Richard M. Nixon by Elizabeth Drew

Author:Elizabeth Drew
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2007-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

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Watergate

The extraordinary set of events that came to be called Watergate— named for the building complex where on June 17, 1972, a team of burglars with ties to the White House broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and culminating in Nixon’s becoming the first president to be forced to leave office— has often been described as the unraveling of a criminal conspiracy. But while crimes were committed in the case of the Watergate break-in, and in the subsequent cover-up of how the burglars were financed and their connections to the White House, these bizarre developments were even more than that: they represented a constitutional crisis. They raised the questions of whether the president was subject to the law and the courts; whether the executive branch, in particular the White House, was accountable to the other branches of government; whether Congress would assert itself against a president who held himself above the law. Though, looking back, the unraveling of the cover-up seems inevitable, it didn’t appear so at the time. The fact that Richard Nixon was driven from the presidency, that “the system worked,” became such a settled part of American history that it has been largely overlooked that this outcome was far from certain. The Watergate era also had its comic moments as a result of the absurdities that were exposed and the bizarre figures that were involved; the mixture of the menacing and the ridiculous put the country through an array of contradictory emotions. Most after-the-fact histories don’t convey that for a great many Americans this was a period of fear and tension, a wild ride through history. A place-name became a metaphor, like Waterloo. The public was intensely engaged, not only because the events of the Watergate era were so astonishing, and often frightening, but also because Nixon, with his self-absorption, outbursts, and emotion-ridden talking about them, made this his last and greatest crisis, and he imposed his own agony on the nation.

A couple of weeks after the Pentagon Papers were published in June 1971, John Ehrlichman, following Nixon’s orders, established the Special Investigations Unit, or the “plumbers,” in the White House to stop such leaks of classified documents. Worried that leaks could undermine his and Kissinger’s largely secret international maneuvering, that the Pentagon Papers themselves could undermine the legitimacy of the Vietnam War, and now all the more exercised about the press, Nixon told his aides he wanted a full investigation “whatever the cost,” and they took him at his word. The plumbers outfit wasn’t hidden away. It was given Room 16 of the Executive Office Building, next to the White House; a sign on the door even said “Plumbers.” But their efforts went well beyond ferreting out and stopping leaks.

The plumbers unit was just one manifestation of Nixon’s determination to destroy those he considered his enemies. (”Crush them” was a familiar Nixon phrase.) Guided by his paranoia, Nixon’s “enemies” fell into several categories: real and potential political opponents; elements in the society—the media,

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