Watergate scandal (1973): Dean and Butterfield

A 17 June 1972 break-in at the DNC in Washington's Watergate complex became a cover-up that ended in Richard Nixon's resignation on 9 August 1974 and a wave of United States ethics law. In the early hours of 17 June 1972, five men were arrested inside the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C. They carried surveillance equipment and were tied, through address books and cash, to the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP, often mocked as CREEP) and to the Nixon White House. The burglary itself was a botched political intelligence job. The scandal was the cover-up that followed.

The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, federal prosecutors, Judge John Sirica, the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (the Ervin Committee) and a special prosecutor's office pulled the thread through 1973. White House counsel John Dean testified. The existence of a taping system was revealed. The Saturday Night Massacre of 20 October 1973 — Nixon's firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox and the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy William Ruckelshaus — turned a burglary story into a constitutional crisis.

On 24 July 1974 the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Nixon that the president had to surrender tapes. The House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment. Nixon resigned on 9 August 1974. President Gerald Ford pardoned him on 8 September. Many aides and burglars were convicted. The status is mixed because the president left office without a criminal trial, while the surrounding dock was full. The legal afterlife includes the Ethics in Government Act, campaign-finance rules and a permanent '-gate' suffix in English.