Question: Who became US Vice President when Spiro Agnew resigned?
Answer: Gerald Ford

The Vice President of the United States (VPOTUS) is the second-highest position in the executive branch of the United States, after the President.  The executive power of both the vice president and the president is granted under Article Two, Section One of the Constitution. The vice president is indirectly elected, together with the president, to a four-year term of office by the people of the United States through the Electoral College.  The vice president is the first person in the presidential line of succession, and would normally ascend to the presidency upon the death, resignation, or removal of the president.   The Office of the Vice President of the United States assists and organizes the vice president's official functions.

The vice president is also president of the United States Senate  and in that capacity only votes when it is necessary to break a tie. While Senate customs have created supermajority rules that have diminished this constitutional tie-breaking authority, the vice president still retains the ability to influence legislation; for example, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 was passed in the Senate by a tie-breaking vice presidential vote.   Additionally, pursuant to the Twelfth Amendment, the vice president presides over the joint session of Congress when it convenes to count the vote of the Electoral College.

While the vice president's only constitutionally prescribed functions aside from presidential succession relate to their role as President of the Senate, the office is commonly viewed as a component of the executive branch of the federal government. The United States Constitution does not expressly assign the office to any one branch, causing a dispute among scholars whether it belongs to the executive branch, the legislative branch, or both.   The modern view of the vice president as a member of the executive branch is due in part to the assignment of executive duties to the vice president by either the president or Congress, though such activities are only recent historical developments.

Origin

The creation of the office of vice president was a direct consequence of the creation of the Electoral College. Delegates to the Philadelphia Convention gave each state a number of presidential electors equal to that state's combined share of House and Senate seats. Yet the delegates were worried that each elector would only favor his own state's favorite son candidate, resulting in deadlocked elections that would produce no winners. To counter this potential difficulty, the delegates gave each presidential elector two votes, requiring that at least one of their votes be for a candidate from outside the elector's state; they also mandated that the winner of an election must obtain an absolute majority of the total number of electors. The delegates expected that each elector's second vote would go to a statesman of national character.

Fearing that electors might throw away their second vote to bolster their favorite son's chance of winning, however, the Philadelphia delegates specified that the runner-up would become vice president. Creating this new office imposed a political cost on discarded votes and forced electors to cast their second ballot.

Roles of the vice president

The Constitution limits the formal powers and role of vice president to becoming president,   should the president become unable to serve, prompting the well-known expression "only a heartbeat away from the presidency," and to acting as the presiding officer of the U.S. Senate.
Other statutorily granted roles include membership of both the National Security Council and the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution.  

President of the United States Senate

As President of the Senate, the vice president has two primary duties: to cast a vote in the event of a Senate deadlock and to preside over and certify the official vote count of the U.S. Electoral College. For example, in the first half of 2001, the Senators were divided 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats and Dick Cheney's tie-breaking vote gave the Republicans the Senate majority.

Regular duties

As President of the Senate (Article I, Section 3, Clause 4), the vice president oversees procedural matters and may cast a tie-breaking vote. There is a strong convention within the U.S. Senate that the vice president should not use their position as President of the Senate to influence the passage of legislation or act in a partisan manner, except in the case of breaking tie votes. As President of the Senate, John Adams cast twenty-nine tie-breaking votes, a record no successor except John C. Calhoun ever threatened. Adams's votes protected the president's sole authority over the removal of appointees, influenced the location of the national capital, and prevented war with Great Britain. On at least one occasion Adams persuaded senators to vote against legislation he opposed, and he frequently addressed the Senate on procedural and policy matters. Adams's political views and his active role in the Senate made him a natural target for critics of George Washington's administration. Toward the end of his first term, a threatened resolution that would have silenced him except for procedural and policy matters caused him to exercise more restraint in hopes of seeing his election as President of the United States.

Formerly, the vice president would preside regularly over Senate proceedings, but in modern times, the vice president rarely presides over day-to-day matters in the Senate; in their place, the Senate chooses a President pro tempore (or "president for a time") to preside in the vice president's absence; the Senate normally selects the longest-serving senator in the majority party. The President pro tempore has the power to appoint any other senator to preside, and in practice junior senators from the majority party are assigned the task of presiding over the Senate at most times.

Except for this tie-breaking role, the Standing Rules of the Senate vest no significant responsibilities in the vice president. Rule XIX, which governs debate, does not authorize the vice president to participate in debate, and grants only to members of the Senate (and, upon appropriate notice, former presidents of the United States) the privilege of addressing the Senate, without granting a similar privilege to the sitting vice president. Thus, as Time magazine wrote during the controversial tenure of Vice President Charles G. Dawes, "once in four years the Vice President can make a little speech, and then he is done. For four years he then has to sit in the seat of the silent, attending to speeches ponderous or otherwise, of deliberation or humor." 

Recurring, infrequent duties

The President of the Senate also presides over counting and presentation of the votes of the Electoral College. This process occurs in the presence of both houses of Congress, generally on January 6 of the year following a U.S. presidential election.  In this capacity, only four vice presidents have been able to announce their own election to the presidency: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, and George H. W. Bush. At the beginning of 1961, it fell to Richard Nixon to preside over this process, which officially announced the election of his 1960 opponent, John F. Kennedy. In 2001, Al Gore announced the election of his opponent, George W. Bush. In 1969, Vice President Hubert Humphrey would have announced the election of his opponent, Richard Nixon; however, on the date of the Congressional joint session (January 6), Humphrey was in Norway attending the funeral of Trygve Lie, the first elected Secretary-General of the United Nations. 

In 1933, incumbent Vice President Charles Curtis announced the election of House Speaker John Nance Garner as his successor, while Garner was seated next to him on the House dais.

The President of the Senate may also preside over most of the impeachment trials of federal officers. However, whenever the President of the United States is impeached, the US Constitution requires the Chief Justice of the United States to preside over the Senate for the trial. The Constitution is silent as to the presiding officer in the instance where the vice president is the officer impeached.

Succession and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment

The U.S. Constitution provides that should the president die, become disabled while in office or removed from office, the "powers and duties" of the office are transferred to the vice president. Initially, it was unclear whether the vice president actually became the new president or merely an acting president. This was first tested in 1841 with the death of President William Henry Harrison. Harrison's vice president, John Tyler, asserted that he had succeeded to the full presidential office, powers, and title, and declined to acknowledge documents referring to him as "Acting President." Despite some strong calls against it, Tyler took the oath of office as the tenth President. Tyler's claim was not challenged legally, and so the Tyler precedent of full succession was established. This was made explicit by Section 1 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1967.

Section 2 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment provides for vice presidential succession:
 Gerald Ford was the first vice president selected by this method, after the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew in 1973; after succeeding to the presidency, Ford nominated Nelson Rockefeller as vice president.

Another issue was who had the power to declare that an incapacitated president is unable to discharge his duties. This question had arisen most recently with the illnesses of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Section 3 and Section 4 of the amendment provide means for the vice president to become acting president upon the temporary disability of the president. Section 3 deals with self-declared incapacity of the president. Section 4 deals with incapacity declared by the joint action of the vice president and of a majority of the Cabinet.

While Section 4 has never been invoked, Section 3 has been invoked three times: on July 13, 1985 when Ronald Reagan underwent surgery to remove cancerous polyps from his colon, and twice more on June 29, 2002 and July 21, 2007 when George W. Bush underwent colonoscopy procedures requiring sedation. Prior to this amendment, Vice President Richard Nixon informally assumed some of President Dwight Eisenhower's duties for several weeks on each of three occasions when Eisenhower was ill.

Informal roles

The extent of any informal roles and functions of the vice president depend on the specific relationship between the president and the vice president, but often include tasks such as drafter and spokesperson for the administration's policies, adviser to the president, and being a symbol of American concern or support. The influence of the vice president in this role depends almost entirely on the characteristics of the particular administration. Dick Cheney, for instance, was widely regarded as one of President George W. Bush's closest confidants. Al Gore was an important adviser to President Bill Clinton on matters of foreign policy and the environment. Often, vice presidents are chosen to act as a "balance" to the president, taking either more moderate or radical positions on issues.

Under the American system the president is both head of state and head of government, and the ceremonial duties of the former position are often delegated to the vice president.  The vice president is often assigned the ceremonial duties of representing the president and the government at state funerals or other functions in the United States.  This often is the most visible role of the vice president, and has occasionally been the subject of ridicule, such as during the vice presidency of George H. W. Bush. The vice president may meet with other heads of state or attend state funerals in other countries, at times when the administration wishes to demonstrate concern or support but cannot send the president themselves.

Office as stepping stone to the presidency

In recent decades, the vice presidency has frequently been used as a platform to launch bids for the presidency. The transition of the office to its modern stature occurred primarily as a result of Franklin Roosevelt's 1940 nomination, when he captured the ability to nominate his running mate instead of leaving the nomination to the convention. Prior to that, party bosses often used the vice presidential nomination as a consolation prize for the party's minority faction. A further factor potentially contributing to the rise in prestige of the office was the adoption of presidential preference primaries in the early 20th century. By adopting primary voting, the field of candidates for vice president was expanded by both the increased quantity and quality of presidential candidates successful in some primaries, yet who ultimately failed to capture the presidential nomination at the convention.

Of the thirteen presidential elections from 1956 to 2004, nine featured the incumbent president; the other four (1960, 1968, 1988, 2000) all featured the incumbent vice president. Former vice presidents also ran, in 1984 (Walter Mondale), and in 1968 (Richard Nixon, against the incumbent vice president, Hubert Humphrey). The first presidential election to include neither the incumbent president nor the incumbent vice president on a major party ticket since 1952 came in 2008 when President George W. Bush had already served two terms and Vice President Cheney chose not to run. Richard Nixon is also the only non-sitting vice president to be elected president, as well as the only person to be elected president and vice president twice each.

Selection process

Eligibility

The Twelfth Amendment states that "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice President of the United States."  Thus, to serve as vice president, an individual must:
* Be a natural-born U.S. citizen;
* Be at least 35 years old
* Have resided in the U.S. at least 14 years. 

Disqualifications

Additionally, Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment denies eligibility for any federal office to anyone who, having sworn an oath to support the United States Constitution, later has rebelled against the United States. This disqualification, originally aimed at former supporters of the Confederacy, may be removed by a two-thirds vote of each house of the Congress.

Under the Twenty-second Amendment, the President of the United States may not be elected to more than two terms. However, there is no similar such limitation as to how many times one can be elected vice president. Scholars disagree whether a former president barred from election to the presidency is also ineligible to be elected or appointed vice president, as suggested by the Twelfth Amendment.   The issue has never been tested in practice.

Also, Article I, Section 3, Clause 7 allows the Senate, upon voting to remove an impeached federal official from office, to disqualify that official from holding any federal office.

Residency limitation

While it is commonly held that the president and vice president must be residents of different states, this is not actually the case. Nothing in the Constitution prohibits both candidates being from a single state. Instead, the limitation imposed is on the members of the Electoral College, who must cast a ballot for at least one candidate who is not from their own state.

In theory, the candidates elected could both be from one state, but the electors of that state would, in a close electoral contest, run the risk of denying their vice presidential candidate the absolute majority required to secure the election, even if the presidential candidate is elected. This would then place the vice presidential election in the hands of the Senate.

In practice, however, residency is rarely an issue. Parties have avoided nominating tickets containing two candidates from the same state. Further, the candidates may themselves take action to alleviate any residency conflict. For example, at the start of the 2000 election cycle Dick Cheney was a resident of Texas; Cheney quickly changed his residency back to Wyoming, where he had previously served as a U.S. Representative, when Texas governor and Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush asked Cheney to be his vice presidential candidate.

Nominating process

Though the vice president does not need to have any political experience, most major-party vice presidential nominees are current or former United States Senators or Representatives, with the occasional nominee being a current or former Governor, a high-ranking military officer, or a holder of a major post within the Executive Department.  The vice presidential candidates of the major national political parties are formally selected by each party's quadrennial nominating convention, following the selection of the party's presidential candidates. The official process is identical to the one by which the presidential candidates are chosen, with delegates placing the names of candidates into nomination, followed by a ballot in which candidates must receive a majority to secure the party's nomination.

In practice, the presidential nominee has considerable influence on the decision, and in the 20th century it became customary for that person to select a preferred running mate, who is then nominated and accepted by the convention. In recent years, with the presidential nomination usually being a foregone conclusion as the result of the primary process, the selection of a vice presidential candidate is often announced prior to the actual balloting for the presidential candidate, and sometimes before the beginning of the convention itself.  The first presidential aspirant to announce his selection for vice president before the beginning of the convention was Ronald Reagan who, prior to the 1976 Republican National Convention announced that Richard Schweiker would be his running mate.  Reagan's supporters then sought to amend the convention rules so that Gerald R. Ford would be required to name his vice presidential running mate in advance as well.  The proposal was defeated, and Reagan did not receive the nomination in 1976.  Often, the presidential nominee will name a vice presidential candidate who will bring geographic or ideological balance to the ticket or appeal to a particular constituency.

The vice presidential candidate might also be chosen on the basis of traits the presidential candidate is perceived to lack, or on the basis of name recognition. To foster party unity, popular runners-up in the presidential nomination process are commonly considered. While this selection process may enhance the chances of success for a national ticket, in the past it often insured that the vice presidential nominee represented regions, constituencies, or ideologies at odds with those of the presidential candidate. As a result, vice presidents were often excluded from the policy-making process of the new administration. Many times their relationships with the president and his staff were aloof, non-existent, or even adversarial.

The ultimate goal of vice presidential candidate selection is to help and not hurt the party's chances of getting elected. A selection whose positive traits make the presidential candidate look less favorable in comparison can backfire, such as in 1988 when Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis chose experienced Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, and in 2008 when Republican candidate John McCain picked dynamic Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. However, Palin also hurt McCain when her interviews with Katie Couric led to concerns about her fitness for the presidency.  In 1984, Walter Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro whose nomination became a drag on the ticket due to repeated questions about her husband's finances. Questions about Dan Quayle's experience and temperament were raised in the 1988 presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush, but he still won. James Stockdale, the choice of third-party candidate Ross Perot in 1992, was seen as unqualified by many, but the Perot-Stockdale ticket still won about 19% of the vote.

