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Richard Nixon is one of the most intriguing men to hold the office of the presidency in the history of the United States. Nixon began his political career in 1947, in the House of Representatives. One could argue that Watergate could have been anticipated when in 1952, once in the Senate, he became embroiled in a scandal that came to be known as the Checkers Speech (Byrnes, 2003). This is but one of many problems that would plague his political career. In later years Richard Pious would write, "Nixon did not play politics; he practiced war" (Pious, 2002). Watergate was the worst political scandal in history connected with the presidency, and one that is still in the memory of the American public and the scandal that has forever changed the way Americans view politicians in our country.

On June 17, 1972, early in the morning police officers arrested five men who had broken into the offices at the Watergate office-building headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C. The press knew the five men who broke into the office at Watergate as the plumbers. Nixon, wanting to cover up the break-in gave the men the code name to hide their identity. However, eventually Nixon was found to be the organizer of the break in. An unknown tipster who went by the code name "Deep Throat" would later identified as W. Mark Felt an FBI official (Von Drehle, 2005).

Americans lived through political scandals from the McCarthy era and throughout the violent and passive protests over the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. However, the country was ill prepared to realize that a single man could bring down the office of the presidency for committing crimes while holding the highest office of the land. Two of the issues Watergate brought into the national spotlight were Executive Privilege and the power of Impeachment (Murphy, 2000). The National media could not stop reporting and discussing the Watergate break in, commentators and political pundits all speculated about Deep Throat and reported on the Nixon White House. In addition, President Nixon believed since he was the President of the United States he did not acknowledge if he broke the law, he would suffer retribution. In 1977, David Frost negotiated an interview with Richard Nixon. Frost was instructed not to question the Ex- President about certain aspects of the Watergate scandal. However, Frost did ask and when Nixon replied, "Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal

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