Watergate Scandal

In June of 1972 in Washington, D.C. a burglary occurred, which ended up holding worldwide importance. On this date five people broke into the Democratic National Headquarters to adjust bugging equipment they had installed during a May break-in and to photograph the Democrats’ documents. These men were members of the “Plumbers”, a secret unit created and maintained by the White House with the expressed purpose of fixing leaks in the administration. Among others they were also former FBI agents and former CIA agents. The group was strongly Republican. The place they broke into was The Watergate Hotel. After the police came, give men were arrested for breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. These men had broken into the same place three weeks earlier as well.
These Plumbers made a number of mistakes and the cause for one of them was the need to break into the office for a second time. Another mistake they made was that the telephone number of E. Howard Hunt, who had previously worked for the White House, appeared in McCord’s, one of the burglars, notebook. While Hunt worked at the White House, McCord was employed as Chief of Security at the Committee to re-elect the President. This suggested that there was a link between the burglars and someone close to the President.
At court, burglar McCord identified himself as retired from the CIA. The district attorney’s office at Washington D.C. began an investigation concerning the links between McCord and the CIA and determined that McCord had received payment from CRP. Bob Woodward began an investigation and what they published was known only to the FBI and other governmental investigators. Woodward had an inside source, who was later codenamed “Deep Throat” and no one knew who he or she was. He informed them that White House Officials had hired fifty agents to make the Democrats loose the 1972 election.
It was discovered that the president of the United States during that time, Richard Milhous Nixon, was involved in everything. Nixon was going to be impeached so he resigned and vice president Jerald Ford took the title of president of the United States.
The Watergate Scandal showed the citizens of the United Sates and of the rest of the world, that, in the American democracy, no one, not even the president of the United States is above the law. Thai is why president Nixon chose to resign before he was impeached and many of his advisors, who were involved in the illegal political tactics and espionage that took place ended up serving jail sentences. Also, as a result of the scandal, the relationship between public officials, the media and the public was altered forever in the sense that media, instead of being just informative, became an investigative resource watching over the activities of elected and appointed government officials in order to inform the citizenship. Other positive consequences of the Watergate Scandal were new laws to regulate political campaign funding, amendments to the Freedom of Information Act that allowed citizens to have more information as to what was going on in government, and laws requiring government officials to reveal the sources of their finances.