by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 27, 2009   Last Updated: June 13, 2009

"I should've burned the tapes," President Nixon said later. But instead, his own recordings of White House conversations provided clear evidence of criminal wrongdoing - the "smoking gun" that proved Nixon guilty. By July of 1974, Congress had already voted to impeach the President over charges that he'd obstructed justice. When the tape surfaced in August, it proved conclusively that Nixon had done just that. Nixon lost all of his political support when the tape was released, and it was clear that he'd be found guilty if the impeachment trial was held by the Congress. To avoid the spectacle of a public trial, the President was forced to resign in disgrace.

Nixon had fought hard to conceal the tape, knowing it would prove his guilt and destroy his political career. Ten months before his resignation, Nixon had wanted to fire the independent special prosecutor who'd been appointed to investigate Watergate, since the prosecutor insisted on receiving copies of the tapes. Nixon's attorney general refused to perform the firing - and resigned in protest - so Nixon then asked the Deputy Attorney General to perform the firing. But the Deputy Attorney General also refused, and resigned in protest. Moving down the chain of command, Nixon now contacted the U.S. solicitor general, Robert Bork, who performed the firing.

Nixon had offered a compromise - that the tapes would be summarized by a U.S. Senator. His next gambit was to offer an edited transcript of the tapes (to the new special prosecutor who replaced the man he'd fired!) When the special prosecutor insisted on the tapes themselves, Nixon's lawyers filed a legal objection which went all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court ruled against him, after which Nixon released the tape. Four days later, it had forced him to resign.

And what was on the tape? Proof that Nixon had secretly tried to block the FBI's investigation into a break-in to the Democratic Party's headquarters at the Watergate hotel. Just six days after the Watergate break-in, Nixon had met with his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, the tape showed, and discussed strategies for stopping the discovery that the burglars had been paid for with money from Nixon's re-election committee. "[T]he FBI is not under control..." Haldeman says, and "their investigation is now leading into some productive areas, because they've been able to trace the money...and it goes in some directions we don't want it to go." Haldeman's suggested the FBI should be led

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