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1969
Richard Nixon is inaugurated as the 37 President of the United States. -
1971
Richard Nixon orders the installation of a secret taping system that records all conversations in the Oval Office, his Executive Office Building office, and his Camp David office and on selected telephones in these locations. -
1971
The New York Times begins publishing the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department's secret history of the Vietnam War. The Washington Post will begin publishing the papers later in the week. -
1972
One of the “plumbers,” G. Gordon Liddy, is transferred to the Committee to Re-Elect the President, where he obtains approval from Attorney General John Mitchell for a wide-ranging plan of espionage against the Democratic Party. -
1972
Liddy’s team breaks into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. for the first time, bugging the telephones of staffers. -
1972
An article in The Washington Post reports that a check for $25,000 earmarked for Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign was deposited into the bank account of one of the men arrested for the Watergate break-in. Over the course of nearly two years, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein continue to file stories about the Watergate scandal, relying on many sources. -
1973
Former Nixon aide and FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy and James McCord, an ex-CIA agent and former security director of the Committee to Re-elect the President, are convicted for their roles in the break-in at the Watergate complex. They are found guilty of conspiracy, bugging DNC headquarters, and burglary. Four others, including E. Howard Hunt, had already plead guilty. Judge John J. Sirica threatens the convicted burglars with long prison sentences unless they talk. -
1974
President Nixon resigns. In a nationally televised speech, the president says, "I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as president, I must put the interest of America first...Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow."