Who was President during Watergate?

Richard Nixon was the President of the United States during the Watergate scandal, serving from January 20, 1969 until his resignation on August 9, 1974. Nixon was born on January 9, 1913, in Yorba Linda, California, and grew up in nearby Whittier. He served as a Navy supply officer in the Pacific during World War II, then won election to the House of Representatives in 1946 and the Senate in 1950. He gained national prominence as a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he pursued the case against accused Soviet spy Alger Hiss.

Nixon served two terms as Vice President under Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961, then narrowly lost the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy and lost the 1962 California gubernatorial race. After moving to New York and rebuilding his political career, he won the 1968 presidential election by promising to end the Vietnam War with honor and to restore law and order.

As president, Nixon achieved important foreign policy successes, including his 1972 visit to communist China, the first by an American president, and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the Soviet Union. He oversaw the gradual withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam under the policy of Vietnamization and signed the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973. Domestically, Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, signed the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972, and ended the gold standard in August 1971. He was reelected in 1972 by a landslide, carrying 49 states.

The Watergate scandal grew steadily through 1973 and 1974. The discovery of secret White House recordings, the Saturday Night Massacre of October 20, 1973, the indictment of his closest aides, and the unanimous Supreme Court ruling on July 24, 1974 that he must release the tapes left him with no defense. The smoking gun tape from June 23, 1972, released August 5, 1974, showed him ordering the obstruction of the FBI investigation. With certain impeachment by the House and likely conviction by the Senate, Nixon announced his resignation in a televised address on August 8, 1974, and left office at noon the next day. Vice President Gerald Ford pardoned him on September 8, 1974. Nixon died on April 22, 1994, at age 81.