What Is The Watergate Scandal In The United States

604 Words3 Pages
Watergate Watergate was a scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970’s. In 1972, when President Richard Nixon was running for re-election, the United States was still fighting in the Vietnam War and our nation was divided because of it. Nixon used aggressive tactics in his campaign and one of them turned out to be illegal, which is known as Watergate. In May 1972, evidence showed, members of Nixon’s Committee broke into the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate headquarters, stole copies of top-secret documents and bugged the office’s phones. However, these bugs failed to work properly, so on June 17 the group returned to the Watergate building. As Nixon’s men were preparing to break into the office with a new microphone, a security guard noticed that they had taped the building’s locks. The guard called the…show more content…
A few days after the break-in, he arranged to provide hundreds of thousands of dollars to the burglars, so they would be quiet. Then, he and his committee told the CIA to slow down the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate scandal. Some Americans thought the cover up was a worse crime than the initial break in. President Nixon was seen as abusing his presidential power. Seven conspirators were indicted on charges related to the Watergate affair. By the time of these indictments, many people had begun to suspect that Nixon was involved in Watergate. Some of Nixon’s aides testified before a grand jury about the president’s involvement in Watergate. They also testified that Nixon had secretly taped every conversation that took place in the Oval Office. Those tapes would prove President Nixon’s guilt. Nixon struggled to protect the tapes. His lawyers argued that the president’s executive privilege allowed him to keep the tapes to himself, but the Senate committee and an independent prosecutor named Archibald Cox were all determined to get them. Eventually, Nixon agreed to surrender some of the

More about What Is The Watergate Scandal In The United States

Open Document