Watergate was the American political scandal of 1972 to 1974 that forced President Richard Nixon to resign. It began with a burglary at the Democratic Party's offices in the Watergate complex and grew into a criminal cover-up run from the White House, exposed by the press, Congress, and the courts, and ended with the only resignation of a U.S. president.
The break-in was almost too small to notice: five men caught in an office at two in the morning. The president had nothing to do with ordering it, and he was about to win re-election in a landslide. Yet within two years that clumsy burglary had cost Richard Nixon his presidency. What destroyed him was not the crime. It was the cover-up, and the tapes that proved he ran it.