Presidential Affairs: Richard Nixon and the Watergate Affair
On January 27, 1972, G. Gordon Liddy, who was then the Finance Counsel for the Committee for the Re-Election of the President and a former aide to John Ehrlichman, presented a campaign intelligence plan to the committee's acting chairman Jeb Stuart Magruder, Attorney General John Mitchell, and Presidential Counsel John Dean that involved extensive illegal activities against the Democratic Party. Mitchell called the plan unrealistic, but two months later, Mitchell approved a reduced version of the plan. Liddy's plan included burglarizing the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate Complex in Washington, D.C. in order to photograph campaign documents and install listening devices in telephones.
James McCord, a former CIA Officer, was serving as Security Coordinator for the campaign. In May of 1972 he assigned former FBI agent Alfred C. Baldwin III to carry out the wiretapping and monitor the telephone conversations afterward. On May 11, McCord arranged for Baldwin to stay at the Howard Johnson across the street from the Watergate complex. There McCord and his team of burglars prepared for their first Watergate break-in, which began on May 28. Two phones inside the DNC headquarters offices were said to have been wiretapped. One phone belonged to DNC chairman Larry O'Brien. The committee agents soon determined that the wiretaps needed repairs. They plotted a second "burglary" for this purpose.
Sometime after midnight on Saturday, June 17, 1972, Watergate Complex security guard Frank Wills noticed tape covering the latches on some of the complex's doors leading from the underground parking garage to several offices, which allowed the doors to close but stay unlocked. He removed the tape, believing it was nothing. When he returned a short time later and discovered that someone had retaped the locks, so he called the police. Police dispatched an unmarked police car with three plainclothes officers, Sgt. Paul W. Leeper, Officer John B. Barrett, and Officer Carl M. Shoffler. Baldwin, who was on "spotter" duty at the Howard Johnson's hotel across the street, was distracted watching TV and did not observe the arrival of the police car in front of the Watergate building, until it was too late to warn those inside the building.
The police apprehended five men, later identified as Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker, James McCord, Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis. They were criminally charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications. The next morning on Sunday, June 18, G. Gordon Liddy called Jeb Magruder in Los Angeles and informed him that "the four men arrested with McCord were Cuban freedom fighters, whom Howard Hunt had recruited. On September 15, 1972, a grand jury indicted the five office burglars, as well as Hunt and Liddy, for conspiracy, burglary, and violation of federal wiretapping laws. The burglars were tried by a jury, with Judge John Sirica officiating. Convictions followed on January 30, 1973.
Within hours of the burglars' arrests, the FBI discovered E. Howard Hunt's name in the address books of two of the burglars. Hunt and Liddy were also involved in a separate secret activity known as the "White House Plumbers", which was established to stop security "leaks" and investigate other sensitive security matters.
President Richard Nixon subsequently ordered Haldeman to have the CIA block the FBI's investigation into the source of the funding for the burglary. Nixon's press secretary, Ron Ziegler, called the event "a third-rate burglary attempt". On August 29, at a news conference, Nixon stated that White House Counsel John Dean had conducted a thorough investigation of the incident, but Dean had actually not conducted any investigations at all. Nixon added, "I can say categorically that no one in the White House staff, no one in this Administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident." '
Martha Mitchell was the wife of Nixon's Attorney General, John N. Mitchell, who had recently resigned his role so that he could become campaign manager for Nixon's Committee for the Re-Election of the President. Mitchell was aware that Martha knew McCord, one of the Watergate burglars who had been arrested, and that upon finding out, she was likely to speak to the media. Mitchell instructed guards in his wife's security detail not to let her contact the media. In June 1972, during a phone call with United Press International reporter Helen Thomas, Martha Mitchell informed Thomas that she was leaving her husband until he resigned from the CRP. The phone call ended abruptly. A few days later, Marcia Kramer, a veteran crime reporter of the New York Daily News, tracked Mitchell to the Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York, and described Mitchell as having visible bruises. Marth Mitchell reported that, during the week following the Watergate burglary, she had been held captive in a hotel in California, and that security guard Steve King ended her call to Thomas by pulling the phone cord from the wall. Mitchell said that she made several attempts to escape via the balcony, but was physically accosted, injured, and forcefully sedated by a psychiatrist. Later, following his conviction for his role in the Watergate burglary, in February 1975, McCord admitted that Mitchell had been "basically kidnapped", and corroborated her reports of the event.
