POL S 332 (A1)

Fall 2003

Dr. Garber

Video background assignment, All the President’s Men

The film begins with the break-in and attempted bugging in June 1972–in the midst of the Presidential election campaign between the Republican, President Richard Nixon, and the Democrat, Senator George McGovern (South Dakota)–of the Democratic National Committee headquarters by men working for the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CREEP).

The film focuses on how Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (who wrote the wonderful book upon which the film is based) investigate and expose what we now know as the Watergate conspiracy, named after the building that was the scene of the crime. The Post coverage was primarily responsible for putting in motion a series of events that culminated in the resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974, the only President ever to resign.

Besides the Watergate burglars, there are many people whose names come up in the film, mostly White House staff working for the President or campaign staff working for Nixon’s reelection. The important characters are:

•          Spiro Agnew–Vice President, resigned in 1973 after being convicted of tax evasion

•          Dwight Chapin–White House appointments secretary

•          Kenneth Clawson–White House deputy director of communications

•          Charles Colson–White House special counsel

•          Kenneth Dahlberg–CREEP fundraiser

•          Thomas Eagleton–U.S. Senator (Iowa)/McGovern’s Vice Presidential running-mate until it came out that he had electroshock treatments in the 1960s

•          John Ehrlichman–White House domestic policy advisor

•          Gerald Ford–Minority Leader in the House of Representatives, replaced Spiro Agnew as Vice President and became President upon Nixon’s resignation

•          Katharine Graham–Washington Post publisher

•          H.R. Haldeman–the President’s chief of staff

•          E. Howard Hunt–White House consultant and novelist

•          Herbert Kalmbach–the President’s personal lawyer

•          Richard Kleindienst–Attorney General (after John Mitchell)

•          G. Gordon Liddy–former White House aide/lawyer for CREEP

•          Clark MacGregor–CREEP chairman (after John Mitchell)

•          Jeb Stuart Magruder–CREEP deputy director

•          John Mitchell–former Attorney General/Nixon’s campaign manager

•          Bart Porter–CREEP employee

•          Edmund Muskie–U.S. Senator (Maine)/presidential candidate who did not win the Democratic nomination

•          Donald Segretti–CREEP’s coordinator of the “dirty tricks” campaign against Democrats

•          Hugh Sloan–CREEP treasurer

•          Maurice Stans–former Secretary of Commerce/CREEP finance chairman

•          Ron Ziegler–White House press secretary

(over)

Five questions

Except for question #1, these questions address what happened after the events covered in the film:

1) How did the “Canuck letter” end Edmund Muskie’s presidential campaign? 3 points

2) What happened in the Saturday Night Massacre?                                              10 points

3) What was the importance of the case U.S. v. Nixon (1974)?                              10 points

4) How did Congress (House and Senate) investigate Watergate?                        10 points

5) What is one way in which Watergate set the pattern for future political scandals like “Irangate” (the Iran-Contra affair during the Ronald Reagan presidency in the 1980s) and “Monicagate” (the sex scandal involving President Bill Clinton in the 1990s)? 10 points

43 points

Five rules

1) Answer the questions in five doublespaced pages maximum (≈1500 words), plus a list of works cited.

2) Use at least eight different sources in answering these questions. There are plenty of books in the library about Watergate, and tons of material in newspaper websites and other Internet sources (some of it, though, produced by dubious conspiracy theorists on the right and left).

3) You must give credit for everything that you have used in your answers, other than your own ideas, your accumulated wisdom, or common knowledge. "Everything" includes: data, ideas, paraphrases, and exact wording. If you take at least three consecutive (non-trivial) words directly from an author, they must be put in quotation marks and cited. If you paraphrase--that is, restate an author's words in your own words--this material must be indicated with a citation, and the passage must truly be rewritten in your own words. See how to paraphrase, what constitutes common knowledge, etc. at <www.library.ualberta.ca/guides/plagiarism/handouts/index.cfm>.

Assignments lacking proper citations will be treated as plagiarism, depending on the severity of the problem and intent to deceive.

4) Use parenthetical or in-text citations rather than footnotes or endnotes. Simon Fraser University’s Department of Political Science has a good, clear style sheet on both author-date citations and bibliographies <www.sfu.ca/politics/undergrad/essay7.html>.

5) In your list of works cited, Internet sources must be complete, just as with text sources. In A. Harnack and E. Kleppinger’s Online! A Reference Guide to Citing Internet Sources, the chapter “Using MLA Style to Document and Cite Sources” <www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/cite5.html> shows how to list Internet sources, as well as examples (in 5b) of text sources, in your bibliography.

There is information on a very long list of research issues at “Library Research/Writing Guides and Tutorials” <www.library.ualberta.ca/guides/index.cfm>.