A crack team of ex-CIA and FBI operatives nicknamed the White House ‘plumbers’ were supposed to stop intelligence leaks that could damage Richard Nixon - instead, the bumbling crooks brought down the president.
The trouble started when five burglars in surgical gloves crept into the Democratic National Committee HQ on June 17, 1972, carrying a walkie-talkie, a short-wave police scanner, 40 rolls of unexposed film, electronic bugging devices, and a wad of $100 bills.
An astute 24-year-old night watchman, Frank Wills, noticed a piece of duct tape on the latch of a door and called the police. The rest is pure espionage history.
D.C. police shut down the elevators and searched the Watergate complex office-by-office to ferret out the five criminals: Bernard L. Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, James W. McCord Jr., and Frank Sturgis, who were convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping. What went wrong? As ‘Deep Throat’ FBI agent Mark Felt said: “The truth is, these aren't very bright guys."
The burglars weren’t acting alone, however, and the repercussions ricocheted around the Oval Office for the next two years. Here’s our SPYSCAPE ‘Who’s Who’ guide to all of the president’s men.
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A crack team of ex-CIA and FBI operatives nicknamed the White House ‘plumbers’ were supposed to stop intelligence leaks that could damage Richard Nixon - instead, the bumbling crooks brought down the president.
The trouble started when five burglars in surgical gloves crept into the Democratic National Committee HQ on June 17, 1972, carrying a walkie-talkie, a short-wave police scanner, 40 rolls of unexposed film, electronic bugging devices, and a wad of $100 bills.
An astute 24-year-old night watchman, Frank Wills, noticed a piece of duct tape on the latch of a door and called the police. The rest is pure espionage history.
D.C. police shut down the elevators and searched the Watergate complex office-by-office to ferret out the five criminals: Bernard L. Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, James W. McCord Jr., and Frank Sturgis, who were convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping. What went wrong? As ‘Deep Throat’ FBI agent Mark Felt said: “The truth is, these aren't very bright guys."
The burglars weren’t acting alone, however, and the repercussions ricocheted around the Oval Office for the next two years. Here’s our SPYSCAPE ‘Who’s Who’ guide to all of the president’s men.
The ex-FBI agent and CIA officer was the security director for the Committee to Reelect the President (Creep) when he snuck into the Watergate complex and put duct tape on a lock, setting off explosive events that triggered Nixon’s 1974 resignation. The electronics expert cooperated with prosecutors and served only four months in prison.
Notable quotes: After the break-in, McCord wrote to Nixon aide Jack Caulfield: "If (CIA Director) Richard Helms goes, and if the (Watergate) operation is laid at the CIA's feet, where it does not belong, every tree in the forest will fall. It will be a scorched desert... Just pass the message that if they want it to blow, they are on exactly the right course.”
Eugenio Martinez (1922-2021) born in Cuba
Black Bag Job: Photographer
Cuban exile and Miami-based CIA agent Eugenio ‘Little Muscle’ Martinez supplied intelligence about Cuban exiles and was the only Watergate burglar granted a presidential pardon. The plumbers may have broken into the sixth-floor offices of the Watergate complex, but they signed in at the front desk and had keys, Martinez said, questioning why anyone needed to tape the lock. Was the arrest a set-up?
Notable quotes: Martinez later wrote an article complaining that the break-in was chaotic: “There was no floor plan of the building; no one knew the disposition of the elevators, how many guards there were, or even what time the guards checked the building. [Lock picker Virgilio] Gonzales did not know what kind of door he was supposed to open. There weren’t even any contingency plans.”
Virgilio Gonzalez (1926-2014) born in Cuba
Black Bag Job: Lock picker
A Cuban exile in Miami, Gonzalez was a locksmith who worked with the CIA on the anti-Castro Bay of Pigs invasion. Recruited by CIA spymaster E. Howard Hunt, Gonzalez said he was tricked into believing the break-in would help liberate Cuba. Gonzalez and three other ‘plumbers’ were paid $50,000 each from Nixon’s 1972 campaign fund to settle their civil lawsuit.
Notable quotes: Gonzalez told Judge John Sirica: “I keep feeling about my country and the way people suffer over there… That is the only reason I did my cooperation.”
Bernard L. Barker (1917-2009) born in Cuba
Black Bag Job:Document hunter
Born to an American father, Barker served in the US Army Air Corps in WWII and later with the Cuban secret police. In 1959, he became a CIA contractor in Miami and helped organize the Bay of Pigs invasion with E. Howard Hunt. In 1971, he broke into the office of a psychiatrist counseling Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, and later burglarized the Watergate complex.
Notable quotes: In 1997, Barker told a journalist that he still considered Richard Nixon “one of our best presidents”.
