Video: 'WGN-9 1972 United Flight 553 Crash!!! Chicago Coverage.'

(Friday, December 8, 1972, 2:29 p.m. CST, during the Watergate scandal) — Dorothy Hunt, 52, a CIA employee and the wife of Watergate burglary conspirator, E. Howard Hunt, was killed this afternoon when United Airlines Flight 553 from Washington to Chicago crashed during an aborted landing and go around while approaching Chicago Midway Airport during an ice storm.

Video: 'PBS Nixon (1990)_3of3' (Dec. 8, 1972, at 9:43)

Hunt’s purse, found in the wreckage, contained $10,000 in $100 bills in cash. Later, it would be revealed that she acted as a courier delivering money drawn from secret White House funds, hush money, used to buy the burglars’ silence.

Video: 'Crew confusion | First Crash in the History of Boeing 737 | United Airlines Flight 553'

43 of the 61 aboard the aircraft and two on the ground were killed, including Illinois congressman George W. Collins, CBS News correspondent Michele Clark, and two people in a house at 3722 W. 70th Place.

Video: ''Like a bomb exploded': Survivors recall United Flight 553 as Chicago anniversary nears'

Investigators later concluded that the plane stalled during the landing approach due to pilot error. This was the first fatal accident involving a Boeing 737, which had entered airline service nearly five years earlier in February 1968.