May 17, 1973

May 17, 1973 joins two developments in the Watergate story: the scheduled opening of Senate hearings and the publication of reporting that placed the break-in within a wider pattern of White House surveillance and covert activity. The date’s significance lies not in a single disclosure, but in the convergence of a public inquiry with a growing evidentiary record.

The investigations before the hearings

In the week before the hearings, reporters at The Washington Post assembled details they had gathered over several months. Their account connected the Watergate affair to operations reaching back to 1969, including 17 wiretaps and the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office. These incidents formed part of what Deep Throat had described to Bob Woodward as White House vigilante activity.

The developing record also included other uses of government access and investigative power. The Secret Service had forwarded information about a Democratic presidential candidate’s private life to the White House; Senator Eagleton’s health records had reached John Ehrlichman’s office before being leaked to the press; and H. R. Haldeman had personally ordered an FBI investigation of CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr in 1971. The Post’s account presented these episodes together as a campaign of illegal and quasi-legal operations, rather than as isolated incidents.

Money, authorization, and silence

The wider reporting had been preceded by work tracing the funds behind the Watergate espionage operation. The Post reported that principal assistants to John Mitchell controlled money held in a special account at the Committee for the Re-election of the President. More than $300,000 had been earmarked for sensitive political projects; G. Gordon Liddy received money from the fund, records relating to it had been destroyed, and Hugh Sloan’s suspicions about Watergate had led to his resignation.

Sloan later described a chain of authorization that made the funding more consequential than a loose accounting irregularity. Beginning in 1971, when he was approached for money, he called Mitchell at the Justice Department and received instructions to distribute it. Mitchell initially had sole authority over the expenditures; that authority was later shared with others, including Jeb Magruder. Sloan said the activity had seemed minor within a campaign budget exceeding $50 million, but the calls connected campaign spending to decisions made while Mitchell was Attorney General.

The reporting unfolded amid pressure on potential sources. Employees Bernstein approached at home described fear, distress, and reluctance to speak; some reportedly trembled or wept. The committee bookkeeper said that witnesses had already lied to the grand jury and that employees, including Sally Harmony, had concealed information. Sloan described an unwritten expectation to hold ranks and keep the committee together, a formulation that left the implication of dishonesty unstated but clear. This climate helped explain why the account had to be assembled from fragments, cautious disclosures, and records whose destruction was itself part of the story.

A public inquiry and a widening record

The Senate hearings were scheduled to begin on May 17, giving the disclosures an immediate public setting. The Post’s reporting that day expanded the frame beyond the Watergate break-in: the 17 wiretaps and the Ellsberg burglary became additional evidence in a pattern of White House operations. The sequence mattered. A congressional inquiry was beginning as the available account of the underlying conduct was growing broader and more difficult to contain within the explanation of a single burglary.

The book’s chronology subsequently carries that inquiry into a major public disclosure about presidential recordings. The Senate committee moved quickly, and Alexander Butterfield eventually laid out the White House taping system before the committee and the country. That later revelation should not be mistaken for an event on May 17 itself; it shows how the hearings opened a path toward evidence capable of transforming what investigators and the public could know.

Significance of the date

May 17 marks a convergence between investigative reporting and congressional scrutiny. The date’s importance rests on the scale of the pattern made visible: campaign funds, political espionage, surveillance, destroyed records, and the use of government resources appeared as connected strands in a larger account. As the hearings began, the story was no longer only about who had entered the Watergate complex. It was increasingly about how covert actions were financed, authorized, concealed, and investigated.