PART 1 The Post Investigates "Five Held in Plot to Bug Democratic Offices Here," said the headline at the

bottom of page one in the Washington Post on Sunday, June 18, 1972. The story reported that a team of burglars had been arrested inside the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office complex in Washington. So began the chain of events that would convulse Washington for two years, lead to the first resignation of a U.S. president and change American politics forever. The story intrigued two young reporters on The Post's staff, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward who were called in to work on the story. As Woodward's notes show, he learned from police sources that the men came from Miami, wore surgical gloves and carried thousands of dollars in cash. It was, said one source, "a professional type operation." The next day, Woodward and Bernstein joined up for the first of many revelatory stories. "GOP Security Aide Among Those Arrested," reported that burglar James McCord was on the payroll of President Nixon's reelection committee. The next day, Nixon and chief of staff H.R. Haldeman privately discussed how to get the CIA to tell the FBI to back off from the burglary investigation. Publicly, a White House spokesman said he would not comment on "a third rate burglary." Within a few weeks, Woodward and Bernstein reported that the grand jury investigating the burglary had sought testimony from two men who had worked in the Nixon White House, former CIA officer E. Howard Hunt and former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy. Both men would ultimately be indicted for guiding the burglars, via walkie-talkies, from a hotel room opposite the Watergate building. In Miami, Bernstein learned that a $25,000 check for Nixon's reelection campaign had been deposited in the bank account of one of the burglars. The resulting story, "Bug Suspect Got Campaign Funds" reported the check had been given to Maurice Stans, the former Secretary of Commerce who served as Nixon's chief fundraiser. It was the first time The Post linked the burglary to Nixon campaign funds. As the two reporters pursued the story, Woodward relied on Mark Felt, a high ranking official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as a confidential source. With access to FBI reports on the burglary investigation, Felt could confirm or deny what other sources were telling The Post reporters. He also could tell them what leads to pursue. Woodward agreed to keep his identity secret, referring to him in conversations with colleagues only as "Deep Throat." His identity would not become public until 2005, 33 years later. While Nixon cruised toward reelection in the fall of 1972, Woodward and Bernstein scored a string of scoops, reporting that:

 Attorney General John Mitchell controlled a secret fund that paid for a campaign to gather information on the Democrats. Nixon's aides had run "a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage" on behalf of Nixon's reelection effort. But while other newspapers ignored the story and voters gave Nixon a huge majority in November 1972, the White House continued to denounce The Post's coverage as biased and misleading. Post publisher Katharine Graham worried about the administration's "unveiled threats and harassment."

As Hunt asked the White House provide money for himself and his codefendants, John Sirica, the tough-talking judge presiding over the trial of the burglars, took on the role of investigator, trying to force the defendants to disclose what they knew. Hunt and the other burglars pleaded guilty, while McCord and Liddy went to trial and were convicted. As Hunt's demands for "hush money" persisted, John Dean, a White House lawyer, privately told Nixon that there was "a cancer on the presidency." When the FBI finally pierced the White House denials, senior officials faced prosecution for perjury and obstruction of justice. In April 1973, four of Nixon's top aides lost their jobs, including chief of staff Haldeman, chief domestic policy adviser, John Ehrlichman, Attorney General Richard Kleindienst and Dean himself. When Nixon's press secretary Ron Ziegler said previous White House criticisms of The Post were "inoperative," Woodward and Bernstein's reporting had been vindicated. PART 2 The Government Acts By the summer of 1973, the Watergate affair was a full-blown national scandal and the subject of two official investigations, one led by Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, the other by North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin, chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee. Cox, a liberal Harvard Law School professor with a crew cut, had served as Solicitor General in the Kennedy administration. He was appointed by Nixon's new Attorney General Elliot Richardson to investigate the burglary and all other offenses involving the White House or Nixon's reelection campaign. Ervin, a conservative Democrat best known for his interest in constitutional law, was chosen by Senate leaders to chair a seven-member investigatory committee. As the Senate Watergate Committee's nationally-televised hearings captured national interest, Ervin's folksy but tenacious grilling of sometimes reluctant witnesses transformed him a household name.

The scandal had spread beyond the original burglary. In April 1973, it was revealed that Watergate burglars, Hunt and Liddy, had broken into the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who gave the top-secret Pentagon papers to the New York Times. Seeking information to discredit Ellsberg, they found nothing and left undetected. In May, a Senator revealed that a young Nixon staffer named Tom Huston had developed a proposal for a domestic espionage office to monitor and harass the opponents of the president. The plan, never implemented, disclosed a "Gestapo mentality," said Sam Ervin. John Dean was the first White House aide to break with the Nixon White House. "Dean Alleges Nixon Knew of Cover-up Plan," Woodward and Bernstein reported on the eve of his testimony. On the stand, Dean disclosed that he had told Nixon that the coverup was "a cancer on the presidency."

But the most sensational revelation came in July 1973, when White House aide Alexander Butterfield told the committee that Nixon had a secret taping system that recorded his phone calls and conversations in the Oval Office. When Nixon refused to release the tapes, Ervin and Cox issued subpoenas. The White House refused to comply, citing "executive privilege," the doctrine that the president, as chief executive, is entitled to candid and confidential advice from aides. "Thus the stage was set for a great constitutional struggle between a President determined not to give up executive documents and materials and a Senate committee and a federal prosecutor who are determined to get them," said The Post on July 24, 1973. "The ultimate arbitration, it was believed, would have to be made by the Supreme Court." After protracted negotiations, the White House agreed to provide written summaries of the taped conversations to the Senate and the special prosecutor. Ervin accepted the deal but Cox rejected it. On Saturday, Oct. 20, Nixon ordered Attorney General Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson resigned rather than carry out the order, as did his top deputy Williams Ruckleshaus. Solicitor General Robert Bork became the acting attorney general and he dismissed Cox. The special prosecutor's office was abolished. The firings, dubbed "the Saturday Night Massacre," ignited a firestorm in Washington. Amid calls for impeachment, Nixon was forced to appoint a new special prosecutor, a prominent Texas lawyer named Leon Jaworski who had been a confidante of President Lyndon Johnson. Nixon's credibility suffered another blow on November 20, when his lawyers informed a federal judge that one of the key tapes sought by investigators contained 18-minute erasure that White House officials had trouble explaining. When Nixon declared at a press conference: "I am not a crook," more than a few Americans found his denial unconvincing.

