If you ask a casual history buff, they’ll tell you it started in June. They're wrong. Sorta. They’ll point to that warm night on June 17, 1972, when five guys in business suits got caught carrying wiretapping gear inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters. But honestly, if you want to know when did Watergate start, you have to look back much further than a single botched burglary. The seeds were planted years before the duct tape was ever placed on those basement doors.
It’s a messy story. History isn't a straight line.
To really get it, you've gotta understand the mindset of Richard Nixon. By the time 1972 rolled around, he was already running a "Plumbers" unit out of the White House. This wasn't some sudden lapse in judgment. It was a slow, agonizing crawl toward total paranoia.
The June Break-in Wasn't the Beginning
Most people fixate on the 2:30 AM arrest. Frank Wills, a 24-year-old security guard, noticed tape over a door lock. He removed it. He came back later, saw it was replaced, and called the cops. That’s the "movie version" of when Watergate started. But the men arrested—Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker, James McCord, Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis—were just the tip of the spear.
McCord was a former CIA officer. He was also the security coordinator for the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP, or "CREEP" as the press loved to call it). This wasn't a group of random thieves looking for jewelry. They were looking for dirt. They wanted to bug the phones of Larry O'Brien, the DNC chairman. They wanted to photograph documents.
But why?
Nixon was actually ahead in the polls. He didn't need to cheat to win. That’s the tragedy of the whole thing. The "start" was actually a series of escalating dirty tricks that began as early as 1969.
The Pentagon Papers and the Birth of the Plumbers
If you’re looking for a specific "point of no return," it’s June 1971. Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. These documents proved the government had been lying about the Vietnam War for decades. Nixon was furious. He didn't just want to stop the leaks; he wanted to destroy Ellsberg.
This is when the White House Special Investigations Unit was born. They were called the Plumbers because their job was to fix leaks. Simple.
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In September 1971, these guys broke into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Lewis Fielding. They wanted to find something—anything—to discredit him. They found nothing. But the blueprint was set. The same guys who did the Ellsberg job—G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt—were the masterminds behind the Watergate break-in months later.
When Did Watergate Start for the Public?
For the average American in 1972, Watergate was a "third-rate burglary." That’s how Ron Ziegler, Nixon’s press secretary, dismissed it. For months, it stayed off the front pages. The election happened in November, and Nixon won in a massive landslide. He took 49 out of 50 states.
The scandal didn't "start" for the public until the trial of the burglars in early 1973.
Judge John Sirica wasn't buying the story that these five guys acted alone. He pushed them. Hard. Then, James McCord cracked. He wrote a letter to Sirica admitting that high-level officials were involved and that there had been a massive cover-up.
That was the spark.
From there, it was a domino effect:
- April 1973: Nixon’s top aides, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, resign. John Dean is fired.
- May 1973: The Senate Watergate Committee begins televised hearings. The whole country stops to watch.
- July 1973: Alexander Butterfield drops the bombshell. He reveals that Nixon has a secret taping system in the Oval Office.
The Paranoia of 1969
If we're being pedantic, you could argue the mindset began in 1969 with the secret bombing of Cambodia. Nixon was obsessed with who was talking to the press. He ordered the FBI to wiretap 17 government officials and journalists without a warrant.
He felt besieged. He felt the "Eastern Establishment" and the "liberal media" were out to get him.
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When you feel like you're at war, you stop following the rules of peace. Nixon started using the IRS to harass his "enemies list." He used the FBI and CIA as tools for political surveillance. By the time the 1972 campaign started, the White House was basically a command center for political espionage.
Misconceptions About the Timeline
A lot of people think Woodward and Bernstein "discovered" Watergate. They didn't. They reported on it brilliantly, sure. They followed the money. They found that a $25,000 check meant for the Nixon campaign had ended up in the bank account of one of the burglars. But the investigation was a massive effort involving the FBI, the GAO, and later, the Senate.
Another weird myth? That Nixon was impeached.
He wasn't. He resigned before he could be. The House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment in late July 1974: obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. Once the "Smoking Gun" tape was released in August—proving Nixon ordered the CIA to tell the FBI to stop the investigation—his support in the Senate evaporated.
He quit on August 8, 1974.
The Real Cost of the Delay
Because the "start" was so murky and the cover-up so effective, Nixon was able to serve almost two years of his second term. Think about that. If the public had known the truth in October 1972, the history of the 20th century looks completely different.
The delay allowed the administration to destroy evidence. They shredded documents. They "lost" 18 and a half minutes of tape. They paid hush money to the burglars using campaign funds.
It wasn't just a crime; it was a systemic failure of leadership.
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Actionable Insights for History Enthusiasts
To truly understand when did watergate start, you need to look at the primary sources. History is often sanitized in textbooks, but the grit is in the transcripts.
1. Listen to the Tapes
Don't just read about them. You can find the digitized Nixon tapes online through the Nixon Presidential Library or the Miller Center. Hearing the tone of voice—the casual way they discussed "paying off" the burglars—changes your perspective on the era.
2. Follow the Money Trail
Read the original reporting from The Washington Post archive. Look specifically for the stories from July and August 1972. It shows how difficult it was to connect a "break-in" to the Oval Office. It wasn't an overnight realization; it was a grueling, inch-by-inch grind.
3. Study the "Plumbers" Specifically
The Watergate break-in was their last job, not their first. Researching the break-in at Lewis Fielding's office (Ellsberg's psychiatrist) provides the real context for the tactics used later at the Watergate complex.
4. Revisit the Senate Hearings
Watch the testimony of John Dean. He was the first to really lay out the "cancer on the presidency." His testimony is a masterclass in how a cover-up functions from the inside.
Watergate didn't start with a bang. It started with a whisper, a wiretap, and a president who believed that if the Commander-in-Chief does it, it's not illegal. The burglary was just the moment the world finally noticed.
Next Steps for Deepening Your Knowledge
To get a full picture of the political climate that allowed Watergate to happen, research the "Huston Plan" of 1970. This was a proposed set of domestic surveillance operations that even J. Edgar Hoover thought went too far. Understanding why Nixon wanted those powers is the final piece of the puzzle in identifying exactly when the ethics of the White House began to crumble.