On June 17, 1972, police arrested five men inside the Democratic National Committee offices at Washington’s Watergate complex. The burglars possessed $2,300, cameras with 40 rolls of film, burglary tools, a police-frequency scanner, tear-gas guns, and electronic devices intended for installation in the offices. One detainee, James W. McCord Jr., was a former CIA employee and security officer for Nixon’s Committee for the Re-Election of the President. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein spent two years tracing links between the break-in, White House officials, and efforts to suppress the investigation.
FBI Deputy Director W. Mark Felt secretly supplied information to Woodward beginning in 1972 under the pseudonym “Deep Throat,” while H. R. Haldeman and other White House officials discussed the source internally. The scandal produced criminal convictions and prison terms for senior figures including Haldeman, G. Gordon Liddy, John Mitchell, John Dean, Charles Colson, Egil Krogh, and John Ehrlichman. Facing impeachment after the release of incriminating White House tapes, Richard Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974—the first U.S. president to do so. Felt’s identity was confirmed by Vanity Fair, Woodward, Bernstein, and former Post editor Benjamin Bradlee on May 31, 2005, though former FBI acting director L. Patrick Gray disputed aspects of the account.