On Dec. 31, 1973 Jaworski issued a report saying that besides the original seven burglars, 12 other persons had pleaded guilty to Watergate-related offenses and criminal proceedings against four more individual were in progress. Nixon rejected accusations of wrongdoing and insisted he would stay in office. PART 3 Nixon Resigns "One year of Watergate is enough," President Nixon declared in his State of the Union address in January 1974. But the embattled president could not put the issue behind him. Special prosecutor Jaworski and the Senate Watergate Committee continued to demand that the White House turn over tapes and transcripts. As public support for Nixon waned, the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives began to consider the ultimate sanction for a president--impeachment. Nixon cast himself as a defender of the presidency. He insisted that he had made mistakes but broke no laws. He said he had no prior knowledge of the burglary and did not know about the cover-up until early 1973. To release the tapes, he said, would harm future chief executives. The pressure on Nixon mounted in March 1974, when the special prosecutor indicted former Attorney General John Mitchell, former aides Haldeman and Ehrlichman, and four other staffers for conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury in connection with the Watergate burglary. While the grand jury wanted to indict Nixon himself, Jaworski declined to do so doubting the constitutionality of indicting a sitting president. To mollify his critics, Nixon announced in April 1974 the release of 1,200 pages of transcripts of conversations between him and his aides. The conversations, "candid beyond any papers ever made public by a President," in the words of The Post stoked more outrage. Even Nixon's most loyal conservative supporters voiced dismay about profanity-laced discussions in the White House around how to raise blackmail money and avoid perjury. Nixon's legal defense began to crumble in May when a federal court ruled in favor of Jaworksi's subpoena for the White House tapes. Nixon's lawyers appealed the decision to the Supreme Court. His political position faltered in June, amid reports that all 21 Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee were prepared to vote for impeachment. On July 24, the Supreme Court unanimously ordered the White House to hand over the tapes to the special prosecutor. Two days later the Judicary Committee approved one article of impeachment to be voted on by the entire House. When Nixon released the tapes a week later, a June 23, 1972, conversation showed that Nixon had, contrary to repeated claims of innocence, played a leading role in the cover-up from the very start. Dubbed "the smoking gun" tape, this recording eliminated what little remained of Nixon's support. Even his closest aides told him he had to resign or face the almost certain prospect of impeachment.

On August 8, 1974, Nixon announced his resignation. "By taking this action," he said in a subdued yet dramatic television address from the Oval Office, "I hope that I will have hastened the start of the process of healing which is so desperately needed in America." In a rare admission of error, Nixon said: "I deeply regret any injuries that may have been done in the course of the events that led to this decision." In a final speech to the White House staff, a teary-eyed Nixon told his audience, "Those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself." Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn into office on Aug. 9, 1974, declaring "our long national nightmare is over." One month later, Ford granted Nixon a "full, free and absolute pardon" for all crimes that Nixon "committed or may have committed" during his time in the White House. The Watergate affair was over, but its influence was not. The interlinked scandals generated a new and enduring skepticism about the federal government in American public opinion. The lingo of the scandal--"to cover-up," to "stonewall," and "to leak"--became part of the American political vocabulary. The newly assertive Congress passed campaign finance reform legislation and probed abuses of power at the CIA and other national security agencies. Woodward and Bernstein's reporting, recounted in a best-selling book, All the President's Men, and a hit movie infused American journalism with a new adversarial edge. Before long, the appointment of special prosecutors to investigate allegations of presidential wrongdoing became the norm in Washington. Watergate had changed American politics permanently and profoundly. PART 4 Deep Throat Revealed On May 31, 2005 one of Washington's best-kept secrets was revealed. Vanity Fair magazine identified a former top FBI official named Mark Felt as Deep Throat, the secret source high in the U.S. government who helped Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein unravel the Watergate conspiracy. Woodward, Bernstein and the paper's editors confirmed the story. "Felt's identity as Washington's most celebrated secret source had been an object of speculation for more than 30 years," wrote Post reporter David Von Drehle the next day. The reporters had written about their trusted source in their best-selling 1974 book, "All the President's Men," and the 1975 movie of the same name dramatized his sometimes cryptic advice about how pursue the connection between the Nixon White House and a crew of seven burglars caught in the offices of the Democratic National Committee on the night of June 17, 1972. His true identity, the object of "countless guesses" over the years, remained secret until Vanity Fair's story. "I'm the guy they call Deep Throat," Felt told members of his family.

The day after the story broke, Woodward wrote a first person account of his relationship with Felt, which began with a chance encounter between a junior naval officer and a wary bureaucrat in 1970. Woodward cultivated him as a source. When the Post began to pursue the Watergate story, Woodward relied on Felt for guidance. "I was thankful for any morsel or information, confirmation or assistance Felt gave me while Carl and I were attempting to understand the many-headed monster of Watergate. Because of his position virtually atop the chief investigative agency, his words and guidance had immense, at times even staggering, authority," Woodward wrote. But as The Post noted, Woodward and Bernstein also "expressed a concern that the Deep Throat story has, over the years, come to obscure the many other elements that went into exposing the Watergate story: other sources, other investigators, high-impact Senate hearings, a shocking trove of secret White House tape recordings and the decisive intervention of a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court." "Felt's role in all this can be overstated," said Bernstein, who went on after Watergate to a career of books, magazine articles and television investigations. "When we wrote the book, we didn't think his role would achieve such mythical dimensions. You see there that Felt/Deep Throat largely confirmed information we had already gotten from other sources."

