The Watergate Scandal - Essay Example

Taken one at a time, each crime may not have been that egregious. However, the gravity of the scandal comes from the sheer number of crimes, the number of people involved, their sweeping impact, and the unbridled willingness to cover-up the crimes at any cost. . While the term Watergate referred specifically to the break-in at the Watergate Hotel, the scandal would ultimately involve a complex tapestry of political corruption, obstruction of justice, illegal domestic spying, abusing public agencies for political purposes, tax fraud, and corruption.

The word has worked its way into the popular culture as a descriptive term for anything associated with political corruption such as Iran-gate, Whitewater-gate, and Paula Jones-gate. The case would drag on through numerous investigations, eventually resulting in the jailing or resignation of more than 40 public officials, many of them for the actions taken during the infamous cover-up. The Watergate scandal that broke into the public realm with the news that five men had been arrested while breaking into the Democratic National Headquarters on June 17, 1972 had actually begun much earlier.

In September 1971, G.Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt had burglarized the office of a psychiatrist in an effort to obtain the medical files on Daniel Ellsberg, a defense analyst who had released documents to The New York Times that would prove embarrassing to the administration's war effort.1 An additional break-in in May of 1972 had placed an illegal listening device in the headquarters of the Democratic National Party. These operations had been financed by the operation of a secret slush fund consisting of tens of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions.

In addition, the administration had used the CIA and FBI to spy on Nixon's political opponents, which illegally used public agencies for political purposes. By the time of the Watergate break-in in June 1972, the Nixon administration had already established a pattern of illegal activity. The report of the break-in at the Watergate Hotel initially dew very little public attention, but within a year would mushroom into a major political scandal. According to the Washington Star News, within two weeks of the 1972 burglary the Philippines sugar industry had funneled $30,000 into the Nixon campaign to help pay for the Watergate cover-up.

2 The cover-up would eventually involve scores of White House insiders. Later investigations would reveal the existence of a cash fund kept in a White House vault to be used for hush money and to finance other illegal operations. During the trial of the burglars, Judge John Sirica learned that the men and the money connected to the crime were a part of the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP), headed by John Mitchell.3 The defendants in the trial refused to cooperate, but subsequent hearings in the Senate would lead to the highest levels of the government.

White House Counsel John Dean would be the lone White House official that would come forward and cooperate with the government's investigations. Dean claimed that Nixon was aware of a secret $300,000 campaign donation by the dairy industry designed to influence the government,