Top Nixon Administration Officials Convicted of Watergate Conspiracy
Former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell and President Richard Nixon’s former top White House aides H.R. Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were all convicted on this day of crimes related to the Watergate scandal.
Mitchell was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury; Haldeman was convicted of conspiracy and obstruction of justice; and Ehrlichman was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury. They were sentenced to prison on February 21, 1975.
The Watergate burglary, on June 17, 1972, touched off a national scandal that gripped the nation for 15 months from the day of the original Watergate burglary to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. The burglary also set in motions investigations that uncovered other abuses of power by President Nixon and several members of his administration. These included the famous “enemies” list of critics of the administration who were targeted for retaliation (August 16, 1971), and the White House “Plumbers” unit that burglarized the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist on September 9, 1971. Nixon was impeached by the House of Representatives in July 1974, and he resigned on August 9, 1974.
President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon on September 8, 1974, for any crimes he may have committed while president.
Learn more about the Watergate scandal: http://watergate.info/
Read: Stanley Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (1990)
Read their own accounts: H.R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power (1978); John Ehrlichman, Witness to Power: The Nixon Years (1982)
View a timeline of the Watergate scandal here
Read the book by the two reporters who broke the Watergate scandal: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, All the President’s Men (1974)