O caso Watergate foi o escndalo poltico ocorrido na dcada de 1970 nos Estados Unidos da Amrica que, ao vir tona, acabou por culminar com a renncia do presidente americano Richard Nixon eleito pelo partido republicano. "Watergate" de certo modo tornou-se um caso paradigmtico de corrupo. O caso Em 18 de Junho de 1972, o jornal Washington Post noticiava na primeira pgina o assalto do dia anterior sede do Comit Nacional Democrata, no Complexo Watergate, na capital dos Estados Unidos.[1] Durante a campanha eleitoral, cinco pessoas foram detidas quando tentavam fotografar documentos e instalar aparelhos de escuta no escritrio do Partido Democrata. Bob Woodward e Carl Bernstein, dois reprteres do Washington Post, comearam a investigar o ento j chamado caso Watergate. Durante muitos meses, os dois reprteres estabeleceram as ligaes entre a Casa Branca e o assalto ao edifcio de Watergate. Eles foram informados por uma pessoa conhecida apenas por Garganta profunda (Deep Throat) que revelou que o presidente sabia das operaes ilegais. Richard Nixon foi eleito presidente em 1968, sucedendo a Lyndon Johnson, tornando-se o terceiro presidente dos Estados Unidos a ter de lidar com a Guerra do Vietn. Nixon voltou a candidatar-se em 1972, tendo como opositor o senador democrata George McGovern, e obteve uma vitria esmagadora, ganhando em 48 dos 50 estados. McGovern venceu apenas em Massachusetts e em Washington. Foi durante essa campanha de 1972 que se verificou o incidente na sede do Comit Nacional Democrtico. Durante a investigao oficial que se seguiu, foram apreendidas fitas gravadas que demonstravam que o presidente tinha conhecimento das operaes ilegais contra a oposio. Em 9 de Agosto de 1974, quando vrias provas j ligavam os atos de espionagem ao Partido Republicano, Nixon renunciou presidncia. Foi substitudo pelo vice Gerald Ford, que assinou uma anistia, retirando-lhe as devidas responsabilidades legais perante qualquer infrao que tivesse cometido. Por muitos anos a identidade de "Garganta Profunda" foi desconhecida, at que a 31 de Maio de 2005 o ex-vice-presidente do FBI, W. Mark Felt, revelou que era o Garganta. Bob Woodward e Carl Bernstein confirmaram o fato. Adaptao ao cinema O Caso Watergate foi retratado ainda em forma cinematogrfica no filme "Todos os Homens do Presidente" tendo como protagonistas os atores Robert Redford e Dustin Hoffman representando Bob Woodward e Carl Bernstein respectivamente. O filme foi dirigido por Alan J. Pakula e ganhou 4 Oscar, nas seguintes categorias: Melhor Ator Coadjuvante (Jason Robards), Melhor Direo de Arte, Melhor Som e Melhor Roteiro Adaptado. Foi ainda indicado em outras 4 categorias: Melhor Filme, Melhor Diretor, Melhor Atriz Coadjuvante (Jane Alexander) e Melhor Edio. Em Forrest Gump, Forrest descobre o caso. Em Nixon, filme realizado por Oliver Stone, com interpretaes de: Anthony Hopkins (no papel de Richard M. Nixon), Joan Allen e Ed Harris, este caso tambm retratado. Em 2008, o filme Frost/Nixon, de Ron Howard, retratou uma srie de entrevistas ps-Watergate dadas por Nixon em 1977 para o jornalista britnico David Frost, interpretado por Michael Sheen.
Grandes conspiraes da histria

4 O escndalo Watergate
02 Agosto 2006 DN Nenhum livro que aborde conspiraes, encobrimentos e crimes de Estado estaria completo sem a presena de Richard Nixon, Tricky Dick (Dick, o Mentiroso), como era conhecido pelos seus concidados. O caso Watergate , quase com toda a certeza, a conspirao mais clebre de todos os tempos. Hoje em dia, o escndalo Watergate converteu-se no exemplo tpico que vem memria de todos quando se trata de falar dos jogos sujos polticos, de corrupo, extorso, escutas ilegais, conspirao, obstruo da justia, destruio de provas, fraude fiscal, uso ilegal dos servios secretos e das foras de segurana, financiamento ilegal de partidos e apropriao indevida de fundos pblicos, todos eles, assuntos dos quais temos alguma experincia. Estas actividades ilegais, mais prprias do crime organizado do que da equipa de um presidente dos Estados Unidos, desenvolveram-se durante toda a Administrao Nixon. So muitos os historiadores e estudiosos que se questionaram acerca do motivo subjacente que, segundo as palavras do prprio Nixon, fez com que tudo se corrompesse to depressa. Ter-se- de procurar possivelmente a resposta numa peculiaridade psicolgica de Nixon que fazia com que se identificasse to intimamente com a sua funo como presidente dos Estados Unidos que interpretava qualquer ataque sua pessoa como uma ameaa contra a nao. De personalidade essencialmente messinica, Nixon acreditava ser um homem do destino, um salvador enviado para resgatar o pas no interessando os meios que utilizava para o fazer. Confundiu a averso que muitos cidados sentiam em relao a ele e sua poltica com a deslealdade nao. Quando foi eleito presidente em 1968, Nixon prometeu tirar os Estados Unidos da guerra do Vietname. Essa foi uma promessa que ficou por cumprir. De facto, h quem pense que Nixon tinha prometido mais do que estava nas suas mos cumprir. Sectores poderosos vinculados indstria do armamento mantinham uma presso constante em crculos polticos para que a guerra continuasse. Assim, os primeiros anos da Administrao Nixon, longe de terminarem com a guerra, provocaram uma extenso do conflito bem como um notvel aumento do nmero de baixas. Isto causou em muitos norte-americanos um sentimento de amargura e profunda decepo em relao a Nixon, que naquela poca comeou a ser chamado de Tricky Dick. Grande parte do pas, muito em especial aqueles que tinham votado nele em virtude da sua promessa de acabar com a guerra, sentiam-se defraudados. Nixon comeou a sentir uma tremenda presso envolvente qual no eram alheios elementos do seu prprio partido, que faziam eco do descontentamento popular e clamavam por uma mudana na poltica internacional do presidente. A natureza paranica deste levou-o a presumir que existia uma conspirao, no j contra ele, mas sim contra a presidncia dos Estados Unidos. Numa entrevista com o jornalista David Frost, Nixon sustentava que, durante a sua presidncia, os EUA se encontravam num estado de quase guerra civil. Esta sensao de presso fez com que Nixon e os seus ajudantes preparassem uma lista de inimigos que incluiria os presumveis conspiradores, que deviam ser aplacados, no pelo bem de Richard Nixon, mas pelo bem da Amrica do Norte. Os pormenores deste caso so sobejamente conhecidos de grande parte do pblico. Tudo comeou com a invaso e interferncia nas linhas telefnicas do quartel- -general da campanha eleitoral do partido democrata. Partindo deste princpio, o presidente Richard Nixon e grande parte dos seus colaboradores foram posteriormente acusados de terem executado uma srie de

