Nixon s Presidency A Period Wrought With Scandal

Nixon’s presidency—a period wrought with scandal. The most well-known of these, Watergate, a complex web of deceit, has become a political term synonymous with corruption and crime. Afraid of possible defeat in the 1972 election, Nixon and his republican associates sanctioned underhanded, illegal, acts, namely a break-in at the Democratic Party national headquarters at the Watergate complex. The break-in failed and the story was revealed to the public, despite the Nixon administration’s attempts to cover up the scandal. As a result of their insistence on covering up the infamous event, the leadership of the United States was sent spiraling into a mess of treachery and dishonesty, threatening both the nation’s stability and future. Beginning the night of June 16, 1972, and continuing on into the wee hours of the morning on June 17, Nixon and his seven associate-burglars—G. Gordan Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, James McCord, Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, and Frank Sturgis—attempted to break in to the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, with the intent to use phone bugs and photos to provide Nixon, a Republican, with information that would hopefully secure him the victory in the 1972 presidential election (Anderson 8-10). To begin, the burglars placed tape on stairway doors, preventing them from locking, allowing them to make an easy exit, the first of many mistakes (Cruden 16). Armed with walkie-talkies andShow MoreRelatedOne Significant Change That Has Occurred in the World Between 1900 and 2005. Explain the Impact This Change Has Made on Our Lives and Why It Is an Important Change.163893 Words   |  656 Pagesopening decades o f the twentieth century and a major break from the prevailing dynamics of the cold war. In addition to the problems posed for conceptualizing the twentieth century as a discrete era of world history due to overlap with the preceding period and disconcertingly radical shifts in the course of global development in the 1900s, contradictory forces and trends, which perhaps more than any other attribute distinguish this turbulent phase of the human experience, render it impervious to