Bush Nixon Watergate

Watergate

Phillips and others have detailed subsequent involvement by Zapata associates in the Watergate affair. George Bush, as Richard Nixon's ambassador to theUnited Nations, urged his former Zapata partner Bill Liedtke to launder $100,000 to the White House plumbers. After Nixon's 1972 re-election, he appointed Bush as Chairman of the Republican Party National Committee. When the laundering was exposed, those involved included several CIA officials: E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, Eugenio Martínez, Virgilio González, and Bernard Barker. A discussion of the laundering appears on the Nixon tapes for June 23, 1973

The Watergate scandal refers to a political scandal in the United States in the 1970s. Named for the Watergate office complexin Washington, D.C., effects of the scandal ultimately led to the resignation of Richard Nixon, President of the United States, on August 9, 1974. It also resulted in the indictment and conviction of several Nixon administration officials.

The scandal began with the arrest of five men for breaking and entering into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972. The men were connected to the 1972 Committee to Re-elect the President by a slush fund^[1] and investigations conducted by the Senate Watergate Committee, House Judiciary Committee and the news media.

President Nixon's staff conspired to cover up the break-in.^[2] As evidence mounted against the president's staff, which included former staff members testifying against them in a Senate investigation, it was revealed that President Nixon had a tape recording system in his offices and that he had recorded many conversations.^[3][4] Recordings from these tapes implicated the president, revealing that he had attempted to cover up the break-in.^[2][5] After a series of court battles, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the president had to hand over the tapes; he ultimately complied.

Facing near-certain impeachment in the House of Representatives and a strong possibility of a conviction in the Senate, Nixon resigned the office of the presidency on August 9, 1974.^[6][7] His successor, Gerald Ford, would issue a pardon unto President Nixon

On June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a security guard at the Watergate Complex, noticed tape covering the latch on locks on several doors in the complex (leaving the doors unlocked). He took the tape off, and thought nothing of it. An hour later, he discovered that someone had retaped the locks. He called the police and five men were arrested inside the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) office.^[8] The five men were Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, James W. McCord, Jr., Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis. The five were charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications. On September 15, a grand jury indicted them and two other men (E. Howard Hunt, Jr. and G. Gordon Liddy^[1]) for conspiracy, burglary, and violation of federal wiretapping laws