On June 19, 1972, the press reported that one of the Watergate burglars was a Republican Party security aide. John Mitchell denied any involvement with the Watergate break-in. He also disavowed any knowledge whatsoever of the five burglars. On August 1, a $25,000 (approximately $182,000 in 2023 dollars) cashier's check was found to have been deposited in the US and Mexican bank accounts of one of the Watergate burglars, Bernard Barker. Made out to the finance committee of the Committee to Reelect the President, the check was a 1972 campaign donation by Kenneth H. Dahlberg. The donor's checks demonstrated the burglars' direct link to the finance committee of the re-election committee. Donations totaling $86,000 ($626,000 today) were made by individuals who believed they were making private donations by certified and cashier's checks for the president's re-election. The investigation by the FBI led to the direct implication of members of the committee, to whom the checks had been delivered. Those individuals were the committee bookkeeper and its treasurer, Hugh Sloan. The checks deposited into Barker's bank account were endorsed by Sloan. Once Sloan had endorsed a check made payable to the committee, he had a legal and fiduciary responsibility to see that the check was deposited only into the accounts named on the check. Sloan failed to do that. He informed investigators that committee deputy director Jeb Magruder and finance director Maurice Stans had directed him to give the money to G. Gordon Liddy. Liddy, in turn, gave the money to Barker and attempted to hide its origin. Barker tried to disguise the funds by depositing them into accounts in banks outside of the United States.
All five Watergate burglars were directly or indirectly tied to the 1972 CRP, thus causing Judge Sirica to suspect a conspiracy involving higher-echelon government officials. On October 10, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post reported that the FBI had determined that the Watergate break-in was part of a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage on behalf of the Nixon re-election committee. Despite these revelations, on November 7, the President was re-elected in one of the biggest landslides in American political history.
Relying heavily upon anonymous sources, Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered information suggesting that knowledge of the break-in, and attempts to cover it up, led deeply into the upper reaches of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and the White House. Chief among the Post's anonymous sources was an individual whom Woodward and Bernstein had nicknamed Deep Throat; 33 years later, in 2005, the informant was identified as Mark Felt, deputy director of the FBI during that period of the 1970s, something Woodward later confirmed. Felt met secretly with Woodward several times, telling him of Howard Hunt's involvement with the Watergate break-in.
One of the convicted burglars had written to Judge Sirica alleging a high-level cover-up. Nixon and top administration officials discussed using government agencies to retaliate against those they perceived as hostile media organizations. At the request of Nixon's White House in 1969, the FBI tapped the phones of five reporters. The administration accused the media of making "wild accusations."
Rather than ending with the conviction and sentencing to prison of the five Watergate burglars on January 30, 1973, the investigation into the break-in and the Nixon Administration's involvement grew broader. On March 23, 1973, Judge Sirica read the court a letter from Watergate burglar James McCord, who alleged that perjury had been committed in the Watergate trial, and defendants had been pressured to remain silent. In an attempt to make them talk, Sirica gave Hunt and two burglars provisional sentences of up to 40 years.
Urged by Nixon, on March 28, aide John Ehrlichman told Attorney General Richard Kleindienst that nobody in the White House had had prior knowledge of the burglary. On April 13, Jeb Magruder told U.S. attorneys that he had perjured himself during the burglars' trial, and implicated John Dean and John Mitchell.
During a meeting between Dean and Nixon on April 15, 1973, Dean was unaware of the president's depth of knowledge and involvement in the Watergate cover-up. It was during this meeting that Dean realized that he was being recorded. He mentioned this observation while testifying to the Senate Committee on Watergate, exposing the thread of what were taped conversations. Two days later, U.S. attorneys told Nixon that Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean, and other White House officials were implicated in the cover-up.
On April 30, Nixon asked for the resignation of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, two of his most influential aides. They were both later indicted, convicted, and ultimately sentenced to prison. He asked for the resignation of Attorney General Kleindienst, to ensure no one could claim that his innocent friendship with Haldeman and Ehrlichman could be construed as a conflict. He fired White House Counsel John Dean, who went on to testify before the Senate Watergate Committee and said that he believed and suspected the conversations in the Oval Office were being taped. Nixon announced the resignations in an address to the American people, in which he said:
"Today, in one of the most difficult decisions of my Presidency, I accepted the resignations of two of my closest associates in the White House, Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, two of the finest public servants it has been my privilege to know... Because Attorney General Kleindienst, though a distinguished public servant, my personal friend for 20 years, with no personal involvement whatever in this matter has been a close personal and professional associate of some of those who are involved in this case, he and I both felt that it was also necessary to name a new Attorney General. The Counsel to the President, John Dean, has also resigned."