Historically, vice presidential candidates were chosen to provide geographic and ideological balance to a presidential ticket, widening a presidential candidate's appeal to voters from outside his regional base or wing of the party. Candidates from electoral-vote rich states were usually preferred. However, in 1992, moderate Democrat Bill Clinton (of Arkansas) chose moderate Democrat Al Gore (of Tennessee)
as his running mate. Despite the two candidates' near-identical ideological and regional backgrounds, Gore's extensive experience in national affairs enhanced the appeal of a ticket headed by Clinton, whose political career had been spent entirely at the local and state levels of government. In 2000, George W. Bush chose Dick Cheney of Wyoming, a reliably Republican state with only three electoral votes, and in 2008, Barack Obama mirrored Bush's strategy when he chose Joe Biden of Delaware, a reliably Democratic state, likewise one with only three electoral votes. Both Cheney and Biden were chosen for their experience in national politics (experience lacked by both Bush and Obama) rather than the ideological balance or electoral vote advantage they would provide.

The first presidential candidate to choose his vice presidential candidate was Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940.  The last not to name a vice presidential choice, leaving the matter up to the convention, was Democrat Adlai Stevenson in 1956. The convention chose Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver over Massachusetts Senator (and later president) John F. Kennedy. At the tumultuous 1972 Democratic convention, presidential nominee George McGovern selected Senator Thomas Eagleton as his running mate, but numerous other candidates were either nominated from the floor or received votes during the balloting. Eagleton nevertheless received a majority of the votes and the nomination, though he later resigned from the ticket, resulting in Sargent Shriver becoming McGovern's final running mate; both lost to the Nixon-Agnew ticket by a wide margin, carrying only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

In cases where the presidential nomination is still in doubt as the convention approaches, the campaigns for the two positions may become intertwined. In 1976, Ronald Reagan, who was trailing President Gerald R. Ford in the presidential delegate count, announced prior to the Republican National Convention that, if nominated, he would select Senator Richard Schweiker as his running mate. This move backfired to a degree, as Schweiker's relatively liberal voting record alienated many of the more conservative delegates who were considering a challenge to party delegate selection rules to improve Reagan's chances. In the end, Ford narrowly won the presidential nomination and Reagan's selection of Schweiker became moot.

Election, oath, and tenure

Vice presidents are elected indirectly in the United States. A number of electors, collectively known as the Electoral College, officially select the president. On Election Day, voters in each of the states and the District of Columbia cast ballots for these electors. Each state is allocated a number of electors, equal to the size of its delegation in both Houses of Congress combined. Generally, the ticket that wins the most votes in a state wins all of that state's electoral votes and thus has its slate of electors chosen to vote in the Electoral College.

The winning slate of electors meet at its state's capital on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, about six weeks after the election, to vote. They then send a record of that vote to Congress. The vote of the electors is opened by the sitting vice president, acting in his capacity as President of the Senate and read aloud to a joint session of the incoming Congress, which was elected at the same time as the president.

Pursuant to the Twentieth Amendment, the vice president's term of office begins at noon on January 20 of the year following the election. This date, known as Inauguration Day, marks the beginning of the four-year terms of both the president and vice president.

Although Article VI requires that the vice president take an oath or affirmation of allegiance to the US Constitution, unlike the president, the United States Constitution does not specify the precise wording of the oath of office for the vice president. Several variants of the oath have been used since 1789; the current form, which is also recited by Senators, Representatives and other government officers, has been used since 1884:

The term of office for vice president is four years. While the Twenty-Second Amendment generally restricts the president to two terms, there is no similar limitation on the office of vice president, meaning an eligible person could hold the office as long as voters continued to vote for electors who in turn would renew the vice president's tenure. A vice president could even serve under different administrations, as George Clinton and John C. Calhoun have done.

Original election process and reform

Under the original terms of the Constitution, the electors of the Electoral College voted only for office of president rather than for both president and vice president. Each elector was allowed to vote for two people for the top office. The person receiving the greatest number of votes (provided that such a number was a majority of electors) would be president, while the individual who received the next largest number of votes became vice president. If no one received a majority of votes, then the House of Representatives would choose among the five candidates with the largest numbers of votes, with each state's representatives together casting a single vote. In such a case, the person who received the highest number of votes but was not chosen president would become vice president. In the case of a tie for second, then the Senate would choose the vice president.Wikisource:Constitution of the United States of America#Section 1 2

The original plan, however, did not foresee the development of political parties and their adversarial role in the government. For example, in the election of 1796, Federalist John Adams came in first, but because the Federalist electors had divided their second vote amongst several vice presidential candidates, Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson came second. Thus, the president and vice president were from opposing parties. Predictably, Adams and Jefferson clashed over issues such as states' rights and foreign policy. 

A greater problem occurred in the election of 1800, in which the two participating parties each had a secondary candidate they intended to elect as vice president, but the more popular Democratic-Republican party failed to execute that plan with their electoral votes. Under the system in place at the time (Article II, Section 1, Clause 3), the electors could not differentiate between their two candidates, so the plan had been for one elector to vote for Thomas Jefferson but not for Aaron Burr, thus putting Burr in second place. This plan broke down for reasons that are disputed, and both candidates received the same number of votes. After 35 deadlocked ballots in the House of Representatives, Jefferson finally won on the 36th ballot and Burr became vice president. 

This tumultuous affair led to the adoption of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, which directed the electors to use separate ballots to vote for the president and vice president. While this solved the problem at hand, it ultimately had the effect of lowering the prestige of the vice presidency, as the office was no longer for the leading challenger for the presidency.

The separate ballots for president and vice president became something of a moot issue later in the 19th century when it became the norm for popular elections to determine a state's Electoral College delegation. Electors chosen this way are pledged to vote for a particular presidential and vice presidential candidate (offered by the same political party). So, while the Constitution says that the president and vice president are chosen separately, in practice they are chosen together.

If no vice presidential candidate receives an Electoral College majority, then the Senate selects the vice president, in accordance with the United States Constitution. The Twelfth Amendment states that a "majority of the whole number" of Senators (currently 51 of 100) is necessary for election.  Further, the language requiring an absolute majority of Senate votes precludes the sitting vice president from breaking any tie which might occur.  The election of 1836 is the only election so far where the office of the vice president has been decided by the Senate. During the campaign, Martin Van Buren's running mate Richard Mentor Johnson was accused of having lived with a black woman. Virginia's 23 electors, who were pledged to Van Buren and Johnson, refused to vote for Johnson (but still voted for Van Buren). The election went to the Senate, where Johnson was elected 33-17.

Salary

The vice president's salary is $230,700.  The salary was set by the 1989 Government Salary Reform Act, which also provides an automatic cost of living adjustment for federal employees.

The vice president does not automatically receive a pension based on that office, but instead receives the same pension as other members of Congress based on his position as President of the Senate.  The vice president must serve a minimum of five years to qualify for a pension. 

Since 1974, the official residence of the vice president and their family has been Number One Observatory Circle, on the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.

Vacancy

Article I, Section 2, Clause 5 and Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution both authorize the House of Representatives to serve as a "grand jury" with the power to impeach high federal officials, including the president, for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." Similarly, Article I, Section 3, Clause 6 and Article II, Section 4 both authorize the Senate to serve as a court with the power to remove impeached officials from office, given a two-thirds vote to convict. No vice president has ever been impeached.

Prior to ratification of the Twenty-fifth Amendment in 1967, no provision existed for filling a vacancy in the office of vice president. As a result, the vice presidency was left vacant 16 times—sometimes for nearly four years—until the next ensuing election and inauguration:  eight times due to the death of the sitting president, resulting in the vice presidents becoming president; seven times due to the death of the sitting vice president; and once due to the resignation of Vice President John C. Calhoun to become a senator.

Calhoun resigned because he had been dropped from the ticket by President Andrew Jackson in favor of Martin Van Buren, due primarily to conflicting with the President over the issue of nullification.  Already a lame duck vice president, he was elected to the Senate by the South Carolina state legislature and resigned the vice presidency early to begin his Senate term because he believed he would have more power as a senator.

Since the adoption of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the office has been vacant twice while awaiting confirmation of the new vice president by both houses of Congress. The first such instance occurred in 1973 following the resignation of Spiro Agnew as Richard Nixon's vice president. Gerald Ford was subsequently nominated by President Nixon and confirmed by Congress. The second occurred 10 months later when Nixon resigned following the Watergate scandal and Ford assumed the presidency. The resulting vice presidential vacancy was filled by Nelson Rockefeller. Ford and Rockefeller are the only two people to have served as vice president without having been elected to the office, and Ford remains the only person to have served as both vice president and president without being elected to either office.

The original Constitution had no provision for selecting such a replacement, so the office of vice president would remain vacant until the beginning of the next presidential and vice presidential terms. This issue had arisen most recently when the John F. Kennedy assassination caused a vacancy from November 22, 1963, until January 20, 1965, and was rectified by Section 2 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

Growth of the office

For much of its existence, the office of vice president was seen as little more than a minor position. Adams, the first vice president, was the first of many who found the job frustrating and stupefying, writing to his wife Abigail that "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived."  Many vice presidents lamented the lack of meaningful work in their role. John Nance Garner, who served as vice president from 1933 to 1941 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, claimed that the vice presidency "isn't worth a pitcher of warm piss."  Harry Truman, who also served as vice president under Roosevelt, said that the office was as "useful as a cow's fifth teat." 

Thomas R. Marshall, the 28th vice president, lamented: "Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea; the other was elected Vice President of the United States. And nothing was heard of either of them again."  His successor, Calvin Coolidge, was so obscure that Major League Baseball sent him free passes that misspelled his name, and a fire marshal failed to recognize him when Coolidge's Washington residence was evacuated. 

When the Whig Party asked Daniel Webster to run for the vice presidency on Zachary Taylor's ticket, he replied "I do not propose to be buried until I am really dead and in my coffin."  This was the second time Webster declined the office, which William Henry Harrison had first offered to him. Ironically, both of the presidents making the offer to Webster died in office, meaning the three-time presidential candidate could have become president if he had accepted either. Since presidents rarely died in office, however, the better preparation for the presidency was considered to be the office of Secretary of State, in which Webster served under Harrison, Tyler, and later, Taylor's successor, Fillmore.

For many years, the vice president was given few responsibilities. Garret Hobart, the first vice president under William McKinley, was one of the very few vice presidents at this time who played an important role in the administration. A close confidant and adviser of the president, Hobart was called "Assistant President."  However, until 1919, vice presidents were not included in meetings of the President's Cabinet.  This precedent was broken by President Woodrow Wilson when he asked Thomas R. Marshall to preside over Cabinet meetings while Wilson was in France negotiating the Treaty of Versailles.  President Warren G. Harding also invited his vice president, Calvin Coolidge, to meetings. The next vice president, Charles G. Dawes, did not seek to attend Cabinet meetings under President Coolidge, declaring that "the precedent might prove injurious to the country."   Vice President Charles Curtis was also precluded from attending by President Herbert Hoover.

In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt raised the stature of the office by renewing the practice of inviting the vice president to cabinet meetings, which every president since has maintained. Roosevelt's first vice president, John Nance Garner, broke with him at the start of the second term on the Court-packing issue and became Roosevelt's leading political enemy. In 1937, Garner became the first vice president to be sworn in on the Capitol steps in the same ceremony with the president, a tradition that continues. Prior to that time, vice presidents were traditionally inaugurated at a separate ceremony in the Senate chamber. Gerald R. Ford and Nelson A. Rockefeller, who were both appointed to the office under the terms of the 25th amendment, were inaugurated in the House and Senate chambers, respectively.

Garner's successor, Henry Wallace, was given major responsibilities during the war, but he moved further to the left than the Democratic Party and the rest of the Roosevelt administration and was relieved of actual power. Roosevelt kept his last vice president, Harry Truman, uninformed on all war and postwar issues, such as the atomic bomb, leading Truman to remark, wryly, that the job of the vice president was to "go to weddings and funerals." Following Roosevelt's death and Truman's ascension to the presidency, the need to keep vice presidents informed on national security issues became clear, and Congress made the vice president one of four statutory members of the National Security Council in 1949.

Richard Nixon reinvented the office of vice president. He had the attention of the media and the Republican party, when Dwight Eisenhower ordered him to preside at Cabinet meetings in his absence. Nixon was also the first vice president to formally assume temporary control of the executive branch, which he did after Eisenhower suffered a heart attack on September 24, 1955, ileitis in June 1956, and a stroke in November 1957.

Until 1961, vice presidents had their offices on Capitol Hill, a formal office in the Capitol itself and a working office in the Russell Senate Office Building. Lyndon B. Johnson was the first vice president to be given an office in the White House complex, in the Old Executive Office Building. The former Navy Secretary's office in the OEOB has since been designated the "Ceremonial Office of the Vice President" and is today used for formal events and press interviews. President Jimmy Carter was the first president to give his vice president, Walter Mondale, an office in the West Wing of the White House, which all vice presidents have since retained. Because of their function as Presidents of the Senate, vice presidents still maintain offices and staff members on Capitol Hill.

Though Walter Mondale's tenure was the beginning of the modern day power of the vice presidency, the tenure of Dick Cheney saw a rapid growth in the office of the vice president. Vice President Cheney held a tremendous amount of power and frequently made policy decisions on his own, without the knowledge of the President.  After his tenure, and during the 2008 presidential campaign, both vice presidential candidates, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, stated that the office had expanded too much under Cheney's tenure and both had planned to reduce the role to simply being an adviser to the president. 

Post–vice presidency

The five former vice presidents now living are:

File:Walter Mondale 2014.jpg|Walter Mondale42nd (1977–1981)
File:President George H. W.tif|George H. W. Bush43rd (1981–1989)
File:Quayle2k11.tif|Dan Quayle44th (1989–1993)
File:Gore2k11.tif|Al Gore45th (1993–2001)
File:Cheney.tif|Dick Cheney46th (2001–2009)

Four vice presidents have been elected to the presidency immediately after serving as vice president: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren and George H. W. Bush. Richard Nixon, John C. Breckinridge, Hubert Humphrey and Al Gore were all nominated by their respective parties, but failed to succeed the presidents with whom they were elected, though Nixon was elected president eight years later.

