What Was Watergate?

I’m Mr. Beat Today, whenever the suffix “-gate” is

at the end of something, ya know it’s bad, man.

Travelgate Coingate

Climategate Nipplegate

Bountygate Gamergate

Deflategate Pizzagate

Sharpiegate Slapgate

Fartgate

Basically, if gate is at the end of a noun, it suggests there might be some widespread

scandal or controversy going on.

For example, let’s take Fartgate.

Yes, this was a real…thing.

So the controversy was that someone clearly farted on air when MSNBC’s Chris Matthews

was interviewing Congressman Eric Swalwell, but to this day NO ONE has admitted to doing

the farting.

For the record, I think it was Swalwell who farted.

Anyway, how did this whole adding “gate” to the end of a noun to describe a scandal

or controversy begin?

Well that’s simple.

It was the Watergate scandal.

Steven: What was the Watergate scandal?

Mr. Beat: You really want to know?

Steven: Yes!

Mr. Beat: You really think you can handle this?

Steven: Yes!

Mr. Beat: (turning to camera) Fine.

Let’s do this.

Here’s the story of the Watergate scandal.

Once upon a time…well on June 17, 1972, to be exact, five men broke into the Democratic

National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D.C.

Steven: Oh is that why it’s called “Watergate?”

Mr. Beat: Yes that’s why it’s called “Watergate.”

Anyway, the five men tried to set up a wiretap and photograph confidential Democratic Party

documents.

Well, Forrest Gump called up a Watergate security guard named Frank Wills and told him about

it.

Just kidding.

That was just a movie.

Forrest Gump is not real.

He’s a fake.

He’s never existed.

He’s made up.

Fabricated.

But Tom Hanks is real, and thank goodness for that.

Anyway, Frank Wills actually noticed tape covering the latches on some of Watergate’s

doors, which allowed the doors to close but stay unlocked.

He called the police, and they promptly came and arrested the men.

Little did most know that these men were connected with the Committee for the Re-Election of

the President, or the CRP, or CREEP.

Steven: Excuse me, did you call me a creep?

Mr. Beat: No I did not.

What the heck are you doin’ here?

Steven: I don’t belong here

The CRP was, officially, a fundraising organization to get Richard Nixon re-elected.

Unofficially, they did all kinds of illegal stuff.

Ya know, stuff like breaking into Democratic National Committee headquarters.

The five men arrested were Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker, James McCord, Eugenio Martínez,

and Frank Sturgis.

Four of them were Cuban exiles.

They were charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of communications,

basically tryna spy and stuff.

Three reporters at the Washington Post: Alfred Lewis, Carl Bernstein, and Bob Woodward, covered

the arrests, but later Bernstein and Woodward decided to do a little more digging, and soon

discovered that two other dudes were involved with the burglary: Everette Howard Hunt, a

former CIA officer, and George Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent.

Huh.

And both were creeps!

I mean, both worked for CREEP, or the CRP, or the Committee for the Re-Election of the

President!

And so did James McCord!

As a matter of fact, Bernstein and Woodward also discovered that the four Cuban exiles

who broke into Watergate had previously worked with the CIA...with Hunt in particular.

Well, Bernstein and Woodward had a little help.

A mysterious person began providing them important information.

Sometimes he called, and sometimes Woodward would meet him in a dark parking garage.

The person claimed he was an FBI agent himself and a Washington Post editor later jokingly

referred to him simply as “Deep Throat.”

Steven: Deep Throat?

Mr. Beat: Hey watch your mouth, sonny boy

Soon everyone was calling him Deep Throat.

As it turns out, the FBI had an investigation into the Watergate break-in, too, and boy

was it juicy.

For starters, they had found a check made out to the CRP for $25,000 actually deposited

in the bank accounts of one of the Watergate burglars, Bernard Baker.

Soon the FBI and Bernstein and Woodward had also found out that Hunt and Liddy were destroying

all evidence that linked the five men who broke into Watergate to not only the CRP,

but to President Richard Nixon himself.

Oh, and the higher ups were involved.

Liddy’s boss, Jeb Magruder?

In on the cover up.

Even John freaking Mitchell.

I mean John N. Mitchell, who not only led the CRP, but was recently the Attorney General

in the Nixon administration, was in on the cover up.

There’s no way to know that Nixon himself knew that the CRP did all these shady things,

but once he found out that the CRP was connected to Watergate, he worked with his chief of

staff, Bob Haldeman, to cover it up.

Steven: Wouldn’t that make things worse?

