Clark Hoyt: “Recall how Watergate unfolded. Burglars paid by the Nixon reelection campaign bugged telephones at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington’s Watergate complex. They were caught in the act after a night watchman discovered tape over a door latch and called the police. The scandal broadened and climbed, revelation by revelation—much of it through the reporting of journalists, The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.”
“A bipartisan Senate Watergate Committee was formed and held hearings, trying to find the truth. It was a Republican senator, Howard Baker of Tennessee, who kept asking two key questions: ‘What did the president know, and when did he know it?’ A witness revealed that there was an Oval Office taping system that recorded the conversations there. A unanimous Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over the tapes to a special prosecutor appointed by his own Justice Department.”
“The president, having previously refused, then complied. A ‘smoking gun’ tape revealed that Nixon had plotted to block investigators as he campaigned for reelection. The leaders of his own party in Congress went to the White House to tell him that he was almost certainly going to be impeached and convicted. And Nixon was soon on that helicopter leaving office.”
“It’s hard to imagine any of this happening today. The checks on the presidency have all grown weaker.”
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