Two vice presidents served under different presidents. George Clinton served under both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, while John C. Calhoun served under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. In the modern era, Adlai Stevenson I became the first former vice president to seek election with a different running mate, running in 1900 with William Jennings Bryan after serving under Bryan's rival, Grover Cleveland. (He was also narrowly defeated for Governor of Illinois in 1908.) Charles W. Fairbanks, vice president under Theodore Roosevelt, sought unsuccessfully to return to office as Charles Evans Hughes' running mate in 1916.

Some former vice presidents have sought other offices after serving as vice president. Daniel D. Tompkins ran for Governor of New York in 1820 whilst serving as vice president under James Monroe. He lost to DeWitt Clinton, but was re-elected vice president. John C. Calhoun resigned as vice president to accept election as US Senator from South Carolina. Hannibal Hamlin, Andrew Johnson, Alben Barkley and Hubert H. Humphrey were all elected to the Senate after leaving office. Levi P. Morton, vice president under Benjamin Harrison, was elected Governor of New York after leaving office.

Richard Nixon unsuccessfully sought the governorship of California in 1962, nearly two years after leaving office as vice president and just over six years before becoming president. Walter Mondale ran unsuccessfully for president in 1984, served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan from 1993 to 1996, and then sought unsuccessfully to return to the Senate in 2002. George H. W. Bush won the presidency, and his vice president, Dan Quayle, sought the Republican nomination in 2000. Al Gore also ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 2000, turning to environmental advocacy afterward. Cheney had previously explored the possibility of running for president before serving as vice president, but chose not to run for president after his two terms as vice president.

Since 1977, former presidents and vice presidents who are elected or re-elected to the Senate are entitled to the largely honorific position of Deputy President pro tempore. So far, the only former vice president to have held this title is Hubert Humphrey following his return to the Senate. Walter Mondale would have been entitled to the position had his 2002 Senate bid been successful.

Under the terms of an 1886 Senate resolution, all former vice presidents are entitled to a portrait bust in the Senate wing of the United States Capitol, commemorating their service as presidents of the Senate. Dick Cheney is the most recent former vice president to be so honored.

Unlike former presidents, who receive a pension automatically regardless of their time in office, former vice presidents must reach pension eligibility by accumulating the appropriate time in federal service. Since 2008, former vice president are also entitled to Secret Service personal protection.  Former vice presidents traditionally receive Secret Service protection for up to six months after leaving office, by order of the Secretary of Homeland Security, though this can be extended if the Secretary believes the level of threat is sufficient.  In 2008, a bill titled the "Former Vice President Protection Act" was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush.  It provides six-month Secret Service protection by law to a former vice president and family. According to the Department of Homeland Security, protection for former vice president Cheney has been extended numerous times because threats against him have not decreased since his leaving office. 

Timeline of vice presidents

Spiro Theodore Agnew (; November 9, 1918 – September 17, 1996) was an American politician who served as the 39th Vice President of the United States from 1969 to 1973, under President Richard Nixon.

Agnew was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and was a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and University of Baltimore School of Law. He was drafted into the United States Army in 1941, serving as an officer during the Second World War, and was recalled for service during the Korean War in 1950. Agnew worked as an aide for U.S. Representative James Devereux before he was appointed to the Baltimore County Board of Zoning Appeals in 1957. In 1960, he lost an election for the Baltimore City Circuit Court, but in 1962 was elected Baltimore County Executive. In 1966, Agnew was elected the 55th Governor of Maryland, defeating his Democratic opponent George P. Mahoney. He was the first Greek American to hold the position, serving between 1967 and 1969.

At the 1968 Republican National Convention, Agnew, who had earlier been asked to place Richard Nixon's name in nomination, was selected in private by Nixon and his campaign staff. He was then presented to the convention delegates for nomination for Vice President and ran alongside Nixon in the Presidential Election of 1968. Nixon and Agnew defeated the incumbent Vice President, Hubert Humphrey (formerly long-time Senator from Minnesota) and Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine. In 1972, Nixon and Agnew were reelected for a second term, defeating Senator George McGovern and Ambassador Sargent Shriver.

In 1973, Agnew was investigated by the United States Attorney for the District of Maryland on charges of extortion, tax fraud, bribery, and conspiracy. He was charged with having accepted bribes totaling more than $100,000 while holding office as Baltimore County Executive, Governor of Maryland, and Vice President. On October 10 that same year, Agnew was allowed to plead no contest to a single charge that he had failed to report $29,500 of income received in 1967, with the condition that he resign the office of Vice President. Nixon later replaced Agnew by appointing House Minority Leader Gerald Ford as Vice President. The following year, when Nixon resigned from the White House due to the Watergate scandal, Ford ascended to the presidency.

Agnew was the second Vice President in United States history to resign, the other being John C. Calhoun, and the only one to do so because of criminal charges. Nearly ten years after leaving office, Agnew paid the state of Maryland nearly $270,000 as a result of a civil suit that stemmed from the bribery allegations. In describing Agnew, Garry Wills borrows the backhanded compliment once paid Coolidge by H.L. Mencken: "No man ever came to market with less seductive goods, and no man ever got a better price for what he had to offer."   Agnew is widely considered by historians to be among the worst Vice Presidents in the history of the United States.   

Early life

Spiro Agnew was born in Baltimore, Maryland. His parents were Theodore Spiros Agnew, a Greek immigrant who shortened his name from Anagnostopoulos (Αναγνωστόπουλος) (originally from Gargalianoi, Messenia) when he moved to the United States,   and Margaret Marian (Akers) Pollard Agnew, a native of Virginia.  Spiro had a half brother, Roy Pollard, from his mother's first marriage (she was widowed at the time she met Spiro's father). Agnew eschewed his father's Greek Orthodox Church. His Greek family has direct lineage from the island of Chios.  

Agnew attended Forest Park Senior High School in Baltimore, before enrolling at Johns Hopkins University in 1937. He studied chemistry at Hopkins for three years.

Agnew was drafted into the United States Army in 1941 and was commissioned on May 25, 1942, upon graduation from Army Officer Candidate School. He served with the 10th Armored Division in Europe during World War II. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his service in France and Germany.

Before leaving for Europe, Agnew worked at the Maryland Casualty Company where he met Elinor Judefind, known as Judy.  Agnew married her on May 27, 1942.  They had four children: Pamela, James Rand, Susan and Kimberly.

Upon his return from the war, Agnew transferred to the evening program at the University of Baltimore School of Law. He studied law at night while working as a grocer and as an insurance salesman during the day. In 1947, Agnew received his LL.B. (later amended to Juris Doctor) and moved to the suburbs to begin practicing law. He passed the Maryland bar exam in June 1949.

Agnew was recalled to service with the Army in 1950 during the Korean War.

Early political career

Spiro Agnew began his political career as the first president of the Loch Raven Community Council  and the President of the Dumbarton Junior High School PTA.  A Democrat from early youth, he switched parties and became a Republican. During the 1950s, he aided U.S. Congressman James Devereux in winning four successive elections. In 1957, he was appointed to the Baltimore County Board of Zoning Appeals by Democratic Baltimore County Executive Michael J. Birmingham. In 1960, he made his first run for office as a candidate for Judge of the Circuit Court, finishing last in a five-person contest. The following year, the new Democratic Baltimore County Executive, Christian H. Kahl, dropped him from the Zoning Board.

Agnew ran for election as Baltimore County Executive in 1962, seeking office in a predominantly Democratic county that had seen no Republican elected to that position in the 20th century, with only one (Roger B. Hayden) earning victory after he left. Running as a reformer and Republican outsider, he took advantage of a bitter split in the Democratic Party and was elected. Agnew backed and signed an ordinance outlawing discrimination in some public accommodations, among the first laws of this kind in the United States.

Governor of Maryland

Agnew ran for the position of Governor of Maryland in 1966. In this overwhelmingly Democratic state, he was elected after the Democratic nominee, George P. Mahoney, a Baltimore paving contractor and perennial candidate running on an anti-integration platform, narrowly won the Democratic gubernatorial primary out of a crowded slate of eight candidates, trumping early favorite Carlton R. Sickles. Coming on the heels of the recently passed federal Fair Housing Act of 1965, Mahoney's campaign embraced the slogan "your home is your castle, protect it."  Many Democrats opposed to segregation then crossed party lines to give Agnew the governorship by 82,000 votes.

As governor, Agnew worked with the Democratic legislature to pass tax and judicial reforms, as well as tough anti-pollution laws. Projecting an image of racial moderation, Agnew signed the state's first open-housing laws and succeeded in effecting the repeal of an anti-miscegenation law. However, during the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., in the spring of 1968, Agnew angered many African-American leaders when he stated in reference to their constituents, "I call on you to publicly repudiate all black racists. This, so far, you have been unwilling to do." 

Vice Presidency (1969–1973)

Agnew's moderate image, immigrant background, and success in a traditionally Democratic state made him an attractive running mate for the 1968 Republican presidential nominee, former Vice President Richard Nixon. As late as early 1968, Agnew was a strong supporter of Nelson Rockefeller, one of Nixon's opponents, but by June had switched to supporting Nixon.  At the 1968 Republican National Convention, Agnew's nomination was supported by many conservatives within the Republican Party and by Nixon himself; however, a small band of delegates started shouting "Spiro Who?" and tried to nominate George W. Romney. In the end, Nixon's wishes prevailed, with Agnew receiving 1,119 out of the 1,317 votes cast. 

During the ensuing general election campaign against Vice President Hubert Humphrey, which took place against a backdrop of urban riots and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, culminating in the violent confrontations at the Democratic convention in Chicago, Agnew repeatedly hammered the Democrats on the issue of "law and order." Agnew was considered something of a political joke at first. One Democratic television commercial featured the sounds of a man's hearty laughter as the camera panned to a TV with the words "Agnew for Vice President?" on the screen.

Agnew went from his first election as County Executive to Vice President in six years—one of the fastest rises in US political history, comparable with that of Nixon, who became Vice President after four years in the House of Representatives and two years in the Senate. Agnew's vice presidency was also the highest-ranking US political office ever reached by either a Greek American or a Marylander. Nixon reportedly said "No assassin in his right mind would kill me, They know if they did that they would wind up with Agnew! 

Agnew soon found his role as the voice of the so-called "silent majority," and by late 1969 he was ranking high on national "Most Admired Men" polls. He also inspired a fashion craze when one entrepreneur introduced Spiro Agnew watches (a takeoff on the popular Mickey Mouse watch); conservatives wore them to show their support for Agnew, while many liberals wore them to signify their contempt.

Agnew was known for his scathing criticisms of political opponents, especially journalists and anti-war activists. Agnew would attack his adversaries with relish, hurling unusual, often alliterative epithets, some of which were coined by White House speechwriters William Safire and Pat Buchanan, including "pusillanimous pussyfooters," "nattering nabobs of negativism" (written by Safire) and "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history."  In a speech denouncing the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, he characterized the war's opponents as "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals." 

Agnew was often characterized as Nixon's "hatchet man" when defending the administration on the Vietnam War.  Agnew was chosen to make several speeches in which he spoke out against anti-war protesters and the media portrayal of the Vietnam War, labeling them "Un-American". However, he also spoke publicly against the actions of the Ohio Army National Guard that led to the Kent State shootings in 1970, even describing their action as "murder."

Despite Agnew's continued loyalty to the Nixon administration, his relationship with Nixon deteriorated almost from the start of their political affiliation. Although Nixon initially liked and respected Agnew, as time progressed he felt his vice president lacked the intelligence and vision, particularly in foreign affairs, to sit in the Oval Office, and he began freezing Agnew out of the White House decision-making process. By some accounts, the President was also resentful that the self-confident Agnew was so popular with many Americans. By 1970, Agnew was limited to seeing the president only during cabinet meetings or in the occasional and brief one-on-one, with Agnew given no opportunity to discuss much of substance.

Oval Office tapes reveal that in 1971, Nixon and his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, discussed their desire to have Agnew resign from office before the following year's campaign season. One plan to achieve this was to try to persuade conservative investors to purchase one of the television networks, and then invite Agnew to run it. Another was to see if Bob Hope would be willing to take Agnew on as his partner in his cable television investments. These and other plans never went beyond the talking stages. 

Nixon would have liked to replace Agnew on the Republican ticket in 1972 with John Connally, his chosen successor for 1976, but he realized that Agnew's large conservative base of supporters would be in an uproar, so he reluctantly kept him as his running mate. When John Ehrlichman, the President's counsel and assistant, asked Nixon why he kept Agnew on the ticket in the 1972 election, Nixon replied that "No assassin in his right mind would kill me" because they would get Agnew (as President). 

Agnew came to enjoy the privileges that being vice president brought to him, particularly access to the rich and famous. He became close friends with Frank Sinatra, Billy Graham, and Bob Hope, and consorted with leaders around the globe. He took in stride his newfound fame, as his utterances often made newspaper front pages and were major stories on the evening network news broadcasts. Invitations for Agnew to give speeches across the country flooded into his office, and he became a top fundraiser for the Republican Party.

In April 1973, when revelations about Watergate began to surface, Agnew was the choice of 35 percent of Republican voters to be the next Republican nominee for President, while then-California Governor Ronald Reagan was second on the Gallup poll. 

Resignation

On October 10, 1973, Spiro Agnew became the second Vice President to resign the office. Unlike John C. Calhoun, who resigned to take a seat in the Senate, Agnew resigned and then pleaded no contest to criminal charges of tax evasion,  part of a negotiated resolution to a scheme wherein he was accused of accepting more than $100,000 in bribes  during his tenure as governor of Maryland. Agnew was fined $10,000 and received three years' probation.  The $10,000 fine covered only the taxes and interest due on what was "unreported income" from 1967. The plea bargain was later mocked by former Maryland Attorney General Stephen H. Sachs as "the greatest deal since the Lord spared Isaac on the mountaintop."  Students of Professor John F. Banzhaf III from the George Washington University Law School, collectively known as Banzhaf's Bandits, found four residents of the state of Maryland willing to put their names on a case that sought to have Agnew repay the state $268,482, the amount it was said he had taken in bribes. After two appeals by Agnew, he finally wrote a check for $268,482 that was turned over to Maryland State Treasurer William S. James in 1983. 

