This Week In National Press Club history: Watergate begins

JUNE 17, 1972: The botched attempt to break into the Democratic National Committee’s office at the Watergate is uncovered. This leads ultimately, after several years of high drama and exposure of widespread criminal activity on the part of President Nixon and his associates, to the only resignation of a president in American history. Bob Woodward, who with fellow Washington Post cub reporter Carl Bernstein, broke and covered the story, will receive the National Press Club’s highest honor, the Fourth Estate Award, in September.

(Woodward, author of 16 non-fiction books including “All The President’s Men,” “demonstrated that journalism could make the world a better place,” said 2012 Club President Theresa Werner this week on the 40th anniversary of the break-in. The Club's 1973 president, Don Larrabee, recalls that during the first Fourth Estate Award dinner for Walter Cronkite that year, he received a note written on a paper napkin indicating that Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox wanted to use the Club’s ballroom the next day for an announcement. That announcement triggered the “Saturday Night Massacre,” in which Richardson resigned as attorney general after refusing to fire Cox. )

June 20, 1991: Boris Yeltsin, newly elected president of the Russian Republic, speaks at a sold-out Club luncheon and reveals that 40 percent of his people live under the official poverty line.

This Week In National Press Club History is brought to you by the History & Heritage Committee, which preserves and revitalizes the Club’s history through displays, events, panel discussions and its oral history project.

For information on Committee activities, or to join the committee, contact Gilbert Klein at [email protected].