On March 19, 1973, James McCord, a former agent of both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency accused of burglary, wrote a letter to the judge presiding at his trial. His act precipitated a series of disclosures that first disrupted and then destroyed the Nixon administration.
McCord had been employed during the 1972 presidential campaign as a security officer of the
Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP). At about 1 AM on June 17, 1972, he and four other men had broken into Democratic party headquarters at Watergate, a complex of apartments and offices in Washington. The burglars were members of an unofficial CREEP surveillance group known as “the plumbers.” Nixon, who was compelled by a need to conceal information about his administration, had formed the group after the Pentagon Papers, a confidential report on government policy in Vietnam, had been leaked to the press. The “plumbers” had been caught rifling files and installing electronic eavesdropping devices.
Two other Republican campaign officials were soon implicated in the affair. Their arrest aroused suspicions that the Republican party was behind the break-in. Nixon denied it. “I can say categorically,” he announced on June 22, “that no one on the White House staff, no one in this Administration presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident.”
Most people evidently took the president at his word. He was far ahead in the polls and seemed so sure to win reelection that it was hard to believe he would stoop to burglary to discover what the
Democrats were up to. In any case, the affair did not materially affect the election. When brought to trial early in 1973, most of the Watergate burglars pleaded guilty.
McCord, who did not, was convicted by the jury. Before Judge John J. Sirica imposed sentences on the culprits, however, McCord wrote his letter. High Republican officials had known about the burglary in advance and had paid the defendants “hush money” to keep their connection secret, McCord claimed. Perjury had been committed during the trial.
The truth of McCord’s charges swiftly became apparent. The head of CREEP, Jeb Stuart Magruder, and President Nixon’s lawyer, John W. Dean III, admitted their involvement. Among the disclosures that emerged over the following months were these:
¦ Large sums of money had been paid to the burglars at the instigation of the White House to ensure their silence.
¦ Agents of the Nixon administration had burglarized the office of a psychiatrist, seeking evidence against one of his patients, Daniel Ellsberg, who had been charged with leaking the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. (This disclosure led to the immediate dismissal of the charges against Ellsberg.)
¦ CREEP officials had attempted to disrupt the campaigns of leading Democratic candidates during the 1972 primaries in a number of illegal ways.
¦ A number of corporations had made large contributions to the Nixon reelection campaign in violation of federal law.
¦ The Nixon administration had placed wiretaps on the telephones of some of its own officials as well as on those of journalists critical of its policies without first obtaining authorization from the courts.
These revelations led to the dismissal of John Dean and to the resignations of most of Nixon’s closest advisers, including Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Attorney Generals John Mitchell and Richard Kleindienst. They also raised the question of the president’s personal connection with the Watergate scandal. This he steadfastly denied. He insisted that he would investigate the Watergate affair thoroughly and see that the guilty were punished. He refused, however, to allow investigators to examine White House documents, on grounds of executive privilege, which he continued to assert in very broad terms.
In the teeth of Nixon’s denials, John Dean, testifying under oath, stated flatly and in circumstantial detail that the president had ordered him to pay the Watergate burglars to conceal White House involvement; if true, the president had been guilty of obstructing justice, a serious crime.
Dean had been a persuasive witness, but many people were reluctant to believe that a president could lie so cold-bloodedly to the entire country. Therefore, when it came out during later hearings of the Senate committee investigating the Watergate scandal that the president had systematically made secret tape recordings of White House conversations and telephone calls, the disclosure caused a sensation. It seemed obvious that these tapes would settle the question of Nixon’s involvement once and for all. Again Nixon refused to allow access to the evidence.
One result of the scandals and of Nixon’s attitude was a precipitous decline in his standing in public opinion polls. Calls for his resignation, even for impeachment, began to be heard. Yielding to pressure, he agreed to the appointment of an “independent” special prosecutor to investigate the Watergate affair, and he promised the appointee, Professor Archibald Cox of Harvard Law School, full cooperation.
Cox swiftly aroused the president’s ire by seeking access to White House records, including the tapes. When Nixon refused to turn over the tapes, Cox obtained a subpoena from Judge Sirica ordering him to do so. The administration appealed this decision and lost in the appellate court. Then, while the case was headed for the Supreme Court, Nixon ordered the new attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to dismiss Cox. Both Richardson, who had promised the Senate during his confirmation hearings that the special prosecutor would have a free hand, and his chief assistant resigned rather than do as the president directed. The third-ranking officer of the Justice Department carried out Nixon’s order.
These events of Saturday, October 20, promptly dubbed the Saturday Night Massacre, caused an outburst of public indignation. Congress was bombarded by thousands of letters and telegrams demanding the president’s impeachment. The House Judiciary Committee began an investigation to see if enough evidence for impeachment existed. (The House of Representatives must vote to indict federal officials for impeachment; the actual impeachment trial is conducted by the Senate.)
Once again Nixon backed down. He agreed to turn over the tapes to Judge Sirica with the understanding that relevant materials could be presented To the grand jury investigating the Watergate affair but that nothing would be revealed to the public. He then named a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, and promised him access to whatever White House documents he needed. However, it soon came out that several tapes were missing and that an important section of another had been deliberately erased.
Then Vice President Agnew (defender of law and order, foe of permissiveness) was accused of income tax fraud and of having accepted bribes while serving as Baltimore county executive and governor of Maryland. To escape a jail term Agnew admitted in October that he had been guilty of tax evasion and resigned as vice president.
Acting according to the procedures for presidential and vice-presidential succession of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, adopted in 1967, President Nixon nominated Representative Gerald R. Ford of Michigan as vice president, and he was confirmed by Congress. Ford had served continuously in Congress since 1949 and as minority leader since 1964. His positions on public issues were close to Nixon’s; he was an internationalist in foreign affairs and a conservative and convinced Republican partisan on domestic issues.
World History
