Nixon operatives break into Democratic National Committee headquarters at Watergate complex for the first time 50 years ago #OnThisDay #OTD (May 28 1972)

1970s, U.S. Presidents, Watergate


Video: 'WATERGATE AFFAIR BBC DOKUMENTATION 1994' (First Watergate break-in at 40:15)

(Sunday, May 28, 1972, late evening EDT; during the Watergate scandal) — Operatives from President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign, the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP), broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., tonight and installed bugging equipment to monitor the party’s activities in the months leading up to the presidential election later that year.

The plot had been devised by former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy, a leader of the White House “plumbers” unit set up to plug information leaks and a strategist for Nixon’s reelection campaign, and engineered with former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt.

As Liddy and Hunt waited in the Howard Johnson’s motel across the street, James W. McCord Jr., a Nixon campaign security official, and four Cuban expatriates — Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, who was the photographer, and Frank Sturgis — went in, planted telephone bugs, photographed documents and got away cleanly.

Video: 'PBS Nixon (1990)_2of3' (May 28, 1972, at 53:18)

Two other Cuban expatriates — Felipe de Diego and Reinaldo Pico — stood guard; de Diego, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, did in fact run into Watergate security but was just taken out of the building without any further investigation.

Tonight’s successful break-in followed two failed attempts on the nights of May 26 and May 27, 1972. The first attempt failed because the planners of the operation did not know of the presence of security guards on the way to the Democrats’ offices. The second attempt had to be called off because team could not open the door to the committee’s headquarters.

When it became clear that the “bug” on DNC Chair O’Brien was not working, the men would break in again three weeks later and be caught. The botched June 17, 1972, burglary would mark the official beginning of the Watergate Scandal that would eventually lead to Nixon’s resignation as President of the United States.