‘HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANOURS'

The ‘Watergate' scandal ended President Nixon's career

By David Cocksedge

Nightwatchman Frank Wills tugged at the locked door in the basement garage of the Watergate office block in Washington. The door swung open freely. A piece of adhesive tape stretched tightly over the latch was holding the door unlocked, so Wills removed it, assuming that a cleaning crew had put it there to facilitate moving objects in and out. After his coffee break, he returned on his rounds and found that the tape had been replaced.

Immediately suspicious, Wills called Washington police from an emergency phone. Three plainclothes officers in an unmarked car responded and were at the Watergate complex in minutes. They found other doors also taped open and reasoned that this was the work of a skilled professional housebreaker. With drawn guns, they walked warily into the sixth-floor offices. Seeing a darkened figure crouching behind a desk, one officer warned, “Come out now! And keep your hands in the air!”

To their amazement, not just one man raised his arms. Five men gave themselves up and were promptly arrested for breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. The men were Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, James W McCord Junior and Frank Sturgis.

These men had broken into Watergate three weeks earlier and had now returned to fix faulty wiretaps and photograph documents. These covert operators, some of them trained by the CIA, were known as ‘the plumbers', working for CRP (Committee to Re-elect the President) at the White House. The Watergate burglars had been caught with spy cameras, bugging equipment, disguises and thousands of dollars in cash. No one knew it then, but this multiple arrest on the night of 17 June 1972 was the beginning of the end of President Richard Nixon's political career.

Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward were at the arraignment of the ‘plumbers' and thereafter stubbornly stayed on the story for the next two years. Their reporter's instincts told them that there was a serious abuse of power here, and their executive editor, Ben Bradlee, allowed them to continue to investigate the story when all other news media had grown bored with it.

The telephone number of E Howard Hunt in McCord's contacts book tied him to the CRP. Hunt had worked for the White House whilst McCord was officially employed as the Chief of Security at CRP. Nixon's Press Secretary Ron Zeigler dismissed the affair as a ‘third rate burglary' and most Americans believed that a President with Nixon's advantage in the polls would not be so foolhardy or unethical to risk association with such a shabby affair.

At his arraignment before Judge John Sirica, McCord stated that he was a retired CIA employee. The Washington DC district attorney's office began an investigation of the links between McCord and the Central Intelligence Agency, and eventually determined that McCord had received payments from CRP. Meantime Bernstein and Woodward had established the existence of a ‘slush fund' that ran to about 900,000 dollars in cash kept in a safe at CRP headquarters. The ‘plumbers' had been paid from this fund that came from campaign donations laundered through dummy corporations and Mexican banks by Finance Director Maurice Stans. Immediately after the foiled break-in at Watergate, all paperwork relating to the fund was destroyed, along with other sensitive documents, in an orgy of shredding at CRP.

The two Post reporters were dogged in their pursuit of the scandal. They spent hours calling sources and interviewing CRP and White House staff, which is the boring, routine part of investigative journalism. Most of what ‘Woodstein' published was known to the FBI, but they kept the Watergate investigation in the spotlight. Woodward's relations with a principal inside source added an extra layer of mystery to the affair. This source was codenamed ‘Deep Throat.' He informed Woodward that White House officials had hired fifty federal agents to help sabotage the Democrats' chances in the 1972 General Election. This included spying on the Democratic Party and sabotaging its' campaign activities by various ‘dirty tricks' instigated by a young attorney named Don Segretti. ‘Deepthroat' kept Woodward on the right path throughout the convoluted investigation. Regarding the slush fund, he advised, “Follow the money. It leads everywhere. These men around Nixon are not smart guys. They have a ‘switchblade' mentality.” (Decades of speculation on just who ‘Deep Throat' was ended on 31 May 2005 when Mark Felt, former deputy director of the FBI, revealed that he was ‘Deep Throat'; a claim later confirmed by Woodward).

On 8 January 1973 the original burglars, along with CRP employees Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt, went on trial. All except McCord and Liddy pleaded guilty, and all were convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping. The accused had been paid by CRP to plead guilty and say nothing, thus sealing off the case from White House involvement. But the defendants' refusal to name their bosses angered the feisty trial judge, John Sirica. He promptly handed down 30-year sentences, but indicated he would reconsider if the group would be more cooperative. McCord soon complied, implicating CRP in the burglary and the payoff for the silence of the ‘plumbers'.

