On the 8th of August, 1974, Richard Nixon became the first president to resign. The next day, Nixon and his family were taken away on a helicopter back to their home in San Clemente, California. As a result, Vice President Gerald Ford transitioned from his position as Vice President and became the 38th president of the United States.
Why did Nixon choose to resign? On June 17th, 1972, 5 men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters (watergate complex). Although the Nixon administration denied any involvement, one man, a security coordinator for Nixon's reelection committee, and two other white house aids were involved in the break-in. Almost a year later, televised events and hearings began to take place. During these hearings, White House Counsel member John Dean affirmed that the watergate scandal had been associated with Attorney General John Mitchell and the knowledge of other white house advisers. As a result of these Senate hearings, confirmation that President Nixon agreed to the scandal was affirmed.
The watergate scandal soon led to other investigations in Nixon's administration. During these investigations, it was discovered that he had been wiretapping thousands of citizens; this meant he set up listening devices to telephone lines where he could then listen or monitor conversations. Due to these events undermining the president's loyalty, public support for Nixon as President began to wane. Finally, the House Judiciary Committee decided to inflict three articles of impeachment upon him: "obstruction of justice, abuse of presidential powers, and hindrance of the impeachment process."
Near the end of his downfall, Nixon released the Watergate tapes where it was revealed that Nixon had given orders to Haldeman to pause the Watergate investigation. Due to all the evidence built up against Nixon leading to his impeachment and his loss of public support, Nixon decided to resign.
Sources: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nixon-resigns
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon
It's interesting how the hearings for the burglary started a year after the actual event took place. I was curious as to what information Nixon wanted out of the Democratic headquarters. According to Jeb Magruder, one of Nixon's aides, it turns out that there was a transaction where Howard Hughes passed $100,000 to the President's friend Charles Rebozo, and was later used by the President to buy jewelry and furnishings. For this reason, the President didn't want the purchases to be used against him by the Democratic Party so he wanted to retrieve any information of the transaction from their headquarters.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/30/opinion/why-the-watergate-break-in.html
This blog was really interesting and informative. It's so interesting to see how even within our country, our constitutional right to privacy has been violated in the past by someone we are supposed to look up to. After doing some research on what happened to those involved in the Watergate scandal, I learned that many of Nixon's aides were not as lucky as he was. While Nixon was pardoned for his crimes in office, Attorney General of the United States John Mitchell served 19 months in prison and former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy served four and a half years. Many of the other aides in the scandal served time in federal prison.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.history.com/topics/1970s/watergate