HELP ME PLEASE!!!Whats the WATERGATE SCANDAL all bout?i hear it lead to a US presidents fall?

Question

the a to z of it wud be appreciated!!
No OVERSMART PERSONS PLEASE!!!
ONLY GENUINE ANSWERERS!!

Answer 1

The term Watergate scandal refers to a 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. by members of the Richard Nixon administration and the resulting cover-up which led to the resignation of the President. The burglars' aim was to plant listening devices, while disguised as common criminals to provide cover. They were informally called the "plumbers unit" to "plug leaks," and included former members of the CIA. Though then-President Nixon had endured two years of mounting political embarrassments, the court-ordered release in August, 1974, of a "smoking gun tape" about the burglaries brought with it the prospect of certain impeachment for Nixon; he resigned only four days later on August 9, making him the only U.S. President to have resigned from office.

Answer 2

Why does this question sound like it's being posed by a high school (or equivalent) student who's too lazy to do research of his own? Jeeze! With Wikipedia and other on-line reference sources so readily available on-line, research is SO easy these days!

Answer 3

WATERGATE, designation of a major U.S. political scandal that began with the burglary and wiretapping of the Democratic party’s campaign headquarters, later engulfed President Richard M. Nixon and many of his supporters in a variety of illegal acts, and culminated in the first resignation of a U.S. president.

The burglary was committed on June 17, 1972, by five men who were caught in the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate apartment and office complex in Washington, D.C. Their arrest eventually uncovered a White House–sponsored plan of espionage against political opponents and a trail of complicity that led to many of the highest officials in the land, including former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, White House Counsel John Dean (1938– ), White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman (1926–93), White House Special Assistant on Domestic Affairs John Ehrlichman (1925–99), and President Nixon himself.

On April 30, 1973, nearly a year after the burglary and arrest and following a grand jury investigation of the burglary, Nixon accepted the resignation of Haldeman and Ehrlichman and announced the dismissal of Dean. U.S. Attorney General Richard Kleindienst (1923–2000) resigned as well. The new attorney general, Elliot Richardson (1920–99), appointed a special prosecutor, Harvard Law School professor Archibald Cox (1912– ), to conduct a full-scale investigation of the Watergate break-in.

In May 1973 the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Activities opened hearings, with Senator Sam Ervin (1896–1985) of North Carolina as chairman. A series of startling revelations followed. Dean testified that Mitchell had ordered the break-in and that a major attempt was under way to hide White House involvement. He claimed that the president had authorized payments to the burglars to keep them quiet. The Nixon administration vehemently denied this assertion.


The White House Tapes.

The testimony of White House aide Alexander Butterfield (1926– ) unlocked the entire investigation. On July 16, 1973, Butterfield told the committee, on national television, that Nixon had ordered a taping system installed in the White House to automatically record all conversations; what the president said and when he said it could be verified. Cox immediately subpoenaed eight relevant tapes to confirm Dean’s testimony. Nixon refused to release the tapes, claiming they were vital to national security. U.S. District Court Judge John Sirica (1904–92) ruled that Nixon must give the tapes to Cox, and an appeals court upheld the decision.

Nixon held firm. He refused to turn over the tapes and, on Saturday, Oct. 20, 1973, ordered Richardson to dismiss Cox. Richardson refused and resigned instead, as did Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus (1932– ). Finally, the solicitor general discharged Cox.

A storm of public protest resulted from this “Saturday night massacre.” In response, Nixon appointed another special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski (1905–82), a Texas lawyer, and gave the tapes to Sirica. Some subpoenaed conversations were missing, and one tape had a mysterious gap of 18 1/2 minutes. Experts determined that the gap was the result of five separate erasures.

In March 1974 a grand jury indicted Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and four other White House officials for their part in the Watergate cover-up and named Nixon as an “unindicted co-conspirator.” The following month Jaworski requested and Nixon released written transcripts of 42 more tapes. The conversations revealed an overwhelming concern with punishing political opponents and thwarting the Watergate investigation.

In May 1974 Jaworski requested 64 more tapes as evidence in the criminal cases against the indicted officials. Nixon refused; on July 24, the Supreme Court voted 8–0 that Nixon must turn over the tapes.

On July 29–30, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment, charging Nixon with misusing his power in order to violate the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, obstructing justice in the Watergate affair, and defying Judiciary Committee subpoenas.


