The Watergate Break-in

On This Day in History: June 17

Ever since Nixon’s resignation, people love to add “gate” to some form of wrongdoing, legitimate or not, to make it more scandalous. The only time it’s been funny was in the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes, when Calvin informed his father of his dropping in the polls, citing “Bedtimegate” and “Homeworkgate” as scandals plaguing Dad’s administration.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: June 17, 1972--

Watergate was a real thing, a real place, a real scandal, and it led to the downfall of a corrupt president during a time when that was still possible because the GOP had something of a conscience.

Watergate is an office complex in Washington, D.C. In the early morning hours of June 17, 1972, five men broke into the Democratic National Convention offices in that building in an attempt to place listening devices so they could gather intelligence to help in President Nixon’s reelection campaign.

But due to an observant security guard named Frank Wills, who found tape on door latches to prevent them from locking, the men were caught by police. Later that summer the five—along with break-in organizers G. Gordy Liddy, who was finance counsel for the Committee for the Reelection of the President (meaning Nixon), and former CIA officer Howard Hunt—were indicted on charges of conspiracy, burglary, and violation of federal wiretapping laws. They all were eventually convicted (one pleaded guilty) and given a variety of sentences, with no one serving more than five years.

Almost immediately after the break-in and arrests, the cover-up began to try to save Nixon’s ass. One of the crazier things that happened as part of the cover-up was that Martha Mitchell, wife of attorney general and CRP head John Mitchell, was “basically kidnapped” on orders of her husband and held incommunicado in a hotel room when the burglary story first broke, to prevent her from blowing the whistle about the White House connection to the break-in. Martha knew that one of those arrested, James W. McCord Jr., worked for her husband at the CRP, and could therefore tie John Mitchell to the crime.

Nixon did win reelection that year, in a landslide. It would take two years of investigations and additional cover-ups about Watergate that would destroy Nixon’s support and lead to three articles of impeachment being approved against him, but he resigned before actual impeachment, on August 9, 1974.

Perhaps you’re thinking: That’s it? So fucking what? That wouldn’t even rate compared to Trump’s scandals. It probably wouldn’t have made front-page news, let alone spawn a movie with the hottest movie stars of the day. Don’t get me wrong. Nixon was a piece of shit. But comparatively speaking, the Trump bar was so low it must have had some bizarrely powerful magnetic attraction to Earth’s molten core.

NOTE: This piece was researched and written by a human, not some bullshit “ai” plagiarism software.

Those who cannot remember the past need a history teacher who says “fuck” a lot. Get both volumes of ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY SH!T WENT DOWN.