On the same day, April 30, Nixon appointed a new attorney general, Elliot Richardson, and gave him authority to designate a special counsel for the Watergate investigation who would be independent of the regular Justice Department hierarchy. In May 1973, Richardson named Archibald Cox to the position.
On February 7, 1973, the United States Senate voted 77-to-0 to approve and establish a select committee to investigate Watergate, with North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin named as chairman. Hearings held by the Senate committee, in which Dean and other former administration officials testified. The hearings were broadcast from May 17 to August 7. On Friday, July 13, during a preliminary interview, deputy minority counsel Donald Sanders asked White House assistant Alexander Butterfield if there was any type of recording system in the White House. Butterfield admitted there was a new system in the White House that automatically recorded everything in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room and others, as well as Nixon's private office in the Old Executive Office Building. On Monday, July 16, in front of a live, televised audience, chief minority counsel Fred Thompson asked Butterfield whether he was "aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president". Butterfield acknowledged the existence of such a recording system. Cox immediately subpoenaed the tapes, as did the Senate, but Nixon refused to release them, citing his executive privilege as president, and ordered Cox to drop his subpoena. Cox refused.
On October 20, 1973, after Cox, the special prosecutor, refused to drop the subpoena, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire him. Richardson resigned in protest rather than carry out the order. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox, but Ruckelshaus also resigned rather than fire him. Nixon's search for someone in the Justice Department willing to fire Cox ended with Solicitor General Robert Bork. Bork carried out the presidential order and dismissed the special prosecutor. These actions met considerable public criticism. Responding to the allegations of possible wrongdoing, in front of 400 Associated Press managing editors at Disney's Contemporary Resort, on November 17, 1973, Nixon emphatically stated, "Well, I am not a crook." Bork, with Nixon's approval, chose Leon Jaworski to continue the investigation.
On March 1, 1974, a grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted several former aides of Nixon, who became known as the "Watergate Seven"-H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John N. Mitchell, Charles Colson, Gordon C. Strachan, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson. They were indicted for conspiring to hinder the Watergate investigation. The grand jury secretly named Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator. On April 5, 1974, Dwight Chapin, the former Nixon appointments secretary, was convicted of lying to the grand jury.
After several weeks of debate, a decision was made to release an edited version of Nixon's recordings. Nixon announced the release of the transcripts in a speech to the nation on April 29, 1974. Nixon noted that any audio pertinent to national security information could be redacted from the released tapes. As people read the transcripts over the next couple of weeks, former supporters among the public, media and political community called for Nixon's resignation or impeachment. Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott said the transcripts revealed a "deplorable, disgusting, shabby, and immoral" performance on the part of the President and his former aides."
The issue of access to the tapes went to the United States Supreme Court. On July 24, 1974, in United States v. Nixon, the Court ruled unanimously (8-0) that claims of executive privilege over the tapes were void. (Then-Justice William Rehnquist-who had recently been appointed to the Court by Nixon and most recently served in the Nixon Justice Department as Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel-recused himself from the case.) The Court ordered the President to release the tapes to the special prosecutor. On July 30, 1974, Nixon complied with the order and released the subpoenaed tapes to the public.
The tapes revealed several crucial conversations that took place between the president and his counsel, John Dean, on March 21, 1973. In this conversation, Dean summarized many aspects of the Watergate case, and focused on the subsequent cover-up, describing it as a "cancer on the presidency". The burglary team was being paid hush money for their silence and Dean stated: "That's the most troublesome post-thing, because Bob [Haldeman] is involved in that; John [Ehrlichman] is involved in that; I am involved in that; Mitchell is involved in that. And that's an obstruction of justice." Dean added that Howard Hunt was blackmailing the White House demanding money immediately. Nixon replied that the money should be paid: "... just looking at the immediate problem, don't you have to have-handle Hunt's financial situation damn soon? ... you've got to keep the cap on the bottle that much, in order to have any options."
