Nixon Essay, Research Paper

RICHARD M. NIXON. The first president of the United States to resign from office was Richard M. Nixon. Before his mid-term retirement in 1974, he had been only the second president to face impeachment.

In 1968, in a political comeback unprecedented in American history, Nixon was elected the 37th president of the United States. This victory followed two major political defeats. In his first bid for the presidency in 1960, the Democratic candidate, John F. Kennedy, defeated him. Two years later he suffered a crushing loss in his campaign for the governorship of his home state of California. He then temporarily retired from politics to practice law.

Before the election of 1960, Nixon’s political career had been a series of unbroken successes. He was elected to the United States Congress in 1946, entered the United States Senate as its youngest member in 1951, and two years later, at 39, became the nation’s second youngest vice-president. (The youngest was John C. Breckinridge.) Nixon served two terms under Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In 1969 Nixon was the first president since the start of the two-party system to assume office handicapped by an opposition Congress. His slim margin of the 73 million votes cast made him the 15th minority president. Nixon, with 301 electoral votes, defeated Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey.

Renominated in 1972, Nixon polled a record 46 million popular votes and won 49 states. Although George McGovern, the Democratic candidate, received only 17 electoral votes, the Democrats held control of Congress. It was a landslide victory for Nixon. Yet by 1974 his impeachment seemed inevitable as a result of political scandals involving his staff. (See also Political Parties; Impeachment.)

Family History

Richard Milhous Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, a farming village in Orange County, Calif., on Jan. 9, 1913. He was the second of five sons of Francis (Frank) Anthony Nixon and Hannah Milhous Nixon. Frank Nixon came from a Scotch-Irish farming family. He was a descendant of James Nixon, who emigrated from Ireland to settle in Delaware in 1753. One member of the Nixon family served in the American Revolution. Another was killed in the battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War.

Richard’s father, who was born near McArthur, Ohio, had to go to work after having had only about six years of school. His last job in Ohio was as a streetcar motorman. One winter day his feet were frostbitten in the car, and he decided to move to a warmer climate. In Whittier, Calif., he took a job running a trolley.

Whittier was founded in 1887 as a Quaker settlement and named for the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Here Frank Nixon met Hannah Milhous, his future wife. Hannah was one of nine children of Franklin Milhous, whose ancestors had emigrated from Germany to England and then to Ireland. Quakers in search of religious freedom, they came to Pennsylvania in 1729. When Hannah Milhous was born, her parents lived near Butlerville, Ind. They moved to California in 1897. Frank and Hannah met at a Quaker meetinghouse party in February 1908. Four months later they were married. Frank, who had been reared as a Methodist, became a Quaker. Their first son, Harold, was born in 1909.

Childhood in Yorba Linda and Whittier

The year before Richard was born, his father bought land in Yorba Linda. Here he built a house and started a lemon grove. Richard’s brothers Francis Donald and Arthur were also born in Yorba Linda. The citrus-fruit venture proved unsuccessful, and after ten years’ struggle the family returned to Whittier. There the last of the Nixon children, Edward, was born in 1930.

In Whittier, Frank Nixon set up a gas station, where he also began to sell a few groceries. Later he bought an old Quaker meetinghouse, which he moved next to the station to serve as a combination market and home. The business was a family enterprise. As soon as the boys were old enough, they helped in the store and in the station. Here young Richard learned his first lessons in dealing with the public. “I sold gas and delivered groceries and met a lot of people. I think this was invaluable as a start on a public career,” Nixon said later.

Richard’s mother, a devout Quaker, was patient, kind, and conscientious. His father was a rather severe man whose chief interest was politics. Frank Nixon’s love of debate turned the market into a neighborhood club. At an age when most children are reading fairy tales, young Richard took an interest in politics and began reading the newspapers. He also absorbed his father’s fondness for debate. While the boy was still in grammar school, his father helped him prepare his first public debate: “Resolved: It is more economical to rent a house than to own one.”

Much of the Nixons’ life centered upon religious activities. They went to the Quaker meetinghouse three times on Sunday and also attended Wednesday services. The boy, who had begun piano lessons at age 7, also played the church organ. One of the highlights of the year for the Nixon children was the Christmas reunion at Grandmother Milhous’ home in Whittier. Richard was her favorite grandchild.

The Nixon family had its share of tragedy. Arthur, the second youngest boy, died when he was 7. When Richard was in high school, his older brother, Harold, contracted tuberculosis. In an effort to better Harold’s health, his mother took him to Arizona for two years; however, he died in 1933.

While Hannah Nixon was away, Richard and his brother Francis Donald helped their father keep the household in order and run the business. Richard was in charge of fruits and vegetables. Every morning he got up at 4:00 AM, drove 12 miles to the produce market, and arranged the counter before school.

College Student and Leader

At 17 Richard entered Whittier College, a Quaker institution that his mother had attended. In his first year he was elected president of his class and of a new fraternity, the Orthogonians. As a sophomore he represented Whittier in more than 50 debates, winning most of them. He became president of the student body during his senior year. He was also active in dramatics. In small groups he was reserved, but he lost his shyness when he faced a crowd. His major subject, history, was easy for him, but he had to work hard at science and mathematics. Nevertheless, he was second in his class when he graduated in 1934.

Richard’s ambition was to become a lawyer, but his brother’s long illness had exhausted the family’s savings. However, his good college record and the recommendations of his teachers enabled him to win a scholarship to Duke University, in Durham, N.C.

Nixon the Lawyer

In Durham Nixon shared a $25-a-semester apartment with three other students. To help pay his living expenses, he worked in the college library. His classmates called him “Nix” or “Gloomy Gus” because of his tendency to brood. At Duke his leadership was soon recognized. He was elected president of the student body and in his final year became president of the Duke Bar Association. In June 1937 he was graduated third in his class.

Five months later Nixon was admitted to the California bar. He joined the firm of Wingert and Bewley in Whittier. A short time after that it became Bewley, Knoop, and Nixon.

Marriage and Military Life

In the Whittier little theater group Nixon met “Pat” Ryan, a new teacher in the town high school. Pat was intelligent and attractive, with red hair and brown eyes. On June 21, 1940, two years after their first meeting, they were married.

Thelma Catherine Patricia Ryan was born March 16, 1912, in Ely, Nev. Her father, a silver miner, nicknamed her Pat. When she was a year old, the family moved to a ten-acre truck farm in California, where she grew up. She was 13 at the time of her mother’s death and 17 when her father died.

