Watergate

p Watergate

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Sometime during the middle of Nixon 's first term , some members of the White House staff had begun to use their power to pursue partisan vendettas . They pointed to the "lawlessness " of their opponents : antiwar demonstrators had pledged to stop the government radicals had bombed the Capitol building Daniel Ellsberg had stolen secret documents , the Pentagon s . Nixon 's assistants , most of them conservative young lawyers and former advertising men lacking political experience ignored the

traditional rules of Washington politics , rationalizing that their predecessors had used sharp practices . By 1972 many of the President 's men claimed that the national interest required Nixon 's re-election justifying crimes as necessary for national security

The Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP ) had organized the burglary of Democratic Party offices at the Watergate Building in Washington , in June . A White House official , G . Gordon Liddy , and a man working for him , E . Howard Hunt , recruited a group of antiCastro Cubans and CREEP 's director of security , James McCord , led this small band of seven people on two raids . The burglars planted microphones and took pictures of s of the Democratic National Committee . During a second raid , a night watchman discovered their entry and called police . Moments later the President 's burglars were under arrest . Evidence at the scene quickly connected them to Liddy and to CREEP

Despite that the President and White House were thought to be innocent some news reporters continued to investigate . Amid media speculation , Nixon ed a staff inquiry and told the public that "what really hurts is if you try to cover up " a crime . In September a federal grand jury indicted McCord and his accomplices , along with Liddy and Hunt . All pleaded guilty , and thus no trial or legal reckoning could be made . But Judge John Sirica , like many others , doubted that these brief judicial proceedings had solved the Watergate case . Then in mid-March 1973McCord wrote to Sirica , charging that the White House had pressured the defendants into silence with offers of executive clemency and hush money . Government officials had approved the Watergate burglary , McCord claimed , and had conspired also to cover up their own involvement . McCord 's letter prompted the Watergate grand jury and the Senate 's special Watergate committee , chaired by Sam Ervin of North Carolina , to probe further these mysterious White House activities

Nixon loyalists could not contain the scandal . One of them , John Dean thought that the President might blame the whole affair on him , and began to bargain with federal prosecutors from the grand jury . At about the same time , the former deputy chairman of CREEP , Jeb Stuart Magruder admitted that he had lied in his appearances before the grand jury . Now he confessed , the bugging of Democratic headquarters was not "a wild scheme concocted by Hunt " but a much-discussed plan , which Attorney General John Mitchell had approved directly . Just at this point , another scandal broke . Two years before...