BACKGROUND GUIDE The White House Plumbers 1972 Topic 1 Topic 2

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1 BACKGROUND GUIDE The White House Plumbers 1972 Director: Katherine Soltani Topic 1: Stopping the Leak of Classified Information Topic 2: The Saturday Night Massacre TAEMUN VI December 14-15

Hello delegates! My name is Katherine Soltani and I will be your White House Plumbers director this year! I am a senior at Woodson high school and have been doing MUN since freshman year.

2 Hello delegates! My name is Katherine Soltani and I will be your White House Plumbers director this year! I am a senior at Woodson high school and have been doing MUN since freshman year. Outside of MUN, I am the events coordinator for Woodson's MSA and a member of National, Math, and Science Honor Societies. I absolutely love eating junk food, reading, laughing at memes, thinking about the amount of work I have to do but not actually doing it, taking pictures, and watching The Office! I am so excited to meet you all, and I wish you all the best of luck in your TAEMUN VI preparations! Feel free to contact me if you have any questions! PS: bonus points if you bring me taco bell (just kidding!) Katherine Soltani Director of White House Plumbers at TAEMUN VI katherine.soltani@gmail.com

3 ***Delegates: I would like to remind you that in writing your position papers and creating your solutions, you are allowed to rewrite history, if you wish to do so!*** Watergate/Committee Background The White House Plumbers was a White House Special Investigation Unit created to stop the leaking of classified information to the news media. The committee was created by the Nixon administration in response to the release of the Pentagon Papers in Their goal was to discredit Daniel Ellsberg, the man who was responsible for leaking the Papers that exposed the US Government s secret operations in Vietnam. In 1972, President Nixon was running for re-election. At this time, however, the country was greatly divided because of the controversy surrounding the Vietnam War. Wanting to secure his re-election, Nixon and his campaign team (Nixon s Campaign to Re-Elect the President, or CREEP) resorted to illegal espionage. In May of 1972, CREEP and White House Plumbers members broke into the Watergate hotel, which was the headquarters for the Democratic National Convention. During this operation, they stole copies of top secret documents and bugged the headquarters phones. On June 17th, 1972, a group of CREEP members returned to re-bug the phones. The spies were caught, but were initially not linked to the President. Nixon managed to persuade the American public that he was not connected to the scandal, ensuring his re-election in A couple months after his re-election, prosecutors realized Nixon was taking advantage of his presidential power to prevent the FBI from further investigating the Watergate scandal. Regardless, investigations into the scandal continued. A feud over secret Oval Office

4 conversation tapes led to the Saturday Night Massacre, which was the removal of several Department of Justice members from office. Eventually, Nixon surrendered the tapes. What was recorded on those tapes led the House of Representatives to vote to impeach Nixon. Not wanting to be impeached, Nixon resigned from office on August 8, Topic 1: Stopping the Leak of Classified Information Background: The Pentagon Papers were a series of top-secret Department of Defense documents written from 1945 to These Papers included details about US involvement in Vietnam, such as the fact that the Kennedy administration helped overthrow and assassinate the South Vietnamese President in By 1969, military analyst Daniel Ellsberg realized that the war against Vietnam was unwinnable, so he went against the war effort and decided that the American public should know the truth about US military and political operations in Vietnam. Consequently, in March 1971, Ellsberg shared copies of the Pentagon Papers with the New York Times, which then published articles about the situation. US Government Actions: In response to the New York Times publishing article about the Pentagon Papers, the Department of Justice was able to obtain a temporary restraining order against further publication about the Papers. This led to the well known Supreme Court case, New York Times Co. vs United States, in which the New York Times and the Washington Post joined forces to fight for the right to freedom of the press. The court ruled in favor of the press, stating that the release of the Papers was not putting national security in jeopardy. Questions to Consider:

5 What security measures should be taken to prevent the leak of classified information? In the event that classified information is leaked, what should the procedure be to make sure that American public opinion of the government remains unchanged? Which issues should be categorized as those of national security, and how should the government work towards protecting information surrounding those issues? Topic 2: The Saturday Night Massacre Background: In May, 1973, Archibald Cox was appointed to be a special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal investigation. In July of 1973, Cox ordered President Nixon to hand over the taped recordings of the conversations held in the Oval Office. These tapes held evidence of whether Nixon was involved in the Watergate scandal or not. Nixon repeatedly refused and, growing fed up with Cox, ordered attorney general Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. This order, and many of Nixon s other actions, had raised debates regarding the abuse of presidential power. Richardson refused to carry out this order and resigned. Nixon then asked deputy attorney general William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox, but he also believed that Cox had done nothing wrong. Rather than obey the president, Ruckelshaus also resigned from his position. Questions to Consider: What can we do to ensure that future presidents (and other government officials) do not abuse their power? Should all private government conversations be recorded? Should government officials be allowed to prosecute another official without having clear charges?

6 Bibliography Dupree, Jamie. 45 Years Ago Today Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre. AJC, Cox Media Group, 20 Oct. 2018, jamiedupree.blog.ajc.com/2018/10/20/45-years-ago-today-nixons-saturday-nightmassacre/. History.com Editors. Pentagon Papers. History.com, A&E Television Networks, History.com Editors. Watergate Scandal. History.com, A&E Television Networks, New York Times Company vs. United States. Oyez.org, Cornell Law School, White House Plumbers. The Vietnam War, thevietnamwar.info/white-house-plumbers/.

BACKGROUND GUIDE The White House Plumbers 1972 Topic 1 Topic 2

BACKGROUND GUIDE The White House Plumbers 1972 Director: Katherine Soltani Topic 1: Stopping the Leak of Classified Information Topic 2: The Saturday Night Massacre TAEMUN VI December 14-15 Hello delegates!