Further Revelations.

Soon after the Watergate scandal came to light, investigators uncovered a related group of illegal activities: Since 1971 a White House group called the “plumbers” had been doing whatever was necessary to stop leaks to the press. A grand jury indicted Ehrlichman, White House Special Counsel Charles Colson (1931– ), and others for organizing a break-in and burglary in 1971 of a psychiatrist’s office to obtain damaging material against Daniel Ellsberg (1931– ), who had publicized classified documents called the Pentagon Papers.

Investigators also discovered that the Nixon administration had solicited large sums of money in illegal campaign contributions—used to finance political espionage and to pay more than $500,000 to the Watergate burglars—and that certain administration officials had systematically lied about their involvement in the break-in and cover-up. In addition, White House aides testified that in 1972 they had falsified documents to make it appear that President John F. Kennedy had been involved in the 1963 assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, and had written false and slanderous documents accusing Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of moral improprieties.


Nixon’s Resignation.

Throughout this period of revelations, Nixon’s support in Congress and popularity nationwide steadily eroded. On Aug. 5, 1974, three tapes revealed that Nixon had, on June 23, 1972, ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation to stop investigating the Watergate break-in. The tapes also showed that Nixon himself had helped to direct the cover-up of the administration’s involvement in the affair.

Rather than face almost certain impeachment, Nixon resigned on August 9, the first U.S. president to do so. A month later his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him for all crimes he might have committed while in office; Nixon was then immune from federal prosecution.

The Watergate scandal severely shook the faith of the American people in the presidency and turned out to be a supreme test for the U.S. Constitution. Throughout the ordeal, however, the constitutional system of checks and balances worked to prevent abuses, as the Founding Fathers had intended. Watergate showed that in a nation of laws no one is above the law, not even the president.

Answer 4

Have you ever heard of Wikipedia? You still have to read for the answer.

Answer 5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate

Answer 6

3:09 PM 6/13/1997


Ben-Veniste, a Washington attorney in the firm of Weil Gotshal & Manges, was chief of the Watergate Task Force of the Watergate Special Prosecutor's office.

Shadows of Nixon, Watergate still cross our national life

By RICHARD BEN-VENISTE
This week is the 25th anniversary of the Watergate burglary, but this inglorious moment is hardly ancient history. We are living daily with the legacy of Richard Nixon and the men who constituted his inner circle.

Their gross misuse of power spawned a virus that lingers on, and its mutant strains have infected the ways in which the Congress, the press, the courts and the White House now process allegations of wrongdoing.

Today's politicians and the press toss around terms made famous by Watergate ("stonewall" and "cover-up" and "smoking gun," to name just a few) so easily that they have almost lost their original meaning. Examine any of our current "scandals" (whether the Whitewater case, now in its fourth year with no end in sight, or this month's scandal du jour at the Pentagon, where adultery has become the death ray of the moment) and you wonder whether anyone is at the controls of this runaway train.

Of course, the most important and enduring lesson of Watergate is that our system was strong enough to purge itself of a president who had so abused the public trust. But underneath that shining reaffirmation of our constitutional democracy is Watergate's scar tissue, principally the diminution of the credibility of the office of the presidency.

I see the past and present circumstances from the vantage point of having served as a senior member of the Watergate Special Prosecutor's team that investigated and prosecuted the Watergate cover-up case against Nixon's aides and, more recently, as the chief minority counsel to the Senate Whitewater Committee.

In my view, there can be no legitimate comparison between Watergate and Whitewater. For those who may have forgotten the details, and for younger readers who weren't alive during Watergate, a brief review of the facts might be helpful.

The break-in and burglary of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office building on June 17, 1972, was not the isolated and loopy "third-rate burglary" portrayed by the Nixon administration. It was a significant violation of law authorized by Nixon insiders at the highest level -- if not the president himself -- to continue illegal electronic eavesdropping and photographing of confidential records.

Indeed, it is a tribute to the skill of Nixon spinmeisters that their "third-rate-burglary" tag -- coined to deflect attention from the higher-ups involved -- endures. The Watergate break-in was just one link in a chain of abuses that Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell aptly dubbed the "White House horrors."

