Talk:Watergate scandal

CREEP

I removed as many instances of CREEP as possible (the real name for the committee is CRP, CREEP is a derogatory term for it used by Nixon's critics), but there's one mention of CREEP that I can't figure out how to change: On that sidebar under the "Groups" list (control F "CREEP" and you'll be able to find it). Can a more advanced user change it, and if possible, tell me how to do it in the future? PÆonU (talk) 09:08, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

It's in a template: Template:Watergate Tedickey (talk) 11:11, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. PÆonU (talk) 19:38, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

no problem Tedickey (talk) 19:50, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Little mention of Washington Post

I have read the article and have previously read external material (i.e. outside Wikipedia). I find it very hard to see why the first mention of the Washington Post occurs in the third-from-last paragraph of the Investigation section. Surely the Washington Post's involvement - whilst not the complete story - is far more important than implied in the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ormers (talk • contribs) 12:29, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Looks like the discussion is in order of time, rather than the after-the-fact attributions Tedickey (talk) 12:51, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

As discussed above, I had proposed to add a new section to the article discussing the role of the press throughout the scandal, and would of course highlight the contributions of the Washington Post and its subsequent pullitzer. As for their involvement, it has been pretty widely recognized that there was no member of the press, Woodward and Bernstein included, that "uncovered" anything that the FBI, special council and other governmental investigators did not already know. The very fact that Woodward's most important source, Mark Felt, was in charge of the FBI's investigation highlights this. The idea that the Washington Post and other news agencies were the ones that "cracked" the Watergate case and that without them the cover up would have worked is, to be frank, a myth. Nonetheless, they certainly did do their job of keeping the public interested in the scandal, and that should be recognized. I just need to actually have more than about 5 minutes to come in and add to this article... (Morethan3words (talk) 17:07, 17 September 2008 (UTC))

Tapes reveal Nixon ordered Watergate burglaries

I think it was in June of 1999 that I read articles in the Kansas City Star in which the Associated Press reported that the Nixon tapes revealed that Richard Nixon had personally ordered both Watergate burglaries. The National Archive invited members of the Associated Press to take notes while listening to tapes that had not been transcribed. On that tape, Richard Nixon orders the burglary. The next week there was another article in which AP reporters listened to another tape. On that tape, Nixon and his cronies berate those who carried out the burglary because they failed to place an eavesdropping device on Lawrence O’Brien’s personal phone line. His office was behind a second locked door and the burglars did not have the proper lock-picking tools to defeat the lock on that door. Nixon orders them to go back to the Watergate with the correct tools and place a microphone on O’Brien’s phone. On June 17, they went back for a second run and were arrested in the building. I remember reading all this but I am having some difficulty locating any reference to these articles on the Web. Has anyone heard of this? Smythology (talk) 03:03, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. If you can find that Kansas City Star article, or any other publication for that matter, that talks about this I would be very interested to see it. To the best of my knowledge, there is no tape that definitively shows that Nixon knew about any of the burglaries before they actually happened. In fact, my understanding is that the predominating theory is that Nixon likely did not know beforehand, and that it was Mitchel who was really in charge of the whole thing. Nonetheless, Nixon certainly knew about the cover-up after the fact and actively participated in the same. It's partly for that reason that everyone says that it was not the crime that was really so bad, but the ensuing cover-up.

Having said that, you are correct with regard to the fact that the burglary that was interrupted was actually the second burglary of the DNC's HQ by the Plumbers, that information has been published in more than one book or article. I don't recall preceisely where I first saw it, you could probably check Stanley Kutler's The Watergate Wars, that's a pretty good take on the whole thing. (Morethan3words (talk) 16:09, 27 December 2008 (UTC))

Northrop-Grumman (sic)

Comment states Northrop-Grumman, but according to the topic's history, the corporation was formed in 1994. An accurate comment would point out which (if either) of the merging corporations is being commented upon. Tedickey (talk) 18:37, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, could you be more specific as to which comment you are referring? (Morethan3words (talk) 04:26, 20 January 2009 (UTC))

see Watergate scandal#Corporate campaign contributions Tedickey (talk) 11:16, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, using google books I found this quote in the cited publication: "Northrop was revealed to have spent $30 million to grease its arms sales overseas." (Pg. 32) I went ahead and made the necessary change already. (Morethan3words (talk) 15:11, 20 January 2009 (UTC))

P.S. From Northrop's wiki article "The Northrop Corporation was a leading aircraft manufacturer of the United States from its formation in 1939 until its merger with Grumman to form Northrop Grumman in 1994."

