When Richard Nixon Had To Step Down Because Of The Watergate Scandal

The 37th President of America, Richard Nixon (doc. Whitehouse)

JAKARTA - Being the leader of a superpower like the United States is not easy. In fact, even the 37th President of the US, Richard Nixon, never failed. Richard Nixon is the first American president to resign following the complication of the Watergate scandal.

Born in California, United States today, January 9, 1913, Nixon, notes the official website of the Whitehouse.gov White House, has a classy track record since living college life at Whittier College and Duke University Law School.

Richard Nixon's shining education made his career in law major. From there, his career continued to climb to lead one of the super power countries in the world.

On the other hand, Nixon's personal life was no less smooth. In 1940, he married a teacher named Patricia Ryan. They have two children Patricia and Julie.

The start of their family life coincided with the time of the second world war. Where Nixon had a role as a naval commander in the Pacific when the war raged.

After leaving his service, Nixon was elected as a congress member (a member of the DPR if in Indonesia) from the California district. Then in 1950, he won the Senate seat. His career in politics was quite rapid, until two years after sitting in the Senate, the Republican politician was joined by General Eisenhower as vice president and won.

As vice president of Eisenhower, Nixon did not take on much of a role. He mostly carried out his duties as an administrator.

Until finally he decided to run for President of the US in 1960. His position as an incumbent did not really increase his electability. He was narrowly defeated by Democrat John F. Kennedy.

Nixon's defeat after fighting Kennedy did not frighten him. He was again nominated for president against the incumbent vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey and third candidate George C. Wallace. Finally Nixon won. This is where Nixon's peak career began.

In filling his tenure as president, Nixon recorded many achievements. Such as completing a new draft anti-criminal law and creating a broad pro-environment program. One of his most dramatic achievements during his early tenure was when American astronauts made their first landing on the moon in 1969.

Several of Nixon's achievements in the international arena are also quite prominent. Most of his efforts were to consolidate with some countries that had bad relations, such as China and the Soviet Union.

Nixon fulfilled his promise when he made tours to many countries in 1972. When he visited Beijing and Moscow, he managed to reduce tensions with China and the Soviet Union. During their summit with Russian leader Leonid I. Brezhnev, they struck a pact to limit nuclear weapons.

Then one year later in January 1973, he announced his agreement with North Vietnam to end the involvement of the American state in the Indochina mainland.

The series of achievements that Nixon managed to make did not guarantee that he would be free from problems. Slowly but surely his involvement in the burglary and wiretapping scandal of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Complex, Washington DC was uncovered. The case became known as the Watergate scandal.

Watergate Scandal

The Watergate scandal began when five people, including the coordinator of the burglary case against the Democratic National Committee's headquarters, were arrested in 1972. They were Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker, James McCord, Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis.

This case took place during the last days of the Nixon administration. He has the ambition to win the second term presidential election.

The Watergate scandal was not an ordinary case. There is a big conspiracy behind the case. Then sure enough the smell of the connection between the theft at Watergate and the ambition to win Nixon's second term begins to unfold as The Washington Post launches an investigation.

In a report by The Washington Post, it was revealed that James McCord - one of the detained suspects - was the security coordinator of the Nixon team's presidential reinstatement committee, aka CREEP.

McCord was Nixon's winning team in the 1972 US Presidential Election. In addition, the two Wahington Post journalists who carried out the investigation, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, also sniffed that US $ 25 thousand was allocated for the Nixon campaign.

Then in May 1973, the Senate Election Committee for the Presidential Campaign broadcast about the Watergate incident on television which made the political temperature heated at the time. One week later Harvard law professor Archibakd Cox was appointed prosecutor to work on the Watergate case.

Long story short, the case refers to the involvement of White House advisers, namely John Ehrlichman and HR Haldemen. They were credited with having approved the Watergate break-in, according to the testimony of former White House attorney John Dean. According to him, President Nixon was also aware of the action.

In July 1974, at the Watergate trial it was mentioned that there was a cassette tape containing a conversation between Nixon and his staff about Watergate. However, the tape was "detained" by Nixon. Until July 30, 1974, at the urging of the Supreme Court, Nixon finally released the Watergate tapes.

The tapes found evidence of a conversation between Nixon and his staff named Haldeman to order the FBI to stop investigating the Watergate scandal.

That's the end of the Watergate scandal. That case finally made President Nixon resign from his position as President of the US and was replaced by his deputy, Gerald Ford on August 8, 1974.

After Gerald Ford was appointed president, he forgave all the crimes that Nixon had committed while serving as president. Nonetheless, Nixon will be remembered as the first US president in the 185-year history of US administration, as the president who resigned from office.