How Much Do You Know About the Watergate Scandal?

A bipartisan panel to investigate the Watergate scandal was backed by a collection of some of the brightest young legal minds of the early 1970s, including Yale Law graduate Hillary Rodham. The future First Lady worked with the House Judiciary Committee during Nixon’s impeachment hearings. After Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, she moved to Arkansas and married Bill Clinton.

Immediately after the arrests on the night of the Watergate break-in, the White House attempted to distance itself from any association. Press secretary Ronald Ziegler famously said that the President would not comment on a “third-rate burglary attempt.” Ziegler also accused Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of “shabby journalism” and “character assassination.”

On October 20, 1973, President Richard Nixon ordered the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox after Cox subpoenaed Nixon’s confidential White House tapes. Attorney General Elliot Richardson was tasked with the firing, but he refused and resigned instead. Then, Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus was told to fire Cox, but he also refused and resigned. The press called this series of events the “Saturday Night Massacre.”

Hotel watchman Frank Willis was one of the first dominoes in the robbery’s unraveling. Willis noticed a piece of tape on the latch of a basement door in the parking garage of the Watergate complex while on his rounds on June 17, 1972. He removed the tape and continued his rounds, only to find the tape replaced when he returned. Sensing something suspicious, he alerted authorities. The tape was placed by James McCord, head of security for Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign.

Watergate cake, popularized around the time of the burglary of the DNC headquarters, consists of a box of white cake mix combined with pistachio pudding, coconut flakes, and pecans. The baked cake is then topped with a frosting made from whipped topping, pistachio pudding, coconut flakes, and pecans. The name of the cake is wordplay because like politics, the cake is “filled with nuts,” and, like the Watergate scandal, is “covered up” with frosting.

While five Watergate burglars were caught, only one — Eugenio Martinez — received a presidential pardon. Martinez claimed he was misled about the mission by former CIA officer E. Howard Hunt. After he was released from prison in 1974, Martinez worked for the U.S. as a double agent, meeting with Cuban officials and providing information to the FBI. He was pardoned in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan.

President Richard Nixon’s policy adviser, John Erlichman, had a colorful vocabulary, and he is credited with coining the term “big enchilada” in 1973. According to Merriam-Webster, the phrase means “the most important person or issue.” It’s similar to phrases such as “big cheese” and “big fish,” but Erlichman says he used “enchilada” simply because he liked Mexican food.

Whether Attorney General John N. Mitchell explicitly approved the Watergate break-in or simply chose not to stop it is up for debate. But what is certain is that he was one of President Richard Nixon’s top fall guys. Mitchell was “the big enchilada” and ended up in prison, convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury. Nixon explicitly blamed Mitchell and his wife, Martha, saying, “If it hadn’t been for Martha, there’d have been no Watergate because John wasn’t mindin’ that store.” Nixon believed that Martha’s mental and emotional problems led to the scandal.

While probing for clarity during their televised interview, David Frost said to President Richard Nixon, “So, what in a sense you’re saying is that there are certain situations, and the Huston plan or that part of it was one of them, where the President can decide that it’s in the best interest of the nation or something and do something illegal.” In response, Nixon showed how he viewed his privilege in the office of the presidency, replying: “Well, when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

G. Gordon Liddy was an FBI agent who coordinated with intelligence officer E. Howard Hunt to organize the Watergate burglary. They worked with a team known as the White House “plumbers” because they were supposed to stop “leaks” of information that could ruin Richard Nixon's reputation. The group was also known as the Room 16 Project, but their official name was the White House Special Investigations Unit.

The first interview in a series between David Frost and President Richard Nixon drew 45 million viewers, still a record for the highest-rated political interview on television. Nixon went against the advice of his advisers in doing the interview, and it was the only time he publicly spoke in detail about his involvement in Watergate. The interviews later inspired the play and Oscar-nominated film “Frost/Nixon.”

While Sherlock Holmes used the phrase “smoking gun” in the 19th century to describe the existence of irrefutable proof of guilt, the phrase was popularized after it was associated with damning audiotape transcripts during the Watergate scandal. The tapes revealed President Richard Nixon speaking to chief of staff H.R. Halderman in the Oval Office, ordering a cover-up and encouraging the FBI to cease its investigation.

“Deep Throat” was the code name for one of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s most important sources, and his true identity remained a secret until May 31, 2005. That day, the family of Mark Felt revealed that Felt, the former assistant director of the FBI, was “Deep Throat.” Tape recordings revealed that Richard Nixon speculated Felt could be the source as early as 1973.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are journalists who worked together to uncover the Watergate scandal for “The Washington Post.” The day after the arrests were made at the DNC headquarters, “Washington Post” journalist Alfred E. Lewis was the first to report on it. Woodward and Bernstein, both in their late 20s at the time, picked up the story the next day.

The Watergate scandal gets its name from a hotel-office-apartment complex on Virginia Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. On June 17, 1972, five robbers were arrested at Democratic National Committee headquarters inside the complex, setting off a two-year political scandal that resulted in the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Today, the Watergate Hotel still stands as a luxury hotel.