O scandalwatergate it was one of the biggest scandals in the history of US politics. It broke out when five men were arrested trying to break into Democratic Party headquarters with the intention of planting wiretapping in June 1972. The case took two journalists from The Washington Post — Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward — investigating more details about him.
An FBI informant, known as Deep Throat, assisted the two journalists in the investigation, only to discover that the president was aware of the espionage. The country's top leader was under investigation by the FBI, and the findings that he tried to obstruct the investigation put him in a state of suffering. impeachment. Nixon, however, resigned as president in August 1974.
Accessalso: The History of the US Republican and Democratic Parties
Historical context
The historical context of Richard Nixon's presidency was, at the very least, hectic. O African-American civil rights movement was still in force. in the country, and despite some significant achievements for blacks in the United States, historian Sean Purdy defines the gains as contradictory, as American social structures continued essentially
segregationists|1|.Furthermore, the United States was involved with the Vietnam War, a conflict in which the country intervened under the justification of providing aid to South Vietnam to impede the advance of the communists of North Vietnam. This war was extremely unpopular in the United States, especially among the poorest strata.
Richard Nixon even used this unpopularity of the war in his campaign, as he announced that he would renounce military intervention in the Vietnamese situation. Once elected, the promises were not kept, therefore, as the historian Victor G. Kiernan, as early as 1969, his government took the war to Cambodia and resumed bombing in North Vietnam|2|.
THE US continuity in this war increased its unpopularity., and numbers at the time indicate that rejection was quite high. In 1971, about 61 percent of the American population were against the conflict; in the same year, around 90,000 young people had deserted. In addition, resistance against orders from superiors was alarming, and within the army itself there were alternative newspapers that circulated among soldiers critical of the war.|3|.
This context showed that the continuation of the war on behalf of the Nixon government was not well regarded, and it also showed that there was a whole movement in opposition to the policies practiced by the United States. It is a period of strength for the social movements, and this mobilization took place in various forms, in addition to the struggle of African-Americans and opponents of the war.
There was also movement growth in counterculture, like the hippies, of the feminist movement, and the workers' movement. Nixon's administration, in a way, is a conservative reaction to this, as it was based on the motto of always maintaining “law and order” in the United States.|4|.
watergate scandal
On June 17, 1972, months before the election for the presidency of the United States, a group of five men got caught tryingstaplethe Democratic Party Headquarters office, located at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, the capital of the United States. The group was discovered because hotel security identified a suspicious move and called the police.
The police action arrested five men, who were VirgilGonzalez, Bernardbarker, JamesMcCord, EugenioMartinez and FrankSturgis. In their possession were equipment that would serve to deploy wiretapping in order to obtain information to use against the Democrats. The case was reported in the American press, but in general it did not receive much attention at first.
One of the newspapers that publicized this event at the time was the The Washington Post. Two journalists who worked for him were intrigued by the case and began to investigate it. Soon they got a source inside the FBI who confirmed or denied all the information they got.
This informant was known at the time as Deep Throat. The two journalists were CarlBernstein and Bobwoodward, and their investigation uncovered an extensive conspiracy plot that directly involved the President Richard Nixon's re-election committee, known as Creep (Committee for the Re-Election of the President, in English).
The clue linking the re-election committee with the squatters at the Democratic Party headquarters was a $25,000 deposit into Bernard Barker's bank account. Then the investigation conducted by journalists from the The Washington Post found that the Nixon's committee owned a box two, that is, undeclared money, used for finance espionage operations. In the case of the Watergate office invasion, the aim was to obtain information from the Democrats to use against them in the 1972 election.
![The investigation into the invasion of the Democratic Party headquarters was carried out by two journalists from The Washington Post.[2]](/f/ae2d6d6345b808ef45d94b1d9c53b899.jpg)
The repercussion of the case did not shake Nixon's position, and he was reelected with a significant victory against George McGovern, the Democratic candidate. The victory in November did not stop the investigation from continuing, but, in addition to the press, the case would be followed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, better known as FBI.
The investigations continued under the responsibility of the FBI, and as they progressed, the closer they came to the president. A Senate Inquiry Has Been Opened in February 1973, and in April three aides to the president resigned. In May, sessions of the Senate investigation began airing on television.
