CREEP

Brilliant, even noble on the international front, Richard Nixon never won total trust and confidence at home. A vigorous, typically merciless political campaigner, Nixon had a reputation for stopping at nothing to crush his opponent. “Tricky Dick,” he was called, and never affectionately.

As the 1972 elections approached, there was little doubt that Nixon would be reelected. Henry Kissinger had announced that peace in Vietnam was “at hand,” international relations were dramatically improving, and Americans were generally loath to (in Lincoln’s homely phrase) change horses in midstream. Yet, oddly, none of this optimism was enough for the president. He directed his reelection organization, the Committee to Reelect the President—known (incredibly enough) by the acronym CREEP—to stack the deck even more thoroughly in his favor. The committee engaged in a campaign of espionage against the Democratic party and a program of dirty tricks aimed at smearing Democratic challengers.

Plumbers

On June 17, 1972, during the presidential campaign, five burglars were arrested in the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C. This was hardly front-page news—except that these burglars were really “Plumbers.” That’s what the White House secretly called the men, because their mission was to plug any leaks (security breaches) that developed or might develop in the aftermath of the publication of The Pentagon Papers. The Plumbers served the Nixon administration as a kind of palace guard, assigned to do jobs that lay beyond the chief executive’s constitutional mandate. One such job involved planting electronic bugs (listening devices) at the headquarters of the political opposition.

The five Plumbers included three anti-Castro Cuban refugees, all veterans of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, and James McCord, Jr., former CIA agent and now “security” officer for CREEP. McCord reported directly to CREEP’s head, Nixon’s campaign manager, U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell. In a slapstick security faux pas, one of the burglars carried in his pocket an address book with the name of E. Howard Hunt. A former CIA agent (he’d been in charge of the Bay of Pigs operation) and writer of spy novels, Hunt was assistant to Charles Colson, special counsel to President Nixon. Hunt’s address? “The White House.”

What President Nixon tried to dismiss as a “third-rate burglary” pointed to conspiracy at the very highest levels of government. In September, the burglars and two co-plotters—Hunt and former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy, CREEP’s general counsel—were indicted on charges of burglary, conspiracy, and wiretapping. After their convictions, Nixon’s aides, one after the other, began to talk.

All the President’s Men

Despite the arrests and early revelations, President Nixon won reelection, but soon after he began his second term, the Watergate conspiracy rapidly unraveled. As each of the “president’s men” gave testimony to federal authorities, the conspiracy tightened around Nixon’s inner circle. In February 1973, the Senate created an investigative committee headed by North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin, Jr. As the Army-McCarthy Hearings had done two decades earlier, so the Watergate Hearings riveted Americans to their television sets. After each key disclosure, the president announced the resignation of an important aide, including John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman, his closest advisors. Nixon’s counsel, John W. Dean III, was dismissed. Patiently, persistently, and with the cunning of a country lawyer educated at Harvard, the drawling Ervin elicited testimony revealing crimes far beyond Watergate:

that Mitchell controlled secret monies used to finance a campaign of forged letters and false news items intended to damage the Democratic party

that major U.S. corporations had made illegal campaign contributions amounting to millions

that Hunt and Liddy had in 1971 burglarized the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in order to discredit The Pentagon Papers whistle blower

that a plan existed to physically assault Ellsberg

that Nixon had promised the Watergate burglars clemency and even bribes in return for silence

that L. Patrick Gray, Nixon’s nominee to replace the recently deceased J. Edgar Hoover as head of the FBI, turned over FBI records on Watergate to White House counsel John Dean

that two Nixon cabinet members, Mitchell and Maurice Stans, took bribes from shady financier John Vesco

that illegal wiretap tapes were in the White House safe of Nixon advisor John Ehrlichman

that Nixon directed the CIA to instruct the FBI not to investigate Watergate

that Nixon used $ 10 million in government funds to improve his personal homes

that during 1969-70, the U.S. had secretly bombed Cambodia without the knowledge (let alone consent) of Congress

In the midst of all this turmoil, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew was indicted for bribes he had taken as Maryland governor. He resigned as vice president in October 1973 and was replaced by Congressman Gerald Ford of Michigan. Finally, it was revealed that President Nixon had covertly taped White House conversations; the tapes were subpoenaed, but the president claimed “executive privilege” and withheld them. Nixon ordered Elliot L. Richardson (who had replaced the disgraced John Mitchell as attorney general) to fire special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox. On October 20, 1973, Richardson refused and resigned in protest; his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, likewise refused and was fired. The duty to discharge Cox fell to Nixon’s solicitor general, Robert H. Bork, and this “Saturday night massacre” served only to suggest that Nixon had much to hide.

At length, the president released transcripts of some of the White House tapes (containing 18 1/2 minutes of suspicious gaps), and on July 27-30, the House Judiciary Committee recommended that Nixon be impeached on three charges: obstruction of justice, abuse of presidential powers, and attempting to impede the impeachment process by defying committee subpoenas. Nixon released the remaining tapes on August 5, 1974, which revealed that he bad taken steps to block the FBI’s inquiry into the Watergate burglary. On August 9, 1974, Richard Milhous Nixon became the first president in U.S. history to resign from office.

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