Shortly after 1 A.M. on the morning of June 17, 1972, a security guard at the Washington, D.C., Watergate office complex spotted a strip of masking tape covering the lock of a basement door.  He removed it.  A short while later, he found the door taped open again.  He called the police, who found two more taped locks and a jammed door leading into the offices of the Democratic National Committee.  Inside they discovered five men carrying cameras and electronic eavesdropping equipment.

     At first, the Watergate break-in seemed like a minor incident.  The identities of the burglars, however, suggested something more serious.  One, James McCord, was chief security coordinator of the Committee for the Reelection of the President (CREEP). Others had links to the CIA.

     Over the course of the next year, it became clear that the break-in was one of a series of secret operations coordinated by the White House.  Financed by illegal campaign contributions, these operations posed a threat to America's constitutional system of government and eventually forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency.

     The Watergate break-in had its roots in Richard Nixon's obsession with secrecy and political intelligence.  To stop "leaks" of information to the press, in 1971 the Nixon White House assembled a team of "plumbers," consisting of former CIA operatives.  This private police force, paid for in part by illegal campaign contributions, engaged in a wide range of criminal acts, including phone tapping and burglary, against those on its "enemies list."

     In 1972 when President Nixon was running for reelection, CREEP authorized another series of illegal activities.  It hired Donald Segretti to stage "dirty tricks" against potential Democratic nominees, which included mailing letters that falsely accused one candidate of homosexuality and fathering an illegitimate child.  It considered a plan to use call girls to blackmail Democrats at their national convention and to kidnap antiNixon radical leaders.  The committee also authorized $250,000 for intelligence-gathering operations.  Four times the committee sent burglars to break into Democratic headquarters.

     Precisely what the campaign committee hoped to learn from these intelligence-gathering activities remains a mystery.  It seems likely that it was seeking information about the Democratic party's campaign strategies and any information the Democrats had about illegal campaign contributions to the Republican party.

    On June 23--six days after the botched break-in--President Nixon ordered aides to block an FBI investigation of White House involvement in the break-in on grounds that an investigation would endanger national security. He also counseled his aides to lie under oath, if necessary.

     The Watergate break-in did not hurt Nixon's reelection campaign.  Between the activities of the burglars and the president were layers of deception that had to be carefully peeled away.  Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, sensing that the break-in was only part of a larger scandal, slowly pieced together part of the story.  Facing long jail terms, some of the burglars began to tell the truth, and the truth illuminated a path leading to the White House.

     If Nixon had few political friends, he had legions of enemies.  Over the years he had offended or attacked many Democrats--and a number of prominent Republicans.  His detractors latched onto the Watergate issue with the tenacity of bulldogs.

     The Senate appointed a special committee to investigate the Watergate scandal.  Most of Nixon's top aides continued the cover-up.  John Dean, the president's counsel, did not.  Throughout the episode he had kept careful notes, and in a quiet precise voice he told the Senate Watergate Committee that the president was deeply involved in the cover-up.  The matter was still not solved.  All the committee had was Dean's word against the other White House aides.

     On July 16, 1973, a former White House employee, Alexander Butterfield, dropped a bombshell by testifying that Nixon had recorded all Oval Office conversations.  Whatever Nixon and his aides had said about Watergate in the Oval Office, therefore, was faithfully recorded on tape.

     Nixon tried to keep the tapes from the committee by invoking executive privilege, insisting that a president had a right to keep confidential any White House communication, whether or not it involved sensitive diplomatic or national security matters.  When Archibald Cox, a special prosecutor investigating the Watergate affair, persisted in demanding the tapes, Nixon ordered his attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to fire him; Richardson refused and resigned; Richardson's assistant, William Ruckelshaus, also resigned.  Ruckelshaus's assistant, Robert Bork, finally fired Cox, but Congress forced Nixon to name a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski.  This train events was latered dubbed "the Saturday Night Massacre," and it was the clearest evidence yet of Nixon's contempt for the Constitution (as in constitutional separation of powers among the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government).

