Download RESOLVED, That Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States

CREEP, Plumbers, and Other Things that go bump in the Night!
On August 9, 1974 President Richard M. Nixon announced that he was resigning, becoming
the first, and only president to resign from office. Examine the following source and summarize the
information provided. What does this source tell us about why the presidents choose to resign? Pay
close attention to important people, dates, and actions.
Articles of Impeachment, Drawn up by the United States House of
Representatives on July 27, 1973
Article 1
RESOLVED, That Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors,
and that the following articles of impeachment to be exhibited to the Senate:
ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT EXHIBITED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA IN THE NAME OF ITSELF AND OF ALL OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
AGAINST RICHARD M. NIXON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN MAINTENANCE AND
SUPPORT OF ITS IMPEACHMENT AGAINST HIM FOR HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANOURS.
ARTICLE 1
In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath
faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend
the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully
executed, has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice, in that:
On June 17, 1972, and prior thereto, agents of the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CREEP) committed
unlawful entry of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, District of Columbia, for the
purpose of securing political intelligence. Subsequent thereto, Richard M. Nixon, using the powers of his high office,
engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay,
impede, and obstruct the investigation of such illegal entry; to cover up, conceal and protect those responsible; and to
conceal the existence and scope of other unlawful covert activities.
The means used to implement this course of conduct or plan included one or more of the following:
1. Making false or misleading statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United
States;
2. Withholding relevant and material evidence or information from lawfully authorized investigative officers and
employees of the United States;
3. Approving, condoning, acquiescing in, and counseling witnesses with respect to the giving of false or misleading
statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States and false or
misleading testimony in duly instituted judicial and congressional proceedings;
4. Interfering or endeavoring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the
United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the office of Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and
Congressional Committees;
5. Approving, condoning, and acquiescing in, the surreptitious payment of substantial sums of money for the
purpose of obtaining the silence or influencing the testimony of witnesses, potential witnesses or individuals who
participated in such unlawful entry and other illegal activities;
6. Endeavoring to misuse the Central Intelligence Agency, an agency of the United States;
7. Disseminating information received from officers of the Department of Justice of the United States to subjects of
investigations conducted by lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States, for the
purpose of aiding and assisting such subjects in their attempts to avoid criminal liability;
8. Making or causing to be made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of
the United States into believing that a thorough and complete investigation had been conducted with respect to
allegations of misconduct on the part of personnel of the executive branch of the United States and personnel of
the Committee for the Re-election of the President, and that there was no involvement of such personnel in such
misconduct: or
9. Endeavoring to cause prospective defendants, and individuals duly tried and convicted, to expect favored
treatment and consideration in return for their silence or false testimony, or rewarding individuals for their
silence or false testimony.
In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of
constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the
people of the United States.
Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.
Article 2
Using the powers of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional
oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect,
and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in disregard of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws
be faithfully executed, has repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the
due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing
agencies of the executive branch and the purposed of these agencies.
This conduct has included one or more of the following:
1. He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal
Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in
income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights
of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a
discriminatory manner.
2. He misused the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service, and other executive personnel, in
violation or disregard of the constitutional rights of citizens, by directing or authorizing such agencies or
personnel to conduct or continue electronic surveillance or other investigations for purposes unrelated to
national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office; he did direct, authorize,
or permit the use of information obtained thereby for purposes unrelated to national security, the
enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office; and he did direct the concealment of certain
records made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of electronic surveillance.
3. He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, in violation or disregard of the
constitutional rights of citizens, authorized and permitted to be maintained a secret investigative unit within
the office of the President, financed in part with money derived from campaign contributions, which
unlawfully utilized the resources of the Central Intelligence Agency, engaged in covert and unlawful
activities, and attempted to prejudice the constitutional right of an accused to a fair trial.
4. He has failed to take care that the laws were faithfully executed by failing to act when he knew or had
reason to know that his close subordinates endeavored to impede and frustrate lawful inquiries by duly
constituted executive, judicial and legislative entities concerning the unlawful entry into the headquarters of
the Democratic National Committee, and the cover-up thereof, and concerning other unlawful activities
including those relating to the confirmation of Richard Kleindienst as Attorney General of the United States,
the electronic surveillance of private citizens, the break-in into the offices of Dr. Lewis Fielding, and the
campaign financing practices of the Committee to Re-elect the President.
