Word: scandal
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Aware that the Watergate scandal was becoming a threat to the presidency itself as well as to Nixon, Garment sought the support of Haig and Kissinger in his attempt to persuade the President that Haldeman and Ehrlichman would have to leave the Administration to save the President. It is not clear whether Kissinger supported the proposal. His global perspective and his concern that a weakened President would lead to international difficulties, however, led him to agree with Garment on another matter...
...Bonn that a tired and discouraged Willy Brandt would soon resign as Chancellor. Yet West Germany, and indeed all of Western Europe, was caught by surprise last week when the 60-year-old leader abruptly announced that he was leaving office. The ostensible cause of his resignation was the scandal that followed last month's arrest of Günter Guillaume, a close personal aide who confessed to being an East German spy. (TIME...
Brandt's reputation for personal integrity is sufficiently strong that he might have been able to weather the scandal by blaming aides who had hired Guillaume despite the warnings of German security police. But that would not have been Willy's way. In a two-paragraph handwritten letter of resignation to President Gustav Heinemann, Brandt declared: "I accept the political responsibility for negligence in connection with the Guillaume espionage affair...
Brandt's resignation confused his followers as much as it grieved them. It was hard for them to believe that he would give up his high office simply because of the spy scandal, even though Guillaume had had access to secret NATO documents and other sensitive matters. There were rumors, given wide circulation by the anti-Brandt newspapers of Axel Springer, that Guillaume had gathered data about indiscretions in Brandt's private life and had attempted to blackmail the Chancellor. One such unsubstantiated story: Brandt in the early 1950s had an affair with an East German woman...
Personal Betrayal. Most experts believe that the spy scandal was the proximate cause rather than the real reason for the resignation. Ever since his electoral triumph in November 1972, when the Social Democrats won 45.8% of the vote and emerged as the Bundestag's largest party for the first time in history, the Chancellor has faced a series of disappointments...