Definition of Watergate Case

Richard Nixon has probably been the most paranoid president of the United States the White House has ever welcomed - yes, even Donald Trump... although this is on the way to equaling it and, possibly surpassing it, one of the most controversial, and so far the only one that has resigned due to the possibility of a procedure of impeachment (Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton were subjected to it, but they came out with flying colors.)

And the reason for this impeachment that would surely have arrived, was the discovery of a plot that reached the leadership of the Party US Republican and President Nixon himself to spy on his rivals, in what is called the "Case Watergate ”.

The Watergate case takes its name from the homonymous building complex located in Washington D.C, and where the headquarters of the Committee was located in the 70s National Democratic Party of the United States, headquarters that was illegally raided by agents in the service of the Republican Party to find information.

This "incident" became part of American popular culture, as well as being part of also of his history, and we can see it reflected, for example, in an episode of the series animated The Simpson and also in the film Forrest Gump.

Basically, the Watergate scandal can be summed up as the attempted obstruction of the investigation who carried out the administration Nixon, and what was uncovered in the subsequent investigation, involving members of the government and the Republican Party in numerous illegal activities.

The case began with the arrest, by the police, of five people responsible for the aforementioned raid.

It seems that the action had been quite "sloppy", and that those who carried it out were arrested red-handed, while committing the raid. But after investigate their identities and the material they brought with them, investigators learned they had something very different from a simple robbery on their hands.

Two of the five arrested were veterans of the CIA, the intelligence from the United States, and the group carried, for example, microphones for wiretapping.

The gang leader was also the head of the committee working for the reelection of President Nixon. A major scandal, then, although the government administration immediately began to try to cover the matter, at the hands of John Dean, one of President Nixon's advisers.

Dean was in charge of slowing down the police investigation, and launching his own investigation, in which obviously nothing was moving, classifying everything as a simple robbery.

To those who wanted to understand it, it was obvious that the Nixon administration was hiding something, so the next to take an interest in the subject were the media. communication.

Later, it would be discovered that senior CIA and FBI officials were also involved in the cover-up.

The Washington Post investigated the most intensively, although it did not lag far behind in the New York Times.

Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein quickly got on track, sensing that This was much more than a medium scandal, and it affected the upper echelons of the administration, including Nixon.

To uncover the case, they had the help of an internal source to the network, William Mark Felt, deputy director of the FBI, who they gave the name of Deep Throat. Some say that the pseudonym referred to a pornographic film of the same name that was very successful at the time, while others indicate that he was already a name given to the anonymous journalistic sources in the US of the epoch.

The identity real of Deep Throat as Felt was not known until 2005 by the express will of the interested party.

Pulling the thread and thanks to the denunciations of Felt, Woodward and Bernstein (who would win the Pulitzer for their work in 1973) were able to unravel the ins and outs of the conspiracy, until they reached the president himself Nixon.

But it was one thing to know that he was involved and quite another to be able to prove it with sufficient evidence. What's more, Deep Throat he also warned journalists that they and others following the scandal were being investigated by the FBI and the CIA.

As the whole scandal unfolded, Nixon was winning his reelection as president.

The White House also pressured the defendants to plead guilty, prompting the judge in the case (John Sirica) to investigate what was going on.

In his obsession with controlling everything, Nixon's team was leaving too many clues and loose ends to made it easier to keep track of them to a certain extent, although it was neither an easy path nor difficulties. Let us remember that we are talking about a network that involves some of the most powerful people not only in the country, but in the planet.

The information provided by Felt, once verified, was published, so that public opinion became interested in the subject, and the tenant of the White House and his team began to feel the breath in their neck.

So, as Trump does now, Nixon went around smearing the press by calling the journalists investigating the matter liars and manipulators. We see that there is nothing new under the sun, it is only rediscovered.

In 1973, the US Senate established a commission of inquiry. Nixon was found to have authorized illegal recordings at the White House, and the Senate demanded his surrender, to which Nixon refused, claiming his immunity.

The scandal was already huge, and little by little the circle about the president. His initial refusal to hand over the tapes resulted in conspicuous public opinion, and that sectors of the Republican Party began to get nervous because of the wear and tear that this could report them.

When, finally, the Senate Investigative Commission was able to force the delivery of the tapes, they had been tampered with.

There were 18 minutes of conversations left, and that lack directly implicated Nixon, who had committed an illegality so that they could not reliably prove his guilt in illegal acts.

but exactly what acts? In July 1974, the case exploded definitively, and details of a conspiracy were known that went far beyond listening to the Democratic Party.

The commission finally forced, and after many acts of delay, the White House to hand over the tapes in their entirety. In these, it was clear that Nixon not only knew about the Watergate raid, but had ordered the cover-up.

With the more than feasible possibility of being dismissed, Nixon finally decided to throw in the towel and walk away in August 1974.

The image of him, saying goodbye with his arms raised in the victory sign, on the steps of the helicopter in the garden of the White House, became a posteriori icon of the case and of an entire epoch in the modern history of the United States.

Fotolia photos: Lyle Bryant / Harry Green

Issues in the Watergate Case