Tag: Nixon

Nixon Resigns! August 9, 1974

lars4968Leave a comment

On August 9, 1974, President Richard M. Nixon departed departed the White House for the last time, bringing to an end the two year long national nightmare known as the Watergate Scandal.  Facing certain impeachment and removal from office, Nixon resigned the prior evening in a prime time television broadcast to avoid the humiliation. Driven by Nixon’s paranoia and insecurity, it was a scandal that would rope in presidential aides at the highest level and eventually be traced back to the President himself. Fundamental principles of American Democracy, such as the rule of law, would come under fire from a President determined to evade responsibility for any criminal wrongdoing. The Watergate Scandal would forever change the course of American politics shattering the American public’s trust and confidence in its leaders and institutions. 

In the Beginning…

Late in the evening on June 17, 1972, five men were arrested at the National Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington DC  in what appeared to be a routine burglary at first glance. Follow on investigations revealed that these men—identified as Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker, James McCord, Eugenio Martinez, and Frank Sturgis— were not your ordinary run of the mill petty criminals but operatives working for the Committee for the Re-election of President Richard Nixon.  They had been caught wiretapping phones and stealing documents as part of a larger campaign of illegal activities developed by Nixon aide G. Gordon Liddy to ensure Nixon’s re-election. On September 15, 1972, a grand jury indicted the five office burglars, as well as Liddy and another Nixon aide E. Howard Hunt for conspiracy, burglary, and violation of federal wiretapping laws. President Nixon denied any association with the break-in and most voters believed him, winning re-election in a landslide. At the urging of Nixon’s aides, five pleaded guilty to avoid trial; the other two were convicted in January 1973.

Left: Virgilio Gonzalez, James McCord, Eugenio Martinez, Bernard Barker, and Frank Sturgis

Nixon’s passionate denials aside, there was a pervasive sense, as well as evidence, that there was more to this story than simply five low level campaign workers acting independently in criminal activities against their political rivals. There were unanswered questions and numerous threats that all pointed to a darker conspiracy and greater White House involvement. On February 7, 1973, the United States Senate voted unanimously to create a Senate select committee to investigate the 1972 Presidential Election and potential wrongdoings. The committee which consisted of four Democratic and three Republican Senators, was empowered to investigate the break-in and any subsequent cover-up of criminal activity, as well as “all other illegal, improper, or unethical conduct occurring during the Presidential campaign of 1972, including political espionage and campaign finance practices.” Committee hearings were broadcast live on television in May 1973 and quickly became “must see TV” for an inquiring and curious nation. Although Nixon repeatedly declared that he knew nothing about the Watergate burglary, former White House counsel John Dean III testified that the president had approved plans to cover up White House connections to the break-in. Another former aide, Alexander Butterfield, revealed that the president maintained a voice-activated tape recorder system in various rooms in the White House which potentially contained information implicating the President in a criminal conspiracy. Only one month after the hearings began, 67 percent believed that President Nixon had participated in the Watergate cover-up.

The Scene of the Crime: The Watergate

The Saturday Night Massacre

The revelation that there were recordings of potentially damaging information implicating Nixon and his efforts to prevent their disclosure soon became the central drama of the story. Nixon struggled to protect the tapes during the summer and fall of 1973. His lawyers argued that the president’s executive privilege allowed him to keep the tapes to himself, but the Senate committee and an independent special prosecutor named Archibald Cox were all determined to obtain them. On October 20, 1973, after Cox refused to drop the subpoena, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire the special prosecutor. Richardson resigned in protest rather than carry out what he judged to be an unethical and unlawful order. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckleshaus to fire Cox, but Ruckelshaus also resigned rather than fire him. Nixon’s search for someone in the Justice Department willing to fire Cox ended with the Solicitor General, Robert Bork. Though Bork said he believed Nixon’s order was valid and appropriate, he considered resigning to avoid being “perceived as a man who did the President’s bidding to save my job”. This chain of events would go down in history as the “Saturday Night Massacre” and further turn the American public against Nixon. Responding to the allegations that he was obstructing justice, Nixon famously replied, “I am not a crook.”

Left: Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox; Center: Attorney General Elliot Richardson; and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckleshaus

Things went from bad to worse for the White House in the new year. On February 6, 1974, the House of Representatives began to investigate the possible impeachment of the President. Less than a month later, on March 1, 1974, a grand jury indicted several former aides of Nixon, who became known as the “Watergate Seven”—H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John N. Mitchell, Charles Colson, Gordan C. Strachan, Robert Maridan and Kenneth Parkinson for conspiring to hinder the Watergate investigation. The grand jury secretly named Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator. However the special prosecutor dissuaded them from an indictment of Nixon, arguing that a president can be indicted only after he leaves office, creating a precedent that lasts even today.

No Way Out

Nixon eventually released select tapes in an effort to tamp down growing public criticisms and perceptions that he was hiding something. The President announced the release of the transcripts in a speech to the nation on April 29, 1974 but noted that any audio pertinent to national security information could be redacted from the released tapes. This caveat almost immediately fueled suspicions that the White House was indeed hiding something more damning. The issue of the recordings and whether the White House was obligated to comply with the Congressional subpoena tapes went to the United States Supreme Court. On July 24, 1974, in United States v. Nixon, the Court ruled unanimously that claims of executive privilege over the tapes were void. The Court ordered the President to release the tapes to the special prosecutor. On July 30, 1974, Nixon complied with the order and released the subpoenaed tapes to the public.

