The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s as a result of the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement. When the conspiracy was discovered and investigated by the U.S. Congress, the Nixon administration's resistance to its probes led to a constitutional crisis.[1] The term Watergate has come to encompass an array of clandestine and often illegal activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration. Those activities included such "dirty tricks" as bugging the offices of political opponents and people of whom Nixon or his officials were suspicious. Nixon and his close aides ordered harassment of activist groups and political figures, using the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The scandal led to the discovery of multiple abuses of power by the Nixon administration, articles of impeachment,[2] and the resignation of Richard Nixon, the President of the United States, on August 9, 1974—the only resignation of a U.S. President to date. The scandal also resulted in the indictment of 69 people, with trials or pleas resulting in 48 being found guilty and incarcerated, many of whom were Nixon's top administration officials...
Facing near-certain impeachment in the House of Representatives and equally certain conviction by the Senate, Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Watergate_scandal&printable=yes
Not to mention Nixon's other actions:
Vietnam War, the draft, and the Pentagon Papers
Mike Gravel attempted to stop the draft to end the war immediately, but he failed. Nixon wanted it extended and although several supported him, he lost. But that was not all that he did:
Meanwhile, on June 13, 1971, The New York Times began printing large portions of the Pentagon Papers.[65] The papers were a large collection of secret government documents and studies pertaining to the Vietnam War, of which former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg had made unauthorized copies and was determined to make public.[66] Ellsberg had for a year and a half approached members of Congress – such as William Fulbright, George McGovern, Charles Mathias, and Pete McCloskey – about publishing the documents, on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution would give congressional members immunity from prosecution, but all had refused.[67] Instead, Ellsberg gave the documents to the Times.
The U.S. Justice Department immediately tried to halt publication, on the grounds that the information revealed within the papers harmed the national interest.[66] Within the next two weeks, a federal court injunction halted publication in The Times; The Washington Post and several other newspapers began publishing parts of the documents, with some of them also being halted by injunctions; and the whole matter went to the U.S. Supreme Court for arguments.[66] Looking for an alternate publication mechanism, Ellsberg returned to his idea of having a member of Congress read them, and chose Gravel based on the latter's efforts against the draft;[8] Gravel agreed where previously others had not. Ellsberg arranged for the papers to be given to Gravel on June 26[8] via an intermediary, Washington Post editor Ben Bagdikian.[68] Gravel used his counter-intelligence experience to choose a midnight transfer in front of the Mayflower Hotel in the center of Washington.[69]
On the night of June 29, 1971, Gravel attempted to read the papers on the floor of the Senate as part of his filibuster against the draft, but was thwarted when no quorum could be formed.[70] Gravel instead convened a session of the Buildings and Grounds subcommittee that he chaired.[70] He got New York Congressman John Dow to testify that the war had soaked up funding for public buildings, thus making discussion of the war relevant to the committee.[71] He began reading from the papers with the press in attendance,[70] omitting supporting documents that he felt might compromise national security,[72] and declaring, "It is my constitutional obligation to protect the security of the people by fostering the free flow of information absolutely essential to their democratic decision-making."[72]
He read until 1 a.m., until with tears and sobs he said that he could no longer physically continue,[72] the previous three nights of sleeplessness and fear about the future having taken their toll.[8] Gravel ended the session by, with no other senators present, establishing unanimous consent[71] to insert 4,100 pages of the Papers into the Congressional Record of his subcommittee.[41][66] The following day, the Supreme Court's New York Times Co. v. United States decision ruled in favor of the newspapers[66] and publication in The Times and others resumed. In July 1971, Bantam Books published an inexpensive paperback edition of the papers containing the material The Times had published.[73]
Gravel, too, wanted to privately publish the portion of the papers he had read into the record, believing that "immediate disclosure of the contents of these papers will change the policy that supports the war."[68] After being turned down by many commercial publishers,[68] on August 4 he reached agreement with Beacon Press,[74] the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which Gravel was a member.[41] Announced on August 17[73] and published on October 22, 1971,[68] this four-volume, relatively expensive set[73] became the "Senator Gravel Edition", which studies from Cornell University and the Annenberg Center for Communication have labeled as the most complete edition of the Pentagon Papers to be published.[75][76] The "Gravel Edition" was edited and annotated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, and included an additional volume of analytical articles on the origins and progress of the war, also edited by Chomsky and Zinn.[76] Beacon Press then was subjected to a FBI investigation;[69] an outgrowth of this was the Gravel v. United States court case, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled upon in June 1972;[69] it held that the Speech or Debate Clause did grant immunity to Gravel for his reading the papers in his subcommittee, did grant some immunity to Gravel's congressional aide, but granted no immunity to Beacon Press in relation to their publishing the same papers.[77]
