Transcript Nixon and Watergate

The Characters

The President: Richard M.
Nixon
The President’s Men:
 Dwight L. Chapin
 Alexander P. Butterfield
 Kenneth W. Clawson
 Charles W. Colson
 John W. Dean III
 John D. Erlichman
 L. Patrick Gray
 H. R. Haldeman
Characters cont’
The President’s Men
 E. Howard Hunt (Watergate
Burglar, Colson aid, and
former CIA employee)
 Frederick C. La Rue
 Herbert W. Kalmbach
 EgilKrogh, Jr.
 G. Gordon Liddy (CREEP
employee and planner of
the Watergate burlary)
 Jeb Stuart Magruder
 Robert C. Mardian
 John N. Mitchell
The President’s Men
 Robert C. Odle, Jr.
 Donald H. Segretti
 Herbert L. Porter
 Hugh Sloan
 Maurice H. Stans
 Gordon C. Strachan
 Ronald L. Ziegler
Characters cont’
The Burglars:
 James W. McCord, Jr.
 Eugenio R. Martinez
 Bernard L. Barker
 Frank A. Sturgis
 Virgilio R. Gonzalez
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E. Howard Hunt
G. Gordon Liddy
The Prosecution:
 Donald E. Campbell
 Earl J. Silbert
 Seymour Glanzer
Characters cont’
The Judge:
 John J. Sirica
“Maximum John”
The Washington Post:
 Katherine Graham
 Benjamin C. Bradlee
 Harry M. Rosenfeld
 Howard Simons
 Barry Sussman


Carl Bernstein
Bob Woodward
Characters cont’
The Senators:
 Sam J. Ervin, Jr.
 Howard Baker, Jr.
Optional Assignment/Teacher note: Assign each student 1-2 characters to briefly
identify. Write 1-2 good sentences about each character and present a picture
of each character. This is to be completed as a homework assignment for the next
day!
Nixon and Watergate
The Election of 1968
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Richard Nixon only narrowly won the 1968 election, but the combined total of popular
votes for Nixon and Wallace indicated a shift to the right in American politics.
The 1960's began as an era of optimism and possibility but ended in disunity and
distrust.
The Vietnam war and a series of assassinations and crises eroded public trust in
government and produced a backlash against liberal movements and the Democratic
party.
The Election of 1968
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Nixon campaigned as a
champion of the "silent
majority," the hardworking
Americans who paid taxes, did
not demonstrate, and desired
a restoration of "law and
order.”
He vowed to restore respect
for the rule of law, reconstitute
the stature of America, dispose
of ineffectual social programs,
and provide strong leadership
to end the turmoil of the
1960's.
Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon
Papers
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Daniel Ellsberg was an employee
of the Defense Department who
leaked a classified assessment of
the Vietnam War in 1971.
The 7,000 page document came
to be known as the Pentagon
Papers.
They cast doubt on the
justification for entry into the war
and revealed that senior
government officials had serious
misgivings about the war.
When the New York Times and
Washington Post began to publish
the Pentagon Papers, the Nixon
Administration sued them.
The Supreme Court ruled that the
papers could continue to publish
the documents.
On June 13, 1971, the New York Times began publishing installments
of the "Pentagon Papers," documents about American involvement in
Indochina from the end of World War II to the mid 1960s. The Nixon
administration moved to block further publication of the papers, and
Attorney General John Mitchell obtained a temporary injunction against
The New York Times. The Washington Post then released two
installments before being similarly enjoined. Other papers picked
up the series, until June 30, when the Supreme Court rejected
the government's request for a permanent injunction.
The "New Figure" cartoon was one of many depicting
President Richard Nixon's attempts to curb public information,
partly through government control of broadcast stations
owned by newspapers. *See next slide
Paranoid Politics – all about getting
reelected
 “enemies list” – list of people who objected his
policies of which he was “out to get”
– Ordered tax audits on antiwar protestors and civil rights
activists
– Fired people in appointed positions within the gov’t
Cold War since World War II
 Nixon a “Cold War Warrior”
 Time of suspicion and espionage
 Remember Alger Hiss, and the Rosenbergs
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Cont’
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Before the Watergate scandals, Herb Block was
pointing out excessive use of government power
to wiretap or otherwise investigate the activities
of citizens an administration felt were at odds
with its policies. In 1970, the Civil Service
Commission admitted to having a Security
Investigations Index with over 10 million entries,
and the armed forces revealed surveillance of
Americans involved in anti-Vietnam war
activities. *See next slide – Political Cartoon January 18, 1970
The White House Plumbers
After the release of the Pentagon
Papers, the White House created a
unit to ensure internal security.
 This unit was called the Plumbers
because they stopped leaks.
 In 1971 *they burglarized the
office of Daniel Ellsberg’s
psychiatrist, seeking material to
discredit him. Did they or did
they authorize it! *Check your list
 It was later revealed that Nixon’s
domestic advisor John Ehrlichman
knew of and approved the plan.