The connection between the Watergate burglary and the President's re-election campaign fund-raising committee dramatically increased the profile of the crime and the consequent political stakes. Now instead of ending with the trial and conviction of the burglars, the investigations suddenly grew broader. To Nixon's dismay, a Senate Committee chaired by Senator Sam Ervin was set up to examine Watergate and started to subpoena White House staff.

On 30 April 1973, Nixon was forced to ask for the resignations of two of his most influential aides, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, both of who would soon be indicted and ultimately imprisoned. Nixon also fired White House counsel John Dean, who had just testified before the Senate and would go on to become the key witness against Nixon himself, who had been re-elected by a landside in November 1972.

Dean had helped to compile Nixon's ‘Enemies List': a register of prominent Americans who were critical of the President. These people were to be persecuted and deprived of their rights. Businessmen would fail to qualify for government contracts or grants and individuals would be ground down by constant litigation and threats of prosecution. Even the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) would be used to sift through their tax returns and penalise them.

Any important personality who did not wholeheartedly support Richard Nixon could be subject to the White House vendetta. The ‘enemies list' included 200 individuals and 18 organisations. They ranged from former ambassadors to industrialists, lawyers and academics. The White House was staffed by vengeful men. A top CRP official had angrily warned Washington Post publisher Kate Graham, “After re-election, we're going to do a real number on you. We're gonna dump on the Post big time!”

By June 1972 as the White House set out to undermine every American constitutional guarantee of the rights to privacy, free speech and equal justice, breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic Party to tap telephones seemed as trivial a breach of the law as a speeding ticket. The break-in was so minor a part of the CRP election strategy that it is unlikely that anyone bothered to tell Nixon in advance about it. But there is little doubt that within days of the burglars being caught, Nixon himself joined the cover-up to prevent the world ever knowing just how power-hungry and corrupt his administration had become.

The Senate Watergate Committee hearings were broadcast to the nation from 17 May to 7 August 1973, and Dean's testimony in particular caused devastating political damage to Nixon. Republican Senator Howard Baker from Tennessee asked the memorable question, “What did the President know, and when did he know it?”

Soon after this came a sensational breakthrough. During routine hearings on 13 July, Alexander Butterfield, deputy assistant to the President, was asked about Dean's version of conversations regarding Watergate in the Oval Office. Butterfield replied that he did not know of the sequence of such talks personally, “but they will be on the tape for that day.” What tape? Butterfield explained that the president had every conversation in the Oval Office secretly tape-recorded as an aide memoire. The system had been originally installed during the Kennedy administration, had fallen into disuse during the tenure of President Johnson (LBJ), but Nixon had it reinstated and upgraded when he took up residence at the White House in January 1969.

This amazing revelation radically transformed the Watergate investigation. The tapes were immediately subpoenaed by Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, as they would prove whether Nixon or Dean had been telling the truth about key meetings. Nixon of course refused to hand over any tapes, citing executive privilege and national security. He ordered Cox to drop his subpoena.

Cox's refusal to do this led to the ‘Saturday Night Massacre' on 20 October 1973, when Nixon compelled the resignations of the new attorney general Elliott Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus in a search for anyone in the Justice Department willing to fire Cox. This search ended with Solicitor General Robert Bork, who duly dismissed the special prosecutor. Public reaction was intense, with protestors standing outside the White House in their hundreds. Many carried signs stating HONK TO IMPEACH! The autumn night air in Washington was filled with the sound of thousands of car horns bleating.

Further allegations of wrongdoing caused Nixon to famously shout “I am not a crook!” in front of 400 Associated Press managing editors at Walt Disney World in Florida on 17 November. The pressmen had never seen Nixon looking so harassed.

The new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, continued the investigation and Nixon eventually agreed to release edited transcripts of many of the tapes relevant to the enquiry. The transcripts largely confirmed Dean's account of proceedings following the break-in, but they also had another unexpected effect, which provided a grotesque insight into the personality of Richard Nixon.

Much dialogue by the President had to be censored on the grounds of public decency. Time and again the phrase ‘expletive deleted' had to be inserted into the text to cover obscenities as Nixon discussed his political rivals and other world leaders in crude and embarrassing terms. This was not the language of diplomacy and learned political discussion. It was more like the profane banter of a mafia don than a President talking in the hallowed chambers of the Oval Office. Whatever the content of the conversations, many Americans were shocked by Nixon's profanity, particularly among the Christian Right, where Republican presidents have always traditionally enjoyed a substantial political majority.