After a year at Fullerton Junior College, Pat drove an elderly couple to New York City, intending to stay only briefly. Instead, in 1931-32 she worked in a New York hospital, first as a secretary, then as an X-ray technician. She used her savings to enter the University of Southern California. While in college she played bit parts in movies. She was graduated in 1937 and began her teaching career. After the Nixons were married, Pat continued to teach.

A few weeks after the United States entered World War II Nixon went to Washington, D.C. In January 1942 he took a job with the Office of Price Administration. Two months later he applied for a Navy commission, and in September 1942 he was commissioned a lieutenant, junior grade. During much of the war he served as an operations officer with the South Pacific Combat Air Transport Command, rising to the rank of lieutenant commander.

The Militant Anti-Communist

After the war Nixon returned to the United States, where he was assigned to work on Navy contracts while awaiting discharge. He was working in Baltimore, Md., when he received a telephone call that changed his life. A Republican citizen’s committee in Whittier was considering Nixon as a candidate for Congress in the 12th Congressional District. In December 1945 Nixon accepted the candidacy with the promise that he would “wage a fighting, rocking, socking campaign.”

Jerry Voorhis, a Democrat who had represented the 12th District since 1936, was running for reelection. Earlier in his career Voorhis had been an active Socialist. He had become more conservative over the years and was now an outspoken anti-Communist. Despite Voorhis’ anti-Communist stand the Los Angeles chapter of the left-wing Political Action Committee (PAC) endorsed him, apparently without his knowledge or approval.

The theme of Nixon’s campaign was “a vote for Nixon is a vote against the Communist-dominated PAC.” The approach was successful. On Nov. 5, 1946, Richard Nixon won his first political election.

The Nixons’ daughter Patricia (called Tricia) was born during the campaign, on Feb. 21, 1946. Their second daughter, Julie, was born July 5, 1948.

The Hiss Case

As a freshman congressman, Nixon was assigned to the Un-American Activities Committee. It was in this capacity that in August 1948 he heard the testimony of Whittaker Chambers, a self-confessed former Communist espionage agent. Chambers named Alger Hiss, a foreign policy advisor during the Roosevelt years, as an accomplice while in government service.

Hiss, a former State Department aide, asked for and obtained a hearing before the committee. He made a favorable impression, and the case would then have been dropped had not Nixon urged investigation into Hiss’s testimony on his relationship with Chambers.

The committee let Nixon pursue the case behind closed doors. He brought Chambers and Hiss face to face. Chambers produced evidence proving that Hiss had passed State Department secrets to him. Among the exhibits were rolls of microfilm which Chambers had hidden in a pumpkin on his farm near Westminster, Md., as a precaution against theft. On Dec. 15, 1948, a New York federal grand jury indicted Hiss for perjury. After two trials he was convicted, on Jan. 21, 1950, and sentenced to five years in prison. The Hiss case made Nixon nationally famous.

While the case was still in the courts, Nixon decided to run for the Senate. In his senatorial campaign he attacked the Harry S. Truman Administration and his opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, for being “soft” toward the Communists.

Nixon won the election, held on Nov. 7, 1950, by 680,000 votes, and at 38 he became the youngest member of the Senate. His Senate career was uneventful, and he was able to concentrate all his efforts on the upcoming 1952 presidential election.

The “Secret Fund”

Nixon did his work well. He hammered hard at three main issues the war in Korea, Communism in government, and the high cost of the Democratic party’s programs. At their 1952 national convention the Republicans chose him as Eisenhower’s running mate, to balance the ticket with a West coast conservative.

Only a few days after the young senator’s triumph his political career seemed doomed. The New York Post printed a story headed “Secret Rich Men’s Trust Fund Keeps Nixon in Style Far Beyond His Salary.” The public was shocked. The Republicans were panic-stricken. Prominent members of the party urged Eisenhower to dump Nixon before it was too late.

There was really nothing secret about the fund. Nixon was a man of limited means, and when he won his Senate seat a group of businessmen had publicly solicited funds to enable him to keep in touch with the voters in his home state while he served in the Senate. Nixon took his case directly to the people in a nationwide television hookup. He invited investigation of his finances and explained that no donor had asked for or received any favors.

The best-remembered part of his speech was his admission that an admirer had once sent the Nixons a small cocker spaniel named Checkers. “The kids love that dog, and I want to say right now that regardless of what they say, we’re going to keep it,” he declared.

The speech was a political triumph. Eisenhower asked Nixon to come to Wheeling, W. Va., where he was campaigning. The president-to-be met his running mate at the airport with the words “Dick, you’re my boy.” The Republicans won by a landslide.

An Active Vice-President

The only duties listed for the vice-president in the Constitution are to preside over the Senate and to vote if there is a tie. Eisenhower, however, groomed his vice-president for active duty. Nixon regularly attended Cabinet meetings and meetings of the National Security Council. In the absence of the president he presided over these sessions. Thus Nixon was able to assume the president’s duties when Eisenhower was incapacitated by illness after a major heart attack in 1955, abdominal surgery in 1956, and a mild stroke in 1957.

During his eight years as vice-president Nixon made a series of goodwill tours that took him to every continent. In 1958 he faced rioting, rock-throwing mobs in Peru and Venezuela. In 1959 he engaged the Soviet Union’s premier, Nikita Khrushchev, in an impromptu debate in Moscow.

A “Political Obituary”

In 1960 the Republican party chose its seasoned vice-president to run for the nation’s highest office. His running mate was Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., a veteran of eight years as ambassador to the United Nations. Voters turned out in record numbers. When the 68 million votes were counted John F. Kennedy had become the nation’s first Roman Catholic president, and Richard Nixon had lost the presidential race by the narrow margin of about 100,000 votes. Nixon got 49.55 percent of the vote; Kennedy, 49.71 percent. Nixon carried 26 states for a total of 219 electoral votes. Kennedy carried 22 states and received 303 electoral votes.

Nixon’s supporters blamed his defeat on irregularities in both the Texas and Illinois votes. Other reasons given were his poor appearance in a series of television debates with Kennedy; his unwillingness, because of the president’s ill health, to let Eisenhower conduct a full-fledged campaign for him; and his refusal to permit any discussion of religion in the campaign. Actually, the Democrats had won the last three Congressional elections and held 34 governorships. The Republicans lacked the support of organized labor, and their social-welfare program was no match for that of the Democrats. Whatever the reasons, Nixon had lost an election for the first time, and he seemed to be out of the political picture.

Two years later Nixon was the Republican candidate for governor in his native California. The incumbent, Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, defeated him. In his “last press conference” Nixon delivered a scathing denunciation of the news media and intimated that he was through with politics forever.

