上海大学英语网上阅读3-7.docxVIP

Read the following articles before answering the corresponding questions.Passage One:Watergate Scandal ?Watergate incident is a U.S. political scandal surrounding the revelation of illegal activities on the part of the incumbent Republican administration of President Richard M. Nixon during the 1972 presidential election campaign.The matter was first brought to public attention by the arrest of five men who, on June 17, 1972, broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate, an office-apartment-hotel complex in Washington, D.C. Within a few days of their arrest at the Watergate, charges of burglary and wiretapping were brought against the five and against E. Howard Hunt, Jr., a former White House aide, and G. Gordon Liddy, general counsel for the Committee for the Re-election of the President. All seven were tried before Judge John J. Sirica, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in January 1973. During the months between their arrest and their trial, President Nixon and his aides had denied that anyone in the administration had been involved, despite persistent press reports to the contrary, especially in The Washington Post.Of the seven, five pleaded guilty and two were convicted by a jury. At sentencing on March 23, 1973, Sirica read a letter from one of the defendants, James W. McCord, Jr., which charged that the White House had been conducting a cover-up to conceal its connection with the break-in. McCord also charged that the seven defendants had been pressured by the White House to plead guilty and remain silent. And, according to McCord, witnesses had perjured themselves during the trial. Before the reconvened grand jury, Jeb Stuart Magruder, assistant to the reelection committee director, former Attorney General John N. Mitchell, changed his earlier testimony, i.e., that the break-in had not been approved by the committee, and said he had perjured himself at the instigation of Mitche