Up to then, it was not known if Nixon had known and approved of the payments to the Watergate defendants earlier than this conversation. Nixon's conversation with Haldeman on August 1, is one of several that establishes he did. Nixon said: "Well ... they have to be paid. That's all there is to that. They have to be paid."
On December 7, investigators found that an 18½-minute portion of one recorded tape had been erased. Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's longtime personal secretary, said she had accidentally erased the tape by pushing the wrong pedal on her tape player when answering the phone. The press ran photos of the set-up, showing that it was unlikely for Woods to answer the phone while keeping her foot on the pedal. Later forensic analysis in 2003 determined that the tape had been erased in several segments-at least five, and perhaps as many as nine.
On February 6, 1974, the House of Representatives approved a resolution giving the Judiciary Committee authority to investigate impeachment of the President. On July 27, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted 27-to-11 to recommend the first article of impeachment against the president: obstruction of justice. The Committee recommended the second article, abuse of power, on July 29, 1974. The next day, on July 30, 1974, the Committee recommended the third article: contempt of Congress.
On August 5, 1974, the White House released a previously unknown audio tape from June 23, 1972. Recorded only a few days after the break-in, it documented the initial stages of the cover-up: it revealed Nixon and Haldeman had a meeting in the Oval Office during which they discussed how to stop the FBI from continuing its investigation of the break-in, as they recognized that there was a high risk that their position in the scandal might be revealed. On the tape, Haldeman said "the Democratic break-in thing, we're back to the-in the, the problem area because the FBI is not under control, because Gray doesn't exactly know how to control them, and they have, their investigation is now leading into some productive areas and it goes in some directions we don't want it to go."
After explaining how the money from CRP was traced to the burglars, Haldeman explained to Nixon the cover-up plan. He said, "the way to handle this now is for us to have Walters [CIA] call Pat Gray [FBI] and just say, 'Stay the hell out of this, this is ah, business here we don't want you to go any further on it." Nixon approved the plan, and after he was given more information about the involvement of his campaign in the break-in, he told Haldeman: "All right, fine, I understand it all. We won't second-guess Mitchell and the rest." Returning to the use of the CIA to obstruct the FBI, he instructed Haldeman: "You call them in. Good. Good deal. Play it tough. That's the way they play it and that's the way we are going to play it."
Before the release of this tape, Nixon had denied any involvement in the scandal. He claimed that there were no political motivations in his instructions to the CIA, and claimed he had no knowledge before March 21, 1973, of involvement by senior campaign officials such as John Mitchell. The contents of this tape proved that Nixon had been involved in the cover-up from the beginning.
The release of the smoking gun tape destroyed Nixon politically. The ten congressmen who had voted against all three articles of impeachment in the House Judiciary Committee announced they would support the impeachment article accusing Nixon of obstructing justice when the articles came up before the full House. On the night of August 7, 1974, Senators Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott and Congressman Rhodes met with Nixon in the Oval Office. Scott and Rhodes were the Republican leaders in the Senate and House, respectively; Goldwater was brought along as an elder statesman. The three lawmakers told Nixon that his support in Congress had all but disappeared. Rhodes told Nixon that he would face certain impeachment when the articles came up for vote in the full House. Goldwater and Scott told the president that there were enough votes in the Senate to convict him, and that no more than 15 Senators were willing to vote for acquittal-not even half of the 34 votes he needed to stay in office. Faced with the inevitability of his impeachment and removal from office, Nixon decided to resign. In a nationally televised address from the Oval Office on the evening of August 8, 1974, Nixon said:
"In all the decisions I have made in my public life, I have always tried to do what was best for the Nation. Throughout the long and difficult period of Watergate, I have felt it was my duty to persevere, to make every possible effort to complete the term of office to which you elected me. In the past few days, however, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort. As long as there was such a base, I felt strongly that it was necessary to see the constitutional process through to its conclusion, that to do otherwise would be unfaithful to the spirit of that deliberately difficult process and a dangerously destabilizing precedent for the future.
"I would have preferred to carry through to the finish whatever the personal agony it would have involved, and my family unanimously urged me to do so. But the interest of the Nation must always come before any personal considerations. From the discussions I have had with Congressional and other leaders, I have concluded that because of the Watergate matter I might not have the support of the Congress that I would consider necessary to back the very difficult decisions and carry out the duties of this office in the way the interests of the Nation would require.
"I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad. To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home. Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office."