I'm afraid you are constructing a statement which is untrue - Northrop was merged with Grumman and other companies over the years. It's likely that the original Northrop is not even a majority of the modern corporation. So your statement is untrue. Tedickey (talk) 15:24, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I see what you are saying. I am happy with the sentence as you have amended if you are. Thanks for the clarification. (Morethan3words (talk) 18:56, 21 January 2009 (UTC))

thanks Tedickey (talk) 00:17, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

No Secret Agenda

Just wanted to query why the article has no mention of the Jim Hougan book "Sectret Agenda" from 1982

I've read it and agree with a lot of people that it is a balanced and very well researched book that contained some original historical facts, written in an engaging but restrained manner.

Jeravincer (talk) 05:17, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that Hougan's research deserves a place in this article. I will try to check his book out from the library again to provide good sourcing for it, it needs to be done precisely and carefully.Ben Kidwell (talk) 23:43, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Cancer on the Presidency and other conversations

I would like to provide some more information on several of the taped conversations that are important evidence in the Watergate coverup. I have begun with a section on the "Cancer on the Presidency" conversation. I would like to also add sections on the "Smoking Gun" conversation, the "I don't give a shit what happens, just stonewall it" conversation, and perhaps the April 14th-16th conversations, as well as some of the tapes released in the post 1990 period. All of this material can be authoritatively sourced via the Watergate special prosecution force transcripts available from the Nixon library, and the "Abuse of Power" conversations transcribed by Kutler. I don't want to totally unbalance the article with too extensive treatment of the tapes, however. Any suggestions or comments? Ben Kidwell (talk) 23:42, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Balance is definitely an issue. You can try adding more and we can go from there. Happyme22 (talk) 00:43, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I used the existing material to frame a new subsection on the "smoking gun" tape. I think that "cancer on the presidency" and "the smoking gun" are definitely the two most important tapes from a notability standpoint, so I'm not sure if any of the other conversations need specific subheadings. There are a few quotes such as the "stonewall it" quote, and the "modified limited hangout", which are fairly famous and probably deserve inclusion. Currently the watergate tapes article doesn't seem to focus on the content of the tapes, where would be a good place for something like a chronology of notable white house tapes and quotations from them? Ben Kidwell (talk) 05:10, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

That content would be better suited in the Watergate tapes article. Perhaps expand on the specifics of the tapes there, chronology, etc. and we can summarize, if need be, in this article. Happyme22 (talk) 17:41, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, started a bit of work on an outline on my user page, but it will take some time to get something properly encyclopedic. One of the challenging things is that a lot of the relevant material is in the conversations released 20+ years after the main Watergate coverup trial. Consequently, many of the secondary sources for Watergate information were written prior to the publication of important information. This makes avoiding original research/synthesis in writing summary material very difficult. The "Abuse of Power" transcripts book has Stanley Kutler's summaries and interpretation, but relying so heavily on a single scholar's characterizations makes me worry about neutral point of view. I think it is still possible to work the material into a balanced and well-sourced form, though. Ben Kidwell (talk) 05:45, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Countermanding ignorant deletion