     In the midst of the Watergate investigations another scandal broke.  Federal prosecutors accused Vice President Spiro Agnew of extorting payoffs from building contractors while he was Maryland's governor and Baltimore County executive.  In a plea bargain, Agnew pleaded no contest to a relatively minor charge--that he had falsified his income tax in 1967--in exchange for a $10,000 fine.  Agnew was succeeded as vice president by Gerald Ford, whom Nixon appointed.

     The Watergate scandal gradually came to encompass not just the cover-up but a wide range of presidential wrongdoings, including political favors to powerful business groups in exchange for campaign contributions; misuse of public funds; deceiving Congress and the public about the secret bombing of Cambodia; authorization of illegal domestic political surveillance and espionage against dissidents, political opponents, and journalists; and attempts to use FBI investigations and income tax audits by the IRS to harass political enemies.

     On July 24, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee recommended that the House of Representatives impeach Nixon for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and refusal to relinquish the tapes.  On August 5th, Nixon obeyed a Supreme Court order to release the tapes, which confirmed Dean's detailed testimony.  Nixon had indeed been involved in a cover-up.  On August 9th he became the first American president to resign from office. The following day Gerald Ford became the new president. "Our long national nightmare," he said, "is over."

     Over the course of the twentieth century the presidency gradually supplanted Congress as the center of federal power.  Presidential authority increased, presidential staffs grew in size, and the executive branch gradually acquired a dominant relationship over Congress.

     Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt, the president, and not Congress, established the nation's legislative agenda.  Increasingly, Congress ceded its budget-making authority to the president.  Presidents even found a way to make agreements with foreign nations without congressional approval.  After World War II presidents substituted executive agreements for treaties requiring approval of the Senate.  Even more important, presidents gained the power to take military action, despite the fact that Congress is the sole branch of government empowered by the Constitution to declare war.

     No president went further than Richard Nixon in concentrating powers in the presidency.  He refused to spend funds that Congress had appropriated; he claimed executive privilege against disclosure of information on administration decisions; he refused to allow key decision makers to be questioned before congressional committees; he reorganized the executive branch and broadened the authority of new cabinet positions without congressional approval; and during the Vietnam War, he ordered harbors mined and bombing raids launched without consulting Congress.

     Watergate brought a halt to the "imperial presidency" and the growth of presidential power.  Over the president's veto, Congress enacted the War Powers Act (1973), which required future presidents to obtain authorization from Congress to engage U.S. forces in foreign combat for more than 90 days.  Under the law, a president who orders troops into action abroad must report the reason for this action to Congress within 48 hours.

     In the wake of the Watergate scandal Congress passed a series of laws designed to reform the political process.  Disclosures during the Watergate investigations of money-laundering led Congress to provide public financing of presidential elections, public disclosure of sources of funding, limits on private campaign contributions and spending, and enforcement of campaign finance laws by an independent Federal Election Commission.  To make it easier for the Justice Department to investigate crimes in the executive branch, Congress now requires the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate accusations of illegal activities.  To reassert its budget-making authority, Congress created a Congressional Budget Office and specifically forbade a president to impound funds without its approval.  To open government to public scrutiny, Congress opened more committee deliberations and enacted the Freedom of Information Act, which allows the public and press to request the declassification of government documents.

     Some of the post-Watergate reforms have not been as effective as reformers anticipated.  The War Powers Act has never been invoked.  Campaign financing reform has not curbed the ability of special interests to curry favor with politicians or the capacity of the very rich to outspend opponents.

     On the other hand, Congress has had somewhat more success in reining in the FBI and the CIA.  During the 1970s congressional investigators discovered that these organizations had, in defiance of federal law, broken into the homes, tapped the phones, and opened the mail of American citizens; illegally infiltrated antiwar groups and black radical organizations; and accumulated dossiers on dissidents; which had been used by presidents for political purposes.  Investigators also found that the CIA had been involved in assassination plots against foreign leaders, among them Fidel Castro, and had tested the effects of radiation, electric shock, and drugs (such as LSD) on unsuspecting citizens.  In the wake of these investigations, the government severely limited CIA operations in the United States and laid down strict guidelines for FBI activities.  To tighten congressional control over the CIA, Congress established a joint committee to supervise its operations.