Five Burglars Arrested Breaking into Democratic National Committee Headquarters at Watergate Complex

In the early morning hours of June 17, 1972, Washington D.C. police arrested five men inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex. Security guard Frank Wills had discovered tape over door locks and called police, who caught the burglars preparing to install listening devices. Among those arrested was James W. McCord Jr., security chief for President Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President (mockingly known as CREEP). At their arraignment, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward overheard McCord mention “CIA” in connection with his occupation—the first hint that this was no ordinary burglary.

FBI investigators quickly identified two additional conspirators who had not been caught at the scene: E. Howard Hunt Jr., a former high-ranking CIA officer recently appointed to the White House staff, and G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent working as counsel for CREEP. Of the seven individuals eventually indicted for planning and executing the break-in, six had been employed by the CIA and one was a former FBI agent. Four of the five burglars arrested at the scene—Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, Frank Sturgis, and Virgilio Gonzalez—were formerly active in CIA activities against Fidel Castro in Cuba, creating immediate questions about intelligence agency involvement in domestic political operations.

The break-in represented the culmination of a broader campaign of political sabotage and espionage orchestrated by CREEP against Nixon’s political opponents. The organization used $500,000 in campaign funds to pay legal expenses for the burglars, helping transform what initially appeared to be a third-rate burglary into an explosive political scandal. Within days, President Nixon would order the FBI through channels to suppress its investigation—an act that, when revealed in what became known as the “smoking gun” tape, would prove the President had been part of a criminal cover-up from the very beginning of the scandal that would eventually force his resignation.