Watergate, Deep Throat And Tricky Dick.

The Watergate Scandal was one of the biggest scandals to rock the United States. It stemmed from the Nixon administration's subsequent attempts to cover up its involvement in the June 17th, 1972 failed break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Washington, D.C. Watergate Office Building.

Before i go on about the scandal, i need to pause for a moment and tell you a little bit about Robert Woodward.

Bob was born in Geneva, Illinois and raised in Wheaton. His father was a lawyer who later became chief judge of the 18th Judicial Circuit Court. Bob's parents divorced when he was twelve, and he and his brother and sister were raised by their father.  Bob enrolled in Yale College with a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps  scholarship and studied history and English literature. He received his B.A. degree in 1965 and began a five-year tour of duty in the United States Navy. During his service in the Navy, Bob served aboard the USS Wright, and was one of two officers assigned to move or handle nuclear launch codes the Wright carried.

After being discharged as a lieutenant in August 1970, Bob wondered what he was going to do. His father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and become a lawyer, but Bob wasn't sure if that is what he wanted to do. That is when he remembered some advice that he was once was given by Deputy director of the FBI, Mark Felt, about sticking with the truth. After thinking about Felt's advice, Bob elected not to attend Harvard Law School, even though he had already been admitted. Instead, he applied for a job as a reporter for The Washington Post while taking graduate courses in Shakespeare and international relations at George Washington University. Harry M. Rosenfeld, the Post's metropolitan editor, gave him a two-week trial but did not hire him because of his lack of journalistic experience. After a year at the Montgomery Sentinel, a weekly newspaper in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, Woodward was hired as a Post reporter in 1971.

OK, now back to 1972. On June 17th of that year, 5 men were arrested for breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Initially, it was assumed that it was just a simple burglary that went wrong. 

Carl Bernstein and Robert Woodward were both reporters for the Washington Post and were assigned to report on the botched burglary. As Bob sat in court and listened as the judge asked the burglars who they worked for, one of them answered that it was the CIA. This gave Bob the idea to contact his mentor, Mark Felt.

Felt was a distinguished looking man with perfectly combed gray hair who had commanding presence. He was born in Twin Falls, Idaho. His father was a carpenter and building contractor. His paternal grandfather was a Free Will Baptist minister. Through his maternal grandfather, Felt was descended from Revolutionary War general Nicholas Herkimer of New York.

Felt attended the University of Idaho in Moscow where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1935.

Felt then went to Washington, D.C., to work in the office of Democratic U.S. Senator James P. Pope. In 1938, Felt married Audrey Robinson, whom he had known when they were students at the University of Idaho. She had come to Washington to work at the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

Felt stayed on with Pope's successor in the Senate, David Worth Clark (D-Idaho). He attended the George Washington University Law School at night, earning his law degree in 1940, and was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1941.

Felt then took a position at the Federal Trade Commission. He was assigned to investigate whether a toilet paper brand, called "Red Cross", was misleading consumers into thinking it was endorsed by the American Red Cross. Felt wrote in his memoir:

My research, which required days of travel and hundreds of interviews, produced two definite conclusions:

1. Most people did use toilet tissue.

2. Most people did not appreciate being asked about it.

That was when I started looking for other employment.

He applied for a job with the FBI in November 1941 and was accepted.

After completing 16 weeks of training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and FBI Headquarters in Washington, Felt was assigned to Texas, spending three months each in the field offices in Houston and San Antonio. He returned to FBI Headquarters, where he was assigned to the Espionage Section of the Domestic Intelligence Division, tracking down spies and saboteurs during World War II. He worked on the Major Case Desk where, under Felt's direction, German agent Helmut Goldschmidt, codename "Peasant", handlers thought that he had made his way to the United States and was giving sending them back Allied plans. But he was really in custody in England and so the Germans were fed disinformation.

