Topic Page: Watergate Affair,

Topic Page: Watergate Affair, 1972-1974 Definition: Watergate af f air from Philip's Encyclopedia (1972-74) US political scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. It arose from an attempted burglary of the Democratic Party's headquarters in the Watergate building, Washington D.C., organized by members of Nixon's re-election committee. Evidence of the administration's involvement provoked investigations by the Senate and the Justice Department, which implicated Nixon. He was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford, but his close advisers (Halderman, Erlichman and Mitchell) were convicted. Summary Article: Watergate from Encyclopedia of American Studies Watergate refers to the political scandal that broke in 1972 and forced Richard M. Nixon to resign the presidency two years later. On June 17, 1972, Washington, D.C., police arrested five men who had burglarized the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate apartment and office complex. From then until August 9, 1974, when President Nixon resigned, journalistic, congressional, and judicial investigations progressively revealed illegal campaign practices, dirty Image from: Poster tricks in campaigning, presidential abuses of power in the use of illegal showing members of the wire-tapping, Internal Revenue Service pressure and other harassments Watergate affair,... in of alleged political enemies, as well as the presidentially directed Conspiracy Theories in cover-up of these and other acts. American History During these years the Watergate scandal preoccupied Nixon, his closest aides, and ultimately the Congress, the courts, the press, and the public. It precipitated several showdowns between the executive and the other branches of government and is therefore regarded as one of the more important constitutional crises in American history. The press played a role in revealing the misdeeds of the Nixon administration, and the press itself became an issue in the unfolding crisis. At first, journalists regarded the break-in as a campaign tactic too stupid and risky to have been authorized by any significant figure in the Republican hierarchy. Of more than four hundred Washington correspondents, at most fifteen worked fulltime on Watergate in the half-year between the break-in and the 1972 presidential election. But the Washington Post pursued the story and linked the burglars to the highest officials in the Nixon reelection campaign. The Washington Post's coverage interested few other media outlets. That changed in March 1973 when James McCord, one of the Watergate burglars, revealed that the burglars had perjured themselves under pressure. Soon President Nixon's two closest advisers were implicated in covering up the burglary's connection to the White House and were forced to resign. The Senate held riveting, televised hearings in the summer of 1973. Nixon's presidential counsel, John Dean, who had also been forced to resign, provided an astonishingly detailed account of his meetings with the president, during which strategies for covering up Watergate had been discussed. Then it was revealed that conversations in the White House's Oval Office were usually tape-recorded and that the evidence existed to verify Dean's damning accusations. The president's lawyers revealed a tape

recording from just six days after the burglary that established Nixon's involvement in the cover-up, to the dismay of even loyal Republican defenders. As a result President Nixon resigned from office and Gerald Ford became president. The Watergate scandal helped establish the Washington Post's national reputation as a serious national newspaper and a rival to the New York Times. When the Post's Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein published their dramatic account of the early coverage of the scandal, All the President's Men, a book later turned into a feature film, Watergate became the symbol of the power of the press in American society. For journalists it became the definitive modern symbol of how essential the press is to democracy and the justification for investigative reporting. For some critics Watergate became a symbol of the dangers of a media establishment grown too liberal and too autonomous, as well as a dangerous scandal-and-investigation-centered mode of politics in Washington, D.C. President Richard Nixon displays his trademark victory wave during campaign on behalf of Republican congressional candidates. 1970. Richard Nixon Presidential Library. National Archives and Records Administration. Wikimedia Commons.

President Nixon meets with chief advisers in the Oval Office: (left to right) H.R. Haldeman, Dwight Chapin, John D. Ehrlichman, President Richard Nixon. 1970. Richard Nixon Presidential Library. National Archives and Records Administration. Wikimedia Commons.

President Richard Nixon conferring with Attorney-General John Mitchell, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and John D. Ehrlichman. 1971. Byron E. Schumaker, photographer. Richard Nixon Presidential Library. National Archives and Records Administration. Wikimedia Commons. Demonstrators with Impeach Nixon sign near the U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C. 1973. Thomas O'Halloran and Marion S. Trikosko, photographers. U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress.

Portrait of John Dean, counsel to the President. 1973. Oliver F. Atkins, photographer. Richard Nixon Presidential Library. Bibliography National Archives and Records Administration. Wikimedia Commons. Bagdikian, Ben, The Fruits of Agnewism, Columbia Journalism Review 11 (January/February 1973: 9-21. Epstein, Edward Jay, Did the Press Uncover Watergate?, in Between Fact and Fiction, ed. by Epstein, Edward Jay (Vintage Bks. 1975). Jeffrey, Harry P.; Thomas Maxwell-Long, Watergate and the Resignation of Richard Nixon: Impact of a Constitutional Crisis (CQ Press 2004). Kutler, Stanley, The Wars of Watergate (Knopf 1990). Lang, Kurt; Gladys Engel Lang, The Battle for Public Opinion: The President, the Press, and the Polls during Watergate (Columbia Univ. Press 1983). Reston, James, The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews (Harmony Bks. 2007). Schudson, Michael, Watergate in American Memory (Basic Bks. 1992). Waldron, Lamar, Watergate: The Hidden History: Nixon, The Mafia, and the CIA (Counterpoint 2012). Woodward, Bob, The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat (Simon & Schuster 2005).

Michael S. Schudson Copyright 2018 The American Studies Association

APA Schudson, M. S. (2018). Watergate. In S. Bronner (Ed.), Encyclopedia of American studies. MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Retrieved from Chicago Schudson, Michael S. "Watergate." In Encyclopedia of American Studies, edited by Simon Bronner. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. Harvard Schudson, M.S. (2018). Watergate. In S. Bronner (Ed.), Encyclopedia of American studies. [Online]. Johns Hopkins University Press. Available from: [Accessed 10 July 2018]. MLA Schudson, Michael S. "Watergate." Encyclopedia of American Studies, edited by Simon Bronner, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1st edition, 2018. Credo Reference,. Accessed 10 Jul. 2018.