Watergate Affair - Essay Example

Since Nixons resignation, it has been debated whether or not Nixon did anything more that a thousand other politicians havent done throughout history. 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 administrations 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