Northeastern University - Cauldron Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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Richard M. Nixon, speaking on national television, announced his resignation from the office of President of the United States on Aug. 8, 1974, following two years of denials over his alleged role in the Watergate cover-up. Democratic legislator from South Carolina, headed the Senate Water- gate Committee that paralleled the Cox investigation and got under way on May 17, 1973. McCord faced the Senate com- mittee and while answering ques- tions from Senators Howard Baker ' and Lowell Weicker, revealed offers of hush money and promises of executive clemency. McCord, a for- mer security director of the Nixon re-election committee pointed di- rectly at Nixon and his staff as being involved in the scandal. White House Counsel John Dean, who unlike Haldeman and Ehrlich- man was fired, in almost a week of testimony said that Nixon had ap- proved the paying of hush money to E. Howard Hunt. Hunt was re- portedly the mastermind of the op- eration with G. Gordon Liddy. With the conflict coming down to a decision between the words of Nixon and those of Dean, the first major breakthrough came. Alexander Butterfield, a former White House aide, disclosed the ex- istence of White House tapes docu- menting all discussions made in the president ' s oval office. With this disclosure, Cox quickly subpoenaed tapes of meetings be- tween Nixon and Dean. These tapes sealed the fate of the presi- dent in the following months but led to Cox ' s dismissal on Oct. 20, 1973. Nixon argued that turning over the tapes would destroy the prin- ciple that a president was entitled to advice from his aides in the stric- test of confidence. Sirica upheld Cox ' s request and a Court of Appeals upheld Sirica ' s decision. Nixon was trapped. Turn- ing quickly, he offered Cox a com- promise. He would supply edited transcripts of the tapes, verified by Sen. John C. Stennis of Mississippi. Cox was not satisfied with this offer and rejected it. In a maneuver called the Saturday Night Mas- sacre, Nixon dismissed Cox. This action led to resignations in protest by Attorney General Richardson and his deputy, William Ruck- elshaus. !: also set the wheels of the House Judiciary Committee in mo- tion. In another instance of the fancy footwork and contradicting actions that Nixon made throughout the scandal, the president agreed to give the subpoenaed tapes to Si- rica and Leon Jaworski, a Texas lawyer, who was given the task of leading the prosecution team. Where Cox had left off, Jaworski plunged ahead and the tapes be- came a big issue of strategy and political maneuvering. On April 16, ' inrald Ford takes the oath of office administered by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and becomes the 38th president of the United States and the first one in history to achieve that office without first participating in a national election. 29

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Watergate ' A second-rate burglary ' — The crime of the century It started as a snowflake, turned into a blizzard, and ended in an avalanche. It is the biggest story so far of the decade and will go down as one of the blackest marks in American history. Its name is Wa- tergate. Starting as the arrest of a num- ber of campaign aides to the in- cumbent president in the national Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate office-apartment complex in Washington, D.C., it en- ded in that re-elected president ' s resignation from office and the conviction of many of his top aides. When the Watergate trial verdict came down on Jan. 1, 1975, H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Mitchell, and Robert Mardian all faced heavy sentences in jail. While these men faced the prospect of jail, the leading figure in the scan- dal, Richard M. Nixon, was seclud- ed in his San Clemente, Calif., es- tate secure in the knowledge that he would not face a trial or prison. Nixon was pardoned of all crimes by his successor to office, Gerald Ford, soon after Ford took office. The long road to the destruction of the Nixon administration began on June 17, 1972 when White House and Nixon re-election aides were discovered breaking into the Watergate complex of offices and apartments to eavesdrop and spy on the Democratic National Com- mittee headquarters. As these men were brought to trial, a trickle of information began to surface indicating that this wasn ' t an ordinary burglary. Still, the public chose to ignore the small amount of publicity that was leaking, then flowing into the pa- pers and re-elected Nixon by the largest vote plurality ever given an American president. In early 1973, James McCord, a Richard M. Nixon The president convicted burglar, decided to tell all in an attempt to soften the pris- on sentence that Federal District Court Judge John Sirica had given him. By March, the tides were turning against the Nixon administration. In rapid fire, Haldeman, Ehrlich- man, and a phone book-full of Nix- on aides resigned because of presi- dential pressure or other unknown reasons. In May, the Watergate special prosecution force was created with Nixon still in the White House. Ap- pointment of a special prosecutor became a condition set by the Sen- ate in order for it to approve Elliot L. Richardson to succeed Richard Kleindienst as the attorney general. Kleindienst had bitten the dust with the other members of the pal- ace guard in the massive house cleaning or track covering on April 30,1973. Archibald Cox, a Harvard Law School professor and reknowned arbitrator who had served as solic- itor general under Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, was appointed the special prosecutor. The Watergate prosecution staff enlisted the aid of 38 lawyers to meet the task. Sen. Sam Ervin, the flamboyant 28 John Ehrlichman The advisor H. R. Haldeman The chief of staff

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A solitary President Ford talks on the phone in his Oval Office in the White House during his first week in the presidency. The early days of the Ford administration were clouded in the continuing Watergate controversy and specifically, the part Richard Nixon played in the extensive cover- up that followed the June, 1972 break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee. Thirty days after his assumption of office, Ford granted Nixon executive clemency, freeing the former president from any fear of criminal prosecution. 1974, Jaworski subpeonaed 64 conversations, breaking the back of the Nixon will to fight to the finish. Nixon again went to the courts and in a momentous decision, the Supreme Court on July 24, 1974, unanimously ordered Nixon to turn over the tapes. After almost two weeks when Nixon aides had been ordered to stonewall it and to protect the presidency at any cost, Nixon resigned in what now had become a hopeless situation for him. But, because of Ford ' s order of executive clemency, Nixon escaped the prosecution that might have shed the final light on one of the darkest situations in American his- tory. — Daniel Kaferle 30