Watergate and the Constitution

• Author: Paul L. Murphy
• Pages: 2864-2865

Page 2864

The Watergate scandal, starting with an illegal break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in June 1972 and ending with President GERALD R. FORD pardoning RICHARD M. NIXON in September 1974, produced one of the most significant constitutional crises in modern times. It raised a number of unsettling issues central to the constitutional structure of SEPARATION OF POWERS.

The two major constitutional issues Watergate brought into focus were EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE and the scope of the IMPEACHMENT power. In September 1972 a GRAND JURY indicted the Watergate burglars but the Justice Department closed the investigation despite evidence of a wider conspiracy. Following the November election, the Watergate burglary trial began. In it defendants claimed they had

Page 2865

been pressured to remain silent and plead guilty; that perjury was committed; and that "others" were involved. Such allegations led to the creation of a Senate Watergate Committee, headed by SAM ERVIN, which began taking testimony, revealing a White House program of political espionage that included Watergate. Witnesses suggested that the President was participating in a coverup and that the President had made tape recordings of conversations in his office. The Ervin Committee attempted to subpoena such tapes, but the President refused to surrender them, claiming executive privilege. The committee then went to the courts, which in two cases (Nixon v. Sirica, 1973, and Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities v. Nixon, 1974) attempted to define the line between a committee's power to compel testimony in order to perform its functions and the need for privacy in presidential communications. A third case, UNITED STATES V. NIXON (1974), arose out of a criminal prosecution of the President's aides. Both the prosecutor and the defense sought to subpoena the tapes, and the President again resisted. Chief Justice WARREN E. BURGER, for a unanimous Supreme Court, conceded a "presumptive privilege" for executive communications, but ruled that respect of the integrity of the judicial process required the courts to weigh any such claim against the importance of assuring the production in court of relevant evidence and ultimately of protecting the system of criminal justice. The Court thus ordered certain tapes produced. Their disclosures, which came at the height of the House of Representatives' impeachment process, demonstrated the...