After the war, Felt was assigned to the Seattle field office. After two years of general work, he spent two years as a firearms instructor and was promoted from agent to supervisor. Felt also oversaw the completion of background checks of workers at the Hanford plutonium plant near Richland, Washington. In 1954 Felt returned briefly to Washington as an inspector's aide. Two months later, he was sent to New Orleans as Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge of the field office. When he was transferred to Los Angeles fifteen months later, he held the same rank there.

In 1956, Felt was transferred to Salt Lake City and promoted to Special Agent-in-Charge. The Salt Lake City office included Nevada within its purview, and Felt oversaw some of the Bureau's earliest investigations into organized crime, assessing the mob's operations in the Reno and Las Vegas casinos. In February 1958, Felt was assigned to Kansas City, Missouri where he directed further investigations of organized crime. 

Felt returned to Washington, D.C., in September 1962. As assistant to the bureau's assistant director in charge of the Training Division, Felt helped oversee the FBI Academy. In November 1964, he was promoted to an Assistant Director of the Bureau, as Chief Inspector of the Bureau and Head of the Inspection Division. This division oversaw compliance with Bureau regulations and conducted internal investigations.

On July 1, 1971, Felt was promoted by Hoover to Deputy Associate Director and began assisting Hoover's right-hand man, Associate Director Clyde Tolson because Tolson was in failing health and unable to carry out his duties. Felt was also was tasked to rein in William C. Sullivan's domestic spying operations, as Sullivan had been engaged in secret unofficial work for the White House. 

Hoover died on May 2nd, 1972. Tolson was in charge until the next day when Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray III as Acting FBI Director. Tolson resigned and Felt became Associate Director. On the day of Hoover's death, Hoover's secretary began destroying his files. However, she did secretly turn over twelve boxes of the "Official/Confidential" files to Felt. These contained 167 files and 17,750 pages, many of them containing derogatory information about individuals whom Hoover had investigated. He used this information as power over them. Felt stored the files in his office.

Now, back to Watergate. As the whole thing happened, Felt saw everything compiled on the case before it was given to Gray. And when Bob called Felt, he was more than willing to help, but refused to talk to him over the phone about it. So, wanting his involvement to remain secret, Felt told Bob that on page twenty of the New York Times newspaper, that Bob received at his door everyday, Felt would draw a little clock indicating what time he wanted to meet. When Bob wanted to meet Felt, he would move his potted plant that he kept on his balcony of his house. And that their meeting place would be an underground parking garage in Virginia.

Bob met Felt at the parking garage and asked him how the burglars might be connected to the CIA. Felt told him to do the work, that it was all right in front of him, but to be careful.

Bob couldn't divulge Felt as his source, so he initially referred to him as "My Friend" and then as "Deep Background." Post editor Howard Simons then tagged Felt as "Deep Throat", after the widely known porno film Deep Throat, which was popular at the time.

Bob and Carl Bernstein found out that the burglars had entered the office to repair bugs that they had installed into the office nearly a week earlier and that the so-called burglars were some how connected to the White House and were given the task to spy on the Democrats. One of the was named Jim McCord Jr. and was the security officer for Richard Nixon's Committee to Reelect the President.  

Nixon, who was named after Richard the Lionheart, was born in Yorba Linda, California, in a house that was built by his father. He was raised in he the Quaker faith and  refrained from alcohol, dancing, and swearing. Nixon was a descendant of the early American settler Thomas Cornell, who was also an ancestor of Ezra Cornell, the founder of Cornell University, as well as of Jimmy Carter and Bill Gates.

Nixon quoted a saying of Eisenhower to describe his boyhood: "We were poor, but the glory of it was we didn't know it". The Nixon family ranch failed in 1922, and the family moved to Whittier, California where Nixon's father opened a grocery store and gas station. Nixon's younger brother Arthur died in 1925 at the age of seven after a short illness. Nixon was twelve years old when a spot was found on his lung. With a family history of tuberculosis, he was forbidden to play sports. Eventually, the spot was found to be scar tissue from an early bout of pneumonia.

