Watergate
• CREEP
• Committee to Reelect the President
• Instructed to find out info
• Five burglars are arrested inside the Democratic National
Committee headquarters in the Washington, D.C., Watergate
office complex
"smoking gun"
• Haldeman and Nixon discussion
• progress of the FBI's investigation especially the tracing of the source
of money found on the burglars.
• Have the CIA ask the FBI to halt its investigation of the Watergate
break-in by claiming that the break-in was a national security
operation.
• After the election
• Set for January
Trial for the burglars
• Thomas Eagleton
• Electroshock therapy
• Sargent Shriver
McGovern
Election of 1972
"peace is at hand“
• Dimmed somewhat by South Vietnamese president Thieu opposition to
the agreement.
• Read about the Christmas bombing
January 28,1973
• Cease-fire agreement is signed in Paris by Henry Kissinger and
Le Duc Tho.
• Designed to get US out of Vietnam
• POW’s and MIA’s back
• We are out
• North Vietnam does not have to leave
• Kissinger gave them18 months
Watergate 5
• Trial in Jan
• Judge John Sirica
• McCord
• implicated CREEP in the burglary and the payoff for the burglars'
silence
• Bernard Barker
• Virgilio Gonzales
• Eugenio Martinez
• James McCord
• Frank Sturgis
Investigation gets bigger
• Senate committee
• chaired by Sam Ervin
• examine Watergate and started to subpoena White House staff.
Early 1973
• Haldeman and Erlichman
• cover up
• Enlisted the aid of John Dean
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April 30
Haldemann and Erlichman are asked to resign
Dean is fired
(Dean thinks he will be the scapegoat)
Nixon appoints Richardson as Attorney General
• Richardson appoints Archie Cox as special Watergate prosecutor
• Talked to Sirica
• Mentioned the burglary of Ellsburg’s shrink
• Dean v. Nixon
Dean is #1 witness
Televised hearings
• No real evidence
• Alexander Porter Butterfield talks about the tapes in the Oval
Office
Executive Privilege
• The tapes were soon subpoenaed by both Cox and the Senate
• Cox took it to court
October of 1973
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Vice President Spiro Agnew
Charge of federal income tax evasion
Sentenced
• Three years' probation
• Fined $10,000
• Disbarred (1974) in Maryland
• Resigned from office
• Conservative
• Liked by both parties
Gerald Ford
Yom Kippur War
• In response to 6 Day War and the failure to resolve territorial disputes
arising from the war
• War between Israel on one side and Egypt and Syria on the other side
Oil prices jump
• Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to double its oil
prices.
• US experienced gasoline shortages
• Embargo placed on countries that assisted Israel.
• The rise in oil prices began a trend of worldwide inflation and a
recession in 1974-1975.
Saturday Night Massacre
• Asked Richardson to fire Cox
• Refused and resigned
• Asked Ruckelshaus to fire Cox
• He refused and was fired
• Bork fired Cox
'I'm Not a Crook'
• "I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life I
have never obstructed justice,"
• "People have got to know whether or not their President is a
crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got.”
Appoints Jaworski as the new prosecutor
• Guess what he wants?
US v. Nixon
• Nixon's claim of executive privilege over the tapes was void
• Ordered him to surrender them to special prosecutor Leon Jaworski
• On July 30 he complied with the order and released the subpoenaed tapes.
Impeachment is going to happen
• Decided to resign
• Televised address on the evening of August 8,1974, he
announced he would resign effective noon on August 9
Nixon is gone
We have a new President
• He nominated Rockefeller as the new Vice-president