It seems to follow that where there are politicians, there is scandal. It either follows them around or they have an uncanny knack of attracting it. I mean, think over your personal career so far. How many times have you accidentally accepted a huge bribe stuffed into a brown envelope? Or slept with someone who was also sleeping with your worst enemy? It just doesn’t happen very often outside the world of politics. But as soon as you start work in Washington or Westminster, it seems that your first scandal is waiting to break. Find out some of the most dramatic moments in international politics with our Top 10 Political Scandals.
10. Thomas Jefferson’s Illegitimate Children
Let’s start with a good, old-fashioned sex scandal. This concerns President Thomas Jefferson, who held office between 1801 and 1809 and may have had a long-running romance with his slave, Sally Hemmings. Questions were raised about the nature of their relationship when Sally’s six, light-skinned children all appeared to bear a startling resemblance to the President (all these children born into slavery were freed by Jefferson’s will after he died). Sally herself was the product of a mixed-race sex scandal, with her father being her master John Wayles, co-incidentally also the father of Jefferson’s wife Martha Wayles Skelton. Martha died when Jefferson was just 38, and the affair with Sally is believed to have started after that.
So, did President Jefferson father six children with his slave and half-sister-in-law? The answer is probably yes, and modern DNA evidence suggests it probably was true. But it didn’t bring down Jefferson’s presidency and he completed two full terms.
9. Sergei Magnitsky’s Death
Look up “Russian Political Scandals” on Wikipedia and you’ll find a list of just three. Is that because Russian politicians are beyond corruption and so everything that happens in and around the Kremlin is whiter-than-white? No. It’s probably because these things are never allowed to leave the secretive and vast Russian terrain. But one story that leaked out was the Magnitsky affair.
Sergei Magnitsky was a tax auditor who discovered a massive fraud, reported it and found himself being arrested for aiding tax evasion. But he never got the chance to protest his innocence because he died before his trial, which still went ahead in his “absence”. The official cause of death – in prison – was untreated pancreatitis, but there was evidence that he’d been beaten and possibly tortured while in prison as well. The investigation into his death was dropped almost as soon as it started, and the effect was that of international outrage at the obvious human rights violations. In December 2012 America passed the Magnitsky Act, which barred anyone involved in the case from entering America and Russia retaliated with their own sanctions. The tensions are still simmering…
8. Nicolas Sarkozy’s Donations
So many political scandals revolve around money – how else do politicians fund their lavish lifestyles? And former French President Nicolas Sarkozy knew the importance of campaign funds, and the best person to obtain them from – the world’s richest woman, L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, estimated to be worth $33.4billion in March 2013. Sarkozy was said to have visited her a number of times while he was seeking re-election (although he maintains it was only once) and persuaded her to part with 4 million euros. The problem here is twofold – that the donations exceeded the limits allowed but, more importantly, that Bettencourt is now senile and Sarkozy is being accused of taking advantage of someone who was unable to make her own decisions. He now faces a possible prison sentence.
7. Woodrow Wilson’s Wife
We’re back to sex and intrigue now, with a question mark hanging over the World War One-era President. It was the short turnaround between wives that raised eyebrows back at the turn of the century – his first wife Ellen Axson Wilson died in August 1914, and he was married again to Edith Bolling Galt Wilson in December 1915. Rumors abounded that Wilson had been cheating on Ellen during their marriage and then further rumors started that Galt and Wilson had conspired together to kill Ellen. The latter seems unlikely – the pair were only introduced in March 1915, more than half a year after Ellen had died. Also, she died of Bright’s Disease which would generally be considered to be natural causes. But facts mean little when it comes to scandal-making…
6. Christian von Boetticher’s Girlfriend
And now for a very modern sex scandal, involving German politician Christian von Boetticher. The 40-year-old was a rising star in the Christian Democratic Union party before news broke that he was involved with a 16-year-old. The affair was strictly legal, as she was just over the age of consent, but left a bad taste in the voters’ mouths, especially once it emerged they’d met on Facebook where von Boetticher was prone to over-sharing his personal life (including confessing to skipping a political debate in order to watch a lunar eclipse). A swift resignation followed.