The morning that his resignation took effect, the President, with Mrs. Nixon and their family, said farewell to the White House staff in the East Room. A helicopter carried them from the White House to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Nixon later wrote that he thought, "As the helicopter moved on to Andrews, I found myself thinking not of the past, but of the future. What could I do now?" At Andrews, he and his family boarded an Air Force plane to El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in California, and then were transported to his home La Casa Pacifica in San Clemente.
James McCord, a former CIA Officer, was serving as Security Coordinator for the campaign. In May of 1972 he assigned former FBI agent Alfred C. Baldwin III to carry out the wiretapping and monitor the telephone conversations afterward. On May 11, McCord arranged for Baldwin to stay at the Howard Johnson across the street from the Watergate complex. There McCord and his team of burglars prepared for their first Watergate break-in, which began on May 28. Two phones inside the DNC headquarters offices were said to have been wiretapped. One phone belonged to DNC chairman Larry O'Brien. The committee agents soon determined that the wiretaps needed repairs. They plotted a second "burglary" for this purpose.
Sometime after midnight on Saturday, June 17, 1972, Watergate Complex security guard Frank Wills noticed tape covering the latches on some of the complex's doors leading from the underground parking garage to several offices, which allowed the doors to close but stay unlocked. He removed the tape, believing it was nothing. When he returned a short time later and discovered that someone had retaped the locks, so he called the police. Police dispatched an unmarked police car with three plainclothes officers, Sgt. Paul W. Leeper, Officer John B. Barrett, and Officer Carl M. Shoffler. Baldwin, who was on "spotter" duty at the Howard Johnson's hotel across the street, was distracted watching TV and did not observe the arrival of the police car in front of the Watergate building, until it was too late to warn those inside the building.
The police apprehended five men, later identified as Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker, James McCord, Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis. They were criminally charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications. The next morning on Sunday, June 18, G. Gordon Liddy called Jeb Magruder in Los Angeles and informed him that "the four men arrested with McCord were Cuban freedom fighters, whom Howard Hunt had recruited. On September 15, 1972, a grand jury indicted the five office burglars, as well as Hunt and Liddy, for conspiracy, burglary, and violation of federal wiretapping laws. The burglars were tried by a jury, with Judge John Sirica officiating. Convictions followed on January 30, 1973.
Within hours of the burglars' arrests, the FBI discovered E. Howard Hunt's name in the address books of two of the burglars. Hunt and Liddy were also involved in a separate secret activity known as the "White House Plumbers", which was established to stop security "leaks" and investigate other sensitive security matters.
President Richard Nixon subsequently ordered Haldeman to have the CIA block the FBI's investigation into the source of the funding for the burglary. Nixon's press secretary, Ron Ziegler, called the event "a third-rate burglary attempt". On August 29, at a news conference, Nixon stated that White House Counsel John Dean had conducted a thorough investigation of the incident, but Dean had actually not conducted any investigations at all. Nixon added, "I can say categorically that no one in the White House staff, no one in this Administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident." '
Martha Mitchell was the wife of Nixon's Attorney General, John N. Mitchell, who had recently resigned his role so that he could become campaign manager for Nixon's Committee for the Re-Election of the President. Mitchell was aware that Martha knew McCord, one of the Watergate burglars who had been arrested, and that upon finding out, she was likely to speak to the media. Mitchell instructed guards in his wife's security detail not to let her contact the media. In June 1972, during a phone call with United Press International reporter Helen Thomas, Martha Mitchell informed Thomas that she was leaving her husband until he resigned from the CRP. The phone call ended abruptly. A few days later, Marcia Kramer, a veteran crime reporter of the New York Daily News, tracked Mitchell to the Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York, and described Mitchell as having visible bruises. Marth Mitchell reported that, during the week following the Watergate burglary, she had been held captive in a hotel in California, and that security guard Steve King ended her call to Thomas by pulling the phone cord from the wall. Mitchell said that she made several attempts to escape via the balcony, but was physically accosted, injured, and forcefully sedated by a psychiatrist. Later, following his conviction for his role in the Watergate burglary, in February 1975, McCord admitted that Mitchell had been "basically kidnapped", and corroborated her reports of the event.
