Watergate/Timelines

From charlesreid1

Wikipedia Watergate Timeline

This timeline is based only on All The President's Men.

  • November 5, 1968: Richard Nixon elected President
  • July 1, 1971: David Young and Egil Krogh write a memo suggesting the formation of what would later be called the "White House Plumbers" in response to the leak of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg.
  • August 21, 1971: Nixon's Enemies List is started by White House aides (though Nixon himself may not have been aware of it); to "use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies."
  • May 2, 1972: J. Edgar Hoover dies; L. Patrick Gray is appointed acting FBI director.
  • June 17, 1972: The plumbers are arrested at 2:30 a.m. in the process of burglarizing and planting surveillance bugs in the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate Hotel.
  • June 20, 1972: Reportedly based on a tip from Deep Throat, Bob Woodward reports in the Washington Post that one of the burglars had E. Howard Hunt in his address book and possessed checks signed by him, and that Hunt was connected to Charles Colson.
  • September 15, 1972: Hunt, Liddy and the Watergate burglars are indicted by a federal grand jury.
  • November 7, 1972: Nixon re-elected in the largest plurality of votes in American history.
  • January 8, 1973: Five defendants plead guilty as the burglary trial begins. Liddy and McCord are convicted after the trial.
  • February 28, 1973: Confirmation hearings begin for confirming L. Patrick Gray as permanent Director of the FBI. During these hearings, Gray reveals that he had complied with an order from John Dean to provide daily updates on the Watergate investigation, and also that Dean had "probably lied" to FBI investigators.
  • March 17, 1973: Watergate burglar James McCord writes a letter to Judge John Sirica, claiming that some of his testimony was perjured under pressure and that the burglary was not a CIA operation, but had involved other government officials, thereby leading the investigation to the White House.
  • April 6, 1973: White House counsel John Dean begins cooperating with federal Watergate prosecutors.
  • April 27, 1973: L. Patrick Gray resigns after it comes to light that he destroyed files from E. Howard Hunt's safe. William Ruckelshaus is appointed as his replacement.
  • April 30, 1973: Senior White house administration officials John Ehrlichman, H. R. Haldeman, and Richard Kleindienst resign; John Dean is fired.
  • May 17, 1973 : The Senate Watergate Committee begins its nationally televised hearings.
  • May 19, 1973: Independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox appointed to oversee investigation into possible presidential impropriety.
  • June 3, 1973: John Dean tells Watergate investigators that he has discussed the cover-up with Nixon at least 35 times.
  • July 13, 1973: Alexander Butterfield, former presidential appointments secretary, reveals that all conversations and telephone calls in Nixon’s office have been taped since 1971.
  • July 18, 1973: Nixon orders White House taping systems disconnected.
  • July 23, 1973: Nixon refuses to turn over presidential tapings to Senate Watergate Committee or the special prosecutor.
  • Vice President replaced:
  • October 20, 1973: "Saturday Night Massacre" - Nixon fires special prosecutor Cox. Ruckelshaus and Elliot Richardson refuse to comply and resign. Robert Bork considers resigning but carries out the order.
  • November 1, 1973: Leon Jaworski is appointed new special prosecutor.
  • November 17, 1973: Nixon delivers "I am not a crook" speech at a televised press conference at Disney World (Florida).
  • January 28, 1974: Nixon campaign aide Herbert Porter pleads guilty to perjury.
  • February 25, 1974: Nixon personal counsel Herbert Kalmbach pleads guilty to two charges of illegal campaign activities.
  • March 4, 1974: "Watergate Seven" indicted.
  • April 5, 1974: Dwight Chapin convicted of lying to a grand jury.
  • April 7, 1974: Ed Reinecke, Republican lieutenant governor of California, indicted on three charges of perjury before the Senate committee.
  • April 30, 1974: White House releases edited transcripts of the Nixon tapes, but the House Judiciary Committee insists the actual tapes must be turned over.
  • June 15, 1974: Woodward and Bernstein's book All the President's Men is published by Simon & Schuster (ISBN 0-671-21781-X).
  • July 24, 1974: United States v. Nixon decided: Nixon is ordered to give up tapes to investigators.
  • Congress moves to impeach Nixon.
    • July 27 to July 30, 1974: House Judiciary Committee passes articles of Impeachment.
    • Early August 1974: A previously unknown tape from June 23, 1972 (recorded a few days after the break-in) documenting Nixon and Haldeman formulating a plan to block investigations, is released. This recording would later became known as the "Smoking Gun".
    • Key Republican Senators tell Nixon that enough votes exist to convict him.
  • August 8, 1974: Nixon resigns presidency. Gerald Ford becomes President.
  • September 8, 1974: President Ford ends investigations by granting Nixon a pardon.
  • November 7, 1974: 94th Congress elected: Democratic Party picks up 5 Senate seats and 49 House seats. Many of the freshman congressmen are very young; the media dubs them "Watergate Babies".
  • December 31, 1974: As a result of Nixon administration abuses of privacy, Privacy Act of 1974 passes into law. Ford is persuaded to veto the bill by Cheney and Rumsfeld; Congress overrides Ford's veto. (Note that the newly-elected Congress had not taken office yet, this Congress was still the 93rd Congress.)
  • January 1, 1975: John N. Mitchell, John Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury.
  • July 27, 1975: Church Committee chaired by Frank Church commences, to investigate foreign and domestic intelligence-gathering activities.
  • November 4, 1975: Ford replaces several Nixon cabinet members in the "Halloween Massacre", engineered by Ford aide Donald Rumsfeld. Richard Cheney, George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft join Ford administration; Rumsfeld becomes Secretary of Defense; Henry Kissinger remains as Secretary of State but not National Security Advisor.
  • May 5, 1976: Church Committee superseded by Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
  • October 25, 1978: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act enacted, creating Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and limiting federal government domestic surveillance powers. Recommended by Church Committee.
  • April 22, 1994: Richard Nixon dies.
  • May 21, 2005: W. Mark Felt, former Associate Director of the FBI during the Watergate years, declares that he is Deep Throat, this declaration would later be confirmed by reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Some writers would later dispute this claim.
  • December 18, 2008: Mark Felt dies at the age of 95.