Howard Hunt
James McCord
G. Gordon Liddy
Chuck Colson
The Watergate Break-in
When initial polls showed Nixon in
the Election of 1972, the Plumbers
turned their activities to political
espionage.
 On 17 June 1972, 5 men were
arrested while attempting to bug
the headquarters of the
Democratic Party inside the
Watergate building in Washington
D.C.
 One of the men arrested, James
McCord, was the head of security
for the Republican Party.
 The Nixon campaign denied any
involvement.

Watergate office complex where the
Democratic National Committee headquarters
were located.
A security guard noticed an exit door had been taped to keep the
latch open. He removed the tape but on his second round found
that it had been retaped and called the police.
When police
arrived, they
found five
burglars who
were attempting
to bug the offices
of the Democratic
National
Headquarters.
All five men
worked for the
Committee to
Reelect the
President,
President Richard
Nixon's campaign
committee.
Seized wiretapping evidence
Woodward, Bernstein and the
Washington Post
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Watergate came to public attention largely through the work of Bob
Woodward and Carl Bernstein, investigative reporters from the
Washington Post.
Despite enormous political pressure, Post editor Ben Bradlee,
publisher Katherine Graham, Woodward and Bernstein, aided by an
enigmatic source nicknamed “Deepthroat” kept the story in the
public consciousness until Nixon’s resignation.
Watergate Enters the Nixon
Campaign
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The break-in was eventually
tied to the Nixon reelection
campaign through a $25,000
check from a Republican donor
that was laundered through a
Mexican bank and deposited in
the account of Watergate
burglar Bernard Barker.
Later it was discovered that
Former Attorney General John
Mitchell, head of Nixon’s
“Committee to Re-Elect the
President,” (CREEP) controlled
a secret fund for political
espionage.
Mitchell would later go to
prison for his role in the
scandal
The Election of 1972
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Despite the growing stain of Watergate, which had not yet reached the
President, Nixon won by the largest margin in history to that point.
The Watergate Investigations:
Judge John Sirica
Watergate came to be
investigated by a Special
Prosecutor, a Senate
committee, and by the
judge in the original breakin case.
 Judge Sirica refused to
believe that the burglars
had acted alone.
 In March 1973, defendant
James W. McCord sent a
letter to Sirica confirming
that it was a conspiracy.
 Sirica’s investigation
transformed Watergate
from the story of a “thirdrate burglary” to a scandal
reaching the highest points
in government.
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“Maximum John”
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Senate Investigation – Ervin Committee
– Televised
– Senator Samuel James Ervin (NC) called
members of administration to testify
– Howard Baker (TN) led questioning
Senate Investigation and
the Oval Office Tapes
The Senate began hearings into
Watergate in May 1973.
 The hearings were televised in
their entirety.
 They focused on when the
President knew of the break-in.
 In June 1973, former White House
legal counsel John Dean
delivered devastating testimony
that implicated Nixon from the
earliest days of Watergate.
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Sam Irvin
Howard Baker
Senate Investigation and the Oval
Office Tapes
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The Administration was eager to discredit Dean and his testimony so it
began to release factual challenges to his account.
 When former White House aide Alexander Butterfield was asked about
the source of the White House information, he revealed the existence of an
automatic taping system that Nixon had secretly installed in the Oval Office.
 These tapes would become the focus of the investigation.
U.S. v Nixon, July 1974
During the investigation it was revealed that there were audio
tapes from the White House. Nixon claimed executive privilege in
an attempt to keep the tapes secret, however the Supreme Court
ruled that executive privilege did not apply in criminal cases and
ordered Nixon to surrender the subpoenaed White House tapes to
John Sirica, U.S. District Court Chief Judge. The tapes revealed
widespread involvement, including by the President.
The Smoking Gun Tapes
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When the Supreme Court forced Nixon to surrender
the tapes.
 Nixon was implicated from the earliest days of the
cover-up:
– authorizing the payment of hush money
– attempting to use the CIA to interfere with the FBI
investigation.
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One tape had an 18 ½ minute gap.
 Nixon’s secretary Rosemary Woods demonstrated
how she could have inadvertently erased the tape,
but no one bought it.
 “The smoking gun tapes,” were released in August
1974, just after the House Judiciary Committee
approved Articles of Impeachment against Nixon.
The Watergate break-in and cover-up led to
the resignation of several members of the
government.
Halderman,
Chief of Staff
Pictured: Front Row: Donald Rumsfeld, Sec. of Transportation John
Volpe, Sec. of Commerce Peter Peterson, Sec. of Defense Melvin
Laird, Richard M. Nixon, Sec. of State William Rogers, Sec. of the
Interior Rogers C.B. Morton, Sec. of HEW Elliot Richardson, Director
of OMB Casper Weinberger Back Row: Robert Finch, Sec. of HUD
George Romney, Sec. of Agriculture Earl Butz, Sec. of the Treasury
George Shultz, Vice President Spiro Agnew, Attorney General
Richard Kleindienst, Sec. of Labor James Hodgson, Ambassador at
large David Kennedy, Ambassador to the UN George Bush.
Ruckelshaus,
Deputy Attorney
General
Ehrlichman,
Assistant to
the President
for Domestic
Affairs
Dean, Counsel to
the President
The Saturday Night Massacre
The Administration reached an
agreement with the Senate
Watergate Committee that its
Chairman would be allowed to
listen to tapes and provide a
transcript to the Committee and to
Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox.
 The deal broke down when Cox