On June 19, 1972, the press reported that one of the Watergate burglars was a Republican Party security aide. John Mitchell denied any involvement with the Watergate break-in. He also disavowed any knowledge whatsoever of the five burglars. On August 1, a $25,000 (approximately $182,000 in 2023 dollars) cashier's check was found to have been deposited in the US and Mexican bank accounts of one of the Watergate burglars, Bernard Barker. Made out to the finance committee of the Committee to Reelect the President, the check was a 1972 campaign donation by Kenneth H. Dahlberg. The donor's checks demonstrated the burglars' direct link to the finance committee of the re-election committee. Donations totaling $86,000 ($626,000 today) were made by individuals who believed they were making private donations by certified and cashier's checks for the president's re-election. The investigation by the FBI led to the direct implication of members of the committee, to whom the checks had been delivered. Those individuals were the committee bookkeeper and its treasurer, Hugh Sloan. The checks deposited into Barker's bank account were endorsed by Sloan. Once Sloan had endorsed a check made payable to the committee, he had a legal and fiduciary responsibility to see that the check was deposited only into the accounts named on the check. Sloan failed to do that. He informed investigators that committee deputy director Jeb Magruder and finance director Maurice Stans had directed him to give the money to G. Gordon Liddy. Liddy, in turn, gave the money to Barker and attempted to hide its origin. Barker tried to disguise the funds by depositing them into accounts in banks outside of the United States.
All five Watergate burglars were directly or indirectly tied to the 1972 CRP, thus causing Judge Sirica to suspect a conspiracy involving higher-echelon government officials. On October 10, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post reported that the FBI had determined that the Watergate break-in was part of a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage on behalf of the Nixon re-election committee. Despite these revelations, on November 7, the President was re-elected in one of the biggest landslides in American political history.
Relying heavily upon anonymous sources, Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered information suggesting that knowledge of the break-in, and attempts to cover it up, led deeply into the upper reaches of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and the White House. Chief among the Post's anonymous sources was an individual whom Woodward and Bernstein had nicknamed Deep Throat; 33 years later, in 2005, the informant was identified as Mark Felt, deputy director of the FBI during that period of the 1970s, something Woodward later confirmed. Felt met secretly with Woodward several times, telling him of Howard Hunt's involvement with the Watergate break-in.
One of the convicted burglars had written to Judge Sirica alleging a high-level cover-up. Nixon and top administration officials discussed using government agencies to retaliate against those they perceived as hostile media organizations. At the request of Nixon's White House in 1969, the FBI tapped the phones of five reporters. The administration accused the media of making "wild accusations."
Rather than ending with the conviction and sentencing to prison of the five Watergate burglars on January 30, 1973, the investigation into the break-in and the Nixon Administration's involvement grew broader. On March 23, 1973, Judge Sirica read the court a letter from Watergate burglar James McCord, who alleged that perjury had been committed in the Watergate trial, and defendants had been pressured to remain silent. In an attempt to make them talk, Sirica gave Hunt and two burglars provisional sentences of up to 40 years.
Urged by Nixon, on March 28, aide John Ehrlichman told Attorney General Richard Kleindienst that nobody in the White House had had prior knowledge of the burglary. On April 13, Jeb Magruder told U.S. attorneys that he had perjured himself during the burglars' trial, and implicated John Dean and John Mitchell.
During a meeting between Dean and Nixon on April 15, 1973, Dean was unaware of the president's depth of knowledge and involvement in the Watergate cover-up. It was during this meeting that Dean realized that he was being recorded. He mentioned this observation while testifying to the Senate Committee on Watergate, exposing the thread of what were taped conversations. Two days later, U.S. attorneys told Nixon that Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean, and other White House officials were implicated in the cover-up.
On April 30, Nixon asked for the resignation of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, two of his most influential aides. They were both later indicted, convicted, and ultimately sentenced to prison. He asked for the resignation of Attorney General Kleindienst, to ensure no one could claim that his innocent friendship with Haldeman and Ehrlichman could be construed as a conflict. He fired White House Counsel John Dean, who went on to testify before the Senate Watergate Committee and said that he believed and suspected the conversations in the Oval Office were being taped. Nixon announced the resignations in an address to the American people, in which he said:
"Today, in one of the most difficult decisions of my Presidency, I accepted the resignations of two of my closest associates in the White House, Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, two of the finest public servants it has been my privilege to know... Because Attorney General Kleindienst, though a distinguished public servant, my personal friend for 20 years, with no personal involvement whatever in this matter has been a close personal and professional associate of some of those who are involved in this case, he and I both felt that it was also necessary to name a new Attorney General. The Counsel to the President, John Dean, has also resigned."