actos ilegais que encheram de consternao a opinio pblica dos Estados Unidos. O escndalo culminou com a primeira demisso de um presidente na histria dos Estados Unidos. A invaso foi cometida a 17 de Junho de 1972 por uma equipa de cinco homens que foram surpreendidos in fraganti nos escritrios do partido democrata, no edifcio Watergate de Washington. A sua deteno revelou um plano de escutas ilegais e espionagem contra opositores polticos apoiado pela Casa Branca, e nele estavam implicados altos funcionrios do pas, como o ex- -inspector-geral John Mitchell, o conselheiro presidencial John Dean, o chefe de pessoal da Casa Branca H. R. Haldeman, o assessor para os Assuntos Nacionais John Ehrlichman e, cabea de todos eles, o presidente Nixon. Em Maio de 1973, a Comisso de Actividades Presidenciais do Senado norte-americano ouviu uma srie de assombrosas revelaes que davam ao escndalo uma dimenso maior do que aquela que j tinha. John Dean testemunhou que o presidente estava ao corrente da operao e que tinha autorizado o pagamento dos assaltantes para que guardassem silncio, algo que foi veementemente negado pela Administrao Nixon. A 16 de Julho de 1973, Butterfield, outro assessor da Casa Branca, revelou que Nixon tinha ordenado a instalao na Casa Branca de um sistema para gravar automaticamente todas as conversas que se efectuassem em determinadas salas do edifcio, incluindo a sala oval. Estas fitas viriam a constituir a melhor prova para confirmar se o presidente estava a mentir ou no, pelo que o inspector especial designado para investigar o caso, Archibald Cox, exigiu Casa Branca a entrega imediata de oito gravaes. Aps uma srie de peripcias e negativas, que incluiriam a demisso do prprio Archibald Cox, Nixon acabou por entreg-las, mas os especialistas verificaram que as fitas tinham sido manipuladas e apagadas em parte. A partir desse momento os escndalos sucederam-se com uma inusitada rapidez e praticamente todos os dias comearam a surgir indicaes de novas actuaes ilegais por parte da equipa de Nixon. Por fim, e para evitar o quase certo impeachment, Nixon demitiu-se a 9 de Agosto de 1974. Um ms depois, o seu sucessor, Gerald Ford, exonerava-o de todos os delitos que pudesse ter cometido durante o seu mandato, ficando a salvo de qualquer acusao. Os "encanadores" At aqui falmos daquilo que se pode encontrar em qualquer enciclopdia, todavia, hoje chamanos a ateno que apesar de ter sido um dos grandes acontecimentos do sculo XX e um facto que foi submetido ao minucioso escrutnio de polticos, jornalistas e historiadores, ainda restam mltiplas questes obscuras no que se refere compreenso global deste assunto e, muito em especial, do facto central que fez detonar a bomba que acabou com a carreira poltica de Richard Nixon. Por exemplo, se bem que na poca tivesse ficado claro que Nixon estava ao corrente dos factos, nunca ficou esclarecido quem foi a pessoa que ordenou a entrada ilegal no edifcio Watergate e, sobretudo, o que que se pretendia com aquela aco. Talvez devido ao empenho das instituies norte-americanas para pr uma pedra sobre este assunto o mais rapidamente possvel, correndo o risco de lhe dar um fim falso, restaram brechas suficientes para que surgissem verses revisionistas do escndalo Watergate que - por mais surpreendente que possa parecer - pretendem nem mais nem menos que reabilitar o bom-nome do presidente mais polmico da histria dos Estados Unidos. Tambm ainda existem aqueles que investigam o lodo de Watergate tentando encontrar o fio que os conduza descoberta de novos segredos inconfessveis que se cozinharam nos bastidores do poder norte-americano.

Para compreender as implicaes reais do escndalo deveramos regressar sua origem. Como j tnhamos mencionado, em plena campanha presidencial norte-americana de 1972, a 17 de Junho, cinco homens irromperam num escritrio do edifcio Watergate de Washington. O objectivo era obter toda a informao possvel do quartel-general democrata. No entanto, foram detectados pela segurana do edifcio e surpreendidos pela polcia, que prendeu Eugenio Martnez, Virgilio Gonzlez, Frank Sturgis, Bernard Barker e James McCord. A equipa operava sob a direco de Everette Howard Hunt e George Gordon Liddy, que tambm foram presos. Nenhum deles era desconhecido dos servios secretos norte-americanos. Martnez e Gonzlez eram figuras importantes dentro do activismo anticastrista de Miami. Sturgis e Hunt tinham sido relacionados por diversos autores com assuntos to srdidos como o assassinato do presidente Kennedy e o "acidente" de viao que acabou com as ambies presidenciais do seu irmo Ted. Por outro lado, Hunt, Liddy e McCord tinham sido membros da CIA. Do profissionalismo dos intrusos fala-nos o facto de que transportavam consigo equipamento de espionagem extremamente sofisticado para a poca, o qual inclua cmaras em miniatura, gazuas, dispositivos de gs lacrimogneo portteis, toda a espcie de microfones oc ultos e transmissores com os quais se comunicavam com Hunt e Liddy, que se encontravam num quarto de um hotel vizinho. Porqu?
A teoria vulgarmente aceite indica que a equipa tinha como objectivo a instalao, reparao ou remoo de dispositivos de vigilncia electrnica do quartel-general democrata. No entanto, esta apenas uma hiptese acerca da natureza da misso que levou aqueles homens ao edifcio Watergate naquela noite. Os prprios acusados contradisseram-se em diversas ocasies quanto natureza da sua misso. Liddy disse que se encontravam ali para recuperar certos docu- mentos comprometedores para Nixon, enquanto Hunt e os cubanos insistiram que se tratava de recolher dados gerais sobre a campanha democrata. De qualquer maneira, existe uma enorme desproporo entre o risco corrido e os possveis benefcios, uma desproporo que levou as mentes mais desconfiadas a pensar que por detrs daquele assalto existia uma razo ainda no revelada.

