Reporters Bob Woodward (right) and Carl Bernstein, who reported extensively on the Watergate scandal. Watergate burglars arrested, June 17, 1972

Early in the morning on this day in 1972, Frank Wills, a security guard at the Watergate Office Building in northwest Washington, noticed that latches on several stairway doors were taped. He removed the tape only to discover an hour later that they were taped again. Wills called the local police, who arrested five men inside the Democratic National Committee offices.

The intruders — Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker, James McCord, Eugenio Martinez and Frank Sturgis — wore surgical gloves and carried walkie-talkies, cameras and nearly $2,300 in $100 bills. They were charged with breaking and entering and attempted interception of telephone and other communications.


A search of a motel room across the street with a line of sight to the offices turned up an additional $4,200, as well as burglary and electronic bugging tools. FBI agents traced the burglars’ campaign funds had been raised to reelect President Richard Nixon. The equipment they used had been borrowed from the CIA.

On Sept. 15, a grand jury indicted the five men, along with two Nixon campaign aides, Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. It charged them with conspiracy, burglary and violation of federal wiretapping laws.

They were convicted on all charges on Jan. 30, 1973. Their trial followed Nixon’s landslide reelection. John Sirica, the U.S. District Court judge who presided at the trial, had suspected that a broad conspiracy had triggered the break-in. He adopted the controversial tactic of questioning the witnesses himself.

In March 1973, McCord, the reelection committee’s former security chief, wrote Sirica, claiming he had been pressured into entering a guilty plea. He implicated John Mitchell, Nixon’s former attorney general, who had headed the committee.

McCord’s letter escalated the break-in to a political scandal. It eventually caused Nixon to resign on Aug. 9, 1974, making him the only U.S. president to do so. President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon before any judicial proceedings occurred. However, 19 administration and campaign officials served prison sentences of up to 52 months for their part in the Watergate crimes.

Some political scientists have attributed an increased level of cynicism among Americans about politics that persists to this day to the Watergate affair.

SOURCE: “ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN,” BY CARL BERNSTEIN AND BOB WOODWARD, 1974