n the Watergate affair, and defying Judiciary Committee subpoenas. Further Revelations Soon after the Watergate scandal came to light, investigators uncovered a related group of illegal activities: Since 1971 a White House group called the plumbers had been doing whatever was necessary to stop leaks to the press. A grand jury indicted Ehrlichman, White House Special Counsel Charles Colson, and others for organizing a break-in and burglary in 1971 of a psychiatrist's office to obtain damaging material against Daniel Ellsberg, who had publicized classified documents called the Pentagon Papers. Investigators also discovered that the Nixon administration had solicited large sums of money in illegal campaign contributionsused to finance political espionage and to pay more than $500,000 to the Watergate burglarsand that certain administration officials had systematically lied about their involvement in the break-in and cover-up. In addition, White House aides testified that in 1972 they had falsified documents to make it appear that President John F. Kennedy had been involved in the 1963 assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, and had written false and slanderous documents accusing Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of moral improprieties. Nixon's Resignation Throughout this period of revelations, Nixon's support in Congress and popularity nationwide steadily eroded. On August 5, 1974, three tapes revealed that Nixon had, on June 23, 1972, ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation to stop investigating the Watergate break-in. The tapes also showed that Nixon himself had helped to direct the cover-up of the administration's involvement in the affair. Rather than face almost certain impeachment, Nixon resigned on August 9, the first U.S. president to do so. A month later his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him for all crimes he might have committed while in office; Nixon was then immune from federal prosecution. The Watergate scan...
