Watergate break-in

The Watergate break-in began as a burglary discovered before dawn on June 17, 1972, and became the opening incident in an expanding investigation of political espionage and its concealment. Five men were caught inside Democratic National Committee headquarters with equipment for surveillance. Their arrest brought the burglary into public view; later reporting connected the intruders to the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CRP), traced the operation’s money and personnel, and exposed disputes over who had authorized it and how far responsibility reached.

The Arrest and the First Report

At nine o’clock on Saturday morning, Bob Woodward was awakened by a call from The Washington Post’s city editor. Five men had been arrested earlier that morning in a burglary at Democratic headquarters, carrying photographic equipment and electronic gear. Woodward was asked to come to the newsroom. The arrest had occurred at 2:30 A.M. The suspects wore business suits and Playtex rubber surgical gloves; police seized a walkie-talkie, forty rolls of unexposed film, two 35-millimeter cameras, lock picks, pen-size tear-gas guns, and bugging devices apparently capable of picking up both telephone and room conversations.

At 3:30 P.M., the five suspects were led into court in dark suits, now without their belts and ties. They sat silently in a row, looking toward the bench and kneading their hands. During the proceedings, James McCord whispered a single identifying word: “CIA.” The Washington Post’s first paragraph reported that one of the five said he was a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, and described the arrest as an elaborate plot to bug Democratic National Committee offices. That formulation established the immediate facts while leaving the larger question unresolved: who had sent the men, and for what purpose?

The answer began to shift the next morning. The national staff at The Washington Post did not ordinarily cover police stories, but Barry Sussman asked Carl Bernstein and Woodward to return on Sunday, June 18, to follow up. An item on the Associated Press wire made the crucial connection: campaign spending reports filed with the government identified McCord as security coordinator for the CRP. The arrest was no longer only a story about men caught with bugging equipment at an opposition headquarters. One of them held a security position in the incumbent president’s campaign organization.

From Burglary to a Larger Operation

Further reporting placed the break-in within a wider intelligence-gathering effort. Alfred C. Baldwin III, a former FBI agent, emerged as a figure who had participated in the operation. Information gathered by the reporters indicated that Democratic headquarters had been under electronic surveillance for about three weeks before the arrests, and that memoranda of intercepted conversations had been transcribed and sent directly to the CRP. Baldwin had also infiltrated the Vietnam Veterans Against the War on McCord’s orders. On September 11, Bernstein and Woodward published a story about the participation of a former FBI agent.

Baldwin’s account gave the surveillance a physical setting and a broader reach. From the Howard Johnson Motor Hotel across the street from the Watergate complex, he had monitored Democrats’ telephone conversations. McCord told him that he would perform similar work at the Democratic convention in Miami. Baldwin said he had been handed a gun belonging to Fred LaRue when hired. He also described an aborted attempt to break into and bug George McGovern’s headquarters: G. Gordon Liddy had suggested shooting out a street light to make entry easier. Baldwin recounted a brief assignment guarding Martha Mitchell and E. Howard Hunt’s arrival at the Howard Johnson at 2:30 A.M. on June 17, as police led five of Hunt’s hirelings away from the Watergate complex.

The evidence pointed beyond the single raid, but it did not make every part of the operation identical or equally deliberate. Deep Throat urged Bob Woodward to investigate what had been called “Offensive Security,” noting that the FBI’s roughly 1,500 interviews suggested investigators had encountered more than one break-in. He described much of the CRP’s intelligence-gathering as routine, while also characterizing parts of it as heavy-handed: information was collected on campaign contributors and on Democratic contributors, whose circumstances could be examined for material useful in applying pressure. His account emphasized that the activity had grown beyond a single burglary and had, in his phrase, “got out of hand.”