But still ‘Trickie Dickie' held back from releasing the text of the most vital tape; that of 23 June 1972 when he had first discussed the Watergate break-in with his chief of staff Bob Haldeman. It took almost a full year of delaying tactics by Nixon before the issue was presented to the Supreme Court. As the court voted unanimously to force him to hand over the critical tape, Congress also voted to hand down articles of impeachment against the President. In spite of his exalted position of political power and his claim of presidential privilege, Richard Nixon was now facing the unthinkable prospect of a trial for criminal abuse.

The secretly taped evidence of 23 June 1972 was vital to Nixon's guilt or innocence. Had he demanded to know the truth about the break-in or had he immediately conspired with Haldeman to cover up all involvement by the White House?

On 5 August 1974, Nixon at last made the tape public. The record of the conversation with Bob Haldeman was no more than 18 minutes and 31 seconds of high-pitched humming. White House staff blamed the erasure on Nixon's secretary Rose Mary Woods, who said that she had accidentally done it by toeing the wrong pedal on her tape recorder whilst answering the telephone during transcription. However, for Woods to answer her phone whilst keeping her foot on the pedal would have required a stretch that challenged a gymnast; and she was said to have held this position for eighteen and a half minutes! Later forensic analysis revealed that the gap had been erased as many as eight times over, refuting any claims of ‘accidental' erasure.

Now the President was known to be completely useless with machines such as tape recorders: Nixon the statesman was so inept with his hands that he couldn't even open a childproofed bottle of Aspirin. His personal assistant, Steve Bull, always helped him with such things. It was fairly obvious that someone (possibly Bull) found the relevant section of tape for him; and then proceeded to erase it on Nixon's orders.

This was the final blow to Nixon's credibility. On 8 August he announced his resignation, effective from noon on 9 August 1974. The new Vice President Gerald Ford (Spiro Agnew had resigned over a tax scandal on 10 October 1973) was duly sworn in to take his place. One of Ford's first acts as the new President was to grant a full and unconditional pardon to Nixon, making him immune from any prosecutions arising out of the Watergate affair.

As several staffers who had served under him went to jail for their part in this affair, the President walked free, though of course he was incapable of seeing the injustice of that. He blamed his downfall on a conspiracy of the left wing press, led by “those two bums”, Woodward and Bernstein. But he did state in his official response to the pardon that he was “wrong in not acting more decisively in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy.”

President Nixon had achieved notable deeds during his term of office: he talked to American astronauts as they walked on the moon in 1969; he brought drafted American troops back from Vietnam in 1973 (when Saigon fell in 1975 only American military advisors remained), and in 1972 he became the first American President to visit China and improve North America's relations with the USSR; but he was brought down by his own cynical misuse of personal power.

His strange compulsion to crush all domestic opposition inevitably led to a litany of ‘high crimes and misdemeanours'. Richard Mihous Nixon, the 37th American President, was also the first ever to resign from that high office. He died a sad and embittered man at his home in San Clemente, California, on 22 April 1994.

(Research: ‘All the President's Men' by Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward, Quartet Books, 1974; wikipedia.org.Watergate_scandal)

IF YOU need a check on my True Crime series of stories, published in the Hua Hin Observer, here is a complete list to date:
April 2002 -The Green Bicycle case, 1921. May 2002 - The Craig/Bentley Case, 1952. June 2002 - The A6 Murder Case, 1961. July 2002 - Murder of the Earl of Errol, 1941. August 2002 - The O J Simpson murder trial, 1995. September 2002 - The Aileen Wuornos case, 1989. October 2002 - The Ronald Opus case, 1993. November 2002 - Madame X, 1929. December 2002 - The Spree Killer, 1984. January 2003 - Shootout at Smiths' Club, 1966. February 2003 - The Christine Dryland case, 1991. March 2003 - Poisoned Pie in Essex, 1982. April 2003 - The Heydrich assassination, 1943. May 2003 - The Diana Davidson Murder case, 1969. June 2003 - The death of Alkibiades, 404 BC. July 2003 - The headsman of Colmar, 1780. August 2003 - The Ruth Ellis case, 1955. September 2003 - The Mel Jones Murder case, 1975. October 2003 - The Bluebeard of the bath, 1915. November 2003 - Murder in a combat zone, 1966. December 2003 - The Barn Restaurant murder case, 1972. January 2004 - The assassination of JFK, 1963. February 2004 - Judge Falcone and the Mafia, 1992. March 2004 - Gilles de Rais/Bluebeard, 1404-1440. April 2004 - The hand in the sand case, 1885. May 2004 - The body in the bag, 1979

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