refused to accept the transcripts
in place of the tapes.
 Since the Special Prosecutor is an
employee of the Justice
Department, Nixon ordered
Attorney General Elliot Richardson
to fire Cox.
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Archibald Cox
The Saturday Night Massacre
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Robert Bork
When Richardson refused, he was
fired.
Nixon ordered Deputy Attorney
General William D. Ruckelshaus to
fire Cox .
When he refused, he was fired.
Nixon then ordered Solicitor
General Robert Bork (who was
later nominated for the Supreme
Court by Reagan) to fire Cox and
he complied.
The Washington Post reported on
the “Saturday Night Massacre.”
The 22 month investigation involved the press,
House of Representatives, Senate, special
prosecutors, and the Supreme Court; it uncovered
covert action on the part of the president and his
advisers.
Nixon Resigns
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On 27 July 1974, the House
Judiciary Committee approved
Articles of Impeachment against
Nixon.
The House was to vote on the
matter soon.
Nixon conceded that impeachment
in the House was likely, but he
believed that the Senate vote to
remove him would fail.
On 5 August 1974, when the
“smoking gun tape” became
public, a delegation from the
Republican National Committee
told Nixon that he would not
survive the vote in the Senate.
On 9 August 1974, Richard Nixon
became the first American
president to resign.
The Nixon’s
left the White
House.
Nixon was forced to resign the
presidency on August 9, 1974 because of
the Watergate scandal. Gerald Ford was
appointed Vice President and later
became president after the corrupt Spiro
Agnew resigned.
Gerald R. Ford became 38th President,
August 9, 1974
Ford immediately damaged his
Presidency by granting Nixon a pardon.
Ford announced the pardon
Aftermath
Ford announcing the pardon
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More than 30 government officials went to prison for their role in Watergate.
Richard Nixon was not one of them.
In September 1974, President Gerald Ford gave Nixon a full pardon.
Woodward and Bernstein won the Pulitzer Prize.
They collaborated on 2 books, All the President’s Men and The Final Days.
In 1976 All the President’s Men was adapted into an Oscar winning film.
The identity of Deepthroat was kept secret until W. Mark Felt unmasked himself in
2005.
Political Cartoons
What can we learn from the
following?
Do you have your Cartoon Analysis
Worksheet?
"Move over – We can't stay in a
holding pattern forever"
Nixon, "unindicted co-conspirator"
By July 14, 1974, President Richard Nixon stood
almost alone. His vice-president Spiro Agnew,
pleaded nolo contendere to a charge of tax evasion,
and was forced to resign. Many of Nixon's closest
aides had been convicted of illegal activities. Nixon
himself was named an "un-indicted co-conspirator" by
the Watergate grand jury. A few days later, the
House Judiciary Committee recommended
impeachment, and the Supreme Court required him
to turn over all subpoenaed tapes. When even his
closest friends, reviewing these tapes, agreed that
the evidence against him was overwhelming, Nixon
bowed to the inevitable, resigning on August 9.
By June 1973, the country had become transfixed by the investigation of
Watergate via the televised hearings of the Senate Select Committee on
Presidential Campaign Activities. On June 25, former presidential counsel
John Dean began his testimony, the first before the committee to directly
accuse President Richard Nixon of involvement in the cover-up.
Nixon awash in his office
"There's no need for an independent investigation–We
have everything well in hand“
As the 1972 presidential campaign progressed, reports surfaced of
violations of campaign regulations and laws. On August 26, the
General Accounting Office said that it had found irregularities in
reports by the Republican Committee to Re-elect the President
(known by the acronym CREEP). Democrats complained that an
investigation by the Justice Department and the White House were
insufficient and called for a special team to handle the matter.
See next slide – Political Cartoon by Herblock
The following slides are excerpts
from All The President’s Men
by Bernstein and Woodward
Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell and White House
Counsel John W. Dean III approved and help plan the
Watergate bugging operation, according to President Nixon’s
Former special assistant, Jeb Magruder.
Mitchell and Dean later arranged to buy the silence of the
Seven convicted Watergate conspirators, Magruder has also
said.
Magruder, the debuty campaign manager for the President,
made these statements to federal prosecutors Saturday,
According to three sources in the White House and the
Committee for the Re-election of the President.
P.294
President threatened Dean personally
and said if he ever revealed
the national security activities that
President would ensure he went
to jail. P. 318
The covert activities involve the whole US intelligence
community and are incredible…P. 318
The cover-up had little to do with the Watergate, but
was mainly to protect covert operations.
P.318
Cover-up cost to be about $1 million. Everyone is involvedHaldeman, Erlichman, the President, Dean, Mardian, Caulfield
and Mitchell. They all had a problem getting the money on the
outside and chipping in their own personal funds. Mitchell
couldn’t meet his quota and … they cut Mitchell loose …
CIA people can testify that Haldeman and Erlichman said the
President orders you to carry this out, meaning the Watergate
Cover-up … P. 318
Liddy told Dean, that they could
shoot him and/or that he would
shoot himself, but that he would
never talk and always be a good
soldier. P. 319
Excerpts from The Wars Of
Watergate by Stanley I. Kutler
Nixon, as should be clear, was not the first
president to perceive a hostile press, but
perhaps no other president saw hostility
more clearly and consistently, or chose to
combat it so passionately. P. 173
 Nixon’s attitude toward the press was
demonstrated first in his shunning it. The
President averaged less than seven press
conferences a year. P. 173

