The Watergate scandal, also simply called Watergate, was a political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon. On June 17, 1972, operatives associated with Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign were caught burglarizing and planting listening devices in the Democratic National Committee headquarters at Washington, D.C.'s Watergate complex. Nixon's efforts to conceal his administration's involvement led to an impeachment process and ultimately to his resignation in August 1974.
Emerging from the White House's efforts to stop leaks, the break-in was an implementation of Operation Gemstone, enacted by mostly Cuban burglars led by former intelligence agents E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. After the arrests, investigators and reporters like The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein—guided by the source "Deep Throat"—exposed a White House political espionage program illegally funded by donor contributions. Nixon denied involvement but his administration destroyed evidence, obstructed investigators, and bribed the burglars. This cover-up initially worked, helping Nixon win a landslide re-election, until revelations from the burglars' 1973 trial led to a Senate investigation.
Mounting pressure led Attorney General Elliot Richardson to appoint Archibald Cox as Watergate special prosecutor. Cox subpoenaed Nixon's Oval Office tapes—suspected to include Watergate conversations—but Nixon invoked executive privilege to block their release, triggering a constitutional crisis. In the "Saturday Night Massacre", Nixon fired Cox, forcing the resignations of the attorney general and his deputy and fueling suspicions of Nixon's involvement. Nixon released select tapes, although one was partially erased and two others disappeared. In April 1974, Cox's replacement Leon Jaworski reissued the subpoena, but Nixon provided only redacted transcripts. In July, the Supreme Court ordered the tapes' release, and the House Judiciary Committee recommended impeachment for obstructing justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. The White House released the "Smoking Gun" tape, showing that Nixon ordered the CIA to stop the FBI's investigation. Facing impeachment, on August 9, 1974, Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign. In total, 69 people were charged for Watergate—including two cabinet members—and most pleaded guilty or were convicted. Nixon was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.
Watergate, often considered the greatest presidential scandal, tarnished Nixon's legacy and had electoral ramifications for the Republican Party: heavy losses in the 1974 midterm elections and Ford's failed 1976 reelection bid. Despite significant coverage, no consensus exists on the motive for the break-in or who specifically ordered it. Theories range from an incompetent break-in by rogue campaign officials to a sexpionage operation or CIA plot. The scandal has generated over 30 memoirs and had such historical impact that the suffix -gate entered the lexicon globally to denote scandals, even those outside of American politics.
Prelude
Leaks and early wiretapping
Richard Nixon was elected the 37th president of the United States in 1968. He inherited American involvement in the Vietnam War, which he promised to end honorably. Seeking to force a diplomatic resolution, he secretly expanded bombing to Cambodia. When The New York Times exposed the bombing in May 1969, Nixon ordered the wiretapping of reporters and suspected leakers. After the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) could not bug some targets, Nixon's domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman directly arranged the wiretapping. Nixon's discontent with the FBI also led him to hire New York Police Department detectives Jack Caulfield and Anthony Ulasewicz as private investigators.
In June 1971, The New York Times started publishing the Pentagon Papers: a leaked 7,000-page study of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, commissioned in 1967. Leaked by analyst Daniel Ellsberg, the papers exposed government deception about the war's progress. Nixon was initially unworried, as the Pentagon Papers predated his presidency, but National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger—furious as Ellsberg was his mentee—pushed Nixon into what White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman called a "frenzy". Attorney General John Mitchell filed a restraining order against the Times, halting the papers' publication. The Washington Post began to publish the papers instead, and the Times case traveled to the Supreme Court, which ruled against Nixon. The episode was, according to journalist Garrett Graff, a "self-inflicted ... disaster".
The White House Plumbers
"We've got a damn counter-government here and we've got to fight it. I don't give a damn how it is done, do whatever has to be done to stop these leaks. I don't want to be told why it can't be done. This government cannot survive, it cannot function if anyone can run out and leak."
After the Supreme Court's ruling, Nixon told aide Chuck Colson to stop all leaks by any means. Nixon fixated on files at the Brookings Institution on the Chennault Affair, which implicated him in the sabotage of 1968 Vietnam peace talks, and urged aides to "get in and get those files—blow the safe and get it". Nixon advisors had previously drafted the Huston Plan, which proposed expanded domestic surveillance and tactics like "surreptitious entry" (burglary).
