Watergate: Chronology of a Scandal

On 17 June 1972, night security guard Frank Wills noticed a piece of tape stuck to the latch of a basement door at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. He removed the tape, which was holding the door open, but on his next round it had reappeared. In response to his call, two policemen in plain clothing turned up and caught five men in the act of an apparent robbery.

THE POST

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, two young reporters at The Washington Post, picked up the story and refused to let it go. With the help of an anonymous informant they called Deep Throat, and with the guidance and backing of their senior colleagues, Bernstein and Woodward began to uncover an earth-shattering truth. With revelation after revelation, they became convinced that US President Richard Nixon was engaging in criminal activity. 

CONGRESS

As things heated up, Nixon and his men took steps to cover up their involvement in the break-in. The President’s landslide re-election in November 1973 appeared to show that, despite the mounting evidence against him, the American public still trusted him. However, mainstream media outlets were publicising the story, and Congress launched its own internal investigation with bipartisan support. 

WITNESSES

Over the course of a year, key witnesses testified to an array of clandestine and illegal activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration. These included bugging the offices of opponents, ordering investigations of activist groups, and using the FBI, the CIA and the IRS as political weapons to protect the presidency. Finally, in August 1974, leading figures in the Republican Party put pressure on Nixon to resign, which led to him being the first and only US president to do so. Fifty years on, The Washington Post maintains an  outstanding reputation, and Watergate remains a symbol of investigative reporting worldwide, so much so that the suffix ‘-gate’ is used to describe political scandals everywhere.