The Watergate Break-in and Cover-up 789large number of social welfare programs and
reduced federal grants in support of science and
education. He even impounded (refused to spend)
funds already appropriated by Congress for purposes
of which he disapproved.
The impoundment created a furor on Capitol
Hill, but when Congress failed to override his vetoes
of bills challenging this policy, it appeared that Nixon
was in total command. The White House staff, headed
by H. R. Haldeman (called “the Prussian”) and John
Ehrlichman, dominated the Washington bureaucracy
and dealt with legislators as though they were lackeys.
Critics began to grumble about a new “imperial presi-
dency.” No one seemed capable of checking Nixon.
The Watergate Break-in and Cover-up
On March 19, 1973, James McCord, a former agent
of both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the
Central Intelligence Agency accused of burglary,
wrote a letter to the judge presiding at his trial. His
act precipitated a series of disclosures that first dis-
rupted and then destroyed the Nixon administration.
McCord had been employed during the 1972
presidential campaign as a security officer of the
Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP). At
about 1 AMon June 17, 1972, he and four other men
had broken into Democratic party headquarters at
Watergate, a complex of apartments and offices in
Washington. The burglars were members of an unof-
ficial CREEP surveillance group known as “the
plumbers.” Nixon, who was compelled by a need to
conceal information about his administration, had
formed the group after the Pentagon Papers, a confi-
dential report on government policy in Vietnam, had
been leaked to the press. The “plumbers” had been
caught rifling files and installing electronic eavesdrop-
ping devices.
Two other Republican campaign officials were
soon implicated in the affair. Their arrest aroused
suspicions that the Republican party was behind the
break-in. Nixon denied it. “I can say categorically,”
he announced on June 22, “that no one on the
White House staff, no one in this Administration
presently employed, was involved in this very
bizarre incident.”
Most people evidently took the president at his
word. He was far ahead in the polls and seemed so
sure to win reelection that it was hard to believe he
would stoop to burglary to discover what theThe Clean Air Act of 1970 mandated reductions in air pollution, arguably the most important environmental legislation passed by the United
States during the twentieth century.