This was an abuse of his power and an obstruction of justice.
More grave was a plan hatched with his advisors to tell the CIA to block the FBI's investigation. It would later emerge that the president had arranged for hundreds of thousands in 'hush money' to be paid to the burglars. Pictured: President Richard Nixon speaks in 1973, a year before he resignedĪ few months later the American people handed him a landslide election victory. In August, Nixon held a news conference in which he denied that his staff were involved in the break-in. The police caught them red handed with equipment to install a new microphone in the office.Īt first it was unclear that the burglars had any connection to Nixon, but suspicions were raised when a phone number for the president's re-election committee was found in their possession.
They stole secret dossiers and wiretapped the phones.īut these bugs failed to work and a month later burglars went back to the building but were noticed by security. In May 1972, members of Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President (mockingly referred to as CREEP) broke into the Democratic National Committee's Watergate headquarters in Washington D.C. Richard Nixon was running for re-election while the US was still embroiled in the Vietnam War and his team were convinced they needed to fight an aggressive campaign to win. The backdrop of the Watergate scandal was the fiercely contested 1972 presidential election. The scandal ultimately led to Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974. The Watergate building was at the centre of the 1972 Watergate scandal, in which President Richard Nixon's administration was caught breaking in to the building which served as the Democratic National Committee. The study found there are 8,309 homeless individuals in the area, with the total being below 10,000 for a third year in a row. Shannon Clark of Remora House DC said: 'We want to make sure that camp residents are safe and they're not being harassed and that police aren't going to move in and throw their stuff away without us being able to help and support them.'Īccording to a recent report by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, homelessness in the region is at its lowest rate since the District began counting in 2001. The group has said it plans to watch over the residents and hopes to protect them from future eviction. Pictured: Tents across the street from Watergate Hotel (pictured in the background) in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Sunday, June 13, 2021Īs the debate continues, Remora House DC - an organization that provides essentials to homeless individuals - has been giving residents of the camps supplies, food and water since Monday. 'Unfortunately, with this pressure, time is working against me now,' Bailey said. with the city and community partners but has no imminent plans to remove existing encampments.”īailey has asked for a two-month extension to help move encampment residents, but said earlier this week that she was yet to hear from the USPP, adding that she was working on a voucher program that could get them re-housed. The National Park Service has since backed off, telling DCist/WAMU that it “engaged in conversations about encampments in national parks in D.C. 'There is ample evidence that these encampments are a danger to the community, bringing with them excess refuse, human excrement and other bodily fluids, heated domestic disputes, drug abuse, weapons, and an inability to enjoy resources and green space under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service,' the letter read.ĬDC Covid-19 guidelines recommend that people be allowed to stay unsheltered or in encampments if other housing options are unavailableīailey said she received an email from the USPP's chief of staff saying 'we have a plan to move on Burke shortly after July 4th' and that while she understands local concerns over the camps, she said she agreed with 25 other commissioners who expressed to the DC council that removing the camps would not solve the issue of homelessness in the area. Neighbors near 12th Street and Massachusetts Avenue in the northwest section of the city have written to the United States Park Police (USPP), asking that it clears camps from Burke Park, Gompers Park and 9th and Massachusetts.Ĭiting public safety, they asked officers to enforce rules by preventing the camps from growing any further on federal properties.
are among many that sprung up in cities during the coronavirus pandemic, leading to debates over how to tackle the growing issue. Washington homeless encampments in the shadow of the Watergate complex will remain - at least for now - amid an intense battle between locals angry about health dangers and dipping quality of life, and activists concerned about displacing camp residents.