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Cover-up and its unraveling Initial cover-up Address book of Watergate burglar Bernard Barker, discovered in a room at the Watergate Hotel, June 18, 1972. Within hours of the burglars' arrests, the FBI discovered E. Howard Hunt's name in Barker and Martínez's address books.
- “The Smoking Gun” and “Deep Throat”
- Nixon's Second Term
- The Dam Begins to Crumble
- The Tapes: Nixon's Last Line of Defense
Despite declaring "It's going to be forgotten" to aide Charles Colson, Nixon must have felt some trepidation. Because three days later, he discussed the FBI's investigation with his chief of staff, H. R. “Bob” Haldeman. The Bureau had already connected the burglars to E. Howard Hunt, who reported directly to Colson. Nixon agreed to let Haldeman and...
In early January, 1973, as Nixon was preparing to begin his second term, seven men faced justice in the courtroom of Judge John Sirica: the five caught in the Watergate Office Building, along with Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, who had been overseeing the burglary from a nearby hotel room. By the end of January, all had either pleaded guilty or, in the ...
As the Watergate Committee prepared to begin its work, Nixon tried once more to contain the situation. In a nationally televised address on April 30, he presented himself as completely innocent, blaming his aides for keeping him in the dark and telling the nation that Dean, Haldeman, Erlichman, and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, a longtime f...
With Dean and several other Watergate participants deciding to tell all, Nixon still enjoyed the presumption of innocence from many Americans. But during the hearings, Alexander Butterfield, a Nixon aide, revealed the installation of a voice-activated taping system in the Oval Office. Now Nixon's word could be weighed against not just those of burg...
- 6 min
- Missy Sullivan
- The Watergate Break-In. The origins of the Watergate break-in lay in the hostile political climate of the time. By 1972, when Republican President Richard M. Nixon was running for reelection, the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War, and the country was deeply divided.
- Nixon's Obstruction of Justice. It later came to light that Nixon was not being truthful. A few days after the break-in, for instance, he arranged to provide hundreds of thousands of dollars in “hush money” to the burglars.
- Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein Investigate. By that time, a growing handful of people—including Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, trial judge John J. Sirica and members of a Senate investigating committee—had begun to suspect that there was a larger scheme afoot.
- The Saturday Night Massacre. When Cox refused to stop demanding the tapes, Nixon ordered that he be fired, leading several Justice Department officials to resign in protest.
- January 1969. Richard Nixon is inaugurated as the 37th president of the United States.
- February 1971. Richard Nixon orders the installation of a secret taping system that records all conversations in the Oval Office, his Executive Office Building office, and his Camp David office and on selected telephones in these locations.
- June 13, 1971. The New York Times begins publishing the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department's secret history of the Vietnam War. The Washington Post will begin publishing the papers later in the week.
- 1971. Nixon and his staff recruit a team of ex-FBI and CIA operatives, later referred to as “the Plumbers” to investigate the leaked publication of the Pentagon Papers.
Apr 13, 2024 · The scandal included a break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 1972, and subsequent cover-up by people who worked for or with the White House, and by Nixon himself.
Jun 13, 2022 · A coverup is uncovered. Citing FBI and Justice Department files, Woodward and Bernstein report that the break-in was part of an extensive campaign of spying and sabotage against Democratic ...
On July 24 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Nixon must provide the recordings. Between July 27 and 30 the House Judiciary Committee passed three articles of impeachment. On August 5 the president supplied transcripts of three tapes that clearly implicated him in the cover-up.
