On Feb. 21, 1972, President Richard Nixon made a historic trip to China, thus reestablishing ties with the Communist regime — ties that had been broken since Mao Tse-tung and his forces took over the Chinese mainland in 1949.

In the November elections that same year, Nixon won a second term by a landslide, beating Democratic Senator George McGovern.

Meanwhile, in-between these two events — in June that year — Republican dirty tricks operators, posing as plumbers were arrested while burglarizing and planting bugs in the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Building in Washington DC. The GOP operatives apparently wanted to make sure — by any means, fair or foul — that Nixon would be reelected, perhaps not satisfied with the brownie points Nixon had gained with his diplomatic tour de force.

The Watergate break-in would spiral into an unmanageable scandal that eventually forced Nixon to resign on Aug. 9, 1974. This was to avoid impeachment — a process that had been initiated by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in early May that same year. The charge against Nixon: obstruction of justice and abuse of power.

It took almost two years from the time of the Watergate break-in and arrests to the start of impeachment hearings against Nixon and three more months before he was forced to resign.

It also took the resignation of top officials of the Department of Justice who refused Nixon’s orders to fire Independent Counsel Archibald Cox (who was investigating the Watergate scandal), and the firing of Cox by the most senior DOJ official left in office after the resignations (referred to as The Saturday Night Massacre).- Businessworld.