As of December 31, 2014, I retired from full-time teaching in Humboldt State University's Department of History. While this website will remain online, it is no longer maintained.

History 111 - Dr. Gayle Olson-Raymer

Watergate Chronology

1968 Richard Milhouse Nixon (Republican) was elected president on a pledge of ending the war.

1970 A White House Special Investigations Unit was established, known as the "Plumbers". This secret group investigated the private lives of Nixon's critics and political enemies. Nixon was reported to have a "hate list", containing the names of many Democrats, including James Reston, Jack Anderson, Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand and Paul Newman.

1971 Voice-activated tape recorders were installed in the Oval Office.

1972 On May 28, bugging equipment was installed at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington DC. This was the first Watergate burglary.

• On June 17, five burglars - Hunt, Barker, Gonzalez, Martinez, and Sturgis - were arrested during a break-in at the Watergate.
• On August 30, Nixon claimed that White House counsel John Dean had conducted an investigation into the Watergate matter and found that no-one from the White House was involved.
• On September 15, the first indictments in Watergate were handed down on five burglars.

1973 On January 8, the first trial relating to the Watergate breakin began and was presided over by Judge John Sirica.

• By January 15, the five burglars plead guilty.
• On January 30, G. Gordon Liddy and Frank McCord, both of whom were aides to President Nixon and pleaded not guilty, were convicted on all counts.
• On February 7, the Senate voted (77-0) to create the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities chaired by Senator Sam Ervin (Democrat, North Carolina).
• In March, McCord wrote a letter to Judge Sirica claiming that the defendants had pleaded guilty under duress; that they had committed perjury; and that others were involved in the Watergate break-in. He claimed that the burglars lied at the urging of John Dean, Counsel to the President, and John Mitchell, the Attorney-General. These allegations of a cover-up and obstruction of justice by the highest law officers in the land blew Watergate wide open.
• On April 6, John Dean, the White House Counsel, began co-operating with the Watergate prosecutors.
• On April 17 an official statement from the White House claims Nixon had no prior knowledge of the Watergate affair. Several days later, Nixon asked Dean to prepare a report about the Watergate affair.
• On April 30, Nixon appeared on national television for his first denial on White House involvement in Watergate. He also announced Dean's and H. R. Haldeman (President's Chief of Staff) and John Erlichman's (Presidential Assistant for Domestic Affairs) resignations, describing them as two of his "closest advisers". The Attorney-General, Richard Kleindienst, also resigned and was replaced by Elliot Richardson.
• On May 17, the Senate Watergate Committee begins public hearings and Archibald Cox was appointed Special Watergate Prosecutor.
• On June 25 when testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee, Dean claimed that Nixon was involved in the cover-up of the Watergate burglary within days in June 1972. In a seven-hour opening statement, Dean detailed a program of political espionage activities conducted by the White House in recent years.
• On July 7, Nixon told the Senate Committee that he would not testify before it and would not grant access to Presidential documents, claiming Executive Privilege - the right of the president and other members of the executive branch to refuse to comply with orders from both other branches, legislative and judicial, to produce requested information. (It allows holders of high offices to protect certain communications that presumably would compromise national security or harm the national interest should they be made public. Executive privilege was not explicitly granted by the U.S. Constitution but has evolved over the years since George Washington first refused to produce for the House of Representatives documents involved in negotiating Pinckney's Treaty with Great Britain. This was the starting point for the executive branch to successfully challenge other branches of government from hindering executive functions by micromanaging and perhaps infringing upon rights that were given exclusively to the executive branch.)
• On July 16, the Senate Committee learned of the White House taping system. A protracted legal battle began between the White House, the Congress and the Special Prosecutor.
• On July 23, the Senate Committee and Archibald Cox demand that Nixon hand over a range of White House tapes and documents. Nixon refused and, in turn, the Committee subpoenas several tapes.
• On August 9, the Committee takes legal action against Nixon for failure to comply with the subpoena.
• On August 15, Nixon delivered a second Address to the Nation on Watergate, claiming "executive privilege" for the tapes and arguing that he should not have to hand them over. Archibald Cox and the Senate Watergate committee requested that the Supreme Court instruct Nixon to surrender the tapes.
• On October 12, Nixon nominated Gerald Ford, Republican Minority leader in the House of Representatives, as vice-president, following the resignation of Spiro Agnew on bribery and tax evasion charges.
• On October 19, Nixon offered a compromise to the Senate Watergate Committee, proposing that the Democratic Senator from Mississippi, John Stennis, be permitted to listen to the tapes and prepare summaries for Special Prosecutor Cox. The compromise was rejected. In a series of events that became known as the Saturday Night Massacre, Nixon ordered his Attorney-General, Elliot Richardson, to fire Archibald Cox. Richardson refused and resigned in protest. Nixon ordered the deputy Attorney-General, William Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus refused and was fired. Robert Bork, the Solicitor-General, acting as Attorney-General, fired Cox.
• On October 23, under immense pressure, Nixon agreed to comply with the subpoena and released some of the tapes.
• On November 1, Leon Jaworski was named as the new Watergate Special Prosecutor.
• On November 21, a gap of 18 and a half minutes was discovered on the tape of the conversation between Nixon and Haldeman on June 20, 1972. Electronics experts reported that the gap was the result of at least 5 separate erasures. Nixon's secretary, Rose MaryWoods, denied deliberately erasing the tape.