Nixon left California for New York, where he entered a substantial law practice. His image as a “loser” in politics seemed complete. A television network even ran a documentary entitled ‘The Political Obituary of Richard M. Nixon’.

Victory in 1968

In 1964 Nixon made no move toward the presidency. He supported Barry M. Goldwater, the conservative Republican candidate. During the campaign Nixon traveled some 50,000 miles and visited 36 states in Goldwater’s behalf. Goldwater’s overwhelming defeat was portrayed as a disaster for the Republican party, which was already torn by dissension between its conservative and its liberal members. The setback, however, was only temporary.

Nixon, stepping in as a unifying force, began to campaign for Republican candidates around the country. In 1966 he traveled 30,000 miles and visited 35 states in behalf of 87 Congressional candidates. That year the Republicans gained 47 House seats, 8 governorships, and 3 additional seats in the Senate. Between 1964 and 1967 he helped raise 5 to 6 million dollars for Republican campaign expenses. By the time the 1968 presidential campaign got under way Republicans all over the country owed Nixon support.

In the 1968 primary elections Nixon began to cast off the “loser” image. He scored successive victories in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Indiana, Nebraska, Oregon, and South Dakota. In Pennsylvania and in New Jersey he won on write-in votes.

By the time the Republican convention met at Miami Beach, Fla., Nixon’s only serious opponent for the presidential nomination was Nelson A. Rockefeller, the governor of New York. The governor’s liberal views were unacceptable to large groups of conservative Republicans. Furthermore, Rockefeller had been late in entering the race. Nixon won a sweeping first-ballot victory. At 1:30 A.M., August 8, Wisconsin’s 30 votes gave the former vice-president 680 votes, 13 more than he needed for the nomination. Wyoming’s 12 brought his total to 692. Rockefeller polled only 277 votes.

For his running mate Nixon chose Spiro T. Agnew, the governor of Maryland, a man little known outside his own state. The choice was a surprise to political forecasters and a disappointment to some Republicans. Nixon realized, however, that a conservative Southern candidate would have lost him badly needed big-city and liberal votes in the North and that a liberal Northern Republican would have alienated the South, which backed him solidly at the convention. Agnew was a compromise choice acceptable to both the North and the South.

Throughout the election campaign Nixon directed his attacks against the failures of the Democratic Administration. He deplored the growing rate of crime in the streets, called attention to the high cost and the limitations of the Democrats’ welfare programs, and denounced their inaction against inflation.

Early in the campaign the Republican candidates announced that they would refrain from comments on the settlement of the Vietnamese conflict. The policy was adopted to prevent interference with peace negotiations begun in May between government representatives from the United States and from North Vietnam in Paris, France.

Nixon emphasized his determination to curb violence in the cities. At the same time he proposed a program of increased “black capitalism” and of tax incentives for private investors locating in the cities. On Nov. 5, 1968, Nixon’s long and loyal support of his party was repaid, and he was elected the 37th president of the United States. About a month before his inauguration on Jan. 20, 1969, his younger daughter, Julie, was married to David Eisenhower, the grandson of former President Eisenhower.

Nixon’s Appointments

In his inaugural address President Nixon emphasized his determination to seek peace abroad, especially in Vietnam, and to bring about a reconciliation of the differences that divided the United States.

All the men nominated by the president for Cabinet posts were approved by the Senate. William P. Rogers was Nixon’s choice as secretary of state. David M. Kennedy became secretary of the treasury; Melvin R. Laird, the secretary of defense. Clifford M. Hardin was named the new secretary of agriculture; Walter J. Hickel, secretary of the interior; Maurice H. Stans, secretary of commerce; George P. Shultz, secretary of labor; John A. Volpe, secretary of transportation. Robert H. Finch was designated to head the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; George Romney, Housing and Urban Development. John N. Mitchell was appointed attorney general; Winton M. Blount, postmaster general.

The first changes in the original Cabinet were made in mid-1970. Elliot L. Richardson replaced Finch. James D. Hodgson succeeded Shultz, who became head of the Office of Management and Budget, a new agency created to replace the Bureau of the Budget. Later in 1970 Nixon dismissed Hickel, with whom he had differences, and appointed former Republican national chairman Rogers C.B. Morton in his stead. Early in 1971 John B. Connally, Jr., a former governor of Texas, replaced Kennedy as secretary of the treasury.

When the Post Office Department was reorganized in 1971, Blount lost his Cabinet status. Also in 1971, Earl L. Butz succeeded Hardin. Early in 1972 Mitchell resigned to head Nixon’s reelection campaign; Deputy Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst replaced him. Mitchell left the campaign in early July. Peter G. Peterson replaced Stans, who also resigned to work for the campaign. Shultz succeeded Connally.

Nixon’s most important selection, perhaps, was that of a successor to retiring Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren. The Senate approved his nominee, Warren E. Burger, a district judge in the federal court system. He had difficulty, however, in getting Senate approval of an associate justice to fill a later vacancy on the Supreme Court. After rejecting Nixon’s first two nominees both Southerners the Senate accepted Harry A. Blackmun of Minnesota, a United States court of appeals judge. Two more Nixon nominees, William H. Rehnquist and Lewis F. Powell, were accepted as associate justices to replace Hugo L. Black and John M. Harlan, who retired in 1971.

Foreign Policy

Upon becoming president, Nixon turned his attention primarily to foreign affairs. In February 1969 he visited Belgium, England, West Germany, Italy, and France in an effort to strengthen the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

To assure non-Communist Asian nations of continued United States support, Nixon embarked in late July on a tour of the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Pakistan, and South Vietnam. Nixon then visited Romania. He was the first American president to enter a Soviet-bloc nation since World War II.

In the fall of 1970, to underscore United States determination to maintain peace in the Mediterranean area, Nixon traveled to Italy, Spain, and Yugoslavia, and visited the United States Sixth Fleet, stationed in the area. The tour included meetings with NATO commanders, an audience with Pope Paul VI, and visits to England and Ireland.

The change in administrations had little initial effect on the Vietnam peace talks being conducted in Paris. However, in June 1969 President Nixon announced that he would begin a phased withdrawal of American forces. The first contingent of some 25,000 men returned to the United States in July. In April 1970 Nixon announced that United States troops had been sent into Cambodia to seek out and destroy North Vietnamese and Viet Cong supply bases. This extension of the war effort in Indochina aroused strong opposition. On June 29 the last United States ground troops were withdrawn from Cambodia. In 1971 and 1972 Nixon continued his efforts to “Vietnamize” the war. By autumn 1972, United States troop strength in Vietnam which in April 1969 had reached a peak of 543,000 men was 32,200 men.