As a result of his no contest plea, the Maryland judiciary later disbarred Agnew, calling him "morally obtuse".  As in most jurisdictions, Maryland lawyers are automatically disbarred after being convicted of a felony, and a no contest plea exposes the defendant to the same penalties as one would face with a guilty plea.

Agnew's resignation triggered the first use of the 25th Amendment, specifically Section 2, as the vacancy prompted the appointment and confirmation of Gerald Ford, the House Minority Leader, as his successor. This remains one of only two instances in which the amendment has been employed to fill a vice-presidential vacancy. The second time was when Ford, after becoming President upon Nixon's resignation, chose Nelson Rockefeller (originally Agnew's mentor in the moderate wing of the Republican Party) to succeed him as Vice President. Had Agnew remained as Vice President when Nixon resigned just 10 months later, Agnew himself would have become the 38th President, instead of Ford.

Later life and death

After leaving politics, Agnew became an international trade executive with homes in Rancho Mirage, California; Arnold, Maryland; Bowie, Maryland; and near Ocean City, Maryland. In 1976, he briefly reentered the public spotlight and engendered controversy with what Gerald Ford publicly criticized as "unsavory remarks about Jews" and anti-Zionist statements that called for the United States to withdraw its support for the state of Israel, citing Israel's allegedly bad treatment of Christians.    

In 1980, Agnew published a memoir in which he implied that Nixon and his Chief of Staff, Alexander Haig, had planned to assassinate him if he refused to resign the Vice Presidency, and that Haig told him to "go quietly...or else," the memoir's title.  Agnew also wrote a novel, The Canfield Decision,  about a Vice President who was "destroyed by his own ambition." 

Agnew always maintained that the tax evasion and bribery charges were an attempt by Nixon to divert attention from the growing Watergate scandal. After their resignations, Agnew and Nixon never spoke to each other again. As a gesture of reconciliation, Nixon's daughters invited Agnew to attend Nixon's funeral in 1994, and Agnew accepted. In 1996, when Agnew died, Nixon's daughters returned the favor by attending Agnew's funeral.

Agnew died on September 17, 1996, at age 77 at Atlantic General Hospital, in Berlin, Maryland, in Worcester County (near his Ocean City home), after struggling with undiagnosed acute leukemia.  Agnew is buried at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens, a cemetery in Timonium, Maryland, in Baltimore County in the Garden of the Last Supper section of the cemetery. 

Tributes

Agnew's official portrait was taken down from the Maryland State House Governor's Reception Room from 1979 until 1995. Governor Parris Glendening stated that in re-including Agnew's portrait, it was not up to anyone to alter history, whether for good or bad; he cited the 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. 

Under the provisions of an 1886 Senate resolution, all former vice presidents are entitled to a portrait bust in the United States Capitol. Plans were set in motion for a bust of Agnew while he was still in office, but were shelved following his resignation. The idea was revived by the Senate Rules Committee in 1992 and a bust was commissioned from North Carolina artist William Behrends, for whom Agnew sat for four sessions. The bust was unveiled May 24, 1995, in the presence of Agnew, his family, friends, and onetime political supporters. Agnew made a short speech and was visibly moved by the occasion. 

Electoral history

Baltimore County Executive, 1962 
*Spiro Agnew (R)—elected unopposed

Governor of Maryland, 1966 
*Spiro Agnew (R)—455,318 (49.50%)
*George P. Mahoney (D)—373,543 (40.61%)
*Hyman A. Pressman (I)—90,899 (9.88%)

1968 Republican National Convention (Vice Presidential tally) 
*Spiro Agnew—1,119 (83.95%)
*George Romney—186 (13.95%)
* Abstaining—16 (1.20%)
*John Lindsay—10 (0.75%)
*Edward Brooke—1 (0.08%)
*James A. Rhodes—1 (0.08%)

United States presidential election, 1968
*Richard Nixon/Spiro Agnew (R)—31,783,783 (43.4%) and 301 electoral votes (32 states carried)
*Hubert Humphrey/Edmund Muskie (D)—31,271,839 (42.7%) and 191 electoral votes (13 states and D.C. carried)
*George Wallace/Curtis LeMay (American Independent)—9,901,118 (13.5%) and 46 electoral votes (5 states carried)

1972 Republican National Convention (Vice Presidential tally) 
*Spiro Agnew (inc.)—1,345 (99.78%)
* Abstaining—2 (0.15%)
*David Brinkley—1 (0.07%)

United States presidential election, 1972
*Richard Nixon/Spiro Agnew (R) (inc.)—47,168,710 (60.7%) and 520 electoral votes (49 states carried)
*George McGovern/Sargent Shriver (D)—29,173,222 (37.5%) and 17 electoral votes (1 state and D.C. carried)
*John Hospers/Theodora Nathalia Nathan (Libertarian)—3,171 (0.00%) and 1 electoral vote (Republican faithless elector)
*John G. Schmitz/Thomas J. Anderson (AI)—1,100,868 (1.4%) and 0 electoral votes
*Linda Jenness/Andrew Pulley (Socialist Workers)—83,380 (0.1%)
*Benjamin Spock/Julius Hobson (People's)—78,759 (0.1%)

Watergate was a major political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s, following a break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. and President Richard Nixon's administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement. When the conspiracy was discovered and investigated by the U.S. Congress, the Nixon administration's resistance to its probes led to a constitutional crisis. 

The term Watergate has come to encompass an array of clandestine and often illegal activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration. Those activities included such "dirty tricks" as bugging the offices of political opponents and people of whom Nixon or his officials were suspicious. Nixon and his close aides ordered harassment of activist groups and political figures, using the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

The scandal led to the discovery of multiple abuses of power by the Nixon administration, articles of impeachment,  and the resignation of Nixon as President of the United States on August 9, 1974. The scandal also resulted in the indictment of 69 people, with trials or pleas resulting in 25 being found guilty and incarcerated, many of whom were Nixon's top administration officials.

The affair began with the arrest of five men for breaking and entering into the DNC headquarters at the Watergate complex on Saturday, June 17, 1972. The FBI investigated and discovered a connection between cash found on the burglars and a slush fund used by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CREEP), the official organization of Nixon's campaign.   In July 1973, evidence mounted against the President's staff, including testimony provided by former staff members in an investigation conducted by the Senate Watergate Committee. The investigation revealed that President Nixon had a tape-recording system in his offices and that he had recorded many conversations.  

After a protracted series of bitter court battles, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the president was obligated to release the tapes to government investigators, and he eventually complied. These audio recordings implicated the president, revealing he had attempted to cover up activities that took place after the break-in and to use federal officials to deflect the investigation. 
Facing near-certain impeachment in the House of Representatives and equally certain conviction by the Senate, Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974.   On September 8, 1974, his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him.

The name "Watergate" and the suffix "-gate" have since become synonymous with political scandals in the United States and elsewhere.     

Wiretapping of the Democratic Party's headquarters 

In January 1972, G. Gordon Liddy, general counsel to the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CREEP), presented a campaign intelligence plan to CREEP's Acting Chairman Jeb Stuart Magruder, Attorney General John Mitchell, and Presidential Counsel John Dean, that involved extensive illegal activities against the Democratic Party. According to Dean, this marked "the opening scene of the worst political scandal of the twentieth century and the beginning of the end of the Nixon presidency." 

Mitchell viewed the plan as unrealistic. Two months later, he was alleged to have approved a reduced version of the plan, to include burgling the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate Complex in Washington, D.C.—ostensibly to photograph campaign documents and install listening devices in telephones. Liddy was nominally in charge of the operation, but has since insisted that he was duped by Dean and at least two of his subordinates. These included former CIA officers E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, then-CREEP Security Coordinator (John Mitchell had by then resigned as Attorney General to become chairman of the CREEP).[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/stories/mitchobit.htm Lawrence Meyer, "John N. Mitchell, Principal in Watergate, Dies at 75"], The Washington Post, November 10, 1988

In May, McCord assigned former FBI agent Alfred C. Baldwin III to carry out the wiretapping and monitor the telephone conversations afterward.[http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKbaldwinA.htm Alfred C. Baldwin] Spartacus Educational. Retrieved May 17, 2015 McCord testified that he selected Baldwin's name from a registry published by the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI to work for the Committee to Re-elect the President.  Baldwin first served as  bodyguard to Martha Mitchell, the wife of John Mitchell, who was living in Washington.  Baldwin accompanied Martha Mitchell to Chicago.  Martha did not like Baldwin and described him as the "gauchest character I've ever met." The Committee replaced Baldwin with another security man.

On May 11, McCord arranged for Baldwin, whom investigative reporter Jim Hougan described as "somehow special and perhaps well known to McCord," to stay at the Howard Johnson's motel across the street from the Watergate complex.  The room 419 was booked in the name of McCord’s company.  At behest of G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, McCord and his team of burglars prepared for their first Watergate break-in, which began on May 28.

Two phones inside the offices of the DNC headquarters were said to have been wiretapped. One was the phone of Robert Spencer Oliver, who at the time was working as the executive director of the Association of State Democratic Chairmen, and the other was the phone of DNC secretary Larry O'Brien.   The FBI found no evidence that O'Brien's phone was bugged.  However, it was determined that an effective listening device had been installed in Oliver's phone.

Despite the success in installing the listening devices, the Committee agents soon determined that they needed to be repaired. They planned a second "burglary" in order to take care of this.

Shortly after midnight on June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a security guard at the Watergate Complex, noticed tape covering the latches on some of the doors in the complex leading from the underground parking garage to several offices (allowing the doors to close but remain unlocked). He removed the tape, and thought nothing of it. He returned an hour later and, having discovered that someone had retaped the locks, Wills called the police. Five men were discovered inside the DNC office and arrested. They were Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, James McCord, Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis, who were charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications. On September 15, a grand jury indicted them, as well as Hunt and Liddy,  for conspiracy, burglary, and violation of federal wiretapping laws. The five burglars who broke into the office were tried by a jury, Judge John Sirica officiating, and were convicted on January 30, 1973. 

Cover-up and its unraveling 

Initial cover-up 

Within hours of the burglars' arrest, the FBI discovered the name of E. Howard Hunt in the address books of Barker and Martínez. Nixon administration officials were concerned because Hunt and Liddy were also involved in a separate secret activity known as the White House Plumbers, which was set up to stop security "leaks" and to investigate other sensitive security matters. Dean would later testify he was ordered by top Nixon aide John Ehrlichman to "deep six" the contents of Howard Hunt's White House safe. Ehrlichman subsequently denied that. In the end, the evidence from Hunt's safe was destroyed (in separate operations) by Dean and the FBI's Acting Director, L. Patrick Gray.

Nixon's own reaction to the break-in, at least initially, was one of skepticism. Watergate prosecutor James Neal was sure Nixon had not known in advance of the break-in. As evidence, he cited a June 23 taped conversation between the President and his Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman, in which Nixon asked, "Who was the asshole who ordered it?"  But Nixon subsequently ordered Haldeman to have the CIA block the FBI's investigation into the source of the funding for the burglary.

A few days later, Nixon's Press Secretary, Ron Ziegler, described the event as "a third-rate burglary attempt." On August 29, at a news conference, President Nixon stated Dean had conducted a thorough investigation of the matter, when in fact Dean had not conducted any investigation at all. Nixon also said, "I can say categorically that... no one in the White House staff, no one in this Administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident." On September 15, Nixon congratulated Dean, saying, "The way you've handled it, it seems to me, has been very skillful, because you—putting your fingers in the dikes every time that leaks have sprung here and sprung there."

Money trail 

On June 19, 1972, the press reported that one of the Watergate burglars was a Republican Party security aide.  Former Attorney General John Mitchell, who at the time was the head of the Nixon re-election campaign (CRP), denied any involvement with the Watergate break-in or knowledge of the five burglars. On August 1, a $25,000 cashier's check earmarked for the Nixon re-election campaign was found in the bank account of one of the Watergate burglars. Further investigation by the FBI would reveal the team had thousands of dollars more to support their travel and expenses in the months leading up to their arrests. Examination of their funds showed a link to the finance committee of CRP.

Several donations (totaling $86,000) were made by individuals who thought they were making private donations by certified and cashier's checks for the President's re-election. Investigators' examination of the bank records of a Miami company run by Watergate burglar Barker revealed an account controlled by him personally had deposited a check and then transferred it (through the Federal Reserve Check Clearing System).

The banks that had originated the checks were keen to ensure the depository institution used by Barker had acted properly in ensuring the checks had been received and endorsed by the check's payee, before its acceptance for deposit in Bernard Barker's account. Only in this way would the issuing banks not be held liable for the unauthorized and improper release of funds from their customers' accounts.

The investigation by the FBI, which cleared Barker's bank of fiduciary malfeasance, led to the direct implication of members of the CRP, to whom the checks had been delivered. Those individuals were the Committee bookkeeper and its treasurer, Hugh Sloan.

As a private organization, the Committee followed normal business practice in allowing only duly authorized individual(s) to accept and endorse checks on behalf of the Committee.  No financial institution could accept or process a check on behalf of the Committee unless a duly authorized individual endorsed it. The checks deposited into Barker's bank account were endorsed by Committee treasurer Hugh Sloan, who was authorized by the Finance Committee. However, once Sloan had endorsed a check made payable to the Committee, he had a legal and fiduciary responsibility to see that the check was deposited only into the accounts named on the check. Sloan failed to do that. When confronted with the potential charge of federal bank fraud, he revealed that Committee deputy director Jeb Magruder and finance director Maurice Stans had directed him to give the money to G. Gordon Liddy.

