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.