The Real Beginning of the Watergate Scandal: President Nixon Receives OK for Secret Bombing of Cambodia
The National Security Council on this day granted President Richard Nixon approval to conduct secret bombing of Cambodia in the Vietnam War.
Many experts believe that this was the real beginning of the Watergate scandal, that involved a wide range of abuses of power and eventually led to Nixon’s resignation as president on August 9, 1974.
The Watergate scandal began on June 17, 1972 when five men with ties to the Nixon administration were arrested while breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Complex in Washington, DC. President Nixon then began a cover-up of the burglary and other abuses of power. See John Dean’s “a cancer on the presidency” talk to Nixon on March 21, 1973.
President Nixon wanted to bomb Cambodia because he believed that North Vietnam was using Cambodia as a sanctuary for its military role in the war in South Vietnam. Afraid of adverse public reaction, and public opinion was growing steadily more anti-war, he wanted to keep the bombing secret. The bombing began three days later, on March 18th. It was, of course, no secret to the people in Cambodia, and very quickly to many people in South Vietnam. The New York Times obtained a relatively small article on the secret bombing on May 9th. President Nixon was furious and was convinced that the Times got its information from leaks by White House officials (and not from sources in Cambodia or Vietnam). Consequently, he ordered secret and illegal wiretapping of several members of the National Security staff.
Many experts argue that these wiretaps were the Nixon administration’s first step into illegal actions and the abuse of presidential power, and that further abuses eventually followed.
Learn more about the Watergate Scandal: Stanley Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (1990)