Why richard nixon was impeached

Those activities had started in after The New York Times revealed a secret bombing campaign against neutral Cambodia in Southeast Asia was being conducted as part of the American war effort in Vietnam.

Following the revelations, Nixon ordered wiretaps of reporters and government employees to discover the source of the news leaks. Defense Department's secret history of the Vietnam War. A "Plumbers" unit was then established by Nixon aides in the White House with the sole purpose of gathering political intelligence on perceived enemies and preventing further news leaks.

A team of burglars from the "Plumbers" then broke into a psychiatrist's office looking for damaging information on Daniel Ellsberg, the former defense analyst who had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press. In , as part of Nixon's re-election effort, a massive campaign of political spying and 'dirty tricks' was initiated against Democrats, leading to the Watergate break-in to plant bugs tiny audio transmitters inside the offices of the Democratic National Committee.

Two young reporters from the Washington Post , Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, then began a dogged pursuit of the facts surrounding the break-in. Perhaps the most notorious dirty trick was a letter planted in a New Hampshire newspaper alleging that leading Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, had referred to Americans of French-Canadian descent as "Canucks. On a snowy New Hampshire day, standing outside the offices of the newspaper, Musky gave a rambling, tearful denial.

His emotional conduct, replayed on television, caused him to drop in the New Hampshire polls shortly before the presidential primary. George McGovern, considered a weaker candidate by Nixon political strategists, eventually won the Democratic nomination and lost the general election to Nixon in a landslide.

In February of , the U. Sam Ervin, to investigate all of the events surrounding Watergate and other allegations of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of Nixon's re-election. March and April of saw the start of the unraveling of the coverup.

On March 23, one of the five burglars convicted after the Watergate break-in, James W. McCord, informed U. District Judge John J. Sirica that he was being pressured to remain silent. Patrick Gray resigned after admitting he had destroyed Watergate evidence under pressure from Nixon aides. Ten days later, four of Nixon's top officials resigned: Chief of Staff H. The Senate Select Committee began televised hearings on May A month later, former Presidential Counsel John Dean testified there was an ongoing White House coverup and that Nixon had been personally involved in the payment of hush money to the five burglars and two other operatives involved in planning the Watergate break-in.

Three weeks later, another Nixon aide revealed the President had ordered hidden microphones installed in the Oval Office in the spring of and had recorded most conversations since then on audio tape. The tapes then became the focus of an intensive year-long legal battle between all three branches of the U. In October of , Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who had been appointed by the Nixon administration, publicly vowed to obtain the tapes despite Nixon's strong objections.

Solicitor General Robert Bork agreed to carry out the order and fired Cox. The minute-by-minute events of the "Saturday Night Massacre" were covered live by stunned reporters on network television starting about p.

Ten days later, impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives began as the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Peter Rodino, started its preliminary investigation. Nixon responded to public outrage by initially agreeing to turn over some of the tapes. Also examines the subpoena power of the House of Representatives in impeachment inquiries.

Debate on Articles of Impeachment. J8 b. Verbatim record of the debate concerning the approval of the articles of impeachment by the House Committee on the Judiciary. Includes opening statements by members and roll call votes on each article available at HathiTrust External. Brief on Behalf of the President of the United States. J8 c. Clair, before the House Committee on the Judiciary, regarding the particular facts and law involving the Watergate investigation.

The final section presents an argument concerning the constitutional limitations on impeachment proceedings available at HathiTrust External. J8 d. Statement of Information.

J8 e. Prepared by the House Committee on the Judiciary in support of its investigation, this hearing provides extensive evidence in 12 volumes relating to all aspects of Watergate and the abuse of power available at HathiTrust External.

Summary of Information. J8 f. Reviews the evidence and law in regard to abuse of presidential powers, refusal to comply with subpoenas from Congress, and tax evasion. Impeachment Inquiry. Pursuant to H. Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck once called politics "the art of the possible. He offered a practical solution he called "New Federalism": locally controlled desegregation. Across the South, the Nixon administration established biracial committees to plan and implement school desegregation.

The program was well accepted by the states, and by the end of only about 18 percent of Black children in the South were attending all-Black schools, down from 70 percent in As president, Nixon also increased the number of female appointments in his administration, despite opposition from many in his administration. He created a Presidential Task Force on Women's Rights, requested that the Department of Justice bring sex-discrimination suits against blatant violators and ordered the Department of Labor to add sex discrimination guidelines to all federal contracts.