Mr. Beat: Abso-lutely

Once Nixon and his administration realized the press were looking into them being involved

with the Watergate break-in, they immediately began to distance themselves.

Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, said the President had no comment on a “third-rate

burglary attempt.”

Nixon ran a public relations campaign to insist he nor his administration, nor even the CRP

were connected at all.

John Mitchell went as far as having his wife kind of kidnapped so she wouldn’t talk to

the press about what she knew about the break-in.

I’m serious.

Now, Nixon was obviously more concerned about the FBI investigation, and especially more

concerned that the FBI was apparently working with Bernstein and Woodward.

He met with Haldeman and told him to have the CIA pressure the FBI into dropping its

Watergate investigation.

Oh this was a recorded conversation, by the way.

It was on tape!

Crazy enough, the FBI went along with it…for a little while at least.

And while Bernstein and Woodward never lost focus, continuing to publish stories describing

the CRP’s dirty tricks, most of the media did lose focus, and Nixon easily won re-election

in November.

The Watergate break-in had hardly any effect on the presidential election of 1972.

But despite the landslide victory for Nixon, Watergate wasn’t going to fade away any

time soon.

Around the same time Nixon was inaugurated, the trial of the Watergate burglars began,

with Judge John Sirica presiding.

Nixon had a close eye on the trial, meeting with his advisors, the Johns, about concerns

that the dudes on trial might speak to the press.

John Dean, the White House Counsel, and John Ehrilichman, the Assistant to the President

for Domestic Affairs.

On January 30, 1973, the Watergate burglars plead guilty or were convicted for conspiracy,

burglary, and violation of federal wiretapping laws.

Judge Sirica, however, suspected there was a major cover-up, and that the CRP or the

President had to know all about the Watergate break-in.

His suspicions were confirmed after James McCord wrote a letter to him implicating Nixon

and his advisors in the cover-up.

Nixon was like “I knew one of them would try this crap!” and called an emergency

meeting with John Dean again.

Dean urged Nixon to come clean, that the only way to keep everyone else quiet was to pay

them off with a million dollars.

Nixon replied

And this is on tape.

This is on tape.

Steven: It’s on tape?

Mr. Beat: It’s on tape

Nixon replied: “You could get a million dollars.

And you could get it in cash.

I know where it could be gotten.”

In other words, Nixon had no intention of ever coming clean on this.

Nixon later tried to make it seem he was kidding, but regardless when it was clear Dean wasn’t

going along with Nixon, Nixon fired him on April 30, 1973.

Well, Dean had been working with the FBI by that time, anyway.

Shortly afterward, even though Ehrlichman and Haldeman seemed to still be on board with

Nixon, they resigned…well… after Nixon pressured them to, and so did four other Nixon

advisors.

By now, top officials in the CRP like Jeb Magruder and even John Mitchell were facing

indictment, and to attempt to calm down the press, which all of sudden was now paying

close attention, Nixon announced that he was not involved with Watergate at all.

Well that didn’t ease the minds of the United States Senate.

In May, it formed the Watergate Committee, chaired by respected North Carolina senator

Sam Ervin.

Former Nixon aides told the committee that lots of crimes had happened before the 1972

election intended to undermine the president’s opponents.

Well Nixon appointed a Harvard law professor named Archibald Cox to lead a separate, independent

investigation.

In June, the Watergate Committee called in John Dean.

The Tennessee senator Howard Baker famously asked “What did the President know and when

did he know it?”

Dean spilled the beans.

He said he had talked with Nixon about the Watergate coverup many, many times, and that

Nixon refused to come clean about it.

Nixon was like, nah man, fake news.

Dean is making that stuff up.

But Americans soon found out that there was a new system in the White House that automatically

recorded everything in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room, so if Nixon was in on the Watergate

break-in or even if he just knew about it and was trying to cover it up, there could

be evidence of it in the recordings.

Archibald Cox, as well as the Senate, immediately subpoenaed the White House recordings.

However, Nixon refused to release them, citing his “executive privilege” as the president.

He even ordered Cox to drop his subpoena, but Cox refused.

In response, on Saturday, October 20, 1973, Nixon told his Attorney General Elliot Richardson

to fire Cox.

Well Richardson refused and immediately resigned.

So Nixon then told Richardson’s next in command, Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus

to fire him.

Well Ruckelshaus also refused and also resigned.

So Nixon then told Ruckelshaus’ next in command, Robert Bork, to fire him and Bork

was like, “ok fine I’ll fire him.”

This whole fiasco became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.

Steven: A massacre?

That doesn’t make Nixon very good, does it

Mr. Beat: No siree, and many Americans began to protest, and after lots of public pressure,

Nixon finally agreed to release the tapes.

