This week marks the 30th anniversary of the zenith of Watergate, when President Richard M. Nixon, the 37th President of the United States resigned in order to avoid impeachment proceedings. The resignation was a culminating point which began on the night of June 17, 1972 when the Democratic National Committee’s offices at the Watergate office building in downtown Washington D.C. were broken into by a group of men who had past ties to the FBI, and CIA. The “plumbers” as they were called sought to adjust listening devices that had been previously placed in the offices, as well as make copies of confidential documents and records. They were discovered when a security guard making his rounds came across duct tape, which the burglars had placed over door locks to keep them from closing.
Investigative reporters Woodward and Bernstein from the Washington Post covered the story which as the weeks went by was expanded and ultimately led to a secret “slush fund” controlled by Nixon’s old friend and U.S. Attorney General, John Mitchell. When Woodward and Bernstein asked the Attorney General for a response, they were instead barraged by threats and intimidation directed at the Washington Post and its Owner Martha Graham. The Post ran the story anyway.
The Watergate scandal was the most serious scandal that this nation ever saw in its history, besides the ‘break-in’, a series of crimes were documented and led straight to the White House; these included illegal wiretaps, conspiracy to obstruct justice, attempts to use the IRS to punish political opponents and liberal critics of the press, political ‘dirty tricks’ and corruption within the CIA and FBI. Among the dirty tricks the group sought to use was to damage the reputation of administration critics and activists like Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, that exposed the lies the administration was telling the American people as well as the truth not being told regarding the war being waged in Vietnam. Nixon resigned in disgrace but was eulogized at his funeral by a sitting president, Clinton, and other prominent politicians. G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent, who was the leader of the “plumbers” after serving time in jail went on to become a successful ultra conservative radio talk host, and lecturer. The security guard who saved the nation from what would have been a continuing pattern of illegality at the highest political level, Frank Wills, spent several years unemployed because no one would hire him—for fear of retribution from those in power. Toward the final years of his life he was working as a security guard for Georgetown University.
He died in near poverty, he was 52.
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We take note of some current Bush administration notables who were associated with the Nixon administration; Donald Rumsfeld was at the Department of Defense and headed the transition team after the Nixon resignation. Dick Cheney was an assistant under Rumsfeld. Paul Wolfowitz was at the Pentagon in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. George H. W. Bush, father of the current president and also a past U.S. president, was in 1974, Chairman of the National Republican Party.
V.S.
Posted August 11, 2004
URL: www.thecitizenfsr.org SM 2000-2004