Watergate Hearings Televised; Clinton Passes Megan's Law: Today In History

May 17, 2017, is the 137th day of the year, with 228 days remaining. The moon is in a waning gibbous phase, with illumination at 65 percent.

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Watergate: Televised hearings begin

We begin with some context: On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into and illegally wiretapping the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., and one of the suspects, James W. McCord Jr., was revealed as President Richard Nixon’s salaried security coordinator. Two other men with White House were also implicated — E. Howard Hunt Jr., a former White House aide, and G. Gordon Liddy, finance counsel for the Committee for Re-election of the President.

Bob Woodward, who has worked for The Washington Post as a reporter since 1971 and is currently an associate editor for the publication, teamed up with investigative journalist and fellow Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein on much of the original news reporting on the Watergate goings-on. Together, the two revealed a “higher-echelon conspiracy” and a political scandal “of unprecedented magnitude” through information obtained by an initially unnamed whistleblower. Dubbed “Deep Throat,” the source was eventually revealed to be FBI Special Agent William Mark Felt Sr.

How did Mark Felt share information Bob Woodward? Warning: Video contains some mature content.

In 1973, a special Watergate Committee, through the Senate, began televising proceedings on the Watergate affair. Former White House legal counsel John Dean testified that the Watergate break-in had been approved by former Attorney General John Mitchell with the knowledge of chief White House advisers John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman and Nixon had been aware of the cover-up.

Clinton enacts Megan’s Law to notify residents of local sex offenders

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law a federal measure requiring neighborhood notification when sex offenders move into the area. Called Megan’s Law, the legislation’s namesake originated from the 1994 rape and murder of 7-year-old Megan Kanka.

Megan’s Law was enacted as a subsection of the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration of 1994, which had only required sex offenders to register with local law enforcement. As the law currently stands, individual states decide what information will be made available and how it should be disseminated.

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Photo credit: National Archives & Records Administration