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Baldwin III to carry out the wiretapping and monitor the telephone conversations afterward. In May, McCord assigned former FBI agent Alfred C. Howard Hunt and James McCord, the latter of whom was serving as then-CRP Security Coordinator after John Mitchell had by then resigned as attorney general to become the CRP chairman. Liddy was nominally in charge of the operation, but has since insisted that he was duped by both Dean and at least two of his subordinates, which included former CIA officers E.
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Two months later, Mitchell approved a reduced version of the plan, including burglarizing the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate Complex in Washington, D.C.-ostensibly to photograph campaign documents and install listening devices in telephones. According to Dean, this marked "the opening scene of the worst political scandal of the twentieth century and the beginning of the end of the Nixon presidency". Gordon Liddy, Finance Counsel for the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP) and former aide to John Ehrlichman, presented a campaign intelligence plan to CRP's acting chairman Jeb Stuart Magruder, Attorney General John Mitchell, and Presidential Counsel John Dean that involved extensive illegal activities against the Democratic Party. Wiretapping of the Democratic Party's headquarters ĭNC filing cabinet from the Watergate office building, damaged by the burglars 5.2 Political and cultural reverberations.5.1 Final legal actions and effect on the law profession.2.8 Legal action against Nixon Administration members.2.6 Senate Watergate hearings and revelation of the Watergate tapes.1 Wiretapping of the Democratic Party's headquarters.The use of the suffix -gate after an identifying term has since become synonymous with public scandal, especially political scandal.
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The metonym Watergate came to encompass an array of clandestine and often illegal activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration, including bugging the offices of political opponents and people of whom Nixon or his officials were suspicious ordering investigations of activist groups and political figures and using the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Internal Revenue Service as political weapons. There were 69 people indicted and 48 people-many of them top Nixon administration officials-convicted. On September 8, 1974, his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned Nixon.
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It is generally believed that, if he had not done so, he would have been impeached by the House and removed from office by a trial in the Senate. With his complicity in the cover-up made public, and his political support completely eroded, Nixon resigned from office on August 9, 1974. The House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against Nixon for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress.
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The Nixon White House tapes revealed that he had conspired to cover up activities that took place after the break-in and had later tried to use federal officials to deflect attention from the investigation. Supreme Court ruled that Nixon had to release the Oval Office tapes to government investigators. Several major revelations and egregious presidential actions obstructing the investigation later in 1973 prompted the House to commence an impeachment process against Nixon. The Senate Watergate hearings were broadcast "gavel-to-gavel" nationwide by PBS, and they aroused public interest. Throughout the investigation, Nixon's administration resisted its probes, and this led to a constitutional crisis.
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Witnesses testified that Nixon had approved plans to cover up his administration's involvement in the break-in, and that there was a voice-activated taping system in the Oval Office. Senate Watergate Committee, which held hearings. House Judiciary Committee additional investigative authority-to probe into "certain matters within its jurisdiction", and led the Senate to create the U.S. Further investigations, along with revelations during subsequent trials of the burglars, led the House of Representatives to grant the U.S. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's continual attempts to cover up its involvement in the June 17, 1972, break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Washington, D.C., Watergate Office Building.Īfter the five perpetrators were arrested, the press and the Justice Department connected the cash found on them at the time to the Committee for the Re-Election of the President. The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation.
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