Watergate Hearings Day 42: Martin Kelly and Robert Benz (1973-10-04)

Описание: The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's attempts to cover up its involvement in the June 17, 1972, break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C., at the Watergate Office Building.

After the five perpetrators were arrested, the press and the Department of Justice connected the cash found on them at the time to the Committee for the Re-Election of the President.[1][2] Further investigations, along with revelations during subsequent trials of the burglars, led the House of Representatives to grant the U.S. House Judiciary Committee additional investigative authority—to probe into "certain matters within its jurisdiction",[3][4] and led the Senate to create the U.S. Senate Watergate Committee, which held hearings. Witnesses testified that Nixon had approved plans to cover up his administration's involvement in the burglary, and that there was a voice-activated taping system in the Oval Office.[5][6] Throughout the investigation, Nixon's administration resisted its probes, and this led to a constitutional crisis.[7] The Senate Watergate hearings were broadcast "gavel-to-gavel" nationwide by PBS and aroused public interest.[8]

Several major revelations and egregious presidential actions obstructing the investigation later in 1973 prompted the House to commence an impeachment process against Nixon.[9] The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Nixon that Nixon had to turn over the Oval Office tapes to government investigators. The Nixon White House tapes revealed that he had conspired to cover up activities that took place after the burglary and had later tried to use federal officials to deflect attention from the investigation.[10][11] The House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against Nixon for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. With his complicity in the cover-up made public upon release of the tapes, Nixon's political support completely eroded. With that, his impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate became a certainty,[a] and so he resigned from office under Section 1 of the 25th Amendment on August 9, 1974.[12][13] He is the only U.S. president to have resigned from office. On September 8, 1974, his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him.

There were 69 people indicted and 48 people—many of them top Nixon administration officials—convicted.[14] The metonym Watergate came to encompass an array of clandestine and often illegal activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration, including bugging the offices of political opponents and people of whom Nixon or his officials were suspicious; ordering investigations of activist groups and political figures; and using the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Internal Revenue Service as political weapons.[15] The use of the suffix -gate after an identifying term has since become synonymous with public scandal,[16][17][18] especially in politics.[19][20]

Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam referred to the American presidency's "parlous position" without the direct wording of the Watergate scandal during Question Time in May 1973.[137] The following day responding to a question upon "the vital importance of future United States–Australia relations", Whitlam parried that the usage of the word 'Watergate' was not his.[138] United States–Australia relations have been considered to have figured as influential when, in November 1975, Australia experienced its own constitutional crisis which led to the dismissal of the Whitlam Government by Sir John Kerr, the Australian Governor-General.[139] Max Suich has suggested that the US was involved in ending the Whitlam government.[140]
China

Chinese then-Premier Zhou Enlai said in October 1973 that the scandal did not affect the relations between China and the United States.[141] According to the then–Prime Minister Kukrit Pramoj of Thailand in July 1975, Chairman Mao Zedong called the Watergate scandal "the result of 'too much freedom of political expression in the U.S.'"[142] Mao called it "an indication of American isolationism, which he saw as 'disastrous' for Europe". He further said, "Do Americans really want to go isolationist? ... In the two world wars, the Americans came [in] very late, but all the same, they did come in. They haven't been isolationist in practice."[143]
Japan

In August 1973, then–Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka said that the scandal had "no cancelling influence on U.S. leadership in the world". Tanaka further said, "The pivotal role of the United States has not changed, so this internal affair will not be permitted to have an effect."