Watergate: The American scandal that ended a presidency

Richard Nixon's scandal for the ages eclipsed by January 6 investigations

Former US president Richard Nixon points to transcripts of tapes after he announced during a televised speech that he would turn them over to House of Representatives impeachment investigators during the Watergate scandal. AP

John Ehrlichman, a key figure in the Watergate scandal, was convicted of conspiracy and perjury and served 18 months in prison. AP

FBI official Mark Felt was the 'Washington Post' informant that helped them break the Watergate story. AP

Nixon tells a group of Republican campaign contributors that he will get to the bottom of the Watergate scandal during a speech on May 9, 1973, in Washington. AP

The Senate Watergate Committee hearings on Capitol Hill in Washington took place in 1973. AP

HR Haldeman, former top Nixon aide, speaks before the Senate Watergate Committee in Washington on July 31, 1973. AP

Named in the Watergate scandal, from left to right, are G Gordon Liddy, White House counsel John W Dean III, former attorney general John Mitchell, and former Nixon deputy campaign manager Jeb Stuart Magruder. AP

Howard Baker, vice chairman of the Senate Watergate Investigating Committee, questions James McCord during a hearing in Washington, on May 18, 1973. AP

Nixon says goodbye with a victorious salute to his staff members outside the White House as he boards a helicopter after resigning the presidency on August 9, 1974. AP

The traumas of Watergate and January 6 are a half century apart, in vastly different eras, and they were about different things. AP

Nixon gives a speech at the White House following his resignation from the presidency after the Watergate scandal. Consolidated News Pictures / AFP

Parking space D32 in the garage underneath the Oakhill Office Building, where 'Washington Post' reporter Bob Woodward would meet his source known as 'Deep Throat' to exchange notes about the Watergate scandal, in Rosslyn, Virginia. Getty Images / AFP

Evidence from the Watergate break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington. AFP

The Watergate buildings feature office suites, a hotel and single-family residences. Getty Images / AFP

Woodward was a cub reporter when he and veteran 'Washington Post' reporter Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate story. AFP

A break-in by five men looking to install microphones at the Watergate and take pictures of documents to find compromising information on Nixon's opponents led to the president's downfall. AFP

Former 'Washington Post’s' executive editor Ben Bradlee and publisher Katharine Graham seen leaving the US district court in Washington. AP

Nixon met football star Pele in 1973 as rumblings of the Watergate scandal were beginning to surface. Photo: US National Archives 

A wanted poster features key people involved in the Watergate scandal at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. EPA

The exhibition presents illustrations from the 50th anniversary of the Watergate scandal. EPA

A photograph of Mark Felt and 'Time' magazine cover artwork called 'Nixon's Palace Guard' are part of the display. EPA

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein eulogises his former boss and 'Washington Post' executive editor Ben Bradlee at the National Cathedral in Washington. Getty Images / AFP

A caricature which appeared on the cover of 'Time' magazine in April 1973. EPA

The luxurious Watergate complex in Washington where the Democratic National Committee had its offices in 1973. AP

The exterior of the modern Watergate Hotel in Washington. Photo: Ron Blunt

The location of the clandestine meetings between Woodward and Mark Felt in 1972 and 1973 were kept secret until Felt came forward and revealed himself to be Deep Throat in 2005. Getty Images / AFP

A historical marker stands outside the parking garage underneath the Oakhill Office Building in Rosslyn, Virginia. Getty Images / AFP

Ben Bradlee, actor Dustin Hoffman and Harry Rosenfeld talk at the premiere of 'All the President's Men' at the Kennedy Centre in Washington. The Washington Post / AP

Although more than 50 years have passed, the Watergate affair remains a cautionary tale of the threat of untrammelled presidential power and the yardstick against which all other political scandals are judged.

Yet some historians believe its architect, former president Richard Nixon, risks being usurped as the norm-breaking exemplar of presidential corruption by Donald Trump and the firestorm over his role in the 2021 US Capitol assault.

Mr Nixon's underlying crime was covering up a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington's Watergate complex that was aimed at stealing documents that might have helped him in an election he would ultimately win by a landslide anyway.

The accusations against Mr Trump — that he incited a deadly riot to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power as part of a conspiracy to overturn an election — appear “far more serious”, says history professor Michael Green.

“One of the ironies is that Nixon did not need to order a break-in to win that election,” he said. “And there is no evidence, even with all of the tapes, that there was ever a discussion or thought of overturning the result if it went against him.”

Five Watergate burglars were caught red-handed on the evening of June 16 in 1972 and it quickly became clear that some were linked to Mr Nixon and the White House.

The ensuing investigation opened a Pandora's box of abuses and dirty tricks that included political spying, the forgery of correspondence and even the theft of a pair of shoes to intimidate a rival to Mr Nixon.

But the cover-up was initially so successful that Mr Nixon won 49 of the 50 states in his landslide victory over Democrat George McGovern in that year's presidential election.

The whitewash might have succeeded were it not for the chance discovery in the summer of 1973 that the president had secretly recorded all of his White House meetings.

They included a “smoking gun” tape in which Mr Nixon could be heard ordering that the FBI, which was set to investigate the Watergate break-in, be told to “stay the hell out of this”.

Mr Nixon resigned after a delegation of Republican elders, led by ultraconservative Barry Goldwater, came to the White House in 1974 to tell him he was likely to be impeached and the jig was up.

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the reporters who played a pivotal role in bringing down Mr Nixon, have written a new foreword for their major book All the President's Men drawing parallels to Mr Trump.

They suggest that Mr Trump's incitement of a mob to march on the Capitol constituted “a deception that exceeded even Nixon's imagination”.

“By legal definition this is clearly sedition … thus Trump became the first seditious president in our history,” they say.

While the Senate voted unanimously to set up a cross-party investigative committee on Watergate, the Republicans of the 2020s vetoed a bipartisan commission and punished two members who joined the Democratic-led House committee investigating January 6.

About 80 million Americans — considerably more than a third of the population — tuned in to White House counsel John Dean's televised evidence given against Mr Nixon at the Watergate hearings, while about 20 million — only 6 per cent of Americans — watched the blockbuster first hearing put on by the January 6 panel.

For David Greenberg, author of Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image, the Watergate hearings were “instrumental” in bringing down a president attempting to subvert democracy.

“The difference, however, is that in 1973 and 1974, a great many Republican congressmen and senators loyal to Nixon ended up admitting that he was engaged in criminal activity,” he told AFP.

“Today, only a few … have been willing to acknowledge Trump's complicity. Our polarised, partisan environment may prevent the January 6 hearings from achieving all they should.”

AFP contributed to this report