President Nixon: “I Am Not a Crook”
President Richard Nixon on this day declared, “I am not a crook,” at a meeting with the press in Florida.
Coming at the height of the Watergate Scandal (see June 17, 1972), the remark is often regarded as a reference to his involvement in the Watergate scandal and related abuses of presidential power that had come to light. But in fact it referred to separate allegations of personal financial irregularities that had also arisen.
Because of the Watergate Scandal, President Nixon resigned in disgrace on August 9, 1974, the only president in history to do so.
Read Nixon’s Statement: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=4046
Watch it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh163n1lJ4M
Read: Stanley Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (1990)
Read historian Joan Hoff’s revisionist view of Nixon: Joan Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered (1994)