For the Brookings burglary, Colson recruited retired Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent E. Howard Hunt, who had helped arrange the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état and the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba. The plot escalated into a planned firebombing with burglars posing as firefighters: White House Counsel John Dean halted the operation. Their focus shifted to leaker Ellsberg: Hunt was teamed with aides Egil Krogh and David Young in the new "Special Investigations Unit". Former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy also joined the group, which he dubbed "ODESSA" after a rumored Nazi Schutzstaffel group. Young's grandmother, misunderstanding leaks, suggested another name: the "Plumbers".
Seeking compromising material, the Plumbers targeted Ellsberg's psychiatrist, Lewis Fielding. Krogh approved a burglary of his Los Angeles office: "Hunt/Liddy Project #1". Hunt enlisted Cuban collaborators from the Bay of Pigs: CIA veteran Bernard Barker—who had served under Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista—and anti-Castro exiles Eugenio Martínez and Felipe De Diego. The September 3 burglary reportedly failed, the Cubans finding no Ellsberg files and staging an addict's rampage after accidentally damaging the safe. De Diego said that they found and photographed Ellsberg's records, and Fielding reported that Ellsberg's health files were in his office and appeared to have been "fingered". Liddy later suspected that Hunt had deceived him, photographing the files and sending them instead to the CIA. Hunt and Liddy then planned to burglarize Fielding's home but were stopped by Ehrlichman.
The Plumbers next plotted to discredit Ellsberg by drugging him with LSD at a Washington gala, but White House approval came too late. They revived the Brookings firebombing scheme, proposing to buy a fire engine for firefighter‑disguised Cubans, which the White House ultimately deemed too costly. Other projects included investigating Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick accident, assessing whether Hoover should be made to leave the FBI, and forging a cable to link John F. Kennedy to the 1963 assassination of South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm. The Plumbers also helped discover that the Pentagon was surveilling the White House via a leaker on the National Security Council, outraging an increasingly paranoid Nixon. Collectively, the Plumbers' schemes are often called the "White House horrors", a phrase coined by Attorney General Mitchell.
Committee for the Re-Election of the President
As Nixon prepared for his 1972 re-election campaign, Caulfield proposed Operation Sandwedge: a private-sector intelligence operation against the Democrats. White House officials deemed the plan too moderate and doubted Caulfield's competence: Liddy was selected to head the project before it was scrapped. In December 1971, Liddy instead became general counsel for the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP)—the fundraising arm of Nixon's re-election campaign—introduced by deputy campaign manager Jeb Stuart Magruder as "our man in charge of dirty tricks". The CRP also recruited retired CIA officer James McCord as its security chief.
With Hunt, Liddy devised Operation Gemstone, a set of covert campaign schemes pitched to Attorney General Mitchell on January 27. These included Operation Diamond: kidnapping, drugging, and detaining in Mexico likely protesters during the 1972 Republican National Convention. The plan, nicknamed Nacht und Nebel after an Adolf Hitler directive, would be enacted by an "Einsatzgruppe" of mobsters that Hunt said had committed 22 murders. Other plots included Operation Emerald, a spy airliner to trail the Democratic nominee; Operation Turquoise, Cuban commandos sabotaging air-conditioning at the Democrats' 1972 Miami convention; and Operation Sapphire, a boat with sex workers to entrap Democrats at the convention. Mitchell rejected the plots as unrealistic and expensive, requesting a simpler Gemstone.
In February, Mitchell resigned to become CRP director. Although disputed by Graff and biographer James Rosen, Mitchell is generally believed to have approved Liddy's next version of Gemstone, which proposed burglarizing and bugging the office of Larry O'Brien at the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) headquarters within D.C.'s Watergate Complex, the Fontainebleau Hotel suites of top Democrats during their Miami convention, and the campaign headquarters of the eventual nominee. As another break-in target, Mitchell or Magruder suggested Las Vegas Sun publisher Hank Greenspun's office. The desired material may have involved possible Democratic nominee Edmund Muskie or the financial dealings of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes with Nixon or his brother Donald Nixon. Although—according to Hunt and Liddy—the burglary was abandoned after Hughes would not provide a getaway plane, Greenspun's office showed evidence of forced entry, and Ehrlichman told Nixon in 1973 that Hunt and Liddy "flew out [to Las Vegas], broke his safe, got something out" [sic].
