Watergate

The Watergate scandal is one of the biggest political scandals in US history. Watergate involved a series of events, but the scandal began with the arrest of five men for breaking and entering the Democratic National Committee's headquarters in the Watergate hotel. The break-in was found to be in connection with people at the top of the government. A thorough investigation of the activities revealed several other unethical activities that were happening in the White House. When tapes of recorded conversations from the White House were discovered, it was revealed that Nixon had known about these events, and he had tried to cover up the burglary. These tapes proved that Nixon had obstructed justice, and he was forced to resign.

I was unable to find any examples of written documents illustrating communication between those involved in the scandal during that time. The main sources of communication were through phone conversations. After reading through some of the transcripts from the tapes, I was able to see some repeating themes. These tapes obviously use different language than a written document would use because a conversation is much more casual. In the transcripts, there were several instances where the person speaking would just sort of trail off and not finish the sentence. They would start a thought and basically leave it to the person on the other end to figure out the rest so that they were not explicitly saying what was going on. Both Nixon and the people he had conversations with obviously knew what they were doing was wrong. They would not have been so secretive in their conversations unless there was something unethical occurring. There were many, many instances of the person saying, “um…” or “uh…” These hesitations again show that Nixon and the people conversing with him knew that had to be careful about what they said. They were obviously trying to cover something. The conversations were very hard to follow because there were a lot of unfinished thoughts.

What I did find interesting, though, was that there were also several instances where they suddenly would use specific names and be much more obvious what they were talking about. In reading the entire transcripts, it is quite obvious what that Nixon was trying to cover up the break-in, but some parts of the conversations were very vague and some were a little more specific. I found this inconsistency to be very interesting. Overall, they used very ambiguous language. In reading the transcripts, it was easy to see how the language was altered because they were trying to hide something. I could not get the audio to work on my computer, but I wish I could listen to the tapes because I feel like their voices and tones would also be a very large indicator that they were trying to hide something they knew was wrong.

I find it very sad that this corruption and scandal was so large. The President is supposed to be a leader for the country, and it is disappointing to see such a huge ethical lapse. It seems like many large ethical lapses come from people who have a lot of power and control. Once people have control, they will do whatever it takes to keep it. It is disappointing to see a strong leader engage in such activities because they set a standard for the nation. In my last post, I discussed the fact that once a small ethical lapse is made, it becomes easier and easier to make more lapses. The many unethical activities involved in Watergate help prove this point. Once someone allows one small ethical lapse, those lapses can lead to larger unethical acts. It is important to act ethically in all situations and not let any unethical act be viewed as something so small that it does not matter. An ethical lapse, no matter how large or small, is unacceptable.