Irish Examiner View: ‘Third-rate’ burglary brought down Nixon

Fifty years since the Watergate arrests which would lead to a scandal that would topple the US president 

Former US President Richard Nixon will always most be associated by his downfall, brought about by the Watergate scandal.

Like the break-up of the Beatles, the Watergate scandal was one of those seminal events which told us that the 60s, with all their initial optimism, was over.

It was 50 years ago yesterday, five months before a triumphal Republican presidential victory, that five men were caught breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington. On their court appearance it transpired that one of them was not only a former member of the CIA, a spook they would be called today, but was also the security chief for Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President, the delightfully acronymic CREEP.

The rest is pretty much history. Nixon left office before he was criminally prosecuted. Journalism, as epitomised by Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, and the Washington Post,
became a sexy profession attracting people who wanted to change the world and newspapers reached their high-water mark. In another golden jubilee which we can celebrate this week the porn film Deep Throat with Linda Lovelace became generally available in the US, if not in Ireland or the UK. Its title was attached to the background source for the two reporters, the FBI agent Mark Felt, who would offer limited confirmation for the lines they were following, and the gnomic advice “follow the money”.

Watergate may have been described as a “third-rate burglary” by Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, but it was a first-rate political scandal with huge consequences and ushered in an era of distrust and cynicism of politicians which prevails to this day. We will hear more of it during the Trump hearings about the Capitol riots this year.