Well, some of them at least.

Judge Sirica asked for nine tapes.

Nixon gave him seven, and one of those seven tapes…uh…had a big gap of 18 and a half

minutes on it that experts say could not have happened accidentally.

That was one of the conversations with…you probably guessed it…John Dean.

In November, Nixon made a now famous proclamation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh163n1lJ4M

Still, by early 1974, it seemed pretty clear that President Nixon had at least known about

the Watergate break-in and tried to cover it up.

There was just little solid evidence to prove it.

On March 1, 1974, a grand jury indicted seven former aides of Nixon, who later simply became

known as the “Watergate Seven.”

That group included the aforementioned John Mitchell, Bob Haldeman, and John Ehrlichman,

but additionally Charles Colson, Gordon Strachan, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson.

In April, the dude who took Cox’s place to investigate the Watergate break-in, Leon

Jaworski, had another subpoena ordering Nixon to release 64 additional tapes of his conversations

in the Oval Office.

Well, instead of releasing the tapes, Nixon just gave them edited transcripts of some

of the conversations.

Nixon even asked Judge John Sirica to reverse the subpoena, but Sirica denied the motion,

saying Nixon had until May 31st to turn over the tapes.

Well this turned into a major Supreme Court case called United States v. Nixon, and I

actually just released a Supreme Court Briefs video about it so feel free to watch that

now.

(to Steven) Say, have you watched it yet?

Steven: Watched what?

Mr. Beat: Nevermind, well long story short, Nixon lost that case

Not only had Nixon lost that case, but now it also looked like the House of Representatives

was going to impeach him on the charges of obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and

contempt of Congress.

Woahness.

Not only that, Bernstein and Woodward had now even published an entire book that went

over their reporting into the whole Watergate Scandal that later became a movie.

By August, 57% of Americans wanted Nixon removed from office.

Feeling the pressure like never before, and worried about further disgrace, Nixon announced

his resignation on August 8, 1974.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_DrUaJEBtE&t He became the first and to this date only

president in American history to quit the job.

The man who replaced him as President, Gerald Ford, later gave him a full pardon, so Nixon

never faced any criminal punishment.

For the rest of his life, he maintained his innocence.

But others in his administration?

Yeah that’s a different story.

In total, 69 people were indicted and 48 people convicted for either participating in, aiding

in, or covering up information about the Watergate break-in.

Again, MANY of these folks were top Nixon administration officials.

Some top dogs even ended up serving prison time.

Most of the 48 convicted served prison time.

Congress moved to further reduce the power of the Presidency, passing laws like the Privacy

Act and creating committees to oversee the shenanigans of executive branch agencies.

In 2005, Americans learned that “Deep Throat,” ya know, the dude who provided Bernstein and

Woodward all the important information for their reporting, was an FBI agent named Mark

Felt.

Steven: So his real name wasn’t Deep Throat?

Mr. Beat: I’m afraid not.

The Watergate Scandal is arguably the biggest political scandal in American history.

It led to a major setback for the Republican Party, especially as they lost many seats

in Congress in the 1974 midterm elections.

Watergate dramatically increased cynicism and distrust of the federal government, which

had already been on the rise due to its lies revolving around the Vietnam War.

But it also proved that the American system of checks and balances actually worked.

The judicial and legislative branches were able to fight corruption within the executive

branch, and ever since the Presidents have been a bit more cautious, I’d argue.

Well, most of them have been a bit more cautious.

We’ll leave it at that.

Hey, want to learn a whole lot more about Watergate?

Well I have two suggestions.

First, you gotta check out the book All the President’s Men and the film based on it.

Second, I strongly suggest watching this wonderful documentary called Nixon In The Den, which

is exclusively available through MagellanTV.

It features a fresh look at Watergate with rare, behind-the-scenes footage.

But once you’re done watching Nixon In The Den, why stop there?

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mobile device, compatible with Roku, AmazonFireTV, AppleTV, Google Play, and iOS.

An annual membership is less than $60, but viewers of my channel will get a one-month

free trial by clicking on the link in the description of this video.

So if Watergate happened today, how would Americans react to it?

I tend to think it’d be quite a bit different as we were a lot less partisan in the 1970s,

but let me know in those comments.Hey if you’re watching this video right now and you’re

looking for a free tutor or if you want to tutor yourself, check out Connect Me, a non

profit organization meant to help students grades K-8.

They’re doing great work.

I’ve put a link in the description for you to check them out.

Thanks to my brother Steven for helping me make this video, and thank YOU for watching.