The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. Effects of the scandal eventually led to the resignation of the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, on August 9, 1974, the only resignation of any U.S. President. It also resulted in the indictment, trial, conviction and incarceration of several Nixon administration officials. The affair began with the arrest of five men for breaking and entering into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972. The FBI connected the payments to the burglars to a slush fund used by the 1972 Committee to Re-elect the President.[1][2] As evidence mounted against the president's staff, which included former staff members testifying against them in an investigation conducted by the Senate Watergate Committee, it was revealed that President Nixon had a tape recording system in his offices and that he had recorded many conversations.[3][4] Recordings from these tapes implicated the president, revealing that he had attempted to cover up the break-in.[2][5] After a series of court battles, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the president had to hand over the tapes; he ultimately complied. Facing near-certain impeachment in the House of Representatives and a strong possibility of a conviction in the Senate, Nixon resigned the office of the presidency on August 9, 1974.[6][7] His successor, Gerald Ford, issued a pardon to President Nixon after his resignation.

Break-in
On the evening of June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a security guard at the Watergate Complex, noticed tape covering the latch on locks on several doors in the complex (leaving the doors unlocked). He took off the tape, and thought nothing of it. An hour later, he discovered that someone had retaped the locks. Wills called the police and five men were arrested inside the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) office.[8] The five men were Virgilio Gonzlez, Bernard Barker, James W. McCord, Jr., Eugenio Martnez, and Frank Sturgis. The five were charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications. On September 15, a grand jury indicted them and two other men (E. Howard Hunt, Jr. and G. Gordon Liddy)[9] for conspiracy, burglary, and violation of federal wiretapping laws. The men who broke into the office were tried and convicted on January 30, 1973. After much investigation, all five men were directly, or indirectly, tied to the 1972 Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP, or sometimes pejoratively referred to as CReeP). The trial judge, John J. Sirica, suspected a conspiracy involving higher-echelon government officials.[10] In March 1973, James McCord wrote a letter to Sirica, claiming that he was under political pressure to plead guilty and he implicated high-ranking government officials, including former Attorney General John Mitchell.[11] His letter helped to elevate the affair into a more prominent political scandal.

Investigation
The unraveling of the cover-up began in the immediate aftermath of the arrests, the search of the burglars' hotel rooms, and a background investigation of the initial evidence, most prominently thousands of dollars in cash in their possession at the time of arrest. On June 19, 1972, it was publicly revealed that one of the Watergate burglars was a Republican Party security aide. Former Attorney General John Mitchell, who at the time was the head of the Nixon reelection campaign, denied any involvement with the Watergate break-in or knowledge of the five burglars. On August 1, a $25,000 cashiers check earmarked for the Nixon re-election campaign was found in the bank account of one of the Watergate burglars. Further investigation would reveal accounts showing that still more thousands had passed through their bank and credit card accounts, supporting their travel, living expenses, and purchases, in the months leading up to their arrests. Examination of the burglars' accounts showed the link to the 1972 Committee to Re-Elect the President, through its subordinate finance committee. Several individual donations (totaling $89,000) were made by individuals who thought they were making private donations to the President's re-election committee. The donations were made in the form of cashier's, certified, and personal checks, and all were made payable only to the Committee to Re-Elect the President. Investigative examination of the bank records of a Miami company run by Watergate burglar Bernard Barker revealed that an account controlled by him personally had deposited, and had transferred to it (through the Federal Reserve Check Clearing System) the funds from these financial instruments. The banks that had originated the checks (especially the certified and cashier's checks) were keen to ensure that the depository institution used by Bernard Barker had acted properly to protect their (the correspondent banks') fiduciary interest in ensuring that the checks had been properly received and endorsed by the checks payee, prior to its acceptance for deposit in Bernard Barker's account. Only in this way would the correspondent banks, which had issued the checks on behalf of the individual donors, not be held liable for the unauthorized and improper release of funds from their customer s accounts into the account of Bernard Barker. The investigative finding, which cleared Bernard Barkers bank of fiduciary malfeasance, led to the direct implication of members of the Committee to ReElect the President, to whom the checks had been delivered. Those individuals were the Committee Bookkeeper and its Treasurer, Hugh Sloan. The Committee, as an organization, followed normal business accounting standards in allowing only duly authorized individual(s) to accept and endorse on behalf of the Committee any financial instrument created on the Committees behalf by itself, or by others. Therefore, no financial institution would accept or process a check on behalf of the Committee unless it had been endorsed and verified as endorsed by a duly authorized individual(s). On the checks themselves deposited into Bernard Barkers bank account was the endorsement

of Committee Treasurer Hugh Sloan who was duly authorized and designated to endorse such instruments that were prepared (by others) on behalf of the Committee. But once Sloan had endorsed a check made payable to the Committee, he had a legal and fiduciary responsibility to see that the check was deposited into the account(s) which were named on the check, and for which he had been delegated fiduciary responsibility. Sloan failed to do that. He was confronted and faced the potential charge of federal bank fraud; he revealed that he had given the checks to G. Gordon Liddy and was directed by Committee Deputy Director Jeb Magruder and Finance Director Maurice Stans to do so. On September 29, 1972 it was revealed that John Mitchell, while serving as Attorney General, controlled a secret Republican fund used to finance intelligence-gathering against the Democrats. On October 10, the FBI reported that the Watergate break-in was part of a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage on behalf of the officials and heads of the Nixon re-election campaign. Despite these revelations, Nixon's re-election campaign was never seriously jeopardized, and on November 7 the President was re-elected in one of the biggest landslides ever in American political history. Barker had been given the checks by Liddy in an attempt to avoid direct proof that Barker ever had received funds from the organization. Barker had attempted to disguise the origin of the funds by depositing the donors checks into bank accounts which (though controlled by him), were located in banks outside of the United States. What Barker, Liddy, and Sloan did not know was that the complete record of all such transactions are held, after the funds cleared, for roughly six months. Barkers use of foreign banks to deposit checks and withdraw the funds via cashiers checks and money orders in April and May 1972 guaranteed that the banks would keep the entire transaction record at least until October and November 1972. The connection between the break-in and the re-election campaign committee was highlighted by media coverage. In particular, investigative coverage by Time, The New York Times, and especially The Washington Post, fueled focus on the event. The coverage dramatically increased publicity and consequent political repercussions. Relying heavily upon anonymous sources, Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered information suggesting that knowledge of the break-in, and attempts to cover it up, led deep into the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and even the White House. Chief among the Post's anonymous sources was an individual they had nicknamed Deep Throat, who was much later (2005) revealed to be former Deputy Director of the FBI William Mark Felt, Sr.. It was Deep Throat who met secretly with Woodward, and told him of Howard Hunts involvement with the Watergate break-in, and that the rest of the White House staff regarded the stake in Watergate extremely high. Deep Throat also warned Woodward that the FBI wanted to know where he and the other reporters were getting the information which was uncovering even a wider web of crimes than first disclosed. In one of their last meetings, all of which took place at an underground parking garage