Nixon's older brother Harold fell ill of tuberculosis. His parents believed that attending Whittier High School had caused  Harold to live a dissolute lifestyle before he became sick, so they sent Nixon to the larger Fullerton Union High School. Nixon received excellent grades. Later, he lived with an aunt in Fullerton during the week so he would have to take the hour long bus ride to and from the high school. Nixon played junior varsity football, and seldom missed a practice, even though he was rarely used in games. He was a great debater, winning a number of championships.

At the start of his junior year in September 1928, Nixon's parents permitted him to transfer to Whittier High School where he suffered his first election defeat when he lost his bid for student body president. Nixon often rose at 4 a.m., to drive the family truck into Los Angeles and purchase vegetables at the market. He then drove to the store to wash and display them before going to school. Nixon's mother took Harold to Arizona in the hopes of improving his health and the demands on Nixon increased, causing him to give up football. Nevertheless, Nixon graduated from Whittier High third in his class of 207 students.

Nixon was offered a tuition grant to attend Harvard University but he was needed at the store. He remained in his hometown and attended Whittier College with his expenses covered by a bequest from his maternal grandfather. Nixon played for the basketball team. He also was on the football, but he was a substitute because he was deemed to small to play. Whittier had literary societies and the only one for men, the Franklins, snubbed Nixon because he wasn't from a prominent family. Nixon responded by helping to found a new society, the Orthogonian Society. In addition to the society, schoolwork, and work at the store, Nixon also became a champion debater and gained a reputation as a hard worker. In 1933, he became engaged to Ola Florence Welch, daughter of the Whittier police chief, but the two broke up 2 years later. 

Nixon graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in history, and received a full scholarship to attend Duke University School of Law. Nixon was elected president of the Duke Bar Association, inducted into the Order of the Coif, and graduated third in his class in June 1937.

After graduating from Duke, Richard moved back home and began practicing law. 

In January 1938 Nixon was cast in the Whittier Community Players production of The Dark Tower. There he played opposite a high school teacher named Thelma "Pat" Ryan. Nixon fell in love with Pat at first sight, but Pat didn't feel the same way and turned him down several times before agreeing to a date. They dated for two years before she assented to his proposal and they were married.

In January 1942 Nixon and Pat moved to Washington, D.C., where Nixon took a job at the Office of Price Administration and was assigned to the tire rationing division, where he was tasked with replying to correspondence. He did not enjoy the role, and four months later applied to join the United States Navy. His application was successful, and he was appointed a lieutenant junior grade in the U.S Naval Reserve on June 15th. Nixon rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander before leaving the Navy in 1946.

Nixon was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946. When in the House, he was a member of House Un-American Activities Commission, a group of Congressmen that tried to expose people in the United States who might have been Communists.

In Congress, Nixon supported the Taft–Hartley Act of 1947, a federal law that monitors the activities and power of labor unions, and he served on the Education and Labor Committee. He was part of the Herter Committee, which went to Europe to report on the need for U.S. foreign aid.  Advocacy by Herter Committee members, including Nixon, led to congressional passage of the Marshall Plan.

By May 1948, Nixon had co-sponsored a "Mundt–Nixon Bill" to implement "a new approach to the complicated problem of internal communist subversion ... It provided for registration of all Communist Party members and required a statement of the source of all printed and broadcast material issued by organizations that were found to be Communist fronts." He served as floor manager for the Republican Party. On May 19th, 1948, the bill passed the House by 319 to 58, but later it failed to pass the Senate.

Nixon first gained national attention in August 1948, when his persistence as a HUAC member helped break the Alger Hiss spy case. In 1948, Nixon successfully cross-filed as a candidate in his district, winning both major party primaries, and was comfortably reelected.

In 1949, Nixon began to consider running for the United States Senate against the Democratic incumbent. He was later elected a Senator in 1950 after running a controversial campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas. During this campaign, Nixon was first called "Tricky Dick" by his opponents for his campaign tactics.

