Watergate Scandal - Watergate case

On June 17th, in the middle of the 1972 US presidential election campaign, a group (7 people) organized by the Nixon Reelection Committee (Republican Party) broke into the Watergate Building in Washington DC, where the Democratic Party's election headquarters was located, and attempted to plant listening devices, but was discovered by a security guard while they were working, and the attempt failed. The group was arrested and indicted. This incident triggered great chaos in American politics for over two years, and finally, on August 9th 1974, the incident that forced President Nixon to resign, just before he was effectively impeached by Congress.

For the first ten days, the incident seemed to end with the suspects arrested for the building break-in and their direct superiors being charged, but gradually it took on the appearance of a power struggle within the system. First, in the trial testimony of James McCord, one of the arrested "Watergate Seven," it was revealed that Republican Presidential Re-election Chairman Mitchell (former Attorney General) and Nixon aides Ehrlichman and Holdman were also directly involved, leading to their resignations. Presidential Counsel Dean and Attorney General Kleindienst were also forced to resign, but President Nixon himself explained that he had nothing to do with the incident. However, when the president fired Special Prosecutor Cox and Deputy Attorney General Ruckelhaus, who were appointed to investigate the truth of the incident, and Attorney General Richardson (Attorney General) resigned in dissatisfaction with this, suspicions began to emerge that the president himself, his aides, and most of the key cabinet members were involved in the incident.

In March 1973, ten months after the incident was discovered, Clark Clifford (who had been Secretary of Defense under President Johnson), who had been the most powerful coordinator in postwar American politics and business, publicly demanded President Nixon's resignation. From then on, this incident went far beyond a simple wiretapping crime during an election campaign, and became a fierce political power struggle to remove Nixon from office at all costs. To prevent Vice President Agnew, who was even more unqualified to become president after Nixon's resignation, the plan was to accuse Agnew of petty corruption committed in his home state before he became vice president, and to have President Nixon dismiss Vice President Agnew and appoint Gerald Ford as his successor. Furthermore, in the tapes of conversations in the White House that Nixon submitted to prove that he had nothing to do with the scandal, it was revealed that Nixon had used vulgar language unbecoming of a president and had falsified the tapes, that the president had given Patricia a jewel that had been gifted from a foreign country in his capacity as head of state, that the president himself had evaded taxes, and other facts that would never have been discovered without the cooperation of the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI, the CIA, and others, were one after another exposed by the mass media, steadily accelerating the movement to oust Nixon. This was clearly an expression of the internal struggle within the powers that be over the political line, under the pretext of Watergate, and as long as Nixon resigned, it didn't matter what the means were, whether it was impeachment or voluntary resignation. In that sense, this incident was an almost unprecedented challenge to the White House by the mainstream of politics and business. The highly publicized roles of the two Washington Post reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who meticulously investigated and exposed the details of the incident, and the House Judiciary Committee's pursuit of the president's impeachment, were actually only secondary roles that furthered this general trend.

The true motives behind the Watergate scandal were (1) the fact that the Nixon administration had not withdrawn from Vietnam even after the Paris Accords on Vietnam Peace (January 1973) and wasted huge sums of money on maintaining the Saigon regime, (2) the collapse of the international monetary system (the Bretton Woods system) and the destruction of the credibility and value of the dollar, and (3) the deterioration of relations with Western European countries and Japan, the linchpins of the global capitalist system, by placing too much emphasis on "détente" with the former Soviet Union and China. However, the fact that the forces that forced Nixon's resignation did not have clear alternatives prepared for these issues suggests the complexity of this incident.

