Wategate Scandal

On June 17, 1972 a burglary occurred in Washington D.C. which had worldwide importance. Five people, all members of the "Plumbers" a anti-Castro Cuban refugee group including former FBI and CIA agents, broke into the Democratic National Headquarters to bug the telephones. The name of were they broke in was known as the Watergate Hotel.

The Plumber were a unit created and maintained by the White House with the purpose of 'fixing leaks' in the administration. They immediately went after Daniel Ellsberg who handed over secret Pentagon report concerning the history of the war to the New York Times who in turn published them. It was thought if the papers in publication could not be stopped the next best thing would be to discredit the man who provided the papers. This involved breaking into Ellsberg's office to dig up any information they could.

The next job was to derail the Democratic party in the upcoming election. On June 17th the small group of men broke into the DNC Headquarters to bug the phones and find any information in the offices. A security guard saw the break in and called police who quickly took the burglars into custody.

For the few months following the arrest information made its way to the public such as one of the burglars used to be a government security aide, another one had a $25 000 check that was supposed to go to Nixon's re-election campaign but in fact turned out that all of the burglars were on Committee to Re-Elect the President payroll. While all of this was happening Nixon was re-elected by a landslide, his last big win.

In May of 1973 the Senate opened up hearings on the Watergate break-in. It became a very damaging event to the President. One former White House Staff admitted that he had discussions with the President about Watergate and how they would cover it up. The next month it was found out that Nixon taped all of his conversations in the Oval Office. Nixon refused to hand over the tapes when the Senate requested. He attempted to tell them the key tape had a 18.5 minute gap on it then he tired to send written and edited transcripts of the tapes instead of the actual tapes.

Nixon realised he had himself in a corner and could only figure one way out. On August 8, 1974 Richard M. Nixon became the first U.S. President to resign. Gerald Ford who was Vice President took on the highest office of the land.

Nixon was the only ‘Watergate conspirator’ who spent no time in jail.

I'm not exactly sure of what President Nixon was thinking of when he thought he could cover something so big up. To break into another party's office to snoop around when you're running for President isn't the wisest thing to do. If he wanted to win so bad I'm sure he could have found another, more legal way of going about it.