The Watergate Break-In
The Watergate break-in was one of the most famous burglaries of all time, for all the wrong reasons. There wasn’t one break-in, there were at least two. They were part of a campaign of what their protagonists considered were dirty tricks, which included felony burglary, illegal wiretaps, defamation of character, the planting of false stories later denied to embarrass political enemies, and much more as the whole thing unraveled. The entire plan was approved by John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell, with knowledge of the plan held by White House Counsel John Dean, by April 1972. The first entry into the Watergate complex was scheduled for May.
In May a successful break-in (successful in that it wasn’t immediately discovered) allowed for illegal wiretaps to be placed on two telephones. However one of the taps did not work properly and a second burglary was planned to repair or replace the device. During this burglary, the men were caught inside the complex and the Nixon administration moved quickly to gain the upper hand over the investigation. Whether Nixon knew of the burglary in advance has never been established with certainty, but there is anecdotal evidence that he did not. One of his initial responses, when informed of the burglary, was to ask who had ordered the operation, at least according to Haldeman.
Within hours of learning of the burglars being in custody Nixon suggested setting up a fund through his friend, Bebe Rebozo, and using campaigns contributions routed through the fund to provide for the burglars’ defense. Several payments went through Mexican banks from CRP coffers to the burglars. It is possible that some of these funds were payments for the continued silence of the burglars over the subject of how high up the chain of command knowledge of the CRP activities was known, in other words, blackmail. The media response was tepid other than that of The Washington Post, The New York Times, and to some extent TIME Magazine.
One of the immediate defenses of the Nixon administration was to attack the media, using both the President’s Press Secretary Ron Ziegler and the Vice President, Spiro Agnew, to condemn the coverage that was there. The Attorney General, John Mitchell also condemned the coverage and The Washington Post was banned from the White House. These attacks were largely successful, and polls showed the public’s distrust of the press rose to levels of around 40% before the election, in which Nixon won a second term in a landslide. It wasn’t until after the election when knowledge of the various financial and other irregularities began to emerge on a daily basis, that the scandal gained traction.
The Watergate burglars were convicted, arrested and sentenced to prison in early 1973. The sentencing judge, John Sirica, tried to pressure E. Howard Hunt and two more of the burglars into trying to make a deal for information by sentencing them to 40 years in prison. Spiro Agnew came under investigation for accepting bribes and kickbacks as Governor of Maryland, and though it had nothing to do with Watergate, it added to the sense of scandal surrounding the entire Nixon administration. One by one Nixon’s associates and aides were implicated in the ever-widening scandal, indicted, convicted, and sent to prison.