Content 1. Biography 2. Nixon's Presidency 3. Watergate Biography January 9, 1913: Born in Yorba Linda, California 1934: Graduated from Whitter College (California) 1937: Received Law degree from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina 1937 - 1941: Practiced law in Whitter, California June 26, 1942: Married with Thelma Catherine "Pat" Ryan 1942: Attorney in the Office of Price Administration in Washington D.C. 1942 - 1946: Served in U.S. Navy during World War II 1947 - 1950: U.S. representive from California 1950 - 1953: U.S. senator from California 1953 - 1961: Vice President of the United States 1960: Republican nominee for President, narrowly defeated by governor John F. Kennedy 1962: Republican nominee for governor of California, defeated by Governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown 1963 - 1968: Practiced law in New York City 1969 - 1974: Thirty - seventh President of the United States August 9, 1974: Resigned as President to avoid impeachment August 22, 1994: died by a stroke in New York City Nixon's Presidency In the election of 1968 completed a remarkable political comeback by defeating Hubert H. Humphrey to become the 37th U.S. President. Major initiatives during his presidency: · Normalizing of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China and partially abandoning the Republic of China on Taiwan as part of Realpolitik, a foreign policy eschewing moral considerations. In the short term Nixon was successful in playing the 'China card' against the Soviet Union and its client state North Vietnam. · Establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency. · Establishment of the Drug Enforcement Administration. · 'Vietnamization': the slow withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam while dramatically increasing the scale of bombing. · Space Shuttle program started. Nixon appealed to what he claimed was the 'silent majority' of moderate Americans who disliked the 'hippie' counterculture and civil rights and peace demonstrators. Nixon also promised 'peace with honor' by his 'secret plan' to end the Vietnam War. He proposed the Nixon Doctrine to establish the strategy to turn over the fighting of the war to the Vietnamese. During the war, on July 30, 1969, Nixon made an unscheduled visit to South Vietnam and met with President Nguyen Van Thieu and with US military commanders. The war ended during Nixon's term, but only after four more years of strategic bombing and defeat on the ground, and the withdrawal of US troops, leaving the battle to the South Vietnamese army. The Nixon administration's massive bombing campaigns of Cambodia and its support for the overthrow of the neutralist royal government of Sihanouk by the rightist military dictator Lon Nol drove much of the peasant population of that country into the arms of the Khmer Rouge, a Maoist revolutionary movement that would kill 1.7 million Cambodians after taking power. On January 5, 1972 Nixon ordered the development of a space shuttle program. Nixon's name appears alongside former UN Secretary General U Thant's on a special plaque that was placed on the moon's surface. On January 2, 1974 Nixon signed a bill that lowered the maximum US speed limit to 55 MPH in order to conserve gasoline during the first OPEC oil embargo. Watergate In 1971 the publication of the Pentagon Papers provoked ill-advised actions by the president. Daniel Ellsberg, who acknowledged giving copies of the "papers" to newspapers, was indicted for espionage. Nixon created an investigation unit - the "plumbers". Agents of the unit broke into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to get information that could be used to discredit Ellsberg before his trial. IN 1973 Nixon and presidential john Ehrlichman met with Judge W. Matthew Byrne, JR., who was then presiding at the Ellsberg trial. They knew, but did not tell Byrne, that a break-in had occurred at the psychiatrist's office and later denied any attempt to influence the trial. When the break-in was revealed to the court, Byrne dismissed the charges against Ellsberg. Gradually, White House efforts aimed at opponents of the war blended into the campaign for Nixon's re-election. The "plumbers" were involved in the wiretapping of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Agents employed by officials of the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CRP) were arrested at the Watergate on June 17, 1972. This event, occurring four months before the election, prompted Nixon and his leading aides to cover up White House and CRP involvement in Watergate. On June 23, Nixon approved a plan to thwart an inquiry by the FBI. The cover-up included promises of clemency and the payment of hush money to the men arrested at the Watergate. But the cover-up collapsed. Persons found guilty of illegal acts - some unrelated to Watergate - included Nixon's chief of staff, his chief domestic adviser two attorneys general, three White House counsels, his personal attorney, hi campaign finance chairman, his deputy campaign manager and his appointments secretary. Nixon's last 16 months in office were punctuated by legal defeats and personal humiliations. After it was learned that he had taped conversations that later proved incriminating to him and others, Nixon fought without success in the courts to keep the tapes from the prosecutors. During hearings conducted by a Senate committee investigating Watergate, Nixon was linked to the cover-up by his former counsel John Dean. Senator Howard Baker (Republican, Tennessee) repeatedly asked the question that worried the nation for the next year: "What did the president know and when did he know it?" Nixon's reputation was damaged in other ways. The taps revealed that he wanted to get revenge on a number of "enemies". A House committee reported that $17 million in public funds had been spent on his private estates. The Internal Revenue Service assessed Nixon nearly $300,000 in back taxes. In 1974 a grand jury named Nixon an unindicted co-conspirator in the cover-up. The House Judiciary Committee recommended that he be impeached for covering up Watergate, abusing his powers, and refusing to honour committee subpoenas. His attorney, James St. Clair, insisted that he make public the taped conversation of June 23, 1972, which implicated Nixon in the cover-up. Realizing that he would be impeached and removed from office, Nixon announced his resignation on August 8, 1974. Gerald Ford was sworn in as his successor. On September 8, Ford granted him a pardon for any federal crimes that he might have committed while president.