Liddy, in turn, gave the money to Barker, and attempted to hide its origin. Barker tried to disguise the funds by depositing them into accounts in banks outside of the United States. What Barker, Liddy, and Sloan did not know was that the complete record of all such transactions were held for roughly six months. Barker's use of foreign banks in April and May 1972, to deposit checks and withdraw the funds via cashier's checks and money orders, resulted in the banks keeping the entire transaction records until October and November 1972.

All five Watergate burglars were directly or indirectly tied to the 1972 CRP, thus causing Judge Sirica to suspect a conspiracy involving higher-echelon government officials. 

On September 29, 1972, the press reported that John Mitchell, while serving as Attorney General, controlled a secret Republican fund used to finance intelligence-gathering against the Democrats. On October 10, the FBI reported the Watergate break-in was part of a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage on behalf of the Nixon re-election committee. Despite these revelations, Nixon's campaign was never seriously jeopardized; on November 7, the President was re-elected in one of the biggest landslides in American political history.

Role of the media 

The connection between the break-in and the re-election committee was highlighted by media coverage—in particular, investigative coverage by The Washington Post, Time, and The New York Times. The coverage dramatically increased publicity and consequent political repercussions. Relying heavily upon anonymous sources, Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered information suggesting that knowledge of the break-in, and attempts to cover it up, led deeply into the upper reaches of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and the White House. Woodward and Bernstein interviewed Judy Hoback Miller, the bookkeeper for Nixon, who revealed to them information about the mishandling of funds and records being destroyed. 

Chief among the Post's anonymous sources was an individual whom Woodward and Bernstein had nicknamed Deep Throat; 33 years later, in 2005, the informant was identified as William Mark Felt, Sr., deputy director of the FBI during that period of the 1970s, something Woodward later confirmed. Felt met secretly with Woodward several times, telling him of Howard Hunt's involvement with the Watergate break-in, and that the White House staff regarded the stakes in Watergate extremely high. Felt warned Woodward that the FBI wanted to know where he and other reporters were getting their information, as they were uncovering a wider web of crimes than the FBI first disclosed. All of the secret meetings between Woodward and "Deep Throat" (W. Mark Felt) took place at an underground parking garage somewhere in Rosslyn over a period from June 1972 to January 1973. Prior to resigning from the FBI on June 22, 1973, Felt also anonymously planted leaks about Watergate to Time magazine, the Washington Daily News and other publications.[http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/14/v-fullstory/2639954/the-profound-lies-of-deep-throat.html "The profound lies of Deep Throat"], The Miami Herald, February 14, 2012 

During this early period, most of the media failed to grasp the full implications of the scandal, and concentrated reporting on other topics related to the 1972 presidential election. After the reporting that one of the convicted burglars wrote to Judge Sirica alleging a high-level cover-up, the media shifted its focus. Time magazine described Nixon as undergoing "daily hell and very little trust." The distrust between the press and the Nixon administration was mutual and greater than usual due to lingering dissatisfaction with events from the Vietnam War. At the same time, public distrust of the media was polled at more than 40%.

Nixon and top administration officials discussed using government agencies to "get" (or retaliate against) those they perceived as hostile media organizations. The discussions had precedent. At the request of Nixon's White House in 1969, the FBI tapped the phones of five reporters. In 1971, the White House requested an audit of the tax return of the editor of Newsday, after he wrote a series of articles about the financial dealings of Charles Rebozo, a friend of Nixon. 

The Administration and its supporters accused the media of making "wild accusations," putting too much emphasis on the story, and of having a liberal bias against the Administration. Nixon said in a May 1974 interview with supporter Baruch Korff that if he had followed the liberal policies that he thought the media preferred, "Watergate would have been a blip."  The media noted that most of the reporting turned out to be accurate; the competitive nature of the media guaranteed widespread coverage of the far-reaching political scandal. Applications to journalism schools reached an all-time high in 1974.

Scandal Escalates 

Rather than ending with the conviction and sentencing to prison of the five Watergate burglars on January 30, 1973, the investigation into the break-in and the Nixon Administration's involvement grew broader. Nixon's conversations in late March and all of April 1973 revealed that not only did he know he needed to remove Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Dean to gain distance from them, but he had to do so in a way that was least likely to incriminate him and his presidency. Nixon created a new conspiracy—to effect a cover-up of the cover-up—which began in late March 1973 and became fully formed in May and June 1973, operating until his presidency ended on August 9, 1974.  On March 23, 1973, Judge Sirica read the court a letter from Watergate burglar James McCord, who alleged that perjury had been committed in the Watergate trial, and defendants had been pressured to remain silent. Trying to make them talk, Sirica gave Hunt and two burglars provisional sentences of up to 40 years.

On March 28, on Nixon's orders, aide John Ehrlichman told Attorney General Richard Kleindienst that nobody in the White House had prior knowledge of the burglary. On April 13, Magruder told U.S. attorneys that he had perjured himself during the burglars' trial, and implicated John Dean and John Mitchell.

John Dean believed that he, Mitchell, Ehrlichman and Haldeman could go to the prosecutors, tell the truth, and save the presidency. Dean wanted to protect the presidency and have his four closest men take the fall for telling the truth. During the critical meeting with Dean and Nixon on April 15, 1973, Dean was totally unaware of the president's depth of knowledge and involvement in the Watergate cover-up. It was during this meeting that Dean felt that he was being recorded. He wondered if this was due to the way Nixon was speaking, as if he were trying to prod attendees; recollections of earlier conversations about fundraising. Dean mentioned this observation while testifying to the Senate Committee on Watergate, exposing the thread of what were taped conversations that would unravel the fabric of Watergate. 

Two days later, Dean told Nixon that he had been cooperating with the U.S. attorneys. On that same day, U.S. attorneys told Nixon that Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean and other White House officials were implicated in the cover-up.  

On April 30, Nixon asked for the resignation of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, two of his most influential aides. They were later both indicted, convicted, and ultimately sentenced to prison. He asked for the resignation of Attorney General Kleindienst, to ensure no one could claim that his innocent friendship with Haldeman and Ehrlichman could be construed as a conflict. He fired White House Counsel John Dean, who went on to testify before the Senate Watergate Committee and said that he believed and suspected the conversations in the Oval Office were being taped. This information became the bombshell that helped force Richard Nixon to resign rather than be impeached. 

Writing from prison for New West and New York magazines in 1977, Ehrlichman claimed Nixon had offered him a large sum of money, which he declined. 

The President announced the resignations in an address to the American people:

On the same day, Nixon appointed a new attorney general, Elliot Richardson, and gave him authority to designate a special counsel for the Watergate investigation who would be independent of the regular Justice Department hierarchy. In May 1973, Richardson named Archibald Cox to the position.

Senate Watergate hearings and revelation of the Watergate tapes 

On February 7, 1973, the United States Senate voted 77–0 to approve Senate Resolution  and establish a select committee to investigate Watergate, with Sam Ervin named chairman the next day.[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,942983-1,00.html "WATERGATE RETROSPECTIVE: THE DECLINE AND FALL"], Time, August 19, 1974 The hearings held by the Senate committee, in which Dean and other former administration officials testified, were broadcast from May 17 to August 7, 1973. The three major networks of the time agreed to take turns covering the hearings live, each network thus maintaining coverage of the hearings every third day, starting with ABC on May 17 and ending with NBC on August 7. An estimated 85% of Americans with television sets tuned into at least one portion of the hearings. 

On Friday, July 13, 1973, during a preliminary interview, deputy minority counsel Donald Sanders asked White House assistant Alexander Butterfield if there was any type of recording system in the White House. 
Butterfield said he was reluctant to answer, but finally stated there was a new system in the White House that automatically recorded everything in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room and others, as well as Nixon's private office in the Old Executive Office Building.

On Monday, July 16, 1973, in front of a live, televised audience, chief minority counsel Fred Thompson asked Butterfield whether he was "aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President." Butterfield's revelation of the taping system transformed the Watergate investigation. Cox immediately subpoenaed the tapes, as did the Senate, but Nixon refused to release them, citing his executive privilege as president, and ordered Cox to drop his subpoena. Cox refused. 

"Saturday Night Massacre" 

On October 20, 1973, after Cox refused to drop the subpoena, Nixon commanded Attorney General Elliot Richardson, and then Richardson's deputy, William Ruckelshaus, to fire the special prosecutor. Richardson and Ruckelshaus both refused to fire Cox and resigned in protest. Nixon's search for someone in the Justice Department willing to fire Cox ended with the Solicitor General Robert Bork. Though Bork claims to believe Nixon's order was valid and appropriate, he considered resigning to avoid being "perceived as a man who did the President's bidding to save my job."  Bork carried out the presidential order and dismissed the special prosecutor.

These actions met considerable public criticism. Responding to the allegations of possible wrongdoing, in front of 400 Associated Press managing editors on November 17, 1973, Nixon stated emphatically, "I'm not a crook."   He needed to allow Bork to appoint a new special prosecutor; Bork chose Leon Jaworski to continue the investigation.

Legal action against Nixon Administration members 

On March 1, 1974, a grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted several former aides of President Nixon, who became known as the "Watergate Seven": Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Charles Colson, Gordon C. Strachan, Robert Mardian and Kenneth Parkinson, for conspiring to hinder the Watergate investigation. The grand jury secretly named President Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator. The special prosecutor dissuaded them from an indictment of Nixon, arguing that a President can only be indicted after he leaves office. John Dean, Jeb Stuart Magruder, and other figures had already pleaded guilty. On April 5, 1974, Dwight Chapin, the former Nixon appointments secretary, was convicted of lying to the grand jury. Two days later, the same grand jury indicted Ed Reinecke, the Republican lieutenant governor of California, on three charges of perjury before the Senate committee.

Release of the transcripts 

The Nixon administration struggled to decide what materials to release. All parties involved agreed that all pertinent information should be released. Whether to release unedited profanity and vulgarity divided his advisers. His legal team favored releasing the tapes unedited, while Press Secretary Ron Ziegler preferred using an edited version where "expletive deleted" would replace the raw material. After several weeks of debate, they decided to release an edited version. Nixon announced the release of the transcripts in a speech to the nation on April 29, 1974. Nixon noted that any audio pertinent to national security information could be redacted from the released tapes. 

Initially, Nixon gained a positive reaction for his speech. As people read the transcripts over the next couple of weeks, however, former supporters among the public, media and political community called for Nixon's resignation or impeachment. Vice President Gerald Ford said, "While it may be easy to delete characterization from the printed page, we cannot delete characterization from people's minds with a wave of the hand."  The Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott said the transcripts revealed a "deplorable, disgusting, shabby, and immoral" performance on the part of the President and his former aides.  The House Republican Leader John Jacob Rhodes agreed with Scott, and Rhodes recommended that if Nixon's position continued to deteriorate, he "ought to consider resigning as a possible option." 

The editors of The Chicago Tribune, a newspaper that had supported Nixon, wrote, "He is humorless to the point of being inhumane. He is devious. He is vacillating. He is profane. He is willing to be led. He displays dismaying gaps in knowledge. He is suspicious of his staff. His loyalty is minimal."  The Providence Journal wrote, "Reading the transcripts is an emetic experience; one comes away feeling unclean." This newspaper continued, that, while the transcripts may not have revealed an indictable offense, they showed Nixon contemptuous of the United States, its institutions, and its people. According to Time magazine, the Republican Party leaders in the Western United States felt that while there remained a significant number of Nixon loyalists in the party, the majority believed that Nixon should step down as quickly as possible. They were disturbed by the bad language and the coarse, vindictive tone of the conversations in the transcripts. 

Supreme Court 

The issue of access to the tapes went to the US Supreme Court. On July 24, 1974, in United States v. Nixon, the Court, which did not include the recused Justice William Rehnquist (who had recently been appointed by Nixon and had served as Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Nixon Justice Department), ruled unanimously that claims of executive privilege over the tapes were void. They ordered the president to release them to the special prosecutor. On July 30, 1974, President Nixon complied with the order and released the subpoenaed tapes for the public.

Release of the tapes 

The tapes revealed several crucial conversations  that took place between the President and his counsel, John Dean, on March 21, 1973. In this conversation, Dean summarized many aspects of the Watergate case, and focused on the subsequent cover-up, describing it as a "cancer on the presidency." The burglary team was being paid hush money for their silence and Dean stated: "That's the most troublesome post-thing, because Bob [Haldeman] is involved in that; John [Ehrlichman] is involved in that; I am involved in that; Mitchell is involved in that. And that's an obstruction of justice." Dean continued, stating that Howard Hunt was blackmailing the White House, demanding money immediately; President Nixon replied that the blackmail money should be paid: "…just looking at the immediate problem, don't you have to have – handle Hunt's financial situation damn soon? […] you've got to keep the cap on the bottle that much, in order to have any options." 

At the time of the initial congressional impeachment, it was not known if Nixon had known and approved of the payments to the Watergate defendants earlier than this conversation. Nixon's conversation with Haldeman on August 1, 1972, is one of several that establishes he did. Nixon states: "Well…they have to be paid. That's all there is to that. They have to be paid."  During the congressional debate on impeachment, some believed that impeachment required a criminally indictable offense. President Nixon's agreement to make the blackmail payments was regarded as an affirmative act to obstruct justice. 

On December 7, 1973, investigators found that an 18½ minute portion of one recorded tape had been erased. Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's longtime personal secretary, said she had accidentally erased the tape by pushing the wrong pedal on her tape player when answering the phone. The press ran photos of the set-up, showing that it was unlikely for Woods to answer the phone while keeping her foot on the pedal. Later forensic analysis in 2003 determined that the tape had been erased in several segments – at least five, and perhaps as many as nine. 

Final investigations and resignation 

Nixon's position was becoming increasingly precarious. On February 6, 1974, the House of Representatives approved  giving the Judiciary Committee authority to investigate impeachment of the President.   On July 27, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted 27–11 to recommend the first article of impeachment against the president: obstruction of justice. The House recommended the second article, abuse of power, on July 29, 1974. The next day, on July 30, 1974, the House recommended the third article: contempt of Congress. On August 20, 1974, the House authorized the printing of the Committee report H. Rept. 93-1305, which included the text of the resolution impeaching President Nixon and set forth articles of impeachment against him.  

