FREE ESSAY ON WATERGATE

WATERGATE

WATERGATE Sex, drugs, money, power, you name it and there is a scandal
for it, but look back and you will see that from all the scandals there have been,
Watergate was among the worst. The Watergate scandal had everything.
From Nixon disgracing the presidency by lying to the country and abusing his
power, to his committees being involved in illegal acts and a big cover up. All
leading to little side roads of corruption and lies. Watergate is by far one of the
worst presidential scandals in the history of the United States. In the story of
Watergate, five burglars were found breaking into democratic offices at the
Watergate complex in Washington DC. The break-in was passed off as just
another burglary, but when the burglars were found to have connections with
the CIA, questions were starting to be asked. Then when the phone number of
Howard Hunt was found in one of the burglars phone books, it made people
think, Why would one of the burglars have the phone number of one of the
presidents men? Then there is Richard Nixon, the man of the hour, plays the
role of the president of the United States of America. The man that was voted
into office by the people, and the man that swore to serve the people. When
Watergate was uncovered, it revealed that the president was a liar and a cheat.
The president lied to our country, lied about his involvement, concealed self
incriminating evidence, abused his power, and planed to have the CIA stop the
FBI investigations. He was also deeply involved with the cover up and still lied
about his involvement. During the times of the unraveling of Watergate,
questions were asked about connections with the White House and the
president, but when the president was asked about it at a press conference he
assured Americans that The White House has no involvement whatever in
this particular incident. He was lying to the country like it was part of his job
(Dorman 158). The lying did not end there, it went on and on for months, and
as the scandal kept unraveling, President Nixon and White House, and creep
officials were deliberately misleading the public about the significance of the
Watergate affair (158). As Watergate was becoming a front-page article in
the newspapers, new evidence was being uncovered. One piece of evidence
that changed the peoples ideas of our president was the tapping of every
conversation in the oval office since about the 18th month of president
Nixon's term (Kutler 368). Those tapes would soon prove that the president
was deeply involved in the scandal. During the trials, the Nixon administration
claimed that the March 21st, 1973 meeting was the first Nixon had heard of the
cover-ups, but after the tapes were heard it was discovered that Nixon was
involved from the beginning (Heritage 36). The Nixon tapes brought out much
controversy. The tapes alone could prove the president innocent or guilty,
whichever one it was, Nixon refused to hand over the tapes. the courts then
demanded the tapes, and Nixon still would not give them up. After much
struggle Nixon agreed to give a transcript of the tapes. The transcripts brought
to light a significant amount of evidence against Nixon. The transcripts
revealed payoffs, affiliation with the burglaries, and the OK's to the cover-up,
But most important the transcripts showed that Nixon had lied repeatedly after
he had denied knowing anything about the conspiracy (27). After much
struggle, the courts finally got the tapes from Nixon, It was Archibald Cox that
issued the subpoena for the tapes, and that started the bloodbath we now know
as the Saturday night massacre. The night of October 20,1973, possibly the
most tumultuous in American political history, when the special Watergate
prosecutor and the nations two top law officers lost their jobs within the space
of an hour and a half. (Heritage 38). Soon the country would find a new
problem with the tapes. When the presidents lawyers were going over the
tapes, they came along an 18 minute gap during a conversation with Nixon and
Haldman (34). Three weeks later, the gap was discovered, Rosemary Woods
(Nixon's secretary) testified that while transcribing the tape, she had
accidentally erased perhaps five minutes when interrupted by a phone call, she
said she had pressed the 'Record' button instead of the 'Stop' button and then
kept her foot on the machines control pedal while speaking into the phone. (34)
Not everyone accepted this explanation; The maneuver would have been
difficult to perform because of the distance between the recording machine and
the telephone in her office (34). Watergate was unraveling, and the story kept
getting bigger. Nixon was just having to much fun in the white house. Before
he was busted, He ordered the FBI to place wire taps on the phones of
thirteen government officials, and four prominent reporters (Fremon 28).
Nixon was abusing his powers to the extent, and to him there seemed to be
nothing wrong with it. Nixon needed the FBI to stop the Watergate
investigation. Former attorney general John Michell knew that the FBI had a
long-standing agreement with the CIA that neither agency would jeopardize the
other's operations. If the FBI could be convinced that the CIA had somehow
been involved in financing or carrying out the Watergate burglary, the
investigation could be curtailed on the ground of protecting national security.
Dorman 159) Nixon then told the chief of staff: You call them [the CIA
director, Richard M. Helms, and his deputy, Lt. Gen. Vernon A. Walters] in. . .
. Play it tough. That's the way they play it and that's the way were gona play
it. . . . Say: 'Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay
of Pigs thing. . . . and that they should call the FBI in and say that we wish for
the country, don't go any further into this case'-- period! (Heritage 27)
President Nixon was also deeply involved with the cover-up. When he was told
about the burglary, he gave his full support to the cover-up plan. On March 21,
1973 the president had a meeting with John Dean, and the president agreed
that one million dollars should be raised to silence the burglars (Kutler
247-257). The president also agreed in a March 21, 1973 meeting with John
Dean, to get money to payoff Mr. Hunt (Heritage 34). President Nixon also
made some statements to the public, saying that there was no White House
involvement with Watergate. In one statement he said: Within our own staff,
under my direction, Counsel to the president, Mr. Dean, has conducted a
complete investigation of all leads which might involve any present members of
the White House or anybody in the government. 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. (Dorman 167) Actually, Dean had
conducted no such investigation and had given him no such assurances (168).