On the same day, April 30, Nixon appointed a new attorney general, Elliot Richardson, and gave him authority to designate a special counsel for the Watergate investigation who would be independent of the regular Justice Department hierarchy. In May 1973, Richardson named Archibald Cox to the position.
On February 7, 1973, the United States Senate voted 77-to-0 to approve and establish a select committee to investigate Watergate, with North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin named as chairman. Hearings held by the Senate committee, in which Dean and other former administration officials testified. The hearings were broadcast from May 17 to August 7. On Friday, July 13, during a preliminary interview, deputy minority counsel Donald Sanders asked White House assistant Alexander Butterfield if there was any type of recording system in the White House. Butterfield admitted there was a new system in the White House that automatically recorded everything in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room and others, as well as Nixon's private office in the Old Executive Office Building. On Monday, July 16, in front of a live, televised audience, chief minority counsel Fred Thompson asked Butterfield whether he was "aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president". Butterfield acknowledged the existence of such a recording system. Cox immediately subpoenaed the tapes, as did the Senate, but Nixon refused to release them, citing his executive privilege as president, and ordered Cox to drop his subpoena. Cox refused.
On October 20, 1973, after Cox, the special prosecutor, refused to drop the subpoena, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire him. Richardson resigned in protest rather than carry out the order. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox, but Ruckelshaus also resigned rather than fire him. Nixon's search for someone in the Justice Department willing to fire Cox ended with Solicitor General Robert Bork. Bork carried out the presidential order and dismissed the special prosecutor. These actions met considerable public criticism. Responding to the allegations of possible wrongdoing, in front of 400 Associated Press managing editors at Disney's Contemporary Resort, on November 17, 1973, Nixon emphatically stated, "Well, I am not a crook." Bork, with Nixon's approval, chose Leon Jaworski to continue the investigation.
On March 1, 1974, a grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted several former aides of Nixon, who became known as the "Watergate Seven"-H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John N. Mitchell, Charles Colson, Gordon C. Strachan, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson. They were indicted for conspiring to hinder the Watergate investigation. The grand jury secretly named Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator. On April 5, 1974, Dwight Chapin, the former Nixon appointments secretary, was convicted of lying to the grand jury.
After several weeks of debate, a decision was made to release an edited version of Nixon's recordings. Nixon announced the release of the transcripts in a speech to the nation on April 29, 1974. Nixon noted that any audio pertinent to national security information could be redacted from the released tapes. As people read the transcripts over the next couple of weeks, former supporters among the public, media and political community called for Nixon's resignation or impeachment. Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott said the transcripts revealed a "deplorable, disgusting, shabby, and immoral" performance on the part of the President and his former aides."
The issue of access to the tapes went to the United States Supreme Court. On July 24, 1974, in United States v. Nixon, the Court ruled unanimously (8-0) that claims of executive privilege over the tapes were void. (Then-Justice William Rehnquist-who had recently been appointed to the Court by Nixon and most recently served in the Nixon Justice Department as Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel-recused himself from the case.) The Court ordered the President to release the tapes to the special prosecutor. On July 30, 1974, Nixon complied with the order and released the subpoenaed tapes to the public.
The tapes revealed several crucial conversations that took place between the president and his counsel, John Dean, on March 21, 1973. In this conversation, Dean summarized many aspects of the Watergate case, and focused on the subsequent cover-up, describing it as a "cancer on the presidency". The burglary team was being paid hush money for their silence and Dean stated: "That's the most troublesome post-thing, because Bob [Haldeman] is involved in that; John [Ehrlichman] is involved in that; I am involved in that; Mitchell is involved in that. And that's an obstruction of justice." Dean added that Howard Hunt was blackmailing the White House demanding money immediately. Nixon replied that the money should be paid: "... just looking at the immediate problem, don't you have to have-handle Hunt's financial situation damn soon? ... you've got to keep the cap on the bottle that much, in order to have any options."
Up to then, it was not known if Nixon had known and approved of the payments to the Watergate defendants earlier than this conversation. Nixon's conversation with Haldeman on August 1, is one of several that establishes he did. Nixon said: "Well ... they have to be paid. That's all there is to that. They have to be paid."