somewhere in Washington DC at 2:00 AM, Deep Throat cautioned Woodward that he might be followed and not to trust their phone conversations. Rather than ending with the trial and conviction of the burglars, the investigations grew broader; a Senate committee chaired by Senator Sam Ervin was set up to examine Watergate and began issuing subpoenas to White House staff members. On April 30, 1973, Nixon was forced to ask for the resignation of two of his most influential aides, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, both of whom were indicted and ultimately went to prison. He also fired White House Counsel John Dean, who went on to testify before the Senate and become the key witness against President Nixon. The President announced these resignations in an address to the American people: In one of the most difficult decisions of my Presidency, I accepted the resignations of two of my closest associates in the White House, Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, two of the finest public servants it has been my privilege to know. Because Attorney General Kleindienst, though a distinguished public servant, my personal friend for 20 years, with no personal involvement whatsoever in this matter has been a close personal and professional associate of some of those who are involved in this case, he and I both felt that it was also necessary to name a new Attorney General. The Counsel to the President, John Dean, has also resigned. Richard Nixon, [13] On the same day, Nixon appointed a new Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, and gave him authority to designate, for the Watergate inquiry, a special counsel who would be independent of the regular Justice Department hierarchy. In May 1973, Richardson named Archibald Cox to the position.

Tapes
The hearings held by the Senate Committee, in which Dean and other former administration officials delivered testimony, were broadcast from May 17 to August 7, 1973, causing political damage to the President. After the three major networks of the time agreed to take turns covering the hearings live (the first 24hour news channel was not introduced until 1980), each network thus maintained coverage of the hearings every third day, starting with ABC on May 17 and ending with NBC on August 7. An estimated 85% of Americans with television sets tuned in to at least one portion of the hearings. [14] On Friday, July 13, 1973, in an interview session, Donald Sanders, the Deputy Minority Counsel, asked Alexander Butterfield if there was any type of recording systems in the White House.[15] Butterfield answered that, though he was reluctant to say so, there was a system in the White House that automatically recorded everything in the Oval Office and other rooms in the White House, including the Cabinet Room and Nixon's private office in the Old Executive

Office Building. On Monday, July 16, 1973, in front of a live, televised audience, Chief Minority Counsel Fred Thompson asked Butterfield if he was "aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President?" The shocking revelation transformed the Watergate investigation yet again. The tapes were soon subpoenaed by special prosecutor Archibald Cox and then by the Senate. Nixon refused to release them, citing his executive privilege as President of the United States, and ordered Cox to drop his subpoena. Cox refused.[16] A taped conversation that was crucial to the case against President Nixon [17] took place between the President and his counsel, John Dean, on March 21, 1973. In this conversation, Dean summarizes many aspects of the Watergate case, and then focuses on the subsequent coverup, describing it as a "cancer on the presidency". The burglary team was being paid hush money for their silence and Dean states: "that's the most troublesome post-thing, because Bob [Haldeman] is involved in that; John [Ehrlichman] is involved in that; I am involved in that; Mitchell is involved in that. And that's an obstruction of justice."[18] Dean continues and states that Howard Hunt is blackmailing the White House, demanding money immediately, and President Nixon states that the blackmail money should be paid: "just looking at the immediate problem, don't you have to have handle Hunt's financial situation damn soon? [] you've got to keep the cap on the bottle that much, in order to have any options."[18] At the time of the initial congressional impeachment debate on Watergate, it was not known that Nixon had known and approved of the payments to the Watergate defendants much earlier than this conversation. Among later released recordings, Nixon's conversation with Haldeman on August 1, 1972 is one of several tapes that establishes this. Nixon states: "Wellthey have to be paid. That's all there is to that. They have to be paid" [19] During congressional debate on impeachment, those who believed that impeachment required a criminally indictable offense focused their attention on President Nixon's agreement to make the blackmail payments, regarding this as an affirmative act to obstruct justice as a member of the cover-up conspiracy.[20]
"Saturday Night Massacre"

Cox's refusal to drop his subpoena influenced Nixon to demand the resignations of Richardson and deputy William Ruckelshaus, on October 20, 1973, in a search for someone in the Justice Department willing to fire Cox. This search ended with Solicitor General Robert Bork. Though Bork believed Nixon's order to be valid and appropriate, he considered resigning to avoid being "perceived as a man who did the President's bidding to save my job."[21] However, both Richardson and Ruckelshaus persuaded him not to resign, in order to prevent any further damage to the Justice Department. As the new acting department head, Bork carried out the presidential order and dismissed the special prosecutor. Allegations of wrongdoing prompted Nixon to famously state "I'm not a crook" in front of 400 Associated Press managing editors on November 17, 1973.[22][23]

Nixon was compelled, however, to allow the appointment of a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, who continued the investigation. While Nixon continued to refuse to turn over actual tapes, he agreed to release transcripts of a large number of them; Nixon cited the fact that any audio pertinent to national security information could be redacted from the released tapes. The audio tapes caused further controversy on December 7, when an 18 minute portion of one tape was found to have been erased. Nixon's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, said she had accidentally erased the tape by pushing the wrong foot pedal on her tape player while answering the phone. However, as photos all over the press showed, it was unlikely for Woods to answer the phone and keep her foot on the pedal. Later forensic analysis determined that the tape had been erased in several segments at least five, and perhaps as many as nine.[24]
Supreme Court

The issue of access to the tapes went to the Supreme Court. On July 24, 1974, in United States v. Nixon, the Court, which did not include the recused Justice William Rehnquist, ruled unanimously that claims of executive privilege over the tapes were void, and they ordered the president to give them to the special prosecutor. On July 30, 1974, President Nixon complied with the order and released the subpoenaed tapes.