Early in 1972 the North Vietnamese mounted an offensive against the South, which had uneven success in defending itself. In a move to cut off military supplies to Hanoi, Nixon ordered the mining of North Vietnamese ports and the bombing of overland supply routes from China. In October 1972 an accord for ending the war was reached with North Vietnam, but South Vietnam’s government opposed it.

Despite the continuing conflict in Vietnam, Nixon remained determined to inaugurate an era of negotiation with the Communist countries that were supporting North Vietnam. He attended summit meetings in the People’s Republic of China in February 1972 and in the Soviet Union in May. Tensions were lessened between mainland China and the United States.

With United States flags waving over the Kremlin, Nixon and his Soviet hosts signed accords that had long been in preparation. The most important agreement limited the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Plans were made also for pooling resources in space exploration and in medical and environmental research. A joint commission was established to effect trade agreements. From the Kremlin, Nixon made a televised speech to the Soviet people. He visited Iran and Poland before returning home.

Domestic Policy

In the summer of 1969 Nixon requested legislation to improve urban transportation, raise social security benefits, combat crime, and reorganize the postal service. He also urged the establishment of national minimum standards for welfare payments and the sharing of federal revenue with the states.

Nixon’s request for a multibillion-dollar antiballistic-missile defense system met with strong Congressional opposition. The 91st Congress, controlled by the Democrats, enacted a modified version of his recommendations by a narrow margin. In the fall 1970 elections the Democrats retained control of both houses of Congress.

In June 1970 Nixon signed into law a bill lowering the voting age in federal elections from 21 to 18. In mid-1971 the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, extending the franchise to citizens 18 years of age in all elections, was ratified.

In his January 1971 State of the Union message to Congress, Nixon outlined six sweeping proposals. He again called for the sharing of federal revenues with state and local governments. Nixon also sought a deficit federal budget designed to spur the lagging economy; the reform of welfare programs; a federal guarantee of adequate health care for all citizens; new measures to preserve natural resources; and revision of the structure of the federal government.

In August 1971 Nixon imposed mandatory wage and price controls and a 10 percent import surcharge to strengthen the economy. The Nixon Administration applied pressure to encourage foreign governments to help resolve the international monetary crisis by realigning their currencies. Foreign governments, in turn, urged Nixon to devalue the dollar. This he did in December 1971, by ending the long-standing convertibility of the dollar into gold. Shortly afterward he rescinded the import surcharge.

Under a Supreme Court decision of 1969, communities had been required to start busing students from one school district to another to achieve racial balance as soon as so ordered by a federal district court. Congressional approval was given in June 1972 to legislation that would delay for up to 18 months the implementation of those court orders. The bill also contained Nixon’s program to contribute 2 billion dollars over a two-year period to communities in the process of desegregating their schools.

Reelection

Nixon conducted his campaign for a second term by surrogate. While he seldom left his White House office, the vice-president and other associates campaigned for him. Supporters interpreted his landslide vote as a mandate for his programs. Soon after reelection, Nixon requested the resignations of some 2,000 presidential appointees in a reorganization designed to streamline the federal bureaucracy. Nevertheless, Nixon had broken all records for presidential Cabinet appointments by mid-1974.

Kleindienst resigned his Cabinet post in April 1973. He was replaced by Richardson, who was succeeded as secretary of defense by James R. Schlesinger, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency and of the Atomic Energy Commission. In August Rogers resigned as secretary of state and was replaced by Henry A. Kissinger, Nixon’s top national security adviser. By mid-1974 Nixon had made 30 Cabinet appointments, breaking all records for an American president.

On Oct. 10, 1973, Vice-President Agnew resigned from office and was convicted in federal court on a felony charge of income tax evasion. Nixon chose Representative Gerald R. Ford of Michigan as Agnew’s successor, and Congress confirmed him.

On Jan. 27, 1973, a Vietnam cease-fire agreement was signed by negotiators in Paris. In March Nixon welcomed home the last American ground troops and prisoners of war from Vietnam. American military involvement continued with bombing raids over Cambodia until mid-August. (See also Vietnam War.)

In June 1973 Nixon hosted a visit from Leonid I. Brezhnev, general secretary of the Soviet Communist party. The two leaders signed a friendship agreement. They also instituted accords for the expansion of scientific, technical, educational, and cultural exchanges, and for accelerated negotiations to limit nuclear arsenals.

In February 1973 it was revealed that the United States and the People’s Republic of China would set up government liaison offices in Washington, D.C., and in Beijing. In May Nixon met French President Georges Pompidou in Iceland to discuss military, political, and economic relations between the United States and its Western European allies.

War erupted in the Middle East in October 1973 when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel simultaneously. United States mediation led to the disengagement of Egyptian and Israeli troops in January 1974 and of Syrian and Israeli troops in May. On a goodwill trip to the Middle East in June, Nixon visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel, and Jordan. To Egypt and Israel, Nixon offered aid in developing nuclear power for peaceful purposes. Later in June Nixon flew to the Soviet Union for summit talks.

In his budget message and in a series of State of the Union messages to Congress early in 1973, Nixon announced the reduction of federal spending for social welfare. He asked that cities and states be granted funds in a revenue-sharing plan to take over federal programs in urban development, education, manpower, and law enforcement.

In February 1973 Nixon announced his second devaluation of the dollar. Faced with rising inflation Nixon in June ordered a 60-day freeze on all retail and wholesale prices except for raw agricultural commodities. Price controls in some form were in effect until Congress let them expire on April 30, 1974. Inflation persisted.

In December 1973 Nixon had asked for Congressional review of some of his financial transactions. (Reports had been circulating about his low tax payments in proportion to his income.) In 1974 the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation and the Internal Revenue Service found that Nixon owed more than 400,000 dollars in back taxes.

The Watergate Scandal

A major issue at the beginning of Nixon’s second term became known as the Watergate scandal. In June 1972, agents hired by the Committee for the Reelection of the President had been arrested while breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate apartment-office complex in Washington, D.C. Early in 1973 they were convicted of burglary and political espionage. The Senate held hearings to probe allegations of attempts by high White House officials to cover up administration involvement in the case. Several of Nixon’s top aides resigned as they became implicated.

Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee began an inquiry into whether he had committed impeachable offenses. On April 30, 1974, Nixon released edited transcripts of White House conversations that he felt would reassure the public of his innocence regarding the Watergate break-in and cover-up. Instead, he lost many of his supporters.

