Before the summer of 1972, Watergate was nothing more than the name of an expensive, luxurious hotel in Washington D.C. Nobody would have predicted that this hotel would be associated with the biggest political scandal in the history of the USA.This scandal would ultimately led to President Nixon’s resignation and the loss of American trust in their leaders.Therefore, the Watergate Scandal was a bad influence on American history.
It all began with the politics in the 1960’s during the time in which the US was involved in the Vietnam war and deeply divided internally. In such a harsh political climate, Republican President Richard Nixon (who was running for reelection) and his key advisors thought it was vital to have a forceful presidential …show more content…
Nixon gave a speech in August, in which he swore that he or his staff had absolutely no connection to the burglary. According to Nixon (1972),“I am not a crook by today’s standards”. Almost all the voters believed him and Richard Nixon was re-elected as president.After some time, it was revealed that Nixon was not being truthful. For instance, he arranged to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to the burglars in order to keep them from confessing. After, President Nixon and his assistants devised a plan to make the CIA keep the FBI from investigating the crime.At the urging of Nixon’s assistants, five of the seven arrested spies pleaded guilty and avoided trial, while the other two were convicted on January ,1973. By that time, a growing number of people had begun to suspect that there was a bigger scheme growing under their noses. Those people included Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, trial judge John J. Sirica and some members of a Senate investigation committee. Meanwhile, a few of the conspirators began to crack under the pressure of the cover-up. John Dean, the White House counsel and a few more of Nixon’s assistants testified before a grand jury about the president’s crimes. They also testified about Nixon secretly taping every conversation that ever …show more content…
After all that happened, the cover up and the falling apart of it all, Nixon still didn’t get any type of punishment, although some people say that the impeachment was punishment enough.Some of Nixon’s aides didn’t get off as lucky as him. They were convicted of very offensive crimes and sent to federal prison. Nixon himself never admitted to any criminal wrongdoing but his abuse of presidential power had a bad influence on American political life. This scandal created a layer of distrust and skepticism and completely destroyed the trust placed by American citizens in their leaders. While the Vietnam war deeply dismayed Americans, the Watergate Scandal gave further disappointment to a decade that had already been scarred by the earlier war’s difficulties and
It all began with the politics in the 1960’s during the time in which the US was involved in the Vietnam war and deeply divided internally. In such a harsh political climate, Republican President Richard Nixon (who was running for reelection) and his key advisors thought it was vital to have a forceful presidential …show more content…
Nixon gave a speech in August, in which he swore that he or his staff had absolutely no connection to the burglary. According to Nixon (1972),“I am not a crook by today’s standards”. Almost all the voters believed him and Richard Nixon was re-elected as president.After some time, it was revealed that Nixon was not being truthful. For instance, he arranged to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to the burglars in order to keep them from confessing. After, President Nixon and his assistants devised a plan to make the CIA keep the FBI from investigating the crime.At the urging of Nixon’s assistants, five of the seven arrested spies pleaded guilty and avoided trial, while the other two were convicted on January ,1973. By that time, a growing number of people had begun to suspect that there was a bigger scheme growing under their noses. Those people included Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, trial judge John J. Sirica and some members of a Senate investigation committee. Meanwhile, a few of the conspirators began to crack under the pressure of the cover-up. John Dean, the White House counsel and a few more of Nixon’s assistants testified before a grand jury about the president’s crimes. They also testified about Nixon secretly taping every conversation that ever …show more content…
After all that happened, the cover up and the falling apart of it all, Nixon still didn’t get any type of punishment, although some people say that the impeachment was punishment enough.Some of Nixon’s aides didn’t get off as lucky as him. They were convicted of very offensive crimes and sent to federal prison. Nixon himself never admitted to any criminal wrongdoing but his abuse of presidential power had a bad influence on American political life. This scandal created a layer of distrust and skepticism and completely destroyed the trust placed by American citizens in their leaders. While the Vietnam war deeply dismayed Americans, the Watergate Scandal gave further disappointment to a decade that had already been scarred by the earlier war’s difficulties and