What was Watergate?

In June 1972, five men were arrested breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington to photograph documents and repair wiretaps installed earlier. The connection to President Nixon's reelection campaign emerged through reporting by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein at the Washington Post, aided by an FBI source later identified as Mark Felt, and through federal investigation. The burglary itself was minor; the scandal was the cover-up, including hush money to the burglars, attempts to direct the CIA to obstruct the FBI investigation, and the destruction of evidence.

The decisive turn came with the revelation during Senate hearings that Nixon had recorded conversations in the Oval Office. He resisted producing the tapes on grounds of executive privilege, and in the Saturday Night Massacre of October 1973 he ordered the firing of the special prosecutor investigating him, prompting the attorney general and his deputy to resign rather than comply. In July 1974 a unanimous Supreme Court held in United States v. Nixon that executive privilege did not shield evidence in a criminal proceeding, and the tapes were released.

One recording, the so-called smoking gun tape from June 1972, captured Nixon approving the plan to use the CIA to block the FBI, establishing direct involvement in obstruction. Republican support collapsed, the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment, and Nixon resigned effective August 9, 1974, the only American president to do so. Gerald Ford pardoned him a month later. The scandal produced lasting institutional changes including campaign finance reform, the Ethics in Government Act, expanded Freedom of Information Act provisions, and the enduring habit of appending the suffix gate to subsequent scandals.