The Watergate Scandal :: President Richard Nixon

The memorializesThe hearings held by the Senate Watergate Committee, in which Dean was the virtuoso witness and in which many other former get word organisation officials gave dramatic testimony, were broadcast through most of the summer, causing devastating policy-making damage to Nixon. The Senate investigators also disc all overed a crucial fact on July 13 Alexander Butterfield, deputy assistant to the President, revealed during an interview with a citizens committee staff member that a taping system in the dust coat sept automatically recorded everything in the Oval Office immortalize recordings that could prove whether Nixon or Dean was telling the truth about key meetings. The tapings were soon subpoenaed by both Cox and the Senate.Nixon refused, citing the theory of executive right, and say Cox, via Attorney General Richardson, to drop his subpoena. Coxs refusal led to the "Saturday Night Massacre" on October 20, 1973, when Nixon compelled the resignations o f Richardson and then his deputy in a search for someone in the Justice Department willing to fire Cox. This search ended with Robert Bork, and the smart acting department head dismissed the special prosecuting officer. Allegations of wrongdoing caused Nixon to splendidly state "I am not a crook" in front of 400 Associated Press managing editors at Walt Disney World in Florida on November 17.While Nixon continued to refuse to turn over actual tapes, he did agree to release edited transcripts of a large number. These largely support Deans account, and caused further embarrassment when a crucial, 18 portion of one tape, which had neer been out of White House custody, was found to have been erased. The White House blamed this on Nixons secretary, Rose Mary Woods, who said she had accidentally erased the tape by pushing the wrong foot pedal on her tape player while answering the phone. However, as photos splashed all over the press showed, for Woods to answer the phone and keep her foot on the pedal involved a stretch that would have challenged many a gymnast. She was then said to have held this position for the full 18 minutes. ulterior forensic analysis determined that the gap had been erased severalperhaps as many as ninetimes over, refuting the "accidental erasure" explanation..This materialisation of access to the tapes went all the way to the Supreme woo and on July 24, 1974 the Court unanimously ruled in United States v. Nixon that Nixons claim of executive privilege over the tapes was void and they further ordered him to surrender them to special prosecutor Leon Jaworski.