Some of President Nixon's well-intentioned domestic policies under New Federalism clashed with the Democrat-controlled Congress and were fraught with unintended consequences.

A case in point was the Family Assistance Plan. The program called for replacing bureaucratically administered programs such as Aid to Families With Dependent Children, Food Stamps and Medicaid with direct cash payments to those in need, including single-parent families and the working poor.

Conservatives disliked the plan for guaranteeing an annual income to people who didn't work, the labor movement saw it as a threat to the minimum wage and federal caseworkers saw the program as a threat to their jobs. Many Americans complained that adding the working poor to Welfare would expand the program rather than reduce it. Though initially not showing much interest in environmental concerns, after the Earth Day, with millions of demonstrations across the country, President Nixon sensed a political opportunity and a need.

Keeping true to his New Federalism principles of less government and fiscal responsibility, Nixon insisted that all environmental proposals meet the cost-benefit standards of the Office of Management and Budget. Congress overrode his veto, and in retaliation, Nixon used his presidential powers to impound half the money. Nixon often adopted a stance of confrontation rather than conciliation and compromise. In his ambition to push through his agenda, he sought to consolidate power within the presidency and took the attitude that the executive branch was exempt from many of the checks and balances imposed by the Constitution.

This attitude would later turn on him during the Watergate scandal. Though achieving some success in domestic politics, most of President Nixon's first term was dominated by foreign affairs and, most notably, the Vietnam War.

Nixon also reestablished American influence in the Middle East and pressured allies to take more responsibility for their own defense. Since the mids, tensions between China and its main ally, the USSR, had increased, causing a breach in their relationship by Nixon sensed an opportunity to shift the Cold War balance of power toward the West, and he sent secret messages to Chinese officials to open a dialogue. The visit ushered in a new era of Chinese-American relations and pressured the Soviet Union to agree to better relations with the United States.

In Latin America, the Nixon administration continued the long-standing policy of supporting autocratic dictatorships in lieu of socialist democracies. Most notably, he authorized clandestine operations to undermine the coalition government of Chile's Marxist president, Salvador Allende, after he nationalized American-owned mining companies. Nixon restricted Chile's access to international economic assistance, discouraged private investment, increased aid to the Chilean military and funneled covert payments to Allende opposition groups.

In September , Allende was overthrown in a military coup, establishing Chilean army general Augusto Pinochet as dictator. But the foremost issue on Nixon's plate was Vietnam. When he took office, American soldiers were dying per week in Vietnam. The Johnson administration had escalated the war to involve over , American troops and expanded operations from the defense of South Vietnam to bombing attacks in North Vietnam.

Nixon faced the decision of either escalating the war further to secure South Vietnam from communism or withdrawing forces to end involvement in an increasingly unpopular war. Nixon proposed a controversial strategy of withdrawing American troops from South Vietnam while carrying out Air Force bombings and army special-ops operations against enemy positions in Laos and Cambodia, both of which were officially neutral at the time.

He established what became known as the Nixon Doctrine also called "Vietnamization" , replacing American troops with Vietnamese soldiers. From to , troop withdrawals were estimated to be , soldiers. While Nixon's campaign promise in was to draw down the size of the U.

When Nixon made a televised speech announcing the movement of U. Beyond all the strife, the war in Vietnam had caused domestic inflation to grow to nearly 6 percent by To address the problem, Nixon initially tried to restrict federal spending, but beginning in , his budget proposals contained deficits of several billion dollars, the largest in American history up to that time.

Though defense spending was cut almost in half, government spending on benefits to American citizens rose from a little over 6 percent to nearly 9 percent. To control increasing inflation and unemployment, Nixon imposed temporary wage and price controls, which achieved marginal success, but by the end of , inflation returned with a vengeance, reaching 8. With the war in Vietnam winding down, Nixon in defeated his Democratic challenger, liberal senator George McGovern, in a landslide victory, receiving almost 20 million more popular votes and winning the Electoral College vote to Nixon looked invincible in his victory.

It seems odd, in retrospect, that his re-election campaign, the Committee to Re-Elect the President also known as CREEP was so concerned about Democrats opposition that it reverted to political sabotage and covert espionage. Public opinion polls during the campaign indicated President Nixon had an overwhelming lead. Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. Live TV.

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