5. In disregard of the rule of law, he knowingly misused the executive power by interfering with agencies of the
executive branch, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Criminal Division, and the Office of
Watergate Special Prosecution Force, of the Department of Justice, and the Central Intelligence Agency, in
violation of his duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of
constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the
people of the United States.
Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.
CREEPs, Plumbers, and Other Things that go bump in the Night!
On August 9, 1974 President Richard M. Nixon announced that he was resigning,
becoming the first, and only president to resign from office. Examine the following source
and summarize the information provided. What does this source tell us about why the
presidents choose to resign? Pay close attention to important people, dates, and actions.
Henry Kissinger served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of
State in the Nixon administration. He was closely involved in many of the political, diplomatic,
and military decisions made by President Richard Nixon.
“As security advisor I thought it my duty to help stanch these leaks [about the war
in Vietnam]…If our government remained passive when stolen documents became
media currency, confidence…would be undermined…The issue became particularly
acute in June 1971 when 7,000 pages of confidential files on Indochina from the
Kennedy and Johnson presidencies—the so called Pentagon Papers—were leaked to
the press…
…until I read about it in the newspapers, I knew nothing of the White House
“Plumbers Unit” burglary of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the admitted perpetrator
of the Pentagon Papers theft. The break-in was sordid, puerile, and self-defeating: It
aborted the criminal trial of the individual who flaunted his defiance of the laws against
such unauthorized disclosures. I have difficulty to this day understanding the rationale
for the break-in…
…The “Plumbers Unit”—so called be cause its job was to stop leaks—was part of
John Ehrlichman’s office…In itself there was nothing startling about assigning two staff
members to look into leaks of classified documents. The need for it appears to have
been compounded in Nixon’s mind by his growing distrust of J. Edgar Hoover, Director
of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). …Nixon believed that Hoover’s
friendship with Ellsberg’s father-in-law would prevent a serious investigation of the
Pentagon Papers theft…”
From: Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1982), pp. 115-118.
CREEPs, Plumbers, and Other Things that go bump in the Night!
On August 9, 1974 President Richard M. Nixon announced that he was resigning, becoming
the first, and only president to resign from office. Examine the following source and summarize the
information provided. What does this source tell us about why the presidents choose to resign? Pay
close attention to important people, dates, and actions.
“On Sunday morning, June 13,[1971] I picked up the New York Times…next to the
picture was another headline: Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of
Growing U.S. Involvement.
The story described a 7,000-page study of American involvement in Southeast Asia
from World War II through 1968, which had been commissioned by Robert McNamara,
Johnson’s Secretary of Defense. It contained verbatim documents from the defense
department, the State Department, the CIA, the White House, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The times announced that it planned to publish not only portions of the study but many of the
original documents as well. The newspaper did not say that all these materials were still
officially classified “Secret” and “Top Secret.” In fact, this was the most massive leak of
classified documents in American History.
…We had lost our court battle against the newspaper that published the documents,
but I was determined that we would at least win out public case against the man I believed
had stolen them, Daniel Ellsberg. A former Pentagon aide, Ellsberg had come under
suspicion soon after the first installments for the study appeared. Whatever others may have
thought, I considered what Ellsberg had done to be despicable and contemptible—he had
revealed government foreign policy secrets during wartime.