Without question, the most notorious examples of dirty politics in the nations
history occurred during president Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign. An
astonishing array of illegal and unethical activities was carried out on Nixon's
behalf. (Dorman 112) Nixon, having a high role in the scandal, was nothing
compared to his committees. Nixon's committees were deeply involved with
the whole scandal and other unethical acts. During the 1972 election, they were
involved in illegal acts like, smear campaigns, and they attacked and harassed
political enemies, and they were involved in the famous Watergate break-in.
Also the committees had a great role in the cover-up. They destroyed
evidence, paid people off, and lied to the country. It could be said that Nixon's
committees were more corrupt than him. When Nixon was running for
president in 1972, ambitious plans were prepared for spying on the democrats.
For four years the White House used the power of the presidency to attack on
political enemies. They spied on & harassed anyone who did not agree with
Nixon's policies (Heritage 32). Nixon also had an enemies list that included
the names of about 21 organizations and some 200 individuals (32). Someone
had to take care of these people, so CREEP ordered the establishment of
several secret teams assigned to carryout political espionage and harassment
operations against the democrats. Placed in charge of one such team was a
young California lawyer named Donald H. Segretti (Dorman 113). Segretti
himself signed up some of his own men, one was Robert M. Benz, who hired
seven others to help him out, one of his helpers was Douglas Kelly (114).
Douglas Kelly helped handle a big political enemy by the name of, Senator
Edmund Muskie, of Maine. Senator Muskie got it pretty bad from CREEP. At
a Florida rally for Democratic contender George Wallace of Alabama, they
distributed more than one thousand anti-Wallace cards that purported to come
from the Muskie Camp. One side, the cards read, IF YOU LIKED HITLER,
YOU'LL JUST LOVE WALLACE. On the other side, they read, CAST
YOUR VOTE FOR SENATOR EDMUND MUSKIE. (116) When in fact
the Muskie organization had nothing to do with the cards. During another
occasion, Kelly sneaked into a Muskie news conference and released two
white mice whose tails were bedecked with ribbons reading, MUSKIE IS A
RAT FINK (115). Kelly also once hired a young woman to run naked
outside Muskie's hotel room while shouting, 'I love Ed Muskie'  (115). The
attacks didn't stop there. they went on and on. Segretti and Benz even got
Senator Humphrey one good time. They went and distributed phony invitations,
to black communities in Milwaukee, to a free all you can eat lunch with beer
and wine, and several special guests. when in fact the supposed lunch was non
existent (118). Nixon's committees were also deeply involved in the cover-up
and destroyed allot of evidence. Within hours of the burglars' arrest, G.
Gordon Liddy showed up at the CREEP office and began destroying his
confidential files on the political-spying operation (150). Also, Howard Hunt's
safe in his office was drilled open and it contained, among other things, bugging
equipment, a revolver, a psychological profile of Daniel J. Ellsberg, leakier of
the pentagon papers, a state department cable that had been faked to make it
appear that president John F. Kennedy had ordered the murder of president
Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam (Heritage 30). John Ehrlichman (the
presidents chief domestic affairs advisor) told John Dean to throw the
sensitive materials over the Potomac river and at night to shred the
paperwork (30).Also, L. Patrick Gray, acting FBI director destroyed the
documents from Hunts safe and withheld word of there existence (Dorman
157). Nixon's chief aid, H. R. Haldman, also destroyed files which might prove
to be potentially dangerous (157). As more problems came along, more
pressure was being put on the men in jail to keep quiet. CREEP agreed to pay
the men about 400,000 dollars total, after a five month period, of hush money.
CREEP did not have that much money, so they put a down payment of 40,000
dollars, which was to be divided amongst the men (170). Although Hunt was
incensed at receiving only partial payment, he made no new threat to expose
the cover-up. The day after the payment was made, Mitchell met at the white
house with Dean, Haldeman, and John Ehrlichman. he told them that Hunt was
not a problem any more (192) The Nixon committees also repeatedly lied to
the country. John Mitchell issued a statement and flat out lied to the country.
We have learned from news reports that a man identified as employed by our
campaign committee was one of five persons arrested at the Democratic
National committee headquarters. The person involved is the proprietor of a
private security agency who was employed by our committee months ago to
assist with the installation of our security system. He has, as we understand it,
a number of business clients and interests and we have no knowledge of those
relationships. we want to emphasize that this man and the other people involved
were not operating either in our behalf or with our consent. (158) The lies went
on and on, and the truth kept leaking out. The president and his comities were
being exposed, and the presidency was disgraced and all trust in the
government was lost. Some say, Had a uniformed officer in a marked car
appeared and Hunt gotten the warning earlier, he probably would have been
able to alert McCord and the Miamians in time for them to escape. The
Watergate scandal--and its subsequent enrichment of our language--would
never have happened. (Heritage 42). However, it did happen, and anyone old
enough to read at that time, will never forget the story of Watergate. The story
of lies and corruption in the government. The scandal that will forever be
known as by far one of the worst scandals in the history of the United States
Of America. 
Bibliography 
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