The Watergate Scandal Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

The Watergate Scandal - Research Paper Example The group of intruders along with the other accused administrative members was put on trial while President Nixon was forced to resign from his office in 1974. This entire series of events is called the â€Å"Watergate Scandal†. The Watergate Scandal â€Å"The Watergate Scandal† was a political scandal which occurred in America in the 1970s decade. It consisted of a series of unlawful events which was later attributed to certain important officials serving under the administration of the then US President Richard Nixon. They had wanted to secure some confidential information which would help them to secure the victory of Nixon in the US Presidential Elections of 1972. After the incident, members of the Nixon government tried to cover up the event and shield the men involved in the crime. Eventually, the US Police arrested the seven officials who had committed the burglary and implicated them on the basis of available evidence. Even, President Nixon was found guilty of a ttempting to shield the incident from being leaked out to the general people. Ultimately, Nixon had to resign from US Presidentship in the year 1974. The Watergate Scandal represented a series of unprecedented political events, which witnessed a US President resigning from his office for the first time in history. On June 16, 1972, seven American citizens planned a burglary in the office headquarters of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) of the USA. The office was situated in the Watergate complex of Washington D.C, in one of the six buildings located over there. On the night of the robbery, the seven men gathered in the Watergate Hotel, situated in the same complex, which gave them easy access to the nearby DNC office. The actual attempt to secure the confidential information was carried out by five men, while two of them stayed back at the hotel to warn the others of any imminent danger. The burglars had also stationed an eighth man in a building, just in front of the DNC off ice, who would also be able to detect any dangerous signals. He was supposed to inform the two men in the hotel who in turn would convey this to the group of five intruders. As the five men made their up to the DNC office on the sixth floor of the concerned building, they placed recording tapes across the doors opening to the stairway on every floor. This would prevent the door from locking, thus leaving a route for the burglars to escape in case of any trouble. However, one of the security guards of the building found out this anomaly and informed the police. The Police arrived immediately and arrested the five men from the DNC office. The policemen were in plain clothes, and so the burglars’ watchmen were not alerted in time to inform the intruders of the lurking danger. The actual identities of the seven men were revealed after their arrest and none of them were common thieves. The group was led by G. Gordin Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, both of whom were former agents of repu ted intelligence agencies of the US. Liddy was a retired agent of the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation, while Hunt had the experience of working with the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). They were assisted by five other men in this burglary: James McCord bore the telephone bugs, Bernard Barker carried cameras to secure photographs of the confidential documents, Virgilio Gonzales was responsible for breaking the locks of