In the Senate, Nixon took a prominent position in opposing global communism. Nixon also criticized President Harry S. Truman's handling of the Korean War. He supported statehood for Alaska and Hawaii, voted in favor of civil rights for minorities, and supported federal disaster relief for India and Yugoslavia. He voted against price controls and other monetary restrictions, benefits for illegal immigrants, and public power.

In the 1952 presidential election, Dwight D. Eisenhower selected Nixon to be vice-president. People accused him of receiving illegal money contributions to his campaign and some people wanted Eisenhower to pick a different vice president, but Eisenhower still kept Nixon. Nixon after the accusations made a speech on television saying that the only gift he had received, but which he would not give back was "a little cocker spaniel dog ... sent all the way from Texas. And our little girl—Tricia, the 6-year-old—named it Checkers." The speech prompted a huge public outpouring of support for Nixon.

The Republican Party decided to keep Nixon as their vice-presidential candidate and when Eisenhower won the election. During his vice-presidency, Nixon attended Cabinet and National Security Council meetings and chaired them when Eisenhower was absent. 

The Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress in the 1954 elections. These losses caused Nixon to contemplate leaving politics once he had served out his term. On September 24th, 1955, President Eisenhower suffered a heart attack and was unable to perform his duties for six weeks. Nixon acted in Eisenhower's stead during this period. 

Nixon sought a second term, but Eisenhower proposed that Nixon not run for reelection in order to give him administrative experience before a 1960 presidential run and instead become a Cabinet officer in a second Eisenhower administration. Nixon believed such an action would destroy his political career. Although no Republican was opposing Eisenhower, Nixon received a substantial number of write-in votes against the President in the 1956 New Hampshire primary election. In late April, the President announced that Nixon would again be his running mate.  Eisenhower and Nixon were reelected by a comfortable margin in the November 1956 election.

In early 1957, Nixon undertook a trip to Africa. On his return, he helped shepherd the Civil Rights Act of 1957 through Congress.  Nixon then advised the President to sign the bill, which he did. Eisenhower suffered a mild stroke in November 1957, and Nixon gave a press conference, assuring the nation that the Cabinet was functioning well as a team during Eisenhower's brief illness.

On April 27th, 1958, Nixon and his wife embarked on a goodwill tour of South America. When the Nixon party reached Lima, Peru,  he was met with student demonstrations. Nixon went to the historical campus of National University of San Marcos, got out of his car to confront the students, and stayed until forced back into the car by a volley of thrown objects. At his hotel, Nixon faced another mob, and one demonstrator spat on him. In Caracas, Venezuela, Nixon and his wife were spat on by anti-American demonstrators and their limousine was attacked by a pipe-wielding mob. Nixon claimed there was "absolute proof that [the protesters] were directed and controlled by a central Communist conspiracy." 

In July 1959 President Eisenhower sent Nixon to the Soviet Union for the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, during which he had a debate with the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. They were both arguing that their country was better.

In 1960 Nixon launched his first campaign for President of the United States. In the first ever televised presidential debate in history, Nixon's performance in the debate was perceived to be mediocre and he narrowly lost the election.

There were charges of voter fraud in Texas and Illinois, both states won by Kennedy. Nixon refused to consider contesting the election, feeling a lengthy controversy would diminish the United States in the eyes of the world and the uncertainty would hurt U.S. interests. At the end of his term of office as vice president in January 1961, Nixon and his family returned to California, where he practiced law and wrote a bestselling book, Six Crises, which included coverage of the Hiss case, Eisenhower's heart attack, and the Fund Crisis, which had been resolved by the Checkers speech.

In 1962, Nixon lost the election for governor of California to Pat Brown. After losing, Nixon said "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore", leading many experts to say that Nixon's political career was over.

In 1963 the Nixon family traveled to Europe, where Nixon gave press conferences and met with leaders of the countries he visited. The family moved to New York City, where Nixon became a senior partner in the leading law firm Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie & Alexander. When announcing his California campaign, Nixon had pledged not to run for president in 1964.

At the end of 1967, Nixon planned to run for president a second time.

