Monday, April 30, 2007
Watergate
You can start with a Timeline from The Washington Post
Here's a PBS show titled A Third Rate Burglary
Here is a blurb about the hearings in the Senate to investigate the break-in and cover-up, from an article in Wikipedia.
The hearings held by the Senate Committee, in which Dean was the star witness and in which many other former key administration officials gave dramatic testimony, were broadcast from May 17, 1974 to August 7, 1974, causing devastating political damage to Nixon. Each network maintained coverage of the hearings every third day, starting with ABC on May 17 and ending with NBC on August 7. An estimated 85 percent of Americans with television sets tuned in to at least one portion of the hearings.[1]
Perhaps the most memorable question of the hearings came when Republican Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee asked "What did the President know, and when did he know it?", which focused attention for the first time on Nixon's personal role in the scandal.
On July 13, 1974, Donald Sanders, the Assistant Minority Counsel, asked Alexander Butterfield if there were any type of recording systems in the White House. Butterfield answered that, though he was reluctant to say so, there was a system in the White House that automatically recorded everything in the Oval Office. The shocking revelation radically transformed the Watergate investigation. The tapes were soon subpoenaed by first special prosecutor Archibald Cox and then the Senate, as they might prove whether Nixon or Dean was telling the truth about key meetings. Nixon refused, citing the principle of executive privilege, and ordered Cox, via Attorney General Richardson, to drop his subpoena.