The Supreme Court ordered Nixon to surrender additional White House tapes sought by the special Watergate prosecutor as evidence in criminal proceedings. Three of these recordings documented Nixon’s personal order to cover up the Watergate break-in.

The House Judiciary Committee had already voted in late July to recommend Nixon’s impeachment. With Congressional support destroyed, Nixon chose to resign. Vice-President Ford succeeded him on Aug. 9, 1974. Within a month President Ford granted Nixon a full pardon for all crimes he may have committed during his administration.

Nixon spent the next 20 years trying to rehabilitate his domestic reputation, though he never lost the admiration of foreign leaders. He became a respected elder statesman in foreign affairs. He revisited China in 1976 and 1989 and made several visits to Russia, the last early in 1994.

The dedication of the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda in 1991 was attended by all five living presidents. The 21-million-dollar library and museum was built with private funds. Nixon’s wife, Pat, died in June 1993. Nixon died on April 22, 1994, in a New York City hospital, four days after suffering a severe stroke. He had just finished writing his 11th book, ‘Beyond Peace’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR RICHARD M. NIXON

Aitken, Jonathan. Nixon: A Life (Regnery, 1994).

Bernstein, Carl, and Woodward, Bob. All the President’s Men (Easton, 1989).

Hargrove, Jim. Richard M. Nixon: 37th President (Childrens, 1985).

Kane, J.N. Facts About the Presidents: A Compilation of Biographical and Historical Information, 5th ed. (Wilson, 1990).

Nixon, R.M. In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat, and Renewal (Simon & Schuster, 1990).

Nixon, R.M. RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (Simon & Schuster, 1990).

Nixon, Richard Milhous (1913-1994), 37th president of the United States (1969-1974), and the only president to have resigned from office.

He was elected president of the United States in 1968 in one of the closest presidential elections in the nation’s history and in 1972 was reelected in a landslide victory. Nixon’s second administration, however, was consumed by the growing Watergate scandal, which eventually forced him to resign to avoid impeachment. Nixon was the second youngest vice president in U.S. history and the first native of California to become either vice president or president.

Watergate, designation of a major U.S. political scandal that began with the burglary and wiretapping of the Democratic Party’s campaign headquarters, later engulfed President Richard M. Nixon and many of his supporters in a variety of illegal acts, and culminated in the first resignation of a U.S. president.

The burglary was committed on June 17, 1972, by five men who were caught in the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate apartment and office complex in Washington, D.C. Their arrest eventually uncovered a White House-sponsored plan of espionage against political opponents and a trail of complicity that led to many of the highest officials in the land, including former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, White House Counsel John Dean, White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, White House Special Assistant on Domestic Affairs John Ehrlichman, and President Nixon himself.

On April 30, 1973, nearly a year after the burglary and arrest and following a grand jury investigation of the burglary, Nixon accepted the resignation of Haldeman and Ehrlichman and announced the dismissal of Dean. U.S. Attorney General Richard Kleindienst resigned as well. The new attorney general, Elliot Richardson, appointed a special prosecutor, Harvard Law School professor Archibald Cox, to conduct a full-scale investigation of the Watergate break-in.

In May 1973 the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Activities opened hearings, with Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina as chairman. A series of startling revelations followed. Dean testified that Mitchell had ordered the break-in and that a major attempt was under way to hide White House involvement. He claimed that the president had authorized payments to the burglars to keep them quiet. The Nixon administration vehemently denied this assertion.

The White House Tapes

The testimony of White House aide Alexander Butterfield unlocked the entire investigation. On July 16, 1973, Butterfield told the committee, on nationwide television, that Nixon had ordered a taping system installed in the White House to automatically record all conversations; what the president said and when he said it could be verified. Cox immediately subpoenaed eight relevant tapes to confirm Dean’s testimony. Nixon refused to release the tapes, claiming they were vital to the national security. U.S. District Court Judge John Sirica ruled that Nixon must give the tapes to Cox, and an appeals court upheld the decision.

Nixon held firm. He refused to turn over the tapes and, on Saturday, October 20, 1973, ordered Richardson to dismiss Cox. Richardson refused and resigned instead, as did Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. Finally, Solicitor General Robert Bork discharged Cox.

A storm of public protest resulted from this Saturday Night Massacre. In response, Nixon appointed another special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, a Texas lawyer, and gave the tapes to Sirica. Some subpoenaed conversations were missing, and one tape had a mysterious gap of 181 minutes. Experts determined that the gap was the result of five separate erasures.

In March 1974 a grand jury indicted Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and four other White House officials for their part in the Watergate cover-up and named Nixon as an “unindicted co-conspirator.” The following month Jaworski requested and Nixon released written transcripts of 42 more tapes. The conversations revealed an overwhelming concern with punishing political opponents and thwarting the Watergate investigation.

In May 1974 Jaworski requested 64 more tapes as evidence in the criminal cases against the indicted officials. Nixon refused; on July 24, the Supreme Court voted 8-0 that Nixon must turn over the tapes.

On July 29-30, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment, charging Nixon with misusing his power in order to violate the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, obstructing justice in the Watergate affair, and defying Judiciary Committee subpoenas.

Further Revelations

Soon after the Watergate scandal came to light, investigators uncovered a related group of illegal activities: Since 1971 a White House group called the “plumbers” had been doing whatever was necessary to stop leaks to the press. A grand jury indicted Ehrlichman, White House Special Counsel Charles Colson, and others for organizing a break-in and burglary in 1971 of a psychiatrist’s office to obtain damaging material against Daniel Ellsberg, who had publicized classified documents called the Pentagon Papers.

Investigators also discovered that the Nixon administration had solicited large sums of money in illegal campaign contributions?used to finance political espionage and to pay more than $500,000 to the Watergate burglars?and that certain administration officials had systematically lied about their involvement in the break-in and cover-up. In addition, White House aides testified that in 1972 they had falsified documents to make it appear that President John F. Kennedy had been involved in the 1963 assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, and had written false and slanderous documents accusing Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of moral improprieties.

Nixon’s Resignation

Throughout this period of revelations, Nixon’s support in Congress and popularity nationwide steadily eroded. On August 5, 1974, three tapes revealed that Nixon had, on June 23, 1972, ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to stop investigating the Watergate break-in. The tapes also showed that Nixon himself had helped to direct the cover-up of the administration’s involvement in the affair.

Rather than face almost certain impeachment, Nixon resigned on August 9, the first U.S. president to do so. A month later his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him for all crimes he might have committed while in office; Nixon was then immune from federal prosecution.

