Great Richard Grave piece on Huffington Post [1] points out the parallel's between the curret "gate" - Climategate - and the original paranoid right wing break-in that gate rise to the unimaginative, but in this case appropriate suffix.

As Graves points out, Watergate showed the worst side of a paranoid right-wing group clinging desperately to power. They committed a quite famous break-in, got nothing useful for their troubles and then crashed historically trying to cover their tracks.

This "gate" began the same way. We can only hope it ends with similar calamity for the perpetrators.