Nixon’s fate was largely sealed on August 5, 1974 when the White House released a previously unknown audio tape that would prove to be a “smoking gun” providing undeniable evidence of his complicity in the Watergate crimes. The recording from June 23, 1972, less than a week after the break-in, revealed a President engaged in in-depth conversations with his aides during which they discussed how to stop the FBI from continuing its investigation of the break-in. Two days later, a group of senior Republican leaders from the Senate and the House of Representatives met with Nixon and presented him with an ultimatum, resign or be impeached.

On August 8, in a nationally televised address, Nixon officially resigned from the Presidency in shame. The following day he and his family departed the White House one last time, boarded Marine One and flew to Andrews Air Force base where they were shuttled back to their home in California. Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn in as President shortly thereafter. He would issue a full and unconditional pardon of Nixon on September 8 immunizing him from prosecution for any crimes he had “committed or may have committed or taken part in” as president.

Nixon departing the White House one last time.

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, August 2-4, 1964

lars4968Leave a comment

On August 2, 1964, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the USS Maddox  in the Gulf of Tonkin in what appeared to be a blatant act of communist aggression. Two days later the Maddox, along with a second destroyer, the USS Turner Joy, claimed again to have come under fire from North Vietnamese patrol boats that allegedly fired at least 20 torpedoes at the U.S. ships. The Johnson administration would use these alleged incidents to argue for more direct U.S. military involvement in the escalating Vietnam conflict, even though the Maddox likely provoked the first attack and the second one never happened. Three days later, the U.S. Congress passed what would become known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, effectively giving the Johnson Administration a blank check to wage war in Vietnam. The resolution was approved unanimously in the House while in the Senate only two Senators, Wayne Morse (D-OR) and Ernest Gruening (D-AK) opposed the resolution. Throughout the war, both Morse and Gruening would remain critics of U.S. involvement in Vietnam with Morse taking great issue with what he saw as the Johnson administration’s deceptive practices, especially the withholding of information from the public. 

The USS Maddox (DD-731)

In reality, nothing about the incident was as reported. The USS Maddox was not the target of unprovoked Communist aggression. It was supporting South Vietnamese commando attacks and intelligence-gathering missions along the North Vietnamese coast. The South Vietnamese attacks were part of Operation Plan 34A (OPLAN 34A). Conceived by the U.S. military and carried out by the South Vietnamese Navy, OPLAN 34A was designed to harass the communist government in Hanoi and create opportunities to learn about North Vietnam’s military readiness and operations, in particular a new radar network the Soviets were installing. Moreover, the alleged August 4 attack never took place. The commander of the Maddox sent conflicting messages about the purported attack which would later be attributed to faulty equipment, poor weather, and overeager sonar men. A navy fighter jet from a nearby aircraft carrier also flew overhead for ninety minutes but failed to locate any North Vietnamese ships. The plane’s pilot, Commander James B. Stockdale wrote, “I had the best seat in the house to watch” and I saw “no boats, no boat wakes, no boat gunfire, no torpedo wakes—nothing but black sea and American firepower.” Lastly, an intelligence intercept in which North Vietnamese patrol boats reported the results of the the alleged August 4 attack to higher officials was in fact from the incident two days earlier and not confirmation of an additional attack.

This incident would also eventually raise troubling questions about whether President Johnson had deliberately misled the American public into the Vietnam War. On this dubious basis, the Johnson administration would plunge the United States into a ten year ground war in Vietnam. Having thoroughly defeated his Republican rival, Senator Barry Goldwater, in a landslide in the November 1964, Senator Hubert Humphrey and others within the Democratic Party, tried to convince Johnson that it was an opportune time to step back from Vietnam. Johnson disagreed and within six months U.S. aircraft would begin carrying out bombing runs over North Vietnam as part of Operation Rolling Thunder while 40,000 U.S. troops would be on the ground in South Vietnam. By the end of 1965, that number would expand to 184,000. The U.S. military troop presence in Vietnam would continue to grow, peaking at roughly 550,000 in April 1969. Approximately 50,000 servicemen and women would lose their lives over the course of this ten year war.

In a largely symbolic gesture, the U.S. Congress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in January 1971, as popular opinion grew against continued U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. Two years later, Congress passed the War Powers Act over the veto of President Richard Nixon. The War Powers Act was a direct reaction to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and Nixon’s illegal expansion of the war into Cambodia. It was also a determined attempt by Congress to reassert it’s oversight of U.S. foreign policy and reclaim its unique power to declare war, a power it had ceded to the presidency during both the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The War Powers Resolution allows a President to use U.S. forces in combat in the event of “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” However, the President also needs to report to Congress within 48 hours of such a military action, and Congress has 60 days to approve or reject it. The legislation highlighted a significant constitutional issue: the President is the commander and chief of American armed forces, but Congress has the sole power to declare war. Although every President since it’s passage has rejected the War Powers Resolution as an infringement on their constitutional powers as Commander-in-Chief, they have all tended to take actions that have been “consistent with” rather than “pursuant to” the provisions of the act—in some cases, seeking congressional approval for military action without invoking the law itself. In this strange way, Presidents have complied with the spirit of the law without recognizing its legitimacy.