In April 1996, after more than two decades of bitter court battles that continued beyond Nixon’s death in 1994, attorneys for the estate of the former president agreed to begin releasing more than 3000 hours of secret Nixon White House tapes. The recordings had been stored in the National Archives after Nixon’s resignation, and had not been available to the public.

The Watergate scandal severely shook the faith of the American people in the presidency and turned out to be a supreme test for the U.S. Constitution. Throughout the ordeal, however, the constitutional system of checks and balances worked to prevent abuses, as the Founding Fathers had intended. Watergate showed that in a nation of laws no one is above the law, not even the president.

Early Life

Nixon was born in 1913 in Yorba Linda, California, the second of five sons of Francis Anthony Nixon and Hannah Milhous Nixon. The Nixons were Scots-Irish and the Milhouses, of Irish and English descent, were members of the Society of Friends, more commonly known as Quakers.

Richard Nixon attended public schools in Whittier, California, and went to Whittier College, a Quaker institution, where he majored in history. He won a scholarship to Duke University Law School and received his law degree in 1937. Nixon joined an established law firm in Whittier and there met his future wife, Thelma (”Pat”) Ryan. They married on June 21, 1940, and had two daughters: Patricia, born in 1946, and Julie, born in 1948.

Early in World War II (1939-1945), Nixon worked for six months in the Office of Emergency Management, an experience that, he later said, disillusioned him with bureaucracy. He then joined the U.S. Navy as a lieutenant, was assigned to the Naval Air Transport Command, and spent most of his service on a South Pacific island. He left the service in 1946 as a lieutenant commander.

Early Political Career

United States Congressman

In 1946 Nixon was persuaded by California Republicans to be their candidate to challenge the popular Democratic Congressman Jerry Voorhis for his seat in the United States House of Representatives. Nixon’s campaign was an example of the vigorous and aggressive style characteristic of his political career. He accused Voorhis of being “soft” on Communism. In 1946, when the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was just beginning, the charge that Voorhis did not sufficiently oppose Communism was damaging. The two men confronted each other in a series of debates, and Voorhis was forced into a defensive position. Nixon won the election by a vote of 65,586 to 49,994.

As a new member of the Congress of the United States, Nixon gained valuable experience in international affairs while serving on a special committee that helped establish the European Recovery Program. Under this program, also known as the Marshall Plan, the United States helped pay for a cooperative, long-term rebuilding program in Europe following the war. Nixon also served on the House Education and Labor Committee, where he helped draft the Taft-Hartley Act on labor-management relations. The act outlawed union shops (workplaces where everyone had to join the union); prohibited such union tactics as secondary boycotts; forbade unions to contribute to political campaigns; established loyalty oaths for union leaders; and allowed court orders to halt strikes that could affect national health or safety (see National Labor Relations Act).

As a member of the Un-American Activities Committee, Nixon personally pressed the investigation of Alger Hiss, a high State Department official. Hiss had been accused of being a Communist by writer and editor Whittaker Chambers, who testified before the committee in 1948. Chambers said that he himself had been a Communist in the 1920s and 1930s and a courier in transmitting secret information to Soviet agents. Chambers charged that Hiss was also a Communist, and that he had turned classified documents over to Chambers to be sent to the USSR. Hiss denied the charges, but Chambers produced microfilm copies of documents that were later identified as classified papers belonging to the Departments of State, Navy, and War, some apparently annotated by Hiss in his own handwriting. The Department of Justice conducted its own investigation, and Hiss was indicted for perjury, or lying under oath. The jury failed to reach a verdict, but Hiss was convicted after a second trial in January 1950 (see Hiss Case). During the investigation Nixon gained a national reputation as a dedicated enemy of Communism and in 1948, he was reelected to Congress after winning both the Republican and Democratic nominations.

United States Senator

In 1950 the Republicans chose Nixon as their candidate for the U.S. Senate from California. His opponent was the liberal Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas. In another bitterly fought campaign, Nixon linked her voting record with that of the American-Labor-Party congressman from New York, Vito Marcantonio, who was widely regarded as pro-Communist. Nixon won the election by 680,000 votes.

In 1952 Nixon was selected to be the running mate of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had won the Republican presidential nomination. Shortly after Nixon’s vice-presidential nomination, however, it was reported that a fund had been collected to meet his expenses as a senator. His critics implied that he was supported by “favor-seeking millionaires.” No evidence was produced that Nixon had misused the fund or given special favors to contributors, but many of Eisenhower’s advisers wanted Nixon to resign his candidacy. In response Nixon made an impassioned reply on national television in a speech known as the “Checkers” speech because it contained a sentimental reference to Nixon’s dog, Checkers. The speech included a full disclosure of his personal finances, and Eisenhower then kept him as his running mate. In the campaign that followed, Nixon once again attacked the Democrats and their presidential candidate, Illinois Governor Adlai E. Stevenson, as soft on Communism. The Eisenhower-Nixon ticket won a resounding victory. In 1956, Eisenhower and Nixon were reelected, after Nixon survived an attempt by some Republicans to replace him.

Vice President

Much of Nixon’s time as vice president was spent in representing the president before Congress and on trips abroad as a goodwill ambassador. On these tours Nixon was occasionally the target of anti-U.S. feelings. During a tour of South America in May 1958, for example, the cars carrying Nixon and his escort were assaulted by stone-throwing Venezuelans near the Caracas airport.

Nixon’s most dramatic confrontation abroad took place when he visited the USSR in July 1959 to open a U.S. exhibition in Moscow. Nixon escorted Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev through a model U.S. kitchen. In front of the television cameras, Khrushchev then found himself in a debate with Nixon over the relative merits of the United States and Communist systems. Parts of what became known as the “kitchen debate” were later broadcast on television in both the USSR and the United States. On the final day of his visit, Nixon made an unprecedented address on Soviet television.

Election of 1960

As President Eisenhower neared the end of his second term, his vice president emerged as his logical successor, and the president endorsed Nixon in March. Nixon received an impressive vote in party primaries, and at the Republican National Convention, held in Chicago in July, he received all but ten of the delegates’ votes on the first ballot. Nixon chose as his running mate the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. An unusual feature of the campaign was a series of four televised face-to-face discussions between Nixon and his Democratic opponent, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Kennedy was widely regarded as the winner of the debates, which helped him win the election.

Even with the debates, the popular vote in November was extremely close. Both candidates received more than 34 million votes, and Kennedy beat Nixon by only 112,803. Because of the way the popular vote was distributed, however, the vote in the electoral college was 303 for Kennedy to 220 for Nixon.