Washington Post Watergate Timeline

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/watergate/chronology.htm

Nice because it provides links to all of the WP stories for each event in the timeline, but this does make for a limited timeline.

  • November 5, 1968

Richard Milhous Nixon, the 55-year-old former vice president who lost the presidency for the Republicans in 1960, reclaims it by defeating Hubert Humphrey in one of the closest elections in U.S. history. Post Story

  • January 21, 1969

Nixon is inaugurated as the 37th president of the United States. Post Story

  • July 23, 1970

Nixon approves a plan for greatly expanding domestic intelligence-gathering by the FBI, CIA and other agencies. He has second thoughts a few days later and rescinds his approval.

  • June 13, 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 that same week.

  • September 3, 1971

The White House "plumbers" unit - named for their orders to plug leaks in the administration - burglarizes a psychiatrist's office to find files on Daniel Ellsberg, the former defense analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

  • June 17, 1972

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. Post Story

  • June 19, 1972

A GOP security aide is among the Watergate burglars, The Washington Post reports. Former attorney general John Mitchell, head of the Nixon reelection campaign, denies any link to the operation. Post Story

  • August 1, 1972

A $25,000 cashier's check, apparently earmarked for the Nixon campaign, wound up in the bank account of a Watergate burglar, The Washington Post reports. Post Story

  • September 29, 1972

John Mitchell, while serving as attorney general, controlled a secret Republican fund used to finance widespread intelligence-gathering operations against the Democrats, The Post reports. Post Story

  • October 10, 1972

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. Post Story

  • November 7, 1972

Nixon is reelected in one of the largest landslides in American political history, taking more than 60 percent of the vote and crushing the Democratic nominee, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota. Post Story

  • January 30, 1973

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. Post Story

  • April 30, 1973

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. Post Story

  • May 18, 1973

The Senate Watergate Committee begins its nationally televised hearings. Attorney General-designate Elliot Richardson taps former solicitor general Archibald Cox as the Justice Department's special prosecutor for Watergate. Post Story | Post Analysis

  • June 3, 1973

John Dean has told Watergate investigators that he discussed the Watergate cover-up with President Nixon at least 35 times, The Post reports. Post Story

  • June 13, 1973

Watergate prosecutors find a memo addressed to John Ehrlichman describing in detail the plans to burglarize the office of Pentagon Papers defendant Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, The Post reports. Post Story

  • July 13, 1973

Alexander Butterfield, former presidential appointments secretary, reveals in congressional testimony that since 1971 Nixon had recorded all conversations and telephone calls in his offices. Post Story

  • July 18, 1973

Nixon reportedly orders the White House taping system disconnected.

  • July 23, 1973

Nixon refuses to turn over the presidential tape recordings to the Senate Watergate Committee or the special prosecutor. Post Story

  • October 20, 1973

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. Post Story

  • November 17, 1973

Nixon declares, "I'm not a crook," maintaining his innocence in the Watergate case. Post Story

  • December 7, 1973

The White House can't explain an 18 ½-minute gap in one of the subpoenaed tapes. Chief of Staff Alexander Haig says one theory is that "some sinister force" erased the segment. Post Story

  • April 30, 1974

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. Post Story

  • July 24, 1974

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. Post Story

  • July 27, 1974

House Judiciary Committee passes the first of three articles of impeachment, charging obstruction of justice.

