ABSTRACT
The Watergate scandal began following a break-in by five men tied to the Richard M. Nixon re-election campaign at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex in Washington in June 1972, and the Nixon administration’s subsequent attempt to cover up its involvement. Gerald Ford had known Henry Kissinger since the time he was a speaker at his Harvard seminars in the 1960s and had been treated well; Ford recalled that Kissinger had, in fact, made the visit a very pleasant experience for him, and returned to Harvard for another visit two years later. While Ford had never run for president or vice-president and came into office because of the Nixon resignation, he did run in the 1976 election to remain as president. The two major issues in the 1976 campaign were his pardon of Nixon and an American economy that had been hurt by the Arab oil embargo following the 1973 Middle East War.
