In a speech broadcast to the American people tonight he vowed to get to the bottom of the matter, saying: "There will be no whitewash at the Whitehouse."

Earlier today he accepted the resignations of four of his closest aides, including Attorney General Richard G Kleindienst.

Resignations were also accepted from chief White House advisers, H R Haldeman and John D Ehrlichman and counsel to the president, John W Dean III.

He said: "America, in its political campaigns, must not again fall into the trap of letting the end, however great that end is, justify the means."

The Democrats immediately demanded the whole Watergate investigation be handed over to an impartial prosecutor and that a special committee of the House be set up to investigate the possibility of presidential involvement in the scandal.

The Watergate Affair began in June 1972, after five men were arrested in the early hours of the morning breaking into the Democratic Party's Watergate headquarters in Washington.

They had with them photographic equipment and bugging devices.

In the ensuing months connections between several of the suspects and one part or another of the Republican power structure were revealed.

In January of this year seven men were convicted of conspiracy, burglary and bugging the Democratic Party's headquarters, two-and-half months after Richard Nixon was re-elected as president of the United States.

But despite continued denials by leading officials in the Nixon administration that Watergate had no connection with the White House, the affair has rumbled on and it seems it still has some way to go before it reaches its conclusion.

	E-mail this story to a friend