"Smoking Gun" tape 

On August 5, 1974, the White House released a previously unknown audio tape from June 23, 1972. Recorded only a few days after the break-in, it documented the initial stages of the cover-up: it revealed Nixon, Swingle, and Haldeman meeting in the Oval Office and formulating a plan to block investigations by having the CIA falsely claim to the FBI that national security was involved.

Haldeman introduced the topic as follows:
…the Democratic break-in thing, we're back to the–in the, the problem area because the FBI is not under control, because Gray doesn't exactly know how to control them, and they have… their investigation is now leading into some productive areas […] and it goes in some directions we don't want it to go.

After explaining how the money from CRP was traced to the burglars, Haldeman explained to Nixon the cover-up plan: "the way to handle this now is for us to have Walters [CIA] call Pat Gray [FBI] and just say, 'Stay the hell out of this …this is ah, business here we don't want you to go any further on it.

President Nixon approved the plan, and after he was given more information about the involvement of his campaign in the break-in, he told Haldeman: "All right, fine, I understand it all. We won't second-guess Mitchell and the rest." Returning to the use of the CIA to obstruct the FBI, he instructed Haldeman: "You call them in. Good. Good deal. Play it tough. That's the way they play it and that's the way we are going to play it."  

Nixon denied that this constituted an obstruction of justice, as his instructions ultimately resulted in the CIA truthfully reporting to the FBI that there were no national security issues. Nixon urged the FBI to press forward with the investigation when they expressed concern about interference. 

Before the release of this tape, President Nixon had denied any involvement in the scandal. He claimed that there were no political motivations in his instructions to the CIA, and claimed he had no knowledge before March 21, 1973, of involvement by senior campaign officials such as John Mitchell. The contents of this tape persuaded Nixon's own lawyers, Fred Buzhardt and James St. Clair, that, "The tape proved that the President had lied to the nation, to his closest aides, and to his own lawyers - for more than two years."  The tape, which was referred to as a "smoking gun" by Barber Conable, proved that Nixon had been involved in the cover-up from the beginning.

In the week before Nixon's resignation, Ehrlichman and Haldeman tried unsuccessfully to get Nixon to grant them pardons—which he had promised them before their April 1973 resignations. 

Resignation 

The release of the "smoking gun" tape destroyed Nixon politically. The ten congressmen who had voted against all three articles of impeachment in the House Judiciary Committee announced they would all support impeachment when the vote was taken in the full House.

On the night of August 7, 1974, Senators Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott and Congressman John Jacob Rhodes met with Nixon in the Oval Office and told him that his support in Congress had all but disappeared. Rhodes told Nixon that he would face certain impeachment when the articles came up for vote in the full House. Goldwater and Scott told the president that there were enough votes in the Senate to convict him, and that no more than 15 Senators were willing to vote for acquittal.

Realizing that he had no chance of staying in office, Nixon decided to resign. In a nationally televised address from the Oval Office on the evening of August 8, 1974, the president said, in part:

The morning that his resignation took effect, the President, with Mrs. Nixon and their family, said farewell to the White House staff in the East Room.  A helicopter carried them from the White House to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Nixon later wrote that he thought, "As the helicopter moved on to Andrews, I found myself thinking not of the past, but of the future. What could I do now?" At Andrews, he and his family boarded Air Force One to El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in California, and then were transported to his home in San Clemente.

President Ford's pardon of Nixon 

With President Nixon's resignation, Congress dropped its impeachment proceedings. Criminal prosecution was still a possibility both on the federal and state level. Nixon was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford as President, who on September 8, 1974, issued a full and unconditional pardon of Nixon, immunizing him from prosecution for any crimes he had "committed or may have committed or taken part in" as president.  In a televised broadcast to the nation, Ford explained that he felt the pardon was in the best interest of the country. He said that the Nixon family's situation "is an American tragedy in which we all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must." 

Nixon proclaimed his innocence until his death in 1994. In his official response to the pardon, he said that he "...was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy." 

Some commentators have argued that pardoning Nixon contributed to President Ford's loss of the presidential election of 1976.  Allegations of a secret deal made with Ford, promising a pardon in return for Nixon's resignation, led Ford to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on October 17, 1974.  

In his autobiography A Time to Heal, Ford wrote about a meeting he had with Nixon's Chief of Staff, Alexander Haig. Haig was explaining what he and Nixon's staff thought were Nixon's only options. He could try to ride out the impeachment and fight against conviction in the Senate all the way, or he could resign. His options for resigning were to delay his resignation until further along in the impeachment process, to try and settle for a censure vote in Congress, or to pardon himself and then resign. Haig told Ford that some of Nixon's staff suggested that Nixon could agree to resign in return for an agreement that Ford would pardon him.

Aftermath 

Final legal actions and effect on the law profession 

Charles Colson pleaded guilty to charges concerning the Daniel Ellsberg case; in exchange, the indictment against him for covering up the activities of the Committee to Re-elect the President was dropped, as it was against Strachan. The remaining five members of the Watergate Seven indicted in March went on trial in October 1974.  On January 1, 1975, all but Parkinson were found guilty. In 1976, the U.S. Court of Appeals ordered a new trial for Mardian; subsequently, all charges against him were dropped.

Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell exhausted their appeals in 1977. Ehrlichman entered prison in 1976, followed by the other two in 1977.  Since Nixon and many senior officials involved in Watergate were lawyers, the scandal severely tarnished the public image of the legal profession.   

The Watergate scandal resulted in 69 government officials being charged and 48 being found guilty, including:
#John N. Mitchell, Attorney General of the United States who resigned to become Director of Committee to Re-elect the President, convicted of perjury about his involvment in the Watergate break-in. Served 19 months of a one- to four-year sentence.
#Richard Kleindienst, Attorney General, convicted of "refusing to answer questions" (contempt of court); given one month in jail. 
#Jeb Stuart Magruder, Deputy Director of Committee to Re-elect the President, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to the burglary, and was sentenced to 10 months to four years in prison, of which he served 7 months before being paroled. 
#Frederick C. LaRue, Advisor to John Mitchell, convicted of obstruction of justice. He served four and a half months.
#H. R. Haldeman, Chief of Staff for Nixon, convicted of conspiracy to the burglary, obstruction of justice, and perjury. Served 18 months in prison. 
#John Ehrlichman, Counsel to Nixon, convicted of conspiracy to the burglary, obstruction of justice, and perjury. Served 18 months in prison. 
#Egil Krogh, aide to John Ehrlichman, sentenced to six months.
#John W. Dean III, counsel to Nixon, convicted of obstruction of justice, later reduced to felony offenses and sentenced to time already served, which totaled 4 months.
#Dwight L. Chapin, deputy assistant to Nixon, convicted of perjury.
#Herbert W. Kalmbach, personal attorney to Nixon, convicted of illegal campaigning.
#Charles W. Colson, special counsel to Nixon, convicted of obstruction of justice. Served 7 months in Federal Maxwell Prison.
#Herbert L. Porter, aide to the Committee to Re-elect the President. Convicted of perjury.
... and the actual Watergate "Burglary" team:
#G. Gordon Liddy, Special Investigations Group, convicted of masterminding the burglary, original sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Served 4½ years in federal prison.
#E. Howard Hunt, Security consultant, convicted of masterminding and overseeing the burglary, original sentence of up to 35 years in prison.  Served 33 months in prison. 
#James W. McCord Jr., convicted of six charges of burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping.  Served 2 months in prison.
#Virgilio Gonzalez, convicted of burglary, original sentence of up to 40 years in prison. Served 13 months in prison.
#Bernard Barker, convicted of burglary, original sentence of up to 40 years in prison. Served 18 months in prison. 
#Eugenio Martinez, convicted of burglary, original sentence of up to 40 years in prison. Served 15 months in prison.
#Frank Sturgis, convicted of burglary, original sentence of up to 40 years in prison.  Served 10 months in prison.

To defuse public demand for direct federal regulation of lawyers (as opposed to leaving it in the hands of state bar associations or courts), the American Bar Association (ABA) launched two major reforms. First, the ABA decided that its existing Model Code of Professional Responsibility (promulgated 1969) was a failure. In 1983 it replaced it with the Model Rules of Professional Conduct.  The MRPC have been adopted in part or in whole by 49 states (and is being considered by the last one, California). Its preamble contains an emphatic reminder that the legal profession can remain self-governing only if lawyers behave properly. Second, the ABA promulgated a requirement that law students at ABA-approved law schools take a course in professional responsibility (which means they must study the MRPC). The requirement remains in effect.

On June 24 and 25, 1975, Nixon gave secret testimony to a grand jury. According to news reports at the time, Nixon answered questions about the 18½-minute tape gap, altering White House tape transcripts turned over to the House Judiciary Committee, using the Internal Revenue Service to harass political enemies, and a $100,000 contribution from billionaire Howard Hughes. Aided by the Public Citizen Litigation Group, the historian Stanley Kutler, who has written several books about Nixon and Watergate and had successfully sued for the 1996 public release of the Nixon White House tapes,  sued for release of the transcripts of the Nixon grand jury testimony.

On July 29, 2011, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth granted Kutler's request, saying historical interests trumped privacy, especially considering that Nixon and other key figures were deceased, and most of the surviving figures had testified under oath, have been written about, or were interviewed. The transcripts were not immediately released pending the government's decision on whether to appeal.[http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/29/us-nixon-watergate-idUSTRE76S4ZH20110729 "Nixon's secret Watergate testimony ordered released"], Reuters, July 29, 2011 They were released in their entirety on November 10, 2011, although the names of people still alive were redacted. 

Texas A&M University–Central Texas professor Luke Nichter wrote the chief judge of the federal court in Washington to release hundreds of pages of sealed records of the Watergate Seven. In June 2012 the U.S. Department of Justice wrote the court that it would not object to their release with some exceptions.  On November 2, 2012, Watergate trial records for G. Gordon Liddy and James McCord were ordered unsealed by Federal Judge Royce Lamberth. 

Political and cultural reverberations 

According to Thomas J. Johnson, a professor of journalism at University of Texas at Austin, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger predicted during Nixon's final days that history would remember Nixon as a great president and that Watergate would be relegated to a "minor footnote." 

When Congress investigated the scope of the president's legal powers, it belatedly found that consecutive presidential administrations had declared the United States to be in a continuous open-ended state of emergency since 1950. Congress enacted the National Emergencies Act in 1976 to regulate such declarations. The Watergate scandal left such an impression on the national and international consciousness that many scandals since then have been labeled with the suffix "-gate".

Disgust with the revelations about Watergate, the Republican Party, and Nixon strongly affected results of the November 1974 Senate and House elections, which took place three months after Nixon's resignation. The Democrats gained five seats in the Senate and forty-nine in the House (the newcomers were nicknamed "Watergate Babies"). Congress passed legislation that changed campaign financing, to amend the Freedom of Information Act, as well as to require financial disclosures by key government officials (via the Ethics in Government Act). Other types of disclosures, such as releasing recent income tax forms, became expected albeit not legally required. Presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt had recorded many of their conversations but the practice purportedly ended after Watergate.

Ford's pardon of Nixon played a major role in his defeat in the 1976 presidential election against Jimmy Carter.

In 1977, Nixon arranged an interview with British journalist David Frost in the hopes of improving his legacy. Based on a previous interview in 1968,  he believed that Frost would be an easy interviewer and was taken aback by Frost's incisive questions. The interview displayed the entire scandal to the American people, and Nixon formally apologized, but his legacy remained tarnished. 

In the aftermath of Watergate, "follow the money" became part of the American lexicon and is widely believed to have been uttered by Mark Felt to Woodward and Bernstein. The phrase was never used in the 1974 book All The President's Men and did not become associated with it until the movie of the same name was released in 1976. 

Purpose of the break-in 

Despite the enormous impact of the Watergate scandal, the purpose of the break-in of the DNC offices has never been conclusively established. Records from the United States v. Liddy trial, made public in 2013, showed that four of the five burglars testified that they were told the campaign operation hoped to find evidence that linked Cuban funding to Democratic campaigns. The longtime hypothesis suggests that the target of the break-in was the offices of Larry O'Brien, the DNC Chairman.  However, O'Brien's name was not on Alfred C. Baldwin III's list of targets that was released in 2013. Among those listed were senior DNC official R. Spencer Oliver, Oliver's secretary Ida "Maxine" Wells, co-worker Robert Allen and secretary Barbara Kennedy.

Based on these revelations, Texas A&M history professor Luke Nichter, who had successfully petitioned for the release of the information,  argued that Woodward and Bernstein were incorrect in concluding, based largely on Watergate burglar James McCord's word, that the purpose of the break-in was to bug O'Brien's phone to gather political and financial intelligence on the Democrats. Instead, Nichter sided with late journalist J. Anthony Lukas of the New York Times, who had concluded that the committee was seeking to find evidence linking the Democrats to prostitution, as Oliver's office had frequently been used to arrange such meetings. However, Nichter acknowledged that Woodward and Bernstein's theory of O'Brien as the target could not be debunked unless information was released about what Baldwin heard in his bugging of conversations.

In 1968, O'Brien was appointed by Vice President Hubert Humphrey to serve as the national director of Humphrey's presidential campaign and, separately, by Howard Hughes to serve as Hughes' public-policy lobbyist in Washington. O'Brien was elected national chairman of the DNC in 1968 and 1970. In late 1971, the president's brother, Donald Nixon, was collecting intelligence for his brother at the time and asked John H. Meier, an adviser to Howard Hughes, about O'Brien. In 1956, Donald Nixon had borrowed $205,000 from Howard Hughes and had never repaid the loan. The loan's existence surfaced during the 1960 presidential election campaign, embarrassing Richard Nixon and becoming a political liability. According to author Donald M. Bartlett, Richard Nixon would do whatever was necessary to prevent another family embarrassment.  From 1968 to 1970, Hughes withdrew nearly half a million dollars from the Texas National Bank of Commerce for contributions to both Democrats and Republicans, including presidential candidates Humphrey and Nixon. Hughes wanted Donald Nixon and Meier involved but Nixon opposed this. 

