4. Watergate
Watergate is the name of the scandal that caused Richard Nixon to become the only U.S. president to resign from office.
On May 27, 1972, concerned that Nixon's bid for reelection was in jeopardy, former CIA
agent E. Howard Hunt, Jr., former New York assistant district attorney
G. Gordon Liddy, former CIA operative James W. McCord, Jr., and six
other men broke into the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate Hotel
in Washington, D.C. They wiretapped phones, stole some documents, and photographed others.
When
they broke in again on June 17 to fix a bug that wasn't working, a
suspicious security guard called the Washington police, who arrested
McCord and four other burglars. A cover-up began to destroy
incriminating evidence, obstruct investigations, and halt any spread of
scandal that might lead to the president. On August 29, Nixon announced
that the break-in had been investigated and that no one in the White
House was involved.
Despite his efforts to hide his
involvement, Nixon was done in by his own tape recordings, one of which
revealed that he had authorized hush money paid to Hunt. To avoid
impeachment, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. His successor, President
Gerald Ford, granted him a blanket pardon on September 8, 1974,
eliminating any possibility that Nixon would be indicted and tried.
Washington Post
reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein helped expose the scandal
using information leaked by someone identified as Deep Throat, a source
whose identity was kept hidden until 2005, when it was revealed that
Deep Throat was former Nixon administration member William Mark Felt.
Learn about more political scandals in the next section, including the Iran-Contra Affair.





