Case in point: The No. It sold basically no copies upon initial release, but June , the month of the break-in, saw the release of Big Star's 1 Record , my favorite record of all time and a power-pop classic.
You can listen to the whole thing on Spotify. Here's the opener, "Feel":. While the Kennedy and Johnson White Houses had done some taping of presidential meetings, the Nixon administration was the first and only one to record the president's activity so completely though his bedroom and residences in San Clemente and Key Biscayne were not taped. As former White House aide Alexander Butterfield — by then Federal Aviation Administration chief — testified before the Senate Watergate Committee in July , the system began recording in the spring of , and was activated by sound.
Few people in the White House other than Nixon knew they were being recorded:. The tapes represented the single best source of evidence into the White House's involvement in the break-in, and as such, the administration tried desperately to prevent the Senate Watergate Committee or the independent counsel whom the attorney general had by then appointed to investigate the incident from getting ahold of them.
It ultimately took a unanimous Supreme Court ruling following the independent counsel's securing of a subpoena against the president to force their release. They contained what became known as the "smoking gun" recording , in which Haldeman and Nixon, days after the break-in, discuss using the CIA to hamper the FBI's investigative efforts.
Within days of the public learning of the smoking gun tape, Nixon resigned from the presidency. The minutes are believed to include a conversation between Nixon and Haldeman about the Watergate arrests.
Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's secretary, claimed that she accidentally erased the portion, but when she was asked to demonstrate how exactly that would have happened, the circumstance was so physically implausible that most discounted that explanation. Most plausible, according to Drew, is Ehrlichman's allegation that Nixon personally erased the tapes, presumably because they contained discussion of a cover-up.
In recent decades, as more and more tapes were made available to the public, journalists, and scholars by the National Archives, non-Watergate revelations about the Nixon presidency emerged. Nixon's anti-Semitism is on full display in the tapes, for example, and they also confirm Nixon and Henry Kissinger's support for the genocide being conducted by Pakistan's military government against Bangladesh in the latter's war for independence.
Most recently, a tape of Nixon discussing panda sex garnered some attention. The fight for the tapes was mainly conducted between the Nixon administration and the independent counsel in the Justice Department appointed to investigate the Watergate break-in.
The first such counsel was Archibald Cox , a former solicitor general from the Kennedy administration and a Harvard law professor. Cox subpoenaed the tapes, and the White House refused to comply, offering instead the "Stennis Compromise" : John Stennis, a conservative Democratic senator from Mississippi, could listen to the tapes and verify they matched transcripts released by the White House.
But Stennis was notoriously hard of hearing , and Cox would not agree to the deal. What happened next was arguably one of the most brazen abuses of presidential power in American history. Nixon ordered his attorney general, Eliot Richardson, to fire Cox.
Richardson refused, resigning instead. The new acting attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, refused as well, and resigned. The office of special prosecutor was abolished, and the investigation was sent back to the Justice Department proper. The reaction to the events was furious. They continue:. The newspapers carried banner headlines. Within two days, , telegrams had arrived in the capital, the largest concentrated volume in the history of Western Union.
Deans of the most prestigious law schools in the country demanded that Congress commence an impeachment inquiry. By the following Tuesday, forty-four separate Watergate-related bills had been introduced in the House. Twenty-two called for an impeachment investigation. The reaction forced Nixon to appoint a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski , who would eventually succeed in his quest for the tapes.
In some ways, the decade was a continuation of the s. Women, African Americans, Native Americans, gays and lesbians and other marginalized people continued their fight for equality, and many Americans joined the protest against the ongoing Jordan's speech On June 17, , five burglars were arrested during a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex in Washington, D. According to news reports of the time, the men wore surgical gloves, carried a walkie-talkie and short-wave police President Richard Nixon might have gotten away with it if it weren't for John Dean.
Not only that, Dean said he suspected there was taped evidence—and he was he right. The Teapot Dome Scandal of the s shocked Americans by revealing an unprecedented level of greed and corruption within the federal government. The scandal involved ornery oil tycoons, poker-playing politicians, illegal liquor sales, a murder-suicide, a womanizing president The paper revealed that, a decade earlier, Cleveland allegedly sexually assaulted Maria Halpin, a woman The Monica Lewinsky scandal began in the late s, when America was rocked by a political sex scandal involving President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern in her early 20s.
In , the two began a sexual relationship that continued sporadically until When it comes to the office of the president, all official documents belong to history. Lately, staffers of President Donald Trump have struggled to ensure the law is upheld, Live TV. At the time, however,Nixon was able to convince the public of his innocence and he won the election with The media was instrumental in keeping the scandal in the public eye, none more so than the Washington Post.
Its reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke the most significant stories of the affair, and their investigation is credited with bringing down the President. He was eventually pardoned by President Ford, therefore escaping impeachment and prosecution. He also refuses a similar request from special prosecutor Cox. August 29, - Federal Judge John Sirica orders Nixon to turn over the tapes to him to be privately examined.
Nixon does not comply and appeals all subpoenas and orders with regards to surrendering the tapes. October 19, - The appeal is denied, and the president is ordered to turn over the tapes to Cox. October 20, - In what becomes known as the "Saturday Night Massacre," President Nixon orders the firing of Cox as special prosecutor.
Cox is eventually fired by Solicitor General Robert Bork. November 1, - Leon Jaworski is named the special prosecutor. November 21, - The White House reveals that one of the subpoenaed recordings, dated June 20, , has an minute gap. Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods says she is responsible for accidentally erasing the tape. April 30, - The White House releases edited transcripts, more than 1, pages, of the presidential tapes. July 24, - The Supreme Court unanimously rules that Nixon must immediately turn over the original recordings of more than 64 conversations to special prosecutor Jaworski.
The recommendation is then sent to the full House of Representatives for a vote. July 31, - The remaining tapes, having been turned over to Jaworski, reveal a conversation from June 23, , that proves the president's knowledge of the cover-up from the beginning.
August 8, - Nixon addresses the nation on TV: "I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as president, I must put the interest of America first.
America needs a full-time president and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad. To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the president and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home.
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