Scandals, Presidential Elections

Harding Through Clinton

The most immediate precursor of the modern presidential scandal was the investigation of “Teapot Dome.” President Warren G. Harding's Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall secretly leased three U.S. Navy strategic petroleum reserve sites to oil companies and received [Page 731]$409,000 in kickbacks for doing so. The Wall Street Journal exposed Fall's activities and the subsequent congressional investigation saw him become the first presidential administration official to receive a prison term. President Harding avoided any adverse electoral effects from this scandal: he died in office in 1923. Perhaps most importantly, Teapot Dome prompted the 1927 Supreme Court decision, McGrain v. Daugherty, which restrained the executive's power to conduct secret activities by providing the House and Senate the power to compel the president's staff and aides to testify before their committees.

The modern presidency recognizes Watergate as a watershed moment for presidential scandal. Watergate had its antecedents in a series of illegal wiretaps and break-ins authorized by President Nixon between 1969 and 1972 to uncover leakers of the Pentagon Papers and information about U.S. bombing in Cambodia. Nixon's Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CREEP), in 1972, broke into the Democratic National Committee's (DNC's) headquarters in the Watergate Apartment Complex to monitor DNC communications. CREEP operatives were caught in the early morning hours of June 17, 1972 attempting to adjust previously installed recording equipment.

The subsequent cover-up and directions by Nixon to squelch investigators' efforts were exposed by the Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and later documented in their book All the President's Men. The scandal resulted in the 1974 obstruction of justice convictions and sentencing for Nixon's Attorney General, Chief of Staff, former chief domestic adviser, and former special counsel. Nixon was impeached by the House of Representatives in July 1974, and, before standing trial in the Senate, resigned from office effective August 9, 1974. He eventually was pardoned by President Gerald Ford in 1975, and faced no prison time for his role in the cover-up. Watergate prompted Congress in 1978 to conclude that the president cannot impartially initiate investigations against himself or members of his administration. The resulting Independent Counsel Act still guides investigation executive misconduct.

The Iran-Contra scandal had its origins in the Reagan administration's support for the Contras, a right-wing rebel group in Nicaragua fighting against the leftist Sandinistas. Although Congress—supported by Reagan—in 1982 banned financial support for the Contras, Reagan's National Security Council contravened this order. It did so not by requesting congressional appropriations, but by selling arms to Iran, a country banned by the Arms Export Control Act from receiving such shipments. The administration calculated that arms sales to Iran would bolster its diplomatic relationship and would provide an incentive for Iran to negotiate with Hizballah for the release of U.S. hostages held by the group. President Reagan approved the shipment of defensive arms and parts to Iran in 1985, the operation was revealed on November 3, 1986 by the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa, and [Page 732]President Reagan confirmed the affair on November 13 during a televised speech.

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