Road to the Presidency

California Campaign of 1962

After losing the presidential election, Nixon returned to California, and in 1962 became the Republican candidate for governor, opposing the Democratic incumbent, Edmund G. (”Pat”) Brown. Again the campaign was bitter, and Nixon argued that Democrats were not sufficiently concerned about the threat that Communism posed around the world and at home. He also asserted that California did not enforce its laws strictly enough. This time the strategy did not work; Brown won easily. At first Nixon refused to acknowledge Brown’s victory. When he did so at a televised news conference, he used the opportunity to attack the press, who he felt had treated him unfairly in the campaign. Most political observers believed that Nixon’s political career was ended.

Election of 1968

After his defeat, Nixon moved to New York City, where he joined a large law firm. He remained in close touch with national Republican leaders and campaigned for Republican candidates in the 1964 and 1966 elections. By February 1, 1968, he had sufficiently recovered his political standing to announce his candidacy for president.

In seeking the nomination in 1968, Nixon had certain handicaps to overcome. For one thing, he had not won an election on his own since 1950. Moreover, he had no state in which to base his candidacy: His former state, California, had rejected him in 1962, and his current state, New York, was the home ground of another possible candidate, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller. In addition, Nixon could count on few Republican governors for support, and they would lead the delegations from their states at the Republican National Convention.

On the other hand, Nixon did have wide support in Congress and with other politicians whom he had helped in their campaigns. In addition, he seemed to occupy a middle position in policies and ideas between the conservative wing of the party, then led by Governor Ronald W. Reagan of California, and the Northeastern liberal wing, which preferred Governor Rockefeller. Polls indicated clearly that Nixon was the favorite of regular party members.

With their backing Nixon easily won the nomination on the first ballot at the convention held in Miami Beach, Florida, in August. For his running mate he chose Spiro T. Agnew, the governor of Maryland.

His Democratic opponent, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, had to contend with serious divisions within his party and was on the defensive because Nixon placed particular stress on the unsuccessful war in Vietnam and the growing antiwar protests at home. The election was complicated by a third party headed by former Alabama governor George C. Wallace. Nixon and Humphrey each gained about 43 percent of the popular vote, but the distribution of Nixon’s nearly 32 million votes gave him a clear majority in the electoral college.

President of the United States

Vietnam War

The most important issue Nixon faced when he became president was the Vietnam War. The war had begun in 1959 when Communist guerrillas (the Vietcong) in South Vietnam, backed by the Communist government of North Vietnam, launched an attempt to overthrow the government of South Vietnam. The struggle widened into a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam and ultimately into a limited international conflict in which the burden of the war fell mainly on civilians. The United States first sent military advisers to South Vietnam in the 1950s. After a report in 1964 that the North Vietnamese had attacked U.S. vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin, Congress had authorized President Lyndon Johnson to increase U.S. military involvement. The Johnson administration authorized the bombing of North Vietnam, and the first U.S. combat troops arrived in South Vietnam in 1965. By 1968, there were more than 500,000 U.S. troops there. Antiwar sentiment developed at home, and demonstrations against the war became a daily occurrence, particularly on university campuses.

Nixon had campaigned against the war, saying that he would bring U.S. soldiers back home. The protests, however, did not decrease with Nixon’s election, even though he began withdrawing U.S. combat troops from South Vietnam, in accordance with a policy announced in 1969 while he was in Guam on an Asian tour. Called the Guam, or Nixon, doctrine, the policy stated that the United States would continue to help Asian nations combat Communism but would no longer commit U.S. troops to land wars in Asia. Nixon announced that 25,000 U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Vietnam by August 1969. Another cut of 65,000 troops was ordered by the end of the year. Nixon’s program, known as Vietnamization of the war, emphasized the responsibilities of the South Vietnamese in the war.

However, Nixon expanded the Vietnam War. In April 1970 he authorized the invasion of Cambodia to pursue North Vietnamese troops there. The authorization was met with protest demonstrations around the country.

In 1971 the United States assisted a South Vietnamese invasion of Laos. The air war was also intensified as U.S. bombing missions were increased over Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam. Through the later months of 1971, American withdrawal from Vietnam continued, but with little apparent effect. Casualty figures in 1971 reflected the intensification of South Vietnam’s own fighting efforts against the Communists. While U.S. deaths in Vietnam declined dramatically to 1380, compared to 4221 in 1970, the South Vietnamese forces, on the other hand, suffered about 21,500 dead, some in Cambodia and Laos but the majority in South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese claimed the enemy death toll to be 97,000.

Quang Tri Offensive

The tide of the war took a turn for the worse on March 30, 1972. North Vietnam launched a massive offensive south into Quang Tri province. In April, the United States retaliated with the first deep-penetration bombing raids over the north since 1967. On May 8 Nixon ordered the mining of major ports of North Vietnam, notably Haiphong, to destroy enemy supply routes. Air strikes were directed against North Vietnamese railroad lines, causing serious economic problems. Quang Tri City, after being held by the Communists for four and one-half months, was recaptured by South Vietnamese forces on September 15.

Peace Talks

As the war continued into the second half of 1972, secret peace meetings were held between Henry A. Kissinger, assistant to the president for national security affairs, and the North Vietnamese delegate Le Duc Tho, beginning on October 8. A breakthrough was achieved when, for the first time, the Communist side expressed acceptance of a peace plan separating the military from the political settlement of the war, relinquishing its demand for a coalition government in South Vietnam, and agreeing to a formula for simultaneous discussion of the situation in Laos and Cambodia. However, the talks abruptly collapsed on December 16, and the following day Nixon ordered further massive bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. Subsequent night raids were perhaps the most severe aerial assaults in history, and the sudden reescalation of the conflict was criticized by many people in the United States and elsewhere. The air attacks also resulted in the loss of 15 B-52s and in the loss or capture of 93 U.S. Air Force personnel.

Relations with China and the USSR

Nixon was more successful in other areas of foreign policy. Nixon pursued a policy of improving relations with China and the USSR. In February 1972 he traveled to Beijing, and in May 1972 he visited Moscow. He signed trade agreements with both countries and a treaty with the USSR to limit the deployment of antiballistic missile systems. In June, the USSR completed an agreement with the United States that enabled it to make huge purchases of U.S. wheat.

Domestic Affairs

Nixon adopted conservative domestic policies, in part to win support in the South, where voters favored such policies. Although two of his nominations to the Supreme Court of the United States were rejected by the Senate, Nixon appointed appeals judge Warren E. Burger to the Supreme Court in 1969; federal judge Harry A. Blackmun from Minnesota in 1970; and Virginia lawyer Lewis F. Powell and Assistant Attorney General William H. Rehnquist of Arizona in 1971. Together they shifted the Supreme Court toward more conservative positions. Nixon also tried to slow the pace of integration of black students into white schools. Separate schools were common across the country, but they had been the norm in the South until the Supreme Court declared the practice illegal in 1957. Nixon did not aggressively prosecute segregated school districts, and Nixon opposed the use of public buses to transport students to integrated schools.

