|On August 8, 1974, President Richard Nixon announced his resignation, effective the next day, following damaging new revelations in the Watergate scandal.
One year earlier, on this same date, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew branded as "damned lies" reports he had taken kickbacks from government contracts in Maryland, and vowed not to resign - which he ended up doing. The resignations set the stage for Gerald Ford, first appointed to replace Agnew- and then replacing Nixon, to be America's first un-elected president.
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In this Aug. 9, 1974 file photo, Richard Nixon waves goodbye with a salute to his staff members outside the White House as he boards a helicopter and resigns the presidency on Aug. 9, 1974. He was the first president in American history to resign the nation's highest office. (AP Photo, File)
President Nixon tells a White House news conference, March 15, 1973, that he will not allow his legal counsel, John Dean, to testify on Capitol Hill in the Watergate investigation and challenged the Senate to test him in the Supreme Court. (AP)
This picture, with Gerald Ford seated behind him, shows President Nixon delivering the State of the Union message in January 1974. The following August, Nixon would step down as the 37th president with a 2,026-day term, urging Americans to rally behind Ford. President Ford fully pardoned Nixon one month later. (AP)
President Richard Nixon pounds his fist on the podium as he answers a question during his televised appearance before questioners made up of members of the National Broadcasters Association in Houston, Texas, March 19, 1974. President Nixon declared that dragging out Watergate drags down America. (AP)
Hiding Behind The Camera:
(CBS) In the moments before President Richard Nixon announced his resignation, he ordered almost everyone out of the Oval Office.
"Only the CBS crew now is going to be in this room during this," Nixon said. "Only the crew."
The crew included George Christian, then just 27 years old.
"There were only two people allowed from the crew in the room, and one of them was the cameraman and the other was myself, to make sure things worked," Christian told CBS News correspondent Chip Reid.
His job was crucial but he worried that Nixon would tell him to leave, too.
"I'm standing there with an Afro, bell bottoms and not looking like I'm doing very much, like I just roamed into the room," Christian said.
So he hid behind the camera. It was Christian's first time in the Oval Office.
"I was more than nervous," Christian said. "I was scared to death!"
Christian said he "could sense the embarrassment" when Nixon gave his resignation speech.
The emotion came later -- when he said goodbye to the White House staff.
Christian was in the room when Nixon said his mother was a "saint."
"He talked about his mother and it was, it was sad and I actually felt compassion for him at that moment," Christian said.
Christian, who has covered a lot of big news events in 40 years, says the Nixon resignation ranks at the top.
"I've been fortunate enough to be in places where I would have paid CBS to be there. This was one of them, and I would have paid a lot. And I think a lot of people would have," Christian said. "I had a front row seat. I wasn't sitting though - I was standing, hiding behind a camera."