Excerpts cont’

The President’s anger focused in a particularly
vicious manner in November that year, when
Haldeman, at Nixon’s direction, called J. Edgar
Hoover and asked for “a rundown on the
homosexuals known and suspected” in the
Washington press corps. Hoover confirmed he
had the material and noted that he would not
need to make any specific investigation. The
Director sent the files to the White House.
P. 176
Excerpts cont’
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Did the Nixon Administration conspire to
discredit the press? Did the President and his
aides foster the “us-against-them” mentality
with respect to the news media that eventually
boomeranged with such devastating results for
the Presidents in his second term? Did the
President himself encourage and direct the
campaign against the media? The President’s
friend and former aide, William Safire, long ago
concluded that the answer to all the questions
“ is, sadly, yes.”
Excerpts cont’
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The Watergate break-in itself eventually
diminished in importance as the nation
discovered what John Mitchell labeled the “White
House horrors” and the clear patterns of
presidential abuses of power. The subsequent
attempts by the White House to obstruct the
investigation of the Watergate affair-the “coverup,” which led to more abuses of power-further
detracted from the significance of the break-in.
P. 200
Excerpts cont’
The Watergate burglary …ultimately must be
seen as part of a behavior pattern characterizing
the President and his aides that stretched back
to the beginnings of the Nixon administration.
P. 209
 … the White House directed a campaign of
noncooperation, lies, and a tragic betrayal from
within to effectively hamstring the FBI’s efforts.
P. 209
 The President had a favorite word for the White
House strategy: “stonewall.” P. 211