…Even as our concern about Ellsberg and his possible collaborators was growing, we
learned that J. Edgar Hoover was dragging his feet and treating the [Ellsberg] case on merely
a medium priority basis; he had assigned no special task forces and no extra man-power to
it…
…I did not care about any reasons or excuses. I wanted someone to light a fire under
the FBI in its investigation of Ellsberg, and to keep the departments and agencies active in
pursuit of leakers. If a conspiracy existed, I wanted to know, and I wanted the full resources
of the government brought to bear in order to find out. If the FBI was not going to pursue the
case, then we would have to do it ourselves. Ellsberg was having great success in the media,
with his efforts to justify unlawful dissent, and while I cared nothing for him personally, I felt
that his views had to be discredited. I urged that we find out everything we could about his
background, his motives, and his co-conspirators, if they existed…
…On July 17, 1971, Ehrlichman assigned Egil “Bud” Krogh, a young lawyer on the
Domestic Council staff, to head the leak project. David Young, a lawyer…and G. Gordon
Liddy, a former FBI man, worked with him. A year and a half later, I learned for the first time
that because their job was plugging leaks, Young had jokingly put up a sign establishing
himself as a “Plumber.”
…On Labor Day weekend, 1971, Krogh’s group organized a break-in at the office of
Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in an attempt to get information from his files on his motivation, his
further intentions, and any possible co-conspirators.
I do not believe I was told about the break-in at the time, but it is clear that it was at
least in part an outgrowth of my sense of urgency about discrediting what Ellsberg had done
and finding out what he might do next. Given the temper of those tense and bitter times and
the peril I perceived, I cannot say that had I been informed of it beforehand, I would have
automatically considered it unprecedented, unwarranted, or unthinkable. Ehrlichman says he
did not know of it in advance, but that he told me about it after the fact in 1972. I do not recall
this and the tapes of the period June-July 1972 indicate that I was not conscious of them, but
I cannot rule it out.
Today the break-in at Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office seems wrong and excessive. But I
do not accept that it was as wrong or excessive as what Daniel Ellsberg did, and I still believe
that it is a tragedy of circumstances that Bud Krogh and John Ehrlichman went to jail and
Daniel Ellsberg went free…
…By late September the Plumbers unit began to disband. Before long, too, the natural
cycle of concern over the Pentagon Papers ran its course and our thoughts turned to other
matters.”
From: Richard Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York:
Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), pp. 508-515.
CREEPs, Plumbers, and Other Things that go bump in the Night!
On August 9, 1974 President Richard M. Nixon announced that he was resigning, becoming
the first, and only president to resign from office. Examine the following source and summarize the
information provided. What does this source tell us about why the presidents choose to resign? Pay
close attention to important people, dates, and actions.
Subpoena Issued to President Richard Nixon
CREEPs, Plumbers, and Other Things that go bump in the Night!
On August 9, 1974 President Richard M. Nixon announced that he was resigning,
becoming the first, and only president to resign from office. Examine the following source
and summarize the information provided. What does this source tell us about why the
presidents choose to resign? Pay close attention to important people, dates, and actions.
H.R. Haldeman was a close political aide to President Richard Nixon. He ran several of his
campaigns and when Nixon was elected president in 1968, Haldeman was named the
President’s Chief of Staff. In this role he closely guarded who spoke with the president and
was a trusted advisor.
P=President Richard M. Nixon
Sunday, June 13, 1971
The big deal today was a break in the New York Times of the reprinting of the 40volume Vietnam Papers that covered the whole McNamara operation. The point is that
it’s criminally traitorous that the documents got to The New York Times, and even more
so that the Times is printing them. The Times says they plan to print the whole series
of articles. The key now is for us to keep out of it and let the people that are affected
cut each other up on it.
Monday, June 14, 1971
The day started up with some more follow- up on the New York Times story,
which was discussed at the staff meeting. When the P called me in, he raised the
point, too, that there’s cause in this for everyone to be concerned, especially regarding
foreign policy. As to staff leakage, etc., the P is especially concerned about Henry’s
staff. He thinks that we should get the story out on… at Brookings, who is the
suspected villain. Just smoke Brookings out, using names, and demand that charges
be brought.