In July 1973, conversations inside the Oval Office in the White House were discovered to be taped. Nixon resisted releasing the recordings, but by order of the United States Supreme Court, he was forced to hand them over. The audios were edited, but, even so, it could be proven that the president acted directly toobstructTheJustice. Furthermore, over the course of the investigations, it was concluded that the invasion of the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington was carried out with his consent.
read more: Collor government: the Brazilian case of government that was also overthrown by corruption scandal
Pentagon papers: the precedent
Historians consider the Watergate scandal to have a precedent: the case of pentagon papers. This case happened in 1971 and can be summarized as a leaking secret documents that demonstrated the actions taken by the United States in Southwest Asia in the last 20 years.
These documents were part of a study carried out by order of Robert McNamara, US Secretary of Defense, but they were top secret. They were related to US actions in Vietnam and were studied by DanielEllsberg, a military analyst who worked for the Pentagon.
Ellsberg had participated in the project that prepared the study requested by McNamara. The final result of this study was a heap with about seven thousand pages distributed in 43 volumes. After participating in the project and studying the volumes produced, Ellsberg decided that the information contained there should be public knowledge.
The secret documents were leaked, by Ellsberg, to the The New York Times, one of the largest newspapers in the United States. Their disclosure created an embarrassing situation for the Nixon administration, which tried to ban it by going to court, but was defeated in the lawsuit filed against the newspaper.
The leak did not contain any information that was harmful to the Nixon administration, but it set a dangerous precedent: new secret documents could be leaked. Nixon's reaction to preventing this from happening again is what led to the Watergate scandal. Nixon's government formed a unit called Theplumbers, aiming to obtain private information to publicly attack Ellsberg.
This group even invaded the office of psychiatrist Lewis Fielding, since Ellsberg was his patient. This was one of the illegal actions taken by the Nixon administration to obtain privileged information from opponents. The espionage actions finally became public when a group of five men led the case that started the Watergate scandal.
Accessalso: How are presidential elections conducted in the United States?
Nixon's political career
![President Richard Nixon is, to this day, the only president in US history to have resigned from the presidency.[1]](/f/a25ed8331f4c8de456774917690494bd.jpg)
The Watergate affair was one of the biggest political scandals in US history, prompting then-President Richard Nixon to resign his position in 1974. The actions taken by the Nixon administration were considered undemocratic, since the president American used illegal means - espionage - to fight its opponents politicians.
Richard Nixon was an American politician who built his career as a anti-communist fierce. He launched his career after the Second World War, during the period of McCarthyist hysteria. In 1950 he was elected senator from california, and, in 1952, he received an invitation from Dwight D. Eisenhower to be his deputy in the race for the presidency in 1952.
He ran in the presidential election in 1960, but was defeated by John F. Kennedy, and returned to the dispute in 1968. Running for the Republicans, Nixon defeated the Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey, with little more than 500,000 votes and a higher number of delegates of the Electoral Colleges. This made him the 37th president from United States.
Renounce
The disclosure that Nixon had acted to obstruct the FBI investigation made his situation untenable. The Republican Party abandoned him, and when he realized he could not reverse his situation, he opted for resignation. In August 8, 1974, Nixon announced, in a statement broadcast on TV, his departure from the government.
He claimed to take this action as way to speed up the country's recovery, and his vice, Gerald Ford, assumed the presidency. The following month, he freed Nixon from answering for his crimes by granting him the amnesty. Nixon was the first and only president in US history to resign.
THE informant identity which gave the way to the stones for the two journalists from the The Washington Post just gone unveiled in 2005. He was the vice president of the FBI during the Nixon administration and his name was William Mark Felt, and he himself confessed to being the informer.
Grades
|1| PURDY, Sean. The American Century. In.: KARNAL, Leandro (ed.). US history. São Paulo: Context, 2008. P. 248-249.
|2| KIERNAN, Victor G. U.S: the new imperialism. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2009. P. 344.
|3| PURDY, Sean. The American Century. In.: KARNAL, Leandro (ed.). US history. São Paulo: Context, 2008. P. 250.
|4| Idem, p. 253.
Credit of the images
[1] mark reinstein and Shutterstock
[2] Nicole Glass Photography and Shutterstock
By Daniel Neves
History teacher
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiag/escandalo-watergate.htm