5. Ronald Reagan’s Arms Deal
As is well established, the United States does not negotiate with terrorists. So, what to do when Iranian terrorists have some of your citizens? That’s the dilemma Reagan faced in 1985 and he solved it with a complex series of maneuvers that seemed designed to cast a smokescreen over the whole affair. Iran had asked to buy weapons from the US, but there was an embargo in place at the time which meant that it would be illegal. But the sale of the arms would secure the release of the hostages, and potentially improve relations with hostile Lebanon, so 1,500 missiles were sent over and some of the money secretly diverted to aiding anti-Communist troops in Nicaragua (I told you this was complex). When the deal was revealed, by not-so-friendly-after-all Lebanon, the question was whether Reagan had traded arms-for-hostages (86% of Americans thought he had) and whether he knew about the Nicaragua diversion (there was no evidence that he did). But it left no lasting damage to his career and he left the Presidency as one of the all-time most popular presidents.
4. Tony Blair’s Dossier
While we’re thinking of Middle East troubles, here’s one about the 2003 Iraq War and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Apparently, the reasons to invade Iraq were compelling – they were harboring weapons of mass destruction, which could be deployed within 45 minutes. The dossier of evidence for invasion was released in September 2002, and the invasion actually happened the following spring. But in May 2003 it emerged that the facts in the dossier had been “sexed-up” to exaggerate the reasons that the UK should intervene in Iraq, and the sources they’d come from were unreliable at best (in 2009 it turned out that the “45 minute” claim came from a taxi driver). The person who unveiled the “sexing up” was Andrew Gilligan of the BBC and his source at the Ministry of Defense was civil servant David Kelly, who was found dead in July 2003, unable to cope with the media scrutiny. It was an ugly affair and forever tainted Tony Blair’s reputation.
3. Bill Clinton’s Sexual Relations
Now, here’s a triumph of semantics over sense. In 1998, in the midst of a sexual harassment scandal involving Paula Jones, President Clinton was asked whether he had had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. His response seemed unambiguous -“I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky”. But Lewinsky’s story didn’t match his, and she had evidence on her side.
Why she kept hold of a semen-stained blue dress, no-one really knew but the stain was proven to be Clinton’s doing. In the following court proceedings, Clinton explained that he didn’t include receiving oral sex as having “sexual relations”, because he was not the “actor” in that scenario. It was a technicality and Clinton was judged to have misled the American people and was consequently impeached- the first president to have been impeached since Andrew Johnson (although Nixon had escaped impeachment only by resigning). Another unpleasant affair for everyone involved.
2. John Profumo’s Lover
A sex scandal is enough to bring any politician down, but add in some Cold War-era tension and a shady Russian naval attaché and you have the makings of a scandal that will go down in history as one of the most embarrassing ever. The year was 1962, the politician was John Profumo, Secretary of State for War and the Russian was Captain Yevgeny Ivanov. Linking the two was call-girl Christine Keeler, who had affairs with both, leading to huge alarm over the potential secrets that might have passed from Profumo to Keeler to Ivanov. Of course, there was denial from Profumo at first and there was a seedy cast of characters that included a suspicious oestopath and the scandal grew to unmanageable proportions, taking down first Profumo, then his Prime Minister Harold MacMillan and finally his party in the elections the following year. A mammoth of a scandal.
1. Richard Nixon’s Cover-Up
But there’s only one scandal which has come to give its name to all other scandals and that is the Watergate Affair of 1972. The break-in at the Watergate Complex (home to the Democratic Party) was apparently done with the permission of President Richard Nixon and it saw him facing criminal charges as he tried to backtrack and cover up the information and wire-tapping. As mentioned above, he was never quite impeached as he resigned before he could be, but it was an effective end to his political career and has ensured that all scandals since have carried the suffix -gate. Momentous indeed.