June 17, 1972, 50 years ago: There is a burglary at the offices of the Democratic National Committee, at the Watergate complex on the Potomac River in Washington, D.C.
Built in stages between 1963 and 1971, the Watergate consists of 6 buildings, including 2 office buildings, 1 of them at 2600 Virginia Avenue NW, where the burglary took place. There are also 3 apartment buildings, and a hotel.
Five men are arrested. As it turns out, they were hired by The Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP -- or, to the Democrats, "Creep"), as part of the "Special Investigations Unit," nicknamed the "Plumbers" because they were meant to stop "leaks," information getting out of the White House to the media.
They are:
* Bernard Barker, born in Cuba in 1917, to a Cuban father and a Jewish mother. In World War II, he joined the U.S. Army Air Force, serving as a bombardier on a B-17 bomber. He was shot down, and held as a prisoner of war by the Nazis for 15 months. He returned to Cuba, working for the secret police of dictator Fulgencio Batista, and for the FBI, and for the CIA. When Fidel Castro took over Cuba, Barker participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion that failed to overthrow him.
* Eugenio Martínez, born in Cuba in 1922. He was a real estate agent, and I didn't find a reference to him having participated in the Bay of Pigs.
* James McCord, born in Oklahoma in 1924. Like Barker, he was an Army Air Force bombardier in World War II. Also like Barker, he served with the FBI and the CIA, although not with the pre-Castro Cuban secret police. He appears not to have participated in the Bay of Pigs.
* Frank Sturgis, born in Norfolk, Virginia in 1924, and grew up in Philadelphia. A Marine in World War II, he later returned to Norfolk, and served in the city's police department, quitting when he saw how corrupt it was. He opened a bar that catered to the city's Cuban community. He infiltrated Castro's movement on behalf of the CIA, and claimed to have participated in the Bay of Pigs.
* Virgilio Gonzalez, born in Cuba in 1926. A locksmith, he also joined the anti-Castro movement among Cuban exiles in America. He also participated in the Bay of Pigs.
Sturgis cooperated, served a little over a year in prison, and went on to aid anti-Communist rebels in Africa and Central America. He was the 1st of the burglars to die, in 1993. Barker pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 6 years in prison, served 1, moved to Miami, worked as a city building inspector, and died in 2009. Gonzalez also pleaded guilty, served just 1 year in prison, and moved to Miami, again working as a locksmith, and then as a mechanic. He died in 2014.
McCord cooperated with the investigators more than any of the other burglars, and was sentenced to 1 to 5 years, but was released after just 6 months. He founded a private security firm, and died in 2017. Martínez pleaded guilty, and served 15 months. He turned out to be the last survivor of the burglars, dying on January 30, 2021.
When asked about the crime, Ron Ziegler, White House Press Secretary to President Richard M. Nixon, called it "a third-rate burglary." And, for most of the 1972 Presidential campaign, few people seemed to care about it, and Nixon went on to win re-election in a landslide.
Two men who definitely cared about it were the reporters that The Washington Post sent to cover the story before anybody realized how big it would become: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Advised by a man he initially identified only with the code name "Deep Throat" (after a recent pornographic movie), later identified as high-ranking FBI official Mark Felt, Woodward chose to "follow the money."
He and Bernstein got closer and closer, until the tide began to turn against Nixon. On April 30, 1973, Nixon fired his White House Chief of Staff, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman; his Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs, John Ehrlichman; his White House Counsel, John Dean; and his Attorney General, Richard Kleindienst. He thought that this would stop the bleeding.
It didn't. The U.S. Senate began hearings into what was being called "The Watergate Matter" on May 17, chaired by Sam Ervin, a Democrat from North Carolina. On that first day, Howard Baker, a Republican from Tennessee, asked the key question about the burglary: "What did the President know, and when did he know it?"
A key to the answer was provided on July 17. Alexander Butterfield, then the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), but previously a Deputy White House Chief of Staff, testified that he had installed a tape-recording system in the Oval Office at the White House.
The tapes could prove Nixon's guilt. Or, they could prove his innocence. Or, they could provide reasonable doubt as to his guilt. They could prove that he didn't know about the burglary beforehand, or that he was presented with the idea and approved it, or that he even thought it up himself and ordered it. Or, they could prove absolutely nothing.
If Nixon were innocent of any crime connected to Watergate, he would have released all the tapes immediately. Instead, he did everything possible to stop the Special Prosecutor investigating the case, Archibald Cox, from getting his hands on them.
On October 20, he told his new Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, the man who had hired Cox and had the power to fire him, to fire him. Richardson refused, because he thought it would spark a Constitutional crisis. Nixon said do it or you're fired. Richardson did the honorable thing, and resigned his post.
So Nixon went to the next man in line, Richardson's Deputy Attorney General, William Ruckelshaus. He told Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. He refused. Nixon said do it or you're fired. Ruckelshaus still refused, but did not resign. Nixon fired him. So with the top 2 men in the U.S. Department of Justice now gone, Nixon went to the Number 3 man, the Solicitor General, Robert Bork, and told him to fire Cox. He did.
Word quickly got out, and the Washington press corps quickly dubbed these events "The Saturday Night Massacre." People woke up the next morning to bold headlines in their Sunday papers. The Sunday morning news shows -- NBC's Meet the Press, CBS' Face the Nation, and ABC's Issues and Answers (the predecessor program to This Week) -- talked about nothing else.
The pressure on Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against Nixon vastly increased. Within days, Nixon realized what a blunder he has committed, and told Bork to appoint a new Special Prosecutor. That man would be Leon Jaworski. He kept pushing, and on August 5, 1974 -- 9 days after the House Judiciary Committee approved 3 Articles of Impeachment against Nixon -- the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously granted his request to order Nixon to turn over the tapes.
One tape became known as the "Smoking Gun," because it revealed that, on June 23, 1972, just 6 days after the break-in, Nixon told Haldeman to tell the FBI to drop its investigation of the break-in, due to the CIA being involved. That was obstruction of justice, one of the charges in the Articles of Impeachment.
Nixon's guilt was now beyond doubt. On August 7, the Republican leaders of Congress -- showing more love of country than their 2019 counterparts would when it was proven that Donald Trump was a criminal President -- went to see Nixon at the White House, and told him they couldn't prevent his impeachment by the full House of Representatives, and they couldn't stop his conviction and removal from office by the Senate.
The evening of the next day, Nixon announced he would resign the Presidency the next day. He did, the 1st President ever to do so, and still the only one.
There are so many weird things about Watergate, and its aftermath. The Chairman of the Republican National Committee at the time of the break-in was Bob Dole, then also a Senator from Kansas. Eventually, he would move into the Watergate apartments, and run for President himself, 3 times, winning his Party's nomination in 1996, losing to Bill Clinton.
In 1998, Clinton was impeached, although he was acquitted, the result of a sex scandal with a former White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. When the scandal broke, she was living at the Watergate apartments.
Watergate Complex (left) and Kennedy Center
The Watergate complex is practically next-door to the John F. Kennedy Center for the performing arts. Kennedy and Nixon are linked in so many ways, so it's not that surprising that JFK's official D.C. memorial and Nixon's unofficial one are next-door to each other.
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