It was past midnight. June 17, 1972. A security guard named Frank Wills was just doing his rounds at the Watergate Office Building in D.C. when he noticed something off. Tape. Someone had put a piece of tape over a door latch to keep it from locking. He pulled it off. He went about his business. But when he came back later, the tape was back. That’s the moment the thread started pulling, and eventually, the whole presidency of Richard Nixon just unraveled.
People always ask who broke into the Watergate building, expecting a list of elite super-spies. The reality is a lot weirder. It was a motley crew of former CIA operatives, anti-Castro Cubans, and a guy who literally used to be a locker-room attendant. They weren't just "burglars." They were a specialized unit known as the "Plumbers." Their job was to stop leaks, but that night, they were there to wiretap the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters.
The Five Men in Business Suits
When the cops finally cornered them in the DNC offices on the sixth floor, they didn't look like thieves. They were wearing suits. They had surgical gloves on. They were carrying walkie-talkies and sequential $100 bills. It was bizarre.
The actual boots on the ground were Virgil Gonzalez, Bernard Barker, James McCord, Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis.
James McCord is the name that really sent shivers through the FBI. Why? Because he wasn't some street thug. He was the security coordinator for the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CRP, or CREEP). He was a former CIA electronics expert. This wasn't a random heist; it was a hit coordinated by the people running the country's re-election campaign.
The other four had deep ties to Miami’s anti-Castro community. Bernard Barker had worked for the CIA during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Eugenio Martínez was still on the CIA payroll—actually receiving a $100-a-month retainer—at the very moment he was arrested. These guys thought they were on a mission for national security. They believed they were fighting communism by spying on Democrats who they thought were "soft" on Castro.
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The Masterminds Across the Street
You can’t talk about who broke into the Watergate building without looking at the Howard Johnson’s hotel across the street. Room 214, specifically. That's where G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt were sitting, watching the whole thing go south through binoculars.
Liddy was a trip. He was a former FBI agent with a penchant for Nietzsche and a habit of holding his hand over a candle flame to prove his willpower. Hunt was a prolific spy novelist and long-time CIA officer. They were the architects. They were the ones who convinced the White House that they needed a "clandestine intelligence-gathering operation."
It’s easy to forget how much of a failure the break-in actually was. This wasn't their first try. They’d already broken in once in May to plant bugs, but the bugs didn't work right. One was placed on the phone of Spencer Oliver, the executive director of the Association of State Democratic Chairmen, but it was picking up too much interference. They went back in on June 17 to fix the equipment and take more photos of documents.
They got caught because they were sloppy.
They taped the door latches horizontally instead of vertically. When you tape them horizontally, the tape shows even when the door is shut. Frank Wills saw the silver duct tape against the blue door frame. If they had just taped them the other way, Wills might have walked right past. History is funny like that. Small mistakes change the world.
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Why They Did It
Motivation is the big question. Why would a sitting president, who was already leading in the polls by a massive margin, need to bug the DNC?
Nixon was paranoid. That’s the short answer. But the long answer involves a culture of "dirty tricks." The Plumbers were originally formed to investigate the leak of the Pentagon Papers. They had already broken into the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Lewis Fielding, looking for dirt. By the time 1972 rolled around, they were a well-oiled machine for illegal surveillance.
They wanted to know the Democrats' strategy. They wanted dirt on DNC Chairman Larry O'Brien. They thought O'Brien had information about a secret (and illegal) loan from Howard Hughes to Nixon’s brother, Donald. They were looking for leverage. They were looking for a way to ensure a landslide.
The Fall of the Dominoes
After the arrest, the cover-up began almost instantly. Ron Ziegler, Nixon’s press secretary, dismissed it as a "third-rate burglary." But the FBI found Barker's address book. Inside? The name "Howard Hunt" and the notation "W. House."
That was the link.
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Then you had Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein at The Washington Post. They started following the money. That sequential cash found on the burglars? It was traced back to a Mexican bank account and then directly to the CRP.
Honestly, the burglars themselves were just the tip of the iceberg. McCord was the first to crack. In March 1973, he wrote a letter to Judge John Sirica. He admitted that there had been political pressure applied to the defendants to plead guilty and remain silent. He admitted that perjury had been committed. He blew the lid off the whole thing.
The investigation eventually led to the "White House Horrors"—a list of illegal activities ranging from money laundering to sabotage. It led to the discovery of the Nixon Tapes. It led to the "Smoking Gun" tape where Nixon clearly orders the CIA to tell the FBI to back off the investigation for "national security" reasons.
The Human Element
We often look at these figures as caricatures. But these were real people with weird quirks. Frank Sturgis claimed he was involved in the JFK assassination (he likely wasn't, but he loved the notoriety). Bernard Barker was a war hero who had been a prisoner of war in Germany.
When you look at who broke into the Watergate building, you see a group of men who were fiercely loyal to a specific vision of America. They weren't looking to get rich. They were looking to be "patriots" in the darkest, most misguided sense of the word. They trusted their superiors. They trusted the President. And they were left out to dry the second things got hot.
Taking Action: Learning from History
Understanding the Watergate break-in isn't just about trivia. It’s about understanding the mechanics of power and the importance of oversight. If you're interested in digging deeper into this specific era of American history, here are a few things you can actually do:
- Visit the Watergate Complex: If you're ever in D.C., go there. It's still a functioning office and residential building. Seeing the physical layout—how close the Howard Johnson's is to the DNC office—makes the logistics of the night much clearer.
- Read the McCord Letter: Look up the full text of James McCord’s letter to Judge Sirica. It’s a masterclass in how a whistleblower operates when they feel they've been used as a pawn.
- Listen to the "Smoking Gun" Tape: The National Archives has these digitized. Hearing Nixon’s actual voice as he discusses the cover-up is much more chilling than reading a transcript.
- Research the "Plumbers" Task Force: Look into their other operations, specifically the Fielding break-in. It provides the necessary context to show that Watergate wasn't an isolated incident, but part of a systemic pattern of behavior.
The break-in was a failure of ethics, but it was also a massive failure of competence. Five men walked into a building with tape and some bugs, and they walked out in handcuffs, dragging a presidency down with them. It remains the ultimate example of how the "cover-up is worse than the crime," though in this case, the crime was pretty bad to begin with.