Two reporters alone brought down a president.
Woodward and Bernstein mattered. So did Sirica, Dean, the Senate, Cox, Jaworski and the Supreme Court.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Notoriety97
Mystery20
Scale75
Evidence88
Legal impact96
Culture94
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Quick answers
What was Watergate?
A political scandal that began with a 17 June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices in Washington's Watergate complex and became a White House cover-up. It ended with President Richard Nixon's resignation on 9 August 1974 and convictions of many aides and burglars.
Who was arrested on 17 June 1972?
Five men inside the DNC offices, including James McCord of CRP. They were tied to E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. The burglary was a political intelligence operation, not a random theft. The scandal was the lying that followed.
What did the Washington Post do?
Reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, with editor Ben Bradlee, kept publishing links between the burglars, CRP cash and the White House through 1972–73. An FBI source, later named as Mark Felt, helped. The paper did not act alone: courts and Congress built the public record.
What was the Saturday Night Massacre?
On 20 October 1973 Nixon ordered special prosecutor Archibald Cox fired for insisting on the White House tapes. Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than comply. Solicitor General Robert Bork carried out the firing. The crisis forced a new prosecutor and deepened impeachment talk.
Why did Nixon resign?
After the Supreme Court ordered the tapes released in United States v. Nixon (24 July 1974), the 23 June 1972 'smoking gun' conversation showed him joining an effort to halt the FBI. The House Judiciary Committee had approved impeachment articles. Senate conviction looked certain. He resigned on 9 August 1974.
Did Nixon go to prison?
No. President Gerald Ford pardoned him on 8 September 1974 for federal crimes he 'committed or may have committed'. Many subordinates were convicted. That split is why this atlas marks the status mixed.
The cover-up is closed as fact. The justice of the pardon is not closed as argument.
English still prefers two reporters in a garage to a Supreme Court syllabus.
Still open
- The pardon argument — Whether Ford was right to block a Nixon trial remains a civic dispute, not a missing-fact problem.
- The 18½-minute gap — What those minutes contained is unknown. That they sit inside a cover-up file is not.
- How far 'what did he know' ran — The smoking-gun tape answers the June 1972 CIA-FBI request. Historians still map other days. They are footnotes on a resigned presidency.
- Independent-counsel afterlife — Whether the 1978 statute was a cure or a new disease is a later congressional fight, still taught as Watergate's child.
- What '-gate' now means — The suffix drifted. Open question for language, not for 1974.
Myth vs record
It was only a third-rate burglary.
That was the White House line in 1972. The tapes show a cover-up of political intelligence work tied to CRP.
Nixon was convicted in criminal court.
He resigned and was pardoned. Subordinates were convicted. Mixed is the correct status.
Deep Throat was a composite or a fiction.
In 2005 the source was identified as W. Mark Felt. The garage myth was real enough; it was never the whole case.
Local notes
Washington as workplace memory
English in the capital still treats Watergate as local geography: a complex, a courthouse and a paper. Tourists photograph the sign.
Journalism-school English
Columbia, City University and British journalism courses assign All the President's Men as scripture. Primary sources are the hearings and the opinion.
Global '-gate' English
From London to Delhi, English-language papers attach the suffix to local scandals. The export is the word, not the 1974 statute wave.
Watergate remains a mixed civic file: a documented cover-up, a resignation, a pardon and laws that still structure how English speakers name a scandal.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.