  • August 8, 1974

Richard Nixon becomes the first U.S. president to resign. Vice President Gerald R. Ford assumes the country's highest office. He will later pardon Nixon of all charges related to the Watergate case. Post Story

  • June 13, 2002

Stanley L. Greigg, 71, the former Democratic National Committee official who filed the original criminal complaint against the Watergate burglars, dies in Salem, Va. Post Story

  • June 25, 2002

One week after the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, an alternative theory of what prompted the most famous burglary in American political history returns to U.S. District Court. Post Story

  • February 10, 2003

Ronald Ziegler, 63, who as President Richard M. Nixon's press secretary at first described the Watergate break-in as a "third-rate burglary," a symbol of his often-testy relations with reporters, dies after a heart attack. He once was suspected of being "Deep Throat."

  • April 8, 2003

In one of the largest such purchases in American history, the University of Texas at Austin buys the Watergate papers of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for $5 million, the university announced. Post Story

  • July 16, 2003

Chesterfield Smith, 85, a prominent Florida lawyer who, as president of the American Bar Association in 1973, became a critic of President Richard Nixon's efforts to avoid the stains of the Watergate scandal, dies in a hospital in Coral Gables, Fla., after a heart attack. Post Story

  • July 27, 2003

Thirty years after the Senate select committee hearings on Watergate riveted the nation and doomed the Nixon presidency, a key figure in the scandal says he has a fresh and explosive revelation: Richard M. Nixon personally ordered the burglary of Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex.

  • August 24, 2003

John J. Rhodes, 86, an Arizona Republican who as minority leader of the House of Representatives played a critical role in the events leading to the 1974 resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, dies of cancer at his home in Mesa, Ariz. Post Story

  • October 31, 2003

Thomas F. McBride, 74, an associate prosecutor in the Watergate investigation and former inspector general of the Agriculture and Labor departments, dies of a cerebral hemorrhage while walking his dog in a park near his home in Portland, Ore.

  • November 13, 2003

Congressional negotiators agree to undo part of a Watergate-era law that prevented former president Richard M. Nixon from taking his tapes and papers with him, but say the records would still have to be processed here before being released to establish the presidential library that Nixon and his family always wanted. Post Story

  • December 11, 2003

National Archives and Records Administration releases 240 more hours of tape of the 37th president. Post Story

  • April 9, 2004

Helen M. Smith, 84, who worked at the White House as press secretary and trusted aide to first lady Pat Nixon during the turbulent Watergate years, dies of vascular disease at her home in Washington. Post Story

  • May 27, 2004

Transcripts of telephone conversations released show President Richard M. Nixon jokingly threatened to drop a nuclear bomb on Capitol Hill in March 1974 as Congress was moving to impeach him over the Watergate scandal. Post Story

  • May 29, 2004

Archibald Cox, 92, the Harvard law professor and special prosecutor whose refusal to accept White House limits on his investigation of the Watergate break-in and coverup helped bring about the 1974 resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, dies at his home in Brooksville, Maine. Post Story

  • May 29, 2004

Samuel Dash, 79, the chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee whose televised interrogation into the secret audiotaping system at the White House ultimately led to President Richard M. Nixon's resignation, dies of multiple organ failure May 29 at Washington Hospital Center. Post Story

  • July 29, 2004

Frederick Cheney LaRue, 75, the shadowy Nixon White House aide and "bagman" who delivered more than $300,000 in payoffs to Watergate conspirators, dies of coronary artery disease in a Biloxi, Miss., motel room, where he lived. Post Story

  • January 22, 2005

Rose Mary Woods, 87, the Nixon White House secretary whose improbable stretch was supposed to account for part of an 18 ½-minute gap in a crucial Watergate tape, dies at a nursing home in Alliance, Ohio, where she lived. Post Story

  • February 4, 2005

Thousands of pages of notes, memos, transcripts and other materials collectively known as the Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers opens to the public at the University of Texas, minus the most fascinating detail connected to the demise of the Nixon administration: the identity of Deep Throat. Post Story

  • February 5, 2005

James Joseph Bierbower, 81, a well-known Washington lawyer who represented Nixon campaign aide Jeb Stuart Magruder during the Watergate trials and EPA official Rita Lavelle during a Superfund inquiry, dies at Charlotte Hall Nursing Home in St. Mary's County. Post Story

  • February 18, 2005

Robert R. Merhige Jr., a judge who who wrote the decision that threw out the appeals of Watergate figures G. Gordon Liddy, Bernard Barker and Eugenio Martinez after they were convicted of breaking into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist dies. Post Story

  • May 31, 2005

The Washington Post confirms that W. Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was Deep Throat, after Vanity Fair magazine identified the 91-year-old Felt, now a retiree in California, as the long-anonymous Watergate source. Post Story

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