Watergate Burglars Arrested, Sparking Scandal

Context

By 1972 President Richard Nixon was seeking reelection against a divided Democratic Party, with antiwar senator George McGovern emerging as the likely nominee. Nixon’s campaign was directed through the Committee to Re-elect the President, known as CREEP and chaired by former attorney general John Mitchell. The administration had already established a pattern of covert political operations, including the formation of a White House special investigations unit nicknamed the Plumbers after the 1971 leak of the Pentagon Papers.

What Happened

In the early morning hours of June 17, 1972, security guard Frank Wills at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., noticed tape covering the latches of several doors leading to the sixth-floor offices of the Democratic National Committee. Police responded and arrested five men found inside: James W. McCord Jr., the security coordinator for CREEP, and four others—Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, and Frank Sturgis—who had backgrounds in anti-Castro Cuban operations and prior CIA-linked activities. The intruders carried electronic bugging devices, cameras, lock picks, and thousands of dollars in sequentially numbered hundred-dollar bills.

Aftermath

White House press secretary Ron Ziegler quickly characterized the incident as a “third-rate burglary attempt,” while the administration sought to distance itself from the arrested men. Reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post began connecting the burglars to CREEP and to White House consultant E. Howard Hunt and CREEP counsel G. Gordon Liddy, who had overseen the operation. Attempts to contain the FBI investigation, including a June 23 directive from the president relayed through chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, formed the core of an emerging cover-up.

Legacy

The scandal forced Nixon’s resignation on August 9, 1974, the only resignation by a U.S. president. It produced major reforms in campaign finance regulation, strengthened congressional oversight mechanisms, and the Ethics in Government Act creating the independent counsel process. Watergate remains a central case study in the constitutional separation of powers and the role of investigative journalism and the courts in exposing abuses of executive authority.