ons on this day were classified as the Saturday night massacre. Public protests and suggestions from his political advisors forced Nixon to turn over the tapes to Sirica. Certain subpoenaed conversations were deficient, and one tape had a mysterious gap of eighteen-and-a-half minutes. Experts analyzed the tapes and concluded that the gap was the result of five separate erasures. Perchance, these erasures removed the information which would have ended the controversy and brought to life the truth of the White Houses involvement in the Watergate scandal. In March 1974, a grand jury indicted Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and four other White House officials for their part in the Watergate cover-up and named President Nixon as an unindited co-conspirator (Colodny, 166). In the subsequent months, Nixon was instructed to, and later did, release transcripts for forty-two more tapes. The conversations revealed Nixons monumental concern with reproving political opponents and thwarting the Watergate investigation. Succeeding investigations have also revealed that the Nixon administration supplicated large sums of money in illegal campaign contributions. The money was put forth to underwrite political espionage in addition to paying more than $500,000 to the Watergate burglars. Also surfaced was, a related group that performed illegal activities for the administration, known as the plumbers (Colodny 377). The group had been doing whatever necessary to stop leaks to the press (Emergy, 269). In an administration where, supposedly, no one is doing any wrong, it does not seem reasonable nor does it seem justifiable to appoint a group that specializes in hiding things from the public. As the Watergate scandal unfolded, the Nixon administration was quick to mitigate the responsibility for the occurrences, however, in actuality, numerous facts and particulars ascertain White House involvement and justify the repercussions. The controversy surrounding t...