Tuesday, June 15, 1971
The big thing today was still the New York Times story follow-up, as they go on
running it and the whole thing builds substantively. Mitchell went ahead last night with
his request of them to cease publication; they refused. So today he went for an
injunction, got a temporary restraining order, and probably will be able to get an
injunction. After meeting with eh P this afternoon, decided to file criminal charges. So
we’re pretty much in the soup on the whole thing now. The real problem is to try to
establish clearly that the Administration’s interest here is in the violation of Top Secret
classifications rather than in the release of this particular material. The problem
otherwise is that we’re going to be tied into it and get blamed for the same kind of
deception that was practiced by the Johnson Administration. He also felt that we
should launch an attack on the Times; that it was a reckless disclosure of secrets and
shocking breach of security. The other point that he wanted us to emphasize was that
this is a family quarrel of another Administration, that they’re washing their dirty linen in
public and that we aren’t going to get into it, but we do believe in the security of secret
documents and we’ll have to enforce that.
Wednesday, June 16, 1971
The P got into this, on and off during the day, wanted to be sure that we’re
making an all –out effort on editorials. He feels that we do have to make the issue that
the press is massively endangering our security, paint them as lawbreakers, disloyal,
etc. That there’s no question of right to know or how we got into Vietnam, but we must
maintain the integrity of government.
Sunday, June 20, 1971
He feels strongly that we’ve got to get Ellsberg nailed hard on the basis of being
guilty of stealing the papers. That’s the only way we’re going to make the case of the
press having done something bad and violated the law in publishing stolen documents.
From: H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries (New York: Berkeley Books, 1995), pp. 363-371,
378.
CREEPs, Plumbers, and Other Things that go bump in the Night!
On August 9, 1974 President Richard M. Nixon announced that he was resigning, becoming
the first, and only president to resign from office. Examine the following source and summarize the
information provided. What does this source tell us about why the presidents choose to resign? Pay
close attention to important people, dates, and actions.
The Following are Headlines that document the Washington Post’s investigation of the Breakin at the Democratic National Party Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel
5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats' Office Here
By Alfred E. Lewis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 18, 1972; A01
Five men, one of whom said he is a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency,
were arrested at 2:30 a.m. yesterday in what authorities described as an elaborate plot to bug the
offices of the Democratic National Committee here.
Three of the men were native-born Cubans and another was said to have trained Cuban
exiles for guerrilla activity after the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
GOP Security Aide Among Five Arrested in Bugging Affair
By Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, June 19, 1972; Page A01
One of the five men arrested early Saturday in the attempt to bug the Democratic National
Committee headquarters is the salaried security coordinator for President Nixon's reelection
committee.
The suspect, former CIA employee James W. McCord Jr., 53, also holds a separate
contract to provide security services to the Republican National Committee, GOP national
chairman Bob Dole said yesterday.
Bug Suspect Got Campaign Funds
By Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 1, 1972; Page A01
A $25,000 cashier's check, apparently earmarked for President Nixon's re-election
campaign, was deposited in April in a bank account of one of the five men arrested in the break-in
at Democratic National Headquarters here June l7.
Last Two Guilty in Watergate Plot
Jury Convicts Liddy, McCord in 90 Minutes; Ex-Aides of Nixon to Appeal
By Lawrence Meyer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 31, 1973; Page A01
Two former officials of President Nixon's re-election committee, G. Gordon Liddy and
James W. McCord, Jr. were convicted yesterday of conspiracy, burglary and bugging the
Democratic Party's Watergate headquarters.
After 16 days of trial spanning 60 witnesses and more than 100 pieces of evidence, the
jury found them guilty of all charges against them in just under 90 minutes.
3 Top Nixon Aides, Kleindienst Out; President Accepts Full Responsibility; Richardson
Will Conduct New Probe
By Laurence Stern and Haynes Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 1, 1973; Page A01
President Nixon, after accepting the resignations of four of his closest aides, told the
American people last night that he accepted full responsibility for the actions of his subordinates
in the Watergate scandal.
"There can be no whitewash at the White House," Mr. Nixon declared in a special
television address to the nation. He pledged to take steps to purge the American political system
of the kind of abuses that emerged in the Watergate affair.
The President took his case to the country some 10 hours after announcing that he had
accepted the resignations of his chief White House advisers, H.R. Haldeman and John D.
Ehrlichman, along with Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst.
He also announced that he had fired his counsel, John W. Dean III, who was by the ironies
of the political process a casualty of the very scandal the President had charged him to
investigate.