Excerpts cont’
Dean perhaps managed details, but the mission
had been determined by others. John Dean did
not decide that there would be a cover-up: that
was determined by the President of the United
States and his Chief of Staff. P. 217
 “The President was involved in the cover-up
from Day One,” Haldeman later revealed-thus
conceding his own involvement. P. 217-218
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Excerpts cont’

…Nixon talked to Haldeman about raising money
for the burglars and for the first time suggested
bringing CIA pressure on the FBI to limit the
investigation. Surely he was anxious to avoid
any links between the burglars and the White
House; but Haldeman also knew that Nixon
feared any expose of “other things,” as the
President often characterized certain White
House activities and campaign “dirty tricks.”
P. 218
Excerpts cont’

The President also met with Colson and
Ehrlichman at one point on June 23rd.
Accordingly to Ehrlichman’s notes, either the
President or Colson put a fitting epitaph on the
day: “Responsible administrations in a tough
political year are born losers.”
The President capped his long day with a
western gunslinger movie, Hang’ Em High. The
story centers on a wrongfully accused man who
promises to play by the rules but then disposes
of his enemies one by one, convinced that he is
an avenging angel. P. 220
Excerpts cont’
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… there were two cover-ups: one to
conceal the involvement of CREEP in the
Watergate break-in, the other to protect
the President. They eventually converged,
ostensibly to “protect the presidency,” as
Nixon liked to say; what he meant, of
course, was to protect himself. P 248
Excerpts cont’

In White House conversations, Richard Nixon
called the sentences “outrageous’; John Sirica
himself was a “son-of-a-bitch of a judge’ by the
President’s lights. When Nixon admitted the
possibility that Watergate was more than a
“third-rate burglary,” the President praised Sirica
as a “courageous judge,” in an obvious attempt
to mollify growing public restlessness.
P. 261
Excerpts cont’
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Senator Herman Talmadge asked Ehrlichman to recall
some fundamental principles: Do you remember when
we were in law school, we studied a famous principle of
law that came from England and also is well known in
his country, that no matter how humble a man’s cottage
is that even the King of England cannot enter without his
consent [?]. Ehrlichman stared across the table,
eyebrows furrowed, jaw set, and replied: I am afraid
that has been considerably eroded over the years, has it
not? Talmadge never hesitated: Down in my country we
still think it is a pretty legitimate principle of law. P. 375
Spontaneous applause from the audience left Ehrlichman
momentarily stunned. The President’s confident aide had
touched upon a tender, treasured principle, one not as
readily dismissed as the less well understood First and
Fifth amendments. P. 376
Excerpts cont’
When Attorney General Saxbe … he
suggested his deputy “tell the President to
piss up a rope.” P. 467 (I had to put this
one in here!)
“The best thing he [Nixon] can do for the
country is to get the hell out of the White
House, and get out this afternoon,”
Goldwater told his Senate colleagues.
Excerpts from Kutler’s book
concluded
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After the “smoking gun” tape became public, Columnist
James Kilpatrick could take no more. “I am close to
tears,” he wrote. “Nixon’s duplicity is almost beyond
bearing.” Had he told the truth from the outset,
Kilpatrick declared, Watergate would have been a nineday wonder, Nixon would have been re-elected and no
more would have been heard of the affair. Kilpatrick had
believed the President when he said knew nothing of the
cover-up and that he was not a crook. Now, he sadly
concluded, it no longer really matters … My President is
a liar. I wish he were a crook instead.
Excerpt from PRESIDENT NIXON'S
RESIGNATION SPEECH
August 8, 1974

At 9:00 P.M. the thirty-seventh President
addressed the nation from the White
House for the thirty-seventh time.
“…Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency
effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President
Ford will be sworn in as President at that
hour in this office…
“Thank you, thank you very much”