15 Figures Who Made Watergate an American Epic
On May 17, 1973, Sen. Sam Ervin, D-N.C., gavelled in the first public hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, better known as the Senate Watergate Committee. The impending result was almost unfathomable.
The months that followed would bring testimony from White House officials and questions from senators on whether „illegal, improper or unethical activities“ had been committed in connection ray ban for sale to President Richard Nixon’s 1972 campaign for re-election. What had started out as a story about a bungled break-in to Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate complex the previous summer eventually ended in the downfall and resignation of President Nixon on Aug. 9, 1974.
Four decades later, we look back at the process that engrossed ray ban sunglasses the country and convulsed Washington with its unwavering characters and cliff-hanging moments.
Here are some of those figures and instances:
Sam Ervin
Unless otherwise noted, all photos taken from archival PBS video of the Senate Watergate hearings.
Sen. Sam J. Ervin Jr. was chairman of the Senate Watergate committee in 1973.
At the start of the television hearings in May of that year, Ervin noted:
If the many allegations made to this date are true, then the burglars who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate were in effect breaking into the home of every citizen of the United States. And if these allegations prove to be true, what they were seeking to steal was not the jewels, money or other precious property of American citizens, but something much more valuable — their most precious raybanforsala heritage: the right to vote in a free election.
Ervin joined the Senate in 1954. As a freshman, he served on a committee charged with studying whether Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., required censure for his anti-Communist investigations. In his 20 years in the Senate, the Harvard-trained statesman became well-known for his constitutional knowledge, according to the U.S. Senate Historical Office. cheap ray ban Ervin retired from the Senate in December 1974. He died April 23, 1985. He was 88.
Howard Baker
Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr., R-Tenn., was vice chairman of the Senate Watergate committee in 1973.
During proceedings, Baker asked a question that would become very well-known in Washington: „What did the president know, and when did he know it?“
Baker served three terms in the U.S. Senate, from 1967 to 1985, and as majority leader for the last four years of his tenure. He was a presidential hopeful for the 1980 Republican nomination, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984, worked as President Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff from 1987 to 1988, served as the U.S. ambassador to Japan from 2001 to 2005 and co-founded the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank in 2007. Baker, now 87, is senior counsel to the law firm of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz.
