Anatomy Of The Watergate Scandal

Anatomy of a Scandal

Sheila Corzo / Period 5

The Watergate Scandal was one of the biggest and first scandals in United States History. Nixon’s political rivals were recorded and harassed. Nixon was a very paranoid man, and the Democratic National Committee was bugged at the Watergate Hotel, there were also bugs at the White House. Five burglars were caught doing so and it was later realized that Nixon was connected to the scandal. It was proved that Nixon had a very big role behind all of the issues around Watergate and he felt guilty enough to resign. One can say that the resignation of Richard Nixon can be credited to the pressures imposed on him by the congress, the press, and the courts.

Be that as it may, the Congress played out their role by having a group called The Senate Watergate Committee. They participated in nationally televised hearings and investigated the issue. They helped in catching a bunch of links that were connected to Nixon’s chain of lies and paranoia. A lot of the people that were somehow involved in the whole ordeal were top Nixon administration officials, some being The Plumbers (the men that were involved with putting an end to the leak of classified information Nixon wanted to keep classified) and obviously the burglars played a big role. Congress had to hold several conferences to solve the situation and get answers, putting all their information on the table. After a lot of inquiry on Nixon, Chairman Ervin said the executive privilege didn’t go as far to cover any aides in this case, so anyone else had to cooperate or get arrested. They complied and Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of the tapes. It was Ervin who first said Nixon had to give up the tapes, using subpoenas, but it didn...

... middle of paper ...

...that the tapes didn;’t fall under that principle and Nixon had no choice but to do what they said.

Given these points, after the tapes had been heard, the House of Representatives had a majority vote to impeach Mr. Nixon out of this presidency! He decided he’d rather quit than being fired, that it would somehow save his dignity after all this ridiculousness associated with Nixon’s insane paranoia. He wrote a resignation speech and the congress, the press, and the courts were all proud of their achievement into getting their justice. They did a well enough job that the president had no choice but to pack his bags and leave the WHite House with his tail tucked in between his legs. There was a lot of fixing up to do afterwards, left to Ford and Congress, which took a lot of time and effort. No one is above the law, not even Mr. Nixon and his high presidential chair.