Watergate vs. Iran-Contra: A Comparison of Two Scandals

This became known more popularly as "the diversion" (North, 6). This diversion was a direct slap in the face of the Bolland amendment, an "iron clad congressional ban on such support." (Timberg, 415). The party began to crumble on election day, 1986, when a Beirut magazine titled Al-Shiraa published a story about the arm sales (North, 6). Under much pressure for answers from the media and the public, the President gave a news conference on November 25th. There, President Reagan and Attorney General Meese confessed the arm sales to Iran and revealed the "diversion" for the first time to the public (Cohen, 13). This led to a congressional investigation and eventually to the investigation led by independent counsel Walsh.
             B. Events Leading to the Investigation of Watergate .
             On the 17th of June, 1972, police officers in Washington D.C., caught people burglarizing the DNC Headquarters. Of the five men that were arrested, they all were said to have had ties to the CIA (Knappman, 11). James McCord, one of the burglars was found to be employed by President Nixon's Committee for the Re-election of the President. The police also found a check on one of the burglars, signed by E. Howard Hunt: a former white house consultant (Knappman, 11). This connection to the President essentially is what sparked the investigation. For a moment, I must make some other events clearer before going back to the break in. The first is that President Nixon was determined not to have a close election in 1992, and he was willing to do just about anything to achieve it (Ervin, 3). In order to achieve this goal, the President established two committees: The Committee to Re-elect the President and the Finance Committee to Re-elect the President (Ervin, 4). These committees together were known as the CRP or CREEP (Ervin, 4). While raising 60 million dollars for the Nixon campaign, CREEP was also involved in deviant activities to hurt Nixon's opponents, and thus enhance the President's re-election hopes.