The Watergate Scandal

Watergate Political scandals are not strangers to the United

States. They date back as far as 1830, with the presidential

sex scandal and Thomas Jefferson, and in 1875 with the

Whiskey Ring and President Ulysses S. Grant (Time and

Again 1). Today we have the Iran-Contra affair with Ronald

Reagan and Whitewater with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Even

with these, it can be argued that Watergate could possibly be

the worst scandal in the history of the United States. Richard

Milihous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States,

and the only President to ever resign his office. He was born

the second of five sons, in Yorba Linda, California. His

parents were Francis Anthony and Hannah Milhous Nixon.

His career started in 1945 when he accepted the candidacy

for a seat in the 12th congressional district which he won. He

was elected to United States Congress in 1946, he then

entered into the Senate as the youngest member ever in

1951. Only a short two years later he became the second

youngest vice-president in history at the age of thirty nine. He

served two terms as vice President under President Dwight D.

Eisenhower. In 1969 he won his bid for the

Presidency(Kinsella 3). The Iran-contra affair was more of a

U.S. foreign policy affair. This scandal came about in

November of 1986 when President Ronald Reagan admitted

to the selling of arms to Iran. The overall goal was to improve

relations with Iran, but it soon came to light that it was more of

a trade of arms for hostages deal. Later it was found that

some of the profits from the sale of the arms to Iran went to

the Nicaraguan "contra" rebels. On Dec.24, 1992, President

George Bush pardoned all the people involved with the

scandal and no charges were filed against Ronald Reagan

(Iran-contra 1). The latest of all scandals is the Whitewater

affair. The Whitewater affair is an ongoing investigation into a

bad Arkansas real-estate adventure in the late 1970, and its

connection with the now defunct Arkansas savings and loan

company, and with President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary.

The Whitewater development company started in 1979 and

had the investors Bill Clinton, the Governor of Arkansas, his

wife Hillary Rodham Clinton, a attorney for the Rose law firm,

James B. McDougal the owner of the Madison Guaranty

Savings and Loan. The group purchased some land which

later turn...

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...dless of population, is the only

part that can remove the president (Farnsworth 8). Although

the tapes played a major part in obtaining President Nixon's

resignation, legal actions taken by the President managed to

keep all but the forty hours of tapes from being released

before his death twenty years later (Secret 1974 1). It is now

some twenty five years after the beginning of Watergate, and

the Nixon tapes are still making the news. In a recent court

battle, the Nixon family lost their fight to keep the remaining

tapes sealed. The National Archives have just released some

two hundred hours of tapes, one which has President Nixon

telling his chief of staff H.R. Haldeman to break into the

Brookings Institution to remove documents concerning the

Vietnam War. The publisher of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel

Ellsberg and former Pentagon analyst, had several

colleagues that worked at the Brooking Institution. Although

there was never any record of a break-in at the Brookings

institution, all of this is just one more piece of evidence of the

many illegal acts that accompanied the Watergate scandal,

and was thought of or performed by the Nixon

Administration(Mercury I).