Nixon also faced economic problems. Inflation (a rapid rise in prices) combined with high unemployment caused hardship for many people. The president tried to slow inflation by raising interest rates, which, in theory, ought to have reduced the amount of money in circulation and thereby lowered prices. Unfortunately the tactic failed, and in August 1971 Nixon began instituting wage and price controls. At the same time, to promote U.S. exports and discourage imports, he devalued the dollar, which lowered the cost of U.S. goods in other countries.

Election of 1972

By 1972, when Nixon and Agnew sought reelection, inflation had slowed and the international position of the U.S. economy had improved. Although the Vietnam War continued, the mining of North Vietnamese harbors had gone unchallenged by North Vietnam’s main allies, and in October it was announced that peace in Vietnam was “at hand.” Aided by prospects of peace and by improvements in the economy, as well as by division within the Democratic Party, Nixon won easily over his Democratic opponent, South Dakota Senator George S. McGovern, obtaining 47,169,911 popular votes and 520 electoral votes to McGovern’s 29,170,383 popular votes and 17 electoral votes.

Almost unnoticed during the campaign was the arrest of five men connected with Nixon’s reelection committee. The five had broken into the Democratic Party’s national headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C., in an attempt to steal documents and place wiretaps on the telephones.

Second Term as President

Cease-fire in Vietnam

With the beginning of the second Nixon administration, the secret peace meetings between Vietnam and the United States resumed in Paris. Sensing progress in the first days, Nixon ordered a halt to all bombing, mining, and artillery fire in North Vietnam. After six days of discussions, Kissinger and Tho met once again on January 23, 1973, and, on that evening, President Nixon announced over nationwide television that agreement on all terms for a formal cease-fire had finally been reached. The cease-fire officially went into effect on January 28. Nixon’s popularity seemed then to be at a peak, but soon his prestige began to crumble because of domestic problems and scandals.

Inflation at Home

The economy once again began to experience severe inflation, largely as a result of massive grain sales to the USSR the previous summer and the need to devalue the dollar a second time in February 1973. Nixon attempted to slow the inflation by cutting government spending on domestic social programs, such as education, urban renewal, and antipoverty programs, while resisting congressional attempts to reduce military spending. His already strained relations with Congress deteriorated further when he impounded funds appropriated by Congress for these programs and vetoed new social legislation.

Watergate and Resignation

Nixon’s popularity was further eroded by the Watergate scandal. By March 1973, investigative reporting by a few journalists and persistent questioning by federal judge John J. Sirica in the trial of the Watergate burglars had shown that a cover-up had concealed the scope of the burglars’ activities and their connections with high government officials and the president’s closest aides. Soon after, a Senate committee on Watergate headed by Sam Ervin of North Carolina and Justice Department special investigator Archibald Cox slowly revealed that the Watergate incident was one of many scandals, including four years of political espionage and sabotage by Nixon loyalists. The actions had been directed against Democrats and a variety of critics and financed in part by secret illegal campaign contributions from political favor seekers.

These revelations embarrassed and forced the resignation of all but one of Nixon’s closest aides and officials. More important, these discoveries raised questions about Nixon’s knowledge of the activities and his participation in their cover-up. Nixon increased doubts about his integrity by issuing inconsistent statements and claiming “executive privilege,” meaning that the importance of the presidency allowed him to withhold certain documents, even if they were subpoenaed (demanded) by the courts and the Senate committees. On October 20, Nixon fired special investigator Cox over the question of access to his records. The public was outraged, and on October 22 the House Judiciary Committee was ordered to look into the possible impeachment, or legal removal, of Nixon. The next day he agreed to produce the subpoenaed material, but soon after, it was revealed that some tapes did not exist and that the key part of one had been erased. Nixon tried again to appease Congress and the public by appointing a new special investigator, Leon Jaworski.

The Watergate inquiry sparked other investigations. One was into a burglary ordered by Nixon aides to obtain information about Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971 had made public a secret Pentagon history of the Vietnam War. Others were into possible income tax evasion by Nixon and misuse of government funds to enhance his homes in Key Biscayne, Florida, and San Clemente, California. A report released by the Internal Revenue Service in early 1974 revealed that Nixon owed $432,787 in back taxes for the years 1969 to 1972.

In an unrelated scandal, Vice President Agnew resigned on October 10, 1973, following revelations of his financial improprieties. Nixon nominated Gerald R. Ford, a conservative Michigan Republican congressman, to succeed Agnew.

On March 1, 1974, Nixon’s two top aides, John D. Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman, his former attorney general, John N. Mitchell, and two other men were indicted in connection with the Watergate cover-up; Nixon was named as an “unindicted co-conspirator.” More of Nixon’s tapes were subpoenaed by Jaworski and the Judiciary Committee, but Nixon refused to surrender them. When it became evident that tapes already supplied to the courts would be made public in the trials, Nixon released edited transcripts of some taped conversations. But they did not allay suspicions about his role in the cover-up.

Nixon’s refusal to comply with subpoenas for tapes early in 1974 led Jaworski to appeal to the Supreme Court. On July 24, 1974, in an 8-0 decision, the Court ruled against Nixon’s claims of executive privilege.

Also in July, the Judiciary Committee voted to introduce three impeachment articles. They accused Nixon of obstructing justice, abusing presidential power, and refusing to obey subpoenas by the House.

On August 5 Nixon released tapes showing that he had participated in the Watergate cover-up as early as June 23, 1972. His supporters in Congress felt betrayed, and it seemed clear that Nixon would be impeached by the House and convicted in the Senate. On August 8 Nixon announced, without admitting guilt, that he would resign. He left office the next day and Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn in as president.

Last Years

On September 8, 1974, President Ford unexpectedly issued a pardon to Nixon for all federal crimes he may have committed while president. In retirement, Nixon wrote and traveled widely and gradually regained some public respect, especially as a foreign policy expert.

He was often called upon to discuss Cold War foreign policy, and his expertise on China remained well regarded. He wrote several books on political affairs, including No More Vietnams (1985), In the Arena (1990), and Beyond Peace (1994). Nixon died of a stroke in 1994 and was buried next to his wife on the grounds of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California.nnn

Bibliography

THIS IS INFORMATION ON NIXON AND THE WATER GATE SCANDAL

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