This Day in History: <br />President Nixon <br />Refuses to Hand Over Tapes January 4, 1974 The tapes were secret <br />recordings that Nixon <br />had made of every <br />conversation in the Oval Office. Their existence had been <br />revealed by Nixon aides — including <br />White House counsel John Dean — during grand <br />jury testimony concerning the Watergate break-in. In 1972, members of Nixon's <br />Committee to Re-Elect the President <br />broke into the Democratic National <br />Committee’s Watergate headquarters. After a security guard <br />on patrol of the offices <br />called the police, the <br />burglars were arrested. Their arrest led <br />to the unraveling of <br />the Watergate scandal. The Senate Watergate <br />Committee soon subpoenaed <br />Nixon's White House tapes. His refusal to hand <br />them over is widely <br />considered the beginning <br />of the end of his presidency. He resigned <br />eight months later.
