United States Senate Watergate Committee

United States Senate Watergate Committee

The Senate Watergate Committee was a special committee convened by the United States Senate to investigate the Watergate burglaries and the ensuing Watergate scandal after it was learned that the Watergate burglars had been directed to break into and wiretap the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee by the Committee to Re-elect the President, President Richard Nixon's re-election campaign fund raising organization. The formal, official name of the committee was the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities.

The Committee played a pivotal role in gathering evidence that would lead to the indictment of forty administration officials and the conviction of several of Nixon's aides for obstruction of justice and other crimes. Its revelations prompted the introduction of articles of impeachment against the President in the House of Representatives, which led to Nixon's resignation.

The members of the Senate Watergate Committee were:

Majority party (Dem.) State
Sam J. Ervin, Chairman North Carolina
Daniel K. Inouye Hawaii
Joseph M. Montoya New Mexico
Herman E. Talmadge Georgia
Minority party (Rep.) State
Howard H. Baker, Jr., Ranking Member Tennessee
Edward J. Gurney Florida
Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. Connecticut

The Committee had two chief counsels, Sam Dash and Fred Thompson, who advised the Democratic and Republican members of the committee, respectively. Hearings opened on May 17, 1973, and the Committee issued its seven-volume, 1,250-page report on June 27, 1974, entitled Report on Presidential Campaign Activities.

The members of the Senate Watergate Committee’s staff investigators were:

  • Donald Sanders (Deputy Minority Counsel - Republican)
  • Terry Lenzner, chief investigator
  • Scott Armstrong
  • Robert Muse
  • Marc Lackritz
  • Gordon L. Freedman

Read more about United States Senate Watergate Committee:  Hearings

Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, senate, watergate and/or committee:

    “In the United States the whites speak well of the Blacks but think bad about them, whereas the Blacks talk bad and think bad about the whites. Whites fear Blacks, because they have a bad conscience, and Blacks hate whites because they need not have a bad conscience.”
    —Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)

    “An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.”
    —Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)

    “Money is power, and in that government which pays all the public officers of the states will all political power be substantially concentrated.”
    —Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)

    “As the House is designed to provide a reflection of the mood of the moment, the Senate is meant to reflect the continuity of the past—to preserve the delicate balance of justice between the majority’s whims and the minority’s rights.”
    —Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)

    “The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon, and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life-rafts.”
    —Eugene J. McCarthy (b. 1916)

    “Any committee that is the slightest use is composed of people who are too busy to want to sit on it for a second longer than they have to.”
    —Katharine Whitehorn (b. 1926)