1974 Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein published their investigative report of the Watergate scandal. In All the President's Men, they described their source as holding an extremely sensitive position in the executive branch, and as one "who could be contacted only on very important occasions." Dubbed "Deep Throat" after a popular porn film at the time, the source encouraged Woodward and Bernstein to "follow the money" and confirmed or denied reports from other sources.

• On March 1, the Watergate Seven were indicted - all of whom were advisors and aides to President Nixon who were - for their role in the Watergate scandal. The grand jury also named Nixon an unindicted co-conspirator. The indictments marked the first time in U.S. history that a president was so named. Consequences were announced in early 1975 and were as follows:
  • John N. Mitchell - former United States Attorney General and director of Nixon's 1968 and 1972 election campaigns. Mitchell was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury and sentenced to two and a half to eight years in prison, which was later reduced to one to four years; Mitchell actually served 19 months.
  • H. R. Haldeman - White House chief of staff, considered the second most powerful man in the government during Nixon's first term. Haldeman was convicted of conspiracy and obstruction of justice and received an 18-month prison sentence.
  • John Ehrlichman - former assistant to Nixon in charge of domestic affairs. Ehrlichman was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, perjury and other charges; he served 18 months in prison.
  • Charles Colson - former White House counsel specializing in political affairs; pleaded nolo contendere on June 3, 1974 to one charge of obstruction of justice, having persuaded prosecution to change the charge from one of which he believed himself innocent to another of which he believed himself guilty, in order to testify freely. Colson was sentenced to 1 to 3 years of prison and fined $5,000; Colson served seven months.
  • Gordon C. Strachan - White House aide to Haldeman. Charges against him were dropped before trial.
  • Robert Mardian - aide to Mitchell and counsel to the Committee to Re-elect the President in 1972Mardian was convicted but his conviction was overturned on appeal.
  • Kenneth Parkinson - counsel for the Committee to Re-elect the President. Parkinson was acquitted at trial.
• Nixon gives his "I am not a crook" speech.
• On April 16, Special Prosecutor Jaworski issued a subpoena for 64 White House tapes. Nixon refused to hand over the tapes, but provided more edited transcripts to the Judiciary Committee. There was public shock at the general tone of the conversations and the foul language used by Nixon and others. The expression "expletive deleted" entered the American vocabulary.
• On May 9, Impeachment hearings begin in House Judiciary Committee.
• On July 24, the Supreme Court, (United States v. Nixon) in a unanimous vote of 8-0 (William Rehnquist abstaining) upheld the Special Prosecutor's subpoena, ordering Nixon to make the tapes available for the Watergate trials of his former subordinates.
• On July 27, the House Judiciary Committee adopted the first Article of Impeachment ( 27-11 with 7 Republicans voting with the Democrats). The Article charged Nixon with obstructing the Watergate investigation. Two days later, the Committee adopted the second Article of Impeachment charging Nixon with misuse of power and violation of his oath of office. The next day, the Committee adopted the third Article of Impeachment, charging Nixon with failure to comply with the House subpoenas.
• On August 5, Nixon released transcripts of 3 conversations he had with Haldeman 6 days after the Watergate break-in and released three more tapes. These sources showed that Nixon knew of the involvement of White House officials and CREEP; that he ordered a cover-up of the Watergate burglary on June 23rd 1972, 6 days after the break-in; and that he ordered the FBI to abandon its investigation of the break-in.
• On August 8, in a televised address to the nation at 9pm, Nixon announced that he would resign. The next morning, Nixon left the White House by helicopter.
• On August 9, around noon, Gerald Ford became the 38th president. Later, he nominated the former Republican Governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, as vice-president. They became the nation's first unelected presidential duo.
• On September 8, Ford granted a "full free and absolute" pardon to Nixon for "all offenses against the United States" committed between January 20, 1969 and August 9, 1974.