Final investigations and resignation

On March 1, 1974, former aides to the president, known as the "Watergate Seven" Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Charles Colson, Gordon C. Strachan, Robert Mardian and Kenneth Parkinson were indicted for conspiring to hinder the Watergate investigation. The grand jury also secretly named Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator. John Dean, Jeb Stuart Magruder, and other figures had already pleaded guilty. On April 5, 1974, former Nixon appointments secretary Dwight Chapin was convicted of lying to the grand jury. Two days later, the Watergate grand jury indicted Ed Reinecke, Republican lieutenant governor of California, on three charges of perjury before the Senate committee. Nixon's position was becoming increasingly precarious, and the House of Representatives began formal investigations into the possible impeachment of the president. The House Judiciary Committee voted 27 to 11 on July 27, 1974 to recommend the first article of impeachment against the president: obstruction of justice. The second (abuse of power) and third (contempt of Congress) articles were passed on July 29, 1974 and July 30, 1974, respectively.
"Smoking Gun" tape

On August 5, 1974, the previously unknown audio tape from June 23, 1972, was released. Recorded only a few days after the break-in, it documented Nixon and Haldeman meeting in the Oval Office and formulating a plan to block

investigations by having the CIA falsely claim to the FBI that national security was involved. Haldeman introduces the topic as follows: "the Democratic break-in thing, we're back to thein the, the problem area because the FBI is not under control, because Gray doesn't exactly know how to control them, and they have their investigation is now leading into some productive areas [] and it goes in some directions we don't want it to go." After explaining how the money from CRP was traced to the burglars, Haldeman explained to Nixon the coverup plan: "the way to handle this now is for us to have Walters [CIA] call Pat Gray [FBI] and just say, 'Stay the hell out of this this is ah, business here we don't want you to go any further on it.'" President Nixon approved the plan, and he is given more information about the involvement of his campaign in the break-in, telling Haldeman: "All right, fine, I understand it all. We won't secondguess Mitchell and the rest." Returning to the use of the CIA to obstruct the FBI, he instructs Haldeman: "You call them in. Good. Good deal. Play it tough. That's the way they play it and that's the way we are going to play it." [25] Prior to the release of this tape, President Nixon had denied political motivations in his instructions to the CIA, and claimed he had no knowledge prior to March 21, 1973 of any involvement by senior campaign officials such as John Mitchell. The contents of this tape persuaded President Nixon's own lawyers, Fred Buzhardt and James St. Clair, "The tape proved that the President had lied to the nation, to his closest aides, and to his own lawyers for more than two years."[26] The tape, which was referred to as a "smoking gun", hampered Nixon politically. The ten congressmen who had voted against all three articles of impeachment in the committee announced that they would all support impeachment when the vote was taken in the full House.
Resignation

Throughout this time, Nixon still denied any involvement in the ordeal. However, after being told by key Republican Senators that enough votes existed to remove him, Nixon decided to resign. In a nationally televised address from the Oval Office on the evening of August 8, 1974, the president said,
In all the decisions I have made in my public life, I have always tried to do what was best for the Nation. Throughout the long and difficult period of Watergate, I have felt it was my duty to persevere, to make every possible effort to complete the term of office to which you elected me. In the past few days, however, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort. As long as there was such a base, I felt strongly that it was necessary to see the constitutional process through to its conclusion, that to do otherwise would be unfaithful to the spirit of that deliberately difficult process and a dangerously destabilizing precedent for the future.

I would have preferred to carry through to the finish whatever the personal agony it would have involved, and my family unanimously urged me to do so. But the interest of the Nation must always come before any personal considerations. From the discussions I have had with Congressional and other leaders, I have concluded that because of the Watergate matter I might not have the support of the Congress that I would consider necessary to back the

very difficult decisions and carry out the duties of this office in the way the interests of the Nation would require. I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad. To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home. Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office. The morning that his resignation was to take effect, President and Mrs. Nixon and their family bade farewell to the White House staff in the East Room. [29] A helicopter took him from the White House to Andrews Air Force base in Maryland. Nixon later wrote that he remembered thinking "As the helicopter moved on to Andrews, I found myself thinking not of the past, but of the future. What could I do now?" At Andrews, he boarded Air Force One to El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in California and then to his home in San Clemente.

Pardon and aftermath

Further information: Gerald Ford's Pardon of Richard Nixon

Though President Nixon's resignation prompted Congress to drop the impeachment proceedings, criminal prosecution was still a possibility. Nixon was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford, who on September 8, 1974, issued a full and unconditional pardon of President Nixon, immunizing him from prosecution for any crimes he had "committed or may have committed or taken part in" as President.[30] In a televised broadcast to the nation, Ford explained that he felt the pardon was in the best interest of the country and that the Nixon family's situation "is an American tragedy in which we all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must." [31] Nixon proclaimed his innocence until his death in 1994. He did state in his official response to the pardon that he "was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy." The Nixon pardon has been argued to be a factor in President Ford's loss of the presidential election of 1976.[32] Accusations of a secret deal made with Ford, promising a pardon in return for Nixon's resignation, led Ford to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on October 17, 1974.[33][34] In his autobiography A Time to Heal, Ford wrote about a meeting he had with Nixon's Chief of Staff, Alexander Haig. Haig was explaining what he and Nixon's staff thought were Nixon's only options. He could try to ride out the

impeachment and fight against conviction in the Senate all the way, or he could resign. His options for resigning were to delay his resignation until further along in the impeachment process to try and settle for a censure vote in Congress, or pardon himself and then resign. Haig then told Ford that some of Nixon's staff suggested that Nixon could agree to resign in return for an agreement that Ford would pardon him.
Haig emphasized that these weren't his suggestions. He didn't identify the staff members and he made it very clear that he wasn't recommending any one option over another. What he wanted to know was whether or not my overall assessment of the situation agreed with his.[emphasis in o riginal] Next he asked if I had any suggestions as to courses of actions for the President. I didn't think it would be proper for me to make any recommendations at all, and I told him so.

