WATERGATE SCANDAL: RICHARD NIXON'S IMPEACHMENT

Richard Nixon

Watergate was a major political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s, following a break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. on June 17 1972, and President Richard Nixon’s administration’s attempted cover-up of its involvement. When the conspiracy was discovered and investigated by the U.S. Congress, the Nixon administration’s resistance to its probes led to a constitutional crisis.

The term Watergate, by metonymy, has come to encompass an array of clandestine and often illegal activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration. Those activities included such dirty tricks as bugging the offices of political opponents and people of whom Nixon or his officials were suspicious. Nixon and his close aides also ordered investigations of activist groups and political figures, using the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

More information: Watergate

The scandal led to the discovery of multiple abuses of power by members of the Nixon administration, an impeachment process against the president that led to articles of impeachment, and the resignation of Nixon. The scandal also resulted in the indictment of 69 people, with trials or pleas resulting in 48 being found guilty, many of whom were Nixon’s top administration officials.

The Watergate Hotel

The affair began with the arrest of five men for breaking and entering into the DNC headquarters at the Watergate complex on Saturday, June 17, 1972. The FBI investigated and discovered a connection between cash found on the burglars and a slush fund used by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP), the official organization of Nixon's campaign. In July 1973, evidence mounted against the President’s staff, including testimony provided by former staff members in an investigation conducted by the Senate Watergate Committee. The investigation revealed that President Nixon had a tape-recording system in his offices and that he had recorded many conversations.

After a series of court battles, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the president was obliged to release the tapes to government investigators. The tapes revealed that Nixon had attempted to cover up activities that took place after the break-in, and to use federal officials to deflect the investigation. Facing virtually certain impeachment in the House of Representatives and equally certain conviction by the Senate, Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974, preventing the House from impeaching him. On September 8, 1974, his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him.

The name Watergate and the suffix -gate have since become synonymous with political and non-political scandals in the United States, and some other parts of the world.

More information: The Washington Post

 You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I'm innocent. You've got to believe I'm innocent. 

If you don't, take my job. 

Richard M. Nixon

UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE: REALITY VS. FICTION

Scully and Mulder watching UFO's in Deep Throat

September, 10 1993. 
Washington DC.

In the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Headquarters, special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigate The X Files: marginalized, unsolved cases involving paranormal phenomena. Mulder believes in the existence of aliens and the paranormal while Scully, a medical doctor and a skeptic, is assigned to make scientific analyses of Mulder's discoveries to debunk his work and thus return him to mainstream cases. 

More information: Mental Floss

Autumn 2016.  
Petworth, England. 

Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are investigating some strange lights which appear in the English sky. Mulder believes they are UFO's, Scully believes they are UAV... 

Churchill and De Havilland Queen Bee drone, 1941

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS); which include a UAV, a ground-based controller, and a system of communications between the two. 

The flight of UAVs may operate with various degrees of autonomy: either under remote control by a human operator or autonomously by onboard computers. 

Compared to manned aircraft, UAVs were originally used for missions too dull, dirty or dangerous for humans. While they originated mostly in military applications, their use is rapidly expanding to commercial, scientific, recreational, agricultural, and other applications, such as policing, peacekeeping, and surveillance, product deliveries, aerial photography, agriculture, smuggling, and drone racing. 

In 1849 Austria sent unmanned, bomb-filled balloons to attack Venice. UAV innovations started in the early 1900s and originally focused on providing practice targets for training military personnel. UAV development continued during World War I, when the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company invented a pilotless aerial torpedo that would explode at a preset time. More emerged during World War II, used both to train antiaircraft gunners and to fly attack missions. Nazi Germany produced and used various UAV aircraft during the war.  

Nevertheless, they were little more than remote-controlled airplanes until the Vietnam War. The War of Attrition (1967–1970) featured the introduction of UAVs with reconnaissance cameras into combat in the Middle East. In 1973 the U.S. military officially confirmed that they had been using UAVs in Southeast Asia (Vietnam) and in Yom Kippur War. 

Some UAVs saw service in the 1991 Gulf War. UAVs demonstrated the possibility of cheaper, more capable fighting machines, deployable without risk to aircrews. 

CAPECON was a European Union project to develop UAVs, running from 1 May 2002 to 31 December 2005. In 2013 at least 50 countries used UAVs. 

Here, we have the video which discovers the mystery.

More information: The Nation

 It is already clear that, because of advances in technology, 

drones are going to play an increased role in warfare in the years ahead. It is therefore vital that the legal frameworks governing 

their use are robust and internationally recognised. 

Douglas Alexander