Meier told Donald that he was sure the Democrats would win the election because they had considerable information on Richard Nixon's illicit dealings with Hughes that had never been released, and that it resided with Larry O'Brien.  O'Brien, who had received $25,000 from Hughes, did not have any documents but Meier claims to have wanted Richard Nixon to think that he did. It is conjecture that Donald told his brother that Meier had given the Democrats all the damaging Hughes information and that O'Brien had the proof.  According to Fred Emery, O'Brien had been a lobbyist for Hughes in a Democrat-controlled Congress, and the possibility of his finding out about Hughes' illegal contributions to the Nixon campaign was too much of a danger for Nixon to ignore. 

James F. Neal, who prosecuted the Watergate 7, did not believe Nixon had ordered the break-in because of Nixon's surprised reaction when he was told about it. He cited the June 23, 1972 conversation when Nixon asked Haldeman, "Who was the asshole that did it?" 

Reactions

Nation-states 

 – In July 1975, according to then-Prime Minister Kukrit Pramoj of Thailand, Chairman Mao Zedong called the Watergate scandal "the result of 'too much freedom of political expression in the U.S.'"  Mao called it "an indication of American isolationism, which he saw as 'disastrous' for Europe." He further said, "Do Americans really want to go isolationist? ... In the two world wars, the Americans came [in] very late, but all the same, they did come in. They haven't been isolationist in practice." 

 – Then-leader Fidel Castro said in his December 1974 interview that, of the crimes committed by the Cuban exiles, like killings, attacks on Cuban ports, and spying, the Watergate burglaries and wiretappings were "probably the least of [them]." 

 – Then-Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi told the press, "I want to say quite emphatically that everything that would weaken or jeopardize the President's power to make decisions in split seconds would represent grave danger for the whole world."

 – In August 1973, then-Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka said that the scandal had "no cancelling influence on U.S. leadership in the world." Tanaka further said, "The pivotal role of the United States has not changed, so this internal affair will not be permitted to have an effect." In March 1975, Tanaka's successor, Takeo Miki, said at a convention of the Liberal Democratic Party, "At the time of the Watergate issue in America, I was deeply moved by the scene in the House Judiciary Committee, where each member of the committee expressed his own or her own heart based upon the spirit of the American Constitution. It was this attitude, I think, that rescued American democracy." 

 – An unnamed senior official of Foreign Affairs Ministry accused President Nixon of lacking interest in Africa and its politics and then said, "American President is so enmeshed in domestic problems created by Watergate that foreign policy seems suddenly to have taken a ."

 – Then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew said in August 1973, "As one surprising revelation follows another at the Senate hearings on Watergate, it becomes increasingly clear that Washington, [D.C.], today is in no position to offer the moral or strong political and economic leadership for which its friends and allies are yearning." Moreover, Lee said that the scandal may have led the United States to lessen its interests and commitments in world affairs, to weaken its ability to enforce the Paris Peace Accords on Vietnam, and to not react to violations of the Accords. Lee said further that the United States "makes the future of this peace in Indonesia an extremely bleak one with grave consequence for the contiguous states." Lee then blamed the scandal for economic inflation in Singapore because the Singapore dollar was pegged to the United States dollar at the time, assuming the U.S. dollar was stronger than the British pound sterling. 

 – In the press conference of May 1973, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev told Secretary of State Henry Kissinger how the United States handled the scandal was different from how the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had operated. There, without any opposition party back then, members of the Party had been wiretapped for any possible wrongdoing.  In June 1973, when Brezhnev arrived in the United States to have a one-week meeting with President Nixon,  Brezhnev told the press, "I do not intent to refer to that matter—[the Watergate]. It would be completely indecent for me to refer to it. [...] My attitude toward Mr. Nixon is of very great respect." When one reporter suggested that President Nixon and his position with Brezhnev were "weakened" by the scandal, Brezhnev replied, "It does not enter my mind to think whether Mr. Nixon has lost or gained any influence because of the affair." Then he said further that he had respected Nixon because of Nixon's "realistic and constructive approach to Soviet Union–United States relations [...] passing from an era of confrontation to an era of negotiations between nations." 

 – Talks between Nixon and Prime Minister Edward Heath may have been bugged. Heath did not publicly display his anger, with aides saying that he was unconcerned about having been bugged at the White House. According to officials, Heath commonly had notes taken of his public discussions with Nixon so a recording would not have bothered him. However, officials privately said that if private talks with Nixon were bugged, then Heath would be outraged. Even so, Heath privately was outraged over being taped without his prior knowledge. 

 – In May 1975, after the fall of Saigon ended the Vietnam War, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said if the scandal had not caused Nixon to resign, and the Congress did not override Nixon's veto of the War Powers Resolution, North Vietnam would not have captured South Vietnam. 

Others 

In January 1975, publisher of The Sacramento Union John P. McGoff said that the media overemphasized the scandal, although "an important issue," overshadowing more serious topics, like declining economy and the energy crisis.

Vice President Agnew resigns - Oct 10, 1973 - HISTORY.com
Vice President Agnew resigns
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Less than a year before Richard M. Nixon’s resignation as president of the United States, Spiro Agnew becomes the first U.S. vice president to resign in disgrace. The same day, he pleaded no contest to a charge of federal income tax evasion in exchange for the dropping of charges of political corruption. He was subsequently fined $10,000, sentenced to three years probation, and disbarred by the Maryland court of appeals.
Agnew, a Republican, was elected chief executive of Baltimore County in 1961. In 1967, he became governor of Maryland, an office he held until his nomination as the Republican vice presidential candidate in 1968. During Nixon’s successful campaign, Agnew ran on a tough law-and-order platform, and as vice president he frequently attacked opponents of the Vietnam War and liberals as being disloyal and un-American. Reelected with Nixon in 1972, Agnew resigned on October 10, 1973, after the U.S. Justice Department uncovered widespread evidence of his political corruption, including allegations that his practice of accepting bribes had continued into his tenure as U.S. vice president. He died at the age of 77 on September 17, 1996.
Under the process decreed by the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, President Nixon was instructed to the fill vacant office of vice president by nominating a candidate who then had to be approved by both houses of Congress. Nixon’s appointment of Representative Gerald Ford of Michigan was approved by Congress and, on December 6, Ford was sworn in. He became the 38th president of the United States on August 9, 1974, after the escalating Watergate affair caused Nixon to resign.
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Spiro T. Agnew, Point Man for Nixon Who Resigned Vice Presidency, Dies at 77 - The New York Times
The New York Times
U.S. |Spiro T. Agnew, Point Man for Nixon Who Resigned Vice Presidency, Dies at 77
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Spiro T. Agnew, the tart-tongued political combatant who fired up the American electorate but then had to resign as Richard M. Nixon's Vice President in the face of a kickback scandal, died on Tuesday at the age of 77.
The cause was acute leukemia, which had gone undiagnosed until his death, said officials of Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin, Md., where Mr. Agnew died within three hours of admission.
A classic practitioner of the hatchet-man role often assigned to Vice Presidents, Mr. Agnew was nationally celebrated by conservatives for his alliterative rallying cries against critics of President Nixon's Vietnam War policy as ''nattering nabobs'' and ''pusillanimous pussyfooters.''
His political demise proved no less sensational. He had to bargain as Vice President with prosecutors to avoid prison and finally pleaded no contest to tax evasion charges in a lucrative statehouse ward-heeling scheme that dated from his public service in Maryland politics but continued to reap payoffs even to his days as Vice President.
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Mr. Agnew's resignation on Oct. 10, 1973, capped a heated, flaring five years on the national scene where he gleefully stirred partisan emotions, from celebration to rancor. A searing crisis of Presidential succession was precipitated by his resignation and that of President Nixon less than a year later in the separate abuse-of-power scandal known as Watergate.
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''Of all those caught up -- on both sides -- in the American tragedy of 1973-1974, Spiro Agnew was one of the good guys,'' said Patrick J. Buchanan, the unsuccessful Republican candidate for President who mourned the disgraced Vice President today for ''raw political courage'' in having served as ''the voice of the silent majority.''
More than two decades removed from the collapse of the Nixon-Agnew incumbency, the national capital today was on a steadier keel, flying most flags, but not all, at half-staff in Mr. Agnew's honor, as some politicians, but not all, spoke well of him in retrospect.
''Spiro Agnew earned the support of millions of his countrymen because he was never afraid to speak out and stand up for America,'' said Bob Dole, the Republican candidate for President.
Former President George Bush said of Mr. Agnew: ''He was a friend. I loved his family.''
In his heyday, Mr. Agnew was bolstered by the confrontational writing skills of such White House speechwriters as Mr. Buchanan, who penned ''pusillanimous pussyfooters'' and ''vicars of vacillation,'' and by William Safire, now a columnist for The New York Times, who crafted ''nattering nabobs of negativism.'' But Mr. Agnew's zest in wielding these denunciations in the cut-and-thrust of politics was all his own, electrifying and polarizing the nation.
One speech in particular, an excoriation of the ''instant analysis'' of political speeches by television anchors, written by Mr. Buchanan, was delivered so effectively by Mr. Agnew that it set off deep debate about responsibility in the news industry that resonates still with voters.
Feelings of Resentment For Political Benefactor
A resourceful man with a cadre of loyal friends in business, politics and show business, Mr. Agnew departed from Washington with special bitterness toward Mr. Nixon who, said, Mr. Agnew, ''naively believed that by throwing me to the wolves, he had appeased his enemies.''
''I felt totally abandoned,'' he said later.
Across the years, he rebuffed eight efforts by Mr. Nixon to talk or meet, Nixon friends said. Mr. Agnew ultimately relented, but only to go to Mr. Nixon's funeral in 1994.
''I decided after 20 years of resentment to put it all aside,'' he said as fellow mourners took note of the signature nattiness and pugnacious smile of the fallen politician. ''The last time I talked to him was the day I resigned.''
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He had been quickly replaced as Vice President by Representative Gerald R. Ford in Mr. Nixon's effort to recover momentum. But the encompassing whirlwind of the Watergate scandal and hearings saw Mr. Nixon follow Mr. Agnew into resignation and disgrace in August 1974, as a White House political plot against the Democrats and subsequent cover-up was painfully brought to light. A national trauma shook political life to its foundations and Jimmy Carter eventually was chosen by the voters in 1976 to replace President Ford.
After resigning, Mr. Agnew, who had a second successful business career as a broker of international deals, insisted that he had never been guilty of accepting bribes in Maryland from state contractors. In 1980, he wrote a book, ''Go Quietly . . . or Else,'' contending that he had accepted only campaign contributions, not bribes.
With his familiar flair of self-confidence back on the scene, he insisted he had been forced to resign by scheming Nixon aides, not by the 40-page specification of charges at his court plea. There, the judge had pointedly reminded Mr. Agnew that his plea of nolo contendere to tax evasion was understood as the ''full equivalent'' of a guilty plea.
Cocky and Combative, Even Amid Legal Woes
As events developed, however, assertions in the book freed Mr. Agnew's former lawyer, George White, from the obligation of lawyer-client privilege and he came forward to testify that Mr. Agnew had not only admitted statehouse bribery to him but also said it had been going on ''for a thousand years.''
A Maryland taxpayers' suit then succeeded in detailing the bribery, chapter and verse. A civil court found in 1981 that Mr. Agnew solicited $147,500 in bribes during 10 years as Baltimore County Executive and Governor, accepting the final $17,500 in discreet envelopes even as he served as Vice President.
A Maryland assistant attorney general, Diana Motz, declared: ''Spiro Agnew used the privilege of his high office for his own purposes. He violated his trust.''
In its rich detail of witnesses and payoff incidents, the suit definitively established the tinhorn nature of the statehouse corruption in Mr. Agnew's tenure. Yet, ever combative, Mr. Agnew tried to use the case seven years later in applying for a tax deduction in California, where he had a home in the affluent town of Rancho Mirage.
He argued that the reimbursement of $268,482 in bribes and interest that he had been forced to make to the State of Maryland entitled him to a deduction. His reasoning was rejected by the tax appeals board in California.
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The self-confident Mr. Agnew, who ascended from school board and county politics to make his name at the Nixon White House, has gone down in Maryland political lore for a stylish, wisecracking, casual cronyism that extended to friends who stocked his home with free food and drink.
''Some of the things he said during his lifetime were extreme and regrettable, but nonetheless I mourn his passing,'' said former Senator George McGovern, who was roughed up rhetorically by the Nixon-Agnew ticket in going down to defeat as the Democratic Presidential nominee in 1972. Mr. Agnew, skewering Mr. McGovern's call for peace negotiations in Vietnam, had declared, ''Even Neville Chamberlain did not carry a beggar's cup to Munich -- as George McGovern proposes to carry to Hanoi.''
By then Mr. Agnew was the practiced flash point of the Nixon Administration, a target of charges that he was incendiary and even racist in some of his flinty remarks in which he spoke of ''Polacks'' and a ''fat Jap.''
The single Agnew quotation that lives on in the 16th edition of Bartlett's ''Familiar Quotations'' was uttered in 1968 when Mr. Agnew, a suburban-rooted politician campaigning as the ticket's urban expert, feistily defended his skirting some of the sorrier American scenes by declaring: ''To some extent, if you've seen one city slum you've seen them all.''
Mr. Nixon surprised his party and nation when he plucked Spiro Theodore Agnew from relative political obscurity in Maryland, where he had been Governor for less than two years, and made him his running mate.
''Spiro Who?'' became the nation's instant question. The Washington Post editorialized that there had not been such a surprising political nomination since Caligula appointed his horse as a Consul of Rome. But once Mr. Agnew was fired up on the stump and Mr. Nixon had marched into the White House, their partisans' response came back: ''Spiro Our Hero.''
Nixon biographers have singled out one moment in the Agnew Governorship that attracted the attention of Nixon strategists: the dressing down Mr. Agnew delivered to black civil rights leaders during a spate of urban rioting.
''It is not evil conditions that cause riots, but evil men,'' he declared. The moderate image that had helped Mr. Agnew to election in that heavily Democratic state soon became sharper-edged as he spoke up increasingly for ''law and order'' and insisted that rioting was caused by ''this permissive climate and the misguided compassion of public opinion.''
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At the Republicans' 1968 convention, when national unrest over the Vietnam War and civil protest was a dominant theme, Mr. Agnew was chosen to make the nominating speech for Mr. Nixon. Then he was astonished to find himself installed on the ticket.
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''A bolt from the blue,'' he said.
Mr. Nixon said of his choice: ''He has real depth and genuine warmth.'' He enthusiastically added, ''He has the attributes of a statesman of the first rank.''
In the privacy of the Nixon White House, however, the President's estimate of Mr. Agnew was mocking and dismissive, said John Ehrlichman, who was the President's counsel and domestic affairs adviser. In his 1982 memoir, ''Witness to Power,'' Mr. Ehrlichman described why Mr. Nixon kept Mr. Agnew on the re-election ticket in 1972 even though he despised him as a fool and an idler and would send him off on speaking tours of Indian reservations.
''No assassin in his right mind would kill me,'' President Nixon liked to joke, Mr. Ehrlichman said. ''They know if they did that they would wind up with Agnew!''
From a Zoning Board To the Executive Office
A generation ago, before his fall, Mr. Agnew was rated the third most popular public figure in America, behind President Nixon and the Rev. Billy Graham. He had arrived on the national scene as a political success story, a Greek immigrant's son with a talent for ambitious socializing in politics.
''Ted got into politics through the P.T.A.,'' recalled his wife of 54 years, the former Elinor Isabel Judefind, known as Judy. ''He kind of spread out.''
Well tailored, friendly and attentive to detail, he rose in public service from three years as a party appointee on a local zoning board to four years as elected Baltimore County Executive, chief of the suburb that borders the city of Baltimore, and then the governorship.
He was born in Baltimore on Nov. 9, 1918, and reared in the inner city, but moved out to the suburbs in the post-immigrant wave of successful migration.
A public school graduate, Mr. Agnew entered Johns Hopkins University to major in chemistry but then moved on to night school at the University of Baltimore Law School while he worked as an insurance company clerk by day.
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In 1942, Mr. Agnew began three years of Army service, graduating from Officer Training School and serving as a company commander with the 10th Armored Division. He saw action in four World War II campaigns and earned the Bronze Star. After the war, he completed his law degree and worked in a variety of jobs, finally moving to the suburbs and finding his way into and soon upward in Republican Party politics.
Out Front in Battle To Win Public Opinion
In office, Mr. Agnew quickly built upon his public persona, as the news media covered his controversy-etched speeches as closely as Mr. Nixon's. He derided war protesters as ''an effete corps of impudent snobs,'' and television commentators as ''a tiny fraternity of privileged men elected by no one and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by the government.''
His barbed criticism of news organizations put them on the defensive and in the awkward position of having to report news about themselves and, Mr. Agnew's partisans maintained, even helped prod such changes as wider-ranging editorial pages and columnists.
Vice President Agnew assailed The Washington Post and The New York Times, declaring, ''The American people should be made aware of the trend toward the monopolization of the great public information vehicles and the concentration of power over public opinion in fewer and fewer hands.''
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, president and publisher of The Times, responded that Mr. Agnew spoke in error ''when he implies that The New York Times ever sought or enjoyed immunity from comment or criticism.''
The Nixon Administration took comfort as Mr. Agnew scored with parts of the public and heightened his alliterative volleys to near-parody as he denounced ''hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.'' (Years after the Vice President was forced to leave the public stage, Mr. Safire mourned, ''And all alliteration ached.'')
Herbert Klein, the Nixon Administration's director of communications, defended Mr. Agnew's combativeness as a necessary mission ''to explain in a missionary way what Administration policies are and to seek support for them.'' The Vice President ''fills a basic need which the President can't do,'' Mr. Klein added.
With ''God Bless Spiro Agnew'' posters sprouting partisanly across the land, Mr. Agnew did heavy duty in the 1970 off-year elections, attacking Democrats as ''radic-libs'' and even ''ideological eunuchs'' for encouraging protest against the war. Commentators credited him with considerable success as such prominent Democrats as Senator Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee, father of the current Vice President, went down to defeat.
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As controversy rose, so did Mr. Agnew's hopes to succeed President Nixon. But a month after taking the oath for a second term, Mr. Agnew was told that a grand jury in Baltimore was looking into charges about his public service there.
He clung to office for another eight months, delivering speeches on his innocence and his refusal to resign even as his lawyers began plea bargaining in the face of Mr. Agnew's possible imprisonment. With classic Nixonian wording, the White House issued a statement vouching for the President's confidence in Mr. Agnew ''during the period that he has served as Vice President.''
In one of his last speeches while in office, Mr. Agnew presented himself to a Los Angeles audience as outraged. He fairly bellowed: ''I will not resign if indicted! I will not resign if indicted!''
But his effort to limit his accountability to political peers in an impeachment proceeding in Congress failed. With his resignation considered a factor in his plea bargain arrangement, Mr. Agnew finally sent Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger a note of concession: ''I hereby resign the office of Vice President of the United States, effective immediately.''
At that moment, Mr. Agnew was in court in Baltimore, pursued by an army of the very news workers he once delighted in attacking. The deal he bargained spared him indictment on kickback and bribery charges as he accepted the tax evasion plea. The judge ordered three years' probation and a fine of $10,000, and Mr. Agnew disappeared from public view.
He surfaced from time to time in a new life of worldwide business travels and an apparently rich social life with Frank Sinatra and other influential figures in his new California circles. Making influential contacts was his specialty, Mr. Agnew once said. In one business undertaking, Mr. Agnew served as the intermediary in a complex $181 million deal by former Nixon aides to sell uniforms to Saddam Hussein of Iraq. His intermediary role was recommended by Mr. Nixon himself to the supplier of the uniforms, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, the historian Stephen E. Ambrose said.
After Political Demise, A Re-Emergence of Sorts
Twenty-one years after he left Washington in disgrace, Mr. Agnew returned to the Capitol, a quieter man, but still proud as he stood at the unveiling of an addition to the Capitol statuary corridors, a marble bust of the 39th Vice President, Spiro T. Agnew.
''I'm not blind or deaf to the fact that there are critics who feel this is a ceremony that should not take place,'' Mr. Agnew began, offering a wisp of the old scrappiness. But no combative alliteration was forthcoming. He smiled and thanked the sculptor for capturing ''my squinty little eyes and mastodonic nose.''
''Lord God, you are the ultimate judge,'' prayed Senator Mark O. Hatfield, the Oregon Republican whose anti-war legislation was vehemently denounced in its day by Mr. Agnew. Loyal friends in a gathering of 300 privately asked, If Aaron Burr's statue is there, why not Spiro Agnew's?
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Spiro Agnew Biography (U.S. Vice President)
Birthplace: Baltimore, Maryland
Best known as: The 39th vice president of the United States, 1969-73
As Richard Nixon 's vice president, Spiro Theodore Agnew served from 20 January 1969 until 10 October 1973, when he resigned over matters unrelated to the Watergate scandal. Agnew, the son of Greek immigrants, grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, where he began practicing law in 1949. From 1962 to 1969 he served as a county executive in Baltimore before being elected governor in 1967. As Nixon's vice president he was not closely involved in policy decisions, but he was a media favorite for his staunch defense of the Vietnam War and his colorful attacks on war protesters, the press and political dissidents. Agnew's fiery rhetoric became legendary: he famously called the press "nattering nabobs of negativism" and referred to war critics as "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as 'intellectuals.'" After Nixon and Agnew were elected to a second term, Agnew became the focus of an investigation by the U.S. Attorney's office in Maryland for financial irregularities while he held state office. Rather than face trial, Agnew resigned and entered a plea of no contest to charges of evading income tax. He was sentenced to three years probation and fined $10,000. After he left office Agnew avoided publicity and went into business as an international broker. In 1981 he was ordered by a Maryland court to repay more than $248,000 to cover bribes he took while in state office.
Extra credit:
Agnew was the second vice president to resign from office — the first, John C. Calhoun, resigned to take a seat to become a U.S. senator… Nixon chose Gerald Ford to be Agnew’s replacement as vice president… In 1976 Agnew published a novel, The Canfield Decision… Political columnists William Safire and Pat Buchanan used to write speeches for Agnew.
Copyright © 1998-2017   by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved.

