The Watergate Scandal

The Watergate Scandal

The Watergate Scandal was a series of crimes committed by the President and

his staff, who were found to spied on and harassed political opponents,

accepted illegal campaign contributions, and covered up their own misdeeds.

On June 17, 1972, The Washington Post published a small story. In this

story the reporters stated that five men had been arrested breaking into

the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. The headquarters was

located in a Washington, D.C., building complex called Watergate. These

burglars were carrying enough equipment to wiretap telephones and take

pictures of papers.

The Washington Post had two reporters who researched deep into the story.

There names were Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, they discovered that one

of the suspects had an address book with the name and phone number of a

White House official who could have been involved in the crime. The

reporters suspected that the break-in had been ordered by other White House

officials.

In a press conference on August in 1972, President Nixon said that nobody

on the White House Staff was involved in the crime. Most of the public

accepted Nixon's word and dropped the questioning. But when the burglars

went to trial four months later, the story changed rapidly from a small

story to a national scandal. It ended only when Richard Nixon was forced

from office.

Watergate was connected to Vietnam, it eventually exposed a long series of

illegal activities in the Nixon administration. Nixon and his staff were

found to have spied on and harassed political opponents, planned

contributions to the campaign, and tried to cover-up their illegal acts.

These crimes that they did were called the Watergate scandal, named after

the building that it happened.

For years Nixon was carrying on the crimes and they were not noticed until

now. 1969 was the really date in which Watergate was really beginning. It

all started when the White House staff made up a list called "enemies list".

Nixon had enemies which include 200 liberal politicians, journalists and

actors. Most of these people made a public speech against the Vietnam war.

Nixon's aides formed a conducts tax audits on these people that he thought

were enemies. He also had agents find out secret information that would

harm them.

Nixon was always worried about govt. Employees revealing secret info. To

the news paper or any sort of press. The presidents agents helped him by

wiretapping phone lines that belonged to reporters in order to find any

revealing some material. Nixon was so worried that during the Cambodia

bombing he had to wiretap his own staff members.

On June in 1971, The New York Times formed work that was published about