[Rikui Saburo]

"The Watergate Legacy" edited by The Washington Post and translated by Ichiro Saita (1975, Misuzu Shobo) " ▽ "All the President's Men" by B. Woodward and C. Bernstein, translated by Shinpei Tokiwa (Bunshun Bunko)

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

1972年アメリカ大統領選挙戦さなかの6月17日、ニクソン再選委員会（共和党）の組織した一味（7名）が、民主党選挙対策本部のあるワシントンDCのウォーターゲート・ビルに侵入し、盗聴器を仕掛けようとしてその作業中にガードマンに発見されて未遂に終わり、逮捕されて起訴され、これが契機となって2年余にわたってアメリカ政界を大混乱に巻き込み、ついに74年8月9日、議会による事実上の弾劾直前になってニクソン大統領を辞任に追い込んだ事件。

　事件は当初10日間は、ビル侵入で逮捕された被疑者およびその直接上司が告発されるだけで終わるかにみえたが、しだいに体制内の権力闘争の様相を濃くしていった。まず、逮捕された「ウォーターゲート・セブン」のうちジェームス・マッコードの裁判証言で、ミッチェル共和党大統領再選委員長（前司法長官）、ニクソン側近のアーリクマン、ホールドマン両補佐官も直接関与していたことが明らかにされて辞任、またディーン大統領法律顧問、クラインディーンスト司法長官も辞任に追い込まれたが、ニクソン大統領自身は事件に無関係だったと釈明した。だが、事件の真相究明のため任命されたコックス特別検察官、ラッケルハウズ司法次官を大統領が解任し、これを不満とするリチャードソン司法長官（検事総長）が辞任したころから、大統領自身とその側近、主要閣僚の大半が事件にかかわってきた疑惑が出てきた。

　事件発覚から10か月目の1973年3月、戦後アメリカ政財界で最有力な調整役を務めてきたクラーク・クリフォード（ジョンソン大統領時代に一時は国防長官）が公然とニクソン大統領の辞任を要求。以後この事件は、単に選挙戦での盗聴犯罪の域をはるかに越えて、なんとしてでもニクソンを大統領から引きずり下ろすためのすさまじい政治権力闘争と化するに至る。そのための筋立てとして、ニクソン辞任によっていっそう不適格なアグニュー副大統領が大統領に昇格するのを防ぐため、アグニューが副大統領就任以前に出身州で犯したささいな汚職を告発して、ニクソン大統領に副大統領アグニューを解任させて、ジェラルド・フォードを後任に任命させる手が打たれる。そのうえで、ニクソンが事件に無関係であることを証明しようとして提出したホワイトハウス内の会話録音テープで、ニクソンが大統領にあるまじき下品なことばを使っていたり、テープに作為していた事実や、大統領が元首の資格で外国から贈与された宝石をパトリシア夫人に贈った事実、大統領自身の脱税の事実そのほか、当時オルソップ記者が書いたように、内国歳入局、FBI、CIAなどが協力しなければ絶対にわからないような事実が次々にマス・メディアに暴露されて、ニクソン追放の大勢を着々と加速させていった。これは明らかに、ウォーターゲートを名目とする、政治路線をめぐる権力内部の抗争の発現であり、ニクソンが辞めさえすれば、弾劾であれ自発的辞任であれ、その手段はどうでもよかったのである。その意味ではこの事件は、アメリカ政治史上でもほとんど先例のない大統領府への政財界主流の挑戦であった。事件の内容を丹念に追及・暴露していったワシントン・ポスト紙の2人の記者カール・バーンスタイン、ボブ・ウッドワードの大きく注目された役割や、下院司法委員会の大統領弾劾への追及劇などは、実はこの大勢を助長するために負わされた副次的役割にすぎなかった。

　ウォーターゲート事件の背景に隠された真の動機は何であったかといえば、(1)ベトナム和平に関するパリ協定（1973年1月）以降もなおニクソン政権がベトナムから手を引かず、サイゴン政権維持に巨額を浪費していたこと、(2)国際通貨体制（ブレトン・ウッズ体制）を崩壊させ、ドルの信用と価値をだいなしにしたこと、(3)旧ソ連・中国との「デタント」を重視するあまり、世界資本主義体制のかなめとしての西欧諸国・日本との関係を悪化させたこと、などであった。しかし、ニクソンを辞任させた勢力の側にも、これらについて明確な対案が用意されていたわけでないことは、この事件の複雑さを暗示している。

［陸井三郎］

『ワシントン・ポスト編、齋田一路訳『ウォーターゲートの遺産』（1975・みすず書房）』▽『B・ウッドワード、C・バーンスタイン著、常盤新平訳『大統領の陰謀』（文春文庫）』

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