Watergate

Watergate was the political scandal that began with the June 17, 1972 arrest of five men who broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and that ended with the resignation of President Richard Nixon on August 9, 1974. The investigation exposed a wider pattern of covert operations, illegal surveillance, and obstruction of justice directed from the White House.¹

The Burglars and the Intelligence Connection

The burglars and their supervisors were drawn from the intersection of the CIA, anti-Castro Cuban exile networks, and the Nixon campaign. E. Howard Hunt, a veteran CIA officer, and James McCord, a former CIA security official, organized the operation, and several of the burglars were Cuban exiles from the Bay of Pigs invasion milieu. Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy had earlier run the White House "Plumbers" unit, whose 1971 burglary of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist used disguises and equipment supplied by the CIA's Technical Services Division.¹²

Investigation and Resignation

Reporting in the Washington Post, an FBI investigation, and the Senate Watergate Committee revealed a secret taping system in the Oval Office and a fund used to buy the burglars' silence. After the Supreme Court ordered release of the tapes, which confirmed Nixon's role in the cover-up, the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment and Nixon resigned. The scandal directly preceded the Church Committee and Pike Committee investigations that exposed the broader history of intelligence abuses.¹