I am countermanding this ignorant deletion of sourced content by User:Happyme22 on 29 August 2009. I am adding additional sources, which User:Happyme22 could have easily found in a couple of minutes by simply running a search on Google Books. The influence of the Watergate scandal on the subsequent reforms to the American legal profession is well-known, widely reported, and is taught in all professional responsibility courses in all law schools in the United States. --Coolcaesar (talk) 09:48, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Hey, there is no need to run around labeling edits as "ignorant." Everything that was done was done for a reason. I had previously reduced the amount of material related to that topic because, when placed in context alongside the rest of the article, the size of the paragraph and the weight given to the topic was too much, in my opinion. When compared with some other laws and reforms enacted after Watergate, the public's opinion of lawyers being damaged didn't rank up there as one of the select few, in my opinion. I could be wrong, but I honestly felt that the long paragraph (which you readded) had too much information on the topic. I didn't have any need to "simply run a search on Google Books" because expanding the topic was not a positive. Again, I could be wrong, but I didn't think so at the time. So perhaps you could have been a bit less feisty and more open than labeling edits which I had the right to make as "ignorant." I'm always open to discussion, and that's all that would have had to have been asked of me. Thanks. Happyme22 (talk) 01:13, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Confusingly worded sentence

I found the following sentence confusingly worded: "The men were connected to the 1972 Committee to Re-elect the President by a slush fund and investigations conducted by the Senate Watergate Committee, House Judiciary Committee and the news media." Read literally, this sentence seems to say that both a slush fund and some investigations are doing the "connecting". It seems like the word "connected" is being used in two different ways, or perhaps an accidental edit removed a chunk of this sentence at the end. The use of passive voice also serves to obscure the agent doing the connecting. I wanted to reword this but I am not an expert in Watergate and I wasn't sure what this sentence was intended to convey. Maybe somebody can help me out. CosineKitty (talk) 22:52, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out, it is both poorly worded and inaccurate :) I will try to fix it now. (Morethan3words | talk) 16:56, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

That makes a lot more sense now. Thanks! CosineKitty (talk) 21:55, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Lead

I have rewrote the first couple of sentences. Previously it read "The Watergate scandal was a political scandal in the United States in the 1970s. It was named after the Watergate office complex...". You needed to read down to the third sentence to understand what this scandal was about. I have combined this info into one sentence: "The Watergate scandal was a political scandal in the United States in the 1970s, resulting from the break-in into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C.". Now the first sentence tells you what the scandal was about, and it is obvious what it was named after. Then User:Coolcaesar accidentally reverted my editing while removing some vandalism, but I have restored this. If you don't like it, please explain.BorisG (talk) 10:25, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Your edits to the lead are fine. I apologize for trampling over them while attempting to fix the earlier vandalism by the anonymous IP editor. What really irritated me about the anon IP's edits was the replacement of "promulgated" with "stipulated." The latter word choice simply doesn't make sense because the ABA wasn't actually involved in litigation or negotiations (the usual contexts in which that word is used) and therefore couldn't technically stipulate to anything. --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:48, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Watergate, Watergate Scandal, White House Horrors refer to a series of scandals that led to the resignation of United States President Richard Nixon in the face of near certain impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate, the only United States President to resign to date. The most prominent scandal involved the cover up of White House involvement in the attempted burglary and wiretapping of the office of the chairman of the Democratic Party at the Watergate Complex in Washington D.C. by President Nixon and key members of his staff." Edkollin (talk) 20:55, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Missing from the article

As a person who was around at the time there are some glaring omissions here particularly in placing the events in context and providing background.

Nixon was an unusual politician, he did not like people. As a Californian coming from a hardscrabble background he despised to the point of paranoia the "Eastern Establishment" whom he felt was privileged and looked down upon people like him. The "Eastern Establishment" at the time meant The New York Times, Washington Post, Harvard ,Yale, The Kennedy family. The Washington Post was run by Ben Bradlee a Kennedy family confidant. Special Prosecutor Cox was associated with The Kennedy's. From the beginning Nixon and his confidants many who would still be there when he was president believed in "rough politics"

In reaction to the Great Depression and World War Two, the previous decades prior to Watergate saw the growth of the imperial presidency. It became more accepted that the president was allowed to do things that skirted with if not crossed the line of illegality.

