“He is humorless to the point of being inhumane. He is devious. He is vacillating. He is profane. He is willing to be led. He displays dismaying gaps in knowledge. He is suspicious of his staff. His loyalty is minimal,” wrote The Chicago Tribune, a newspaper that had supported Nixon, following Nixon’s resignation.
President Richard Nixon, who carried 49 states in winning a second term just 21 months earlier, had resigned from office on August 9th, 1974 following an astounding 69 indictments and 48 convictions in the runious unveilings of the Watergate scandal.
The Watergate story
The summer of 1972 saw the arrest of four burglars, found stealing documents and tapping phones inside the Watergate Hotel complex, a five-star luxury hotel popular with members of Congress and governmental personnel in Washington D.C.
Surprisingly, the culprits had been “formerly active in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) activities against Fidel Castro in Cuba.”
Information on “lock-picks and door jimmies, almost $2,300 in cash, most of it in $100 bills with the serial numbers in sequence,” appeared on The Washington Post the next morning, with writers being two unacknowledged young reporters new to the Post – Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward – along with the more experienced Alfred E. Lewis.
Early mainstream media reporting of the incident was limited due to successful White House campaigns to deter any public reporting of Nixon’s affiliation. In fact, Watergate’s chief prosecutor James Neal “was sure that Nixon had known advance of the break-in.”
According to Neal, Nixon reacted skeptical and “somewhat surprised” when told about the incident. “I can say categorically that … no one in the White House staff, no one in this Administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident,” Nixon affirmed a few days after the event, noting that the “Dean had conducted thorough investigations of the burglary.” However, it would be later revealed that no official investigation was conducted at all.
Publicizing secrets and the role of ‘Deep Throat’
In the following days, investigators identified newly appointed staff of the White House, E. Howard Hunt was responsible for the burglar’s recruitment. The aftermath of Hunt’s unraveling prompted the White House to scramble into a two-year-long cover-up campaign.
Gradually, though relying on anonymous sources, Woodward and Bernstein would “connect the dots of a likely cover-up attempt” – speculations that would be further researched in depth by the CIA, FBI, and the Justice Department.
One of the most significant anonymous sources derived from a nicknamed anonymous individual: Deep Throat. Woodward would later confirm the individual to be then deputy director of the FBI Mark Felt.
Felt’s involvement revealed crucial evidence to investigators. Meeting with Woodward undercover several times, Felt detailed the White House and Hunt’s direct involvement in the break-in and the stakes Nixon’s administration would face if the truth were to be uncovered. Alongside The Washington Post, Felt also revealed this information to publications like The Washington Daily News and Time magazine.
In April, after the forced resignation, indictments, and ultimate sentencing of Nixon’s two closest aides, H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, the “smoking gun” tapes’ release to the public provided a solid source of Nixon’s attempted coverup. The tape illustrated Nixon’s conversations about “formulating a plan to block FBI investigations by having the CIA falsely claim that national security was involved.” In 1974, a grand jury indicted several other aides of Nixon and took legal action against members of the Nixon administration.
Amidst the piling of evidence and unraveling of tapes, the public media and political community would call for an urgent Nixon’s resignation and impeachment. “Nixon had turned his White House, to a remarkable extent, into a criminal enterprise,” Bernstein and Woodward later wrote.
“I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first,” Nixon exclaimed in his televised resignation speech.
Lessons from Watergate
Initially, media outlets “failed to interpret the scandal’s implications” under heavy restrictions imposed by White House campaigns which ran secret funds to distribute false and “incorrectly discreted articles.”
Nonetheless, it was up to Bernstein, Woodward, and The Washington Post’s heroic reporting which unfolded the truth we know today and all received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1974 for their work.
Meanwhile, public distrust in media polled at a historical high of 40%. While legitimacy was attempted to be re-established after strengthening the Federal Freedom of Information Act of 1974 and the Government in the Sunshine Act for open-door meetings, discrepancies between the public’s attitudes towards the press and Nixon’s administration only grew following further dissatisfaction from the Vietnam War.
Watergate would mark a major stepping stone of the US government’s internal hypocrisy and the dangerous consequences of maneuverd media. The incident would spark increased tightness of journalism regulation and the need for reliable investigative reporting to keep the government accountable. However, as of June 24, 2024, Pew Research Center revealed roughly two-in-ten (22%) Americans say they trust the government. The percentage drops to 9% among America’s youth.
However, CNN’s Nicole Hemmer warns against viewing Watergate as a “model” for the power of investigative journalism to uncover the truth. Hemmer corroborates the discrepancies and unjustified convictions of many later US presidents, including Reagan’s “secret arms deals in violation of their own embargo,” Cliton’s financial dealings, and more recently, Trump’s impeachment case. Clearly, established tools of accountability from Watergate seem to have lost their effect when addressing just as significant, if not more controversial incidents.
Hemmer concludes that Watergate should be embraced as the “exception” in journalism, with large portions of “creativity and luck involved.” Hence, at present, the best way to commemorate the event’s 50th anniversary is to “do the hard work of building new systems of political accountability to serve Americans in the future.”
Written by Julia Jiang
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