The case behind the Watergate scandal is the supreme court case “United States vs. NIxon.” This is a famous case because president Nixon was the one being accused. It all started in June of 1972 when a handful of men came armed with bugging equipment and cameras into the Watergate hotel. They worked for president Nixon. Their mission was to bug a democratic committee office. Nixon was trying to eavesdrop on his competition in the election. The men were caught and arrested. It wasn’t until 1973 that Nixon was accused of being apart of the scandal. Investigators discovered that NIxon installed a recording device that automatically saved his conversations with the men involved with the scandal. Nixon refused to release any of the tapes. He claimed …show more content…
The petition between both sides were clear. The United States was the Plaintiff. They are claiming that executive power is not absolute. Nixon was the defendant. He claimed that executive privilege is absolute.
The question of the court was, “Is the president's right to safeguard certain information, using his “executive privilege” confidentiality power, entirely immune from judicial review.” On july 24, 1974 The supreme court ruled against Nixon and in favor of The United States. The justices were, Burger, Douglas, Brennan, Stewart, White, Marshall, Blackmun, and Powell. It came down to 8-0, all the justices voted in favor of the United States. Burger was the one who wrote the majority opinion. He wrote that, “Presidents do enjoy a constitutionally protected executive privilege, but that privilege is not absolute.” After the case was final, Richard Nixon released all of the tapes. It was confirmed that he was involved with the watergate scandal. He had contact with the men that he ordered to bug the committees office. He shortly resigned after everything releasing the tapes. He became known as the first president to resign in history. This case is very famous and will go down in history forever. It was reenacted in one of my favorite movies, Forrest
The Watergate Scandal was the downfall of Richard Nixon. It made Americans put less trust in the government and built trust in the media. It all takes place at the Watergate Hotel. He led an extremely corrupt administration to get him re elected. He also was the first President to resign. The unethical organization that was formed was called the CRP (later creep). They helped Nixon get re elected in 1972. They used illegal tactics to get him re elected. They paid lawyers for the burglars who broke into the Watergate Hotel. These people were known as the Plumbers. That was directed by John Ehrlichman. They were the White House investigation unit. They prevented information leak and burglarize any of Nixon reveals. Watergate seven was Richard Nixon closest comrades. They were in charge of the Creep and the plumbers that carried out many illegal activities. Christ the Transformer of Business culture is a good trait to obtain. “These people are intimately involved with those in the business, but their distinctive Christian standards are not lost” (Ruddell, 2004, p. 40). The people that were involved in the Watergate scandal should have had this trait.
After the Watergate Scandal, a man by the name of Leon Jaworski who was in charge of conducting the investigation obtained a subpoena which ordered Nixon to give up tapes and papers related to the meetings. Nixon asserted that he had an absolute executive privilege to protect communications and only released some of them which were edited. He was finally asked by the Supreme Court to release them in its entirety.
They had found that President Nixon’s administration group was involved with the cover-up and the breaking in of the hotel. One other thing that they found out was the even Nixon himself was actually playing a large part in the Watergate incident. The investigators had found several tapes that Nixon had planted in the White House. Places like the oval office were not private because of Nixon. Whenever Nixon was confronted about the tapes from John Mitchell for his defense. This caused Nixon’s whole plan to get ruined and Nixon had finally released some of the tapes, but a lot of them were destroyed. Eventually Nixon’s own prosecutor went to the supreme court and told them confiscate the tapes. Nixon quickly resigned office, being first to do so. He did this to not become impeached and would have to a lot of issues. He still had to go to the supreme court and thus started the Nixon V. United States
The late 1960s to the mid-1970s was characterized by political controversy and instability. The Watergate crisis is the most infamous scandal that occurred within those years, and arguably, in American political history. The event occurred in 1972 and it redefined American political culture. Nixon’s involvement in the incident (and other controversies leading up to Watergate) led to a loss of faith in government and a transition to the public’s reliance on the media. However, Watergate's long term positive effects negate its obviously negative reputation. The scandal transformed the ethical environment of politics by yielding a series of progressive changes to government administration. These alterations include the Freedom of Information
Summarize the arguments made in each of the two articles regarding the conduct of President Nixon.
The Watergate Scandal involved a number of illegal activities that were designed to help President Richard Nixon win re-election. The scandal involved burglary, wiretapping, campaign financing violations, and the use of government agencies to harm political opponents. A major part of the scandal was also the cover-up of all these illegal actions. “Watergate, however, differed from most previous political scandals because personal greed apparently did not play an important role. Instead Watergate attacked one of the chief features of Democracy – free and open elections” (Worldbook 1).
