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Nixon reportedly orders the White House taping system disconnected.
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Five men, one of whom says he used to work for the CIA, are arrested at 2:30 a.m. trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate hotel and office complex.
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A $25,000 cashier’s check, apparently for the Nixon campaign, wound up in the bank account of a Watergate burglar, the Washington Post reports.
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FBI agents establish that the Watergate break-in stems from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of the Nixon reelection effort, the Post reports.
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Nixon is reelected in one of the largest landslides in American political history, taking more than 60%of the vote and crushing the Democratic nominee, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.
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Former Nixon aides G. Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord Jr. are convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and wiretapping in the Watergate incident. Five other men plead guilty, but mysteries remain.
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Nixon’s top White House staffers, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst resign over the scandal. White House counsel John Dean is fired.
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The Senate Watergate committee begins its nationally televised hearings.
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John Dean has told Watergate investigators that he discussed the Watergate cover-up with President Nixon at least 35 times, the Post reports.
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Alexander Butterfield, former presidential appointments secretary, reveals in congressional testimony that since 1971, Nixon had recorded all conversations and telephone calls in his offices.
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Nixon refuses to turn over the presidential tape recordings to the Senate Watergate committee or the special prosecutor.
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Saturday Night Massacre: Nixon fires Archibald Cox and abolishes the office of the special prosecutor. Attorney General Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus resign. Pressure for impeachment mounts in Congress.
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Nixon declares, “I’m not a crook,” maintaining his innocence in the Watergate case.
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The White House can’t explain an eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap in one of the subpoenaed [court-ordered] tapes. Chief of staff Alexander Haig says one theory is that “some sinister force” erased the segment.
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The White House releases more than 1,200 pages of edited transcripts of the Nixon tapes to the House Judiciary Committee, but the committee insists that the tapes themselves must be turned over.
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The Supreme Court rules unanimously that Nixon must turn over the tape recordings of 64 White House conversations, rejecting the president’s claims of executive privilege.
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House Judiciary Committee passes the first of three articles of impeachment, charging obstruction of justice.