That era saw the country divided as it had not been since the Civil War over The Counterculture in general and The Vietnam War in particular. Since a lot of the anti-war movement seemed to come from the elite colleges this fed into Nixon's (and his administration's) hatred and paranoia. The team the burglarized the Watergate was known as the plumbers. They started operations by breaking into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrists office. Ellsberg had leaked a Secret history of the Vietnam War to The New York Times, those eastern establishment types (thus the "plumbers" were attempting to plug leaks). Since the administration considered this treason that was justification for this. This led to acceptance to more and more brazen illegalities and eventually to the Watergate break in. The political "dirty tricks" altered in a major way the 1972 nomination process of the Democratic Party. The IRS was sicked on hostile news organizations. This hatred was not one sided. Nixon personality and looks had a way a making people despise him, add to that to say the least the brutal disagreements over Vietnam, and that was atmosphere that colored both intense reporting of the scandal once it did begin and Nixon's response to that reporting.

The article does not mention that it took a hell of lot of lawyering to prevent the grand jury from indicting Nixon. Also not discussed is the firestorm after the release of the transcripts. People at the time were legitimately shocked that a president would talk like a character from the Godfather. For the first time some Midwest Republican newspapers advocated his resignation. The allegations by Woodward and Bernstein in their book The Final Days that Nixon was mentally unstable are not discussed.

I do not know about the more recent histories but this background was discussed constantly at the time. Edkollin (talk) 01:05, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I understand your concern, but I think your criticism speaks more to a style of article that Wikipedia generally does not adapt. This article is supposed to be in the style of an encyclopedia, and as such does not seek to provide its reader with the atmosphere and nuances surrounding an event, merely the facts about that event itself. For example, it could be (and has been) argued that this article should contain a discussion about the Daniel Ellsburg case and the creation of the Plumbers, as these were preludes that significantly contributed to the reasoning and motivations behind the actions that would later become the Watergate Scandal. However, the conclusion was ultimately that this information was better held in the respective articles on Daniel Ellsburg and the Plumbers, and that this article should limit itself to events more directly a part of the Watergate scandal (i.e., the break-ins, ensuing investigations, and the fall-out from the same). As such, I would say that such issues as the growth of the imperial presidency, the division of the country over the counterculture and the Vietnam war, the paranoia experienced by officials in the Nixon administration (and causes thereof), the effect of the "dirty tricks" on the 1972 Democratic nomination process, the hostility between the Nixon administration and various news and media organizations leading up to this scandal, and the allegations by Woodward and Bernstein about Mr. Nixon's mental state are all issues that would fit better in other articles.

Notwithstanding the above, I agree that it would be useful to have a more robust discussion of the intense lawyering to prevent the grand jury from indicting Nixon and the "firestorm" and public reaction to the release of the tape transcripts. I would certainly encourage you to provide any cited information you have on these topics, and would be happy to work with you in any reorganization of the article that may be necessary as a result. (Morethan3words | talk) 23:27, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

You and me must look at different articles. In is not uncommon at all to have a few paragraphs of background information. American Civil War, World War II,Hippie . Perhaps a paragraph with see also links would be a compromise.

"The audio tapes caused further controversy on December 7, when an 18½ minute portion of one tape was found to have been erased. Nixon's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, said she had accidentally erased the tape by pushing the wrong foot pedal on her tape player while answering the phone. However, as photos all over the press showed, it was unlikely for Woods to answer the phone and keep her foot on the pedal. Later forensic analysis determined that the tape had been erased in several segments — at least five, and perhaps as many as nine.

While Nixon continued to refuse to turn over actual tapes, he agreed to release transcripts of a large number of them. What to release caused internal divisions. All parties involved agreed that all pertinent information should be released. Whether to release profanity and vulgarity unedited divided his advisers, his legal team favored releasing the tapes unedited while Press Secretary Ron Zieglar preferred using an edited version where "expletive deleted" would replace the raw material. After several weeks of debate it was the decided that the edited version would be released. Nixon announced in the release of the transcripts in a speech to the nation on April 29, 1974. Nixon noted that any audio pertinent to national security information could be redacted from the released tapes.

The release of the transcripts caused another firestorm of reaction. Republican House minority leader John Rhodes said Nixon should consider resignation, Republican Minority leader Hugh Scott described the material in the transcripts as “deplorable”, ”disgusting” and “immoral”. Senate Democratic Leader Robert Strauss said he was embarrassed to have his children read it. In the following weeks Republican newspapers in middle America that had earlier in the scandal defended Nixon such as The Chicago Tribune ,Omaha World Herald, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran editorials calling for Nixon’s resignation Time Magazine reported it's polling showed an increase from 38% favoring Nixon’s resignation pre-transcript release to 49% of those its surveyed favoring Nixon’s resignation post transcript release".

Source: 'Breach of Faith : The Fall of Richard Nixon by Theodore White 1975 Readers Digest Press Athineum Publishers Pages 296-298 Edkollin (talk) 22:58, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry it's been forever since I looked at this, I didn't mean to leave the conversation hanging. And thank you for providing that source, certainly some of this information should make it into the article, if it is not there already.

To continue on your discussion about background and atmosphere, I guess I'm not totally against providing some background information, if it is pertinent, but in doing so we should be comparing this article to other similar articles. Comparing an article about a political scandal to wars and social movements is not really fair. But if we compare this article to other articles on political scandals, like the Pentagon Papers, Iran-contra, the Whitewater scandal, the Lewinsky affair, Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy, and the Plame affair, we can see that only the Plame affair really bothers to give any background at all, and that article has been tagged as too long (though admittedly not necessarily because of the background section). Nonetheless, I think it might be helpful to have some brief discussions in the beginning about who the Plumbers were and who was giving them orders. I'm mainly just concerned that getting too bogged down in discussions about Vietnam, the societal mindsets of the day, and the personality traits of the various players will prevent the reader from having easy access to the real nuts and bolts of what happened and why it was important. ((Morethan3words | talk) 22:03, 18 March 2010 (UTC))

The Ends of Power

In the book The Ends of Power, Nixon's chief of staff H. R. Haldeman claimed that the term "Bay of Pigs", mentioned by Nixon in a tape-recorded White House conversation as the reason the CIA should put a stop to the Watergate investigations,[2] was used by Nixon as a coded reference to a CIA plot to assassinate Fidel Castro during the John F. Kennedy administration. The CIA had not disclosed this plot to the Warren Commission, the commission investigating the Kennedy assassination, despite the fact that it would attribute a motive to Castro in the assassination.[47] Any such revelation would also expose CIA/Mafia connections that could lead to unwanted scrutiny of suspected CIA/Mafia participants in the assassination of the president. Furthermore, Nixon's awareness as vice-president of the Bay of Pigs plan and his own ties to the underworld and unsavory intelligence operations might come to light. A theoretical connection between the Kennedy assassination and the Watergate Tapes was later referred to in the biopic, Nixon, directed by Oliver Stone.

I don't understand the last but one sentence in this paragraph:

a/ Nixon was vice-president before Kennedy's Bay of Pigs thing, not during. And if aware before Kennedy's presidency, it was still not his responsibility so why would he need to cover it up ?

b/ What ties to the underworld and 'unsavory' intel operations ? It seems mere character assassination. The Kennedys had known ties to the underworld ( which does not detract from Kennedy accomplishments ); I'm unaware of Nixon being linked to organized crime. And virtually all intelligence operations are 'unsavory' from a moral basis; to indicate he was unique in this regard is pejorative terminology.

However, I know nothing about Watergate, so would rather not edit when unsure. Claverhouse (talk) 13:20, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Worth mentioning the key to Wells's desk?

It seems to be the main piece of evidence for the "Call-Girl Ring" people. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2002/06/25/AR2005111001241.html It's talked about briefly there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikiditm (talk • contribs) 15:52, 26 June 2010 (UTC)