Watergate

Watergate is the political scandal involving illegal activities on the part of the incumbent Republican administration of President Richard M. Nixon during and after the 1972 presidential election campaign. The first inkling of the scandal was the arrests at Democratic Party Headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., of five men who broke into the headquarters - which eventually led to Nixon's resignation in August 1974. So much did the Watergate scandal affect the national and international consciousness that many scandals since then have been labeled with the suffix "-gate."