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Five Men, One Tape, and the Break-In That Broke a Presidency
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
On the night of June 16, 1972, five men with CIA ties and White House backing slipped into the Watergate complex — and a piece of tape left on a door latch began the unraveling of Richard Nixon's presidency. This is the botched break-in, the secret Plumbers unit, and the amateur mistakes that no cover-up could contain.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
It's late on the night of June sixteenth, nineteen seventy-two. A team of five men is moving through the Watergate complex in Washington D.C.
To understand who these men were and why they were there, you have to go back about a year earlier. In June of nineteen seventy-one, the New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers.
Nixon maintained a formal enemies list. Political opponents, journalists, academics, and public figures he considered threats were placed on it.
The target in June of nineteen seventy-two was the Democratic National Committee headquarters, located inside the Watergate office complex. The Plumbers wanted to photograph documents and check on listening devices already planted from an earlier visit.
Washington Metropolitan Police arrived in plain clothes. They found five men inside the DNC offices: Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Frank Sturgis, Eugenio Martinez, and James McCord.
Two reporters at the Post were assigned to follow up. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were not the paper's most senior journalists.
By the summer of nineteen seventy-three, the Senate had established the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, better known as the Senate Watergate Committee. Televised hearings began, and the country watched.
The special prosecutor investigating Watergate was Archibald Cox. He had subpoenaed the tapes.
Nixon's position throughout all of this was that he had not been involved in the cover-up. He had not authorized obstruction.
On the evening of August eighth, nineteen seventy-four, Richard Nixon addressed the nation from the Oval Office. He announced that he would resign the presidency the following day.
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