Watergate Timeline

November 5, 1968
Richard Milhous Nixon, the 55-year-old former vice president who lost the presidency for the Republicans in 1960, reclaims it by defeating Hubert Humphrey in one of the closest elections in U.S. history.

January 21, 1969
Nixon is inaugurated as the 37th president of the United States.

June 13, 1971
The New York Times begins publishing the Pentagon Papers - the Defense Department's secret history of the Vietnam War. 

September 3, 1971
The White House "plumbers" unit - named for their orders to plug leaks in the administration - burglarizes a psychiatrist's office to find files on Daniel Ellsberg, the former defense analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

June 17, 1972
Five men, one of whom says he used to work for the CIA, are arrested at 2:30 a.m. trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate hotel and office complex.

June 19, 1972
A GOP security aide is among the Watergate burglars. Former attorney general John Mitchell, head of the Nixon reelection campaign, denies any link to the operation.

August 1, 1972
A $25,000 cashier's check, apparently earmarked for the Nixon campaign, wound up in the bank account of a Watergate burglar. 

September 29, 1972
John Mitchell, while serving as attorney general, controlled a secret Republican fund used to finance widespread intelligence-gathering operations against the Democrats.

October 10, 1972
FBI agents establish that the Watergate break-in stems from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of the Nixon reelection effort.

November 7, 1972
Nixon is reelected in one of the largest landslides in American political history, taking more than 60 percent of the vote and crushing the Democratic nominee, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.

January 30, 1973
Former Nixon aides G. Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord Jr. are convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping in the Watergate incident. Five other men plead guilty, but mysteries remain.

April 30, 1973
Nixon's top White House staffers, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst resign over the scandal. White House counsel John Dean is fired.

May 18, 1973
The Senate Watergate Committee begins its nationally televised hearings. Attorney General-designate Elliot Richardson taps former solicitor general Archibald Cox as the Justice Department's special prosecutor for Watergate.

June 3, 1973
John Dean has told Watergate investigators that he discussed the Watergate cover-up with President Nixon at least 35 times.

June 13, 1973
Watergate prosecutors find a memo addressed to John Ehrlichman describing in detail the plans to burglarize the office of Pentagon Papers defendant Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist.

July 13, 1973
Alexander Butterfield, former presidential appointments secretary, reveals in congressional testimony that since 1971 Nixon had recorded all conversations and telephone calls in his offices.

July 18, 1973
Nixon reportedly orders the White House taping system disconnected.

July 23, 1973
Nixon refuses to turn over the presidential tape recordings to the Senate Watergate Committee or the special prosecutor.

October 20, 1973
Saturday Night Massacre: Nixon fires Archibald Cox and abolishes the office of the special prosecutor. Attorney General Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus resign. Pressure for impeachment mounts in Congress.

November 17, 1973
Nixon declares, "I'm not a crook," maintaining his innocence in the Watergate case.

December 7, 1973
The White House can't explain an 18 ½-minute gap in one of the subpoenaed tapes. Chief of Staff Alexander Haig says one theory is that "some sinister force" erased the segment.

April 30, 1974
The White House releases more than 1,200 pages of edited transcripts of the Nixon tapes to the House Judiciary Committee, but the committee insists that the tapes themselves must be turned over.

July 24, 1974
The Supreme Court rules unanimously in US vs. Nixon, that Nixon must turn over the tape recordings of 64 White House conversations, rejecting the president's claims of executive privilege.

July 27, 1974
House Judiciary Committee passes the first of three articles of impeachment, charging obstruction of justice.

August 8, 1974
Richard Nixon becomes the first U.S. president to resign. Vice President Gerald R. Ford assumes the country's highest office. He will later pardon Nixon of all charges related to the Watergate case.