Nixon and Watergate » The Watergate Break-In and Cover-Up

Why did Watergate happen? Nixon's fear of opponents

Richard Nixon, a Republican, became President in January 1969. He was clever and hard-working, but he was also deeply suspicious. He believed that the press, anti-war protesters and many government officials were out to destroy him.

His past explains some of this. In 1960 he lost the presidential election to John F. Kennedy by fewer than 120,000 votes out of nearly 69 million. In 1968 he won, but only by about half a million votes. The Democrats still controlled Congress. Nixon was determined that the 1972 election would not be close.

Two events in 1971 show how far the White House was ready to go:

• The 'Plumbers'. In June 1971 the New York Times began printing the Pentagon Papers, a secret government study of the Vietnam War. It had been leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, a former defence analyst. Nixon was furious. A secret White House team was set up to stop leaks, which is why they were nicknamed the 'Plumbers'. In September 1971 they broke into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist in California, looking for information to damage him. They found nothing useful.
• The 'enemies list'. Nixon's staff drew up a list of opponents, including politicians, journalists and actors. A memo of August 1971 by John Dean, the White House lawyer, asked how they could 'use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies'.

So before Watergate, the men around Nixon had already broken the law and treated opponents as enemies to be crushed.

Key terms:

• Watergate Scandal: the break-in at the Democratic Party's offices in June 1972 and the attempt by the White House to hide its links to it.
• CREEP: the nickname of the Committee to Re-elect the President, which ran Nixon's 1972 campaign.
• Bug: a hidden microphone used to listen in secretly to telephone calls or conversations.
• Cover-up: an attempt to hide the truth about a crime or mistake.
• Hush money: money paid to people to keep them quiet.
• Obstruction of justice: the crime of getting in the way of a police or court investigation.

CREEP and the 1972 campaign

In 1971 Nixon's supporters set up the Committee to Re-elect the President. Its opponents called it CREEP. From March 1972 it was led by John Mitchell, who gave up his job as Attorney General (the government's chief law officer) to run it.

Two former 'Plumbers' now worked on this side of the campaign: Gordon Liddy, who had been in the FBI, and Howard Hunt, who had been in the CIA. Liddy drew up a plan to spy on the Democrats. A cut-down version, costing about 250,000 dollars, was given the go-ahead. It included bugging the headquarters of the Democratic Party in the Watergate building in Washington DC.

The break-in, 17 June 1972

In late May 1972 a team broke into the Democratic offices and planted bugs on telephones. One bug did not work, so they went back.

In the early hours of 17 June 1972 a security guard, Frank Wills, noticed tape holding a door lock open. He called the police. At about 2.30 am, five men were arrested inside the Democratic offices. They wore suits and rubber gloves and carried cameras, bugging equipment and new 100-dollar notes.

The links to Nixon's campaign appeared quickly:

• One burglar, James McCord, was CREEP's head of security and had worked for the CIA.
• Address books belonging to two of the burglars contained Howard Hunt's name and a White House telephone number.
• The FBI traced the burglars' cash back to money given to CREEP.

There is no evidence that Nixon ordered the break-in or knew about it beforehand. His crime was what came next.

The cover-up

The White House had a choice: admit that campaign workers had broken the law, or hide the link. It chose to hide it. An honest investigation might also have uncovered the Plumbers and the dirty tricks, and the election was less than five months away.

Did it work? At first, yes. In September 1972 only seven men were charged: the five burglars, Hunt and Liddy. Most Americans took little notice. On 7 November 1972 Nixon beat the Democrat George McGovern in a landslide, winning 49 of the 50 states and more than 60 per cent of the votes. In January 1973 all seven men pleaded guilty or were found guilty. It looked as if the story had ended with them.

The result shows how needless the break-in was: Nixon would have won easily without it. But the cover-up now rested on lies, secret payments and the silence of men facing long prison sentences. How it fell apart is covered in Nixon's Resignation and Ford's Pardon.

Exam-style question

Extract A (a practice extract written for this lesson, in the style of a modern history book)

The Watergate break-in was a farce from start to finish. The burglars, grown men in business suits and rubber gloves, had already botched the job once and were back to mend a bug that did not work. They clumsily left tape on a door where any passing guard could see it. They were found hiding in an office, and address books left in their hotel rooms led investigators straight to the White House.

What impression does the author give about the Watergate break-in?

You must use Extract A to explain your answer. [6 marks]