Dean Alleges Nixon Knew of Cover-up Plan
By Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, June 3, 1973; Page A01
Former presidential counsel John W. Dean III has told Senate investigators and federal
prosecutors that the discussed aspects of the Watergate cover-up with President Nixon or in Mr.
Nixon's presence on at least 35 occasions between January and April of this year, according to
reliable sources.
Dean plans to testify under oath at the Senate's Watergate hearings, regardless of whether
he is granted full immunity from prosecution, and he will allege that President Nixon was deeply
involved in the cover-up, the sources said.
Dean has told investigators that Mr. Nixon had prior knowledge of payments used to buy
the silence of the Watergate conspirators and of offers of executive clemency extended in his
name, the sources said
President Taped Talks, Phone Calls; Lawyer Ties Ehrlichman to Payments
Principal Offices Secretly Bugged Since Spring 1971
By Lawrence Meyer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 17, 1973; Page A01
President Nixon has been routinely taping all his conversations and meetings in the Oval
Office and cabinet room of the White House, in his Executive Office Building office and on four of
his personal telephones, former White House aide Alexander P. Butterfield told the Senate select
Watergate committee yesterday.
Butterfield, now the Federal Aviation Administration administrator, said the tape recording
began in the spring of 1971 and was intended "to record things for posterity, for the Nixon library."
Most participants in conversations with the President did not know they were being taped,
Butterfield said, because only a few members of the White House inner circle were told about the
several hidden recording devices.
CREEPs, Plumbers, and Other Things that go bump in the Night!
On August 9, 1974 President Richard M. Nixon announced that he was resigning,
becoming the first, and only president to resign from office. Examine the following source and
summarize the information provided. What does this source tell us about why the presidents
choose to resign? Pay close attention to important people, dates, and actions.
“On Sunday morning, June 13,[1971] I picked up the New York Times…next to the picture was
another headline: Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of Growing U.S.
Involvement.
The story described a 7,000-page study of American involvement in Southeast Asia from
World War II through 1968, which had been commissioned by Robert McNamara, Johnson’s
Secretary of Defense. It contained verbatim documents from the Defense Department, the State
Department, the CIA, the White House, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The times announced that it
planned to publish not only portions of the study but many of the original documents as well. The
newspaper did not say that all these materials were still officially classified “Secret” and “Top Secret.”
In fact, this was the most massive leak of classified documents in American History.
…We had lost our court battle against the newspaper that published the documents, but I was
determined that we would at least win out public case against the man I believed had stolen them,
Daniel Ellsberg. A former Pentagon aide, Ellsberg had come under suspicion soon after the first
installments for the study appeared. Whatever others may have thought, I considered what Ellsberg
had done to be despicable and contemptible—he had revealed government foreign policy secrets
during wartime.
…Even as our concern about Ellsberg and his possible collaborators was growing, we learned
that J. Edgar Hoover was dragging his feet and treating the [Ellsberg] case on merely a medium
priority basis; he had assigned no special task forces and no extra man-power to it…
…I did not care about any reasons or excuses. I wanted someone to light a fire under the FBI in
its investigation of Ellsberg, and to keep the departments and agencies active in pursuit of leakers. If
a conspiracy existed, I wanted to know, and I wanted the full resources of the government brought to
bear in order to find out. If the FBI was not going to pursue the case, then we would have to do it
ourselves. Ellsberg was having great success in the media, with his efforts to justify unlawful dissent,
and while I cared nothing for him personally, I felt that his views had to be discredited. I urged that
we find out everything we could about his background, his motives, and his co-conspirators, if they
existed…
…On July 17, 1971, Ehrlichman assigned Egil “Bud” Krogh, a young lawyer on the Domestic
Council staff, to head the leak project. David Young, a lawyer…and G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI
man, worked with him. A year and a half later, I learned for the first time that because their job was
plugging leaks, Young had jokingly put up a sign establishing himself as a “Plumber.”
…On Labor Day weekend, 1971, Krogh’s group organized a break-in at the office of Ellsberg’s
psychiatrist in an attempt to get information from his files on his motivation, his further intentions,
and any possible co-conspirators.