Frank A. Sturgis (1924-1993) born in Norfolk, Virginia
Black Bag Job: Lookout and lock picker
Soldier of fortune Frank Sturgis had ties to the CIA, Mafia, and JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. He worked as Castro's Minister of Gaming (gambling) but switched sides and became anti-Castro. According to Bond of Secrecy, Sturgis (a.k.a. Fred Frank Fiorini, Attila F. Sturgis, Anthony Sturgis, and Edward Joseph Hamilton) also worked with the CIA’s E. Howard Hunt on the Bay of Pigs.
Notable quotes: Sturgis believed Nixon was in physical danger after asking the CIA for files on the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile crisis, and the JFK shooting: “Yes, absolutely. He's lucky he didn't get killed. He's lucky he didn't get assassinated like President Kennedy was assassinated."
THE ORGANIZERS
E. Howard Hunt (1918-2007) born in Hamburg, New York
Blag Bag Job: Organizer
The Ex-CIA operative was one of Nixon’s ‘secret agents’ and a Senior Plumber. His phone number was found in address books belonging to the Watergate burglars, linking the break-in to the Oval Office. “This fellow Hunt,” Nixon muttered, “he knows too damn much.” Hunt was convicted of burglary, conspiracy, and wiretapping. He served 33 months in prison and earned money writing spy novels.
Notable quotes: Hunt told the Senate Watergate committee: “I cannot escape feeling that the country I have served for my entire life and which directed me to carry out the Watergate entry is punishing me for doing the very things it trained and directed me to do.”
G. Gordon Liddy (1930 - 2021) born in Brooklyn, New York
Black Bag Job: Watergate break-in supervisor
Ex-FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy was recruited for Watergate by Jeb Magruder, a White House communications advisor and Watergate plotter who claimed Nixon ordered the break-in. After prison, Liddy rebranded as a conservative talk-show host and Miami Vice actor.
Notable quotes: “I was engaged in two different kinds of work when I was at the White House. One was, in my judgment, legal. It involved national security and not politics, and that was the activities of the Odessa Group (the Plumbers),” Liddy told PBS. “When I was no longer with the Odessa Group and we were engaging in a political campaign and seeking political intelligence, clearly what was done was illegal but not wrong - morally wrong.”
Charles ‘Chuck’ Colson (1931-2012) born in Massachusetts
Black Bag Job: Dirty tricks mastermind
The Boston-born lawyer hired Hunt to spy on Nixon’s opponents and pleaded guilty to obstructing justice in a Watergate-related case involving Pentagon Papers whistleblower Ellsberg. Post-prison, Nixon’s hatchet-man became an evangelical Christian and opened a ministry.
Notable quotes: In a recorded conversation, Colson told Hunt his memoirs would say: “Watergate was brilliantly conceived as an escapade that would divert the Democrats’ attention from the real issues, and therefore permit us to win a landslide that we probably wouldn’t have won otherwise.”
WHITE HOUSE CONSPIRATORS
John Ehrlichman (1925-1999) born in Tacoma, Washington
Black Bag Job: Chief plumber
Nixon’s adviser tried to cover up the botched Watergate break-in and resigned in 1973. John Ehrlichman was convicted of perjury and conspiracy to obstruct justice related to Watergate and served 18 months in prison.
Notable quotes: In Ehrlichman’s memoir Witness to Power: The Nixon Years, he wrote: "I don't miss Richard Nixon very much, and Richard Nixon probably doesn't miss me."
John Dean (1938) born Akron, Ohio
Black Bag Job:Clean-up crew
As White House counsel, Dean helped hide the break-in and intelligence gathering. He later revealed the cover-up, implicating Nixon in testimony to the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973. He served four months in prison for obstruction of justice and later became an investment banker and author.
Notable quotes: “There’s social media, there’s the internet; the news cycles are faster. I think Watergate would have occurred at a much more accelerated speed than the 928 days it took to go from the arrest at the Watergate to the conviction of Haldeman and Ehrlichman and [John] Mitchell, et al.,” Dean said in 2018. “There’s more likelihood he might have survived if there’d been a Fox News.”
H.R. Haldeman (1926-1993) born Los Angeles
Black bag Job: Clean up crew
Investigators looking into Nixon’s tape-recorded meetings noted a gap of more than 18 minutes that included a conversation between Nixon and H.R. 'Bob' Haldeman. The president’s chief of staff was also implicated in a conversation where Nixon talked about using the CIA to divert the FBI’s Watergate investigation. Haldeman was convicted of perjury, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice.
Notable quotes: “Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it is awfully hard to get it back in.”
John Mitchell (1913-1988) born in Detroit
Black Bag Job: Approved the Watergate break-in and bugging operation
Nixon’s attorney general, former Creep director John Mitchell, served 19 months for conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury. He remained loyal to Nixon, for whom, he said, he had done it all.
Notable quotes: Asked about his prison sentence, Mitchell reportedly replied: “It could have been a hell of a lot worse. They could have sentenced me to spend the rest of my life with [my wife] Martha.”
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