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Botched burglary, coverup led to a president's resignation
By wire services
Published June 1, 2005
WASHINGTON - The scandal began with a botched burglary that initially attracted little attention but ended two years later with the first and only resignation of a president.
To many Americans, Watergate is a dimming memory, if that. A majority of living Americans were not born or were children when President Richard Nixon was forced from office in 1974.
A summary of the events:
It was a story of political espionage gone awry in the midst of a presidential campaign, followed by a coverup that unraveled when Nixon's secret White House taping system came to light.
Incriminating conversations, it turned out, were all on tape.
Six days after the break-in at the Watergate complex by the Potomac River, Nixon agreed to a plan to derail the FBI's investigation of the burglary at the Democratic National Committee's offices by claiming the investigation would interfere with a CIA operation.
The tale began with G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI man who was finance counsel at the president's re-election committee. Liddy got $250,000 to implement a plan of dirty tricks and espionage that included late-night forays to install telephone bugs at the DNC office and scouring the party's files for useful information.
Caught in the act at the DNC on June 17, 1972, five burglars working for Liddy were a novelist's dream.
Among the burglars were E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA operative who went on to write 42 spy thrillers and had participated in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Castro's Cuba; and James W. McCord, a 20-year CIA technician who was in charge of security at the president's re-election committee.
From the start, two young reporters from the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, pursued what they sensed was a scandal that went all the way to the White House.
Woodward was in court and heard McCord whisper "CIA" when the burglars were asked to identify themselves.
The Senate and the U.S. attorney's office pursued Nixon's aides. Nixon insisted he knew nothing of any coverup.
The coverup collapsed when Nixon's schedule keeper, Alexander Butterfield, told the Senate of a taping system that recorded every conversation Nixon had in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room, the Lincoln Bedroom sitting room and the Camp David presidential cabin.
Information from the Washington Post and Associated Press was used in this report.
[Last modified June 1, 2005, 00:39:12]
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Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
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