Truly explain it like I’m 5, never really understood what happened.
In: 18
Richard Nixon was the president. He wanted to get reelected. He paid people to steal things from his opponents headquarters to get an advantage. They got caught and the investigation revealed more illegal things he was doing. He then resigned before he was able to be impeached.
A few goons broke into the democratic headquarters to tap and steal stuff.
The goons were got.
Then a couple of very good reporters with the help from a man named Deepthroat uncovered Nixon was the man with the plan.
In the end, Nixon resigns.
All The President’s Men (1976) is a great movie on the subject.
Just wanted to add (and upvote the other comments), it’s called Watergate because that was the name of the building (and complex) that was broken into.
The short version. President Nixon’s campaign tried to bug the Democratic committees headquarters. They were caught in the act. He was informed about it and then with his staff tried to cover it up. Everything came out due to diligent reporting by the Washington Post and NYT. Nixon was impeached and would have been convicted by the Senate. He resigned instead.
A good read on the subject is “All the President’s Men” by Woodward and Bernstein.
I don’t think it was ever really proven that Nixon had foreknowledge of that specific break in, but he certainly had goons and he encouraged them to do stuff of questionable legality. He felt entitled to after the Pentagon Papers leak. After the break in, Nixon wholeheartedly participated in the cover-up. Even then some of Nixon’s goons didn’t always tell him every detail at once. Sometimes to protect him, sometimes to protect themselves. I read a long book of The White House recording transcripts about 10 years back and the thing that stood out to me the most was how they were trying to figure out what really happened while also trying to come up with plausible cover stories. And as it went on it was hard for even them to keep track of what was what. They were constantly asking each other to clarify if they were talking about a real event or their previously agreed upon cover story version of the event. Sometimes they were trying to come up with cover stories to cover up other cover stories that didn’t work. It was a mess.
In addition to what everyone has said, there is a new show on HBO Max, White House Plumbers, that is (I assume) a fictionalized drama from the perspective of the people that planned and carried out the break in
Watergate is the name of a hotel in D.C. It had some offices for Democratic campaign for the 1972 election. Richard Nixon’s operatives broke in to steal some documents to try to find dirt on them. Everybody involved of course lied about everything. As the lies grew more and more ridiculous under the scrutiny of Congressional investigations and journalism, Nixon was finally convinced to resign by, among others, members of his own Republican party (this is the part that is hard to imagine today).
The reason this scandal is the go-to example of political corruption is because it followed a series of events and trends that seemed like a pattern of disillusionment. The Vietnam war, high-profile assassinations, the counter culture, civil rights and its backlash and related riots, etc.
For many it killed off the notion that came from WW2 about American institutions being generally ok and worthy of some sort of trust, so dark cynicism.
I know you didn’t ask about that part but I feel like the consequences of Watergate are even more important than what actually happened. It seems like WATERGATE it this big epic thing the way people talk about it sometimes, but we’ve had so much worse since then. Its importance is about the wider context and culture.
On top of all the correct answers here, Nixon recorded EVERY conversation and phone call in the Whitehouse and Camp David. Once this was discovered it was game over for Nixon.
“One tape, later known as the “Smoking Gun” tape, documented the initial stages of the Watergate coverup. On it, Nixon and H. R. Haldeman are heard formulating a plan to block investigations by having the CIA falsely claim to the FBI that national security was involved.”
New show “White House Plumbers” on HBO based on the whole thing. Pretty interesting (and funny).
Democratic headquarters got broken into (at the Watergate), they tried to steal info and tap phone lines. They got caught and revealed they were working on orders of republican politicians. Nixon the leader at the time claimed he had no involvement or knowledge of the break in. Reporters uncovered he did indeed know and was heavily involved in the operation. Nixon had to resign after lying for a long time to the public about his involvement.
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