1.The date is June 17,1972
2. Five men are about to be caught breaking into Washington D.C. offices of the Watergate located in the democrated building.
3.Their purpose for the break in was to bug O'Brien's phone to gather political and financial intelligence of citizens
4.A Republican, Richard Nixon is president. He was first elected in 1968 and is running for a second term. He wins.
5.Thanks largely to the work of two reporters from the Washington Post newspaper, Nixon's administrations is found to be guilty of:
A) Unethical and illegal campaign activities
B) The misuse of hundreds of thousands of dollars of unaccounted for campaign donations and C) a political espionage campaign headed by the CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect the President) and involving the White House, campaign officials, and the Justice Department
6.By the time it's all over in the summer of 1974, many White House officials and others are charged and convicted of felonies, and do serious jail time, and, faced with impeachment, President Nixon resigns.
Vocabulary:
Bugging-conceal a miniature microphone in order to monitor or record someone's conversations
Canuck Letter- a forged letter
Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP)- was a fundraising organization of President Nixon's administration
Cover up-An attempt to prevent people's discovering the truth
Covert Operations-An operation that is so planned and executed as to conceal the identity of
Deep Background- The information that's not included in the article but is used by the journalist to enhance his or her view of the subject matter
General Accounting Office (GAO)-An independent nonpartisan agency that works for Congress
On the record-The making of an official or public statement
Set up- A scheme intended to incriminate or deceive someone
Slush Fund-An amount of money that is kept secretly for illegal or dishonest purposes
Verbatim notes-In the exact words
Essay:
What Ben Bradlee meant by the statement "Nothing's riding on this except the First Amendment of the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country", was about the mass involvement in the cover up that was discovered by Woodward and Bernstein in regards to their investigation that uncovers involvement all the way up to President Nixon.
It's important to "follow the money" because if someone's doing something that doesn't make sense then they're either being bribed or doing something that involves money as reward.
Characters:
- Carl Bernstein-Washington Post reporter
- Ben Bradlee-executive editor of the Washington Post
- Patrick Buchanan-Speech writer and special adviser to the president
- Archibald Cox-Special prosecutor for the Watergate case
- H.R. “Bob” Haldeman-White House chief of staff
- E. Howard Hunt-A former White House consultant, indicted after break-in
- Leon Jaworski-Named by acting attorney general Bork as new special prosecutor
- G. Gordon Liddy-Member of CREEP’s finance committee
- James McCord-A security consultant for the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP); former CIA agent
- Bob Woodward-Washington post reporter