Charles Colson pleaded guilty to charges concerning the Daniel Ellsberg case; in exchange, the indictment against him for covering up the activities of the Committee to Re-elect the President was dropped, as it was against Strachan. The remaining five members of the Watergate Seven indicted in March went on trial in October 1974, and on January 1, 1975, all but Parkinson were found guilty. In 1976, the U.S. Court of Appeals ordered a new trial for Mardian; subsequently, all charges against him were dropped. Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell exhausted their appeals in 1977. Ehrlichman entered prison in 1976, followed by the other two in 1977. The effect on the upcoming Senate election and House race, only three months later, was significant. The Democrats gained five seats in the Senate and 49 in the House. Watergate was also indirectly responsible for changes in campaign financing. It was a driving factor in amending the Freedom of Information Act in 1974, as well as laws requiring new financial disclosures by key government officials, such as the Ethics in Government Act. While not legally required, other types of personal disclosure, such as releasing recent income tax forms, became expected. Presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt had recorded many of their conversations, but after Watergate this practice purportedly ended. Also, Congress investigated the scope of the President's actual legal powers, and belatedly realized that the United States had been in a continuous openended state of emergency since 1950, which led to the enactment of the National Emergencies Act in 1976. The Watergate scandal left such an impression on the national and international consciousness that many scandals since then have been labeled with the suffix "-gate". According to Thomas J. Johnson, professor of journalism at Southern Illinois University, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger boldly predicted during Nixon's final days that history would remember Nixon as a great president and that Watergate would be relegated to a "minor footnote." [36] Since Nixon and many senior officials involved in Watergate were lawyers, the scandal severely tarnished the public image of the legal profession. [37][38][39] In

order to defuse public demand for direct federal regulation of lawyers (as opposed to leaving it in the hands of state bar associations or courts), the American Bar Association (ABA) launched two major reforms. First, the ABA decided that its existing Model Code of Professional Responsibility (promulgated 1969) was a failure and replaced it with the Model Rules of Professional Conduct in 1983.[40] The MRPC have been adopted in part or in whole by 49 states (and is being actively considered by the last one, California). Its preamble contains an emphatic reminder to young lawyers that the legal profession can remain self-governing only if lawyers behave properly. Second, the ABA promulgated a requirement that law students at ABA-approved law schools take a course in professional responsibility (which means they must study the MRPC). The requirement remains in effect.

Purpose of the break-in

Despite the enormous impact of the Watergate scandal, the actual purpose of the break-in of the DNC offices has never been conclusively established. Some theories suggest that the burglars were after specific information. The likeliest of these theories suggests that the target of the break-in was the offices of Larry O'Brien, the Chairman of the DNC.[41] In 1968, O'Brien was appointed by VicePresident Hubert Humphrey to serve as the national director of Humphrey's presidential campaign and, separately, by Howard Hughes, to serve as Hughes' public-policy lobbyist in Washington. O'Brien was elected national chairman of the DNC in 1968 and 1970. With the upcoming Presidential election, former Howard Hughes business associate John H. Meier, working with Hubert Humphrey and others, wanted to feed misinformation to Richard Nixon. John Meier's father had been a German agent during World War II. Meier had joined the FBI and in the 60s had contracted to the CIA to eliminate Fidel Castro using Mafia bosses Sam Giancana and Santo Trafficante.[42] In late 1971, the Presidents brother, Donald Nixon, was collecting intelligence for his brother at the time and was asking Meier about Larry O'Brien. In 1956, Donald Nixon had borrowed $205,000 from Howard Hughes and never repaid the loan. The fact of the loan surfaced during the 1960 presidential election campaign embarrassing Richard Nixon and became a real political liability. According to author Donald M. Bartlett, Richard Nixon would do whatever was necessary to prevent another Hughes-Nixon family embarrassment.[43] From 1968 to 1970, Hughes withdrew nearly half a million dollars from the Texas National Bank of Commerce for contributions to both Democrats and Republicans, including presidential candidates Humphrey and Nixon. Hughes wanted Donald Nixon and Meier involved but Richard Nixon was opposed to their involvement. [44] Meier told Donald that he was sure the Democrats would win the election because they had considerable information on Richard Nixons illicit dealings with Howard Hughes that had never been released, and that Larry OBrien had the information.[45] OBrien, who had received $25,000 from Hughes, didnt actually have any documents but Meier claims to have wanted Richard Nixon to think he did. It is only a question of conjecture then that Donald called his brother Richard and told him that Meier gave the Democrats all the Hughes information that could destroy hi m and that OBrien had the proof. [46] The fact is Larry O'Brien, elected Democratic Party Chairman, was also a lobbyist for

Howard Hughes in a Democratic controlled Congress and the possibility of his finding about Hughes' illegal contributions to the Nixon campaign was too much of a danger for Nixon to ignore and O'Brien's office at Watergate became a target of Nixon's intelligence in the political campaign. [47] This theory has been proposed as a motivation for the break-in. Numerous theories have persisted in claiming deeper significance to the Watergate scandal than that commonly acknowledged by media and historians:

In the book The Ends of Power, Nixon's chief of staff H. R. Haldeman claimed that the term "Bay of Pigs", mentioned by Nixon in a tape-recorded White House conversation as the reason the CIA should put a stop to the Watergate investigations,[2] was used by Nixon as a coded reference to a CIA plot to assassinate Fidel Castro during the John F. Kennedy administration. The CIA had not disclosed this plot to the Warren Commission, the commission investigating the Kennedy assassination, despite the fact that it would attribute a motive to Castro in the assassination. [48] Any such revelation would also expose CIA/Mafia connections that could lead to unwanted scrutiny of suspected CIA/Mafia participants in the assassination of the president. Furthermore, Nixon's awareness as vice-president of the Bay of Pigs plan and his own ties to the underworld and unsavory intelligence operations might come to light. A theoretical connection between the Kennedy assassination and the Watergate Tapes was later referred to in the biopic, Nixon, directed by Oliver Stone. Silent Coup, is a bestselling 1992 book written by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin in which they contend that former Nixon White House counsel John Dean orchestrated the 1972 Watergate burglary at Democratic National Committee headquarters to protect his future wife, Maureen Biner, by removing information linking her to a call-girl (prostitute) ring that worked for the DNC. The authors also argued that Alexander Haig was not Deep Throat but was a key source for Bob Woodward, who as a Naval officer had briefed Haig at the White House in 1969 and 1970.[49][50] Secret Honor by Stone and Freed implies that Nixon deliberately sacrificed his presidency to save democracy from a plan to implement martial law. The theory uses the construct of "Yankees" vs. "Cowboys" to suggest that, since the postwar era, the United States has been dominated by Yankees competing with Cowboys. Nixon, who hailed from the Southwest, was initially backed by the military industrial defense contractor power-brokers (the Cowboys); however, he later wanted to jump ship and return government to the east-coast establishment of Yankees. His resignation accomplished this because Nelson Rockefeller, the epitome of the eastern economic elite, assumed the vice presidency after Nixon's resignation.