2002 - In April, former White House Counsel John Dean announced that he would reveal the name of "Deep Throat" when releasing a book about the Watergate scandal in July, 2002.

2005 - In May, an article in Vanity Fair revealed that W. Mark Felt, the FBI's second ranking official during the Watergate years, was Deep Throat. In public statements following the disclosure of his identity, Felt's family called him an "American hero," stating that he leaked information about the Watergate scandal to the Washington Post for moral and patriotic reasons. Most commentators and historians familiar with the details of the Watergate history feel that Felt's contributions were vital in exposing the illegal actions and cover-ups of the Nixon White House.

Most important lesson to remember about Watergate:

1. The Watergate break-in was no ordinary robbery: The prowlers were connected to President Richard Nixon's reelection campaign, and they were caught while attempting to wiretap phones and steal secret documents.
2. While historians are not sure whether Nixon knew about the Watergate espionage operation before it happened, they are absolutely clear that he took steps to cover it up after it happened.
3. Nixon's cover up activities included raising "hush money" for the burglars, trying to stop the FBI from investigating the crime, destroying evidence, lying to the American people, and firing uncooperative staff members.
4. Congress recommended three articles of impeachment - obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress - but before Congress members could vote to impeach Nixon, he resigned in August 1974. His successor, Gerald Ford, immediately pardoned Nixon for all the crimes he "committed or may have committed" while in office.
5. Although Nixon was never prosecuted, some of Nixon’s aides were not so lucky: 69 government officials were charged and 48 were found guilty of very serious offenses and sent to federal prison.
6. The Watergate scandal changed American politics forever, leading many Americans to think more critically about the presidency. Nixon's abuse of presidential power had a negative effect on American political life, creating an atmosphere of cynicism and distrust. While many Americans had been deeply dismayed by the outcomes of the Vietnam War, Watergate added further disappointment in a national climate already soured by the difficulties and losses of the past decade.
7. Nixon never admitted to any criminal wrongdoing, although he did acknowledge using poor judgment. This leads us to our final, and perhaps most important lesson - Watergate was about the arrogance of power and the age old knowledge that power corrupts. The president, his advisors, and those who worked for him were not just full of themselves, they also thought that the ends justified the means. Thus, they believed that they could get away with illegal wiretappings, break-ins, and targeting their political enemies because they controlled the levers of power.
   • And how was this arrogance of power revealed - through the mechanisms of the check and balances our Founding Fathers designed. Indeed, Congress and the courts asserted themselves and proved them wrong.
   • And today, in the 21st Century, what should we remember about this arrogance of power? Fred Thompson - assistant U.S. Attorney during the early years of the Nixon presidency and Representative from Tennessee in the U.S. Senate from 1994 to 2003 - tells us that we must always be vigilant:

     "We make a mistake when we build a moral fence around Watergate. It was, indeed, unprecedented in many ways, and the ugly array of crimes, misplaced loyalties, immaturity, and hubris speaks for itself. But Watergate is more about the frailties of man and his tendency to abuse power than it is about the unique evil of a small group of people at one time in history".