Watergate: 4 momentos que marcaron el caso que forzó la única renuncia de un presidente en EE.UU.

The Watergate scandal is today a symbol of corruption and conspiracy. What began as a robbery in a Washington building ended with the resignation of the 37th president of the United States, Richard Nixon. It shook American politics and society and was even made into a movie. It was a turning point in citizen trust towards those in power. In this video we tell you what happened in 4 moments that marked the Watergate case. It all starts with an alleged robbery. 5 men (3 Cubans, 1 Cuban-American and one American) enter the Watergate building in Washington at the main headquarters of the Democratic Committee in the middle of the night.

The campaign of the party that aspires to defeat Richard Nixon, the Republican president, in the November elections of that same year is centralized in this place. The building's janitor notices something suspicious and calls the police, who arrive and arrest the 5 men. The next day, the Washington Post, one of the country's main newspapers, reports the incident with some data that begins to raise suspicions that perhaps there is more behind this than a simple robbery. For example, the alleged thieves were dressed in suits and used surgical gloves, listening equipment and cameras. And something even more suspicious: almost US$2,300 in cash.

With this information, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, two young Post reporters, began to investigate the case. And Deep Throat was crucial to this, an anonymous source whose identity was revealed three decades later: it was Mark Felt, the then deputy director of the FBI. With his help, they turned the plot around when they began to find connections between the alleged robbery and the White House. The first evidence of this connection was a US$25,000 check for the president's re-election campaign that had been deposited into the bank account of one of the thieves. The reporters' investigations also revealed that some of those involved in the robbery had participated in CIA operations against Fidel Castro's regime.

But this was only the tip of the ball. They also found that Attorney General John Mitchel controlled a secret fund to collect information on members of the Democratic Party. And everything indicated that the orders came from the White House. Let us remember that at that time Nixon was at the end of his first term and from the White House a committee was directing the strategy for his re-election. Although Nixon was emerging as the favorite to win the elections, he did not have a clear path. And one of his main challenges was not having fulfilled the promise with which he became president in 1968: to end the war in Vietnam.

This at a time when the civil rights and anti-war movements were in full swing. Furthermore, a year earlier, a scandalous leak had left the president in a bad light: the Pentagon Papers. These secret documents about the conflict in Vietnam leaked to the New York Times revealed how the public had been deceived about what was happening in the war. After this scandal, the president created a Special Investigations Unit within the White House, better known as the “Plumbers” unit. Because his task was to stop any leak. And it is at this point where this story intersects with that of Watergate.

Because it turns out that one of the “plumbers,” G. Gordon Liddy, was transferred to the Committee to Reelect Richard Nixon. And there he was tasked with spying on his political rivals from the Democratic Party. From there came the order to enter the Democrats' offices in the Watergate building to spy on them and find any document that could harm them. But while this information was coming to light, Nixon's popularity remained intact. He actually swept the elections. But all this took a dramatic turn when the investigations reached the Senate. In the public hearings of the case, which were followed on television by millions of Americans, several witnesses agreed that although Nixon had not given the direct order to spy on the Democrats in the Watergate building, he had ordered to cover up the links of the case with the White House.

But in addition, not only did details of Watergate come to light, but the entire network of espionage and conspiracy that had become almost a culture of “the ends justify the means” in the White House was known. And details were given of the illegal financing of many of the espionage operations and of contributions to the Republican Party in exchange for political favors. But one of the most serious revelations was the one that uncovered the wiretapping and conversation system that President Nixon himself had installed in the Oval Office. The president justified himself by saying that he had installed the system to write his memoirs.

But the fierce battle over the Oval Office recordings marked the beginning of the end of Nixon's presidency. On August 8, 1974, the president resigned, something that had never happened in the history of the United States. And according to experts, the process that ended with his resignation tested the independence of the powers in the United States: the judiciary, the Senate, the Congress and the presidency. First was the dispute between the Senate, which wanted to obtain the recordings of Nixon's office, and the president, who refused to hand them over, citing security reasons. But the drama escalated when several Justice Department officials including the Attorney General resigned while others were fired amid pressure from the White House to quell the Senate investigation.

There was strong condemnation from public opinion and there were those who went so far as to describe this episode as an attempted coup d'état by the government to interfere in justice. The recordings were finally made public when the Supreme Court of Justice demanded it. And one of them put the president at the center of the conspiracy. Nixon could be heard talking with one of his advisors about how the CIA should block the FBI's investigations into the Watergate case, just 6 days after the press reported the alleged robbery. Congress immediately began impeachment proceedings against Nixon, accusing him of obstruction of justice and abuse of power. 15 days later Nixon resigned from office.

But a few days after taking office, his successor Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon and many think this caused even more disillusionment in society. However, there are other experts who say that the case also showed that, despite their flaws, institutions in the United States are strong and function independently. What many agree on is that this was one of the murkiest episodes in American politics in the 20th century.