Richard M. Nixon | whitehouse.gov
Air Force One
Richard M. Nixon
Richard Nixon was elected the 37th President of the United States (1969-1974) after previously serving as a U.S. Representative and a U.S. Senator from California. After successfully ending American fighting in Vietnam and improving international relations with the U.S.S.R. and China, he became the only President to ever resign the office, as a result of the Watergate scandal.
Reconciliation was the first goal set by President Richard M. Nixon. The Nation was painfully divided, with turbulence in the cities and war overseas. During his Presidency, Nixon succeeded in ending American fighting in Viet Nam and improving relations with the U.S.S.R. and China. But the Watergate scandal brought fresh divisions to the country and ultimately led to his resignation.
His election in 1968 had climaxed a career unusual on two counts: his early success and his comeback after being defeated for President in 1960 and for Governor of California in 1962.
Born in California in 1913, Nixon had a brilliant record at Whittier College and Duke University Law School before beginning the practice of law. In 1940, he married Patricia Ryan; they had two daughters, Patricia (Tricia) and Julie. During World War II, Nixon served as a Navy lieutenant commander in the Pacific.
On leaving the service, he was elected to Congress from his California district. In 1950, he won a Senate seat. Two years later, General Eisenhower selected Nixon, age 39, to be his running mate.
As Vice President, Nixon took on major duties in the Eisenhower Administration. Nominated for President by acclamation in 1960, he lost by a narrow margin to John F. Kennedy. In 1968, he again won his party's nomination, and went on to defeat Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and third-party candidate George C. Wallace.
His accomplishments while in office included revenue sharing, the end of the draft, new anticrime laws, and a broad environmental program. As he had promised, he appointed Justices of conservative philosophy to the Supreme Court. One of the most dramatic events of his first term occurred in 1969, when American astronauts made the first moon landing.
Some of his most acclaimed achievements came in his quest for world stability. During visits in 1972 to Beijing and Moscow, he reduced tensions with China and the U.S.S.R. His summit meetings with Russian leader Leonid I. Brezhnev produced a treaty to limit strategic nuclear weapons. In January 1973, he announced an accord with North Viet Nam to end American involvement in Indochina. In 1974, his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, negotiated disengagement agreements between Israel and its opponents, Egypt and Syria.
In his 1972 bid for office, Nixon defeated Democratic candidate George McGovern by one of the widest margins on record.
Within a few months, his administration was embattled over the so-called "Watergate" scandal, stemming from a break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee during the 1972 campaign. The break-in was traced to officials of the Committee to Re-elect the President. A number of administration officials resigned; some were later convicted of offenses connected with efforts to cover up the affair. Nixon denied any personal involvement, but the courts forced him to yield tape recordings which indicated that he had, in fact, tried to divert the investigation.
As a result of unrelated scandals in Maryland, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned in 1973. Nixon nominated, and Congress approved, House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford as Vice President.
Faced with what seemed almost certain impeachment, Nixon announced on August 8, 1974, that he would resign the next day to begin "that process of healing which is so desperately needed in America."
In his last years, Nixon gained praise as an elder statesman. By the time of his death on April 22, 1994, he had written numerous books on his experiences in public life and on foreign policy.
The Presidential biographies on WhiteHouse.gov are from “The Presidents of the United States of America,” by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey. Copyright 2006 by the White House Historical Association.
For more information about President Nixon, please visit

Spiro Agnew | vice president of United States | Britannica.com
vice president of United States
Written By:
Alternative Titles: Spiro T. Agnew, Spiro Theodore Agnew
Spiro Agnew
Vice president of United States
Also known as
Gerald Ford
Spiro Agnew, in full Spiro Theodore Agnew, also called Spiro T. Agnew (born November 9, 1918, Baltimore , Maryland , U.S.—died September 17, 1996, Berlin, Maryland), 39th vice president of the United States (1969–73) in the Republican administration of President Richard M. Nixon . He was the second person to resign the nation’s second highest office ( John C. Calhoun was the first in 1832) and the first to resign under duress.
Spiro T. Agnew.
© Bettmann/Corbis
Agnew was the son of Theodore Agnew, a Greek-immigrant restaurateur who had shortened his name from Anagnostopoulos, and Margaret Akers, from Virginia . He studied law at the University of Baltimore and began a law practice in a Baltimore suburb in 1947. He was elected Baltimore county executive in 1962 and then governor of Maryland in 1967. During his tenure as governor he established an image as a moderate, securing a graduated income tax, strong antipollution laws, the first open-housing law south of the Mason and Dixon Line , and repeal of the state’s 306-year-old anti- miscegenation law. Although he was little known to the American public at the time of his nomination for the vice presidency in 1968, Agnew won national recognition for speeches in which he denounced Vietnam War protesters and other opponents of the Nixon administration with colourful epithets such as “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.” Agnew was despised by most Democrats and sometimes drew censure even from Republicans, as he did for accusing Vice President Hubert Humphrey , the Democratic Party candidate for president in 1968, of being “soft on communism.”
Agnew’s downfall began in the summer of 1973, when he was investigated in connection with accusations of extortion , bribery , and income-tax violations relating chiefly to his tenure as governor of Maryland. Faced with federal indictments, Agnew fought the charges, arguing that the allegations were false, that a sitting vice president could not be indicted, and that the only way he could be removed from office was by impeachment . After the solicitor general released a brief asserting that sitting vice presidents could be indicted, Agnew launched an attack on the administration and vowed not to resign. With Nixon in danger of impeachment for his role in the Watergate scandal , the administration sought to remove Agnew from the presidential line of succession, and secret plea bargaining took place between Agnew’s lawyers and a federal judge. Agnew resigned the vice presidency on October 10, 1973, and appeared in United States District Court in Baltimore on the same day to plead nolo contendere to a single federal count of failing to report on his income-tax return $29,500 in income that he had received in 1967, while governor of Maryland. Acknowledging that the plea amounted to a felony conviction , Agnew declared that he had resigned in the national interest. He was fined $10,000 and sentenced to three years of unsupervised probation.
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