STORY

The Watergate scandal: the investigation that brought down President Richard Nixon

Journalists Carl Bernstein (left) and Robert Woodward (right) at the offices of the Washington Post on May 7, 1973, received the Pulitzer Prize for their investigation of the Watergate scandal.

1973 A.D.

Text by: Olivier Favier Follow

7 mins

On the night of June 16 to 17, 1972, the police arrested five men in the Watergate building, headquarters of the Democratic Party, in Washington.

The revelations of two journalists from the

 will give this simple American news item the dimensions of a state scandal and lead, on August 8, 1974, to the resignation of Republican President Richard Nixon.

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On June 17, 1972, around 1 a.m., the night watchman of Watergate, an office building on the banks of the Potomac in Washington, discovered that a door to the building had been reopened in the middle of the night.

Taken aback, he calls the police.

Three agents enter the building and arrest five men equipped with photographic equipment as well as spy microphones that they were obviously preparing to conceal.

The investigation carried out by the FBI – we are in a federal district – proves to be instructive.

James McCord, one of the burglars, is a former agent of theirs who also worked for the CIA and, even more surprisingly, a member of the Committee for the Reelection of the President, an organization serving Richard Nixon, who was then seeking a second term.

Alerted, the latter wishes to state publicly, five days later, that the White House is not involved in “

”.

He repeated this lie in August, relying this time on the results of an internal investigation.

During this period, voters have their eyes riveted on Vietnam, with which Richard Nixon promised a “

”.

Also, the president crushes his Democratic adversary in the presidential election of November 9.

However, this triumph is only a reprieve.

Deep Throat

From Saturday, June 17 in the morning, in fact, the editor of the

, Benjamin Bradlee, summoned Bob Woodward, a 29-year-old former soldier who became a journalist, to explain to him the first elements of the case.

Dispatched to the court where the defendants were immediately heard, Bob Woodward discovers, flabbergasted, the identity of James McCord.

From then on, his newspaper put him full-time on the case with his colleague Carl Bernstein, his junior by a year.

From October 1972, the pair benefited from the leads given by a man whom Bob Woodward had met two years earlier at the White House, when he was still an officer.

This is Mark Felt, number two in the FBI.

Readers of the newspaper simply know of the existence of an informed source, which one of the editors dubbed "Deep Throat", after the title of a pornographic film from 1972.

The meetings with "Deep Throat" take place in a parking lot in Rosslyn, a suburb of Washington.

Woodward goes there by changing taxis along the way to avoid spinning.

Each time, Mark Felt publishes at the bottom of page 20 of the

a small clock indicating the time of the meeting.

And when Woodward wants to solicit him, he moves one of the plants from his balcony.

Mark Felt behaves, moreover, more like an oracle than a real indicator, often contenting himself with suggesting leads: “

»

The President's Men

The trial opened in January 1973. There were now seven defendants: the five men present on the scene and their sponsors, Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy.

While most plead guilty and are released on bail, Hunt and McCord remain silent.

They were nevertheless found guilty and released in turn on bail.

In March, however, McCord decides to write a letter to the judge in which he believes he has been the subject of pressure from the White House and is targeting senior officials.

The judge publishes the letter and pronounces heavy sentences, but not definitive ones for the other defendants, thus hoping to make them speak.

The same month, the first hearings of a senatorial commission set up by the Democratic majority of the Senate, on the proposal of Ted Kennedy, opened.

To avoid certain members of the White House being interrogated, Richard Nixon invokes the separation of powers and “

”.

Very quickly, it appears to the two journalists of the

that the operation carried out at Watergate is part of a vast system of espionage and political sabotage.

For its part, at the end of an investigation which stretched until July 1974, the commission evoked obstructions of justice by relatives of Richard Nixon, clandestine listening, embezzlement.

April 1973 is a month of resignations, from the acting director of the FBI to the attorney general of the United States – the equivalent of a minister of justice at the federal level – passing by the three main advisers Of the president.

The vice tightens around the latter.

A publicized showdown

In May 1973, the hearings of the commission became public and broadcast by live television.

Richard Nixon continues to deny any involvement.

He tries to divert attention with an imposing ceremony in honor of the prisoners freed by North Vietnam.

Nothing helped and, on June 3, the

announced that one of the president's resigning advisers, John Dean, had agreed to testify before the commission.

John Dean mentions several meetings between Richard Nixon and the two other advisers in order to stifle the scandal triggered by Watergate.

He says he was pressured to submit his own resignation and acknowledge responsibility.

He finally transmits a copy of a blacklist of enemies of the presidency, among which are Senator Ted Kennedy and Richard Nixon's ill-fated rival in the 1972 election, George McGovern.

The commission then demanded a hearing from the president, but he refused in July.

The same month, we learn of the existence of magnetic tapes on which the conversations conducted with the president were systematically recorded without the knowledge of his interlocutors.

Richard Nixon refuses to give access and responds in October by dismissing the independent special prosecutor in charge of the case, thereby causing the resignation of two senior justice officials.

Resignation

This blatant abuse of power, known as the "Saturday Night Massacre", sparked a series of

proceedings against the president.

Finally, he resolves to give access to a few magnetic tapes, but one of them appears erased over more than eighteen minutes of recording.

In February 1974, the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives took over from the Senate Committee.

At the same time, other cases are resurfacing in the press, where the president seems to be involved.

Finally, the report of the senatorial commission, published in July 1974, proves damning.

Cornered, the president then decides to make public, at the beginning of August, the transcription of one of the most compromising tapes, thus hoping to put an end to the pressures of justice.

But this document is immediately nicknamed "

", in other words the irrefutable proof of his lies and his involvement.

He resigned three days later to avoid the humiliation of impeachment.

He was immediately pardoned by Vice President Gerald Ford.

On August 8, 1974, US President Richard Nixon announced his resignation.

The posterity of this scandal, the only one to have led to the resignation of a President of the United States, is such that the suffix "-gate" has been used to qualify a number of affairs of state: thus "Rubygate" where the President of the Italian Council Silvio Berlusconi is suspected of having had sex with an underage prostitute, from the "Fillongate" in France during the 2017 presidential election where the wife of the candidate Les Républicains is accused of having occupied a fictitious job, or even the "Partygate" in the United Kingdom when Prime Minister Boris Johnson was accused in November 2021 of having organized parties in Downing Street in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Our selection on the subject:

• To listen :

→ In 2019, Richard Nixon's ex-legal adviser draws a parallel between Watergate and the Mueller report targeting incumbent President Donald Trump

→ In 2014, historian Antoine Coppolani talks about Richard Nixon, of whom he has just published a biography

• Read also :

→ Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward,

, (translated by Claudine Cowen), Gallimard, Folio documents, 2005. This is from the original edition of this book, published in the United States shortly before the resignation of Richard Nixon , which is based on the eponymous film by Alan J. Pakula in 1976, with Robert Redford in the role of Bob Woolward and Dustin Hoffman in that of Carl Bernstein).

→ Bob Woodward,

, (translated by Bernard Blanc, Gallimard Folio, 2007. The publication of this book follows the revelation in 2005 by Mark Felt of his role in the downfall of the President Nixon).

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