These included the break-in at a psychiatrist's office looking for information that could be used to smear Daniel Ellsberg, who had exposed the secret government history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers; the misuse of the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies to punish those on the president's "enemies list"; the illegal wiretapping of journalists and members of Nixon's own administration; the deliberate falsification of government documents to enhance Nixon's political agenda; the proposed fire-bombing of the Brookings Institution as a diversion for the theft of records; the surreptitious surveillance of political opponents; and the willingness to use thugs to brutalize political protesters.

The subsequent cover-up was not an irrational response to an insignificant, stupid break-in. Rather, it became necessary to counter the threat that the administration's widespread abuses of governmental authority would be exposed once investigators began asking questions.

The American people watched in amazement as the Nixon administration's explanation for Watergate changed from "we didn't do it" to "the CIA set us up" to "they all (past presidents) did it" to "John Dean (the White House counsel) did it" to, finally, Nixon's memorable statement, "I am not a crook."

Nixon's imperial view of the presidency encouraged a competition among his advisers. They catered to his "dark side," disregarding legal boundaries to strike at, and punish, his adversaries and critics.

As the cover-up unraveled, facts emerged about the extent of Nixon's willingness to abuse his power to prevent the truth from coming out. Nixon directed the deputy director of the CIA to tell the FBI, falsely, that the country's national security would be jeopardized by a full investigation of the money trail left by the five Watergate burglars.

Acting on the president's instructions to lie under oath, several top advisers committed perjury, including Mitchell, who had been the nation's chief legal officer, and Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman.

There was more. Offers of presidential clemency were extended to certain members of the burglary team, and all were paid significant sums from a secret slush fund -- financed by campaign contributions, controlled by the president and Haldeman and delivered by the president's personal attorney.

Transcripts and summaries of illegally tape-recorded conversations at Democratic National Committee headquarters, as well as other incriminating evidence, were burned and shredded. And, of course, there was the erasure of 18 and a half minutes of a subpoenaed tape recording of a conversation between Nixon and Haldeman three days after the break-in.

Finally, Nixon's mendacity was dramatically exposed by his own words on the White House tape recordings, which provided irrefutable proof that Nixon had lied repeatedly to the American people about his involvement in Watergate. No amount of spin control could save Nixon from the web of deception that entangled him.

Today a number of factors combine to produce a political climate skewed by a lack of proportionality. Despite the absence of any credible allegation of misuse of presidential power in any way remotely resembling that of Watergate, we have a Congress prone to making blunderbuss demands for whole categories of White House documents, relevant or not.

Nixon's explicit tape-recorded order to "stonewall" has helped create an environment in which there is always a suspicion that the president is not being forthcoming -- no matter how onerous, invasive or novel the demand for information. This dragnet approach, now routinely applied, was never attempted in Watergate, nor would it have been countenanced by the courts.

This lack of proportionality seems to infuse the press, too. Whether it is the creeping tabloidization of America, or changes in the economics of the news business, or simply an instinct for pack journalism, there appears to be a decline in critical judgment used to evaluate the importance of a story.

Rather than seeing the media as pro-conservative or pro-liberal, pro-Republican or pro-Democrat, I see today's journalists as profoundly and uncritically pro-scandal.

The use of congressional committees and independent counsels to conduct investigations of the executive branch has its evolutionary basis in Watergate, but with a crucial difference. The Watergate wannabes and political revisionists who labor to equate Whitewater with Watergate miss the fundamental point of both affairs.

The abuse of presidential power so central to the Watergate scandal, and which truly threatened our civil liberties, is nowhere to be found after four years of investigating the Clintons. Watergate was about what Nixon did to the presidency; Whitewater is about a failed land venture that went south before Clinton was even elected.

There is, however, one enduring strain of political virus whose recent outbreak is reminiscent of Watergate: the corrosive effect of raising ever-increasing amounts of money to fund political campaigns.

The post-Watergate laws reforming campaign financing were long ago evaded by creative minds seeking loopholes and competitive advantage. Clearly, there have been abuses of the system by both political parties. But unless there is a genuine legislative agenda to reduce the demand for raising these enormous sums of money, the public may regard the upcoming hearings on campaign finance as just another round of partisan mudslinging, rather than a true effort at reform.

At least after Watergate, the parties were motivated to find a remedy, however short-lived, for the problems that existed. Let us use the memory of Watergate to roll up our sleeves and do the work necessary to fix what is so clearly broken.