The events of 1971 changed Gravel in the months following from an obscure freshman senator in a far corner of the country to a nationally visible political figure.[41] He became a sought-after speaker on the college circuit as well as at political fundraisers,[41] opportunities he welcomed as lectures were "the one honest way a Senator has to supplement his income."[41] The Democratic candidates for the 1972 presidential election sought out his endorsement.[41] In January 1972 Gravel did endorse Maine Senator Ed Muskie,[78] hoping his endorsement would help Muskie with the party's left wing and in the ethnic French-Canadian areas in first primary state New Hampshire[41] (which Muskie won, but not strongly, and his campaign faltered soon thereafter). In April 1972, Gravel appeared on all three network nightly newscasts to decry the Nixon administration's reliance on Vietnamization by making reference to the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 document, which stated it would take 8–13 years before the Army of the Republic of Vietnam could defend South Vietnam.[79] Gravel made excerpts from the study public,[80] but his attempt to read NSSM 1 into the Congressional Record was blocked by Senators Robert P. Griffin and William B. Saxbe.[79]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Gravel#Vietnam_War.2C_the_draft.2C_and_the_Pentagon_Papers
Gravel endorsed Muskie, but he and other good men were destroyed by Nixon's legacy from the CREP remains and its media driven method has never failed the GOP:
Donald Segretti
Watergate
Segretti was hired by friend Dwight L. Chapin to run a campaign of dirty tricks (which he dubbed "ratfucking"[1]) against the Democrats, with his work being paid for by Herb Kalmbach, Nixon's lawyer, from presidential campaign re-election funds gathered before an April 7, 1972, law required that contributors be identified. His actions were part of the larger Watergate scandal, and were important indicators for the few members of the press actively investigating the Watergate break in in the earliest stages that what became known as the Watergate scandal involved far more than just a simple break in.[2]
Segretti's involvement in the "Canuck letter"[3] typifies the tactics Segretti and others working with him used, forging a letter ascribed to Senator Edmund Muskie which maligned the people, language and culture of French Canada and French Canadians, causing the soon to be Democratic presidential candidate Muskie considerable headaches in denying the letter and having to continue dealing with the issue. Many historians have indicated over the years that Muskie's withdrawal from the Presidential primaries, and the disastrous Iowa primary loss to George McGovern that precipitated it, were at least partly the result of Segretti and some of the other "Ratfuckers" creating so much confusion and false accusations that Muskie simply could not respond in any meaningful way.
One notable example of his wrongdoing was a faked letter on Democratic presidential candidate Edmund Muskie's letterhead falsely alleging that U.S. Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a fellow Democrat, had had an illegitimate child with a 17-year-old; the Muskie letters accused Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of sexual misconduct as well.[4] After testimony regarding the Muskie letters emerged, Democrats in Florida noted the similarity between these sabotage incidents and others that involved stationery stolen from Humphrey's offices after Muskie dropped out of the race. A false news release on Humphrey's letterhead "accused Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-N.Y.) of being mentally unbalanced" and a mailing with an unidentified source mischaracterized Humphrey as supporting a controversial environmental measure that he actually opposed.[4]
In 1974, Segretti pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of distributing illegal (in fact, forged) campaign literature and was sentenced to six months in prison, actually serving four months.
In the 1976 film about Watergate, All the President's Men, Segretti was played by Robert Walden, who downplayed the dirty tricks he had undertaken as "Nickel-and-dime stuff . . . stuff. Stuff with a little wit attached to it."
Segretti was a lawyer who served as a prosecutor for the military and later as a civilian. However, his license was suspended for two years following his conviction. In 1995, he ran for a local judgeship in Orange County, California. However, he quickly withdrew from the race when his campaign awakened lingering anger over his involvement in the Watergate scandal. In 2000, Segretti served as co-chair of John McCain's presidential campaign in Orange County.[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Segretti
Yes, Segretti is still around and there are plenty of younger GOP operatives. Ratfucking by the GOP never stopped, because they persuade many who know nothing of the true source or purpose. They think they are reacting in righteous outrage to manufactured scandals:
The term 'Ratfucking' and how it applies to Obama and Democrats
http://www.democraticunderground.com/110215862
That's a BOG post. You may want to read it, most of it comes from the blog Driftglass which also used the material from Wikipedia, but carried it forward to today. The BOG is a safe haven with a SOP that says it is for the supporters of PBO, so many will not want to post there.
This is the continuing, not liberal legacy of the man who killed half a million Cambodians and more Americans as he stymied the peace process in Vietnam for political gain, and did other things that have continued to harm us.
He was in the midst of a social revolution largely made of Democrats. And did nothing good without being pressured to do it. He came into power in the McCarthy era and was much like the JBS. No hero, there. Thanks for your post.
JMHO.
= new reply since forum marked as read