In 1972, the biggest scandal in American politics occurred at the Watergate complex. For years, the struggle to reveal secret of who masterminded this operation occupied the courts in Washington D.C. The Committee for the Re-election of the President (CRP) fought to keep President Richard Nixon 's name clear throughout the confessions of the Watergate burglars and of men inside the White House. From 1972 until 2017, many other national scandals have been publicized to the nation, but current political controversies such as President Trump 's Russia scandal and Hillary Clinton 's email mishap rival Watergate. The Watergate Scandal changed the security measures taken during presidential campaigns and began an era of political scandals.
The political disaster of Watergate in the early 1970s marked the first time a president resigned. Essentially, it began when a former Marine, Daniel Ellsberg, who no longer supported war in Vietnam, leaked an analysis of American involvement there to The New York Times, starting in 1971. President Richard Nixon, a very private man, demanded that these Pentagon Papers be kept secret in order to prevent the public from finding out exactly what was going on. The scandal that followed ruined Nixon and led Americans to be more critical of the politicians they put in power and to question their leadership.
The Watergate scandal shocked millions of Americans when it was revealed in 1972. The president at that time was Richard M. Nixon, who himself was involved within the scandal. The Watergate scandal took place in 1972 when a group of five men broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office complex in Washington. The five men involved in this burglary were eventually identified as Virgilio Gonzalez, Frank Sturgis, Eugenio Martinez, Bernard Barker and James W. McCord Jr. were arrested and plead guilty to charges. Later, it was revealed the burglary was arranged plot to plant bugs in the offices of the
May 1972, several members of Nixon’s Committee broke into the Watergate buildings, and stole classified documents as well as wiring the phone’s in the office. The wiretaps didn’t function accurately, so on June 17 a group of five revisited the Watergate headquarters. When breaking into the office, a security guard noticed something was off and called the police. From the beginning, people did not speculate that Nixon was associated with the spies. However, suspicion came about when detectives found copies of White House committee phone numbers among the burglars’ possessions. Following this, President Nixon gave a speech swearing that his White House staff had not been involved in the earlier break-in. Nonetheless, many voters believed Nixon and he was reelected in November of 1972, which was a massive mistake. Further investigation proved Nixon was dishonest. It came to surface that a few days after the break-in, there were arrangements called by Nixon, to pay the burglars to be silent. With Nixon’s assistance, all but two of the
The story of Watergate is both historically and politically interesting. It began to occur from the Pentagon Papers, in which Daniel Ellsberg handed over to the press. The Pentagon Papers contained secret documents outlining the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam (p.848).These secret documents would bring to light the deception of the the morning of June 17, 1972, at 2:30 a.m. 5 burglars were arrested inside the office of the Democratic National Committee, located inside of the Watergate building in Washington, D.C.. Being connected to President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, and they had been caught while attempting to wiretap phones and steal secret documents. It was not immediately clear that the burglars were connected to the
“While historians are not sure whether Nixon knew about the Watergate espionage operation before it happened, he took steps to cover it up afterwards, raising “hush money” for the burglars trying to stop the FBI from investigating the crime, destroying evidence and firing uncooperative staff members” (“Watergate Scandal”). “He [Nixon] went on national television and declared he had done nothing wrong” (Cohen 17-18). “The seven men charged with the Watergate burglary went on trial January 8, 1973” (Cohen 35). “ McCord - one of the seven men - stated that members of his family had expressed fear for his life if he told what he knew and that he did not feel confident talking to the FBI” (Cohen 37).
The Watergate Scandal was considered one of the most of disturbing political scandals in the history of America. This Scandal brought down a President and his administration, also made the American public distrust the government which still goes on today.
Watergate is a word that will forever be connected to the 37th President, Richard Nixon. What started out as a botched robbery at the Democratic Reelection headquarters would later become know for bringing down the Presidency.
Watergate began as a botched burglary that didn’t really involve the president ended in revealing impeachable abuses of power throughout Nixon’s presidency. Shockingly over 20 lawyers were found out to be operating outside the law and in response Watergate forever changed law practice in the United States. Watergate produced various new laws like the “Independent Counsel Act” that enabled the investigation of the President, vice President, and other officials. Other acts created were the “Freedom of Information Act”, and “Federal Election Campaign Act” which reduces contribution size to candidates or political parties, and demands campaigns to report information of donations greater than $200. All of these acts were very relevant in the recent