Money, Authorization, and Competing Accounts

The developing financial trail connected the operation to a campaign fund. The Washington Post reported that funds for the Watergate espionage operation were controlled by several principal assistants to John Mitchell, former manager of Richard Nixon’s campaign, and held in a special CRP account. Hugh Sloan later described requests for money as routine within a campaign budget exceeding $50 million. When first approached, he called Mitchell at the Justice Department; Mitchell told him to distribute the money. Sloan said such calls had begun in 1971. The account of those transactions supplied a chain of contact and disbursement, though a connection to funds by itself did not settle every question of authorization.

A separate check offered investigators a specific financial lead. Carl Bernstein copied a $25,000 cashier’s check payable to Kenneth H. Dahlberg, dated April 10 and drawn on the First Bank and Trust Co. of Boca Raton, Florida. The check was deposited on April 20 with four Mexican checks, for a total deposit of $114,000. Four days later, Bernard Barker withdrew $25,000; the remaining $89,000 was withdrawn separately. The amounts and dates made the transactions traceable pieces of the inquiry, rather than a complete explanation of who had directed each use of the money.

The question of authorization remained contested as the case approached trial. Two days before proceedings began, Bernstein heard that the Miami men were staying with their families and lawyers in a high-rise apartment house in Arlington, Virginia. One man described the defense they hoped to use: they would say they had been assured the raid was approved by high government officials and were therefore carrying out an authorized mission. The account also disclosed a limit within the defense itself: E. Howard Hunt wanted a unified approach but vehemently opposed any courtroom strategy suggesting that the conspiracy extended beyond the seven defendants.

At the trial, Chief Prosecutor Earl Silbert said he could account for only $50,000 of the $235,000 in presidential campaign funds handed to G. Gordon Liddy in $100 bills. Relying chiefly on statements by Jeb Stuart Magruder and Herbert Porter, Silbert argued that Liddy had received the money for legitimate intelligence-gathering activities, then acted on his own in planning and carrying out the illegal Watergate operation. That account repeated the CRP’s earlier cover story. John Sirica, who had assigned the case to himself, had already put the unresolved issues plainly: what the men intended to do, whether they were paid, who hired them, and who started the operation.

Pressure, Disclosure, and Aftermath

The investigation also exposed the conditions under which information was withheld. Bernstein encountered employees who feared being seen speaking to him: one was trembling and asked him to leave, while another began to cry. The CRP bookkeeper said people had already lied to the grand jury before anyone knew what questions to ask. Sloan later described an unwritten but unmistakable instruction to keep ranks and keep the organization together. His departure was not presented as vindication or triumph; he said he had left because he suspected the worst, and appeared hurt rather than vengeful.

The break-in’s meaning changed decisively when James McCord came forward after the trial. In a letter, he said family members feared for his life if he disclosed what he knew. He alleged that defendants had been pressured to plead guilty and remain silent, that perjury had occurred during the trial, and that other people involved in Watergate had not been identified in testimony. The letter changed the case from an inquiry into the defendants’ conduct into an inquiry into the pressure surrounding their prosecution and the omissions in the account given at trial.

Jeb Stuart Magruder’s later account moved the question of responsibility higher. The Washington Post reported that Magruder said John Mitchell and White House Counsel John Dean had approved and helped plan the bugging operation. That was an attributed claim, not simply a consequence of McCord’s arrest or the campaign-fund records; it supplied a further link in the reporters’ reconstruction of how the operation had been authorized. Deep Throat also described the handling of E. Howard Hunt’s files. He said that, at a June 28 meeting, John Ehrlichman and Dean told L. Patrick Gray the files were political dynamite and should never be seen, and that Gray later said he put them in a burn bag. Gray said he had not been explicitly ordered to destroy them, but understood what Dean and Ehrlichman wanted.

The burglary thus remained both a discrete crime and the point from which a much wider sequence of disclosures could be followed. Five men, surveillance devices, and an arrest at Democratic headquarters were the visible beginning. The reporting that followed connected personnel, funds, prior surveillance, and disputed accounts of authorization; the later allegations of pressure and file destruction showed why the first courtroom explanation could not contain the story. The event’s significance lies in that widening chain, while the competing claims about who directed it and how responsibility extended upward remained matters the investigation had to establish.