On December 7, investigators found that an 18½-minute portion of one recorded tape had been erased. Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's longtime personal secretary, said she had accidentally erased the tape by pushing the wrong pedal on her tape player when answering the phone. The press ran photos of the set-up, showing that it was unlikely for Woods to answer the phone while keeping her foot on the pedal. Later forensic analysis in 2003 determined that the tape had been erased in several segments-at least five, and perhaps as many as nine.
On February 6, 1974, the House of Representatives approved a resolution giving the Judiciary Committee authority to investigate impeachment of the President. On July 27, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted 27-to-11 to recommend the first article of impeachment against the president: obstruction of justice. The Committee recommended the second article, abuse of power, on July 29, 1974. The next day, on July 30, 1974, the Committee recommended the third article: contempt of Congress.
On August 5, 1974, the White House released a previously unknown audio tape from June 23, 1972. Recorded only a few days after the break-in, it documented the initial stages of the cover-up: it revealed Nixon and Haldeman had a meeting in the Oval Office during which they discussed how to stop the FBI from continuing its investigation of the break-in, as they recognized that there was a high risk that their position in the scandal might be revealed. On the tape, Haldeman said "the Democratic break-in thing, we're back to the-in the, the problem area because the FBI is not under control, because Gray doesn't exactly know how to control them, and they have, their investigation is now leading into some productive areas and it goes in some directions we don't want it to go."
After explaining how the money from CRP was traced to the burglars, Haldeman explained to Nixon the cover-up plan. He said, "the way to handle this now is for us to have Walters [CIA] call Pat Gray [FBI] and just say, 'Stay the hell out of this, this is ah, business here we don't want you to go any further on it." Nixon approved the plan, and after he was given more information about the involvement of his campaign in the break-in, he told Haldeman: "All right, fine, I understand it all. We won't second-guess Mitchell and the rest." Returning to the use of the CIA to obstruct the FBI, he instructed Haldeman: "You call them in. Good. Good deal. Play it tough. That's the way they play it and that's the way we are going to play it."
Before the release of this tape, Nixon had denied any involvement in the scandal. He claimed that there were no political motivations in his instructions to the CIA, and claimed he had no knowledge before March 21, 1973, of involvement by senior campaign officials such as John Mitchell. The contents of this tape proved that Nixon had been involved in the cover-up from the beginning.
The release of the smoking gun tape destroyed Nixon politically. The ten congressmen who had voted against all three articles of impeachment in the House Judiciary Committee announced they would support the impeachment article accusing Nixon of obstructing justice when the articles came up before the full House. On the night of August 7, 1974, Senators Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott and Congressman Rhodes met with Nixon in the Oval Office. Scott and Rhodes were the Republican leaders in the Senate and House, respectively; Goldwater was brought along as an elder statesman. The three lawmakers told Nixon that his support in Congress had all but disappeared. Rhodes told Nixon that he would face certain impeachment when the articles came up for vote in the full House. Goldwater and Scott told the president that there were enough votes in the Senate to convict him, and that no more than 15 Senators were willing to vote for acquittal-not even half of the 34 votes he needed to stay in office. Faced with the inevitability of his impeachment and removal from office, Nixon decided to resign. In a nationally televised address from the Oval Office on the evening of August 8, 1974, Nixon said:
"In all the decisions I have made in my public life, I have always tried to do what was best for the Nation. Throughout the long and difficult period of Watergate, I have felt it was my duty to persevere, to make every possible effort to complete the term of office to which you elected me. In the past few days, however, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort. As long as there was such a base, I felt strongly that it was necessary to see the constitutional process through to its conclusion, that to do otherwise would be unfaithful to the spirit of that deliberately difficult process and a dangerously destabilizing precedent for the future.
"I would have preferred to carry through to the finish whatever the personal agony it would have involved, and my family unanimously urged me to do so. But the interest of the Nation must always come before any personal considerations. From the discussions I have had with Congressional and other leaders, I have concluded that because of the Watergate matter I might not have the support of the Congress that I would consider necessary to back the very difficult decisions and carry out the duties of this office in the way the interests of the Nation would require.
"I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad. To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home. Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office."
The morning that his resignation took effect, the President, with Mrs. Nixon and their family, said farewell to the White House staff in the East Room. A helicopter carried them from the White House to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Nixon later wrote that he thought, "As the helicopter moved on to Andrews, I found myself thinking not of the past, but of the future. What could I do now?" At Andrews, he and his family boarded an Air Force plane to El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in California, and then were transported to his home La Casa Pacifica in San Clemente.