I do not believe I was told about the break-in at the time, but it is clear that it was at least in
part an outgrowth of my sense of urgency about discrediting what Ellsberg had done and finding out
what he might do next. Given the temper of those tense and bitter times and the peril I perceived, I
cannot say that had I been informed of it beforehand, I would have automatically considered it
unprecedented, unwarranted, or unthinkable. Ehrlichman says he did not know of it in advance, but
that he told me about it after the fact in 1972. I do not recall this and the tapes of the period June-July
1972 indicate that I was not conscious of them, but I cannot rule it out.
Today the break-in at Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office seems wrong and excessive. But I do not
accept that it was as wrong or excessive as what Daniel Ellsberg did, and I still believe that it is a
tragedy of circumstances that Bud Krogh and John Ehrlichman went to jail and Daniel Ellsberg went
free…
…By late September the Plumbers unit began to disband. Before long, too, the natural cycle of
concern over the Pentagon Papers ran its course and our thoughts turned to other matters.”
CREEPs, Plumbers, and Other Things that go bump in the Night!
On August 9, 1974 President Richard M. Nixon announced that he was resigning,
becoming the first, and only president to resign from office. Examine the following source and
summarize the information provided. What does this source tell us about why the presidents
choose to resign? Pay close attention to important people, dates, and actions.
Henry Kissinger served as National Security Advisor and later as Secretary of State in the
Nixon administration. He was closely involved in many of the political, diplomatic, and military
decisions made by President Richard Nixon. The following excerpt is taken from his meoirs
published in 1982.
“As security advisor I thought it my duty to help stanch these leaks [about the war
in Vietnam]…If our government remained passive when stolen documents became
media currency, confidence…would be undermined…The issue became particularly
acute in June 1971 when 7,000 pages of confidential files on Indochina from the
Kennedy and Johnson presidencies—the so called Pentagon Papers—were leaked to
the press…
…until I read about it in the newspapers, I knew nothing of the White House
“Plumbers Unit” burglary of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the admitted perpetrator
of the Pentagon Papers theft. The break-in was sordid, puerile, and self-defeating: It
aborted the criminal trial of the individual who flaunted his defiance of the laws against
such unauthorized disclosures. I have difficulty to this day understanding the rationale
for the break-in…
…The “Plumbers Unit”—so called be cause its job was to stop leaks—was part of
John Ehrlichman’s office…In itself there was nothing startling about assigning two staff
members to look into leaks of classified documents. The need for it appears to have
been compounded in Nixon’s mind by his growing distrust of J. Edgar Hoover, Director
of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). …Nixon believed that Hoover’s
friendship with Ellsberg’s father-in-law would prevent a serious investigation of the
Pentagon Papers theft…”
From: Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1982), pp. 115-118.
CREEPS, Plumbers, and other things that go bump in the Night!
Source
Articles of Impeachment,
Drawn up by the United States
House of Representatives on
July 27, 1973
Henry Kissinger, Years of
Upheaval (Boston: Little,
Brown and Company, 1982),
pp. 115-118.
Richard Nixon, The Memoirs of
Richard Nixon (New York:
Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), pp.
508-515.
Subpoena Issued by United
States District Court to
President Richard Nixon
H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman
Diaries (New York: Berkeley
Books, 1995), pp. 363-371,
378.
Newspaper Headlines from the
Washington Post
Cool stuff I learned that might help me connect causes and effects
How Does the Vietnam War lead to the Resignation of President Richard Nixon?
Directions: Create a list of 7 steps that makes up a chain of events leading from the Vietnam war (step 1) and the resignation of President
Nixon (step 7). Complete the required sentence for each event that explains its relationship to the next event.
Step 1: The United States is involved in the war in Vietnam.
Step 2: The involvement of the United States in the War in Vietnam causes______________________________________ because:
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Step 3: This in turn causes ______________________________________________________________________________ because:
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Step 4: This in turn causes ______________________________________________________________________________ because:
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Step 5: This in turn causes ______________________________________________________________________________ because:
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Step 6: This in turn causes ______________________________________________________________________________ because:
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Step 7: This in turn causes the resignation of President Nixon because:
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________