Watergate Scandal

The Watergate scandal had everything. Nixon disgraced the presidency by lying to the country and abusing his power and his committees were involved in illegal acts and a big cover up, all leading to little side roads of corruption and lies. Watergate is by far one of the worst presidential scandals in the history of the United States. In the story of Watergate, five burglars were found breaking into democratic offices at the Watergate complex in Washington DC. The break-in was passed off as just another burglary, but when the burglars were found to have connections with the CIA, questions were starting to be asked. Then when the phone number of Howard Hunt was found in one of the burglar's phone books, it made people think, why would one of the burglars have the phone number of one of the presidents men? When Watergate was uncovered, it revealed that the president was a liar and a cheat. The president lied to our country, lied about his involvement, concealed self incriminating evidence, abused his power, and planned

to have the CIA stop the FBI investigations. During the times of the unraveling of Watergate, questions were asked about connections with the White House and the president, but when the president was asked about it at a press conference he assured Americans that The White House has no involvement whatever in this particular incident.

The lying and cover-ups did not end there, it went on and on for months, and as the scandal kept unraveling, President Nixon and White House, and CREEP officials were deliberately misleading the public about the significance of the Watergate affair. As Watergate was becoming a front-page article in the newspapers, new evidence was being uncovered. One piece of evidence that changed the peoples' ideas of our president was the tapping of every conversation in the oval office since about the 18th month of President Nixon's term. Those tapes would soon prove that the president was deeply involved in the scandal. The Nixon tapes brought out much controversy. The tapes alone could prove the president innocent or guilty, but whichever one it was, Nixon refused to hand over the tapes. After much struggle Nixon agreed to give a transcript of the tapes. The transcripts brought to light a significant amount of evidence against Nixon. The transcripts revealed payoffs, affiliation with the burglaries and the OK's to the cover-up, but most important the transcripts showed that Nixon had lied repeatedly after he had denied knowing anything about the conspiracy. Soon the country would find a new problem with the tapes. When the president's lawyers were going over the tapes, they came along an 18 minute gap during a conversation with Nixon and Haldman. Watergate was unraveling, and the story kept getting bigger.

Former attorney general John Mitchell knew that the FBI had a