Oval Office taping system
After his election, Nixon made the Army Signal Corps remove a taping system used by predecessor Lyndon B. Johnson in the Oval Office. By 1971, Nixon worried that his presidency would not be sufficiently preserved for posterity and had the Secret Service install microphones in his desk and throughout the room. The system was deliberately kept secret from those close to Nixon, including his secretary, Rose Mary Woods. From February 16, 1971 to July 12, 1973, the system recorded 3,432 hours of conversation. According to Graff, the tapes were ultimately "the root cause of [Nixon's] downfall". No president since Nixon is known to have taped White House conversations, although President Donald Trump suggested that he did.
Watergate break-ins
Assembling the crew
Following the May 1972 death of FBI director Hoover, Colson asked the CRP to send counterprotestors to a protest at Hoover's state funeral in the Capitol rotunda. Hunt and Liddy again recruited Bay of Pigs collaborators: Barker flew to D.C. with nine men from Miami. After the counterprotest, according to Lukas, Barker's team may have committed two unsolved burglaries in Washington, those of the Chilean Embassy and of a major Democratic law firm within the Watergate Complex on May 16. The counterprotest may also have been a ruse to bring the Cubans to D.C. to burglarize Hoover's home in search of alleged kompromat used to blackmail politicians.
After meeting with Hunt in Miami, Barker selected the men for the DNC break-in planned for Memorial Day weekend: Martínez, as photographer; Virgilio Gonzalez, as lockpicker; and De Diego, Reinaldo Pico, and Frank Sturgis as guards. Sturgis was the only non-Cuban member, but he had fought alongside Castro during the Cuban Revolution. Pico and De Diego were dropped because McCord forgot two walkie-talkies. After a planning session with McCord and Hunt at the Hamilton Hotel near the White House, Barker's team checked into the Watergate Hotel on May 26. McCord recruited former FBI agent Alfred Baldwin III to perform the wiretapping and monitor the telephone conversations afterward; he was booked at the Howard Johnson's motel opposite the Watergate.
Initial attempts and May 28 break-in
The Plumbers attempted a break-in on the night of May 26, when Hunt and seven others posed as executives in a banquet room located beneath the Watergate office building and connected to the office's stairwell. This effort failed when Hunt and Martínez, after hiding in a closet to evade a night guard, were unable to pick the lock and were stuck in the banquet room overnight. A concurrent, spontaneous plot led by Liddy with the Cubans—the bugging of George McGovern's D.C. campaign headquarters—failed on two nights when a lone volunteer was seen working late. On May 27, a second DNC break-in failed after Gonzalez lacked proper tools for the DNC office's door; he flew back to Miami to retrieve them.
On May 28, Gonzalez and Sturgis entered the office on their third attempt, approaching via the garage. They were joined by Barker, who sought files on Cuban contributions and had Martínez photograph convention security files, and McCord, who bugged the phones of both staffer R. Spencer Oliver and O'Brien's secretary. After the team left the office, McCord was unable to pick up one of the wiretap transmitters—that of O'Brien's secretary—with his remote receiver. In the following weeks, Baldwin recorded hundreds of calls on Oliver's wiretap, including many sexual conversations from secretaries using his phone. Liddy delivered the phone transcripts and developed photos to Magruder and a disappointed Mitchell, who dismissed them as "shitty".
On June 12, Magruder asked Liddy to photograph all documents in the office. Later that day, Baldwin, directed by Liddy, visited the Watergate DNC office under the guise of a nephew of former DNC chairman John Bailey and was given a tour of the floor. Two days later, Liddy told Hunt that the DNC break-in would be reattempted. On June 16, Barker's team returned to D.C. and checked into the Watergate.