Thursday, August 11, 2011

How did the white house react to the Watergate Scandal?

It turned out that the arrest of five men on 17 June 1972 who were trying to install electronic listening devices in the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC was just one of several surreptitious activities sponsored by the Nixon Administration. Nixon’s aides had also engineered the burglary of a Los Angeles psychiatrist’s office to try and obtain damaging information about Daniel Ellsberg, a Defense Department employee who leaked the Pentagon Papers, revealing the activities of the administration regarding Vietnam. The press and public began to view Nixon’s administration and activities as “the Imperial Presidency” because Nixon and his advisers became so arrogant in their possession of power. They seemed to believe they were above the law. Nixon even went so far as to claim that if something was done by the president, that means it was not illegal. The public began to distrust the power that had been amed in the office of the Executive.

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