Lessons From Watergate #225 By Hank Silverberg We are coming up on a major historical anniversary next week. It was 50 years ago, on June 17, 1972, when a group of burglars broke into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. It started what was then the biggest criminal/political scandal (Watergate Hotel, Courtesy Library of Congress) in U.S. history. It led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon two years later--the result of a massive attempt to cover it all up and subsequent impeachment hearings. It has been described as a major constitutional test in our history, almost to the same degree as the Civil War. Nixon and his minions wanted to hold onto power by manipulating who won the Democratic primaries so that Nixon would face a weak candidate in the general election. It involved a series of dirty tricks against various Democrats. The break-in was supposed