After the Tet Offensive was launched in January 1968, President Johnson withdrew as a candidate in March. In June, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated just moments after his victory in the California primary. Nixon's main opposition was Michigan Governor George Romney. Nixon secured the nomination on the first ballot. He selected Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew as his running mate.

Nixon's Democratic opponent in the general election was Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Throughout the campaign, Nixon portrayed himself as a figure of stability during a period of national unrest and upheaval. He appealed to what he later called the "silent majority" of socially conservative Americans who disliked the hippie counterculture and the anti-war demonstrators.

Nixon waged a prominent television advertising campaign and stressed that the crime rate was too high, and attacked what he perceived as a surrender by the Democrats of the United States' nuclear superiority. Nixon promised "peace with honor" in the Vietnam War and proclaimed that "new leadership will end the war and win the peace in the Pacific".

In 1968, Richard Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey and Nixon was inaugurated as president on January 20th, 1969. In his inaugural address, which received almost uniformly positive reviews, Nixon remarked that "the greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker."

When Nixon took office, about 300 American soldiers were dying each week in Vietnam, and the war was broadly unpopular in the United States, with ongoing violent protests against the war. Nixon had concluded that the Vietnam War could not be won and he was determined to end the war quickly. He slowly began withdrawing U.S. troops, so that the South Vietnamese troops could take over the fighting by themselves. Nixon secretly bombed many enemy targets in Cambodia and North Vietnam while bringing home the American troops, to make it easier for South Vietnam to win. When his spreading the bombing to Cambodia and Laos became known in 1970, it caused larger protests than ever in America, including at Kent State and even in Washington, DC, where more than 12,000 were arrested in May 1971 at the peak of the protests. Partly because of the amount of opposition, Nixon sped up troop withdrawal and ended the draft.

Nixon began a policy called "detente" which reduced tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. The two countries would get along and sign treaties that would limit the production of nuclear weapons between both sides. Nixon traveled to communist China and established a very good relationship with them. Before that, there was almost no relationship between the United States and China. It opened up the door for decades of trade in the future, which is why many items in the United States were made in China. 

Nixon entered his name on the New Hampshire primary ballot on January 5, 1972, effectively announcing his candidacy for reelection. 

Fast forward to June and back to Bob and Bernstein's investigation in to what was going on with the break in at Watergate.

A diary was found which had the contact number of E Howard Hunt, who was an intelligence agent and a member of the White House plumbers, which was a secret team of agents working at the behest of the White House. It turned out that Hunt along G Gordon Liddy were the brains behind the first break in and that there were many agents responsible for spying on the Democrats. A check meant for Richard Nixon's reelection campaign was traced to the bank account of one of the burglars. This led to the conclusion that the campaign funds were being used to fund these illegal activities. 

Nixon wanted to stop the leaks and find who "Deep throat" was. Felt volunteered to head up a task force to investigate to which Nixon agreed. Haldeman later initially suspected lower-level FBI agents, including Angelo Lano, of speaking to the Post. But eventually he began to suspect Felt and told the president about his suspicions.

Haldeman also said that he had spoken to White House counsel John W. Dean about punishing Felt, but Dean said Felt had committed no crime and could not be prosecuted.

James McCord sent a letter to the trial judge naming other people who were part of this conspiracy. With more and more evidence being unearthed, it was soon clear that Richard Nixon was personally involved in the scandal along with several members from his administration. It was also discovered that many of the conversations regarding the conspiracy took place in the Oval Office and these conversations were taped. Initially, Nixon denied the presence of the tapes, but due to US Supreme Court order, he was forced to hand over the tapes containing the damning conversations. However, some important conversations from these tapes were missing.

On November 17th, 1973, during a televised question-and-answer session Nixon said, "People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got."

The US Congress was forced to begin the process of impeachment against Richard Nixon. However, before the culmination of the process, Nixon resigned on 9th August 1974. While Nixon himself did not serve any prison time, many of his aides were found guilty by the Grand Jury.