John Dean and Nixon with his lawyer describing the cover-up operation as “a cancer on the presidency”. However, it then became apparent that an 18 minute section of tape was ‘missing’. There were various excuses proffered including a secretary Rose Mary Woods accidentally pressing a wrong pedal, famously demonstrated as the “Rose Mary Stretch”.
Finally, in August 1974, a new section of tape from the Oval Office was released. It had been recorded a few days after the Watergate break-in and it documented the formulation of a plan between Nixon and Bob Halderman to block any
investigations. They wanted the CIA to falsely claim to the FBI that there were issues of National Security at stake in the break-in. This is the section of audio described as the “Smoking Gun”, and even in the words of his own lawyers, it “proved that the President had lied to the nation, to his closest aides, and to his own lawyers – for more than 2 years.” The game was up. Facing impeachment by his own Republican Senators, Nixon chose to resign.
But far from being repentant, he merely claimed that the scandal would prevent him from carrying out his duties. His resignation came into effect on 9th August 1974 when he was succeeded by his Vice President, Gerald Ford. The new President issued an immediate Pardon to Nixon, ensuring he would never be prosecuted. Ford would later describe the scandal and Nixon’s family situation as an “American tragedy in which we have all played a part.”
